"Which is historically more accurate?" Topic

I played Squad Leader for about 20 years, then changed over to Spearhead for another 20 before (finally) making the plunge into Flames of War this year. In the earlier games, the profiles for Russian infantry were similar to those of their opponents (although a Russian Brigade would be matched up against a German Battalion). Because of these similar capabilities, I had about the same amount of models on each side. I'm still getting my head around the Russian swarm that is FOW. Is the Flames of War rendition more accurate or was this something the designers did just to differentiate them from the other armies? Perhaps infantry brigades in the earlier games actually represented more men but with similar fighting capabilities as a German battalion?

Dear Wizbangs

What's "accurate"?

You have to define what "accuracy" is.

Now obviously what I think you mean is that it reproduces faithfully what actually happens." Fair enough, but then we get to the question of "what actually happens," which means "what is true" and when we get to that point I remember a Roman Governor who once asked God that question and I don't recall he got an answer-- at least one that was useful in the sense of his question.

Not to FoW bash but just to offer perspective, I did read on a blog yesterday that Flames of War might more properly be called an "action" game of WW2 than an "historical" game. The author's point was that FOW is not trying to be an accurate historical simulation but rather to give a game that may have some of the feel. Emphasis being on game first, history second.

I used to play Sqyad Leader and have played other similar games where the emphasis seems to be more on historical simulation first.

The question of "accuracy" is a tricky one. It really boils down to which aspects of a conflict and which results are important to you to simulate and in how much detail. For some periods I am quite happy with very highly abstracted games, Steve Jackson's Ogre/GEV is a favorite of mine and it is hard to think of how it could be much more abstract. On the other hand I also enjoy Mark Walker's World at War series which is considerably more detailed than Ogre, but still more abstract than Squad Leader.

I would have to dig out my old (ancient) Squad Leader game to check, but it is certainly possible that in that and Spearhead Russian and German tabletop pieces represent different numbers of men and machines. I know that in World at War and also Valley of Tears a "tank platoon" counter can represent different numbers of tanks depending on nationality and even scenario. The same is true for Cold War Commander.

I do think it likely that the Soviet Horde in FOW is at least in part a mechanism to differentiate the Soviet army. It may also better depict the actual way the army fought at the scale represented by the game, by I will leave that question to those who know the period better than I do.

The most "accurate" WW2 game is the one which produces an ultimate Allied victory. The "best" WW2 game is the one that you and your mates enjoy playing.

Ok, let me further define my intent behind "accurate." Was it typical that the Russians would out number their opponents by such a large margin in the early war? Did it take that many men in order to be as effective as their opponents? Was a Russian Brigade the same size as a Western battalion, or was it an actual brigade (in size) with the combat effectiveness of a Western Battalion? Essentially I am trying to decide which of the rule systems (between Spearhead & FOW) will most accurately reflect combat against the Russians in the early war.

In my mind, a big part of the problem is:
1) Most rules set try to get a balanced/fair game
2) A general's main job is to make sure his battle is as unfair as possible.

So it is quite possible to be strategically outnumbered by a lot, but have a tactical advantage at an important place.
So, I think in WWII Eastern Front, there would be times when the Soviets massively outnumber the Germans – just as there will be times when the Germans have better odds in a particular spot.

Was it typical that the Russians would out number their opponents by such a large margin in the early war? Did it take that many men in order to be as effective as their opponents?

In the early war it was indeed typical that Russian formations, particularly infantry formations, were quite large.

It is not true that they needed that many men in order to be effective. In fact it was quite the opposite. They were not at all effective, even though they generally outnumbered their opponents.

Was a Russian Brigade the same size as a Western battalion, or was it an actual brigade (in size) with the combat effectiveness of a Western Battalion?

You dare to investigate Red Army WW2 TOEs? I pity you.

I could probably find evidence to confirm AND deny any conclusion you might want to make comparing Red Army TOEs to other nations' TOEs.

Their Brigades were smaller. And their Brigades were bigger. And they didn't even use Brigades, but rather used Regiments and Divisions. All statements are true. It depends on which TOE regulations you are looking at, in which month of which year, or on the other hand if you are looking at actual strength returns, of which units, in which Front, in which month of which year.

