"Pickett’s Charge - first impressions on Publication" Topic

Yes folks it's one of my notorious – "Not played it yet, no it's not a step by step walk thorough of every detail, I could be entirely wrong about this, but…." First full read throughs! Slightly, different this time as I had seen an early pre-production version and no doubt you will be pleased to know the "for sale" version is a lot slicker! Well of course it is – really nice product.

My scan read on the previous occasion was just that, so these are real first, over the counter, impressions.

Firstly, anyone who has played or owns "Guns at Gettysburg" by the same author, needs to know "Pickett's Charge" is not the same animal at all. Ten years down the line it's the major change I for one was hoping for. In terms of its mechanisms and its approach it's way, way above its predecessor and has some key Civil War touches I can't recall elsewhere (OK I haven't read every rule set ever printed, who has?)

The main thrust for me, as I have posted elsewhere on TMP, is the level the game is pitched at.

I have seen on a number of occasions TMP people saying they didn't like "X's" rules because the Civil War was Regimental. That's to say fought by Regiments and they want them in the game at all costs.

Fine, it wasn't. It was "fought" at Brigade level but Regiments did do the killing and the dying and this is what you get here. Brigades manoeuvring and carrying out the battle plan but with identifiable individual Regiments shooting, charging and taking hits and generally doing stuff.

All this is facilitated through the use of "Staff Officers" which are the representation of the command function within the Division the player commands (Corps level action is also catered for if required). Players use this limited command resource for a number of prescribed functions to keep their Brigades moving and fighting and present on the all important Line of Battle. That, in a nutshell, is how both the game and the real thing works.

The fighting and moral aspects of the rules are based on the "cohesion" style of gaming in that there is no figure removal and the "hits" or "casualties" represent individual Regiments and Brigades ability to function as they get ground away.This reduced effectiveness showing in their performance in all the areas one might expect. I should add that this paragraph cannot begin to convey the amount of work put in the rules to bring out this aspect, running as it does through many lines that are not immediately obvious but add greatly to the overall effect.

The rules themselves are clear and well written with a good chunk at the start for new ACW gamers and new gamers in general to get to grips with troop types and the way they operated in the period, basic formations etc. It also explains troop quality and terms used in the game for this and other items.

Funnily enough this brings up gripe #1 (there aren't many) which is also Civil War flavour item #1 as well.

Amid the gradings of Veteran, Green etc. is one surprise item, which may well cause a puzzle to US readers this is the term "Old Lags"

"Old Lags" British and Australian gamers will know is a term relating mainly to habitual criminals who have spent most of their lives in and out of prison. Some branches of the Armed Forces use it too but that's not as familiar to most people. Basically, they are long termers.

The neat thing here is they represent units like Union infantry in the Overland Campaign, who have just had enough of it. They can still out shoot and outfight the opposition and when they are up for it are better soldiers than most but boy are they tired. I've never seen this combination represented as it is here. Excellent.

The gripe? "Old Lags" – I have no idea how that one will play on Main Street USA. Hopefully, hoards will now post and tell me it was in common use in High School! :o)

Next plus point, then. Charge Combat.

You start reading this chapter and it goes on a while and then a little bit more. So as an "Old Lag" you start to wonder where it's going, a lot of words here to get to melees, you think. However, realisation dawns that it's all about setting the process for those crazy charges we all read about.You charge, various things happen and most of the time you get shoot to hell and don't arrive, or get stopped and try and shoot but then sometimes the enemy just runs!

It sounds obvious in a sentence but the sequence is really well handled and allows for losses on both sides under varying circumstances, in a very tidy manner. Only then, if after this part there's a drawn result, does the quick and simple melee and its outcomes come into play. I like this a lot!

The Moral chapter of the rules is a delight. Primarily because it's so small and really is an add on or tidy up/explanation up to the parts and terms that are already built into the activity sections – Fire, Combat, Command and Moving et al – there is no Moral Test section in the game turn sequence at all you have already done it!

Skirmishers, love'em or hate'em?

Tricky point, your Skirmish rules, I find. Here they get a two plus one treatment. The rules are simple and appear likely to be effective but I will be adding another item to my games.

