I remember my first game of Terrible Swift Sword. This game offered something new: forces that marched, deployed, shot at each other, took casualties, and either stood or fled. I had leader counters and command rules that kept me from sending units every which way regardless of historical subordination. I even had different types of cannon and small arms. Later refinements of the Great Battles of the American Civil War series added more human factors simulation through brigade combat effectiveness rules, the "Seeing the Elephant" Table for troops of untested mettle, and most recently, the Turn Continuation Table.

The change in the counter graphics-from branch of service symbols to silhouettes of soldiers, troopers and guns reflected the difference between this game and those based on Napoleon at Waterloo. Designer Richard Berg had cut away a layer or two of abstraction. In a Blue & Gray system game, units attack, retreat, and advance like bumper cars, occasionally blowing each other clean off the map. In TSS the map gradually becomes messier as units pileup casualties and take to their heels.

Sure, my brother and I spent a few real days fighting through part of the first game day, but we felt we were playing a game chock full of realism. What we had really discovered was the toy-like appeal of literalism.

Maybe we, like many gamers, ell into the detail-equals realism trap, but the truth is that TSS (and, to be fair, La Bataille de Moscowa) really did make substantial advances in realistic simulation. On the other hand, plenty of detailed atmosphere and feel is no guarantee of realism. A simulation should be capable of simulating the events it is based on, right? to give historically valid results, a game has to stay grounded in what was or what might have been. A properly designed game can get valid results, in this sense, out of a system as simple as Blue and Gray.

This distinction between games that yield realistic results and games that realistically simulate a process is at least as old as an article about "Realism" and "Naturalism" by Redmond Simonsen in an early issue of MOVES. Often this, difference is regarded as a trade-off. In his InBrief in Operations 2, Dean pointed out how a fascination with process can work against realistic results. The point I want to make is that a realistic feel, usually through nifty nuts-and-bolts detail, need not come at the expense of a game's ability to produce historically plausible results and clarify the big picture. We do not, or should not, have to choose between intoxicating atmospherics and abstract enlightenment. In fact, any decent game should express its historicity in both the what and how departments. The particular mixture of these two sorts of realism that each of us prefers in a game depends on-and says a lot about-the masons we enjoy wargames.

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait?

Games of similar scope can simulate a given effect in dramatically different ways. Players of, say, both First Blood and August Fury find themselves dealing with similar game mechanics to march, change formation, shoot, and so on. The greatest contrast between the GBACW games and the CWB series lies in their approaches to command and control. Clearly a good Civil War battle game has to show the importance of getting there first with the most. How many times have we read about (let's mention no names) General X's inexplicable sluggishness or General Y's brilliant seizure of an opportunity?

The Turn continuation rules in the latest GBACW games operate so as to let the units commanded by the superior (cardboard) leaders take the initiative while the poorly led formations have to stand around waiting for their turn to act--or be acted against. Likewise, in a CWB game a good army commander with good subordinates can give more orders and have them carried out faster than, well, Braxton Bragg. Also, highly rated division and corps commanders have a better chance of rolling initiative to grab that fleeting opportunity or avert disaster.

Both systems emphasize the importance of leadership quality and deny the player ahistorically perfect control over his army, but here the similarities end. Rolls on the Turn Continuation Table determine whether a player will have the chance to use some of his units before play passes to his opponent. The activities that, in the older GBACW games, made up a player-turn are divided into actions, and through most of the game-turn it is uncertain which group of units, from either side, will have the next opportunity to move or fight.

The CWB, of course, uses separate player-turns which, incidentally, follow a sequence similar to that in games from TSS to Rebel Sabers. Using the Second Edition rules, CWB players have to roll each game turn to see whether their troops with delayed orders shoulder their arms or sit on their hands; once the action starts, a Corps Attack Stoppage roll can yank it to a halt again. The Turn Continuation rules work entirely within a single game-turn and so tend to regulate the player's ability to react to the immediate situation, while the CWB rules place the greatest importance on planning over several turns.

This difference reflects the designers' choices of simulation emphasis and affects your style of play; if you want to win a game of First Blood (or any wargame), you had better have a plan in mind, but by forcing you to formalize and then live with your plans, the CWB system stresses battlefield time lag over immediate fog of war.

Dean's approach shows a good deal more of what I call literalism, mechanics that avoid abstraction enough so that the real- life events they simulate are self-evident. In the process of writing, sending, and accepting an order from, say, Bragg to Polk, a player imagines a staff officer writing (AW) or Bragg bellowing (IPV, force 2), a courier's getting lost on the battlefield (delivery roll of 12 [Ed Note: this roll was eliminated in the 2nd Ed CWBJ], garbled words (Dt), and Polk's lack of skin or fighting spirit of both (Delay 1 or 2). In Berg's designs all such details, except for officer quality, are invisible behind the Turn Continuation dice roll. To factor the details that Dean models into a single dice roll might not sacrifice any realism; it might cost you some fun, depending on your tastes.

The two systems differ also in which abstractions they make obvious to the player. The Turn Continuation rules do away with the artificial predictability that arises from a set sequence of play. With thew rules, neither player knows just which units will get to move or fight next, and this uncertainty goes a long way toward giving the players some sense of the confusion and drama of the battlefield. On the other hand, the simple Turn Continuation Table requires some very gamey rules to determine when a player does or does not have to roll for an action. Because these rules have no clear relationship to any events on the actual battlefield, they tend to reduce and distract from the games' Civil War flavor.

