I see that I've managed to almost miss June without a post, so here goes!
Many years ago, I wrote a brief article for MWAN that proposed that most games that I'd observed as convention games, or games that I'd played in, or games that could be played in a reasonable amount of time followed:
a) THE RULE OF TWELVE: Simply put, any battle can be reduced to a 12 unit or so limit of the core type of unit in the army. Obviously, in all but the most horse centered culture, this will be 12 units of infantry. Artillery and cavalry would then be proportioned off of the 12 infantry units.
A second rule that makes for collection sanity, and games that look and play well is:
b) THE RULE OF REASON: Another simple rule - The total number of units in a game shouldn't be more than the square footage of your table. If your table is 5'x10', that would be a 50 unit total. That could be 25 units per side, or 30 vs. 20, etc.
The RULE OF REASON doesn't imply that games of this size are needed, or should even be a goal. It really is just a common sense rule - don't put too much stuff on the table!!! Games with too high of a unit density just turn into a version of a zombie hunt. Pick of the first unit - guess what? - there's another unit right behind it - eliminate it - and guess what? - there's another unit behind it.
Yawn.
Too many troops for the table size just leads to plodding games of attrition.
I should say that both the RULE OF TWELVE and THE RULE OF REASON are based on "normal" unit sizes of 12 to 24 infantry figures, not the "old school" figure intensive 40+ figures per unit. Yikes - I think units of that size require their own set of rules!
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Friday, May 31, 2013
An Odd Question - Or Is It Perception?
Yesterday, I was asked by someone at work who knew of my interest in the ACW - "Who is your favorite General?"
For such a seemingly straightforward question, I was stumped. I'd quite honestly never thought about a "favorite" ACW General.
The more I thought about the question, the more odd it seemed.
Ask me about my favorite NFL quarterback, and I'll have an immediate answer. (Peyton Manning, of course!).
Ask me about my favorite motorcycle, and I'll have an immediate answer. (Harley-Davidson RoadKing Custom).
Ask me about my favorite movie, and I'll have an immediate answer. (Glory)
But - I'd never even considered having a "favorite" ACW General. That just strikes me as odd. It seems as odd as someone asking me "Who is your favorite corporate executive?", or "Which US Senator is your favorite?". Favorites?
The problem I see with the question is that its such a complex question. How would you have a favorite? Why would you have a favorite? Favorite in which way?
Tactical innovator?
Intriguing personality? Good or bad?
Impact on the war?
In the event, I just mumbled something about not really having a favorite, which was quite true. How do you explain the depth of that question to someone who is lucky to recognize that the North wore blue and the South wore grey....
There are those I admire, those I loathe, those that intrigue me, those that I'd find fascinating to have a conversation with. The list of names that "interest" me as ACW personalities include Longstreet, Meade, Bragg, Burnsides, Upton, Stuart, Hampton, Custer, Gibbon, Rosecrans....in no particular order of admired/loathed/intriguing! Everyone has their good days, everyone has their bad days. I quite often find those who had more bad days than good to be more interesting! It's the "if he'd only just done...." possibility that makes me dig deeper to look at the history behind the stories.
For such a seemingly straightforward question, I was stumped. I'd quite honestly never thought about a "favorite" ACW General.
The more I thought about the question, the more odd it seemed.
Ask me about my favorite NFL quarterback, and I'll have an immediate answer. (Peyton Manning, of course!).
Ask me about my favorite motorcycle, and I'll have an immediate answer. (Harley-Davidson RoadKing Custom).
Ask me about my favorite movie, and I'll have an immediate answer. (Glory)
But - I'd never even considered having a "favorite" ACW General. That just strikes me as odd. It seems as odd as someone asking me "Who is your favorite corporate executive?", or "Which US Senator is your favorite?". Favorites?
The problem I see with the question is that its such a complex question. How would you have a favorite? Why would you have a favorite? Favorite in which way?
Tactical innovator?
Intriguing personality? Good or bad?
Impact on the war?
In the event, I just mumbled something about not really having a favorite, which was quite true. How do you explain the depth of that question to someone who is lucky to recognize that the North wore blue and the South wore grey....
