Reasons NOT to refight historical battles

[fred.]

Impressive Mark! I was going to reference It Never Snows, but I think you have gone rather beyond that!

[John Cook]

Exactly so Chad, and the principal reason why I have never belonged to a club that had to set up and complete games on one evening.  There is also the racket from half a dozen different games going on at the same time.  Not for me.  I am fortunate that I have my own permanent set-up and game with a handful of like minded people, so time is not a constraint for me either.

[John Cook]

Mark, my interest stops in 1940 but the Niehorster German WWII Organizational Series might also be useful.  They can be found here http://niehorster.org/

[Chris Pringle]

Assuming you meet on a Friday night from say 7pm to 11pm. You have to allow say an hour to set up and then pack up, giving you abou 3 hours for a game. You are then very much reliant on having rules that are capable of running a refight of any historical battle in 3 hours to a satisfactory and meaningful conclusion.

That is exactly the challenge that "Bloody Big BATTLES!" was designed to meet. (OK, not exactly - Oxford Wargames Society meets on Monday evenings, not Fridays.) Four of us fought all three days of Gettysburg to a conclusion in under four hours, including set-up and take-down time, and made it to the pub for a pint afterwards.

As for the matter of imperfect knowledge about orders of battle: we don't need perfect knowledge. A simulation can cope with some margin of error in the data and still provide useful output.

Anyway, glad that my post of two months ago is still generating interesting discussion!

Chris

[Last Hussar]

My point is that was the "theoretical" German Orbat. However there was an armour a/t battalion that was 3 STuGsin NW Europe. Its fine to say "we think x bn was there" but if it turns out the bn is actually a couple of platoons the Orbat you use is wrong.

And that is the 20th century. Wars of the Roses sources have things like "5000 men under Stanley". Really 5000? How many were actually on the field? What proportion had bow? Were armoured?

[FierceKitty]

My point is that was the "theoretical" German Orbat. However there was an armour a/t battalion that was 3 STuGsin NW Europe. Its fine to say "we think x bn was there" but if it turns out the bn is actually a couple of platoons the Orbat you use is wrong.

And that is the 20th century. Wars of the Roses sources have things like "5000 men under Stanley". Really 5000? How many were actually on the field? What proportion had bow? Were armoured?

Too many of both, the treacherous creep!

[Heedless Horseman]

Life's too short!

Research is good and can 'entertain' for hours/months/years... but 'Accuracy' is impossible to achieve... even 'Down The Rabbit Hole' of 20th C records... never mind earlier.
L Hussar has it about right. Even if you could ask Stanley... He wouldn't know... or be bothered that much. I imagine that Richard's comments would be more 'colourful'! 

Make an 'educated' guess and enjoy yourselves!

[Chad]

The French Revoluion can be exactly the same at times.

[sultanbev]

My point is that was the "theoretical" German Orbat. However there was an armour a/t battalion that was 3 STuGsin NW Europe. Its fine to say "we think x bn was there" but if it turns out the bn is actually a couple of platoons the Orbat you use is wrong.

The lists I have done for Market Garden, and many more recent ones, above are actual strengths as much as possible- I try and combine TOE and OOB - there are now more and more records coming available detailing weapons strengths of many units in WW2, almost leading to information overload.

[John Cook]

My point is that was the "theoretical" German Orbat. However there was an armour a/t battalion that was 3 STuGsin NW Europe. Its fine to say "we think x bn was there" but if it turns out the bn is actually a couple of platoons the Orbat you use is wrong.

Then use the 'correct' OB. 

[Last Hussar]

Then use the 'correct' OB. 

Then you aren't fighting Market Garden!

This is my point. It is impossible to actually know the historical forces involved. You may have found that the sources say a battalion, so put 15 bases down, but in reality you should have just 1 base, because that's what was actually deployed.

I'm not against 'historical battles', I've played them. I am just VERY wary of anyone whom says I only do historic scenarios',because they don't.

[fred.]

You seem to be letting perfection get in the way of good enough. 

I think there is enough info out there to know if a given battalion was at full strength or at  5-10% strength at the start of a given battle. Yes, we might not know if they had 200 or 220 men in a depleted battalion - but I'm not sure that level of granularity really matters. And I'm not sure any commander on the day knew his unit strengths that accurately. 

In some ways this seems to mirror the bottom up vs top down arguments when looking at tanks or other weapons. Taking a lot of technical details (that are often easy to know) vs looking at overall performance (often harder to gather and more subjective). Feels very similar to going if its not the paper ToE then how can you be sure what was there. But as long as within a degree of certainty you can say what units were there at what strength, and have an understanding of how they performed then I would say its an historical battle you are recreating. 

