"Putting Your Tactical Cart Before The Historical Horse" Topic

As a historical gaming community we often speak of historical accuracy or realistic mechanics in our games. Some folks pride themselves on the standard of authenticity that is apparent in real tactics rewarded etc.

I've been running a WWII PBeM with two TMPers and its been a lot of fun (for me at least). The game is basically a Platoon plus support skirmish game of the excellent TFL's Chain of Command WWII (using a campaign of their own.)

I was really interested how the system would work with this unusual dynamic and I have to say its actually been amazingly enjoyable to watch played out.

For those not familiar with the game:

It has an activation process that is based on certain die values allow certain unit types or leaders to activate ie a roll of a 1 allows a weapons team to activate while a single roll of 3 would enable a NCO to activate his squad or section etc. Each force is allowed a certain amount of these activation dice each phase and so the player must decide which units to allocate these dice.

Now I love these rules. They have given me some of the best "feelings" of something historically authentic taking place.

An Example of "real" tactics being rewarded would be
just before Christmas late last year when I had a pal over. He had played various wargames in the past and was looking forward to trying out this game that I had praised so highly.

Since the guy's busy life doesn't allow him to play a lot of games and he was determined to be the American Airborne attacker I decided (unknown to him)to give him some extra advantages over what the scenario recommended (higher morale/troop quality, extra support etc) I wanted him to do well and to give me a challenging game

So as he advanced his troops he began to get a little frustrated that his deployed troops didn't have a lot of targets. (in fact he had none)

US advancing through the town with no enemy in sight

My tactic of course was to delay deployment and not commit my force too early as he had a big advantage in firepower (he had 2 Sherman's and 2 bazooka's available while I had a single Stug and a couple of single shot Panzerfausts.

He also would need to pass through a relatively coverless plaza where I thought I would have a larger amount of firepower to bring down of him with wide fire lanes rather than entering into a firefight in some narrow protective alley

Narrow Streets providing cover

So as the US Sherman slowly moved forward scanning for non-existent targets I received an amazing roll of 3x3's and 2x6's that meant I would have two phases in a row while in my first deploying my Stug and immediately fire on the Sherman while simultaneously deploying 2 of my infantry squads bringing fire on the enemy and being guaranteed the next phase

So I launched into this surprise attack

By the end of my 2 phases the leading Sherman lay in the middle of the street as a burning wreck and a US squad was routed. My proud smug look probably guaranteeing never to see my friend again :)

Now this very rewarding moment was the result of sound military tactics or a nice mix of pure luck and gamesy know-how!

This feeling has been highlighted with my recent Play By Email Games.

First I need to give you an idea of how we're playing it: So the players are giving very general list of orders and plus provisional orders and the priority of those orders.
It's my role to fit those orders with the actual dice rolled.

The players have no idea where their enemies JOP's are (they will once this AAR is posted) nor where the enemy is unless they are in clear line of sight or if they have opened fire and even then they don't know what size or quality the enemy is.
How those actual military orders and provisional orders are interpreted, implemented and executed by the rules are at times pretty cool. But the important aspect is that the players are giving orders as commanders making tactical plans; not dictated to by the roll of a die.

Again I'd use an example from the PBeM game:

British squad taking cover behind a burnt out halftrack are under fire from a MG42 in a farmhouse window above.

Due to a combination of some bad rolls and some covering fire from the British Bren the MG42 cannot be activate.
The British rifle team are ordered to move across the road.

They make it across. Now unknown to the British player the German player receives 3 phases in a row. He's able to unpin his troops move them to the window set overwatch, deploy another squad and set them in overwatch. The hapless British player then gives orders to the squad to move around the building.

And are absolutely massacred

Now there's no way the British player would have moved into that situation if he's seen the die rolls of the German player

Chain of Command is one of the most excellent and realistic "feeling" systems I've played. But I've never seen anything like this realism until I've played with two commanders who are "blind" as "blind" as there true real life counterparts.
Is this kind of "Fog of War" available without an umpire?
Are we all kidding ourselves that any rule system can truly simulate anything resembling real warfare?

To answer your last question first: Yes

As for "Fog of War": You can do it with hidden dice rolls and using another TFL device "blinds". You can also use "orders". In the example above you could order the squad to cross the road and if the situation hasn't changed (they got shot-up crossing the road, stepped on a land mine, spotted the enemy, etc) they would round the corner of the building and do whatever you wanted them to do.

In either case you need players who are trustworthy and willing to walk into a hail of bullets because the move was planned and they can't "really" see the mg positioned in the window.

Those are lovely photographs.

I really like Chain of Command and it's my platoon skirmish WW2 rules of choice. What I like, and what I think you've achieved, is that games of CoC often generate a narrative to them and that's the beauty of the rules.

For example, in my first game of it we played early war British v Germans. The British had a platoon plus a single Vickers machinegun and halfway through the game the Germans advanced behind a stone wall, within LOS and range of the Vickers but the phase dice rolled didn't allow for it to be activated. Instead, we had to activate the British platoon sergeant and have him break cover from his command post to run over to the MG in order to activate it. This was interpreted as the crew being distracted by reloading or clearing a jam or otherwise concentrating on the workings of the Vickers instead of keeping a look out for targets. It took a gruff, professional British army sergeant to give them a sound telling off and open fire. We all felt afterwards that we didn't just play a game, we told a story with it.

Not sure how anyone can definitively say it's impossible – it's more that we don't know how to do it yet.

Players have an omniscient view. The fog of war is negligible. A double blind with two identical terrain tables is the closest one can come to replicating that fog of war in miniature. I submit that rules have little to do with creating that atmosphere, and that it can only be done with a referee and two identical tables. At best, it can recreate the tactical intricacies one might encounter, but never the fear of actual combat. BTW, your game tables are simply spectacular.

He who owns the rules, wins the game.

Games seem realistic when you win, and not so realistic when you lose.

I've run similar PBEM games, acting as umpire between two remote players, for Napoleonic battles and a couple AWI ones.
One thing I've noticed is that players are far more hesitant when they can't see everything, including their own side. I would typically describe the scene, update any reports from division commanders or take a picture at ground level to show them what they could see. Because they didn't have the instant data of the helicopter view of both the enemy AND their own forces, they had to go a lot more on sound tactics and trust. They could launch that center attack, but they didn't know for sure that the right flank diversion had gone off as planned or not because no reports had been received. I saw far more realistic responses from people in these games and also understood how their historical counterparts could be seen as hesitant to take action.
But to create this same feeling without an umpire? I'm not sure it could be done. You can hide dice rolls and go by the honesty of the players. You can have hidden troops or blinds, I supposed, but it's still not the same thing as having an umpire keeping the information limited. Even what you know about your own forces is usually far more than the real commander would know.
If someone can create a system that generates the same feel as having an umpire, I think you would have a run away hit.
For now, all we have to compensate are activation rolls, blinds and command pips or cards.

I have an idea for an app that would do a lot of that, but I don't have the $50 USDk to get it developed. Basically it would be a somewhat simplified and automatic umpire, run on a tablet or other screen.

Crispy -- throw it on Kickstarter. The way that seems to go, you'll have three times that amount in about a day. After that, you just have the problem of actually creating it.

it has always been common for modern active duty or veterans to use bounding overwatch for their WW2 games. Despite the fact that this is the wrong tactic for infantry.

a maintain proximity to the squad leader or PL has been the main way to avoid it.