"Encouraging Use of historical Reserves " Topic

Most gamers throw everything in the pot and do not hold back reserves. Almost all actual accounts of battles indicate a heavy use of reserves. What can we do to "encourage this?"
How about that the bad thing is postponed if reserves are employed thus encouraging the use of what was very historical ( use of reserves) and which wargamers ignore with reckless abandon. Thus a 30 unit army dissolves with loss of 10 units but a 10 unit loss will not cause same result to a 20 unit army if 10 additional units are in reserve and are then called to the front. -- or some such. .

Play with hidden movement…

Field of Battle, my own Company Commander and a few others require a reserve. That's one of the benefits of having some chaos in your rules. If everyone moves at the same rate in a predictable manner, why would you need a reserve?

Play with hidden movement…

or dummy counters.

Bring your army list, but you can only field 1/2 or 1/3 during intial deployment. You can deploy the rest on any other turn but…Turn 2 – must come off rear side of table. Turn 3 – may deploy on a flank up to 1/4 of table from rear edge. Turn 4 – may deploy on a flank up to 1/2 of table from rear edge.

Of course, your opponent has the same options. And if you don't know what he's got waiting in the wings…

Gives an advantage to using reserves and adds to the fog of war.

A lot of rules do not have mechanisms for a defense in depth – or the second line is off the table

If your rules make reserves pointless you need new rules

What period are we talking about? Ancient period, the main issue was fatigue. Troops got exhausted in combat; fresh troops had a better perfomance, so having a reserve was useful. I dont know how relevant should be this in modern combat.

The other issue with a reserve was that it was very difficult to give orders to units engaged in combat; so having a reserve was interesting because you could give orders to them, even if only was an attack order.

I suspect that the only decissions an ancient commander took were:
-to choose when and were to battle the enemy.
-Army deployment.
-If he had a reserve, when and where to launch it to combat. Probably it was the only order he could issue after the general attack order.

I suspect that this is still relevant today. That units engaged in a firefight are harder to control, even to disengage. So a reserve should be issued orders easy (sorry about my english)

The third issue should be uncertainty about the enemy deployment. If there isnt hidden movement in a modern game; if you know where each enemy unit is, there isnt any reason to not commit all your units from first minute

As ghostdog says, the purpose and function of reserves depends on the period you are gaming as well as the level of game.

Rules which reward players who commit all their units every turn are probably poor simulations and take no account of the impact of target density or loss of cohesion for both winners and losers in combat. Clausewitz has quite a lot to say about this stuff, both tactically and strategically.

The dispersion of modern units is not just related to maintenance of cohesion and ability to respond, but response to the lethality of firepower. Again, rules which reward bunching up in a modern context, and many do, are just wrong.

Even Clausewitz states, the best tactic is to engage more troops with fewer troops. That means, that even fighting apart from inflicted casualties, reduces your fighting power.

Most rules have that wrong. The best tactic there is to have as much as possible troops shooting and fighting.

We need rules, that let you loose combat power (in the form of fatigue, losses or casualties dependend on the rules) by simply fighting, even if you win. And if at the time, troops with loses are harder to control, you get the effect, that you need a reserve to act effectively.

This is another example of something that gamers often say they want, but in fact rarely do. It's a great example of the distance between a war-game and a battle.

The commander in a battle is worried about the unexpected calamity that might result from his limited and imperfect knowledge of the surroundings and the enemy's strength and intentions. A Reserve is necessary as an insurance policy against that calamity. The commander also knows that this battle will continue until somebody wins it, so he needs to be patient and exercise prudence with the lives of his men.

The war gamer, by contrast, has near-perfect intelligence of the environment, and all of the enemy's dispositions and intentions (probably not least because the "enemy" is his buddy and they've been talking about what they're going to do next in the game.) So there's no need to withhold any Reserve: the Scenario they're playing doesn't have any rules for possible enemy reinforcements or a surprise flank attack. (And besides, I saw how many figures Jim brought over in his box, and they're all on the table, so I know he doesn't have any tricks up his sleeve!)

Furthermore, we've only got about 3 hours in which to complete this game, before the Wife needs me to pick up Junior at reform school, so we need to get this thing done quickly.

And most importantly: I just spent hundreds of bucks and months of effort painting up those elite Guard Chevaliers-Chasseurs-Tirailleurs-Grenadier-Fusiliers! I want to get my money's worth from them. I don't want them to just sit there in a corner of the table doing nothing! Let's fight!

Why, therefore, would any gamer want or need Reserves? You'd be forcing him to do things that make no sense in the context of a good game:

1. To take longer to complete the game.

2. To not use all of the figures that he so lovingly and painstakingly painted.

3. To pretend that he doesn't know things, when he obviously does.

That's a pretty pessimistic attitude about gaming … and I certainly hope it's not typical!

The best way to encourage the use of reserves is to encourage the unknown, which can be done in many ways. Some sort of hidden or disguised movement can easily be used without slowing down the game too much, as can the use of flank marches. Simply ensuring that neither side has a completely accurate knowledge of the enemy's numbers, quality, or objectives also helps. These sorts of things usually fall to the game master to organize and run, but given a modicum of trust between fellow players it doesn't have to.

Cheers,

Christopher

The fate of a battle is the result of a moment, of a thought: the hostile forces advance with various combinations, they attack each other and fight for a certain time; the critical moment arrives, a mental flash decides, and the least reserve accomplishes the object. Napoleon

I think the Traveling Turk nailed it.

Decebalus – did you mean something like this ?
web.295.ca/danabbott/fbg.html