Rules that offer historically accurate movement rates – are there any?

[Bandit]

ExtraCrispy wrote:

Simply put, movement rates are limited by table size. In a rule set with infantry movement at 2500 yards per hour (picking a number out of the air), a ground scale of 1″ = 50 yards and a 30 minute turn, one infantry unit will move 25″ per turn. Assuming each side advances if they start 50″ apart they will lock in melee turn one. You need a 10′ wide table to allow two turns of infantry movement.

Below is me rambling through a working example to see how these practical concerns show themselves in a historical battle. I’m writing this after I finished that… my conclusion is that since once opposing forces reach ~1,000 yards from each other they just march roughly forward (sometimes they oblique but they don’t march laterally).

If all movement within 1,000 yards is largely straight forward then does it matter if it takes 1 more to make contact or 6?

Lateral movements screened by friendly troops would radically benefit from faster movement, if L’Estoqc can’t march from the Russian extreme right to the far Russian right and deploy in less than 3 hours, then with all other things being equal the Russians can’t be saved at Eylau.

I think it more comes down to players wanting to make grand tactical and strategic movements on a setup that supports tactical to grand tactical games. That is a valid problem of course.

Makes me think a bit of the big light table at Gettysburg years ago, really sorry that thing is gone. Players so commonly look at a 5×9′ table and think of it as being Bautzen (or somewhere, name any battle) but it is just crammed with figures and none of the surrounding country is represented. None of the big, sweeping movements they think about happening in history actually happened on the area of that tabletop, but that tabletop is their canvas so they picture them there.

Anyways…

So Mark:

If all movement within 1,000 yards is largely straight ahead (historically) then does it matter if it takes 1 more to make contact or 6?

Would you say that players don’t want to be forced into that level of fatalism (move to contact in 1 turn) even if it what occurs over 6 turns anyway? Or are you of another mind entirely on the question?

_________________________________WORKING THOUGHTS AND EXAMPLES BELOW_________________________________
This is a very valid practical concern in my mind. To know how big a worry it is I’m going to do what you just did with the rates and ground scales I’ve been pondering to-date in this thread to see if it changes any or stays the same… devil in the details check and all that:

• 75 yards = 1″
• ~20 minutes = 1 turn
• 20″ per turn, infantry, deployed, moving over ‘open’ terrain
• table width of 6′ (using this because my regular gaming group uses both 5′ wide and 6′ wide tables…) = 72″

There are 3.6 moves between the two table edges if someone were just to march straight across.
Sure, problem exists as you describe it.

Comparing this to the same scenario with 9″ movements per turn, there are 8 turns of movement from table edge to table edge, so arguably there are 4-6 turns of movement for a given side (depending on if one hunkers down to defend or they both advance right?).

So my next question is: If I am marching straight at the enemy (other side of the table) why does it matter if it takes me 1 move or 6? I’m plotting straight ahead at them in both cases. If my goal is to come to contact with them, I can do it, will it take me 1 turn or 6 turns is the question, right?

I think we need to clarify a couple of things. Are we playing the battle of Eylau (for example) or are we playing the approach, deployment and battle of Eylau?

The reason I ask is that the French line and the Russian line were within artillery range of each other, so say ~1,000 yards or so. That is pretty close. Soult couldn’t jockey most of his corps because he was engaged. Davout marched to the battlefield and arrived roughly perpendicular to the Russian left flank, deployed, attacked, so our table is L shaped when Davout arrives. Davout didn’t march out from the right of Soult, he marched in from the southwest, his corps was completely disconnected from Soult’s right flank until he had joined the battle *and* Soult’s right division (Saint Hilaire) had assaulted forward, their two movements bridged the gap between them and created a roughly L shaped line.

There were five movement vectors that were used during the Battle of Eylau:
1) the two main armies staring at each other could and did move straight forward.
2) Davout marched in perpendicular to the Russian main line having marched from the southwest.
3) L’Estoqc marched in from the northwest and shifts to an east-by-south-east line of march until he gets to the new Russian left, having marched from one point of the L to the other.
4) Ney arrives nominally at the point L’Estoqc did and then largely hangs out because it is like 8pm.

So…

#1 – just a straight forward attacking movement, no real lateral shifting.
#2 – Davout’s approach is different but once he hits the battlefield he is attacking straight forward.
#3 – L’Estoqc makes a large amount of what I suppose you might call ‘maneuver movement’ to relocate from where he arrives to where he fights, this is the first lateral movement (from the perspective of the parent army) that occurs during the battle.
#4 – Once Ney arrives his movements are again directly forward or directly backward.

I mentioned a 5th which I would argue was the shifting of various elements slightly left and right at the joint of the L by Bennigsen. It was relatively minor, basically “everyone near by, shift towards this huge hole!”

#1 is not harmed by fast movement in my opinion because whether it takes Augereau, St. Hilaire, Murat or the Guard Cavalry a single turn or several turns to move from their starting position to contact, it is just a straight forward advance, none of them moved significantly left or right.
#2 is potentially a table size problem for fast movement if Davout’s march to the battlefield is to be included, otherwise, once he arrived, he moved directly to contact and did so advancing roughly straight forward.
#3 is our big lateral move so I’ll come back to this one.
#4 is just Ney arriving and sitting there so that is kinda boring.

