Some Wargaming Notes
I've been wargamingsince...a long time ago. My first game was with 30mm American Civil War Britains (at least I think they were Britains). I was 13, and I was hooked. I went home and began reading everything I could about that conflict (I was living in Southwestern Ohio at the time). Fortunately the local library (Xenia, Ohio) had an extensive collection, and I had an adult library card (which is another story, I've had an adult library card since I was 9).

It wasn't long before I wrote my own rules. They were long, they were complicated, and they were unplayable. You have to get rules like that out of your system. My second set of rules used the brand new roster system (Morschauser). My third, the first playable rules I ever wrote, used Airfix figures with 25 casting battalions. They fit on 2 pages, and I still drag them out from time to time.

From there I went through a 'modern' phase, but soon lost interest after amassing nearly a division worth of plastic tanks and matching infantry. The earlier periods were more fun (besides, there was this war in Vietnam...).

In the 1970s I discovered Napoleonics. This came through my ACW reading. I soon amassed a lot of 20/25mm plastic figures (Airfix again). How many? Enough to field a reinforced division at 1:20. And I wrote Battleline: Napoleonics to play them, which was a cleaned up and rationalized version of Western Washington Wargamer's Maneuver Supported by Firepower rules (with their 'good' muskets that shot 1" farther).

Then I discovered Empire by Scotty Bowden. There was a picture there that sold me on the rules: a French infantry regiment storms the Great Redout at Borodino, having been repulsed twice before and suffered 33% casualties in the process. In our 1:20 rules a unit got repulsed with 70% casualties. This caused me to reassess morale (something I proceeded to do for the next decade). It also let me triple my army.

Then I stumbled on 15mm. These were the Napoleonette line of figures. I painted, others painted, and things happened. Among them was a transfer to Indianapolis and a job that had me working nights for 2/3rds of the year (so no social life). I got a lot of painting done, mastering assembly line techniques so I could crank out a multiple-battalion regiment every week.

I was painting French, not because of any awe of Napoleon, but I found their tactical system fit the way I liked to game. This is a point I think gets missed by a lot of people. I knew one gamer who was smitten by the French, but he was a passive gamer, standing on the defensive behind his artillery and counterpunching when attacked. When he attacked it was a massive affair with artillery in the fore and no combined arms. Not the way you read the French fighting, especially during the Consulate and the early years of the Empire.

Trust me, there are proper ways to use these different armies. They had this thing called doctrine which is how they intended (and generally) fought. I have this strange belief that the rules should reward a player for using an army in a historic fashion. Player competence is part of that; some players are just better with certain troops, but you should fight according to an army's doctrine.

An example: I refereed a game where a player who loved the French was given the Austrians. He wasn't very good with his French, by the way. He got attacked by somebody who used the French the way they were meant to be used, and was getting his head handed to him when he suddenly remembered 'he had to go home' (he did this when he finally realized he was losing). His troops were taken over by someone who did know how to use the Austrians. The French attack suddenly began to run into problems as the Austrians were being used by someone competent. And then, as the French started to go from pursuit mode to prepared attack mode, they got hit in the other flank by another force. But the rest of that battle is another story.

The book that taught me a lot about how to use the French was Quimby's Background to Napoleonic Warfare. This is a history of the discussion of the theory of tactics in the 18th Century in France. The final result, the Drill Regulations of 1791, were pretty much the conceptual framework used by everyone until the muzzle loader rate of fire was surpassed in 1870.

At one point, for Empire 2 (modified), I fielded three full infantry corps, a cavalry corps, and a small reserve of 1806 French, and a corps of 1813 Prussians. One of the things that appealed to me about both armies was that they were both in transition when it came to uniforms. The French tried the white uniform, and was moving from the long-tailed coat and bicorne to the short-tailed 'Spencer' coat and shako. The Prussians were throwing together an army with anything they could grab. Thus the uniforms were dark blue, medium blue, white pants, blue pants, brown pants, gray pants, gray coats, and so on. It keeps you from getting bored when you paint.

I said Empire 2 (modified). What were the modifications, and why did we make them? We (Colin Keizer, Mike Lonie and myself) thought that there were parts of the Empire system that could use some improving. We lifted from some places, we lifted from our own reading. We codified them in a couple of pages. I like to think we balanced playability vs. detail. I like to think we improved the rules. They were house amendments, though. When I did some gaming in Indiana and Ohio I used Empire 2 stock (I tried Empire 3, and reverted to its predecessor).

In this period I also painted a lot of Seven Years War 15mm figures, mostly for Warfare in the Age of Reason by Tod Kershner and Dale Woods. Most excellent rules. I should come clean and admit that I wrote the siege module for Tod and Dale. At the same time Dan Weisman and I painted a large number of 9mm figures for the rules Alte Fritz. These rules were 1:75 SYW. One cavalry stand was a squadron, one infantry stand was a battalion (light infantry were on 1/2stands), and one gun model was an artillery company. Alte Fritz uses a roster system.

Amusing sidelight: Dan and I negotiated an arms limitation agreement - we would paint no more figures than we could get in a previously defined container. Both of us then became experts at getting more and more figures in those containers! If we did that, then what hope does any arms limitation agreement have in the real world? On our way to a wargames convention in Milwaukee we realized we didn't even know how many units we had! We spent most of the trip adding them up.

Alte Fritz was my first 'commercial' set of rules. I retyped them on my Commodore 64, Dan found somebody to actually print them, and we went into business. By the way, we recouped our investment and actually made money! (Well, about $2.50).

But Alte Fritz (aside from teaching me how to use cavalry) finally got to what I found I enjoyed in gaming, the massive battles. There was something about a cavalry fight with 40-60 squadrons on a side that was downright fun. And an infantry battle with 30 battalions on a side had challenges and dynamics that I hadn't seen elsewhere. There is a whole level of tactics that I didn't see with other rules, and somebody who is good at brigade and regimental tactics can be utterly confounded at a higher level.

I saw this when Jeff Cox and I got to playing a set of rules with Dave Gibson, a gamer who lived in West Seattle. After a few games Dave asked us not to play in some of his games because we were beating up the other guys so severely (badly enough that they told Dave they wouldn't be showing up if we did). Gamers have a bit of an ego, and for one to admit that says something. Oh, they had no problem being on our side, they just didn't want to be fighting opposite us.

This concept of higher level tactics shows up in Little Big Battles. We used a variant of the DBA system by Phil Barker to handle the lower levels (battalion), and the player concentrates on running a corps or army. I've put it on to rave reviews at Enfilade, doing two historical battles (Raab and Albuera) and one made-up battle.

I did observe in the post-mortem after these battles that the average gamer expects all artillery to be like WW2 artillery. Somebody fired at 1200 yards at a battalion in the open, and forced it to fall back 2". He sniffed that artillery was too weak. He should have been at a Labor Day battle where I used 20 batteries of Austrian artillery to savage my opponent. Mass, as the general said, not driblets.

I also observed that the average gamer might not be a very good tactician at the start of one of these convention games, but is pretty good by the time you finish. Some gamers learn faster than others, which is only to be expected. And some gamers are just unlucky when it comes to the dice, but that discussion is for another day.

Coming up soon, variable length bounds and other achievable concepts (aka I try to dissect the turn sequence).