"Classic battles that don't 'work' as wargames - and why" Topic

This thread was inspired by a diversion on another board, in which we discussed if / how a certain 'must- play' battle could be satisfactorily gamed. I don't want to re-hash that whole debate here, but suffice to say I think it is hard to play some 'classic' battles as traditional wargames for various reasons.

Maybe the way to 'win' is so blatantly obvious to one side that the game is ruined from the start – or you have to put so many artifical restrictions in place to prevent the player(s) doing the obvious thing, that it becomes a replay, rather than a wargame.

Perhaps the 'classic' action really doesn't involve a whole lot of thinking and tactics, but rather just sees large numbers of troops tying to storm forwards (I am thinking of any number of classic 'last stand' type actions here).

Anyway, what 'must play' / 'classic' historical actions have you found to be a let down when wargamed / or found it difficult to turn into a traditional wargame? And, more importantly, why and how did you try to over come this?

Any classic Ambush or other scenario heavily dependent on fog of war can be very difficult to put on the table top. We as players know so much more than our historical counterparts. We know how many troops the enemy has available and where they are, even if they are out of line of sight. As soon as figures hit the table we know there is going to be a dust up.

One really common problem is gamers knowing the battle so well – like Gettysburg or Chancellorsville – that a "surprise" is impossible. They can tell you exactly where, when, and in what strength the enemy waits…

Disguise is one option: play Chancellorsville but use SYW rules/figures.

Leuthen and Rossbach are both pretty hard to game without concealed forces or something else that avoids letting the gentlemen of the opposition know what is going on

Personally I'm quite happy with a replay rather than a competitive game. As long as the players have something interesting to do. 'Victory' is in the victory conditions.

The 1967 War in Sinai is a no-win situation for the Egyptians as the IDF are just so good. However, I gave them three objectives:
1) set up in a standard Warpac deep defence (guidelines provided)
2) conduct at least one armoured counterattack (it doesn't matter if it is successful)
3) destroy a single IDF unit

I ran this a few times, and from being victims/targets for the mighty IDF tank force, the Egyptians appeared to quite enjoy themselves. The whoops of joy if/when they did actually manage to catch one overextended IDF unit were something to behold.

I once ran an Antietam game as English Civil War. I didn't tell the participants that it was Antietam, I merely told them that troops would be arriving at various times and places. It was about 3/4 of the way through the game that someone figured out why the field looked so familiar, but by that point AP Hill had already arrived.

Running Antietam as a straight up ACW is really hard without piles of restrictions on the Union side.

Austerlitz is a the top of this list.

I think this is a pretty common problem for any historical scenario that isn't a set-piece game or a situation where the advanced intel doesn't really change the choices the players have. I've never the tried the 'transpose the battle to a different place/time' but I think that's a really good idea. Altering the victory conditions also seems like a good bet in a lot of situations.

-Will

John the Greater & Extra Crispy, that is a neat way of doing it. Good idea :)

Cannae.

Chalfant

I really like the "disguise" idea too, I've been thinking about it as a project when I get a bunch of other projects done and have the figures available – e.g. Waterloo as a SYW-in-India fight, fantasy fight, ACW fight, ECW/TYW fight, etc. Maybe even use the terrain for WWII microarmour.

Some great ideas, so far.

Which battles did you really look forward to playing, but which turned out to be a let down on the table top?

I've been in some AWI and War of 1812 battles that have bogged down because of the heavy woods. Probably not a problem if they had been two player games, but these were multi-player games and depending on your command, you could have ended up with little to do.

As a scenario planner, one should put great effort into matching the battle with the players. If you need a crazy dumb attack to replicate an action of the battle, give it to "Kill Cavalry Bob" who want to just "charge stuff!" If you need a totally defensive posture, just that command to the meekest player you know. And if you need total inaction from a certain formation, give the command to your wife, who will promptly say nothing and go start making dinner!
With this, you can recreate any battle, even the most well known.

One really common problem is gamers knowing the battle so well – like Gettysburg or Chancellorsville – that a "surprise" is impossible. They can tell you exactly where, when, and in what strength the enemy waits…

Ran historic Chancellorsville and even warned the Union that CSA troops could possibly manuver "off board" and arrive on the flank. The Union right flank commander (XI Corp) pretty much ignored the threat as believing the Confederates would not attempt to do what they historically did. When Jacksons troops came on the board on his flank he was actually stunned as he had pushed his line forward to find the enemy and was quickly crushed!

Running Antietam as a straight up ACW is really hard without piles of restrictions on the Union side.

Actually I have run Antietam more than any other ACW battle and the CSA has gotten a win or at least a draw 40% of the time without any artifical restrictions. Several of the games even had the Union players get LESS men in the fight then McClellan did!