There are those I admire, those I loathe, those that intrigue me, those that I'd find fascinating to have a conversation with. The list of names that "interest" me as ACW personalities include Longstreet, Meade, Bragg, Burnsides, Upton, Stuart, Hampton, Custer, Gibbon, Rosecrans....in no particular order of admired/loathed/intriguing! Everyone has their good days, everyone has their bad days. I quite often find those who had more bad days than good to be more interesting! It's the "if he'd only just done...." possibility that makes me dig deeper to look at the history behind the stories.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Review - "Bunker Hill", by Nathaniel Philbrick
This won't take long.
"Bunker Hill, A City, A Siege, A Revolution" by Nathaniel Philbrick was released within the last month. I'd been looking forward to it since reading his book on Custer and the LBH battle.
In a word, disappointing.
While Philbrick is a great writer and his works are easy, pleasing reads, BH just didn't do it for me. I recognize that it is probably intended for Joe Public that didn't know there was a battle in Boston, or that there was a war with England, and who only knows George Washington 'cause his face is on money and on a rock.
I'm a pretty forgiving reviewer, and typically only ask that I learn something new when reading an historical work. Alas, that didn't happen here. True, I learned more about Joseph Warren's personal life than I ever wanted to, but....
In short, my recommendation is to save the $32.95 and watch the movie (Ben Afleck has apparently purchased the rights....egads). If you wait until RedBox gets the movie, it will only cost you a little over a buck.
"Bunker Hill, A City, A Siege, A Revolution" by Nathaniel Philbrick was released within the last month. I'd been looking forward to it since reading his book on Custer and the LBH battle.
In a word, disappointing.
While Philbrick is a great writer and his works are easy, pleasing reads, BH just didn't do it for me. I recognize that it is probably intended for Joe Public that didn't know there was a battle in Boston, or that there was a war with England, and who only knows George Washington 'cause his face is on money and on a rock.
I'm a pretty forgiving reviewer, and typically only ask that I learn something new when reading an historical work. Alas, that didn't happen here. True, I learned more about Joseph Warren's personal life than I ever wanted to, but....
In short, my recommendation is to save the $32.95 and watch the movie (Ben Afleck has apparently purchased the rights....egads). If you wait until RedBox gets the movie, it will only cost you a little over a buck.
Monday, May 13, 2013
New WW2 Game and Pulse of Battle Update
Sorry that it has been a while (well, actually...a long while) since I last posted. Real life with multiple business trips and home projects had severely cut into my blogging time!
In reverse order of the post's title - an update on Pulse of Battle: The text is complete, and edited thoroughly. Final, final work is being done on the army list text, and then it will be time to take photos and do the final layout of the rules. I'd really like to get this off my plate no later than sometime in June, but we'll see how the schedule works out....
I'm extremely happy with PoB and how it plays. I think its a unique approach to ancient combat, yet fully in line with the Piquet/Field of Battle emphasis on the fog of war and command challenges.
With that creative project wrapped up, I've turned to the WW2 squad level (every unit = an infantry squad, a vehicle = 1 to 3 vehicles, etc) game, tentatively (very) titled "Follow Me". It's aimed at allowing multiple companies up to a battalion or more on the table per side.
We played 2 games last Saturday night. The first had two recon type forces fighting over control of a strategic road intersection. The US had two companies of infantry (18 units) plus 4 MG sections, plus a platoon of M8's and a Stuart. The Germans had an armored recon platoon (armored car and a halftrack) plus an infantry company with a couple of HMGs. Both sides had offboard mortar and artillery assets (available via an asset deck of cards).
The second game was an extremely armor heavy game with 3 Sherman platoons (9 units), an M10 TD platoon (2 units) and the M8 armored cars, plus a couple of platoons of infantry (6 units) vs. a German force of a Stug Platoon (3 units), a PzkwIV platoon (3 units), a Panther platoon (2 units), and 2 platoons (6 units) of PanzerGrenadiers in halftracks.
The US won the first game handily, and the Germans did the same in game 2. The first game (with the rules being entirely new to the players) lasted around 2 hours, and the 2nd game lasted around 1 3/4 hours.
Overall, I was thrilled with how the games played and felt. I always feel more than a bit nervous when I trot out a new game for the first time. Its hard to guess how things will go...
Some photos from the games:
In reverse order of the post's title - an update on Pulse of Battle: The text is complete, and edited thoroughly. Final, final work is being done on the army list text, and then it will be time to take photos and do the final layout of the rules. I'd really like to get this off my plate no later than sometime in June, but we'll see how the schedule works out....