I’m concluding at this point that opposing troops within 1,000 yards of each other basically just walk forward to attack. All the flank moves are largely strategic positioning outside of the main battlefield. I think Waterloo would offer the same example, Davout’s proposed flanking movement at Borodino would give the same conclusion and the Russian cossack attack against Eugene’s IV Corps (also Borodino) is similar (stay outside ~1,000 yards to maneuver, inside that distance attack). Wagram is the same, Davout moves into a flanking position and then it is all about going straight forward. Austerlitz is similar too, the Allies spend all night repositioning so that when they attack it can be done without performing lateral marches in front of the enemy.

#3 is kinda the big one because L’Estoqc needs to be able to laterally move quite a distance, something like 3-4 miles and deploy in about 3 hours (he was in Althof at 1pm per Petre and Arnold, he was attacking Davout at 4pm per Petre, Arnold and more importantly Davout…).

That means we’ve got 3 hours to deploy and move 3-4 miles, if deployment only takes an hour which seems short but sure, then L’Estoqc is moving through retreating Russian units, on a poor road and cross-country at 1.8-2MPH at a minimum.

Going back to Davout’s advance to the battlefield… this is a question of if we are mapping the battle or the approach and deployment as well. If so I’d say the problem is our ground scale not our movement rate. At 1″ = 75 yards having a big enough table for Davout’s approach march to be included will be nuts, you’ll be adding several feet at a ~45º angle to the rest of the table.

From all this I think the actual problem isn’t table size but (no big surprise here) player’s having conflicting expectations. I don’t mean between players of course but within a given player he/she will want XYZ things were at least two of them are in conflict:

i.e. “maneuver” + 32 figure 28mm units + 5×8′ table + a large scale battle (example made slightly extreme for illustrative purposes)

Well heck, the big strategic maneuvering can happen on table but you’d have to give up the figure scale… etc.

[grizzlymc]

Exactly.  The boardgamers can do Europe on a coffee table, but you can’t specify that the first brigade will deploy skirmishers and following brigades will remain in column.

This is why it is important to know what you want to represent.  For my brigade level games, off table movement is just “Unit X arrives on this part of ther table edge any turn after turn Y on a die roll of Z”  Do I care about time much?  No, because battles involved some psot scouting pre contact manouvre and then maybe a totally pointless cannonade followed by the battle, which is what I am playing.  When I do a campaign I might do that pre battle phase on google earth with pushpins.

But if you are doing the pre battle phase on the table for a big battle, the question will be how much more detailed do I want to go than “brigade attack factor 4 plus support from artillery 2 attacks brigade with defence factor 5 roll on the CRT”

 

Me, I like to see little men come off, units weaken, break and get pursued.  I like to catch his cavalry in an anvil attack and pursue with a fresh squadron/regiment/brigade.  I like to decide the firefight with aggressive use of horse artillery.  I think you can do all of this on a table but not in the same game – unless you get a lot of long weekends.

 

[Bandit]

Not Connard Sage:

None of your posts have offer any thing to the topic. The closest most come is to demean its importance. One actually questions if the evidence is valid which would seem like a perfectly fair point but when asked to discuss the evidence you deflected back at me, insinuated I presumed my own conclusion and then declined to offer a substantive counter. It seems that post, which stood out as being of value to the discussion, may have just been bait. Then you challenged me to publish rules to determine the correctness of movement rates but admit that it would answer nothing…

I’m confused by your intent. The only obvious ones I can conclude are negative but I’m unaware of motivation for them so I’m not willing presume they must be the case.

If this is how you know to participate in conversation then I suppose it constitutes the tools you have. But you allude to having others and while you may not see benefit for yourself in using them, it would make the experience both more pleasant and more beneficial for others. Seeking to derail the conversation to spur progress is one thing, doing it for no reason is just a discourteous towards other participants and intentional or not, risks stifling the growth and success of the forum.

Please disagree but offer value through substance.

Otherwise, in the context of all your posts in this thread, this:

Not Connard Sage wrote:

I’m not fighting, I’m just not taking any of this very seriously. It’s not that important, but while these threads exist, and I’m a member here, I will participate. You may ignore me, or engage me. Your prerogative.

Just translates into: “As long as I’m present I’ll try to annoy people and derail conversation.”

And that is a weak justification for an action that adds no value.

[Bandit]

grizzlymc wrote:

This is why it is important to know what you want to represent.

Very true.

This is why I am so sympathetic to McLaddie’s view that movement shouldn’t be variable at the division level. If there really was an average of X MPH that was reliable but in extreme cases then it does make one question what variable movement rates – at that scale and scope – model for us?

[McLaddie]

Simply put, movement rates are limited by table size. In a rule set with infantry movement at 2500 yards per hour (picking a number out of the air), a ground scale of 1″ = 50 yards and a 30 minute turn, one infantry unit will move 25″ per turn. Assuming each side advances if they start 50″ apart they will lock in melee turn one.

Extra C:

It is an issue, but not an unsolvable problem.  Some games at the scale of General de Brigade deal with the issue by reducing the ground/unit scale.  Mike Collins’ Grande Maneuver scales down the time represented to seconds.  That’s not for everyone, to be sure.  However, is that really a problem if many gamers want fast play games?   Movement isn’t limited by table size. Movement is only limited by what players want to do on the table within a desired time span of the game.

The real question is why the actual combatants didn’t become locked in melee in the same time span.  It wasn’t because they weren’t in control or didn’t know how far they could move.

