Old School, Physical Wargaming

A few years ago, I got in on Civil War Advanced Tobruk System' the idea of adding in material on the American Civil War seemed pretty interesting. And Critical Hit has put out CWATS version 3.0; this time as a module of the main 2014 rulebook. 

I plan on getting other Advanced Tobruk System material; my only other material from this was the original ATS title and its module: Wavell's 10,000. 

I have the idea that not many people have taken up the Civil War material from ATS, and by having 3 iterations of the rulesets, I fully realise that this makes me a version of a unicorn. 

Each individual basic infantry/cavalry unit is 20-25 men. However the units are not intended to be functioning, efficiently, independently. Functioning = fire combat, as well as movement. Much of this is governed by the command control system, which is what might be expected from the period. 

In the meantime, I am looking at either going next to the First World War, or some Second World War topics. I mean, it is Advanced Tobruk, so at some point I really want to get into some armoured warfare. I don't have the room to set up fully and do the really big scenarios in anything -but I look at these as the 'system' angle, meaning this is something that with a little bit of imagination, it should always be possible to set up some scenarios.

I hope to get things together so as to set up a little bit of movement and combat, so I get the hang of the combat system in action.

I have a fair selection of grand tactical material; have done a fair bit in the digital world, but some of the earliest material I have had was following my brother's Kernstown issue of S&T, which led me to get Terrible Swift Sword. I have most of GBACW series; I have Clash of Arms' 4x titles in their La Bataille series on Waterloo (sort of a superquad), Wellington's Victory, Quatre Bras. And then there is the HPS/JTS/WDS material; I guess what that means is that conceptually I think I get what CWATS is trying to do. 

At the same time, another early title I had had was the original Squad Leaders series and their 4 modules. I did get some ASL as well (a lot actually, but I gave up on it over 20 years ago. I might get the rulebook again). I had the original Tobruk as published by Avalon Hill - point being, I also have an idea of what ATS is about (to a degree) ... meaning I understand it is different from the original in a lot of ways; I get that Critical Hit is a business selling bespoke material - a LOT of it, and I really respect that. I look forward to getting into things even more.

And simultaneously, I am looking at reworking some HPS/JTS/WDS material for myself; I have an idea of the difference between engine, and scenario design, and want to see where it can go. Oh I don't really plan on doing anything with it apart from seeing if I can do it, and what it looks like.

 

Project Work - when you have choices, make a choice and start somewhere.

Chancellorsville seemed as good as any place to start; in doing so, the focus will be on the Eastern theater of war - and that, essentially, means the Army of the Potomac versus the Army of Northern Virginia for the most part.

I was digging in through the Civil War Battles' title: Campaign Chancellorsville. I don't do this in order to play the stock scenarios. Frankly speaking I like working within Tiller's engines; I don't necessarily accept what the designer has presented as anything other than their interpretation of the engine.


Why Chancellorsville? Berg's title published by Clash of Arms, and there wasn't anything in the title that covered both the Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville as a whole. However I didn't necessarily feel bound by the order of battle structure presented. And that was probably a good thing, because the structure provided shows the Union artillery, as effectively part of the Army of Potomac Corps command structure directly; this wasn't so - Hooker had restructured and reorganised the Army of the Potomac, and one part of that was putting the majority of artillery under divisions -and that severely limited the effectiveness of Union artillery. This isn't just me saying this - Stephen Sears flat out wrote it in both his Gettysburg and Chancellorsville titles; and also elsewhere by other authors.

I never really understood, in game terms, the purpose of leaders assigned to artillery formations, and in this case it was mix and match, with some units having none at all. And I didn't really understand the purpose of gun sections (or rather I didn't agree with them -not for the Union side - not if you are wanting to try to limit their effectiveness - vis a vis the Army of Northern Virginia's artillery (at this battle). Now I guess none of these are necessarily valid or invalid, but they were design choices, and doing the unscientific alt-f to see if anything was mentioned in the notes - there was nothing at all mentioned. I was mainly looking for why it was that Union artillery was set up to fall under the Corps commanders' game impacts. I never found anything.

I also wasn't sure why Stuart's group was set up as a Corps in the game, when at this point in time, it was listed as a Division.

And finally, it caused me to do a rethink of how to represent a unit where a commander is running 2 units (say- army, and corps, as Lee was here - with Longstreet sent off to another part of the state; he didn't return to the ANV until after the conclusion of the battle. Now, to be fair, this isn't the only instance of this problem coming up in an order of battle set up. I think I had something like this happen in the American War of Independence at Savannah, back to the Civil War at Chantilly (for the Union side -which was worse, is I think that one also had a misattributed leadership set up -and I think it was Stevens and Reno off the top of my head - Reno was Stevens' superior officer there and was in charge of - I think a corps and a division). I guess the specifics aren't as important a point as to - what do you do with these situations? 

I hit on trying, instead of having 2 of the same leaders in the game - to having 1 leader - probably in the superior ranking role; then having a "leader" unit that is basically a collective 'staff' label - it sort of still only represents the same guy, but in game terms it should serve as a mechanism to refer on the command and leadership ratings throughout the unit.

In terms of Leadership effectiveness within the engine; that's something that I need to have a think about. I don't think it is accurate to think of this in terms of 'was this guy a great leader, a poor leader, or somewhere in between -it's more like what impact did this, that, or the other leader have in game terms. And that, in turn, also piggybacks on to morale ratings of units in the oob under command levels.  Like say - if a leader was particularly inspirational; their units performed accordingly ... and I believe I read leaders passing their 'rolls' for leadership, and command (respectively) pass this along down to the next level of leader, and the next ... etc - ultimately landing with units.  Take that strong leader out of the equation - what happens? Well, it seems like rating the units too highly ... you get no real difference in impact, which sort of obviates the impact of having leaders with really solid leadership/command ratings.  The morale rating working, effectively like a rallying number (or morale factor - roll over it - you break ... pass it, you're good) ... and if broken, pass the rally roll, you've rallied and are no longer routed. Pass it again, and no longer disrupted ... 

Which is a roundabout way of saying -something to think over -and maybe go there.

I also opted to add HQ detachments as a general rule -these aren't really massive- usually about 25 guys and would come from rotating details within larger formations (some of which were known, and others not). It's also a good excuse to create graphics for the Union Corps that Hooker had introduced.

I plan on redoing the unit portraits - and want to see what I can come up with that is a little like what the Blind Swords' series uses. I want to put together a new set of leader portraits - and want to go through Battles and Leaders and other lithographs -to see what I can put together. I sort of started along that path several years ago when I found some tintype frame graphics.

And if you want to know why you use a frame? For me it's about setting a consistent alignment. I know that recently the publisher got away from this - and they do have their own distinct style preferences. 

I want to build a top down map that is different from the isometric style's look and feel. For me isometric = miniatures (and probably say- 28mm miniatures); top down (2D) - that's your traditional board wargame look. 

Menus ...will change, phasebox.... change ... blank box areas ... change (and will be made way less busy, as the focus ought to be on the battle map - they've done some nice work lately -and of course none of the CWB titles are using 32 bit PNG files -so I haven't barely begun to scratch the surface of what can be done with these.

I mentioned Army of the Potomac's artillery at Chancellorsville, and the changes in the artillery arm over the course of the war are a fascinating story, which to me -is a good story to show from one title to the next, as in the context of the course of a series. 

I guess the above is what happens when you do a little bit of work in advance of writing anything down. . . :] it happens.