INTRODUCTION This article looks at wargame movement systems, always integrally related to the sequence in which they appear. My first rule in generating a wargaming movement system has to do with the movement distances themselves. I abhor games in which the units "micro-inch" across the field... "infantry move 3 inches, cavalry move 5 inches", and so on. And I abhor, even more, games in which the units move up, not in inches, but in centimeters. The only reason that movement distances should be fairly small is if you're playing a DBA size game, where the playing field is a 3 foot by 3 foot area. Otherwise, on the ordinary ping pong table, I tend to use a 10 inch movement distance for the troops. There are several sets of rules that divide the field into a "strategic move area" and a "tactical move area". Two such sets that come to mind are Terry Gore's ancient and medieval rules, and Chris Parker's DAY OF BATTLE, which allow units to zip up the field until they're within a certain distance of the enemy. In the Gore rules, the distance, I think, is 16 inches... I'm not sure what the critical 16-inch distance represents. When units are within 16 inches of enemy troops, they slow down and can advance only a fraction of the distance they had gone before. Chris Parker's medieval DAY OF BATTLE contains a similar ploy, and, if I remember correctly, so do the EMPIRE Napoleonic rules. For me, the 10 inch distance that I use seems to keep the game going... units approach each other rapidly instead of micro-inching along. In effect, I use two basic formations: 'unit-incolumn', and 'unit-not-in-column'. My column is defined as a single file, one stand behind the other. Whether the unit is in line, or assault column, or column of march... whatever its formation, it moves up the field a standard 10 inches, until it hits rough terrain, at which time, the "column" or "not column" categories take over. A unit in column is not affected by rough terrain; and whether it hits woods or hills or creeks or streams, it continues to snake along 10 inches. A unit-not-in-column, when it hits rough terrain, may be impacted, and I'll toss in a dice roll to see if it's slowed down. The unit has a 70 percent chance to pass through the rough terrain unimpeded, i.e., to continue to move at its 10-inch rate. If it fails, it stops in its tracks... it's been affected by the briars or the brambles or the mud or whatever. There are many rules sets which pretend to tell you which units are more efficient in their movement procedures. NAPOLEON'S BATTLES, for example, has lebenty-leben charts, which decree that column formations for the year 1801 moved as follows: French line infantry, 12 inches; Polish line infantry, 6 inches; Italian line infantry, 8 inches; Portuguese line infantry, 10 inches; Wurtemburg line infantry, 6 inches, and so on. There are many, many other charts for other years, and other charts for different formations. And if you believe this crappola, then Gawd bless you, but I'll stick to a regular 10 inch movement distance. SCALES Starting with the 10-inch distance as a given, the question becomes... what's the real distance on the battlefield represented by the 10 inches? i.e., what's the scale? And the answer is: that depends upon the size of the unit you're pushing along. Pat Condray has a basic rule of thumb which he uses for the Napoleonic era. The frontage of a battalion of infantry is very close to the effective range of the unit's muskets, i.e., around 100 yards. So if you've got a 15mm battalion with a 4-inch frontage, then 4 inches represents the 100 yard musket firing range. And if you use 25mm figures, and your frontage is 8 inches, then the 8-inch distance represents 100 yards. And now, if we assume that infantry can advance one yard per second, we get our time scale. With 15mm figures, each 4 inches being 100 yards, their 10-inch movement distance represents a distance of 10/4x100, or 250 yards, and with each yard taking a second, the total time becomes 250 seconds, or 4 minutes for the advance. With 25mm figures advancing 10 inches, and with each 8-inch increment being 100 yards, they're moving up 10/8x100, or 125 yards, and it'll take them, at a yard per second, 2 minutes to do so.... a 2-minute advance. But note that we've only considered the time required for actual battlefield forward movement... how about the time required to receive and interpret orders, form up, deploy, change formation, change facing, load muskets, fire, engage in melee, etc., etc.? The result is that most tactical-level Napoleonic rules sets state that a full turn is in the order of a couple of minutes, but that, due to "administrative procedures", the turn can be said to take a full half hour. And the "administrative procedures" are those I just referred to... form up, deploy, etc. It's interesting that NAPOLEON'S BATTLES, in 15mm, stays away from any mention of the time scale. It doesn't have a simple battalion configuration... it uses multiple-battalion brigades, and the rules booklet, referring to a single-stand battalion, around 3/4-inch width, references a scale of 100 yards to the inch. A French unit in column can advance 12 inches (it varies according to the year and experience of the troops), so that the total battlefield movement distance is 12x100, or 1,200 yards. That equates to a 20 minute time period. A set of rules dealing