Forum Replies Created
-
What Howard says. I’m not sure if a generic “Germanic” barbarian army can still be defined in the 4th century and later (unless still somewhere in the middle of their heartland?) The North of Germany sprouted Franks, Saxons etc, who were bands of infantry. In Southern regions (which extend as far as the Danube valley, Romania etc) you get Wisigoths who are mainly infantry with some noble cavalry; and Ostrogoths who after their submission to the Huns (in the mid-4th century?) learn to fight mainly on horseback (with still some infantry).
Differences between all them grow quickly in 5th-6th century after their installations in so many different places where they adapt to the local context and raise local troops etc (Franks in northern Gaul, Wisigoths in South-West Gaul and Spain, Ostrogoths in northern Italy and South-East Gaul, and I won’t tell you what the heathen Saxons became
).http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/Um, did you forget to write something?
Oh yes, you are waiting till you can see the white of their eyes.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/Fascinating! Thanks for the link.
(but for me, as a player, it’s 28mm or death
)Um, although I can accept some 15mm DBA sometimes…
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/AND more pictures of a following game (in the same campaign) that we played last Sunday
are here:
http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=72961.msg889534#msg889534
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/Or you could imagine that the GDR (or other countries) gains some independance under Gorbachev; but that the 1991 Moscow military coup against Eltsin succeeds and the USSR is ready to fight again.
(Not that I think that they really wanted to fight in the earlier period, I’m convinced they didn’t, but hey, you want imagination).
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/I think it is much better accepted than it was 30 years ago.
Or perhaps it is because many players now don’t look as young as they were, and people hesitate to criticize them openly.
Also most of us are now familiar with such discussions and know how to handle it and how to explain what we are doing.
In France we still meet people who have never heard of miniatures wargames – last summer I ran a game in a harvest festival in my village and some people there had never seen a wargame or heard of it; and there was an old man who I had once heard saying timidly that he owned some Napoleonic miniatures in a shelf and he was obviously ashamed to talk about them (and he had certainly never thought of any gaming with them) and then he came to this festival and he saw us doing it in public with all our miniatures, you should have seen his face.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/It could be a smaller “fanion”, on a pole or in a gun barrell.
I did a quick research, found some discussion about it on a French wargamers forum:
http://www.planete-napoleon.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=588 they say sources are contradictory.
Also found this (not sure if it’s a reliable source)…
but it wouldn’t surprise me; such small “fanions” which fit in a gun barrell are still carried on parade by companies of the French army.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/Your African forest is very impressive although apparently it’s only made of trees.
…Um, did I write this?
I mean, lots of trees and you have created a real effect with them.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/games do not allow for historical movement speeds (…) 20 minute turns
This is the point that made me uneasy in the other
thread although I couldn’t explain myself why. But, yes:“20 minute turns”. How do you know that a turn represents 20 minutes? Because the author of the rules wrote it somewhere in the rulebook. But it’s not really a part of the gaming rules; in fact it’s “designer’s notes” or whatever you call it, it has no effect on the game system itself.
Gamers are looking for:
-an acceptable simulation (or feeling of simulation) of the relation between moves/fire/etc; which does not depends on the exact time scale, but are relative to each other;
and
– an acceptable simulation (or feeling of simulation) of what the general sees and decides on the battlefield. As you wrote earlier, the generals took into account the true speed of their units (in reality) …as the players take into account the true speed of their units but on a gaming table it’s in cm (or inches) per turn and nothing else. It works even if the exact scale does not match.
(- and fun!)
IMO what you are looking for is an absolute modelization. It’s something different of a game system. If you take one of the rulesets that have been metioned, and take a pen and write “one turn = 10 minutes not 20” across the first page, you could be happy with the units absolute speeds without changing anything else in the game rules. It’s different things.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/Does this mean 30mm top of head (that means our usual 28mm at eye-level), or 30mm eye-level?
Don’t encourage 30mm eye-level in our own lifetime or we’ll regret it
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/Nice.
You should tell your granddaughter to buy some for you for Xmas.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/Really? On a 4′ table moving 15% of the table width per turn makes for a long game?
Um, was it already mentioned?
I still don’t get the “battlefield is smaller” part. The figures are smaller than real men too, so are the trees. This is a question of proportionality which can be influenced and *to a degree* controlled through the rules.
Not trolling, but interested – I’m still interested in where this thread leads to.
The size of the table has an impact on the game…
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/Woowww I am appalled about what my previous post has done
I was just suggesting that people may have different feelings and different views.
I have been (and still am, although less frequently) an historical re-enactor; and after many long and hard discussions in the re-enactments groups I was in, it became obvious that all re-enactors are not seeking for the same thing. Some give more importance to the right costumes and uniforms (even if drinking from plastic bottles); some just want to be in battle whatever is around; some want to sit in a friendly campsite and cook and/or taste (medieval/18th century/or whatever) cooking; some want role-playing and no modern things on view, etc.
And everyone is right (in his/her own point of view) and you can do a wonderful event with all these people together. But it can become very difficult if you keep them together around the same campfire all the evening long, when the public is gone and that each of them is wishing for a different context.
