"Which Ruleset Compromises Least on Scales?" Topic

The title hopefully says it all. There has been much talk on another recent thread about how rules which strictly define ground and time scales then compromise them to mkae the game 'work'. Which published rules are the least compromising in this respect?

Regards

As a criterion for my purchasing a game, this one is rather low on my list.

I don't mind. Feeling is more important than scale.

But I have a problem with dragon scales: if they are harder than arrows it can be very difficult to kill the dragon and that's a difficult compromise to find in the shooting charts in the rules.

Sorry Tim. One of the arguments used in this thread TMP link was that most rulesets, having defined ground and timescales, then proceed to ignore them in certain ways. My question is which rulesets do this least?

That is: they don't mess with ranges, or formation sizes, or march rates, or times to change formation, order transmission times etc etc

For example: Bruce Quarrie's rules were pretty uncompromising about scales IIRC, then he wrote something like 'but in a campaign consider the 2.5 minute turn as half-an-hour' or words to that effect. Or was it WRG's 1685-1845? I forget. But which rules don't do anything like this, or do it least?

Regards

@ John: low on my list too. I was just wondering who'd gone furthest along this path?

I'd like to know the answer to this question too.

So I can go out of my way to avoid those rules.

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever"

No wait

"If you want a vision of hell, imagine a regiment sized game of Challenger 2000 – forever"

I wonder if Challenger would be fun if you used it to play Force-on-Force scenarios? Just a thought.

Regards

Challenger wouldn't be fun even if you played it with a bevy of naked hookers coked off their

Only fun I had with Challenger was burning the damn thing…

The Colonial Skirmish Rules, published in the early 70's, had a scale of 1cm to 1year, pretty good for 20mm figures. Turns were approximately a second (though once you knew the rules – and we did – you could easily bundle them together). It did a fairly accurate job, but was best for a limited number of figures in close contact. Had a great deal of fun with them in fact, but it could only ever cover a very limited set of games.

None of them?

Seriously, I've never seen a game in anything close to consistent scale.

Striker.

I'm pretty sure I can do Battle of Tsushima at the same ground scale as model scale @ 1:6000. I think the first shot in that battle was fired at 6400 yards, at 1:6000 this is just a little over 3 feet, comfortably within the confines of my table. Now I just have to paint those Figurehead ships…

You could look at my 'Science versus Pluck' Sudan era rules, which use a variable length turn that depends on what the players (all Imperial officers) tell the Umpire what they want to do next.

So, let's say that your cavalry patrol moves at 200 yards (4") per minute at a walk. If you say, "I want to move up to those huts and look around", the umpire (who, as in an RPG, knows what the Mahdists are up to) looks at the huts, estimates they are 20" from the cavalry, says "Okay, five minute turn". The cavalry move up to the huts. Everyone else moves five x their movement rate per minute.

Some turn are a minute long. That's usually when trouble is to be had, and lots of it. Your infantry companies move an inch, which is seldom enough to fix the problem.

Some turns are very long, and allow units to move far into the distance. A "Let's brew tea and wait for the scouts to come back" turn might involve an hour, in which players are disturbed to see their riders leave the board (being permitted to move, er, 240") and not return.

Whirlwind,

I once tried the same question.

Besides Striker and a couple of other dust covered games nobody could think of one, certainly nothing currently played in wide numbers.

A couple of guys offered up their own rules but the moment you scratched the surface you'd find they fudged too.

On the other hand it seems the most popular rules freely fudge their ground, time, and troop scales, regardless of what designers and fan boys say. FoW fudges lots of stuff and is eztremely popular. The Warhammer series uses a fudged scale described bu the Perry twins as "Grand Skirmish": one figure is one man but 20 figures is hundreds.

Probably a naval ruleset that uses 1:4800 or 1:6000 scale ships. You could use a reasonable sized table or floor area and be in scale.

As games become higher level and more abstract the level of fudging required tends to drop. e.g. much consistency is found in Volley & Bayonet, particularly wrt length of march columns, deployment times etc.

The worst offenders are probably WW2 grand tactical games which pretend that one base = one platoon then play like a skirmish game. Yes, I mean you Rapid Fire and to a lesser extent Command Decision. OTOH Spearhead is generally pretty consistent with one minor deviation into silliness with wrecked tanks blocking bridges.

One base = one company/battalion games are generally better in this regard.

I don't think this thread is about using 1:1 figure:ground scale rules though.

Martin,

Rapid Fire is a perfect example at its end of the scale.

At the 1:1 end of the scale you have Flames of War. Remember, FoW doesn't count individual figures but the figure ratio, vehicle ratio, and relationship btetween terrain and troops are 1:1.

In their own ways RF and FoW arrive at the same point from opposite directions. RF fudges battalion+ battles towards 1:1 while FoW fudges 1:1 towards battalions, especially with respect to assets available.