with modern-day armies, SPEARHEAD, also states that the ground scale is such that 1-inch represents 100 yards, the same as NAPOLEON'S BATTLES. And here, SPEARHEAD states that each game turn represents about 15 to 30 minutes. Now why did I go through the above assessment? Simply because if you're generating your own rules, and you attempt to work with specific time/distance ratios and derive exact movement distances and weapon ranges relating to those distances, you'll probably find you've got to stretch the scales to produce a playable game. This is exactly what the above two "historically accurate" rules sets do... and so you may as well start out as I do, and simply mandate that "all troops will move 10 inches", and rationalize what you've done later. Many published sets simply avoid the discussion of distance scale. THE SWORD AND THE FLAME (TSATF), British colonial rules, and RAPID FIRE (RF), WW2 rules, don't mention it at all. TSATF deals in 20 man (20 figure) companies, while RF uses 8 to 10 man companies. What do the weapon ranges represent? Your guess is as good as mine. For example, RF permits rifle fire out to 24 inches. At this range, firing at a target in the open, the average number of hits per unit firing is around 1, i.e., 1 man out of a 10-man target company is killed, a 10 percent kill rate. In RF, infantry move a distance of 6 inches in the open. Moving 24 inches (maximum rifle range) would take them 4 turns. Is there any way to relate the rifle range to the movement distance to the time scale? Better men than I have tried to do so... And if you examine TSATF, units move a distance obtained from the toss of several 6-sided dice, which, in essence, completely obliterates any discussion of the time scale. I mentioned SPEARHEAD (SH), oriented toward division-level tactics versus the company-level tactics of RF. Despite the difference in scale and presentation, SH permits infantry to move 6 inches per turn, just as in RF. In SH, rifles fire for a range of 6 inches (600 yards), which means that a unit, firing on another that is attempting to close to contact from long range, will get one blast at the closing unit. Looking at RF, a unit, also firing at an enemy unit attempting to close to contact from long range of 24 inches, will get 4 blasts at the oncoming target. Is there a right or wrong here? Is one blast more "historically realistic" than four? Certainly not. It's solely a function of how the rules author wants to set up his casualty rate, and how fluid and mobile he wants his troops to be on the field. ACTIONS Let's look at an earlier period. Most rules for the horse-and-musket era calculate the time span of a turn based on the movement rates of the troops, and leave no time increment for firing. Firing is simply an add-on, and the fire phase is tacked onto the basic procedures with no thought to the time involved in the firing process. I can see this for a set of modern rules, wherein, with a weapon on "automatic!', you can, within seconds, fire a full clip, and then within another second or so, insert another clip and be ready to fire again. But for the horse-and-musket era, when the firing procedures were rather time consuming, this makes no sense. That's why I became an advocate of assigning actions to a unit when its side becomes active... each action within the turn represents a certain period of time, and with only so many actions, i.e., time, available during the turn, a unit can devote its actions to either firing or to moving. Which means that firing is no longer a "freebee"... in this era, you've got to sacrifice movement for firing. In a recent article, Sam Mustafa pointed out an anomaly which most wargamers ignore... indeed, they're not even aware the problem exists. The time encompassed within a bound for most rules sets will be based on the distance a unit can normally move within the time span of the turn. As Sam indicates, there's no time allowance for firing or melee resolution. And so when contact is made and melee is resolved, the rules simply state that the losing unit will rout back some specified distance, probably equal to the distance it just moved up during the turn itself. Which means that now, having lost the combat, the unit has miraculously gone double the distance allotted for the time span of the turn. About the only rules set that I know of that actually takes time into account during the melee procedures is Bruce MacFarlane's FLOWER OF CHIVALRY, designed for the medieval era. Here, each unit's movement distance is governed by the actions assigned by a deck of cards, and if your unit has sufficient movement to plow into the enemy and then, after making contact, has a wee bit of movement left over, you get a first strike before the other guy can raise his hand. This is a "gotcha!", pure and simple, but at least time becomes a parameter to be considered. A quick note on simultaneous movement. In theory, this is the be-all and end-all, entailing order writing to specify exactly what units are doing, either moving or firing, during the coming turn. But in practice, there is never anything like true simultaneous movement. There is always a Mr. Careful to be found in a game, whose orders are rather vague, and who futzes around and futzes around and measures and re-measures, until his opponent is finished with his move, when Mr. Careful says "Aha! If that's