"Too much detail / wrong focus? " Topic

I just throw this out as a discussion point, rather than seeking a definitive answer, but do we – as wargamers / rules writers – tend to give too much weight to certain aspects of warfare, thus putting our focus in the wrong place?

What got me thinking about this was reading an account of the Imperial Light Horse in the early days of the Boer War. They were (mainly) civilians, rushed into service with very little training and thrust up into the line to try and stem the Boer invasion of Natal. Due to a lack of magazine rifles, they were armed with single-shot 'Martini-Metfords' – unlike virtually all other units (on both sides) at the time.

So I think its fair to say that most wargames rules would rate this unit pretty badly – perhaps as a 'militia' or similar, and I am pretty sure most rules would see them penalised for being armed with markedly inferior rifles than the norm.

But – on reading the accounts of the ILH in those early days – neither of these would strike me as being reasonable. There is no evidence (that I have seen) of this want of training having made them any less effective that regular troops or of them having really suffered for having a worse rifle. Sure, on a micro level, it would have made a difference in some situations, but on any sort of higher level, should rifle type even be a consideration?

I am not sure it should, but most rules would distinguish between a unit armed with carbines and one armed with rifles, or even perhaps one armed with Lee Enfields and one armed with Mausers. I cannot remember reading any reports of a (eg) carbine-armed unit 'losing' because of their armament. I have no doubt it happened here and there and there was certainly a push to re-equip cavalry units with rifles, but, equally, modern armies went the other way in the 1980s, ditching long-range 'battle rifles' for shorter-ranged 'assault rifles', suggesting range is not the be-all and end-all.

Basically, would a divisional commander (ie. the man the player is pretending to be) be thinking: 'wait a moment, which of my units has the single-shot rifles?' or would be rather be thinking: 'the ILH are a solid, well-led bunch and they are well-rested and in roughly the right place – I'll use those'? Would he, indeed, even have thought: 'well, that battalion has 800 men, and that one only has 700 men, so I'll better use the first one'? Would he even know this? Would it have been a major factor in his thinking?

Similarly, should we distinguish between taking fire from a 12-pdr and a 15-pdr? Did it really make any difference? Even (slight) differences in range of different types of guns – how often was that really a factor? Sure, for a few seconds / minutes one battery would have out-ranged the other until the battery with the shorter ranged guns could close the gap (assuming it were possible to do), but in a game played in (eg) 15 minute turns, should we even be thinking of this as an important factor, or do we tend to over-rate the significance due to a love of maths / stats / facts and figures.

Or is it because we seek 'flavour' in our games? It would certainly be dull just to have 'infantry', 'cavalry' and 'artillery' units, so is it more of an attempt to add depth and flavour rather than seek historical accuracy?

So not really sure where I am going with this stream of conscious, but basically, what aspects to people feel we as gamers SHOULD focus on, and what do people feel there is perhaps a tendency to focus a little too much on at the moment?

Equipment is definitely overrated.

Some of the best wargames I've played don't differentiate weapons.

It's the hand that holds the weapon and not the weapon itself what really counts.

But then, searching for a "better weapon" has been done at nauseum for wargames, RPGs, boardgames, videogames…

But certainly, you have a point.

Best wishes.

Training and unit morale are way moreimportant than differences in weapons. but, they are much harder to quantify and replicate in a game table. 100 yards better range is very easy to show. Squad leaders that dont need to be given detailed instructions not so easy.

Actualy what moist gamers seem to have the hardest time to grasp is that most soldiers dont really care about the big picture, they just want to survive the war, and a great way to do that is not expose yourself more than needed. or that after dashing across a field with a pack you are infact tired as hell and need a bit to get it together before you do something else.

This remends me of a discusion several of us had a long time ago concerning different rifle calibers and thier effectiveness. One of my marine friends who had stopped by said "I just put a couple in the head and down they go, never had any trouble wiuth a 5.56 working in that case". Could not really argue with that.

On the other hand I have also seen what happens when one force has located and can range an oponent and they either have not located you, or they cant range back effectivly. but honestly those cases would make very poor wargames.

Other things as well. Tnaks for example. Very easy to model the great gun and thick armor of a tiger. not so easy or fun to mode;l that it is way better to have a couple of shemans that show up, than that awesome tiger broke down 10 miles away. Again, nobody want to gaem that sort of thing much, but it is what really happened a lot of the time.