Best Regards, McLaddie

 

[McLaddie]

You and McLaddie seem to want very precise detail about units speed. My point is that it’s only one factor amongst other factors in the simulation, that we have a gaming table smaller than a battlefield (this means that you cannot show on the table the moves the units have done since the early morning etc) and with many other unknown factors too, so: if the overall feeling of the game feels right, I am not bothered by the exact speed of units. Not because it has no relevance, but because we want an overall feeling.

Patrice:

I wanted to respond to this, but am a little late.  I don’t want ‘precise detail about unit speeds or exact speeds.  I simply wanted to find out what the average–expected–speed for units were during Napoleonic battles.   Now there are many factors that could affect movement. The question is if they did.

Soult moved his troops up hill over open terrain on a cold December morning against no opposition at @75 yards per minute.

The three divisions of Pickett Charge moved over open terrain on a hot July afternoon, crossing at least two fence lines and dressing lines twice while under serious artillery fire.  How fast did they move? @75 yards per minute.

Now if I find that twenty more examples of units from different armies at different times moved across ‘open terrain’ at a similar rate under a wide variety of conditions, what am I to conclude about all possible factors and conditions that could slow down units, particularly large formations of multiple divisions?  That they weren’t that significant and don’t need to be simulated.

Best Regards,  McLaddie

 

[Bandit]

grizzlymc wrote:

If it is a fixed period in which a minute and a half of action happens then most of the rule sets you quote above will see Soult on the heights in half an hour or so.  My interpretation is that in general large bodies of men did not cover wide spaces at those sorts of rates.  However, if you buy into the X minute rather than the XX minute turn you can get movement rates out of the drill book and you can take the heights at a speed which is not far off reality.

Well, kinda. The fast half of the list would cross ~1,400 yards in about 20-40 minutes but the slow half of the list will require over an hour.

grizzlymc wrote:

However, when you have finished your 8 hour day (these are government employees after all), there is a possibility that some of your troops will have moved 33km, which would set a near all time record for battlefield movement in the era.

No unions or employment regs at the time it would seem though as Davout’s men marched and fought for between 12-14 hours, Ney started marching at 6am and reached the battlefield between 7-8pm. They got overtime pay right? :-p

So doing the math for L’Estoqc at Eylau, he marched about ~12-13 miles and deployed during a roughly 8 hour period (8AM left Hussehnen, 4PM contacted Davout). Deployment can’t have taken less than say an hour so that drops us to ~12 miles in ~7 hours giving us about 1.7MPH minimum. Most estimates have L’Estoqc reaching Althof on the Russian right at about 1pm and then moving east by 2pm. That would potentially drop another hour off his marching time so we’d be at ~12 miles in ~6 hours, or roughly 2MPH.

I need to dig and see if I can find any good estimates for the duration of Augereau’s attack against the Russian center since it was during a freak blizzard that was so bad they managed to wander left into the Russian grand batteries. I think that whole assault and repulse including the counterattack of Russian cavalry and cossacks took 40 minutes or less. More illustrative is that Murat’s heavy cavalry were roughly 1.5 miles from the Russian lines when they charged forward to support Augereau and their charge and combat wasn’t more than 20 minutes +/-5.

This does cause me to ponder some questions though: battlefield movement is over short distances, doesn’t it make sense that the average movement rate for shorter distances is faster? Longstreet at Gettysburg was relying on bad scouting and had to countermarch a lot. So that becomes a question of if we should be merging issues with command & control with movement. I think McLaddie’s point that penalizing all troops at Gettysburg equally by reducing their movement rates to account for Longstreet’s two divisions having to countermarch a lot being wrong is a strong one.

I’d say that Longstreet’s men didn’t move slower because of bad scouting, in fact, they couldn’t have, otherwise there wouldn’t have been a fight on the Union left because due to all the *extra* marching they did, had it been at a slower pace they wouldn’t have reached their launch point in time to fight.

Players obviously have consistently excellent scouting, so the Player Longstreet never ends up in the march-counter-march situation that the Historical Longstreet did. If it were a campaign or an RPG the game host could just inform you that your men aren’t there yet and you could be confused as to why, but on the tabletop you can see where your men are so you’d never let em get lost right… But I think that slowing movement to address this combines two separate issues.

Now the Russians at Dürenstein certainly moved through the mountains slower than expected, they planning to hit the French at something like 10am (someone correct me, I think that time is wrong) but actually came out of the mountain gaps at like 4pm having traveled less than 5 miles is something like 12 hours. So movement did vary sometimes.

[Bandit]

Should it prove useful at all, I dug out of my notes a “clock” I’d run for the events at the Battle of Eyalu using Petre, Arnold & Davout’s III Corps Journal as source material.

The exercise was to map the events to 20 minute game turns just to see how things laid out, my thinking was it would then be possible to evaluate if a given rule set would allow them to occur at their appointed time.