what you're doing, then here's what I'm doing!" This doesn't sound like true simultaneity to me. One way of implementing the simultaneous movement system is to omit order writing and have the sides each start movement from opposite sides of the table. This works... sort of... but what do you do when you reach the middle of the table? In the action movement system for which I'm currently beating the drum, each action can be used for a specific function. An action can be used to fire a volley, or to have a unit change face, or to change formation, or to move. I'm always impressed when a player whips out a movement 'Wheeling" template and starts to micro-inch and measure the specific distance his unit moves as it wheels. The ACW set of rules FIRE AND FURY (FAF) uses such a template. But the time scale of this particular game is so distorted due to the intermixing of movement and firing procedures within the turn, that use of such a template is almost meaningless. Which is why I'll simply allot a single action for wheeling 90 degrees, or an action for having a unit reverse face, or an action for having a unit form square. If a unit wishes to perform an evolution, one action is sufficient. In some of my earlier rules, the active side always received 4 actions with which to function. If a unit wished to perform an evolution, say to change formation, then each of the actions contributed 25 percent to the chance the evolution was successfully completed. For example, a unit in march column could devote 3 of its 4 actions to forming firing line, and wish to fire with the last remaining action. With 3 actions allocated for changing formation to line, the chance that the unit succeeded was 3x25, or 75 percent. A percentage dice throw of 75 or under, and the change of formation was successful, and the unit could fire with its last action. If the dice throw failed... then tough! The unit didn't come through, the commanding officer didn't give the order in time, or the order was disobeyed or misinterpreted. Note that if all 4 actions were devoted to changing formation, then 4x25 is 100 percent, and the unit did what it was ordered to do. But note that a more adventurous, risk-prone commander could devote only 2 of his 4 actions to changing formation, a 50 percent chance of success, which, if successful, would give him the 2 remaining actions during which to fire 2 volleys. After sometime, I abandoned the percentage-per-action system. This occurred because of an incident in an American Civil War battle. On one turn, one of the players had run up a limbered battery to the front lines and wished to unlimber it. On the subsequent turn, he devoted 3 of his 4 actions to the unlimbering function, hoping to get a cannon blast with the remaining action. Alas! The player failed his 75 percent dice throw, and the battery didn't get unlimbered, didn't get to fire, and was eventually over-run! The ensuing discussion brought up the point that unlimbering a gun was a fairly simple evolution, and it shouldn't even be diced for. I tended to agree, and perhaps went overboard, for I tossed out the dicing effort, not only for unlimbering but for everything... if your unit wants to do something, simply devote one action to it, and it's done. The number of actions assigned to the units on a side can be diced for, or can be obtained from the draw of a card, or can be assigned on the basis of troop quality (elite troops get 3 actions, regular troops get 2, etc.). I rarely give a unit a single action... it's too restricting, and doesn't provide enough choices to the gamer. When I run a card-action game, I tend to draw the number of assigned actions from a deck, either 2, 3, or 4-actions. Each action permits a unit to advance 5 inches, or to fire a volley, etc. The deck is heavily weighted in favor of the 2-action cards... too many 4-action cards, and the units fly around the field. By keeping them to a minimum, their use is much appreciated, and their appearance valued. One item of note in rules systems that has always bothered me is the arc-of-fire in which a unit can direct its fire. It is frequently stated, for example, that in a Napoleonic game, the arc-of-fire is 45 degrees off-center to the front of the unit. And so, in the heat of battle, the battalion commanding officer can shout "Fire on that battalion to our right!", and all 500 muskets in his own battalion immediately swivel, in unison, 45 degrees to the right and fire. The action system, in part, solves this. If the target unit is directly to the front, then the firing unit simply blasts away. But if the target unit is off-center, then devote one action to realigning the unit's muskets... this takes away some of its fire-power, and represents lost time in lining up the weapons in a different direction. SPLIT MOVEMENT In most of my ancient games, I provide a separate phase for movement of light troops, i.e., the missile men. I've noted that the "standard set' of rules will have everyone in a force moving at once, simultaneously, and then a 'fire phase" will follow. The archers and slingers and what-not will thus move along with the rest of the army, position themselves in front of the enemy units, launch their missiles, and sit there. This never seemed quite right to me. I would think that the missile troops would dash forward, prior to the rest of the army's advance, fire away, and