Over the years I have run ACW games I have found that even game players make the same boneheaded mistakes on the gameboard that real life commanders made on the battlefield. Some even worse!

I have never seen any battle that could not be recreated if you put game players with known temperments or tendencies in specific commands and watch them muck it up.

Kim

The problem with the 'match the players to the role' answer is that if you are running a convention game, or just a casual game with whomever shows up, you have zero control over who your players are. So it only works if you have a set group of players, know them well and never have any of them surprise you.

-Will

It doesn't work even if you have a set group of players. They'll just do what they want anyway.

Agincourt is unplayable as a wargame.

For a long time Greg Novak and Frank Chadwick ran battles in disguise. The most prevalent one was Quatre Bras as a ACW battle.

A friend of mine did Gettysburg as a Napoleonic battle. I had a "great time" trying to advance my infantry against the "Union" cavalry…..

Agincourt is unplayable as a wargame.

Um … no:
link

I've played Austerlitz three times at the Wargame Holiday Centre in the UK and Peter Gilder's scenario works like a charm.

I use the disguised scenarios gambit frequently, using Waterloo, Gettysburg, and Austerlitz in SYW games.

I've run the Battle of Kolin about six times now and I still have problems with the greater number of Austrians compared to the Prussians. The Austrian players always want to come charging down from the heights to swarm over the Prussians. The next time that I try to do Kolin, I will stick solely to the battle around the Krechor Hill and the Oak Wood.

but by that point AP Hill had already arrived.

Hahhahah that's pretty great.

I've run fantasy and sci-fi games that were based on historical battles, but I hadn't thought about historical battles disguised as other historical battles. Great idea.

It also helps if your group is made up largely of "regular folks" who are thus totally uneducated about military history. It's really easy for them to fall into historical/hysterical mistakes. :)

I have done historical battles by inverting the battlefield. Example Waterloo. Place Hugomont on the French right, La Haye Sainte on the French right side of central roadway etc…. The Prussians arrive on the French left…. remember to change the divisional formation starting positions to match the inverse setup. Rename the terrain if required…. (I used Victormont for Hugomont). Rarely can the typical gamer even guess the battle if non-histocial commander names are used (but have the same characteristics of the real person).

Another twist…. Had the Prussians holding the ridge and the Anglo-allied army arrive on the French flank.

Simply take the map of the battle, flip the page over and shine a light from the reverse side. Draw your terrain map how the image shows though the map.

M aka WR

Not quite on topic, but picking up darthfozzywig's point on 'regular folk', I have very fond memories of an 1885 Sudan game when, at the first sight of the Dervish horde, the call went up to "form square!"

John, a regular Napoleonics player in his first colonial game, really didn't understand why his question "why, do they have cavalry?" was met with so much ribald laughter.

To answer the OP, Hastings 1066 can be a less than exciting experience, given the limited tactical options available to both sides – and GreenLeader and I have already discussed Isandlwana at 'the other place'!

To answer the OP, Hastings 1066 can be a less than exciting experience, given the limited tactical options available to both sides

Hastings using DBA3.0 seems to work fine according to Bobgnar:
TMP link

Ran Agincourt as a 5 player game (1 English, 4 French) each player had a different set of victory conditions and were not allowed to support each other. Was a great game, with the English only just losing (actually finishing 2nd) on the last turn

Ian

For what it is worth, I once worked on designing a senario for Fire and Fury. It was the battle of Franklin TN. I did a lot of reaserch to try to get the best OBs, the best maps available, the best descriptions of the locations of the different units, etc. I also visited the battlefield (what's left of it – not very much). After I had finished it, Rich and I tested it out. The battle played out almost exactly as the original battle. The only real difference was the number of Generals killed. Rich judged that the Rebs really could not do anything different than the original plan and did not stand a chance of "winning" so he didn't include it in his Western Scenario book. That outcome usually never happens in a game, but on that occasion it did. We did test it out a couple of times with different players and got similar results. It helps that this battle is pretty much a set piece battle. So sometimes you do get the same result. I like the idea of using on period's battles with another periods troops. I've seen it done a few times and it was always enjoyable. I wonder what result you would get using Napoleonic or 18th century armies at the battle of Franklin?

Which battles did you really look forward to playing, but which turned out to be a let down on the table top?

Normandy invasion. Got murdered by my reserve rolls, just couldn't get any troops onto the table, or only had one platoon arrive, which promptly got blown to hell because they were the only thing to shoot at.

Got murdered by my reserve rolls, just couldn't get any troops onto the table, or only had one platoon arrive, which promptly got blown to hell because they were the only thing to shoot at.

Ah … the fickle hand of chance. Excellent example of when cards should have been used rather than dice …

Ah … the fickle hand of chance. Excellent example of when cards should have been used rather than dice.