I'm extremely happy with PoB and how it plays. I think its a unique approach to ancient combat, yet fully in line with the Piquet/Field of Battle emphasis on the fog of war and command challenges.
With that creative project wrapped up, I've turned to the WW2 squad level (every unit = an infantry squad, a vehicle = 1 to 3 vehicles, etc) game, tentatively (very) titled "Follow Me". It's aimed at allowing multiple companies up to a battalion or more on the table per side.
We played 2 games last Saturday night. The first had two recon type forces fighting over control of a strategic road intersection. The US had two companies of infantry (18 units) plus 4 MG sections, plus a platoon of M8's and a Stuart. The Germans had an armored recon platoon (armored car and a halftrack) plus an infantry company with a couple of HMGs. Both sides had offboard mortar and artillery assets (available via an asset deck of cards).
The second game was an extremely armor heavy game with 3 Sherman platoons (9 units), an M10 TD platoon (2 units) and the M8 armored cars, plus a couple of platoons of infantry (6 units) vs. a German force of a Stug Platoon (3 units), a PzkwIV platoon (3 units), a Panther platoon (2 units), and 2 platoons (6 units) of PanzerGrenadiers in halftracks.
The US won the first game handily, and the Germans did the same in game 2. The first game (with the rules being entirely new to the players) lasted around 2 hours, and the 2nd game lasted around 1 3/4 hours.
Overall, I was thrilled with how the games played and felt. I always feel more than a bit nervous when I trot out a new game for the first time. Its hard to guess how things will go...
Some photos from the games:
Monday, April 1, 2013
Lame, Lame, Lame
Well, it is April Fool's day, and with it the inevitable flood of lame (LAME) blog updates and TMP posts.
You know the type:
a) I've decided to leave wargaming as a hobby and take up (insert lame hobby of your choice).
b) I've decided to only do 1mm armies, or armies made of rice grains, etc.
c) There's a new manufacturer of X line of figures - in 31.8mm! I've been looking for all of these for years!!!
d) There's a new software program that reads a gamer's mind and requires no manual input to totally automate the game and rules process!
Maybe I'm just old and grumpy (I turned 50 in June)......but I find these repetitive, lame, April Fool's day posts to just be.....well.....lame. They're not funny, not engaging, nor interesting. At best, they're......lame.
Happy April Fool's day.
You know the type:
a) I've decided to leave wargaming as a hobby and take up (insert lame hobby of your choice).
b) I've decided to only do 1mm armies, or armies made of rice grains, etc.
c) There's a new manufacturer of X line of figures - in 31.8mm! I've been looking for all of these for years!!!
d) There's a new software program that reads a gamer's mind and requires no manual input to totally automate the game and rules process!
Maybe I'm just old and grumpy (I turned 50 in June)......but I find these repetitive, lame, April Fool's day posts to just be.....well.....lame. They're not funny, not engaging, nor interesting. At best, they're......lame.
Happy April Fool's day.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Musket, Rifle, Skirmishers.....Ranges
I'm reading a fascinating book by Earl Hess - "The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat, Reality and Myth". Hess follows very much in line with Paddy Griffith's earlier work, and convincingly lays out evidence that the rifle musket did very little to change battleline combat ranges. A combination of visibility, unit control, tactical decisions, terrain, and weapon ballistic characteristics, made the rifle musket battleline engagement ranges somewhat longer, but still appreciably short of what the weapon's capabilities were. I don't have the exact number, but he suggests that the average battleline engatement range was around 90 yards, vs. 60 to 70 in the Napoleonic era.
BUT - the big difference was that skirmishers and snipers now had a much more capable weapon, and used it with effectiveness. The skirmish ranges would be 200+ yards, with skirmishers deployed from 100/200 yards in front of the battleline to as much as 500 to 800 yards!
Hess points out that the Federal armies had a distinct skirmish advantage when compared to the Confederates in the Western theatre. In particular, he spends considerable time discussing the Atlanta campaign, when skirmishers really came into their own. Part of the Federal advantage was leadership and an emphasis on skirmishers, while part of the Federal advantage was that they had the supply system in place to provide plenty of ammunition for the skirmshers to fire off! Confederate units labored under ammo limitations, and fired distinctly lower numbers of rounds.
I started thinking about representing skirmishers in Field of Battle. I truly think wargame rules get skirmishers wrong. In my opinion, they're best represented as an abstracted benefit. Its very difficult to model one of their primary functions - intelligence, being the "eyes and ears" of a unit.
