I was reading of a small engagement in the Boer War. A small party of Light Horse took up hidden positions on a low kopjie and waited until a group of Boers were well within range, then opened up on them. This emptied a few saddles and sent the republicans scurrying back from whence they came.
Nothing particularly interesting in that, but it got me thinking how such an engagement would play out on wargames table.
Why did the commander of the Imperial troops wait until the Boers were well within range before opening fire? Basically, I would suggest, because he wanted the first few shots to be as effective as possible as, the moment as they were fired at, the Boers would either dismount and take up positions in cover to return fire, or else gap it, galloping away as fast as they could. Either way, the window of having an 'easy' target was small.
If he had opened fire at longer range / as soon as the Boers came into view, they would probably have gone to ground without loss, and would not have been at risk of being pinned down in effective range – meaning that they would have had a much greater chance to return fire while some of their number worked their way round the flank of the Imperial patrol. Or they could have just disengaged from the ambush with ease and retreated.
So the reaction of the commander was logical enough.
But how would the engagement have played out in most wargames? Would many rules have encouraged the British player to hold his fire in such a fashion? Do our rules give big enough variations in the chances of doing execution to a mounted patrol caught by surprise versus men that have jumped off their horses and gone prone behind cover? I don't know statistics for this, but I assume the chance of killing a man in the former situation might be as much as 50 times as likely as in the latter.
Instead, in most wargames I have played, the British player would have opened fire as soon as he could (at a low-ish chance to hit) and kept firing as the Boers approached, assuming they did (chances to hit getting higher each turn as the range shortened). Again, faced with such rules, the player is also acting logically.
This 'failing' in many of our rule sets is not, I would suggest, just pertinent in small skirmishes like the one I mentioned – reports from many battles of the period stress the importance of letting the attacking forces get close before opening up on them, even when surprise was not a factor: presumably (in such cases against a 'savage foe') the first couple of volleys were much more ordered and thus devastating that those that came thereafter?* Are there any rules out there that handle this well?
*Omdurman provides an interesting exception: from memory, some British units opened up on the onrushing Fuzzie-Wuzzies at a mile.
experiments to find a better way to mount aircraft for wargaming.