Let me explain.

You can (1) put a whole Regiment out as Skirmishers – a common event. You can have (2) small Sharpshooter units and you can have (the +1) Snipers! Yes, Snipers, who will pick off Artillery crew and Generals, great fun!

The Sharpshooters are independent units and among other things very handy at flushing out Snipers ;o) However, no provision is made for Regiments to employ skirmish companies which was also a common event. Personally, I'm going to add that in, which using options from the existing rules is very easy without any additional invention.

One more point on the Civil War detail front – Limber horses die. Yeah, I know, I love horses too. Anyway, there's a simple method for recording these tragic events included in the shooting rules in order to immobilise your Batteries and as any period commander would tell you, this is a serious inconvenience.

Oh and Infantry can go prone, a cherished carryover from "Guns at Gettysburg" and history come to that. You can't shoot worth a damn but you are harder to hit, naturally.

Final point for now. Now I know it's customary to end on a high but as this is essentially a personal preference – some people like them, I don't – I hope no one takes this as an overall view of the rules, it's not. Command Radius are used.

So what, they cry! Well yeah, I know but I just found it a shame that having set up a position in the rules where the Brigades form Line of Battle and move as a line of Regiments, at least an option could have been there to complete the historical set up and get players to use Regulating rather than an artificial measurement that mimics the same thing.

Rant over.

All that's left is to say – Looks like a cracking set of rules – can't wait to get the troops out!

Thanks for posting this!

How would this compare to RF&F?

The gripe? "Old Lags" – I have no idea how that one will play on Main Street USA. Hopefully, hoards will now post and tell me it was in common use in High School! :o)

Never heard the term before. Definitely not in common usage in America.

"Old Lags" was a term used in the ACW for old coggers, old sloggers… just the types that Trajanus describes.

It isn't a term you hear today, but neither is 'the bees' knees' or 'copacetic'…

I've just bought Pickett's Charge. I'm looking forward to getting into it from Big 'T's review.

How would this compare to RF&F

Hey NM! What have I ever done to you? :p)

OK wait while I bolt the blast proof doors before I reply.

Fine.

I have found over time that those who really like F&F and RF&F, really like them. So I'll start right away by saying this is my opinion, one man's meat is another man's artichoke and any other platitude you fancy.

That said if your comparator is which one of the two has more historical feel. To me, bearing in mind I have yet to roll dice in anger on PC but I have played a fair amount of RF&F. Then there's no question that PC is a better representation of an ACW battle, at the level both sets of rules are pitched at.

The command process is more engaging for the player each turn than just rolling against a "Manoeuvre Table" and players will have to make more choices than figuring out what to do as a result of a couple of Regiments not rolling well.

On top of that while admitting, the items on my list are picked cherries, they are just examples of the way the rules are written, toward a game that feels right for the period and are the tip of a better iceberg.

This is achieved without hellish complexity by doing things in a different way.

Look, let's get brutal. RF&F is six years old but its core systems come from a set that wasn't even written in this century. 1990 was a long time ago.

New doesn't = Good and Old doesn't = Bad – but a fresh approach can achieve a lot!

As I said, even by its own measure, the ten years between G@G and PC is a gulf in style and method. There is not the attempt to make the two like one another as there was with "the Furies"

RF&F gives a game that was made to be familiar and was able to directly reuse the basing scheme of the original – Hey Presto! A new game!

For, my money it just doesn't take into account enough of what was involved with Civil War battles if you were a Divisional General and below.

On the other hand Picketts Charge appears to fill out that representation. Does that help?

"copacetic" Really?

I love it! "copacetic" Where the hell did you get that one from? You have this little tin box in the desk draw or what?

Priceless!

I'm not even going to post the meaning. These suckers will just have to Google it themselves! :0)

"copacetic"! Outstanding!

copacetic, never seen it written before, but my dad used it a lot. But he is from waaaay back in the hills of montana, so no surprise his language is a bit dated.