Honestly it is very confusing, and generalizations are simply not going to stand up well.

The closest I have gotten to useful generalizations is at the platoon/company/battalion levels. Here there were only about 8 or 10 different structures (as long as you stay with Rifle units, not Naval Infantry, or Parachute Infantry, or Desant Infantry, or the Guards' versions of any of those, or Workers' Militias).

Several observations might be made about Red Army formations in the early war period. These observations will probably be seen in 60 – 80% of historical actions:

1. Centralized planning was doctrine. Lower levels of command were not encouraged to think independently, but rather were expected to conform to orders.

2. Attachment and cross-attachment was rare (compared to Germans or western allies). Higher level formations (battalions or even regiments) generally operated as single cohesive units, intact down to the platoon level.

3. Usually … at least in terms of authorized strengths … a Soviet Rifle Battalion was as large, or larger, than a German Infantry Battalion. It was also generally larger than western infantry battalions.

Platoons virtually never operated independently. Even companies were almost never seen outside of their battalion formations. The battalion was the tactical unit of maneuver, occasionally seen operating independently, but most often not. Most of the decisions about how the battalions fought were made by regimental COs. The battalion CO might have minor leeway on how the sub-units of his battalion would deploy to achieve the battleplan he was given, but everyone else was told what to do in full detail. The company and platoon COs just did what they were told.

As the command staffs were thin, most tactics came straight from battle doctrine set down in the regulations. There was little creativity, and even little regard for circumstances, except at the higher command levels. So although a different number of resources might be committed, at the tactical level attacks in wooded hills against weak opposition were done the same way as attacks in open plains against strong opposition.

This all changed as the war went along. Late war veteran formations demonstrated significant creativity in their tactics, and adapted well to differing circumstances. Late war green formations behaved much as early war formations -- doing things by the book. This "veteran" vs. "green" issue was often decided at the higher command levels … a green division might enforce considerable control over the tactical behavior of veteran regiments or battalions under it's command. The result was a very wide spectrum of tactical proficiency … once again, generalizations don't survive well.

In early war comparisons Red Army infantry comes off as tactically quite inept. Dramatic improvements were seen later in the war. By early 1943 Red Army infantry fought as well or better than Italian and Romanian formations but still, due to the uneven performance across such a large army, the overall tactical proficiency of the Red Army infantry formations never reached the levels of the German or Finnish infantry formations.

Or so I've read.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Many games claim to be historically accurate, I've yet to play one that lives up the claims.

All wargames and rules are abstracting what actual combat is like and most game designers alive now have little or no experience of it. No one has experience outside of their lifetime, either. That's not knocking the designers, but it does mean they read their history and they make their game mechanic choices based on how they want to interpret that history. Prejudice comes into it a lot.

The way Flames of War works with the Russians is that Phil Yates takes Stalin's quote "Quantity has a quality of its own" and applied it to his rules. Looking at the various armies in FoW, I notice that a few of them have the company, not the platoon, as the basic unit and that corresponds with armies where radio sets are fewer and far between. A realistic interpretation of command and control? Maybe. It's a game mechanic that works for me. Other games I play and enjoy don't have anything approaching that rule; the designers interpret things differently. Incidentally, Two Fat Lardies WW2 rules often ignore radio operators. In both Chain of Command and I Ain't Been Shot Mum you can field platoons or company command teams without a radio operator figure; they scarcely get a mention in the rules. Is that accurate? It's a design choice they've made.

Thanks, Mark! Great info (and LOL about the Russian TOE's).

3. Usually … at least in terms of authorized strengths … a Soviet Rifle Battalion was as large, or larger, than a German Infantry Battalion. It was also generally larger than western infantry battalions.

This is true, authorized strengths were as large or larger than equivalent Western battalions. But very few Soviet infantry battalions ever reached anywhere near full strength, right from the get-go. This was one of the reasons the "Siberian" divisions were so tough – they'd have 4 months in which to build up to full TOE strength before being shipped West and committed against the Germans.

