"Rules changes for The War Game" Topic

Hi

I have posted some rule changes, for Grants The War Game, regarding using smaller units sizes without separate officer figures on my blog.

link

Cheers

Nice straightforward ideas, true to the style and spirit of the original, IMHO.

Thanks for making them available.

Thanks for the ideas. I have looked at these rules off and on and decided that I would need to do something with the morale rules as written because I was not going to organize units as Mr. Grant did. Since you have everyone firing in groups of four, do you do anything special for grenadiers since the rules have them firing in groups of four and hat men firing in groups of six? I have always had a soft spot for these rules since they were the first rules my brother and I used for "real" wargames. Of course, we used unpainted 1/72 Naps plastics as stand-ins for what we saw in the rules.

do you do anything special for grenadiers since the rules have them firing in groups of four and hat men firing in groups of six?

In the newer edition of the rules C S Grant has scrapped this as it made grenadiers too powerful. I also have grenadiers firing in groups of six rather than four but I do allow ten grenadiers to count as two groups – e.g. 20 grenadiers would get four 'volleys'.

Charles has made a number of rules changes which he outlines in his recent book: "Wargaming in History, Volume 9".

I didn't know there were any changes to the rules: I have the 1971 printing.

C S Grant has published an updated version of the rules in 2012 which pulls all the rules from the original book together with revisions and new rules gathered over the years.

The Wargaming in History in Series has also added new ideas.

I am getting a copy of vol 9 at the York show in early February and I am looking forward to reading it.

Cheers

As I recall, the newest changes divide cavalry into squadrons as the main mounted fighting element and he now has rules that provide for converged grenadier battalions.

FtG: Interesting, although in the original rules the 24+4 cavalry "regiment" was only squadron sized anyway.

I read 'The War Game' (the book that definitively 'hooked' me to the hobby, to mid-18th C. wargaming and to Imagi-Nations) in late '71 and immediately started to play (at first with labelled rectangles of cardboard to represent the individual bases, since I didn't have minis yet. I also changed the scale -using 1cm instead of 1"- which allowed me to play my first battles on a kitchen table).
I progressively made some changes to the rules, and have to confess I was far less faithful to the original set than you!
First I used dice (à la Young's 'Charge!') to assess artillery fire -I was not happy with templates, and it was more consistent with musketry.
The major change I made at the same time here and to WRG Ancients 5th ed. was to have all minis permanently glued to collective bases (standardized 'elements' of 6 on 2 rks for infantry, 4 on 2 rks for cavalry) and not removing the casualties. The rationale (as used later by Phil Barker in Ancients 7th) being that men of rear ranks step forward to fill the holes in the front one and keep the frontage of the unit constant). This implied to have the 'officers' included in the elements.
To record casualties was extremely simple and fast: each unit was allocated a line on a sheet of squared paper and a square ticked for each casualty; the line was 'scaled' to show when the unit loose a 'fighting element', reached a certain number of casualties… Loss of 'command points' was recorded on 2nd line for the morale test. The process took much less time than moving the figurines individually, and was less boring. To determine if a casualty was an officer (and whom as long as as the '2 pts colonel' was still alive was a simple matter of dice throwing.
For light infantry in 'loose' order the elements were placed in staggered rows 'manipular fashion', leaving the frontage of the unit unchanged and doubling its depth.

Then when the WRG 1685-1835 set appeared in '77 I was seduced by the Old School 'feeling' of its 'Bang! You're dead!' dice -indeed I soon perceived it as a 'steamlined' version of Charles Grant's rules, so I switched to it with 2 major changes:
- to keep 'big battalions', doubling the number of mini (ie the number of ranks) in each 'element', and the number of elements in each 'regiment': infantry remained at 48 and cavalry at 32. It was only a matter of doubling the number of 'to hit' dice / element (more for models such as artillery, since their number was unchanged, and giving them a saving throw).
- all minis permanently in 'elements' ('companies) and casualties recording as above…..

Very interesting, IOS – thank you for sharing those ideas!

Do you field your light infantry in 32s as well, or in separate battalions of 16?

And how does artillery fire affect the smaller units?
(For once I agree on something with Abdul: I'd rather use the Young rules for gunnery.)

Hi

Light infantry are either 16 in a unit or 8 Men Companies.

I also use the Charge Artillery rules and use 9" range bands. So max range is 54" and cannister is 18".

Cheers

I have had another thought

I could just let one of my stands of 4 infantry take 6 hits and 2 figure cavalry 3 hits. Keep officer hits with each stand lost.

My 32 figure man units will now fight as 48 man units in game terms.

Cheers