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Glenn, I confess I rarely play figure games with ‘victory points’ or victory objectives’ in terms of pieces of terrain etc. When I do I find them artificial (and they drive me crazy in computer games).
However I always play games with ‘objectives’ and they are not always (rarely?) simply the destruction of the opposing army. Sometimes if I get involved in big battle games – Borodino, Dresden, (Napoleonic), Gembloux Gap 1940, etc but often, not even then. You have to know what the strategic national goal is and the strategic and operational situation or you cannot act realistically.
Take the Waterloo campaign – was Ligny a win or a loss for the Prussians? They didn’t crush Napoleon (and probably couldn’t have on the day) but they couldn’t abandon Wellington by simply withdrawing asap or moving eastwards as they were retreated letting Napoleon separate them and occupy the central position to crush Wellington and then the Prussians later in detail. Tempting though that may have been for Blucher given the armies advancing from the east. Letting Wellington be beaten and then using the continental armies to crush Bonaparte might have been an alluring option but then, would the allies have been quite so bold against an invigorated Bonaparte after a successful campaign? Events dear boy events.
So not being smashed but withdrawing in order to gain time and effect a union with Wellington in the near future was a strategic goal, objective and win for the Prussians despite their battlefield loss.
Life is more complicated than simply two armies slugging it out to the death.
We rarely have the chance to fight the more awkward ends of battle or the ability with rules as generally constituted (they are aimed at the stand up fight) or given the strung out nature of the thing, the space. And yet when your players don’t fight to the bitter end and start their withdrawal, that is where much of the real win and loss of a battle takes place. If you have an organised, uncommitted, mounted reserve you can destroy the enemy’s army and possibly national will to resist but if they have a better reserve, they will get most of their army away safely – how many wargame generals keep any reserve? Straight slogs are usually boring death fests, especially where linear grand tactics prevail – the interesting bit is the campaign and the manoeuvre prior to battle and what you can salvage or achieve in the pursuit.
Don’t get me wrong I want to fight the big battles (as well as the small actions) but they must be set in context and often that involves much more than just battering each other.
And in any event, those big battles rarely produced decisive victory anyway (see above re pursuit). If you want another authority than me
for this contention:Russell F Weigley noted in his introduction to ‘The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo’ (London, Pimlico 1993) p xviii ‘The swift decisions almost never came. If war’s one virtue was its capacity to produce decisions at a tolerable cost, it had lost its virtue before the age of battles commenced’
Glen!
Gosh!
Okay – we are talking about two different things.
I had assumed you didn’t like ‘victory conditions’ or ‘victory points’ because it made for an unrealistic representation of war as a game (within the obvious parameters of unreality inherent in the wargame).
I now see your objection is it makes you play a different type of game.
Any real life General who fought a battle without consideration of national goals, strategic situation or geographic position was most likely to lose horribly and/or be shot if he survived. A battle without context is by definition a slugfest of death. It has no purpose, no aim and no result other than destruction.
My dislike of victory points is they divorce games/battles from historical reality and make them just another badly thought out game of chess.
Wargames, for me, don’t always have to be ‘realistic’ or ‘simulations’ (although I do like playing games that bear some resemblance to what could actually be achieved on the ground) but just lining up all the figures I can amass and slaughtering them to no purpose seems a parody of the popular misconception of WWI Generalship.
I may be a victim of history and my start in wargaming.
‘Charge! Or How to Play Wargames’ by Nicholson and Young has reasons laid out for the example games, and clear objectives for the Generals. I can’t shake the idea that they had the right of it. The idea a General enters a black box of battle without concern for what happens next is clearly wrong.
But if you like that type of game that’s fine fine by me.
I wouldn’t want to make everyone play the games I like (and I play some (many?) games that are just that – games) – but if I were setting up 5-10,000+ toy soldiers I’d sure as hell want to know a little bit of context!Best wishes
Guy
(Oh – PS – Ligny – certainly as Chandler says ‘in many ways a major Napoleonic victory’.
However.
Tactically the Prussians were defeated, but (as I hinted above) those messy bits we tend not to game – the aftermath – turned it into a strategic defeat. Failure to complete the work allowed Blucher freedom of movement to maintain his army and his less than one day’s march contact with Wellington. Perhaps Bonaparte was in his ‘battle black box’ that day – and look where it got him two days later.
)Glenn, I am sure I would enjoy a game with you and your friends – it is a rare game I don’t take some enjoyment from, and one of the main things is the people around the table and the interaction with them.
I like the chance to play out historical set ups from the morning of battle now and then but often I can’t help remembering the classic Irish advice on being asked for directions – ‘I wouldn’t start from here.’
I think both Rhys and Victoria above make valid points. Overall strategic goals have to be turned into operational and tactical objectives with missions to achieve them as you work down the command levels.
If you are playing Army commanders in the long eighteenth century this order cascade is in its infancy and growing throughout. You probably can get away with simple – attack that lot- orders. Good Army commanders either had a sound strategic concept and made subordinates rigidly obey their orders (Napoleon?) (which works up to a certain size of army if you are a genius) or trusted subordinates who were appraised of the general plan (which relies on people having an idea of how strategy works before the invention of staff colleges). In either case following a plan becomes increasingly difficult as armies grow and when your subordinates are thrown on their own initiative, it is only the Davouts of this world who will save you, the Neys will destroy you.