Command Decision models Soviet battalions as 3 companies of 2 stands (platoons) each, compared to 3 companies of 3 stands each for western battalions. It's a generalization, but not a bad one, IMHO.

Wargames are all accurate based on what the designer wants to focus on; at the same time even the most "accurate" game has to sacrifice some bit of realism just to fit within the context of a wargame.

In the end it depends on what you prefer. That's why I always read designer notes, when available, so I can see if his perspective is similar to mine.

For example, I enjoy playing FoW, but it does have limitations. My mates and I tend to play scenarios so it's ok. OTOH I HATED Squad Leader, for which I will be vilified…but it was not my cup of tea.

I think Spearhead does a good job, although it's a bit more complicated for my tastes today. You may want to also check out Blitzkrieg Commander II…it's the same level of play but plays faster -- if that's a factor.

The Band of Brothers wargame (hex & counter) series utilizes proficiency based system. I played the first (Screaming Eagles), and I think it's both a great game and simulation, albeit ripe with abstraction.

There are two things that the game does right I think.

First, it models proficiency & suppression well. In general, units don't differ all that much, but when conducting difficult task and/or under suppression the gap widens.

Second, I really love the suppression model. You can shoot to suppress, but unless the enemy is waltzing on open ground, you'll *very* rarely reduce/kill a unit. Understandable since once a unit is suppressed it will hunker down. You'll have to suppress them, and then approach and attempt make a close assault (approaching without suppressing *will* cause your unit to get shredded).

The system also cause you to spread your units, less focus fire, and more fire & maneuver.

It's really the best bang for the amount of rules involved (I think the rules are less than 20 pages). I'm itching to use this in sci fi minis game.

I have the second game of the series incoming, about the Ghost Panzers. In this one I heard there are grades of Russian units, depending on the scenario, mainly differentiated by their proficiency value.

This is true, authorized strengths were as large or larger …. But very few Soviet infantry battalions ever reached anywhere near full strength, right from the get-go.

Actually there were several Fronts ("Front" is a Soviet higher level formation, roughly equivalent to a western "Army Group") that reported very high manning strengths compared to their authorized TOEs at the beginning of the war.

It is hard to verify, though, whether the reported strengths were well correlated to actual strengths. In peacetime there was lots of incentive for a commander to report full strength even if his unit was under-staffed. He received less scrutiny if he reported everything the way it "should be", and also received more resources, more food, etc. that way. During wartime it was quite another matter … reporting at full strength when you were well below was dangerous for two reasons: a ) because your superiors did not send you more manpower unless you reported you were under-strength, and manpower was key to the unit's success and survival, and b ) because false reporting was more rigorously investigated and prosecuted.

Still, in the opening weeks of Operation Barbarossa, many Red Army formations should be at or near full strength, at least in manpower. Now, getting the equipment and weapons to fill out the TOEs … that's another question altogether.

Any time after the first few months of the war in the east, Red Army formations should usually be below authorized strength.

This is particularly true for scenarios that are not the opening day of a campaign. The Red Army did not feed replacement troops into units that were engaged in combat operations. The units fought with the manpower they started with, until the operation was concluded or the unit was combat ineffective.

Generally operations were conducted with echelons of forces … those that opened the attack were expected to be rendered useless for offensive operations pretty quickly, and so would transition to defense to hold the positions they had gained while fresh units (the follow-on echelons) moved through them to continue attacking. At the end of the operation, most of the units involved would be replaced by fresh forces, so that they could withdraw for replacements, refitting and retraining.

So any time after the opening day of an operation, the units involved would be understrength. If you fight a hasty defense the Red Army force may well be at only half or one-third strength. Even second or third echelon units jest entering the battle would be under-strength from attrition on approach marches (due to illness as well as various interdiction attacks).

And then … they probably weren't up to full authorized strength to begin with! By late-war (end of 1944 through 1945) infantry divisions were often only at 2/3rds strength or less even at the beginning of offensive operations. TOEs called for Rifle divisions to be about 9K troops but they were more often 5 1/2 to 6K at the start of operations (all IIRC … can chase some sources if anyone is interested).

