"You Might Suck at Armybuilding if..." Topic

I was listening to Craig Gallant of the D6G complaining about uber army lists and I came to a realization.

It took a couple of tries to articulate on my blog, so I cannot repeat it here.
tyler.provick.ca/?p=848
Basically army building is part of competitive wargaming. The game starts when you start planning your army, not when you put your miniatures on the table.

I did want to mention in the blog but forgot, if the idea that you should be able to remain competitive in a game without working as hard as the really competitive people playing, you need to look up the definition of competitive.

From listening to the D6G its pretty obvious that Craig does not view wargaming as a competitive sport. A lot of people don't. Unfortunately most 'tournaments' have a mix of both. And unfortunately the 'competitive' players use language like 'you suck', which is why the non-competitive players get ed off at all the pricks which take playing with toy soldiers too seriously.

Rich

I'm more sympathetic to min-maxing than some people, it can be an enjoyable part of gaming. Furthermore, if the army list rules are designed well (appropriate minimums and maximums required), and the different units have the right points values assigned, then cheesy army building will only get a player so far.

However, I don't quite agree that this is in anyway realistic. "Making the most efficient use of the resources you have available is good generalship." This is true, but the key word that your essay overlooks is AVAILABLE. In reality, commanders don't get to design their ideal force from scratch, they are limited by constraints too numerous to list here. Basically, they are limited to what happens to be available at a given moment in time and place.

This is particularly true of the low-level commanders that most wargames actually represent. Most games, particularly those in 28mm scale, represent mere skirmishes. Depending on the game, we are effectively taking the place of a squad, platoon, company or battalion commander at most. Such leaders have relatively little control, if any, over what troops are available to them. So, while carefully crafing a wargame force can be a fun part of competition games, it is not very realistic. And by that, I include fantasy and science fiction settings, because even fantasy and sci-fi universes are presumably governed by similar laws of logistics, economics, social availability of troop types, etc, just as ours is.

IMHO "abuse" of official army lists just highlights the weakness of the game or list designers. If they want an army to reflect the "realistic" availability of forces, or to represent the "spirit" of a particular force, then they should darn well design it that way.

Competitive sports always have a referee (or 10) watching the game and penalising any rule infringements.

A game is far more of a co-operative experience – and if people bring different expectations then there can be conflict about how the game should be played.

For a game to be played fully competitively between just 2 players the rules need to be unambiguous and moves need to be visible. This hardly describes a simulation of a battle??

There's a third army builder type. The guy that tries to keep his list as historically accurate as he can. And that's why I sucked at Flames of War.

Real life commanders are "limited by the counter mix".

If I started a rules system and supplied miniatures I would develop army lists that would require the purchase of as many figures as possible to line my pockets.I can then really put me feet up then ,no one has done this yet have they?
The way I have done army building in the past it has been mainly themed with only one of the guys at the old club being a bit unrealistic with the army.WW2 games with figures randomly removed before deployment make an interesting game aswell as vehicle breakdowns.

Ivan,

I appreciate your comment and I can understand that army building doesn't appeal to you. I'm not a big fan of it myself, but I've accepted that it is part of the game.
I understand what you are saying about not having a choice. This can be true. However to say that no general ever had a choice of what he brought with him into battle is false.
Except in desperate battles you usually didn't bring every available soldier with you. Some troops would be left behind to guard camps or you would dispatch a brigade of a composition of your choice to fight the battle. I know at least in 1812 brigades were ad-hoc organizations based on the commanding general's preferences. I know by WWII at least this was a standard organizational setup that didn't vary. However a general would still choose which battalions to send where along his front.

Now you can argue that the people being sent had no choice and this would be more, but not universally, true. However, at this stage we're discussing the isolation of command roles in wargames which would take much more work than abolishing army building. So, just like in an 1812 wargame you are the division commander, brigade commanders and battalion commanders, you also move up the ladder to the higher command who has the power to assign troops where they wish.