And on tanks, it is also not so easy or liked to model that real tanks catch foire for odd reasons, real tanks know that and dont want to be the star in a BBQ, so are more prone to back out of a situation than gamers are willing to. lots and lot and lots of brave little lead heros, not so many flesh and blood ones. And if real one stayed in situations gamers put troops in, you would run out of them pretty wquickly anyway.

owen

Mostly, I agree. However, there are situations where it made a difference, and I'd suggest that the Franco-Prussian War was one. The French Chassepot did outrange the Prussian Dreyse rifle; while the Prussian artillery consistently outmatched the French. The interaction between the separate weapon systems makes for interesting games.

Even although what really counted was the effectiveness of command, logistics and indeed, the relative size of the belligerents' populations.

I'm reminded of walking ACW battlefields with my late fiend and mentor Paddy Griffith. He knew a great deal about individual weapons, but had little regard for them in terms of overall contribution to the results of a battle. What he thought was important was whether troops had eaten breakfast, whether they were drunk, and if the sun was in their eyes.

"I cannot remember reading any reports of a (eg) carbine-armed unit 'losing' because of their armament."

Yellow Tavern. federal cavalry dismounted to shoot up some dismounted Confederate cavalry. CS cavalry was armed with 2-band Enfields and tore them apart at range.

Confederate cavalry at Cerro Gordo <sic> part of Sibley's New Mexico campaign. CS cavalry armed with lances charged US infantry who shot them to pieces.

Lighting Brigade at Hoover's Gap. shot their way through superior numbers of troops armed with single shot weapons while they were armed with repeaters…bought at their own expense.

Little Big Horn where Custer's troops were, at times, out ranged and out shot because their single shot carbines kept jamming while the Indians were armed with repeaters.

Weaponry does matter, but it depends on the game scale you are playing. In a skirmish it matters a lot more than when the maneuver element is a division.

I'd suggest reading Churchill's History of the Malakand Field Force.

The Indian troops are all armed with single-shot Martinis, while the British troops all have Magazine rifles (Lee-Metford or Lee-Enfield).

It makes a huge difference in how well the Indian regiments can handle a fighting withdrawal compared to the English troops. 10 rounds rapid in a company volley is a huge psychological thing to the locals.

Now, I don't think it would be as big a deal to the Boers, since I don't recall any charges with bayonet and big honking knives during the Boer war.

But there are times when every man having a much higher rate of fire can make a huge difference, even on the battalion-as-maneuver-unit level.

Similarly, having or not having Night Vision devices is a much bigger difference than having an early, anvil-heavy Starlight scope as opposed to having a modern Gen4 or whatever we're up to scope.

I had been thinking along similar lines and came up with this thought experiment:

Assume a 1941 well trained, experienced German tank crew with high morale are in a Pz IID and encounter a barely trained, inexperienced Russian tank crew with average morale that are in a KV I. Who has the advantage?

Obviously the KV I has better armor and armament that the Pz IID and in most armor miniature games would easily dispatch the Pz IID. If the rules included training and such for the crew, then it becomes more of an even match. Throw terrain beyond a flat tabletop into the mix and the Germans may have the advantage. They may not knock out the KV I by blowing it up, but they most likely could get the crew to abandon it by repeatedly hitting it or more likely immobilize it.

The picture changes if the Russian crew is better trained and has some experience.

Difficult issue really- I would tend to agree that weapon details are over emphasised although they could be considered vital in some instances,such as the FPW as described so well by "Advocate" earlier. However it isn't always that simple- take the 1866 war where the Prussians had the better artillery equipment but were outclassed by the Austrians better artillery tactics and doctrine but using inferior guns. As always it isn't a simple issue, ultimately it boils down to what the rule writer thinks and what the players want. You still get nonsense written about how the Panther was the best tank of WW2 but the fact that it was prone to bust suspensions and almost impossible to field repair is strangely forgotten.

The Panther had the best gun, armor, and build numbers for the Germans. Tiger 1 was arguably better, but was far too expensive to build in the numbers required. The Panther was only a little bit more expensive than the Pz4, and was much better armed and protected.

Most tabletop games don't model vehicle reliability or maintainability, which is the 4th axis of the graph. Yes, Shermans were under-armored and arguably under-gunned by the time Normandy rolled around. But the fact that even at 10:1 kill ratios, there was always another Sherman available to get the kill on the big cat.