I think the best way is to look at unit ranges over the horse and musket period. From "bad" skirmishing or non-skirmishing Napoleonic systems and earlier (SYW, WSS), I can broadly say that there aren't significant skirmishers. They'd use the battleline vs. battleline model, with roughly a 100 yard range.
As you get the "good" Napoleonic skirmish units (French, British, later Continental armies), that range doubles, as a skirmish screen proceeds the battleline. So, let's say the range is 200 yards.
For the ACW, those numbers just go up, to a net of 400 yard range.
The longer ranges are abstracted in game terms by the long range of the units. I'd propose that an interesting tweak to Field of Battle would be to disallow long ranges for units that were "out skirmished. I tossed the graphic (below) together to illustrate my thinking.
I need to stop messing with this and get back to editing Pulse of Battle!
BUT - the big difference was that skirmishers and snipers now had a much more capable weapon, and used it with effectiveness. The skirmish ranges would be 200+ yards, with skirmishers deployed from 100/200 yards in front of the battleline to as much as 500 to 800 yards!
Hess points out that the Federal armies had a distinct skirmish advantage when compared to the Confederates in the Western theatre. In particular, he spends considerable time discussing the Atlanta campaign, when skirmishers really came into their own. Part of the Federal advantage was leadership and an emphasis on skirmishers, while part of the Federal advantage was that they had the supply system in place to provide plenty of ammunition for the skirmshers to fire off! Confederate units labored under ammo limitations, and fired distinctly lower numbers of rounds.
I started thinking about representing skirmishers in Field of Battle. I truly think wargame rules get skirmishers wrong. In my opinion, they're best represented as an abstracted benefit. Its very difficult to model one of their primary functions - intelligence, being the "eyes and ears" of a unit.
I think the best way is to look at unit ranges over the horse and musket period. From "bad" skirmishing or non-skirmishing Napoleonic systems and earlier (SYW, WSS), I can broadly say that there aren't significant skirmishers. They'd use the battleline vs. battleline model, with roughly a 100 yard range.
As you get the "good" Napoleonic skirmish units (French, British, later Continental armies), that range doubles, as a skirmish screen proceeds the battleline. So, let's say the range is 200 yards.
For the ACW, those numbers just go up, to a net of 400 yard range.
The longer ranges are abstracted in game terms by the long range of the units. I'd propose that an interesting tweak to Field of Battle would be to disallow long ranges for units that were "out skirmished. I tossed the graphic (below) together to illustrate my thinking.
I need to stop messing with this and get back to editing Pulse of Battle!
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Pulse of Battle Update
I haven't been posting many updates lately, as I've been focusing on using my free time to work on writing on Pulse of Battle. I chuckle when I see the "One Page Rules" discussions on The Miniatures Page. Hmmm. One page rules. What they really mean is 1 page reference sheet. It's quite impossible to have a 1 page set of rules. There are sooooooo many situations and questions that players have when playing a game. I'm not saying that my rules are exhaustive, but they are aimed at being precise, concise, and easy to use/comprehend. You can't do explanations in one page for everything.....
We played a final set of test games last Saturday with Pulse of Battle. Two games, 2nd Punic War. The Carthaginians had the advantage of a large leadership advantage, and somewhat better troop quality. They won both games, which wasn't too much of a surprise.
I'm very happy with PoB now. Only a couple of minor fixes popped up in the game, and the games played really well and smoothly.
PoB is now in the edit phase. It's in the hands of 4 thorough and capable editors, who are providing tons of edit suggestions to me. I think this set of rules will be by far the best edited, "cleanest" set that I've done.
That being said, I'm sure I'll see errors and typos when the first printed copy arrives!
A couple of photos from the games:
We played a final set of test games last Saturday with Pulse of Battle. Two games, 2nd Punic War. The Carthaginians had the advantage of a large leadership advantage, and somewhat better troop quality. They won both games, which wasn't too much of a surprise.
I'm very happy with PoB now. Only a couple of minor fixes popped up in the game, and the games played really well and smoothly.
PoB is now in the edit phase. It's in the hands of 4 thorough and capable editors, who are providing tons of edit suggestions to me. I think this set of rules will be by far the best edited, "cleanest" set that I've done.
That being said, I'm sure I'll see errors and typos when the first printed copy arrives!
A couple of photos from the games:
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