Back to wargames: we do not really disagree. But we are not playing exactly the same games?
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/OK guys. Different points of views are legitimate.
(Um, please don’t misunderstand me I mean no harm) Bandit you say that you are not convinced by some rules (Sam’s and other) because they do not seem logical to you (movements/time/etc);
and when some people react to this and say that it’s not so important, you feel that:
people posting just to say they think the topic is stupid
I don’t think that the topic is stupid; but the exact meaning of “simulation” can vary. You may look for exact detail, etc, for a true simulation; other people may think that they have a good simulation without detail.
I post two pictures of wheat fields. Some people may prefer the first one (with every small detail right), others would prefer the second one (painting by Van Gogh). They are both right, because they choose what gives them a good feeling of the true thing – as wargamers may have different feelings.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/I think that it might work quite well to place some sort of fire marker on the target, say a cotton ball or something, upon a successful artillery roll. Then under given circumstances, those markers are converted to a number of ‘hits’ against the units. It should not be a predictable conversion rate, maybe rolling 1D6 per cotton ball or something.
Yes, or something like that; same conclusion as before, hey?
I suppose it depends if the gunners really know there is something behind the ridge, or not. And, as it has been suggested, they don’t know if the fire is effective. Perhaps the dice for these shots should be rolled only after their first attacking unit arrives on the ridge and can see what is behind.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/having a complete, well-painted set from a few periods than an incomplete, unpainted pile of lead comprising dozens of periods
Oooooh this is a very interesting idea.
I should consider it. But unfortunately for me I am not wise enough for that.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/he didn’t know what to say other than “this is a game!! Those are toys, this isn’t real!!!”
Oooh I hate when a player says that.I always answer: “Don’t say that, it hurts them! Each time someone says that the miniatures are not real, one of them DIES!”
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/I am very interested in this topic too.
Since long I have been planning 1920s Back of Beyond 28mm Manchuria winter scenarios; but I am so unhappy with the landscapes I have made (especially since I found that my beautiful snowy hills actually look like Xmas shops decorations, but I should have foreseen it as I was using miniature Xmas trees) that this gaming campaign has still not begun.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/The question is therefore never just: “How should the 1st brigade close with these defenders at the farm?” But rather: “What systems of managing time and space will work, when all of these different potential contacts and non-contacts will exist, each under different circumstances, each potentially affecting the others, and each representing different amounts of both real and game time?” Historical accuracy is usually not the issue when debating whether it’s better to have a 4″ movement rate or a 24″ movement rate, but rather: how many extra rules will you have to write, to prevent the guy with the 24″ movement rate from abusing it and doing all sorts of silly things? Game designs have generally therefore tended toward smallish artificial increments of some sort, not in any effort at historical accuracy, but because it works better as a game and constrains the natural tendencies of players to search for and exploit any advantage in the rules… in ways that they themselves allegedly think are “wrong,” but alas, that’s the nature of the species. God knows that every time I’ve had some cool outside-the-box idea that would dispense with this or that traditional constraint and open up a whole new chapter in Wargaming History… I’ve been humbled by the ability of my play testers to break it in a matter of minutes by figuring out how to use it in all sorts of absurd ways. So I sigh and come shuffling back to the basics.
Yes I agree. That is what I was trying to suggest (although I wrote it less clearly) in some of my earlier posts.
It’s interesting that this thread was simply trying to determine an average march rate and it leads to game theory, practical limitations and what is possible on the table.
And that, too.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/Here’s the thing: simulation isn’t about being absolute and it definitely requires lots of abstraction, it is fine if someone wants to say that they don’t feel such questions as these have any relevance because “it is only a game” but someday should a guy want to use BattleMechs with pulse lasers in the WW2 game you’re about to play, don’t begrudge him – it is, after all, only a game…
OK. I’m not saying that it has no relevance. We probably are not talking about the same thing. 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.
That’s why in my previous post I mentioned my long and pompous sentence about the game spacetime being “absolute” from a player’s point of view but “relative” for the soldiers taking part in it in reality, etc, there is some sense in it (although voluntarily ridiculous and perhaps not well translated)
But I’m not trying to prevent you from discussing units speed; just saying that for me it’s a factor amongst others and it should not be given too much importance.
http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/Patrice wrote:
The movements on the table cannot be truly accurate because your game table will never be as large as a real battlefield. The spacetime of the game cannot be proportional to reality.This I’m not sure I agree with but maybe I’m not following you. Are you indicating that I can’t predict relatively accurate movement course and speed from say MN to CA on a highway map? Or can you clarify?
You can predict movements and speed, approximately, on an highway map.But (in my opinion) you cannot get actual proportionality on the game table.
When my players question this, I like to answer that “the reality we want to simulate is, historically – or fantastically -, objectively absolute and subjectively relative, but our perception of the game is subjectively absolute and objectively relative, so the spacetime of the game cannot be proportional to reality!” (and yes I know it’s gibberish but it always gives me more time to play while they try to understand what it means
)http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/
