"Brigades in bad terrain" Topic

While pondering brigade level rules and Gettysburg, I started thinking ablut the fighting around Devils den and the whole southern sector of the battle field. When you look at that terrain, its really staggering how complicated it is from a tactical standpoint. Lee had not even looked itmover apparently before ordering the assault to go in, and left the planning up to Longstreet and his divisional commanders. From the perpective therefore, of an army level general, the actual fighting and back and forth in that sector seem to have been a minor point compared to the desired outcome, which was originally supposed to have been outflanking the union line. Lee didnt know that Sickles was going to move out of line when he made his plans.

So, I got to thinkng about how one would model the fight in that area of the battlefield in a grand tactical game. I mean, in an area of pretty great tactical complexity but at a size that is below the footprint of the brigade itself.

The first idea is that you could delineate the entire area from the peach orchard to the round tops as bad or rough terrain. An assault by a brigade through that area should be a) slower than an assault across open terrain and b) result in more lopsides and unpredictable results. I feel that time should be an especially important factor here. Just like the way hat fighting in a city could take a unit out of the battle for quite some time, sending your brigades or divisions to fight in quite restrivted areas should mean that you have to be prepared for them to get bogged down in them. Sickles troops were run over pretty quickly, but the injection of reserved drew the battle out. The assault began at 430 and ended around the wheat field at 730. That was four hours of fighting by dozens of brigades in an area that was only about 2km square. In my rules that area would only cover 80cm! Even in Grande Armee or VnB it wouldnt be larger than a few bases lined up.

It occurs to me that one trick you could do in rough terrain is to not allow any followup moves to an assault. This provides a natural break in the action to allow enemy reserves in to continue to contest the area.

Another thing that seems relevent, especially in the above example, is the need to portray especially rough terrain features even if they are below the level of the brigade. For instance Devils Den and Little Round Top. Both of these features would fit under a brigade base, but were particularly hard nuts to crack. Especially in an ACW battle where history often turned on the actions of single regiments, it seems like these small, sub-brigade terrain elements really need to be portrayed. As such, I think that prior to the game opening particularly defensible terrain below the level of the brigade should be pointed out and marked in some way and given preset rules. Instead of a neat add on this should be central to the board set up. Then, any brigade that attempts to pass through that feature has to contend with it if its occupied. To go one step further, a player should be able to detach units from brigades which can then be said to occupy these small but key terrain features. Of course the parent brigade need suffer some sort of penalty in reduced strength if this is the case.

I feel like these things taken together can overcome the tactical-operational break that wargames often suffer from, by allowing focus on the big picture of the battle while not erasing the ground level fighting that really gives the period its flavor.

Has anyone else tried any of these ideas, or something like them for games like VnB and FPGA or similar? I suppose these issues would be the same in FnF, although the units and table size are much larger in that game, and I really dont know too much about it. Just kicking ideas around, any input is appreciated!

You could portray pretty much the whole area from the Orchard to the round tops as rough terrain, but DIFFERENT TYPES of rough terrain, if that makes sense. For example, the round top hills might preclude cavalry or artillery, the woods might inhibit ranged volley fire, the devil's den might restrict soldiers to fighting open-order only.

The whole brigade thing is a real conundrum.
In my Napoleonic rules the smallest units are brigades (made up of 4 battalion-sized stands); the brigades can detach one or more of their battalions if they want to garrison a village or throw out a skirmish line. I guess my rules could be adapted to allow a detachment to hunker down in a complex position with a small footprint, such as your area of Gettysberg. A Napoleonic example might be something like the British Rifles acting as a detachment inside the gravel pit at Waterloo.

I'd venture that that entire area is unsuitable for cavalry. Outside of Devil's Den, artillery would be fine.

To be honest, I've been over much of that ground and except for Devil's Den, the infantry really didn't have any problems maneuvering and fighting there.

The Devil's Den area broke down into an extended firefight between small groups of soldiers on the CS side and the federals further up the slope from them. If you can get ahold of Val Giles' book "Rags and Hope" he talks quite a bit in detail from his perspective as a member of the 4th Texas there.

If using Grande Armee you could treat some of these areas as villages, and allow units to garrison them. Garrisons are committed to the area for the battle but are very hard to dislodge.