Copacetic is still very much a part of my lexicon…

I have read through Pickett's Charge a couple of times but have not played a game yet. It seems pretty solo friendly which is important to me, the "friction" built into the command system is good for us lonely gamers. I never did get on with the F&F family of rules which is funny because I really like Big Bloody Battles which is a close relative. As Trajanus pointed out it must be a game level thing…Traditional F&F just seemed unwieldy and any large scenario requires seven gazillion figures while RF&F suffers from the C&C issues Trajanus mentioned. So I guess I may be good for ACW now, BBB for Army level and PC for divisional. Now if I could just find a brigade level WWII set that I could get on with…

I use copacetic too. On the other hand I started using a senior transit card this year, half price.

Seniors consessions are cool. I love claiming mine at the movies just to see the staff members faces when I'm going to see the latest Superheroes release and they are like, what?

While I'm thinking you really have no idea how long this stuff has been around, have you?

Nice review. Sounds like a great set of rules for gaming with a division or so; however, I want to be an army commander! (Guess I should think: "small army.")

Peter Pigs 'Civil War Battles' has a similar charge sequence with a Falter Test. Only on a draw or close to a draw is a meld fought…..one side or the other will typically run before the cold steel bit.

Nice review!

Thanks for taking the time to write this up! But … I'm still not understanding how the relationship between "move and fight with regiments" and "it's really a brigade game" works.

Trajanus wrote:
"All this is facilitated through the use of "Staff Officers" which are the representation of the command function within the Division the player commands (Corps level action is also catered for if required). Players use this limited command resource for a number of prescribed functions to keep their Brigades moving and fighting and present on the all important Line of Battle. That, in a nutshell, is how both the game and the real thing works."

This sounds great in spirit … but in actual practice are you just moving and fighting with regiments as is fairly normal (using an abstracted CV/cohesion point type system), and sending some sort of (pre-set?) orders to brigades (and I assume divisions?) using these staff officers as an abstraction of "command points"?

I have absolutely nothing against either of those systems, it's just that I don't see what is new or innovative? It may just be that not enough info about how these two levels of play interact is out there yet. However, I think the practicalities of how those systems work and interact will be the selling point (well, at least for me).

Cheers,

Christopher
(a fan of RF&f who nevertheless uses scenario-specific c&c house rules)

Copacetic [All's good, that's great], bees' knees, bunk as in 'that's bunk', technicolor yawn [throwing up], Lounge Lizard and many more were created during the Roaring twenties. Bunk is an interesting one. During the year the US had to create a standing 1,000,000 man army in a few months, discipline was an issue. ONE of the disciplinary measures was to exile the military miscreant to his bunk. "That's Bunk" for stupid actions or ideas. It also seems to have melded with 'Hookum and Bunkum' dished out by Barnam and Bailey's side shows. Just a little Americana.

Christopher,

As always passing on someone's ideas is an expansive task and will be at the mercy of my interpretation.

I'll say up front that there may be rule components that are "new and innovative" there may be some you, or I, might consider not to be so but the combination of how the whole is stitched together is what comes over to the reader.

I'm afraid 40 odd pages of the detail that makes this combination work is hard to get across, even if it's easy to read. However, I would add there's nothing I've found so far that immediately reminds me of something I've read in another set.

That said, you might personally spot things you regard as previously seen elsewhere but I'm going to try not to draw direct comparisons, so as not to put ideas out there, or cloud my recall.

As I've already said, the rules rely on Command Radius.

In this variant (as others) if a Regiment is outside the circle it's nailed to the floor that turn. It can shoot or change formation but not advance. As mentioned, I would have preferred it be taken care of by Regulation but it's a substitute that still means if you don't keep Regiments together, bits of the Brigade fall by the wayside and the mission goes out the window.

Key here is you can't peel a Regiment off and have it wander away on some spurious mission far from the parent Brigade. It can't move.

Brigades gain strength from internal support between the Regiments for charges, and shooting etc. so again keeping them together has a value. Also, the moral of the Brigade and Division fades under the cohesion elements of the rules, so to win you need to keep Regiments and Brigades tight.

Actual calculation of combat and shooting is done by the player choosing to employ one or more of the individual Regiments once they get to their Brigade target and the usual back and forth of any game takes place.