06:30AM – TURN #1, 0-20 MINUTES – RUSSIAN BOMBARDMENT OF EYLAU BEGINS, FRIANT (OF DAVOUT) ATTACKS SOUTH OF SERPALLEN, MORAND BEGINS TO DEPLOY
06:50AM – TURN #2, 20-40 MINUTES –
07:30AM – TURN #3, 40-60 MINUTES – RUSSIAN ATTACK AGAINST EYLAU
07:50AM – TURN #4, 60-80 MINUTES –
08:10AM – TURN #5, 80-100 MINUTES – MORAND (OF DAVOUT) COMPLETES DEPLOYMENT, FRIANT & MORAND (OF DAVOUT) ATTACK SERPALLEN
08:30AM – TURN #6, 100-120 MINUTES – NAPOLEON IS ABLE TO SEE DAVOUT HAS ARRIVED AND IS BEGINNING HIS ATTACK
08:50AM – TURN #7, 120-140 MINUTES –
09:10AM – TURN #8, 140-160 MINUTES – AUGEREAU ATTACKS RUSSIAN CENTER, ST. HILAIRE (OF SOULT) ADVANCES IN SUPPORT OF AUGEREAU
09:30AM – TURN #9, 160-180 MINUTES – AUGEREAU IS COUNTERATTACKED BY RUSSIAN CAVALRY AND BEGINS TO BREAKUP
09:50AM – TURN #10, 180-200 MINUTES – MURAT ATTACKS TO SAVE AUGEREAU
10:10AM – TURN #11, 200-220 MINUTES – GUARD CAVALRY ATTACKS TO SAVE MURAT
10:30AM – TURN #12, 220-240 MINUTES – MECKLENBURG (OF KAMENSKI) ATTACKS THE FRENCH CENTER, NAPOLEON COMMITS ELEMENTS OF THE GUARD INFANTRY AND MURAT AGAINST THEM
10:50AM – TURN #13, 240-260 MINUTES – BAGGOVUT WITHDRAWS NORTHEAST TOWARD KLEIN-SAUSGARTEN
11:10AM – TURN #14, 260-280 MINUTES – OSTERMAN WITHDRAWS NORTHEAST MAINTAINING CONTACT WITH BAGGOVUT
11:30AM – TURN #15, 280-300 MINUTES – ST. HILAIRE (OF SOULT) ADVANCES TO SUPPORT MORAND (OF DAVOUT)
11:50AM – TURN #16, 300-320 MINUTES –
12:10PM – TURN #17, 320-340 MINUTES – DAVOUT ATTACKS KLEIN-SAUSGARTEN***
12:30PM – TURN #18, 340-360 MINUTES – SACKEN ATTACKS ST. HILAIRE
12:50PM – TURN #19, 360-380 MINUTES – FRIANT (OF DAVOUT) TAKES KLEIN-SAUSGARTEN, BAGGOVUT WITHDRAWS***
01:10PM – TURN #20, 380-400 MINUTES – L’ESTOCQ APPROACHES ALTHOF, OSTERMAN ATTACKS MORAND (OF DAVOUT) AND ST. HILAIRE (OF SOULT)
01:30PM – TURN #21, 400-420 MINUTES – KAMENSKI ATTACKS FRIANT (OF DAVOUT) AT KLEIN-SAUSGARTEN DISPLACING FRIANT
01:50PM – TURN #22, 420-440 MINUTES –
02:10PM – TURN #23, 440-460 MINUTES – L’ESTOCQ LEAVES ALTHOF MOVING EAST-BY-SOUTH-EAST
02:30PM – TURN #24, 460-480 MINUTES – MORAND (OF DAVOUT) TAKES KEEGE-BERGE
02:50PM – TURN #25, 480-500 MINUTES – FRIANT (OF DAVOUT) ATTACKS KLEIN-SAUSGARTEN [AGAIN], KAMENSKI WITHDRAWS NORTH
03:10PM – TURN #26, 520-540 MINUTES – OSTERMAN WITHDRAWS NORTH***
03:30PM – TURN #27, 540-560 MINUTES – GUDIN (OF DAVOUT) ATTACKS AUKLAPPEN, FRIANT (OF DAVOUT) ATTACKS EAST OF AUKLAPPEN (TOWARDS KUSCHITTEN), MORAND (OF DAVOUT) SUPPORTS
03:50PM – TURN #28, 560-580 MINUTES – L’ESTOCQ ATTACKS FRIANT (OF DAVOUT) AT KUSCHITTEN
03:10PM – TURN #29, 580-600 MINUTES –
03:30PM – TURN #30, 600-620 MINUTES – FRIANT & MORAND (OF DAVOUT) WITHDRAWN TO KEEGE-BERGE***

There were three attacks made by the Russians between 6-10PM against Davout’s position, none made any progress.

*** Indicate events for which I could not find either an exact time or an elapse time relative to another event so it is known it happens in the given order of events but the time is suspect.

[McLaddie]

I’d say that Longstreet’s men didn’t move slower because of bad scouting, in fact, they couldn’t have, otherwise there wouldn’t have been a fight on the Union left because due to all the *extra* marching they did, had it been at a slower pace they wouldn’t have reached their launch point in time to fight.

Players obviously have consistently excellent scouting, so the Player Longstreet never ends up in the march-counter-march situation that the Historical Longstreet did.

 

His troops weren’t slow. There were two issues. 1. Longstreet found that his move was visible to the Union and decided to counter-march to hide the movement and 2. Longstreet waited for Hood’s men to march past McLaws so he would be leading, and thus on the right flank of the corps and attack. [There were issues of precedence and which flank was going to be the regulating end of the entire line.]

So, the first issue is LOS and hidden movement and the second has to do with something else that most rules ignore, customary battle array, which was very important in managing a battle line.

[grizzlymc]

Bandit

That is exactly what you need to see whether rules will make a battle possible.

 

When I decided to see how the time dilation affect worked I used Waterloo and made up something like that.  I then (using an A2 map and cardboard counters) back calculated when each attack had to be launched in order for a WRG double turn to represent a half hour.  Everything worked except the Prussians who would have had to leave Wavre the day before to make it.  It meant that attacks that were sequential overlapped, but not in an out of control way.