They give players want they want: a feeling of epic scale combined arms action with infantry, armor, arty, and air support at the same time you get to hunt individual tank models with small groups of infantry armed with bazookas and fausts.

It's interesting that when the OP asked for specifics the Scalenistas are at such a loss to provide concrete examples of consistently scale games this thread died after a few posts.

But the thread on ground scales, in which Scalenistas are free to proclaim the supposed superiority of consistently scaled games, soars to huge numbers of posts.

Consistent Ground Scales in Miniature Wargaming: great in theory, not so great in practice. :-) And clearly unpopular with both wargamers in general and even the Scalenistas when it comes to specifics!

The two I could think of were GW Jeffrey's Napoleonic Wargame and Shane Devries' rules. I can't recall any instance where they deliberately compromised the scales to make a better game (although I've only 'played through' the first).

Regards

Double thumbs-up and cheesy grin to Mexican Jack! Science Vs Pluck – Best rules and most amount of fun for a game involving a dozen or more players EVER!!

I would say however, that those who immerse themselves in ground scale comparisons to quoted scale ratios and weapons ranges and look to see whether author/designer got his/her maths right – unless you play in an SvP game and have an Epiphany, you're not liable to 'get-it'.

Scale enthusiasts and scrutineers remind me of the Quartermaster-Sergeant in charge of the Ammunition Train, insisting on proper order, sensible queuing and waiting your turn, ammunition handed out from the dedicated stores for that unit only, and always, always signed for before you run back to your mates in the firing line!

Meantime, I'll be up in the hills, dear boy, pot-shotting at big cats and antelope, while that Engineer chappy gets on with making his mud-pies. Chin chin….

But the thread on ground scales, in which Scalenistas are free to proclaim the supposed superiority of consistently scaled games, soars to huge numbers of posts.

Consistent Ground Scales in Miniature Wargaming: great in theory, not so great in practice. :-) And clearly unpopular with both wargamers in general and even the Scalenistas when it comes to specifics!

Tim:
I'm really unclear as to what 'superiority' consistently scaled games provide, or even why such a goal is seen as important.

I can think of several possibilities, but haven't seen them mentioned. On the other hand, the opposition to the "Scale Enthusiasts", are simply saying other game details are more important whle suggesting that consistent scale in games is impossible…

I'm not sure I have ever seen a game designer try and produce a consistently scaled game, let alone define what such a puppy would look like. And the original question is sort of loaded suggesting that any wargame that doesn't have consistent scale has been 'compromised' or the designer wanted to have consistent scale but had to give that up to include other things like 'playability.'

Bill H.

And the original question is sort of loaded suggesting that any wargame that doesn't have consistent scale has been 'compromised' or the designer wanted to have consistent scale but had to give that up to include other things like 'playability.'

Nope. Other way around. I haven't suggested a 'wargame' has been compromised and I'm saying that in the other thread it was stated that games designers who define strict ground or time scales then inevitably compromise these scales in certain respects to make the game work better.

"Which Ruleset Compromises Least on Scales?"

My comment: The question suggests "that any wargame that doesn't have consistent scale has been 'compromised."

…it was stated that games designers who define strict ground or time scales then inevitably compromise these scales in certain respects to make the game work better.

Seems that we are saying the same thing in different ways. Whatever the process, games without strict game scales have been compromised, or fudged, whether purposely or from a failure to achieve strict ground scale.

Question: Which game designers have "defined strict ground or time scales"? If the designer states that game has a 50 yards to the inch ground scale, is that denoting a 'strict ground scale'?

Bill H.

Yes. Is that not a strict ground scale?

Regards

If the designer states that game has a 50 yards to the inch ground scale, is that denoting a 'strict ground scale'?

Whirlwind:

Yes. Is that not a strict ground scale?

Whirlwind:

I don't know. If that is what constitutes a strict game scale, then most wargames, both board and tabletop, have a strict game scale.

However, there are obious problems with that, because the scale in all those games are not 'strictly' adhered to, for a variety of reasons.

And then there is the time vs distance issue. For instance,
Regimental Fire & Fury gives a 25 yard to the inch ground scale, but a 10-15 minute time span for a turn. Field of Battle gives the same ground scale but a turn can be 30 minutes to 2 hours.

With such a wide variation in the time represented by a turn[50%+], can the ground scale be considered 'strict'? The distance a unit can travel is held as widely variable, so is ground scale being strictly adhered to?

The question is why ground scale would be important for a Historical wargame? And as long as past reality is being represented, the answer is pretty obvious:

Ground scale is important in representing any battlefield environment, particularly recreating historical battles. Important terrain features have to be represented in the same relationship to the actual features on the real terrain if a wargame is to have any relationship to an actual battle.