Any veteran formation in these situations will have a very high ratio of support weapons to riflemen. As with any army, as the troop strength dwindled, there was a lot of priority placed on keeping the heavy weapons in service by whatever troops were left.

One way I like to address this in my wargaming is to build out a full authorized unit (by whatever TOE … for the Red Army you can pretty much choose from the menu!), and then have the commanding players roll a die for each stand, to see if that stand is actually present for the battle. I use different to-make numbers for the support weapons to adjust the ratios.

So for example I might build a full battalion with 3 rifle companies and a support company with 3 platoons (ATGs, HMGs and mortars), but then have each company commander roll 1D10 for each stand in his formation … he needs 5 or less for a rifle stand to actually participate in the game and 8 or less for a support weapon stand to actually participate. Sounds like a lot of work, but its pretty quick if you give each gamer a roster or a pizza box with his forces. Maybe 5 minutes, and they are all done.

This was one of the reasons the "Siberian" divisions were so tough – they'd have 4 months in which to build up to full TOE strength before being shipped West and committed against the Germans.

Actually they had more than 2 years to build up their strength before being shipped west. Most had managed to rebuild to full strength or near full strength after the Khalkhyn Gol (Nomonhan) campaign in 1938/39.

After commanding the campaign in Mongolia, Zhukov was promoted to several national Red Army positions (including chief of staff). He favored the units he had commanded in the east, helping them to obtain more resources (although not the most modern equipment) compared to other regions.

-Mark

Bear in mind that units under-strength is not exclusive to the Reds either. One of the things that strikes me as I am reading through Clash of Titans by Glantz is the constant comments of this division being reduced to 30 tanks or this regiment having barely a half-strength battalion left.

German generals were concerned in late 41 that they were winning themselves to death, as attrition slowly built up.

Mark 1 is on to something I've been pondering for platoon level WW2 games: You start with what you'd theoretically have, then roll for what is actually present.
Of course, a platoon might have picked up some stragglers or extra weapons too.

Squad Leader generally had small numbers of Germans taking on vast hordes of Soviets so it's not just FOW that has a numbers disparity.

If you are doing an Operational level game there should be vast numbers of confused soviets getting surrounded and losing all their tanks to breakdowns trying to move to where the fighting is.

A Tactical level game probably shouldn't have too much of a disparity as the bits you are playing are when the soviets did put up a fight and the germans had the opportunity to concentrate their forces. That said there are times during the desperate days of 41-42 that the soviets did commit large numbers of new troops en mass in a small area, by 43 and later there shouldn't be too much difference.

Many tactical level games such as FOW model the soviets as hordes in order to emphasise the differences between nationalities to provide a more "interesting" game.

From what i see on local fow forums moost of the russian players get used to be wwii skaven (rat hordes in Whfb).there' s still a regular hatred topics on how fow creators are depicting russian troops, but it's still just a game and not Cia plot ;)

>The most "accurate" WW2 game is the one which produces an ultimate Allied victory.

Only if you absolutely reduce WW2 to who has more resources and bodies to burn.

Not much of a game left, as you can only play it on a global level, with resources, industrial and workforce base and diplomacy as a focus – military only come in on a theatre level with perhaps a "comparative efficiency" value. In this factor, the early Russians probably are lower then the Germans.

Wizbang,

Have you tried asking the game designers this question through the official website or maybe contact information in the rules?

One of the issues that you could judge the games is their ability to handle terrain, and model effective frontages of a unit. I have not played FOW but have seen some games and it has not appealed to me. On spearhead the concern would be that it does abstract to a very large extent terrain, it does not use an actual map. From what I recall it does not even use realistic looking maps. This introduces some very serious errors. Its rate of progress looks to be suspect. At games that size the battle will be sufficiently extended that units like companies if actually fighting at company level will need to be replaced probably every 4 hrs. Remember as an guide a Tiger has only about 4 hrs of fuel.