[ExtraCrispy]

@Bandit:

I was just talking about this issue with a friend today. Inside some distance – 1000 yards sounds reasonable – yes, I think units  pretty much move straight ahead or straight back out. So Grande Armee includes the 6″ rule (600 yards in that game). Inside 6″ you either move straight toward the enemy or back straight away. No oblique, no wheels. And if you have a rash commander inside 6″ he might charge even if you don’t want him to. So putting him in the front line carries a risk. In Grande Armee this works well. You are commanding multiple divisions. You can’t choreograph the advance of your brigades. You send 5th division to take the hill and hope for the best.

I played in a huge Wagram game at Historicon once. 90 million figures splayed out over 20 or 30 tables. I got a couple battalions and a battery. There was nothing to do but bash straight ahead. Troops to my right and left gave me no room to do anything fancy. In essence every single interesting decision had already been made. Where to send my battalions had been decided and I was on a front that was to “demonstrate.” How enemy troops from there could have been sent to the other flank I have no idea. But it didn’t matter to me. I just had to bash head on. INCREDIBLY BORING. But probably realistic. Most officers most of the time just marched where they were told, then either held or attacked pretty much straight ahead. Not much fun as a game though!

I have a friend who wants to play a game with multiple corps on the table but with individual battalions and skirmishers and formations. Most every set he tries ends up with the same problem: even with a big table all you can really do is move straight ahead and commit reserves.

[ExtraCrispy]

@McLaddie:

In reading up on Gettysburg to work out a scenario I “re-learned” an important truth. Armies learn fast. At Gettysburg there’s a fence every 8 feet (well, it feels that way). Turns out the officers sned out pioneers to break down the fences thus “cutting a path.” They were quite good at it. So by itself a fence is not really a movement impediment in 15-30 minute turns. There are exceptions of course. For example the fences across the pike in the way of Pickett’s charge could not be taken down in advance. And there were much stronger and more substantial than you r average fence around a field. So they were a serious impediment (in my scenario only a handful of fences counted as obstacles, all the rest were just there for “flavor”).

It was suggested you take friends and try to march across a field. You;d make a hash of it sure. But now, spend 3 months practicing. Bring a bugle or a drum. Hang fanions/pennants/flags for guiding the flanks. Ever notice how many men in a battalion had the job of “keep the lads together?” How much effort was done to do just that? So now 3 months later, with a drum, a lot of practice, several NCO types keeping things organized, some pennants as guides, I’d bet you;d cross that field at quite a clip.

[ExtraCrispy]

@All:

One of my Napoleonic projects is a small scale game. Maybe two brigades a side, played on a big table. Your basic French battalion will be 288 figures (6mm). It will occupy 19″ of frontage. A cavalry squadron will have between 60 and 100 figures. I’m looking for a rule set to adapt. And an immediate problem presents itself: at that ground scale unless turns are a minute movement rates will be huge.

I thought of having split tables – three parallel tables where the French table is farthest west, there’s a middle table, and the British are east. The gap between them allows players to reach, but units may freely “skip” from table to table as the gap isn’t really there. So I can get a 12′ deep table without having to walk on it.

But the rules will need to be fast and fun because a line up and go get them game (which this will quickly turn in to) has to really move along unless you want players pulling their hair out…

[grizzlymc]

Crispy, Angel was playing something like that until a while ago.  Might be an idea to contact him.  I would like to follow your efforts online.

 

Personally, I am playing that scale at 1=10 with a fig = 10 men in a single line.  I am planning to do smaller battles at 1:1 possibly with Sharp practice.

[ExtraCrispy]

Grizz:

For the moments my efforts consist of painting when I can and reading rules sets. The only rule set at this level (1:5) really is chef de batallion. Useful but boring. Since my goal is visual splendor and to drive home how lines and columns really looked, I’m thinking of may be adapting General de Brigade….not really much to follow “on line” yet except a few gallery photos like these:

 

 

 

 

 

[grizzlymc]

Phooooaaaaawwwwwww!

6mm porn.

As my total output for the last five years has been less than 1000 figs, I slaute you but will not try to emulate you.

[Bandit]

ExtraCrispy wrote:

The only rule set at this level (1:5) really is chef de batallion. Useful but boring. Since my goal is visual splendor and to drive home how lines and columns really looked

Not to be an oaf but from what I know of Chef de Battalion, if one wanted to learn and explore how columns and lines really worked and functions, wouldn’t that be the thing to use? Little else deals with the evolutions of those formations.

[Whirlwind]

EC, the ‘Brigade-level’ rules in Paddy Griffith’s Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun would work as the basis for an adaptation for gaming that size of battle.

[Sam Mustafa]

Mark’s point was one that ought to be obvious but for some reason rarely is.  Namely:  what can and can’t, or what should and shouldn’t, be done in wargames has everything to do with the practical limitations of gaming itself, long before you have to worry about the limitations of historical accuracy.

For example, we could certainly do a game with historically-accurate movement rates, as long as we had very short turns. (Each turn representing, say, 5 minutes or less of historical time.)   Then you could have a common scale like 1″ = 30 paces, and you could have troops marching 60 paces per minute, for example, and there you have a nice, tame 10″ movement allowance per turn.   But of course that won’t work for cavalry.  You can’t have a 24″ movement allowance because, as Mark pointed out, that wouldn’t work with most gaming tables. In order to get cavalry movement rates accurate, you’d need a turn that represents something like 2-3 minutes.