Ground scale is important in determining how far units have to travel in what time span. Screw up that relationship and you don't have much of anything representing historical battles. We can all find quotes where Napoelon, Wellington and others comment on how important time and timing was to a battle. Ground scale is one-half of that equation.

Ground scale is important in determining how many troops in what formations can attack or defend a specific area.

Ground scale is important in determining the distances that rranged weapons have, those relationships being very important in representing the development of a battle.

Ground scale is also important in determining Line-of-Sight, who can see what.

So, ground scale is important if one of the purposes of the rules is to represent 'real battle' in some fashion.

I know some rules never state any ground scales, but they still strive to keep those distance relationships intact--with words like relationship and 'credible'. They have to, if the game is going to make any sense historically and militarily.

I know of current rules where, because of poor time and distance relationships, a historical battle can't be recreated, and because of that, scenario terrain has to be so 'fudged' as to represent nothing historical.

I know of rules that state a ground scale, only to ignore it in the rules, again with predictable ahistorical results.

And I know of rules that ignore the time vs distance issue all together, focusing on a 'good game', making it is quite difficult to compare the game mechanics to historical combat, but not impossible as long as the toys are said to represent real military units.

However, as far as I know, to have game with 'strict' ground scale everywhere on the table, one would have to have a very small scale game, say 10 yards to an inch, with very small figures representing companies and battalions, 2mm figures. All roads, buildings and the 'footprint of various terrain features would be in scale…[like a 1/2 inch wide roads]. Some villages and woods would cover half or all of the entire table. However, the width of stands would be 'in scale'.

I think it is pretty obvious why wargame rules include ground scale if recreating historical battles and actual combat is one of the purposes of the rules.

What has to be 'strictly' adhered to do that in a valid way is the question.

If the designer states that game has a 50 yards to the inch ground scale, is that denoting a 'strict ground scale'?

Whirlwind:

Yes. Is that not a strict ground scale?

Whirlwind:

I don't know. If that is what constitutes a strict game scale, then most wargames, both board and tabletop, have a strict game scale.

However, there are obvious problems with that, because the scale in all those games are not 'strictly' adhered to, for a variety of reasons.

And then there is the time vs distance issue. For instance,
Regimental Fire & Fury gives a 25 yard to the inch ground scale, but a 10-15 minute time span for a turn. Field of Battle gives the same ground scale but a turn can be 30 minutes to 2 hours.

With such a wide variation in the time represented by a turn [50%+], can the ground scale be considered 'strict'? If the distance a unit can travel in X amount of time is widely variable, is ground scale being strictly adhered to?

The question is why ground scale would be important for a Historical wargame. And as long as past reality is being represented, the answer is pretty straight-forward:

Ground scale is important in representing any battlefield environment, particularly recreating historical battles. Important terrain features have to be represented in the same relationship to the actual features on the real terrain if a wargame is to have any relationship to an actual battle.

Ground scale is important in determining how far units have to travel in what time span. Screw up that relationship and you don't have much of anything representing historical battles. We can all find quotes where Napoelon, Wellington and others comment on how important time and timing was to a battle. Ground scale is one-half of that equation.

Ground scale is important in determining how many troops in what formations can attack or defend a specific area.

Ground scale is important in determining the distances that rranged weapons have, those relationships being very important in representing the development of a battle.

Ground scale is also important in determining Line-of-Sight, who can see what.

So, ground scale is important if one of the purposes of the rules is to represent 'real battle' in some fashion.

I know some rules never state any ground scales, but they still strive to keep those distance relationships intact--with words describing that effort like relationship and 'credible'. They have to, if the game is going to make any sense historically and militarily.

I know of current rules where, because of poor time and distance relationships, a historical battle can't be recreated, and because of that, scenario terrain has to be so 'fudged' as to represent nothing historical.

I know of rules that state a ground scale, only to ignore it in the rules, again with predictable ahistorical results.

And I know of rules that ignore the time vs distance issue all together, focusing on a 'good game', making it is quite difficult to compare the game mechanics to historical combat, but not impossible as long as the toys are said to represent real military units.

However, as far as I know, to have game with 'strict' ground scale everywhere on the table, one would have to have a very small scale game, say 10 yards to an inch, with very small figures representing companies and battalions, 2mm figures. All roads, buildings and the 'footprint of various terrain features would be in scale…[like a 1/2 inch wide roads]. Some villages and woods would cover half or all of the entire table. However, the width of stands would be 'in scale'.

I think it is pretty obvious why wargame rules include ground scale if recreating historical battles and actual combat is one of the purposes of the rules.

What has to be 'strictly' adhered to do that in a valid way is the question.

And the answer has everything to do with what the wargame designer is trying to accomplish with his design.

Best Regards,
Bill H.