I have read with great interest the debate in Operations regarding the CWB system combat and command rules. I have been active with The Gamers since the company started. The first two games I owned were the original In their Quiet Fields and the original Thunder at the Crossroads. In addition, I got all the early issues of Operations. I have also been a playtester for No Better Place to Die and April's Harvest. I don't like most of the changes people are making in the system.

The Burden of Command

Through two rules editions and many articles, Dean's point has always been the same. Command and control during the Civil War was marginal at best, usually worse, with certain corps and brigades sometimes doing great. Most of what I have seen tries to put us as gamers too much in control. In the Winter 95 issue ["A System for the People" by Poitinger and Manross, Operations 19] for example, let's look at one of the fallacies proposed, the one about writing orders from a house or barn helping you on delivery.

Not true; for example, in the Battle of First Bull Run both Beauregard and Johnston wrote orders from mansions. But they were delivered way late because the courier supposedly had an extended visit with a farmer's daughter. [Ed. note: This could be the sort of crazy event simulated by a poor die roll on a good acceptance column.]

What The Gamers' designers have said from the beginning is that the system is designed to simulate the lack of command and control. At Gettysburg, for example, Lee's second in command told General Ewell the morning of the first day to move and take the Little Round Top. He told him this three or four times with increasing force. Yet Ewell never gave the order to do it.

In the heat and emotion of battle, human beings react differently. The result was that the Confederates never took the Little Round Top. [This example seems to me to conflate Ewell's first-day failure to capture Culp's Hill/northern Cemetery Hill with Longstreet's second-day attempt at Little Round Top.]

Shiloh

Shiloh was another example where orders were not carried out fully and on time. Even under the best circumstances, when Jackson stood at Bull Run or when Longstreet attacked, or when Chamberlain held at Gettysburg, they still had stragglers and deaths in the ranks. The reason we admire these kinds of stands is because of strong unit cohesion.

But even these were not absolute situations. Grant in his Memoirs talked about the high rate of stragglers and deaths at Shiloh, and about how it was nearly impossible to maintain unit cohesion. Shelby Foote put it this way: When you hear the sounds of battle around you, you see your buddies die and you realize the plan you were part of is not working, you just start to run. These were the assumptions that went into the CWB command system from day one.

As far as headquarters movement goes, a couple of examples should suffice. [Ed note: See especially articles by Prowell and Powell in Ops 15.] During the Battle of Shiloh the Union General Prentiss moved his headquarters about four times in a two-hour period. He was finally ordered to hold the Bloody Lane [the sunken road at the Hornet's Nest] at all costs. This he did at a horrendous cost in men. In the end he surrendered his command. In the same battle Sherman moved his headquarters about three times in an hour. Sherman once boasted that he could establish a headquarters in about 15 minutes. "After all, it is in the saddle" he once said.

[Ed note: By making a similar remark, Pope is supposed to have inspired jokes about having his headquarters where his hindquarters were supposed to be.]

Remember, the game turns represent half-hour time frames.

Army HQ Rules

Rules related to army headquarters in the Winter 95 issue are too restrictive and unrealistic. Army commanders should not have their power to write orders limited; after all, they are the commanding generals. Let me explain. During the Civil War many army commanders were all over the field. Much of the time they did not stay at their headquarters. They would want to check things out for themselves. Sometimes if they had not heard from a courier, they might want to check with the general to whom the courier had been dispatched. Other times they might get a message from the other side of the field saying that the line was caving in, or they might want to inspire the troops further.

They might just get worried. Sometimes the army headquarters might be five or ten miles away from the battle. Many times the army commander might be five or ten miles from his headquarters. Many commanding generals never did hold councils of war. Those who did might hold them in the range of some of the corps commanders [Ed note: i.e. where the corps commander would still be within his HQ's radius]. This means that some might have to go clear across the field to be involved. Some corps commanders may not get there at all. The current rules give us the opportunity to simulate these situations.

If you are having this problem in your games, you are playing them right. In the game the army commander can move anywhere on the field to deal with a problem or unexpected success. Again, it seems that we want total control. We should not have it. If our commander is out of position and we need to deal with some kind of emergency or exploit a success, we always have initiative. This may or may not work. Just as it was historically.

As far as Force 2 orders go, we all create Force 2 orders to get on the best column of the Acceptance Table. We have all done this. Even with this technique we can't control the acceptance process because of the procrastination rule and because we still have to dice for acceptance. Even on the 8 or more column we have only about a 25% chance of the order being immediately accepted. This is realistic. [Ed note: I get something like a 44% probability of rolling immediate acceptance here, but the point is still valid: even with the best chances, you have to expect orders to be delayed.]

There were numerous times in the Civil War when the commanding general was standing face to face with his subordinate, both screaming at him and giving him written orders, and the subordinate still did not get it. McClellan and Burnside are one example of this.

One thing we could do is write Force 2 orders only when necessary. But what may be necessary for one may not be necessary for another. We have found in our games out here that if you are issuing a lot of orders in a turn, you won't have enough command points to make all of them Force 2.

If the orders you issue are situation specific, then maybe Force 2 is okay. It depends on how we run our battles. I am not sure that "iron maiden" rules are what we want. The point of the command system is that there should be no certainty that orders will be accepted or followed on time.

So Many Fallen

I have always admired The Gamers for putting the little crosses on the casualty markers. In my mind this makes the casualties less abstract. In real war men die, and the accumulation of those deaths has an effect on the battle. Watching the death rate of your men go up should have an effect on you. There is a military axiom that says suffering 20% to 25% casualties is unacceptably high. Corps Attack Stoppage simulates that effect, and so did the old panic rules. Civil War battles were fierce.

At Antietam alone about 1,000 soldiers died every 15 minutes at one point in the battle. The Fire Combat Table is not designed to simulate casualties exactly. It is designed to give us a feel for what they were about. Sometimes there will be more, sometimes less. Much depends on how we fight the battle. If we don't constantly bring in fresh troops, or in some cases retreat to avoid battle, our casualties will be unacceptably high. In some of our games out here, we may go about three or four game hours without major combat. We ought to be sensitive to death and stragglers in our cardboard games.

Fatigue rules [see "Fog of Battle and Other Factors" by Cutajar in Ops 17] are unnecessary in this system. When a brigade force marches it can suffer stragglers: this is a form of fatigue.

In addition, when a brigade gets wrecked, among the things that happen to it is fatigue because its unit cohesion is broken. Too many forced marches will weaken a brigade's unit cohesion. Rallying is in part about forming unit cohesion.

Closing

In closing, I want to say that we should remember that this system can't be all things to all people. But what I believe The Gamers has done with this series is to get us in touch with the horror, brutality, frustration, and uncertainty of Civil War combat and command. If we learn those lessons well, the system will have worked!

[Ed note: I have been deep in the jungle of the CWB optional rules and analyses that have appeared in previous issues of this magazine. Guess what: I have more such articles waiting for their turn in print. I can sympathize with Kevin's argument, since I tend to play pretty much by the "stock" CWB rules. My sense is that players devise house rules in response to those times when they discover holes in the system's checks and balances. In a way, those players are saying, "Oops, I broke it. Guess I'd better fix it."

If Mr. Kiconas' strong response to earlier Operations articles draws responses in turn, a healthy debate will continue. That's fine, since a basically sound system should survive large amounts of tinkering.]