Now, do you want a game in which each turn represents 2-3 minutes?  That also depends upon how long (game time) it takes you to complete a turn.  Let’s say that you’ve got six guys at the table, and the action is getting hot  (because it’s a war-game, not a real battle, so all forces are engaged because everybody wants to fight, cuz that’s what they came here to do!)  and therefore there are a number of dice rolls and calculations, and so on… in other words, let’s say that a turn takes at least 10 minutes to play.

And let’s say that you’ve got a typical 3-hour gaming period (plus an hour for set-up and tear-down.)   So at most you could play 18 turns during the game, and those 18 turns will represent 45 minutes of battle.

—

Now, if you’re concerned about historical accuracy, then you’re probably also concerned that your game can only represent about 45 minutes of historical time, so that probably won’t work for you. (Since most horse-n-musket battles needed substantially more than 45 min. to resolve.)   However, the above sort of game will work if:

1. You want to play a game that focuses on a short period of decisive action,  OR

2. You don’t care about time scales in the first place  (in which case you were probably also never worried about historically-accurate movement rates in the first place.)

But either way, the crucial factors all along were never the limits of historical accuracy;  they were the practical limits of wargaming itself:  How much table space do you have?  How much time do you have in which to play?

That’s why no amount of faithful historical research will matter much in the end. You’re still constrained by very artificial limitations, so you’ll either have to fudge massively (in which case, why bother with all that research?), or you’ll have to limit your game to something impractical like 2-3 minute turns.

There are of course all sorts of other practical limitations, such as the fact that every player wants to get into the action, so the game needs to provide for that (no “keeping a reserve,”  no long periods of bombardment, etc.).  And the player have spent weeks or months painting their figures, so they want them to stay on the table for at least a while, so that will place limitations on the combat systems.  (And I like painting generals and Marshals with all their shiny brass, so I don’t want a game that abstracts their role and doesn’t let me “use” them on the table.)   And so on.

 

[Not Connard Sage]

Cheers Sam. As ever, you said it better than I can.

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Nick the Lemming]

I agree with Sam too. That’s without even starting on the subject of basing width and basing depth being completely out of whack too.

Glory Eagles de l'Empereur! blog

[repiqueone]

Sam’s comments are well taken, as usual. However, I think there is another aspect at work here.

One of my favorite painters is Rene Magritte.  One of the paintings that he is famous for, among many, is a very detailed painting of a smoker’s pipe, accurate down to the smallest wisps of smoke curing up from white tobacco ash in its bowl.  In bold letters across the bottom of this painting Magritte wrote “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. This is not a pipe!

His statement was clear that the representation of a thing is not the thing itself.  An artist uses his creativity and skill to create the illusion of the real thing in the mind of the person viewing the work by mimicking certain perceptual  stimuli.

In a sense, a wargame is an artistic representation of battle that by successfully triggering certain emotional and intellectual responses in the mind of the gamer gives him the illusion of events that occurred in history.  It has great similarities to a novel, or a film, and far fewer to a scientific examination of battle-particularly in by-gone periods.

If the designer instills this “feeling” of verisimilitude in the gamer’s mind, then issues of drill rates, musket accuracy tables, etc. are not of great import.  In a very real sense, the various issues of time and space are whatever the designer says they are, as long as they seem true to the gamer’s perceptions of what seems plausible.  That is why there is a great range of opinion about whether a design is good, bad, historically accurate, or just rubbish.  People have different expectations of what a wargame should do, and what are the key considerations in a given period and how they should be portrayed.  Its why people vary on their favorite novel, film, or wargame rules.  It’s the same thing as with any work of fiction.

And as with many works of fiction, it can be “truer” than fact.

ps:  Please don’t respond with some claim that I am ignoring the need for historical facts, and the necessity of basing all designs on the pertinent information.   That is an important aspect of rule design, and becomes part of the design process, but it is merely an ingredient in the creative process of rule design and not the completed dish.

Literal replication of “facts” ( of which drill rates are a prime example) is not going to create a good representation or game, just as assembling all of a man’s “factual” body  parts and sewing them together yielded a disappointing outcome for Dr. Frankenstein.

[ExtraCrispy]

@Bandit: Who said anything about wanting to learn how lines and columns functioned? I want to show how they looked. And maybe convince some people to buy the 6mm figures I sell. I assume most of the gamers who would play in my game would (think they) know how lines and columns worked. I also want to model a battery with all the caissons, limbers, wagons and horses – the entire tail. Then we can discuss why batteries can’t rotate like tank turrets too.

[John D Salt]

A nice idea; no reason wargaming should not be regarded as a kind of art.

I wonder how many art critics would make the argument that you can’t do landscape painiting, because you can’t fit a hillside onto an artist’s canvas?

Or say that you shouldn’t try to paint the drowned Ophelia without first having a go at drowning yourself?

All the best,

John.

[Bandit]

Sam,

Sam Mustafa wrote:

For example, we could certainly do a game with historically-accurate movement rates, as long as we had very short turns.

This is the premise that I don’t quite get.

Mark noted that there is concern about table depth – after all we can only reach so far – OK sure.

He also noted that there is concern over how many turns it takes to make contact – This I want to challenge.*

My question in return is:

If the forces start X distance apart, and within X distance any attack would historically be made fairly directly forward, why does it matter if the units cover X distance in 1 turn or 15 turns?

Or put another way:

In all games there is a distance “X” where from there on in players are just closing to contact forward, why does it matter how many turns it takes them to do that?

[Bandit]

repiqueone wrote:

And as with many works of fiction, it can be “truer” than fact.

