"Pre Battle strategies in Ancient wargames?" Topic

Whilst reading up on Ancient warfare there is an impression I get that the actions before a decisive battles such as the decision to offer battle or tricking an adversary into rashly accepting battle could be as important to the outcome of the battle as the battle itself. This is especially the case if an adversary has a great advantage in strength or numbers therefore a commander would need to seek a way to counter this by finding an advantage in terrain for example. However it seems that most wargames understandably miss or abstract this sort of pre battle context out by points systems for equalising armies and such. So I am interested what people think on this.

Are people interested in gaming pre battle strategies in order to influence the set up of the miniature battle?

If so what do you find are the best methods to achieve this? or are there any rule sets that cover this well?

Many thanks and all the best

ToneTW

This is true for all warfare, not just ancients.

The best way to achieve this is to play actual historical battles as well as you can with the information available.

Even what if scenarios can be based on information about what forces were available to commanders at the time.

The second best way is to design a scenario for the game rather than worrying about points. Equalized points based games get pretty old pretty quickly.

If you are looking for scenarios use another historical battle from a different period with mods for the period you are doing.

Take an American Civil War battle and convert it into a Sassanid vs. Byzantine battle. Look at some of the Napoleonic battles in Spain and then set up a Roman vs. Carthaginian battle on the same terrain with similar relative army strengths.

If you want a mechanism for having variables for non-historical battles try having one players set up the terrain with a decisive but not obvious advantage in some piece of terrain for his army and then have the other player pick which side he wants to start from.

Or if you have points in your game do a variable number of points for each side. So you do roughly 1500 pt armies with a variable at the start like this:

1) 1400
2-3) 1500
4) 1600
5) 1700
6)2000

Each side makes the roll and then adds or subtracts units to make that approximate number of points in their army.

There are other rules in rulesets to represent the ability of generals to carry out things like this, like in the Byzantium book in WAB the Byzantine general can do a number of tricks before the battle starts and some units can come in from the sides and things like that.

Take a look at most of the Peter Pig rule sets, they tend to do this really well although it seems to be a bit of a marmite thing amongst gamers. Don't know about their Ancients rules but most of the others feature some kind of pre-game game which determines which units have turned up and where and when (and if) they arrive.

Clash of Empires has a really interesting pre-game contest about the placing of terrain and how the player who wins the initiative can use flank march or do a hidden ambush sort of thing. There's more to it, and it can add some interesting dynamics to the battle if you can keep your friends from just throwing their armies out on a flat table.

As an aside about people wanting to play only on flat tables , there was a passage in Livy that JJartist posted where Livy talks about how good the phalanx is on flat ground, but also mentions that, at some point, you can't just sit on the flat ground while your enemy raids all the other areas of your country- at some point you're gonna have to fight where there's some unfavorable terrain.

Run a double-blind games using a referee and maps. Lay out the figures on tabletop once the units starting engaging. It takes a lot of time and a very good referee to do, but I think it's worth it.

pjm

Or if you can't get an umpire taking mckrok's idea further: two equal size graph paper, draw the table battlefield on both. Label A to Z across the horizontal and 1 – 100 along the vertical (size depending on how big your board is – each sqaure being 1ft by 1ft so for a 6ft x 4ft you would A – F for the length of 6ft and 1 – 4 for the depth). Make / acquire some coloured counters / markers equivalent to how many units each side has, and move them per square or half square. Then once all units ahve moved on both sides each side call out the squares where there are forces but do not tell the opposition what that force is, just state there is enemy present.

Hope this helps or provides ideas…

Or play DBMM with its list of stratagems which cost points. :)

i remember a kriegsspiel ruleset from the british army where the combat results were left to the umpire's will, as the author though that the important thing was the prebattle maneouver.
but if you take out the politic and economical aspects of a campaign, i dont think that an ancient comander had too many options. without tactical maps, his only choices were how to deploy his units in route, wich security measures to take to avoid ambushes, etc..
i recall a ruleset from tabletop games were each player could assign troops to scouting (light infantry or light cavalry would add more points to this task). the player which put more points outscout the other playeri so he could choose more terrain features and deploy later. but you rolled for every unit commited to scouting in order to see if they arrived in time to the battlefield, or not. so winning the "scouting" phase could cost to you useful units in the battlefield

Thank you all for your input quite a lot of ideas and rules to look into and think on

cheers

Hi Tone, interesting post. I've often thought about using a mini matrix game pre-battle as a way of introducing stratagems and ruses.

Players could make for and counter arguments to the umpire (either a real umpire of an obliging friend who would do it by e-mail before game day). The umpire would dice for the likelihood of the argument succeeding, and then adjust the scenario accordingly.

There's more about it here on my blog if you want to take a look.

link

There are other things you could do too of course, such as use stratagem cards, which might be better for games where there is no umpire. It does limit the surprise factor though, as both players would have to know what the possible stratagems might be.

Cheers,
Aaron

DBMM has a good mechanism for pre and during battle stratagems.One of the best bits in the rules IMHO.Worth a look if your not wedded to particular set.
Cheers

One reason why ancient gaming works as a competitive or tournament vehicle is because *most* Classical era battles are not encounter engagements… they are set piece affairs with both sides agreeing to give battle… obviously this usually is the case because both sides have the energy to collect what they perceive to be an equitable force to the enemy. Sometimes smaller forces retreat to passes, or other constricted ground, but usually if one side cannot put together an army they think can contest, then there is no battle- they hide in forts or towns… this is why there are so few battles of size in even major campaigns…. the 2nd Punic War is an exception as there are many many more battles than usual. Decisive battles of course knock an enemy completely out… the Macedonians suffered two decisive defeats and were off the map (for the most part)…. Stratagems or pre battle shenanigans were more rare in battles before the 2nd Punic War… but even Hannibal set up his army in set-piece fashion, more often than his famous ambushes on a grand tactical scale. Arrian's discussion of Alexander's motives, often revolve over "not stealing a night victory" or displaying disdain for those who would fight from behind a river as pointing out their lack of confidence.

I'm not saying that there is no room for Sun Tsu gambits, its just that in Classical ancients, the armies mostly assembled, and camped then deployed in front of each other, sometimes shifting their alignments… sometimes having small distracting raids or infiltration…. all in all it way too formalized for modern people to understand-- we who have been trained that lying in wait and bushwhacking is the best way to defeat enemies, or sneak in and kill them in their sleep… Alexander's Agrianians and Cretans did do that too.. but it's hardly a game scenario. Still one can find great amusement reading Onasander… how to mistreat prisoners and make them raise your army's spirits…

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