Do you realize that you only need another 5* posts to get promoted to Major, Gareth ?
Cheers - Phil.
*....As I write. 

Quote from: Techno on 13 February 2015, 08:16:25 PM
Do you realize that you only need another 5* posts to get promoted to Major, Gareth ?
Cheers - Phil.
*....As I write. 

Wow, that was fast.  But as Steve readily points out, I do go on a bit 

Quote from: Ithoriel on 13 February 2015, 02:17:54 PM
Chris,

I'd say my main disagreement with what you say is that you seem to think Napoleonic warfare and onwards is any different.

All wars in all eras are basically lining up troops and hoping your men hit harder, fire faster or stand fast longer than the enemy.

The real decisions are, as you say, taken long before the day of battle. Things like training, equipment and supply happen (or don't!) well before the day of decision and are merely manifestations of the political, moral, religious, etc., etc. ethos of the society they represent.

In the 5000 years or so of historical warfare I'm not sure anything has changed except the hardware. I've seen nothing to suggest that the average conscript with an AK-47 runs faster, fights harder or obeys orders any better than a conscript spearmen turning out to fight for his Sumerian god. Armies may be bigger, death may come from further afar but the decision on where to apply air-power or when to loose the "donkey carts" don't seem to me to be intrinsically more interesting to game.

Besides, lining up the troops is only part of the story, the best match-up can still result in your overconfident elite getting roughly handled by some grubby peasants at which point you need to decide how to plug a gap in the line. I'm happy to make a game out of those sort of decisions.

Deciding whether loosing the reserves now is too early or if you are saving them for a future your army doesn't have seems to me a worthwhile thing to game.

Hmm, this has turned out to be a longer ramble than I intended!

Well said Ithoriel 

You have said, much better, what I was trying to say

Oh and Chris

Quote from: Chris Pringle on 13 February 2015, 01:44:43 PM
@paulr: really?

Yes really!

Your generalisations about roughly 5,000 years of warfare apply similarly to the few centuries after 1789 or what ever arbitrary year you pick to mark the end of the PNW

Quote from: Chris Pringle on 13 February 2015, 01:44:43 PM
@Fig.ht: Gaugamela again supports my case, I think. Two armies line up facing each other on a billiard table. Some preliminary skirmishing by chariots and cavalry fighting on the wings. Alexander commits his reserve and goes right-flanking and wins. That's it. Where's the ebb and flow and the interesting in-game decisions for players?

It's difficult to assess the ebb and flow of an Ancient battle when the only accounts of the battle are by the victors. Victors who want you to believe they crushed their enemy under their mighty foot. Who says the losers who lack a voice in surviving accounts didn't add a bit more ebb than the victors would like you to believe?

Ever read Napoleon's accounts of his 'easily won' battles?

And just how many post-Gaugamela (PG) battles give you the chance to lead a commander-in-chief on a mission across the battlefield with his select companions to pick out and destroy the enemy's c-in-c to win the battle? And Gaugamela isn't wargames-friendly?

If we're talking pre-anything, we may as well start with "the earliest battle in recorded history for which details of tactics and formations are known": Kadesh. Even Egyptian propaganda couldn't disguise the tension and unpredictable outcome of the battle.

More excitement can be had from Caesar's battles who on more than one occasion thought his fight was lost before he was victorious. Ebb and flow?

Staying with Ancients, the great Battle of Cannae doesn't appear any more or less linear in plan than the wargames-worthy Battle of Leipzig. But being an Ancient battle, we know much less about the detail. The detail that gives a battle the excitement of its ebb and flow.

As the chroniclers of Leipzig could have written in the year 1813:
"We made a mighty circle, a solid unbroken line of our allied troops, around that guy Napoleon and crushed him under our (Wellington-less) boot and his army went running away back to their own land, thoroughly defeated. It was that simple. Cause we're brilliant. Don't mess with us."


Get the pre-Naps on the tabletop. Embrace the ebb, the flow, and the fun.

I'll stick my neck out, indeed; the main reason why I don't have 1942 western desert forces is that as far as I can see, there's no longer any real scope for a commander to exercise tactical skill (as I understand a contemporary German general observed - I wish I'd made a note of his name).

Quote from: FierceKitty on 14 February 2015, 01:39:57 AM
I'll stick my neck out, indeed; the main reason why I don't have 1942 western desert forces is that as far as I can see, there's no longer any real scope for a commander to exercise tactical skill (as I understand a contemporary German general observed - I wish I'd made a note of his name).

Always good to have an excuse when you're losing

I won the only modern game I've played in the last twenty years. Partly because I was up against someone who played only moderns and knew cavalry were out of date and could be ignored, allowing my Cossacks to choose their time and place to charge. SS kebabs, anyone?

In case there's any doubt FK, I meant the Germans, not you!

Quote from: ianrs54 on 13 February 2015, 03:04:28 PM
No help at all really, and neither had I !!!

IanS

Quote from: Ithoriel on 14 February 2015, 03:23:17 AM
In case there's any doubt FK, I meant the Germans, not you!

Ah, you're a gentleman, sir.