But reliability and maintainability rarely matter on the battlefield itself. Those show up either in how many big cats the German player can get to the battlefield in the first place, or how many big cats the German player can use in the next battle of the campaign.

Lots of games start at 'shots fired' or very shortly before then. Very few games have a significant pregame, where you need to allocate resources to different areas, and those areas affect your on-table army composition.

Now, you can partially reflect the reliability of vehicles in the Army Lists, but then you need to find players willing to not have perfect control over their collection of minis. "I paid the points for a full platoon of 4, what do you mean I only get 1 tank!!!"

I know a lot of players have a hard time with random or semi-random armies like in Rally Round the King.

It depends what sort of tech and training difference you are talking about. In the nineteenth century, tech differences often make quite a big difference, particularly for poor saps armed with muzzle loaders going up against chaps armed with breechloaders, just ask the Austrians in 1866. Even when they 'won' their losses were horric.

Magazine rifles with smokeless ammo are an order of magnitude more effective than black powder breechloaders as the firers are essentially invisible, and can shoot flat any sort of close order units at ranges up to a mile.

Once everyone had figured out how to spread out, then small arms differences became less significant, but the nineteenth century shock vs fire debate contributed in no small order to the hecatombs of WW1.

Having said all that, WW2 gamers agonise pointlessly over microscopic technical differences in vehicles which made not a jot of difference to the outcome of battalion sized and larger engagements. Crew quality, unit cohesion etc were far more significant, which is what you'd expect for crewed weapons systems. More like aircrew than infantrymen.

The French Chassepot did outrange the Prussian Dreyse rifle;

Which of course is why the French regularly failed to stop German attacks with rifle fire. In fact, the Dreyse, despite wargamer mythology, was physically capable of putting rounds out to nearly the same range as the Chassepot, but the Germans didn't see any point on wasting ammunition on long range fire which, by the very nature of black-powder ballistics, was going to yield very few hits. Add the fact that the French were given no training in range estimation and had poor fire discipline and the supposed superiority of the Chassepot disappears.

take the 1866 war where the Prussians had the better artillery equipment but were outclassed by the Austrians better artillery tactics and doctrine but using inferior guns

Again, a case of illusory technical advantage. A third of the Prussian guns were smoothbore 12-pdrs, and the breech mechanism on the remainder was different from the Krupp breech adopted after the war. The fact that the supposed superiority led the Prussians to set up too far from their intended targets was, however the telling factor.

Less about what played historically than what 'plays' on the table top. Any element that pulls focus from the table action detracts from the overall gaming experience. Thus, less focus on weapons variation and better focus on period tactics (which develops from reading up on the period before coming to the table) yields a more satisfying game. And that means a desire to play again.

Any of use who've been around long enough know of at least one system we don't care to try again because it was unpleasant – more than just 'unrealistic' (which the games never are, no one really dies). My input.

Simple rules (not simplistic) work, every layer of complexity pulls the players further and further away from the game. Granted, different layers are simple for different gamers. Doesn't change the essential argument.

Less about what played historically than what 'plays' on the table top. Any element that pulls focus from the table action detracts from the overall gaming experience. Thus, less focus on weapons variation and better focus on period tactics (which develops from reading up on the period before coming to the table) yields a more satisfying game. And that means a desire to play again.

But in the late 1800s, the difference between black powder muzzle loaders, breech loaders, and repeaters is a *massive* force multiplier, which did historically drive tactics.

It's like the difference between rifled and smoothbore cannon in the ACW. Smoothbore has a range of a little over 1000yards, when a rifled gun using the same amount of powder can shoot out to 3000 yards.

The problem with basing performance on the technical capabilities of a weapon skews a great deal. For instance, while Smoothbores were outranged by rifled guns, the Union instructions pasted on the inside of the cassion ammo boxes stated that 1500 yards was effective range. So, if that was how they were used, then the fact they were capable of 3000 yards doesn't matter.

It's how the weapons were used, the typical practices and doctrine. And of course, looking at the actual performance of units rather than just the weapons they were carrying.

I have been concerned with the questions posed in the OP for a while, but the way I`m going is to base the fire effects on the weapons used, and apply modifiers to any poorly trained units. And of course, if individual gamers don`t agree with the modifier values then they can always tweak them.