Sure, Tim O’Brien is a good example.

repiqueone wrote:

Literal replication of “facts” ( of which drill rates are a prime example) is not going to create a good representation or game, just as assembling all of a man’s “factual” body  parts and sewing them together yielded a disappointing outcome for Dr. Frankenstein.

Yet this I find to be a ridiculous generalization. Keeping with its tone and breath: “A fact based book will never be as good of a book as a historically based novel.”

The statement is wrong because the statement is absolute.

Also, there is no “literal” replication of facts being discussed. Nor are exact drill times being proposed by anyone – Bill (McLaddie) and I have been talking about averages, which are necessarily not exact, but most of the disagreement voiced so far has been in one form or another saying that we’re trying to be too exact. Seems to me that we’re (as a group) still talking past each other.

repiqueone wrote:

That is an important aspect of rule design, and becomes part of the design process, but it is merely an ingredient in the creative process of rule design and not the completed dish.

Sure, but no one is proposing that it is the complete dish. People are arguing against it, but no one is arguing for it.

If someone were to tell me that they did away with ground scale or time scale in their game design but their movement and weapon ranges were proportional to each other based on historical averages – I’d say that makes perfect sense.

If someone were to tell me they just picked different distances by throwing darts at a board, I’d say, that seems incredibly arbitrary and the only thing the output has to do with the historical period it is associated with are the uniform colors painted.

I started this thread because I think the proportionality of movement vs weapons in wargames is largely in the second category, I’m not sure of that conclusion, but it is the impression I get.

[Bandit]

Mark,

ExtraCrispy wrote:

Who said anything about wanting to learn how lines and columns functioned? I want to show how they looked.

Ah! My bad, I must have read too fast.

ExtraCrispy wrote:

I also want to model a battery with all the caissons, limbers, wagons and horses – the entire tail. Then we can discuss why batteries can’t rotate like tank turrets too.

I think that will be very enlightening to many (the actual look of it).

[Bandit]

John D Salt wrote:

A nice idea; no reason wargaming should not be regarded as a kind of art.

I think design, be it buildings, bridges or games for that matter can rise to the level of art. I would concur.

And they all fall into different genres right? Beer & Pretzels, Simulation, several others we haven’t defined but certainly exist. Abstract, Realist, etc…

John D Salt wrote:

I wonder how many art critics would make the argument that you can’t do landscape painiting, because you can’t fit a hillside onto an artist’s canvas?

Or say that you shouldn’t try to paint the drowned Ophelia without first having a go at drowning yourself?

See these I find very ironic, I also find them dead-on. Look at this thread for instance. Bill and I have been the two primarily saying, “How come our movement rates can’t be more representative of historical movement rates?” Which is easy to label as the ‘realist’ or ‘simulationist’ perspective right?

The critical response has largely been, “You need to be less accurate and more abstract.” Which is easy to label as the ‘abstract’ perspective.

OK, fair enough.

But the two core arguments for why design must be more abstract and less realistic were:

“Go take your buddies and walk in a field,” i.e. …you shouldn’t try to paint the drowned Ophelia without first having a go at drowning yourself…

and

“You can’t fit that much on the table,” i.e. …you can’t fit a hillside onto an artist’s canvas…

Which I guess frames the discussion more in light of establishment vs challenger…

[McLaddie]

The representation of a thing is not the thing itself.  An artist uses his creativity and skill to create the illusion of the real thing in the mind of the person viewing the work by mimicking certain perceptual  stimuli.

That is what a simulation is: a representation of the thing, not the thing itself.  The simulating is what a wargame does in presenting the same mental issues, with similar consequences as ‘the real thing.’  As Marc Prensky, a fellow Education and Training simulator writes in his book Interactive Pretending: An Overview of Simulation

“Simulation’ is a broad term. But simulation is, by definition, pretending. All simulations are “tools that give you ersatz (as opposed to real) experience.”

There is both art and science, self-expression and technology in crafting a functioning simulation or wargame [a valid representation of war]. To think it is all art reduces the craft to only self-expression and personal preferences.

 

 

 

Digital Game-based Learning  2007

[willz]

Just read all the post fascinating stuff, mainly positive with lots of deep thought.  I enjoyed reading all the comments.

On trying to understand movement on a war-game table, play a large game (any form of game, naval, land, air or a mixture) and have the generals in charge of each side in separate rooms unable to see what’s happening on the table.  Giving and receiving orders / reports via telephone, walkie talkie, messenger and after a couple of hours let them come and see the table.  They will find that what they think was happening isn’t and the movement of troops, tanks planes, guns, ships has not happened the way they want or expected, and stuff will not have moved at all or very little.

Done this for a Sealion game and the German general was in a separate room for 2 hours, wow was he surprised when saw the table.  Throwing his toys out the pram would be a simplistic way to describe what happened next. 

[McLaddie]

1. You want to play a game that focuses on a short period of decisive action,  OR

2. You don’t care about time scales in the first place  (in which case you were probably also never worried about historically-accurate movement rates in the first place.)

But either way, the crucial factors all along were never the limits of historical accuracy;  they were the practical limits of wargaming itself:  How much table space do you have?  How much time do you have in which to play?

The total space to play in and the time to play circumscribe what can be done. To that there is no doubt.  However, that limitation doesn’t reduce game design down to two options because of it.

Such playing area limitations do not circumscribe the kind of game mechanics that were possible or what they represent.  Certainly no one would say the only games that can be played on an 8X8 square board is  Chess and Checkers.  The only real limitations are the game designer and what he sees as possible with the rules as well as the gamers  expectations and desires.  The relationship between the two often shape what is seen as possible… not the actual possibilities.

