Let's consider the technique of keeping the army commander close to where orders will need to be issued and accepted. This technique makes sense for several reasons. Since leaders move faster than orders, there's no reason not to have the army commander go to the subordinate and his corps HQ, provided you anticipate which subordinate will need the help next. Keeping the two leaders at the corps HQ helps speed implementation, making it possible, at best, to issue, accept, and begin implementing an order all on the same turn. Time saved on order dispatch and/or officer movement to the HQ to "touch base" can help make up for time lost trying to get low-rated officers to roll acceptance or reduce delay.

Also, the savings in command points with oral orders (2 instead of 5) means a good deal when the army commander has only 15 points to work with each turn. You know that O-rated commanders will be spending 3 of those points per order for Force 2 to help make up for their sad ratings.

What about those sad ratings? Take David's example from Perryville: Bragg is rated O and Polk 1. To send Polk into an attack, Bragg could spend 11 of his 15 commands points to issue a Force 2, aide-delivered written order. Say Polk is currently without orders. The net acceptance number is 0. This order has zero chance of acceptance on the turn it's delivered, but it does have a 1 in 9 chance of being distorted (all those command points wasted). It has almost a 50% chance (17 out of 36) of ending up in D2, making that outcome more likely even than D1 (15 out of 36). Polk is going nowhere fast.

By way of contrast, imagine the same sort of order, a Force 2, complex, AW to a leader not currently carrying out orders. But this time, the game is April's Harvest and the officers are Grant (4) and Sherman (4). The net acceptance number is 7, putting the roll on the second best column. The chance of distortion is minimal, the probability of immediate acceptance is 14 out of 36, and a D1 is more than three times as likely as a D2. What's more, Grant has enough command points to issue two such very expensive orders each turn, if necessary.

If Bragg issues the same order to Polk as an IPV, the acceptance roll is on the 2 to 3 column. Compared with the 0 to 1 column, this improvement shows up in reduced probabilities of distortion and of D2. Polk even has a 5 out of 36 chance of accepting the orders on the spot and moving out that turn. And Bragg still has 7 command points to spend in the same turn. Yes, this one-column difference looks minor, especially compared with what real talent like Grant and Sherman can accomplish.

But if you look at the numbers (e.g. a D2 is twice as slow as a D1), you can see that in the long run this sort of optimization should yield better results. And remember, planning for the long run is the key idea in David's approach. Rather than complain about what a klutz Bragg is, use this idea to squeeze the most out of his sub-stellar capabilities.

Some Thoughts on CWB Command