"Troop ratings (in ELAN)" Topic

As this has come up in this thread
TMP link
I thought I'd answer it in a fresh thread & maybe it'll broaden itself to be a general discussion on ratings in wargames' rules.

As a preliminary, I will state I'm NOT saying that my preferred rules, ELAN, are in anyway a "super" set or superior to all others. Indeed, they're a little hoary in places & have a few anomalies. I do love them though.

To start, there are 6 classes. Class 6 are French & English Guards, Class 5 Crack veterans, Class 4 Elite Troops, Class 3 Veterans, Class 2 Trained, Class 1 Militia & levies.

Although I can hear teeth gnashing already, the system can be tweaked to mirror your prejudices & we do.

The interesting thing about it are the differences are subtle & not necessarily battle winning. And the cost of the superior troops do keep things in proportion (most games have mostly 2/1s). For example French Guard must purchase a general of brigade for each regiment. This is expensive.

One of the things I like are that Crack Veterans actually have some superior qualities to those above & below them eg because it's envisaged they are more combat experienced, they have slightly better morale. They're "hard" & they know it.
Your "crummy" Class 2 troops are perfectly acceptable as long as you know the foibles of the class: anchor flanks, provide rear support & keep in command radius etc. Things a good general should attend to anyway.

The rules contain extensive army lists were every unit is assigned a suggested class although the writer invites you to change these according to the date, the battle & your understanding. Young Guard in 1815 are awarded Class 4 Elite status for example. They're formidable but can be brittle if pressured too much.

As a way of tweaking I give a bonus/minus to units 1 point at a time for superior accomplishment or cowardly act (usually just exceptionally bad dice rolls). So generally it takes a couple of changes to mean something. I like not having every unit equal.

Hello ochoin!

Well the first thing is I don't think that the men of the period thought they had 6 classes of troops. So why have them in a game? At best I think they only had about 3, good/crack, regulars and poor. Guards, Elites, Crack and Veterans are pretty hard to separate as they are vary often used interchangeably. Rule systems that separate these do this under their own definition that are often divorced from the real military world. See your problem with the Austrian Grenadiers and trying to make them fit into this kind of system. There are lots of others you have just not found them all yet.

Okay so now your living with these 6 different classes and although you say there not winning differences they have to be otherwise there is no point. I realize that in some systems they are not very big, but they are still generally there and do make a difference. The bottom line is your saying that 6 is 6 times better then 1 and so on. This creates super troops which is okay if you want those kind of troops in your game system. A lot of players think the FG and BG are super troops so it fits.

I used a multi system for about 20 years before all the cracks got too big to justify. It's all about what you want or expect out of a game. If 6 levels does it for you great.

Best regards,

Glenn

The bottom line is your saying that 6 is 6 times better then 1

Hi, Glenn. Well I didn't say that & I wouldn't.

You are, of course correct in saying any artificial "class" system is far from having a formal presence on the battlefield of the time. I think such systems are used by game designers to create the frisson needed for a game but do have a tangible existence in history.

Specifically, the gamer in order to win must maximise the troops potential & cover weaknesses.

Now that's not to say all troops were equal but there were so many variables that to have a playable game you need to simplify: 6 troop classifications.I do think you need some troop classification system but 3-4-5 or even 6: it's up to the flavour of your rules.

you say there not winning differences they have to be otherwise there is no point

I did write that but I apologise for expressing myself badly. What I meant was French Imperial Guard would not automatically defeat Landwehr. In ELAN, they have an edge in manoeuvre & shooting & morale. This class 6 vs class 1 edge can be (& has in our games) been overturned by luck (dice) but also by clever tactics. Just as in history it sometimes happened.

I realise simple rules are the current flavour but I still prefer my slightly cumbersome & definitely old fashioned ELAN.
I am not preaching to convert anyone. I just really enjoy Napoleonic gaming above all other genres.

I think there was a world of difference between the Old Guard battalions at Plancenoit and the Prussian Landwehr that faced them and I dont think a simple 3 grades – soft, medium & hard – will represent the situation, as I explained in the Austrian Grenadiers thread.

I respect Glenn's point of view but I fundamentally dont agree with it.

This is a broad hobby – whatever floats your boat is right for you. And I might add, that will change over time.

The question is: Why do you have 4 classes better than normal and only 1 class worse?

I think the most usual system (and used by most rules) is:

A Elite (Old Guard, and i dont see british Guard here)
B Veteran (Heavy Cav., Grenadiers etc.)
C Line / Normal
D Low Line (Netherland Line)
E Militia (Landwehr)

Hello nsolomon99!

Thanks for your kind words.

