While discussing medicine recently with a doctor friend of mine, he made the point that too many doctors are in the position of suppressing the symptoms of an illness, rather than eliminating the cause. The thought occurred to me at that time that doctors are not the only ones using this approach.
Many rules used by wargamers are perfect examples of curing the symptoms without getting to the cause. A wargamer reads of some isolated case where light infantry performed some tactical manoeuvre. He immediately writes yet another rule into his set, forcing this new found tactic on his fellow wargamers. This will be rule number 5,220. He has neatly reproduced another "symptom" of Napoleonic warfare, but he has failed to ask the question "Why do they do this?" Is there some logical historical reason for the action that can be stated as a general case?
Unfortunately, he has not looked for the cause, but has been lured into uncritically duplicating the symptom. He is not rewarding actions on the game board that reflect contemporary battle conditions, but, rather, outlawing actions that do not fit the strictures of a specific "symptom" he has read about.
An example of this is the gamer who reads that seldom were light infantry battalions, such as the French Legere or British Rifles, completely deployed into skirmish order. Usually, no more than one-half of a light battalion was sent forward in skirmish order. The remainder was kept in formed order in the rear where it served as a reserve which could either support the forward elements, or form a refuge if the skirmishers got into trouble.
The symptom oriented gamer writes a rule that legalistically prohibits sending forward more then one-half of the unit. It just ain't allowed! Voila! How much better then this is the approach that asks "why?" and seeks the cause. A little research and reason will lead one to the conclusion that formed reserves were kept so that the battalion commander would not lose complete control of his troops! There was no room for decisions of support or withdrawal if the entire battalion was scattered! If they were forced to withdraw, upon what point would they form or rally? A bugle call can only do so much.
Perhaps the rule is better written to Bay that a commander could deploy all, three-fourths, one-half, or just one-quarter of his battalion, but any company of skirmishers that does not have a formed reserve of comparable numbers to the numbers skirmishing will, if contacted by enemy troops, be thrown into permanent disorder for the remainder of the engagement. A judicious commander is then rewarded while a gambling C.O. could try to send forward his whole light force in skirmish order, but with an increased chance of losing them to disorder.
All of this comes back upon the problem of writing rules to reflect a general case, as opposed to snow-balling aggregates of specifies to form a restrictive set of rules. A medical doctor learns the general construction of the human body, then applies this knowledge to the specific aberrant cases. Rules written to portray a given historical period must first strive to identify the commonalities of all warfare in that period, then use specific cases to confirm or adjust this norm. Too often rules concentrate on all the differences in French, English and Russian weapons, organisation, and tactics, blithely ignoring the much more substantial a imilarities. All too often it was the strategic situation, or the excellence of command that decided a battle, not any inherent superiority or flaw in the troops.
I think if wargamers base their rules on the deductive rather than the inductive they will have better results.
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© Copyright 1972 by Donald Featherstone.
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