Not every Brigade is guaranteed to move every turn. A dice roll is made on a simple pass or fail basis but the "Staff Officer" from Division (that's the player level) has a function that can, if he is attached prior to the roll, provide a binding re roll attempt which of course may also fail.

Brigade activation is weighed toward passing but players cannot be sure, using the "Staff Officer" can be insurance or desperation.

You only get these "Staff Officers" in direct proportion to the number of Brigades present, minus a random roll each turn. They have a number of different tasks available but as the game progresses there are soon not enough to go round, hence if the battle plan is too ambitious, the wheels will inevitably come off!

Not sure how much the above provides you with insight to what you want to establish, so to prevent wandering off on some further assumptions I'll hold it there and if there's anything further give me a shout.

However, I think the practicalities of how those systems work and interact will be the selling point (well, at least for me).

Yep. In the end, it is how the system works as a system, regardless of how particular parts are or are not 'innovative.' The designers of Black Powder admitted that the game was simply a system built with all the particular mechanics they liked in other games.

Both the porsche Boxster and a VW bug have pistons and a fuel pump, but that doesn't say much about how those vehicles function, how they drive.

For a set of historical wargame rules, their function is to provide the players with interesting [fun], historically grounded [simulated] decisions and their consequences. For a tabletop game, no set of rules are going to be that 'innovative' if that means completely new and never seen before in any iteration.

For a tabletop game, no set of rules are going to be that 'innovative' if that means completely new and never seen before in any iteration.

Well yes I guess that's inevitable and considering we are probably 40 years into this being a mainstream hobby, it is a pretty good achievement we are still getting rules with a reasonable level of difference between them.

Be they innovations or not.

What is the basing? Common 1 inch stands? What about artillery? 1 base equals 1 section? Or 1 battery?

I confess I love it when someone comes up with an evocative term like 'old lags' rather than sticking to wargamer speak, which from the sounds of it would probably be something like 'reluctant veteran'!

What is the basing?

Hi Brad,

In reality bases are "Run What Ya Brung!" The modern convention of "both sides the same" applies.

There are some suggestions regarding frontage size in the rules, which are really for Newbies. For what its worth these are 10-15mm per figure at 15mm and 20 – 30mm at 28mm.

Per section, an Artillery base comes out at 30mm – 45mm in 15mm or 50mm – 60mm in 28mm

Stands are representing 75-80 men, so Infantry pans out at 3/5/7/9 stand Regiments (or even numbers if that's what you like).

Calvary can have three or four figures to a base at the same scale, or if they are mounted in pairs treat them as being 35 – 40 men instead.

Artillery batteries can be mounted either, as per reality, in two or three sections – one model per section, or in one model per battery entire frontage format.

Thanks! I was wondering if 1 inch stands would work, regardless of number of figures are on it. Sounds like it would.

Yes, no problem at all !

I like a number of the mechanics Dave has included in the game, but I have to say his comment on the time scale:

I will not suggest a time scale, as wargaming time tends to be very elastic.

bear in mind, however, that the turn is divided into four game phases, each following the other; thus charges take place perhaps several minutes before normal movement, and so on.

…strikes me as a surprising 'cop out' considering his other explanations throughout the rules, if only because the scales given for ground and the number of men on a stand DO SUGGEST a time scale, something easy to calculate if you know how fast a unit moved. And the old saw about all the things that *could* keep a unit from moving doesn't count if you already have mechanisms for terrain, hesitating units, attrition and command staff etc. in place.

With a ground scale of 1mm equals 1 yard, a movement rate in line of 15cm [150 yards] or 9" [16 yards per inch] per turn and 75-80 men per stand, that strongly implies a specific time scale. How fast did an infantry unit cross 150 yards of even ground? No more than two minutes. Even if you decide that there is a lot of 'uneven' ground not shown on the flat tabletop, you still have no more than a three minute scale… Now, if units are seen as burning up "several minutes before normal movement" in combat, there is a distinct possibility of 'dislocation'. Units moving very slowly compared to combat which takes up far more time. That still means that a complete turn of four phases covers no more than 5 or 6 minutes.