Odd you should mention the OG and Plancenoit as it's that very situation that is constantly in the back of my mind.
That should not be a problem as even in a 3 tier system there can be a big difference between soft and hard. You also have to keep in mind that the OG was in a really great defensive position which is added to them during the game.

The real question to consider is how well would they have done in an open field against the Landwehr.

I came into a multi tier system some 40 years ago. It was a very long road for me and my group of well seasoned players to fully understand that there was another option that seemed to be a better reflection of the military reality that we were trying to portray.

Best regards,

Glenn

I prefer four classes, green regular veteran elite, but even that really isn't granular enough to cover the entire Napoleonic period. There should be a difference between 1813 landwehr and 1814 "Marie Louises", and there should be a difference between 1805 1st Grenadiers a'Pied and the Ssemenovski Reg't.
Perhaps on option would be to make the quality time and enemy-dependant. thus you would have pairings of France and her enemies and units would have different quality based on the nationality of their enemy & possibly the year. Then three classes would make more sense.

The question is: Why do you have 4 classes better than normal and only 1 class worse?

No, 2 worse, 3 better (& one of those, Class 6, is only for a very limited range of troops).

And anyway, usually most of your army is Class 2 & Class 3 (ie average & below).

When I re-wrote my version of Elan – Pro Patria – I specifically dropped the classes of troops down to 5 as I didn't believe the British and Old Guard should be in a separate category. Also the problem, as I saw it, with the class 4 troops was that you paid more and they weren't as good as the Class 3 in most circumstances which was a leftover from the WRG rules. Looking a the gradings of the 6 classes the increase in quality was not not matched by the increase in price and not an equitable rise in points v quality. I also changed a bunch of other stuff such as fighting in towns and woods among other things with some veteran players to fix a few things that needed it. It worked pretty well but the Sydney & Canberra scene dropped playing Elan and went to Shako. I was pretty happy with the multi layered system and still quite like the smaller 12-16 figure units with casualty removal though. Seems to be very much out of vogue these days though.

YOU wrote Pro Patria? Well done.
Our version of ELAN has an amount of 'tweaks', several pinched from your rules. Many thanks.

A small group of us in Brisvegas still use ELAN.

Thanks Ochoin. I did so as I believed the core essence of the rules did make for a game I liked while Elan needed some changes which the author wasn't going to make. Besides he'd 'retired' from the hobby and I had not and I used a draft copy I was given by the author when I wrote an ACW variant (Days of Glory). I didn't like the 6 classes, thought the wording was repetitive and convoluted and there were some other areas needing tightening up or even replacing such as the urban area fighting,the telescoping time and the reference sheets plus a bunch of other stuff.

I changed the name as they were different to how Elan was written but in essence they are pretty much the same game. Although Elan was really taking core mechanisms from Empire and putting them into WRG and I don't believe you can really claim much IP for that. A name change though – yes.

Regardless I did believe, and still do, it made for a good game particularly for those with WRG based armies.

I still like casualty removal as it shrinks the frontage of you line and causes gaps that need filling.

I like 12-16 figure battalions as it is cheaper and you can play on a 6 x 4 table and have room to manoeuvre.

It is an old fashioned game though. But maybe what is old will become new again. :)

ELAN's moderately complex but not unplayable. The trend at the moment is, of course, for simpler rules.

It's not that, over the years, I hadn't tried other rule sets but I decided if ELAN gives a good game, why change.

BTW Waterloo with 1800 figures in 2 easy days with 4 of us playing (we could have done it in one but kept talking to the punters):

link

Class 6 are French & English Guards, Class 5 Crack veterans, Class 4 Elite Troops, Class 3 Veterans, Class 2 Trained, Class 1 Militia & levies.

I think that I'd be asking a few questions about the classes, knowing that a designer has to give names to the various grades or skill levels of the units.

1. Would division and/or corps commanders [the Elan level of the players] be thinking of battalions or even brigades in such terms/abilities during a battle?

2. What is the basis for the various abilities/disabilities of each grade?

3. Do those distinctions make any difference in play, particularly player decisions? A. If they are throwing in a Crack Veteran because they know it is better than the Elite opposing them, is that really a distinction real officers made at that command level, and B. if there were only three distictions, would Elan play the same?

Those are just questions that come to mind, rather than suggesting I know the answers…

I don't know about British, Austrians, Prussians, etc. And I have never player ELAN.
But for Russians and French in the era, they saw generally 4 classes of troops, as follows ….