To be fair I am biased as I am a rule writer (MG)and a hater of points systems as they don't work in the variety of real world terrain. All my games are scenario driven and usually are attack defence and bound limited (but not always one evening games). Out largest game ever is at bound 89 (13 hrs in real terms and has had to replace units about 3 times due to attrition).

The other thing to decide is what aspects you want emphasise in the model, political impact of the generals stance, the psychology of the troops, accuracy of troops types and detailed performance of them, random events, weather, or in our case how would you do it when it all goes roughly top plan on a resonable day with a representative but perhaps not very accurate representation of troop types. This has already proved enough to achieve fog of war without recourse to arbitrary rules on such things.

Oh and of course the games rating on the Macomb scale. "No I know the rules are simple but you guys have made simple rules into a 2 paracetamol headache game. I want a game where there are not too many decisions".

wrt the OP, one of the features of Squad Leader was that the basic squads were all fairly similar, what made the difference was leadership. So in 'The Hedgehog of Peipsk' you may have had nine 4-6-7 Germans vs 48 Russian 4-4-7s, but the Russians had a couple of crappy 8-0/7-0 leaders and maybe a 9-1, whereas the Gemans had a bunch of 8-1s, 9-1s and the mighty 9-2 Lt Stahler and his heavy machinegun team in the church tower.

So leaderless Sov hordes wandered like sheep and were mown down like grass before the scythe.

Similarly in SH the basic platoons are similar (although that +1 firepower bonus for the Germans is a HUGE advantage), however Russian battalions change orders on a 5+, whereas the ubermensch do it on a 2+, so once again the mighty Germans dance all over the battlefield crushing the Sovs in detail.

FOW chose to model companies as the basic manouvre units for the Russians, platoons for everyone else. An interesting approach, not dissimilar to that used in Panzerblitz, and of course it means they sell lots of Russian figures.

My personal rule of thumb (subject to much variation) is that a WW2 German infantry battalion has roughly similar combat power to half a Soviet infantry regiment. You can do the maths from that, but it probably means the Sovs are bit shortchanged in FOW.

Love Mark's idea about starting with a full TOE on paper, then rolling for attrition once they're ready to hit the table. It goes a long way toward representing the rift between the Generals in the back office & the reality on the front. Also like the idea of the suppressive fire rolls in the aforementioned Band of Btothers game. As a former grunt, I know how critical it is and how it is part of (at least American) infantry tactical doctrine. I'll have to work on a House rule for that. Regarding the Spearhead demerit for terrain & limited: I have some nice House Rules I picked up from an d issue of Wargames Illustrated that deal with supply (ammo), fuel and getting re supplied/re fueled during a battle.

Nice idea, but it means painting a lot of figures and then only using some of them -- not something that would appeal to many.

I read in one book the Sov's started Barbarossa with their infantry divisions averaging 75% full strength, but they varied between 100% and much, much less than 75%. Similarly, a few tank divisions had 100% strength, all T-34's and KV's in the southern area, and others were at cadre strength with T-26's. One constant was the massive attrition suffered for mechanical breakdown, new tanks and old. I was working on a strategic game where 1 turn equalled a month and the first two turns the Russians rolled for all their tanks, 1 or 2 on d6 means the tank was a complete loss from breakdown and was removed.

I have to admit my group played FOW for few years before rejecting it on the basis that we found the proliferation of "special rules" too gamey for our personal tastes.. for WWII we now use Blitkrieg Commander..

We only play early WWII (up to Gazala) as before that point we find a more equal balance of forces.

One thing I will say about FOW is it did get the relative sizes of units correct. Soviet Battalons were very big. Also, whilst rejecting the special rules I always liked the Soviet wave attack rule… But as a Soviet player I would say that!!!

In my mind you need more Soviets to get a balanced game.. otherwise you are relying too much on blind luck… Which you could argue is kinda the point.

Nice idea, but it means painting a lot of figures and then only using some of them -- not something that would appeal to many.

Also ignores the fact that units going into the attack were usually made up to full strength, sometimes over strength, by stripping rear echelon and reserves. At the tactical level, under strength sub units would be consolidated to form full strength ones.