"Little Big Horn where Custer's troops were, at times, out ranged and out shot because their single shot carbines kept jamming while the Indians were armed with repeaters"

This is a good example of what (I think) the OP is about. This is something that we, as wargamers and amateur historians, focus on, but was it the deciding factor in Custer's defeat? Indeed, was it even an important factor?

As others have said, we seem to prefer to look at the minutiae of weapons and obsess about their theortical ranges and rates of fire, ignoring rather than more 'difficult' issues as a result. How does one, for example, write rules for a highly experienced commander (like Custer) making a mistake? Or for veteran troops havig a 'bad day at the office'?

The other thing to bear in mind is that – as McLaddie mentioned – weapons are very rarely used at their theoretical limits: just because your 15-pdr outranges my 12-pdr, that doesn't mean the action will take place outide my range. Indeed, given the impact of weather, terrain, daylight, smoke etc etc, the chance are it will take place well within the maximum ranges of either weapon system.

Hi Green,
If other factors are more important than range or even weapon reliability (i.e.: the numerical inferiority of Custer`s men) then that too will be accounted for in the rules.

Doesn't weapon technology drive tactics? Weapon tech. almost always outpaces tactics but eventually at some point, tactics catch up.

I don't know if the following has anything to do with anything but I found it interesting.

"So when thousands of single-shot-armed Russians swarmed around the Bulgarian fortress city of Plevna, they expected the similar number of Turks inside the city to be roughly similarly armed. But Osman Pasha, the Turkish commander, had a trick up his embroidered sleeves: each Turk in the defensive works had two rifles. The Encyclopedia Britannica wrote:

In the matter of armament the Turks had the advantage. The artillery were armed with a Krupp breech-loading gun, which was better , than the Russian bronze gun, while the Peabody- Martini rifles of the infantry were superior to the Russian Krenk. The firearm of the Turkish, cavalry was the Winchester repeating carbine, which was inferior to the short Berden with which the Russian cavalry was armed. But this advantage in armament was discounted by the fact that, from motives of economy, the Turkish soldier had done but little rifle practice.

So as the Russians charged the fortress, shouting and firing, and awkwardly reloading thieir Krnkas or Berdans. Meanwhile, the Turks lay in wait, each with a British Peabody-Martini, capable of great long-range accuracy, and a loaded Winchester 1866, capable of rapid fire. When the Russians came into Martini range, the Turks began to pick them off, until they'd closed to within the 150 to 100 yard range of the brass-framed .44 rimfire Winchester. There at practically point-blank range the Russians ran into an unprecedented buzzsaw of rapid fire. The survivors retreated in disorder."

MichaelCollinsHimself

Yes, I imagine it would, but I wonder if other factors would be given similar importance?

Just thinking out loud.

Doesn't weapon technology drive tactics? Weapon tech. almost always outpaces tactics but eventually at some point, tactics catch up.

The example you give doesn't show a difference in tactics, just the weapons effects.

If weapon technology drove tactics, then all firefights today would be at 1000 yards or better. They aren't. They remain in the 100 to 400 yard range for the most part.

The assumption is that new technology dictates tactics, when it is actually men who dictate tactics and the same technology can inspire very different tactics [or the same-old, same-old] depending on other conditions.

In the US Army, technology definitely drives tactics, but that is a conscious decision on the part of the military who see technology as the principle tactical advantage on the battlefield.

The biggest change in infantry tactics wrought by technology was the adoption of the breechloader. Troops in battle could lie down and continue to use their weapon. That's when the battle went from two lines of troops lined up en masse to an empty place where you're lucky to see the enemy at all.

in all there were 7 technological leaps in infantry weapons between 1840 and 1945:
Percussion Cap
Minie Ball
Breachloader
Magazine
High-powered Cartridge
Semi-auto rifle
Assault rifle

When I make up rules I don't get anymore granular than that; in WW2 a bolt rifle is a bolt rifle whether it's a Mauser, Enfield, Carcano or Mosin Nagant. On the other hand, 19th century warfare is much more interesting because one side can have high powered magazine rifles and the other flintlock muskets.

+1 on Murvihill.

The only comment I would offer would be to insert "Self-primed Metallic Cartridge" between "Breechloader" and "Magazine. The metallic cartridge made possible the replaceable magazine and later belt-feed practical propositions which in turn made the repeating rifle and semi-/full-automatic rifles a reality.