In a game where individual units are brigades, or at least 2000 men, I think one has to ask onesself whether the terrain is so bad that it would disrupt the whole brigade, even if one tiny bit of the unit were in it.

Because that's the issue: it's rarely clear when a unit is "in" terrain or not. If one corner of the unit is in the terrain, then you have to make some decisions about how you're going to represent that. And if you want to keep it simple and say: "if any bit of the unit is in, then the unit is IN…" then it needs to be bad enough terrain for that to make sense.

An especially rough area, but one which only affected a small part of a large unit… will that matter if the point of contact is not in that area?

Good question.

I dont know about the specifics of this engagement, so I am only looking at this from a game design point of view. Hope that helps.

I dont think that the "Devils Den" problem is limited to exceptionally tricky terrain actually.

Even on the cleanest patch of battlefield – the combination of smoke, dust, noise, rocks, thorns, local fauna, blood, gore, and the smell of terror in the air .. can potentially create any number of "tactical black holes" on the best of battlefields.

You simply do not know what you are getting into sometimes, until you step into it. Your example of the fighting at Devil's Den is an excellent case in point.

What is important from a game point of view (from the perspective of the army commander), is that the exact nature of that zone of the battlefield was not fully known prior to the battle, and only becomes apparent later as the battle develops.

If there had been no engagement of opposing troops at that part of the map, the name of Devil's Den may never have made it into the history books … perhaps ?

Tabletop wargames (with luscious models of trees and villages), tend to give the player a false sense of knowing the exact lay of the land a little too well sometimes .. just as printed maps tend to give professional military officers a false sense of frontline knowledge in real life :)

Another mechanic worth considering at this game level, would be to track each brigade sized engagement as being at a state of escalation on a turn by turn basis. From a light contact, through to very very hot. This factor being a combination of the current level of ferocity of the contact, the level of smoke/noise/fear in the air, as well as the unknown (or unknowable ?) tactical complexity of the ground.

The rate of escalation would be a function of the local terrain type, the number of units involved in the engagement, and some random element.

The ability of units to respond to commands is then an inverse function of how 'hot' an engagement they are mired in. Throwing reserves into the fray commits those fresh troops for the duration, effectively tying them up until the engagement is concluded or 'cools down'.

It would be quite easy to quantify this on a simple scale of 1-10, or whatever, and apply it as a die roll to be able to pull units out of the mess, or add fresh units into the mess. Troop quality and leadership bonuses would apply here as a modifying factor.

The effect on the game would be that any part of the table could potentially turn into a Devil's Den, as the battle takes on a life of its own.

It is important to note as well, that hot engagements take a variable amount of time to cool down – sometimes long after the opposing enemy force has been defeated. There is always some delay as general confusion, mopping up and reorganisation follow in the wake of an engagement.

Steve64- "Ferocity of Contact" is a good line. I've actually had that exact idea recently, but in my case the idea was that the number would lead to a "saving throw" for each unit involved to see if it survived, and with what damage. This would be opposed to brigades firing directly at other brigades. They didn't do that at all, really. Units fired directly ahead of each other, not squarely at other brigades.

Sam- Obviously you are one of the masters of brigade levels games, haha. Your point is taken. I agree that small terrain features shouldn't dictate what the entire brigade base needs to be doing. Thats why I had the idea for small detachment bases that could take advantage of certain key terrain features. For the ACW this feels right. But that being said, those should probably be kept to a limited number. I know that with that suggestion I am sort of getting away from the basic idea of a grande tactical brigade level game, by creeping down into the tactical realm. Like I said though, for the period it feels right to me. Extra Cripsy made a good point- maybe just identifying those areas and calling them towns would have about the same effect as what I'm talking about. The trick would be keeping such detachments and strong points from overly dominating a game that is based principly on maneuver.

The idea of the die roll indicating the opposing commanders relative success in exploiting the given, unknown local terrain is an idea I brought up awhile back and I remember some people being very against it. Personally I think its a great idea, and how VnB and FP/GA seem to work. But there are some people who this is anathema too. I can't seem to find the post though. I took the idea even further by saying that the defending brigade in an attack should roll a green "terrain" die, and a hit scored with that that die would be marked on the unit indicating that the unit, as long as it did not move, would continue to always have one win over attacking units that moved into its location.