CWB games allow the unrealistic predictability of a fixed sequence of play but gain back the sense of uncertainty on a macroscopic scale. The two systems show different choices of trade- offs, but not, I think, some overall trade-off between abstraction and literalism. Overall, the contrast between the ways these game systems feel is even greater than their differences as simulations.

Shoot Me and I'll Shoot You Back

An illustration from the Tactical Combat Series might make my point even clearer. A popular way to simulate command and control in 20th-century tactical games is through some point system. In Assault or City Fight for example, players spend points each turn to control their forces. One way to use command points to limit a player's control and keep the sequence of play fluid is through randomly picked chits (Fireright, TSR's Sniper, Fire Team). One of the most innovative approaches (prior to 1989) is the card system in Tank Leader. Players fight for initiative within the game-turn by playing cards that reflect command, control, and communications quality of companysized units and their higher HQs. High rated cards allow a player either to seize the initiative or to react quickly to a new development (if he still has a good card in his hand). Most of these systems give a fluid and interactive feel to play, and all have the realistic effect of making the units' effectiveness depend on leadership as well as raw firepower.

Then along comes Dean, who achieves the same overall effects with a Suppressive Fire sequence right out of Fireright and nota chit or a card or (until Omaha) a leader to be found. TCS units shoot and move when the player wants them to, limited only by overwatch rolls and a simple roll-off to see who gets the first shot or the first Action Phase. Microscopically the Suppressive Fire Phase is quite unrealistic, as players choose firers and targets according to their perfect knowledge of which units (friendly and enemy) have not yet fired or received fire.

The alternate-target rule does give a good simulation of fire discipline; small unit leaders cannot always insure the most economical distribution of firepower among targets, and if a particular target is important, a player has to risk overkill in order to hit it I'm shooting at the Tiger II with these ten Shermans..."). And the overall effect is a dirt-free approximation of simultaneous combat. Still, the polite, let's-take-turns feel of Suppressive Fire is always there, and obvious abstraction.

What I find striking about the TCS rules is the choice of where to located that obvious abstraction. This system emphasizes operational planning, not platoon-level leadership. Rather than make command and control into a casino game complete with cards, dice, and chits, this system has players mark up a map and issue orders. General Omar Bradley explained how he would sit down with a big map of Normandy "and with my colored crayons, outline various operations." (D'Este, Decision in Normandy, 1983.)

By allowing the player to do the same, the TCS rules avoid a major abstraction in the form of game-like command mechanisms. Rather than include squad leaders or rules to determine who squeezes his trigger first, Dean chose to put players in the shoes of regimental and divisional commanders. A good deal of both simulation value and game-playing fun lies in what goes on before anyone moves a counter, in the preparation of those initial Op sheets. The difference is not so much one of realism per se as of focus and feel. Marking up an Op sheet feels like pretend generalship; a system that focuseson small-unit command can give mathematical modes but (fortunately!) not much feel for the difficulties of leading men through the noise, weariness, pain, confusion, and terror of combat.

There's No Arguing Taste, But...

Different games move along different axes toward the objective of realistic simulation. So what else is new?

Bo Eldridge, designer of XTR's Desert Storm, chose the term "effect-over-process" to describe the use of abstractions to save players unnecessary work. He did not, and we should not, think of entire games as either effect-oriented or process-oriented. A designer always has to choose some mixture of the two approaches, and that choice determines the game's focus and flavor. The TCS Point Fire Table is more effect-oriented than the tank fire systems of many other games, but the artillery system is more literal than most. Berg's Turn Continuation Table cuts straight to effect, while the CWB rules give a luxurious treatment of the command process.

On the other hand, the CWB rules factor horse-holders into cavalry units' strength point/fire level relationship and allow shots at gun crews and the cannons themselves through the same fire procedure. So it's difficult to say one system is more detailed than another without risking oversimplification.

Any serious wargamer wants a game that gives historically plausible simulations of a given conflict. The question of whether a game does so with the right mixture of process and effect is a matter of taste. One player enjoys making a few dice rolls to see whether his panzergrenadier platoon can stand up to (and maybe knock out) some overrunning Links, while another player wants to see if Feldwebel Schultz can blow the left track off that Sherman before he gets cut down by the Americans' coaxial MG. If these two players argue over which tactical WW2 game is more realistic, they miss the point that they are shopping for different kinds of realism. Another not-to-be-missed point is that added detail and complexity do not necessarily give a proportional increase in realistic feel. Sure, Dean's Point Fire Table (either version) makes facing, turret traverse, running gear damage, etc. all invisible, but by resolving each attack with a single dice-roll giving all-or-nothing results, it makes for quick, sharp tank battles.

The game versus simulation question is never far away. Are we studying history (through the abstract game) or playing with toy soldiers (the literalist game)? Both. Insight and entertainment, like realism and playability, are not mutually exclusive. For me, the historical foundation makes the game more fun. And some out-and-out fun features, like the CWB command rules, correspond with what historians write about the battles. Gaming is a good way to study history, and wargames' toy-like appeal is legitimate too. Why worry over a false dichotomy of process and effect? My not seek a good balance?