All those things are real issues, and I have no problem with playing with those kinds of dislocations--they are unavoidable. And many will find the issues unimportant. That is Okay too.

I just find Dave's statement that he won't suggest a time scale misleading… dodging the issue rather than explaining it.

I came across the term "old lags" when working on my masters degree in history via the civil war concentration readings. I understand its use from the authors I read to mean older soldiers who were veterans but not crazy enough / still ideolistic enough to charge enemy positions they felt were unassailable or would cause high casualties. This is a later war concept. They'd advance but when they deemed the advance becoming too dangerous they'd go to cover and blaze away instead. Not having read the rules though I cant comment on how the rules authors applied it.

@Trajanus:
Thanks again for taking the time to answer in depth. I'm really not a fan of the extreme "outside of CR, nailed in place" approach, but it seems that this is in service to their broader approach of emphasizing brigade operations. So, you do have to judge the whole package to see if its worth it to put up with it, or whether a minor house rule loosening things up would affect the system too much. The wrinkle, of course, is that in the ACW it was actually very commonplace for regiments to "wander off" or be posted to missions apart from the majority of their brigade.

@McLaddie:
Yes, this dodge by "modern" game designers to avoid being explicit about any sort of game scales is highly annoying (to me) – precisely because, as you say, as soon as you have a unit scale ("a unit/base represents this many men") and a movement rate ("this many inches per turn") you have *already* explicitly defined a ground and time scale for your game. I think the issue is dodged because people want to emphasize how the rules work on the table from turn to turn over these sorts of "technicalities" – which is fine as we are playing a game after all – however it makes the vital spatial and chronological aspects historical scenario design difficult to address (as well as sometimes masking some scale mistakes).

The example you give above is actually a great example of this. A movement rate of 150 yards per turn sounds very small – it means that your battle lines will usually start 5-10 moves apart if you are using accurate ranges, and that you will have to maneuver 2-3 turns in small arms and canister range whatever you do. There is also the matter of "reinforcements will arrive in one hour" means 20 game turns? Now, if the game concentrates on close-up action and smaller parts of the battle, that might work out okay, but it does limit what you can do.

And … just to be clear, this is a common thing today, so I'm not picking on this new set of rules so much as ranting about an increasingly common pet peeve, like an old man still complaining about rap music. ;)

The rules do sound like they have interesting aspects (the ACW up close was certainly dominated by the brigadier's perspective), and I'll be keeping an eye on AAR's. Good gaming!

Cheers,

Christopher

Hi Christoper,

Well as you know I don't like CRs, period. However the Brigade operations thing is what its all about.

To be fair to the author, my "nailed to the floor" only means units outside the CR can't tag along with their Brigade, or have independent forward movement. They can retire, evade or return to their formation, as well as reform, change formation or shoot etc.

I should also have mentioned the radius is 30cm for 15mm scale and 18" for 28mm. RF&F (as a comparison) has equivalents of 20cm and 12.5" inches when you convert them round the same way. On that basis, Mr Brown seems to be cutting the more slack!

Your point on independent missions is taken but I associate this more with what happened when Brigades impacted on one another – the mayhem of the attack on III Corps at Gettysburg for example, which the rules allow for. However, I admit there were other circumstances.

If I may just comment on the "modern game designers".

I fully agree with your and Bill's comments. I don't think I play a set in any period now that has a time scale, ground scale or frontage. It may have "nominal" for any of those and/or men per figure but a worked out lock in of them all, appears a thing of the past.

My view is that it could be put down to authors reluctance to do the math or the research but for me this all died with "No re basing". As soon as this became the standard USP, tying any on table measurement to the factors you describe went out of the window.

The days of making the frontage of your units fit with everything just to play a new rule set are gone. Now this may not be the be all and end all of what you are talking about but it certainly is a key factor for my money and sets the tone for all or some of the components being ignored.

I am merely the publisher of Pickett's Charge, but feel that, as a rule writer and game designer myself, I should make some comment about time scale in wargames.