This is also somewhat inferior to the concept of wargame as reality. That is, if the wargame was reality and a real general did have the choices we face in army building would he not take as much advantage as he could or call himself a poor general?

You and I, Ivan, would enjoy playing together. We'd probably come up with a great scenario on the fly that tells a story and if it comes out a little unbalanced we'd shrug and say, "war is hell."

I just say, if you find yourself playing a game system which uses points don't turn up your nose. If Ol'Boney were in your shoes he'd probably try to figure out how to squeeze a few more Assault Squads into his army by juggling the points on his Tactical Squads.

Well I just recently read of a patrol across a canal in Holland in '44. The section commander had maybe 8 men. He loaded up with a 2" mortar, a PIAT, a bren and everyone else carried stens and extra grenades. So I guess he was min-maxing his army list?

Generally I don't like min-maxing army lists either and it does warp a game. But then I don't play tournaments for that reason because my army would suck.

But Coyote is right, army lists and designing your army are part of the game for many. Planning how to tweak your army list is the way many gamers manage to play when they're stuck in math class and should be paying attention!

If . . .

You just want to enjoy yourself at a game and don't care too much about winning or losing.

. . .

Then again, if you tend to win anyway, this especially infuriates the uber-competitive types.

. . .

Insisting on painted troops and a nice table with lots of terrain may get in the way of 'army building' as well. After all, it really isn't 'fair' to insist on using terrain that negates an army designed to be played on a pool table.

mjc

If building historical lists makes your army suck – I must be a genius of a general as my lists are generally historical and they still win – in tournaments. The key is playing to beat the scenario – not necessarily your opponent. The issue with tournaments is the opponents who design armies with one purpose – and figuring out how to beat them.

Coyote-

I actually don't dislike army building, I've had fun with it in the past, particularly in the brief period when I played 40K. I'm not saying its an illigitimate part of the hobby, or anything like that. I just think that the flexibilility it gives you, while fun, and probably necessary to enable people to play tournaments or pick-up games, is unrealistic.

I'm not anti-points systems either. When they are done right, they enable to players who've never met to quickly put together a game, and be reasonably assured that the game will be at least somewhat fair.

I get what you are saying, that any commander worth his salt would carefully tailor his force to the task at hand. When commanders do have choices, that is indeed what they do. But I maintain that in reality, most commanders most of the time have to make do with whatever they happen to have at hand.

This will be determined by:
The overall doctrine of their military,
the cultural tendencies of their nation (for example, Mongols have plenty of cavaly, but no native infantry, no matter how useful it might be in theory),
the industrial base (how many of those really awesome weapons can they make),
economics (ditto),
logistics,
losses, either through battle or wear & tear,
unit organization (armies are nearly always organized into fairly permanent units, for example, you usually have at least a platoon of tanks, or no tanks at all),
decisions by superior officers (your Battalion CO decided to reinforce your mech company with a tank platoon, or he didn't),
time & place (if you have just forced marched to meet the enemy, maybe only your cavalry units are on the field),
etc.

And again, all of these things apply in spades at the level we are talking about. Squad, platoon, and company commanders have virtually no discretion about what forces are at their disposal. This is true whether the commander is a genious or a dullard.

Then play a campaign game and see what people do – they usually result in one player or another simply giving up or quitting after a bad game.

Also, I should have said that I agree with the main thrust of your essay, which I found an enjoyable and interesting read. Building a good army list is a test of skill as a gamer, and can be part of the fun.

I could lose even if the best min-maxer cheesed out my list and he loaned me his army. I suck at list building and playing.

Cheesey lists are one of the reasons I dropped DBM, however good games can encourage rather that force you into more reasonable/historical forces. When we play BKC the list is very open, but when we were playing ,we would realise that we could do with this or that support unit, and maybe next time do without the shiny toy and take another group of infantry with trucks this time, etc. Pretty soon we ended up with more historical lists than when we started and when you optimised your list you ended up with was the historical ideal, and the poor fool who took the maximum of superheavy tanks and silliness was getting whooped by turn 3.

Phil