There is a continuum of ways of playing wargames from pure fantasy to pure history - with I suspect very few people playing at either end of the spectrum. But lots playing towards the ends. But we seem in danger of wanting absolutism from the language - whereas I think most gamers know what they mean with an historical game, without feeling the need to get into too much detail about what the realistic limits are on that. 

[John Cook]

Fred, I agree completely.  I'm afraid LH's point eludes me completely.  If you discover that your initial OB is wrong, then use the subsequent correct one.  History is not set in concrete and is subject to frequent revision and re-interpretation.  That is part of its attraction.

My approach might be different though.  I love history for its own sake and my wargames have to have historical context.  Without it they are reduced to the level or just another competitive, but otherwise pointless, game with counters and dice.

[Ithoriel]

I think that LH's point* is that even for modern wars we don't have a "correct one" and probably never will, except by sheer chance. Infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters given infinite time will eventually come up with a 100% accurate OOB, level of chance.

The further back in time you go the worse it gets.

And one platoon, one tank, one plane could make all the difference.

I contend that Japan did not lose Midway because the Americans had better code-breakers than the Japanese, though they did.

Nor because the Americans had a had a smart plan, though they did.

Nor because their high command dithered over re-arming and refueling, though they did.

They lost because the one scout plane that mattered was not where it was supposed to be, when it was supposed to be there.

"all for want of a horseshoe nail"


*I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm misrepresenting him.

[John Cook]

My question remains is how do you decide when an OB is 'correct' or not?  That has to be a subjective judgement, unless you've done all the research yourself, sat in the archives and looked at all the unit returns, collated the results and then done the analysis.
I agree that the farther you go back the more difficult is becomes as far as granularity is concerned but so what?  You can certainly come to a valued judgement. 
My Hattin OB, for example, is in large part extrapolation but it reflects overall numbers and types, as far as it is possible to know. I would certainly contend that when I refought the campaign it was a historical game.  It might not have been perfect but it was not some imaginary scenario without context.  Historical wargaming is not easy insofar as it needs significant planning and preparation and, perhaps, that is the real problem.
As for Midway, I'm not sure I understand you in the context of the accuracy, or otherwise, of historical OBs and the ability to refight historically based wargames.

[Ithoriel]

My point, about Midway, is that very, very minor errors in OOB could lead to very, very unhistorical outcomes.

Which leads me back to if "near enough is good enough" in what way are your games not fantasy?

Fantasy/ SciFi games can have a background and a set variation on the laws of physics and "historical" battles in terms of their lore.

I've been involved in refights of Helms Deep and The Pelennor Fields that took every bit as much research as anything historical.

Several of the supposedly historical refights I've been involved in were basically "knock 'em down, drag 'em out" encounter battles on terrain that vaguely resembled the purported battlefield.

I remain bemused that you see such a division between the games we play.

[T13A]

Hi

As one who is quite keen on visiting the ground on which 'historical' battles were actually fought I must admit I was bemused by Ithoriel's comment above:

I've been involved in refights of Helms Deep and The Pelennor Fields that took every bit as much research as anything historical.

Exactly how many books and personal accounts were consulted in doing the 'research' for the refights of Helms Deep and Pelennor Fields? 

I thinks we have two very different meanings/understandings here of what constitutes historical and fantasy wargaming.

Cheers Paul

[Ithoriel]

Exactly how many books and personal accounts were consulted in doing the 'research' for the refights of Helms Deep and Pelennor Fields? 

Books? Half a dozen plus several websites.

Personal accounts? Exactly the same number as I'd read if I wanted to refight The Fields of the Gu'Edina.

Are we now extending Fantasy to cover the Early Bronze Age? Welcome to the Dark Side!!

At last! Converting history to fantasy one era at a time

[Westmarcher]

The biggest problem with fighting a historical battle is you can't.

We don't have the accurate orbats for both sides.
.......

How many Prussians actually arrived at Plaicenot?

I'm distraught. My crest has never fallen so far. Although Adkins only managed to find out the exact strengths of the great majority of units in his orbats, and not all of them, does that mean my Waterloo Companion is not historical?

[Plaicenot? ... sounds fishy ....] 

[Ithoriel]

I'm distraught. My crest has never fallen so far. Although Adkins only managed to find out the exact strengths of the great majority of units in his orbats, and not all of them, does that mean my Waterloo Companion is not historical?

[Plaicenot? ... sounds fishy ....] 

Alas, as fictional as the Wheel of Time series .... the TV adaptation of which I am also enjoying.