It is perfectly true that when designing a set of wargame rules it does help to have certain fixed scales as these can then really help in getting some of the fine detail right. Indeed, I always start defining these as they are the foundation for any rule set which seeks to replicate what is practicable and achievable in reality.

Ground scale is pretty simple. If you want your unit on the table to be (for example) 24 figures on six bases of four figures, then you need to consider how much space this will take up on the table. Once you have done that, that unit frontage will then tell you what the ground scale is because it is pretty simple to find out what the real frontage of such a unit is.

Once you have that, you can then use that scale to work out weapon ranges and movement distances. Of course, when considering movement distances you need to combine a ground scale with a time scale. At one level this is very simple indeed. If 1" = 10 yards, then 10" is a 100 yards and we can decide how long we as designer think it takes for a unit to cover that ground. In theory that then tells us how long a turn is. It really is that simple.

But, of course it isn't that simple. The big problem is that if we assume that troops can march at 100 yards a minute, we then allow them to move at 1000 yards in ten minutes, or (in an extremely large game) at 10,000 yards in 100 minutes. This isn't unreasonable, it comes in at around three miles an hour which is what I look to achieve when I am out walking my dog and trying to shift a few pounds off the waistline.

However, when we look at reality we find that troops in battle rarely if ever accomplish anything like those rates of movement. This is largely due to the who "hurry up and wait" nature of warfare.

Now, if we are playing a platoon level game, like Chain of Command, it is not unreasonable to accept that each turn (or Phase in the case of CoC) is "a few seconds" and that the whole action is a brief clash which is over in a couple of minutes. The need for an accurate stated time scale is removed, or possibly even irrelevant because as a low-level game we can rationalise how long the action took in any way we wish. With a larger game we really do need to consider how close to reality we can get with the duration of our actions as if you're refighting something like Germantown it is very important to know when various units appear on the battlefield.

In fact with most of my games I state that a turn is around x number of seconds of activity, but the end of a turn represents an unmeasured period of inertia. That could be from a few seconds to many minutes. If we don't stipulate that, the design of a scenario becomes absurdly out of kilter with reality.

So and so's Brigade arriving at 11am, two hours into a battle, may well have done so at the critical point. In our game where troops are moving at maximum effectiveness this 120 turns will be way way after the game has ended. This is because we as wargamers want to model the exciting and important bits of any action we game, not the bits where there is inertia, where orders are being written, explained, delivered etc.

The truth is that to state a time scale which relates to what our figures on the table can achieve is to present something which simply doesn't conform to the reality of warfare. Yes, they can march a mile in twenty minutes, but in the course of a battle that just isn't what happens; things take longer than the theory suggests.

My own solution, to say that each turn of play is the exciting bit and the boring bits in between we ignore is probably more of a "cop out" than Dave's more honest observation that wargaming time tends to be very elastic.

Cheers

Rich

Key here is you can't peel a Regiment off and have it wander away on some spurious mission far from the parent Brigade. It can't move.

Hmm. That doesn't allow for how units that became separated wandered off and did their own thing -- sometimes good sometimes bad. For instance, the 15th Alabama at Chickamauga. I agree that such units should not be under the control of the player(s); some kind of random movement would be needed.

Rich:
Thanks for the explanation. I realize that you probably didn't have the space in the rule book to explain what you did above. I can appreciate that. And your reasoning and the design issues you detail certainly are those that many designers have echoed.

However, when we look at reality we find that troops in battle rarely if ever accomplish anything like those rates of movement. This is largely due to the who "hurry up and wait" nature of warfare.

The 'hurry up and wait' nature or warfare is more of a command issue than movement--what could be done versus waiting for *something* to allow them to move.

I don't think that 'nature' has been seriously explored, particularly as to where, when and how that occurs on the battlefield. It is just unquestioningly given as a rationale for a lack of movement.

The truth is that to state a time scale which relates to what our figures on the table can achieve is to present something which simply doesn't conform to the reality of warfare. Yes, they can march a mile in twenty minutes, but in the course of a battle that just isn't what happens; things take longer than the theory suggests.