Quote from: getagrip on 13 February 2015, 08:26:43 PM
Wow, that was fast.  But as Steve readily points out, I do go on a bit 

Congratulations, Gareth !
Cheers - Phil

Wow, up to 50 replies now. I'm seriously tempted just to withdraw gracefully. But since so many have taken the trouble to respond, it would be a bit discourteous of me not to at least try to reply. First a couple of general points:

Quite a lot of replies seem to be arguing against things I never actually said. I didn't say PNW armies themselves aren't interesting, and I didn't say there isn't plenty of interest and fun to be had from them. This is in part my fault. I realize that listing PNW as a 'pet hate' raised hackles unnecessarily, and wasn't a good way to start a reasoned theoretical discussion, especially as it isn't really true - it's a preference on my part but not an intolerance, and in just the past couple of months I have enjoyed playing in three good PNW games myself: Bunker Hill and White Plains (AWI using Black Powder), and a Leuthen-esque Seven Years' War game. Also, although I did mention decisions for "generals", I should have made clearer that I was talking about large battles rather than skirmishes.

I have just had a look at a list of 30+ of the largest C19 battles. I didn't initially define what I meant by a linear battle, but even if we take a very loose definition - a battle where at least one side starts deployed in a continuous line and trying to hold that line - I reckon only half of them would count. If we disallow those where a significant proportion of one or both sides' forces arrives after the battle starts, i.e. it is a more fluid situation than a true linear line-out, you get down to a third or fewer.

For instance, Mars-la-Tour (Franco-Prussian War): one army is strung out in column of march, and its smaller opponent, cutting across its line of march, has just planted a small blocking force in the way. Both armies get multiple reinforcements arriving on the battlefield from all points of the compass. This "march divided, fight united" story is quite a common theme in C19 battles but I think rare in PNW, because (Mongols excepted?) very few armies had the mobility plus the command structure to manage it. I'd welcome more equivalent PNW examples.

Some individual answers in detail:

@Fig.ht: Vienna 1683? If the launch of the Hussars is the only significant decision - in effect, the "when to commit the reserve" decision - then that doesn't work as a counter-example. But if Sobieski is also having to marshal various forces arriving from various directions during the battle, then perhaps it does. Merits further examination. (By me, I mean.)

@Subedai: thanks for engaging directly with the serious military-geometrical-theoretical point I was trying to make, and for offering a good counter-example. The Mongols did manage to overrun half the world, so they must have had something special. Perhaps they are the exception that proves my rule?

@Luddite: in late C19 games there are a lot more in-game decisions to be made. Sometimes it's about responding to the arrival of your own or enemy reinforcements from whichever direction. Often a battle is in a series of phases as particular terrain strongpoints need to be seized before the attacker can progress to the next. There may be defence in depth on a series of positions; there may be fighting withdrawals.

@Upgraydd: Jez, thanks for a couple of nice points. I agree that asymmetrical armies help to make battles interesting, regardless of period. And I appreciate that the very limitations I talked about could present interesting challenges. In the SYW game I tried recently, one thing I did like about the rules was how they seemed to reflect battered lines falling back behind a fresh second line to rally.

@ Last Hussar: ditto.

@WeeWars: see my reply to Hertsblue below.

@Pijlie: was this your Fleurus game? http://pijlieblog.blogspot.nl/search/label/Fleurus ? If so, it looks and sounds like one big line-out to me, but if you say there was lots of maneuver and lots of fun then I have no argument.

@FierceKitty: "you'd be hard-pressed to find any real battle in any period that didn't need to impose a line. Troops wouldn't be able to support each other without it." Au contraire. Once you have weapons with decent range and firepower, you no longer need to form a PNW-style shoulder-to-shoulder line, since units can support each other with fire from a distance. Which is the geometrical point I was trying to make.

@Hertsblue: Rossbach, Leuthen, Leignitz are all very different battles, indeed. Here perhaps it depends where you start your game: are the interesting decisions all made pre-battle? If you start the game at the point where Frederick's line envelops his enemies at Rossbach, or already outflanks them at Leuthen, it's still a bit limited (though more fun than a straight line-out). If you make those pre-battle maneuvers part of the game, count me in. (Leignitz sort of just a double line-out?)

@barbarian. Agreed. The scale I am interested in is where generals are commanding 10s or 100s of 1000s of troops. Corps-plus, if you like.

@Maenoferren: it might not make much difference to the people in the front line getting shot, but it does to the generals, and that's the scale I'm interested in. My fault for not making that clearer to begin with.

And that's all I have time for today!

Chris

Big distance is relative. The line just gets longer, and it becomes increasingly difficult to show a battlefield on a tabletop as you need a helicopter, then a spy satellite, to see it.

This just seems to be a "my period is better than yours" point of view

What do I think?

I like it all. Linear, non-linear, skirmish, air, land, sea, multi-corps, modern, ancients, wwii, early and late WWI, fantasy, sci-Fi, even occasionally non-Euclidean!

Just not keen on 28mm zombie-vampire-gunslingers.

I'm with Lemmey; I'll give anything a go.  Not really found a wargame I didn't like.  Same goes for military boardgames too

I have - BKC

Quote from: mad lemmey on 16 February 2015, 07:37:34 PM
What do I think?

I like it all. Linear, non-linear, skirmish, air, land, sea, multi-corps, modern, ancients, wwii, early and late WWI, fantasy, sci-Fi, even occasionally non-Euclidean!

Just not keen on 28mm zombie-vampire-gunslingers.

You're such a fascist, Will. Such discrimination 

I resemble that remark!
Outside, now!
If I'm not their in five minutes, start without me!

Quote from: mad lemmey on 25 February 2015, 12:11:19 PM
Outside, now!
If I'm not their in five minutes, start without me!

Careful, Nik, cos Lemmey could surprise you and attack from any point of the compass. Don't expect a boring old linear encounter.