For instance, regardless of the time or ground scale chosen for the table, historically units and armies still moved at the same rate.  So if the table can cover the entire battlefield at Talavera at 50 yards to an inch, Waterloo or Austerlitz at 100 yards to the inch, the Borodino Great Redoubt at 10 yards to the inch or whatever scale you want, representing their movement should be the same general distances and the same general capabilities demonstrated in the historical battles.

The questions of why units didn’t go scooting all over the battlefield [and thus the table] are good ones, but so far the answers in the hobby have basically come down to the either/or choices above.  There is no doubt that brigades and divisions demonstrated an ability to move far quicker than most all wargames allow for when the commander wanted them to.  100% of the time? Of course not.  But certainly the majority of the time, to the point that it was something they planned on and expected.

It really is about what the player experiences in that game representation in the way of command decisions, whether the options, challenges and decision consequences mimic those of the historical battlefield.  And obviously, that is only an issue if you care about history being represented in the first place.

 

[Not Connard Sage]

willz wrote:

Just read all the post fascinating stuff, mainly positive with lots of deep thought. I enjoyed reading all the comments. On trying to understand movement on a war-game table, play a large game (any form of game, naval, land, air or a mixture) and have the generals in charge of each side in separate rooms unable to see what’s happening on the table. Giving and receiving orders / reports via telephone, walkie talkie, messenger and after a couple of hours let them come and see the table. They will find that what they think was happening isn’t and the movement of troops, tanks planes, guns, ships has not happened the way they want or expected, and stuff will not have moved at all or very little. Done this for a Sealion game and the German general was in a separate room for 2 hours, wow was he surprised when saw the table. Throwing his toys out the pram would be a simplistic way to describe what happened next.

That sir, is why I’m frustrated by these ‘everything is quantifiable’ threads.

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[McLaddie]

Done this for a Sealion game and the German general was in a separate room for 2 hours, wow was he surprised when saw the table.  Throwing his toys out the pram would be a simplistic way to describe what happened next. 

 

This reminds me of Napoleon’s surprises in both his and the enemy’s troop movements during the Jena Campaign.  Of course, those are campaigns and not a specific battle area during the campaign like Jena and Auerstadt.  The ‘fog of war’ issues are more contained in the latter situation, but still very much there.

Drawing a circle around a particular battle and putting it on the table is in some ways an arbitrary division of campaign events, but military men did it too, so what the heck.

[Bandit]

Not Connard Sage wrote:

That sir, is why I’m frustrated by these ‘everything is quantifiable’ threads.

No one is trying to ‘quantify everything’. Also, just in case repetition helps: average ≠ exact.

[McLaddie]

That sir, is why I’m frustrated by these ‘everything is quantifiable’ threads.

 

Well, this thread isn’t about ‘everything.’  Just the quantification of one issue… ‘average movement ability’ of units on a Napoleonic battlefield.  However, I am surprised that it would frustrate you.  Wargames are all about quantifying distances, the odds of something happening, the ability to get out orders, combat, morale, unit and army morale.   A great deal of wargames [and all simulations] comes down to quantifying things with numbers.

But in wargame and simulation design, recreating the historical battlefield, there are design options other than everything has to be quantified or nothing can be.

[grizzlymc]

John D Salt wrote:

………………… Or say that you shouldn’t try to paint the drowned Ophelia without first having a go at drowning yourself? All the best, John.

 

True, but there are some artists who could have added much to the world by drowning before they started painting.

[Not Connard Sage]

grizzlymc wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>John D Salt wrote:</div>
………………… Or say that you shouldn’t try to paint the drowned Ophelia without first having a go at drowning yourself? All the best, John.

True, but there are some artists who could have added much to the world by drowning before they started painting.

 

Jackson Pollock?

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[grizzlymc]

McLaddie wrote:

 All simulations are “tools that give you ersatz (as opposed to real) experience.”  

 

You speak for yourself!

 

I will have you know that as I pick up the die to see if my cavalry charge, I feel that hollow in the pit of my stomach, the clenching of the teeth, the smell of horse and sweaty leather,, then…….  as I check the modifiers, I can feel the horse moving slowly forward, hear the zzzzzzziinnnnnngggg, as my sword leaves its scabbard, as we approach our enemy and I start moving through the charge bonus distance the sleeves of my pelisse occasionally smack the side of my face and necfk and my arm starts to cramp from holding the sword forward.

They roll their die and stand, but do not countercharge, the pelisse is now flattened on my shoulder, the drumming of its sleeves on the edge of my feelings, sword arm rigid, I pick my man, the dice roll, the charge goes home, the shock of impact and the feeling of the sword cutting through flesh and gristle, deflecting on bone, a spatter of blood on my face as the dice roll 4 casualties against him!  That fatalistic expression on his face as he picks up the dice and realises that, although he cannot yet feel it he has suffered a mortal blow, he rolls a one, my horse speeds past him lifeless in the saddle, again and again I experience the savage joy of running fleeing men through the back, the whinney of crippled horses, screams of terror!

 

And you call that an ersatz experience?

[willz]

“Not Conrad Sage wrote” That sir, is why I’m frustrated by these ‘everything is quantifiable’ threads.

?

[John D Salt]

Not Connard Sage wrote:

Jackson Pollock?

No thanks, I’ve just put one out.

All the best,

John.

[Author]

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