If you are playing a corps or Division commander you need to know what you are doing – even if it is ‘hold the river line’ or ‘attack the enemy to your front’. If you are in a more dispersed fighting era, command and initiative devolve downwards and integration of your mission into an understanding of the overall situation is crucial. It’s a poor platoon commander who takes a position from an enemy and sits there. (probably be dead as well if he doesn’t push through or pull back a little from pre-registered defensive fire positions).
If you want a good illustration of how devolving initiative and changing to local exploitation worked to win a war – look at the development of British infantry tactics post 1916 on the Western Front. Just destroying the enemy in front of you on the day didn’t work. Changing tactics and the development of flexibility at junior level, in a better understanding of what was trying to be achieved, succeeded where old tactics and just trying to kill the enemy had failed.
But you sound as if you and your friends have a great time and that is as it should be. Wargaming is a broad enough church to encompass us all in this conversation, and I think we can all agree that whatever we like doing we are happy to accept that others may prefer to do it slightly differently. And good luck to us all with that.
I’ve simply gone where the conversation went. As now and previously it’s my position that is under discussion so why would it include other periods?
Well, no. Lets be honest here, you started by making general statements and when it was shown you were wrong you cut down the scale of what was being discussed to one where you felt more likely to win the argument.
But then, your only objective is win, isn’t it?
Well done you, this opponent is retiring from the field. No doubt you can describe this as a discussion where there was a clear outcome and everyone involved loved the experience…
From a simple question about ‘Victory Conditions’ in games (and I suspect you are none the wiser Brian!) we have meandered via not defining what we are talking about to some fundamental mutual confusions about war, strategy and battle.
As Jim Storr neatly puts it: ‘As a further example of the poor state of military thought, there appears to be no consensus of what constitutes victory. Jim Storr, The Human Face of War (London: Continuum UK, 2009), p.34.
He cites the Second World War as an example of how we can argue about who actually ‘won’. But then he goes on to consider the tactical level and he says that ‘”success in battle” is generally easier to understand than the wider aspects of victory’. Storr, p.35.
The problem is when you delve further that clarity begins to get murkier.
Battle is about destruction.
But of what?
The enemy certainly- but you can kill a soldier, you can ‘destroy’ a unit but unless you destroy the ‘system’ that is the enemy army, you leave the enemy the means to pursue their strategic and national goal. So when I agree that battle is about ‘destruction’ it is not simply (or perhaps even at all in some cases) about physically battering the opposing force into a pulp.
The physical ‘destruction’ take place largely after the ‘psychic’ or ‘system’ failure – ie in the H&M era, usually in the pursuit phase, which is why I talked about Ligny.
The Prussians undoubtedly surrendered the field and were driven off at Ligny but although they suffered more casualties and could not stay where they were, they were allowed to avoid the ‘system destruction’ that was surely the aim of battle. They retained the power to regroup, to reform and win the next two battles, the campaign, and the war. They did not lose at Ligny.
Which is why I question, not your enjoyment of your miniature battles Glenn, but your ability to know who won. Your friends may concede ‘defeat on the day’ and ‘everyone knows who won’ – but does it mean they are right?
Perhaps Napoleon should have conceded Marengo at two o’clock? He certainly declared victory too soon at Ligny.What does this tell us about victory conditions in a game?
Context is everything, and either through a well explained scenario, or victory conditions, or a mix of both, you can give that to any game.
Well if you are an army commander – learn what destruction means for one, but given we cannot easily play through a phase of battle that may last another day or more and stretch over miles of small actions, perhaps something like- occupy the strategic ford/bridge/road with significant fresh troops by the end of the day so the enemy will not be able to retreat intact?
At a lower tactical level (and many people play Divisional games still, or as we go on in time , brigade, battalion, company or platoon actions) your ‘destruction’ of the enemy may not give you any clue as to the overall picture of battle and you may need some indication of what your mission in the greater scheme of things is – take and hold a vital crossroads until certain time? Get a Forward controller up on the high ground overlooking the enemy position (off table)? Hold a river and canal crossing until relieved? You won’t be ‘destroying’ any significant part of the enemy ‘system’ but you will have ‘success on the battlefield’.
Save me reading this all again, has anyone been insulting/made any personal remarks?
Or is it more a case of this?
If your suffering from some other issues than perhaps you should seek professional help.
That is not relevant or cool.
It is clearly a go at someones mental health and not advice born out of compassion and as such is not the sort of thing needed here.
People need to discuss the topic, not each other.
Yep!
Those darned rhetorical questions will come back and bite you in the bum every time.
(Sorry – that was addressed to NCS)
Oh I dunno – this thread has suddenly struck a rich and unexpected vein of comedy
I don’t think it’s fair to single me out simply because I’m able to express myself in a factual manner that others can’t reply to.
Ok, so back to regular service now please.
Hopefully there will be no more diversions from certain people.
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