Also ignores the fact that units going into the attack were usually made up to full strength, sometimes over strength, by stripping rear echelon and reserves. At the tactical level, under strength sub units would be consolidated to form full strength ones.

Also ignores much of what has been described in this thread to-date.

Yes, units earmarked for offensive operations were rebuilt and refitted … to some extent. But in the late war period Red Army divisions were operating at 2/3rds strength at the start of offensive operations …

AND Red Army divisions had much smaller trails than western divisions to begin with …

A US Infantry Division might have had half it's strength in rear echelon roles … a German Wehrmacht Division might have had 1/3rd of it's manpower in rear echelon roles, but a Red Army Rifle division, even at FULL strength, never had more than 20% of it's manpower in rear echelon roles.

Now cut the manpower of that division by 1/3rd, and it is highly unlikely that the remaining "frontoviks" could even get off the start-line if the division raided its rear echelons to fill out the rifle squads. Who would be left to provide the food and ammo your riflemen were supposed to stockpile before they marched off?

In the Red Army, at least, rear echelon troops were rarely available to fill out combat roles. Rather, additional units would be moved into position. So rather than having 4 full strength divisions going in to the attack, you'd have 6 or 8 under-strength divisions (which would most likely be echeloned into two or three waves on a 2 division wide frontage).

This process is pretty well documented for late-war campaigns in the Red Army materials that have become available since the early 1990s.

It was intensely confusing to German military intelligence, which tended to vastly over-estimate the number of Soviet troops in most campaigns throughout the war. They counted up how many divisions were identified to get their estimates, with no ability to judge the manpower state of each division. This is one reason that most German post-war accounts describe being so badly out-numbered, when Soviet troop-strength returns do not demonstrate how such an advantage could possibly have been achieved.

Or so I have read.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Flames of War is not really a historical game.

It's a game of stereotypes – Soviet hordes, skillful Germans, average Americans, dubious quality Italians, gritty Brits, fanatical Japanese and all associated gimmicks needed to support these stereotypes.

Bare in mind this is a game whereby a small infatry company is "supported" by up to a dozen or even two dozen tanks, and anywhere up to a battalion of artillery which are located within stone's throw of infantry as opposed to many kilometres behind front lines.

People talk of speartip – but I don't see a "speartip" being two small platoons of infantry supported by armoured platoons from anywhere up to 3-4 different regiments/batallions (tanks, assault guns etc) with a dozen artillery pieces following some 20 metres behind the infantry.

Hence any talk of historical accuracy goes out the door.

Bear in mind that much of the above post is about list choices made by players in Flames of War.

There's nothing that requires a player to take only two infantry platoons, and then support it with an overload of support elements and tanks. It's just what some tournament focused players do when playing in that format. You'll note that you can run actually OOB or MTOE type forces, even when using "points" to your heart's content in FoW and you are perfectly free to design scenarios that are not based on "equal points." As with any game system it's all about what you want to get out of it!

The beauty of FoW, from my perspective, is that it has such a robust tournament following but is still perfectly usable for solid scenario based gaming. FoW has built a large player base in my area where little historical wargaming previously occured. This created a respectable pool of players that are conversant in a common rules system. Though most are honestly focused on the tournament format primarily, they have been more than willing to also jump in on many historical OOB based campaigns and scenarios we have run.

Just this past weekend one of our local guys ran a Ypres WW1 scenario four player game using FoW base rules and 6mm figs. If it were not for FoW's local popularity and common understanding of the base mechanics, I don't think that game would have ever occurred. WW1? 6mm? Pre-set forces in a scenario? Three out of those four players would likely not have showed up if the common thread of "FoW" was missing from the equation.

You can really do just about do whatever it is you want to do in your wargaming with any sets of rules. If you are comfortable with just playing with a couple of the same folks for the majority of your wargaming life, then all you need to do is get those few folks to agree on whatever set "works" for you all. But if you're interested in really expanding and developing your local historical wargaming sceeen in to a "Community," then FoW has a lot of advantages that other alternatives just don't seem to be able to generate.

Good Gaming, VB