Scouting

Continuing the theme of campaign games, let's look at scouting. What is it, what's the purpose, and how to do it.

Scouting allows players to use hidden movement. Hidden movement replicates one of the features of a real campaign: you don't know what's out there, or where it is. This allows surprise, daring maneuvers, and the like. Armies have devoted whole formations to battlefield intelligence. This was one of the reasons why there were 31 regiments of Chasseurs a Cheval and 8 of Hussars in Napoleon's army. This is what Jeb Stuart spent most of his time doing for the Army of Northern Virginia. It was why Frederick the Great stopped raising heavy cavalry and began raising 10 squadron strong hussar regiments. And it was why the Russians raised hussars (their Cossacks weren't very good at finding things, only at keeping the enemy from finding things, the other half of the scouting equation).

Scouts are spread all around the army; some (the rear) are a security cordon, but most are probing forward, looking for traces of the enemy. They check the posts, read the newspapers, look for dust and horse droppings, and so on. And when they find the enemy they try to drive them off, driving them back on their supports until they find infantry. This is what happened at Brandy Station in 1863. Union cavalry was finally stopped, but they ran into infantry from Dick Ewell's corps, which was the first hint the Army of the Potomac had that Lee was on the move.

Most gamers like the smaller actions, the skirmishes and outpost actions. Small parties of troops try to drive each other back, horses rearing, sabers slashing, pistols and carbines banging in the morning air. It makes for a fun game. And it easily replicates what happened in real life.

Doing that on the tabletop, or more properly on the map, is a bit harder. You can't game out every contact. I tried it once. We assiduously laid out every contact we had, and found we spent most of our time adjudicating those contacts. A lot of them were of troops just staring at each other, noting uniforms, and reporting the contact. We all agreed that it was great in theory, but it wasn't anything we wanted to try again. We needed a table of some kind.

Quite a number of years ago the ACW rules On to Richmond were published by The Courier magazine. In the back were a set of rules for a campaign game. And featured in the rules was a scouting method that was easily transferred to nearly any campaign game.

Scouting and Screening is conducted by cavalry. A cavalry brigade may scout into hex adjoining theirs. A cavalry brigade may produce up to 4 patrols. Players must designate which units are scouting/screening which hexes. Note that patrols only cross rivers at bridges.

The referee rolls on the table below to determine what each patrol sees. Note that if there is no enemy within 4 hexes the patrols will report no contact. Within 4 hexes the patrols might see things that aren't there. If opposing patrols are in the same hex a "patrol action" will be fought, and the winning side will then conduct scouting while the defeated side will report seeing nothing, both sides will report the skirmish, and which opposing units were in it (they noted the uniforms).

die nothing present light troops present formed troops present
0 nothing seen nothing seen nothing seen
1 nothing seen nothing seen patrols seen
2 nothing seen patrols seen formed cav
3 nothing seen formed cav formed cav
4 patrols seen formed cav formed troops
5 patrols seen formed troops formed troops
6 formed cav formed troops formed troops
7 formed troops formed troops formed troops

definitions:
nothing seen just that
patrols seen enemy patrols spotted, uniform details upon request
formed cav non-screening enemy cavalry seen
formed troops troops in rows with standards and artillery seen

Troops spotting formed troops will give a rough count of the number of troops present (referee will report this). The higher the number, the more accurate the report is.

Patrol Actions are skirmish between opposing patrols. To conduct a patrol action the referee totals the number of patrols for each side in a hex, and adds the throw of 1d6. The higher number wins. If the numbers are tied, the referee rolls again until he has a winner. He reports to each side that there was a clash, and furnishes uniform details of the units in the clash. The winning side then conducts scouting, while the losing side is told they saw nothing.

This above system will produce a lot of misinformation! That's its purpose. It is up to the player to sort the wheat from the chaff (most intelligence failures are in interpretation). Players (just like real generals) often act upon inaccurate information.

So try it in the next campaign. It will add an element of uncertainty not found in a lot of boardgames (except the double-blind ones). It will make for some unexpected battles, which is one of the fun elements of a campaign game.