then run like hell to get out of the way of the heavier units, not wishing to be caught in the big crunch between forces. To implement this, I'll insert a separate movement and fire phase solely for the missileers... they'll dash out some 10 inches (here's the ubiquitous 10 inches again!), launch away, and then attempt to retire. By "attempt to retire", I give them a 70 percent chance to pull back to safety behind their own lines. Most of the time they'll make it, sometimes they won't... and it's then that they'll get crushed under the heavier units. Another example of setting up an additional phase for faster moving units, is what I term "split movement'. By the term "faster moving units", I'm referring to cavalry and tanks and armored cars, etc. In most rules, when a side is active, it moves all its troops a requisite distance, depending upon the type. Thus, for example, in SH, most vehicles will go 12 inches, while infantry move their 6 inches. Then they all halt and fire. My preference is to have all troops move the same distance when the side becomes active. That's when I use the "everybody moves 10-inches regardless of type" ploy. Later in the sequence for the turn, the faster moving units will receive an additional movement increment, permitting them to zip out in front of the slow moving infantry. One such sequence for the halfturn would consist of the following four steps: (a) Side A is active and moves all units 10 inches (b) A fire phase. Side A's missileers dash out another 10 inches, and zap away. This fire phase could be for Side A only, or it could include Side Bs archers. (c) Side B's faster moving units (cavalry, tanks, etc.) get their additional movement... perhaps another 10 inches (d) Resolve melee Here, Side B's cavalry and tanks wait until the middle of Side A's active phase, and then, on Phase (c), get to respond to the actions of Side A's troops. There are a lot of rules systems currently in use which employ card decks... each card has a unit noted on it, and when it is drawn, the unit moves or fires. A split movement system could be implemented here, by giving the faster units more cards in the deck than the slower ones. Some 20 years ago, I experimented with a variation on a split or incremental movement system using a special movement deck with each card devoted to a specific type of unit. The card drawing procedures were not random; each card was given a number and had a place in the deck and the deck had to kept in a specific order. Here's one of my WW2 decks. Card : Unit 1 Arm car 2 Med tank 3 Lt tank 4 Arm car 5 Hvy tank 6 Infantry 7 Arm car 8 Lt tank 9 Med tank 10 Infantry 11 Hvy tank 12 Arm car 13 Lt tank 14 Med tank 15 Arm car 16 Infantry 17 Lt tank Cards are drawn, one at a time, and the drawn card is placed, face-down, on the bottom of the deck, so that when all 17 cards have been drawn, the sequence can be repeated. Note that the frequency of the appearance of the cards is roughly proportional to the relative speed of the units. When a card is drawn, all units of that type can move, say, 10 inches. Thus, during the bound, i.e., the complete draw of all 17 cards, armored cars could have gone 50 inches (they've got 5 cards) , infantry 30 inches with their 3 cards, and so on. If both sides have medium tanks, and the medium tank card is drawn, simply toss a die to see which side's medium tanks move first. Here's a summary of the content of the deck: Type of Unit Number of Cards Armored car 5 Light tank 4 Medium tank 3 Infantry 3 Heavy tank 2 The deck is used for movement only. The firing procedures are completely independent of movement. What I'll do is to insert a couple of "fire cards" in the deck... cards that could call for simultaneous fire, or for Side A fire, etc. Another note of interest is that most of time, movement governed by card decks is kinda lurchy... I take that back... it's definitely lurchy... first, this unit advances, and then that unit advances... all in bits and pieces across the field. The card deck content can be broadened to reduce lurchiness... the cards can specify specific units to move, or can specify types of units to move, or can specify distances for all units to move... the systems are pretty flexible, but be prepared for lurchiness. The lurchiness problem presents itself because if actions are focused on either one unit at a time, or on one type of unit at a time, there are always going to be a couple of gamers at tableside, who sit and wait and wait, and have nothing to do until their particular units are called upon. In a one-on-one game, both players always have something to do, hence lurchiness is minimalized, but in a multiplayer game, lurchiness penalizes someone most of the time. If you want to avoid lurchiness, going to alternate movement and firing solves the problem. But it brings up another issue... that of "pass through" fire. Most rules authors ignore the problem, but some think it's important enough to be addressed. FIRE AND FURY contains a provision for pass through fire... instead of firing at a unit where it is, you're allowed to fire at it where it was prior to its last move, and this opens a huge can of worms. In the many games of FIRE AND FURY I've played, everyone seems to moan about the procedure, but all take advantage of it. Back to PW Review August 2002 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com