For Russians :
- UNTRAINED :Temporary Irregular and Militia (would also apply to 4th reserve/recruit battalions if these ever entered combat), a freshly-raised Army unit that was not (as was usual) mostly composed of drafts from other units
- NORMAL : Army regulars, Don Cosack and Native cavalry permanent units, most special volunteer units
- SELECTED : Grenadiers (of any kind) + Cuirassiers (selected recruits, special equipment, selected horses) + Guard light infantry (until 1814) + Ataman's Own Don Cossacks + maybe Army jäger that were in 1814 selected as "Grenadier-Jäger" + probably marines + artillery
- DOUBLE-SELECTED GUARDS

For French :
- RÉSERVE : departmental troops, miquelots, compangnies francs, battalions de march
- REGULAR : Army regulars and young guards *
- ÉLITE : Middle guards + cuirassiers and carabiniers à cheval + various specially raised units (example : tirailleurs de Po) + grenadiers de la réserve (dit "d'Oudinot") + maybe certain very well-regarded Army units (example : 9e légère) + gendarmes + artillery
- OLD GUARD

* The idea was that selected conscription + guards officers + good equipment and supplies would give otherwise newly raised regiments that same quality as more veteran army troops

Now, there are always some exceptions to the general classifcations, or units that are arguably not of the obvious class. Examples ….
- 1st "Mechanics" or "Philistines" Cohort of the the Saint-Petersburg militia : actually composed of middle-class volunteers, including many foreigners, with a training cadre of marines, selected officers and excellent equipment – entered combat after some months' training and likely was as good as an Army unit.
- the strange case of the 17th and 18th Cohorts of the Saint-Petersburg militia : composed of hunters, forresters and Native (ethnic Finns and Permiac people) forest-dwellers from Olonets and Vologda regions and armed largely with new and good quality military rifles (*not* their own hunting rifles) : they could not really form or drill, but were all excellet marksmen and were of excellent morale and effectiveness when allowed to lie down or take cover and engage the French as snipers.
- Russian Life-Grenadiers ("the first unit of the Army" – until later taken into the Guards) and French carabiniers à cheval ("the first unit of the French cavalry") and gendarmes : might really be better than "class 3" and likely thought of themselves as equal to (Old) Guards ….with regard to the gendarmes, it is worth noting that the guards "gendarmes d'élite" were not so much the "best" of the gendarmes, but more a collection of drafts from the regular departmental légions (especialy the Paris légion).
- French régiments provisoires : could be composed of battalions/squadrons made of up trained regulars and pretty much the same as regular units after a couple of months of working together, but could also be composed of drafts of rather raw recruits and as such likley no better than battalions de march.
- and so on.

- Sasha

@ MacLaddie

1. Yes. But keeping in mind a commander uses the troops he has at hand. It's no good wishing you had that crack battalion of Old Guard to fill the gap in your line: they're too far away. Throw in the brigade of 'Marie Louises' & cross your fingers. Man! this is what wargaming is about.

2. Historical. The rules come with a fairly detailed breakdown of armies according to year & even, in some cases, individual units (eg the "terrible" 57th d'Ligne).
This is all according to the author's bias of course but he freely tells you to change anything you like according to your bias (or "understanding" if you prefer).

3. Yes. These distinctions can make a difference, modified according to the luck of the die. I don't think they conform to the rigid system as outlined by Alexandre (above)but mirror the brigade commanders' knowledge of the troops under his command.

In essence, they transcend rigid division into a mere 3 classes.

Play the game & see.

You guys do know that the "simple" Flames of War rules actually have 9 different possible categories of troops, right?

You have Reluctant/Confident/Fearless morale categories and Conscript/Trained/Veteran training categories, which gives you nine different possible combinations.

So fresh levies of troops could be Reluctant Conscripts (like the crews of the Sturmtigers in the Warsaw Uprising), crack divisions are Fearless veteran (say, paratroopers), over-aggressive troops are Fearless Trained (like the 442nd RCT, not taking as much cover as they should but pressing on regardless) and troops that have just flat seen too much combat are Reluctant Veteran (like 7th Armoured Division in Normandy, though they do get a re-roll to unpin if they've not been fired at in the last turn which makes them a little bit better than Confident Veterans).

And I kinda prefer having morale separate from training/experience, to tell you the truth, and I like using words to indicate those levels because the words are easier to remember.

I've always found the 'bottom end' more troublesome than the 'top end', particularly for the Peninsular War – there seems to be a need to cover at least three bases of average and below:

A 'regular' French infantry unit (extant for more than 18 months, typically having missed the 1805-7 campaigns by being in garrison).

French 'Reserve Legions' or 'Provisional Battalions' – and one could even argue that they should be differentiated. (with about 6-12 months experience by the time hostilities broke out)

Newly-raised Spanish infantry units (i.e. experience level measured in weeks from the establishment of the various regional Juntas in May 1808).

And bear in mind that the French Old Guard Grenadiers arrive in the theatre later in the same year!