B

Does anyone take into account the length of turns when writing rules for this? Sure, in a skirmish with 10 second turns (or whatever – I don't know how long turns are in skirmish games), it might make a difference if one guy has a semi-auto and the other has a bolt action, but would a unit armed with semi-automatic rifles (ie. something like the M1 Garand) actually put down significantly more effective fire than a bolt-action equipped unit (ie. something like an SMLE) over the course of (eg) a 15 minute turn?

Sure, at first glance it is obvious that they would, but is that really the case? I remember reading that a common bet between British / Commonwealth soldiers and American ones was a race to hit ten bullseyes – ie. pitting the M1 Garand against the SMLE. The SMLE would invariably win, as the Garard could get eight shots off quickly, but then the soldier had to reload, so overall, the SMLE could actually get a heavier weight of fire down in 'some' circumstances. Someone cleverer than me would have to 'do the math' (as our American brothers say) as to how that would average out over various periods of time, but I would wager there was not a lot in it, and certainly not enough to worry about at anything above company / battalion level. And by that stage, factors like training, command / control, how much of the unit could actually see the enemy (something we never take into account in wargames), ammo supplies etc would have – I would suggest – a far, far bigger impact than the theoritical ROF of the individual weapons.

Indeed, it is much more important that we consider ammo supply than the type of weapon – a unit armed with a more rapidly firing weapon could not simply fire this off at (eg) three times the rate of another unit, as it had to carefully husband its ammo – something we wargamers rarely have much interest in. We had selectable fully-automatic assault rifles when i was in the army, but the use of this setting was strictly controlled / forbidden for anything other than trench or house clearing. So most of time, I would guess that the rate of aimed fire we would (I stress would, not could) put down would not have been massively higher than that which could have been acheived by a bolt action rifle in the right hands.

Another example is the Falklands War, where the British troops had the semi-automatic version of the SLR / FN, while the Argentines had the full-auto version. Did this confer the Argentines a significant advantage? Overall, clearly not.

Basically, I think there is an awful lot more to this than one would first suppose, and think that, one gets past the big leaps from muzzle-loader to breach-loader, and single-shot to magazine bolt action rifle, any other advances / advantages confered start to become pretty small at a reasonably high level.

Lets put it another way, what percentage impact of combat effectiveness would it make to a modern British / American battalion in Afghanistan if they were armed with SMLEs rather than their current rifles? 5% 10%? I can't answer the question, but I imagine it would make a far bigger impact to their effectiveness if someone swapped (eg) their radios or night vision kit for the WW2 equivalent.

Once everyone had figured out how to spread out, then small arms differences became less significant, but the nineteenth century shock vs fire debate contributed in no small order to the hecatombs of WW1.

It doesn't help that there were no flanks to turn in WW1. No choice but to charge head-on…

Lets put it another way, what percentage impact of combat effectiveness would it make to a modern British / American battalion in Afghanistan if they were armed with SMLEs rather than their current rifles? 5% 10%? I can't answer the question, but I imagine it would make a far bigger impact to their effectiveness if someone swapped (eg) their radios or night vision kit for the WW2 equivalent.

No. Not even close. If you took a classic WW2 British infantry battalion armed with .303s and Brens and dropped them in Afghanistan today, they'd be just as capable as the Americans next door with M16s and M240s in a firefight. Maybe a little more capable in terms of countering snipers, since the WW2 Brits still trained at really long-range shots (over 500m).

But the Americans would be able to run circles around them at night with the NVGs, and the calls for fire would be completely different. Overall, the modern soldier is much more capable because he can see in the dark and even take a hit square in the chest and still fight. Plus he can call artillery or air in much closer.

While I'd hate to be on the wrong end of one of the code-word targets of the Royal Artillery in WW2, where they can get every gun in the entire Corps firing my direction, counter-insurgency combat is different. I don't want to necessarily smash the entire village, I just want the guy shooting at me.

Lion in the Stars

So you agree with me, in that case?

So I don't understand the statement 'not even close' ?

Your right my example did not have anything to do with tactics. I just thought it was interesting. I should have posted it separately.

@GreenLeader: No, I'm disagreeing. The WW2 Brits might be as good as modern troops in a firefight during the day, but they'd be horribly outclassed at night or when trying to call in Arty or Air.

Lion in the Stars

Which is exactly what I said – the changes in the individual weapons are far less important than the advances in (eg) radios and night-fighting equipment etc.

I think you need to re-read my post.