Besides 'too much information', the rules themselves can make the battle unplayable. Austerlitz is a good example. Many rules simply don't allow the movement actually achieved by both sides in what was a maneuver battle over a larger than typical battle area. [An 6+mile front as opposed to a 3 mile or less at Borodino and Waterloo].

Then again, playing a game of Antietam where the Union is hamstrung by a "McClellan rule" might make for a good game, but realistically, anyone in McClellan's place probably wouldn't have done what he did…or didn't. Mistakes that make a game 'playable' are often hard to recreate in a competetive game form.

i ran a post-Balaclava game in the Crimean war which – at a lower level – was Gettysburg. The Russians held the Fishhook and the allies ( Rebs) were attacking. The allies refused the suicidal charge and eventually assailed the flanks . Eventually some wag figured it out

some very good ideas

We did have a "attack at all costs" player and another that was very defensive. They were fun to give orders that either fitted or completely went against their personalties as Auld Minister suggests.
Unfortunately, both have drifted off and the current players are a bit harder to put things over on, esoecially as one is a military history lecturer!

nashville? I was going to run my crimean war battle as a mirror image of gettysburg with the Russians in the fish hook and the british/french/turks assaulting at Nashcon2015, i was thinking to myself hah' nobody would have thought of that idea. my balloon has been deflated…….. ; (

I was watching the Military History Channel (contact your local Comcast sales contractor) last night, and the Battle off Samar from Leyte Gulf pretty much fits the bill.
Kurita has to be … drunk to lose.

Straight frontal assaults of fortified positions can be very dull. Two examples are The Alma (Crimean War), and, less famously, the Prussian assault on the Danish redoubts at Dybbol / Dueppel in 1864. In both cases I found that drawing the frame of the game wider helped.

For The Alma, I extended the map to the east and gave the Russians the option of setting up as a flank threat rather than a blocking position. This was mirrored by the Allies having to choose whether to be aggressive or cautious, producing a matrix of four possible situations with different scenario lengths and objectives. The Russian army is always going to be a speed bump, but victory conditions revolve around how quickly the Allies can take objectives.

‌CRI2 Crimean War The Alma map by bbbchrisp, on Flickr

For Dybbol, I stretched the scenario to three "days" – actually more like 4 months – and included the preliminary outpost skirmishes, and the subsequent invasion of the island of Als. Again, the Danes are bound to be squashed eventually, but if they can delay the Prussians long enough they are deemed to have held on until other powers intervene to save them.

‌SSW Schleswig war Dybbol Als map by bbbchrisp, on Flickr

I was really pleased with both of these. They're in my newly published "Bloody Big EUROPEAN BATTLES!" scenario book
(BBEB) that accompanies the "Bloody Big BATTLES!" rules (BBB).

BBB is in press and taking orders from dealers now and will be launched at Fall In in November. To keep informed of availability, join the BBB Yahoo Group
skirmishcampaigns.com
or monitor the SkirmishCampaigns website:
link
Vendors who carry SkirmishCampaigns books will have BBB products:
link

Chris

We did have a "attack at all costs" player and another that was very defensive. They were fun to give orders that either fitted or completely went against their personalties as Auld Minister suggests.
Unfortunately, both have drifted off and the current players are a bit harder to put things over on, esoecially as one is a military history lecturer!

When you have a practicing military historian, you need to look for battles outside his favorite period to flog. Like how David Drake went to some serious historical backwater for Paying the Piper.

Though to be honest, I kinda like the Northwest Frontier. Sure, chances are someone's seen the ground already, but that's true for many of the historical operations, too!

And I can either drag pre-1900 operations up to today, or vice versa!

Since others have weighed in with examples that are not 18th or 19th century, I'll post this.

My Operation Dingo scenario, from the Rhodesian Bush War, was written as a way to refight a historical scenario that is pretty much unplayable as a conventional competative game. I run it as a multi-player co-op game with each player running a single stick of Rhodesian SAS. The insurgents are placed and moved via random rolls. The players are competing to see who racks up the most points by killing bad guys, neutralizing AAA positions, and clearing buildings. It makes a playable, and fun, scenario out of what would otherwise just an exercise in target practice for one side.

I've run it several times at conventions now, with two seperate rules sets, and it's always been well recieved.

Martin

To return to the OP – it would appear all of them. Battles are often decided before the actual deployment: the winning general has often got the ground he wanted. We tend to give win conditions that are just the losing side not doing as badly.

Out of period, many years ago, fought the Zulu War 1879 as Romans vs Celts.
Usually, when playing an historical wargame, victory is not a simple win, but which side did better than their historical counterpart. Or create a set of victory conditions.