I would question that conclusion. Have you tested that at all for the ACW? For instance, Pickett's Charge: Three divisions crossed 1400 to 1600 yards of ground in twenty minutes. During that time they were under serious artillery and musket fire, crossed two fence lines, made a least one stop to dress lines as well as move on the oblique twice to redirect the divisions' movements… all laid out by Lee before hand, including moving at quick march. The elapsed time between the start of the advance to the Confederates stopping to return fire is one of the most documented of any major attacks during the war. Any perceived delay in the movement wasn't caused by 'hurry up and wait.' At best, the wait was before the order to advance and that was a command concern about the effects of the artillery bombardment.

That is about @75 yards a minute, under fire, crossing obstacles. That is during what I would assume is the exciting bit. Whatever our little figures can do is only what the rules say they can do…and that is supposed to represent what troops could and did do in battle.

My own solution, to say that each turn of play is the exciting bit and the boring bits in between we ignore is probably more of a "cop out" than Dave's more honest observation that wargaming time tends to be very elastic.

Granted. I am all for including only the exciting bits. However, 'elastic time' still has parameters, rather than being non-existent.

Wargaming time is only very elastic if the game is designed that way--which is the designer's prerogative. What 'elastic' means in design terms itself needs some explanation if the meaning is going to be something less than elastic--which you have done. Thanks.

I don't think I play a set in any period now that has a time scale, ground scale or frontage. It may have "nominal" for any of those and/or men per figure but a worked out lock in of them all, appears a thing of the past.

Trajanus:
It certainly is something that is very common now, but whether it is a thing of the past? We will have to see.

My view is that it could be put down to authors' reluctance to do the math or the research but for me this all died with "No re basing". As soon as this became the standard USP, tying any on table measurement to the factors you describe went out of the window.

I am sure that there were many reasons. Re-basing can be an issue, but I still see re-basing as an issue with current rules…one that is no more difficult or 'unnecessary' has they have been in the past, unless the gamer simply doesn't want to do the simple math involved to make a particular base size work… which could well be the case.

I think part of it is also that scale is an admittedly difficult design issue. More than one designer has stated how 'freeing' it was not to bother with scale. Gosh, you can have a fun game without dealing with the issues at all. Imagine that! Some designers have even justified this by insisted including 'realistic' scale is "impossible", so don't bother.

The days of making the frontage of your units fit with everything just to play a new rule set are gone.

I don't think so. Read the TMP threads. Games that have no scale at all are still generating questions of how to scale them or the terrain of a battle.

The second a designer or wargamer attempts to 'represent' reality or history with wargame rules in any fashion, scale can't be avoided, elastic or rigid. There can be a legion of methods to handling scale in a representative design, to there is no way to avoid the issues unless you simply say it is just a game with no ability to mimic reality whatsoever. Of course, that too has been an argument of some gamers and designers.

Hmm. That doesn't allow for how units that became separated wandered off and did their own thing -- sometimes good sometimes bad. For instance, the 15th Alabama at Chickamauga. I agree that such units should not be under the control of the player(s); some kind of random movement would be needed.

Well yeah that's the key – not allowing player control. There's plenty of examples of units getting lost and then turning up later, sometimes with surprising results!

The basic game standard is keeping what used to be called "the nippy little battalion" syndrome under control. Back in the day before game mechanics eveolved to stop the radio controlled ability of every unit on the table anything was fair game and historical command and control non existent.

In the modern world some random events could make life interesting!

McLaddie,

Points taken. I think I would say that there is enthusiasm for doing things differently and people do struggle with rules where there are no true scales.

Trying to lay out an historical table for Waterloo, while playing 'Blucher', certainly kept me amused for a while.

That said I would still maintain the majority of gamers in this day and age wouldn't be prepared to rebase a large army of miniatures to take a punt on rules they have not played prior to purchase on the chance they would enjoy the reality it might bring.

I hated rebasing back in the day when my little men were on green painted balsa wood and not that well painted. Now after 25 years honing my painting and basing on textured and flock bases – no chance!

Other design methods I'm up for but bases are the deal breaker.

McLaddie

Apologies, I cannot do the clever quote trick.

You said:
"Three divisions crossed 1400 to 1600 yards of ground in twenty minutes. During that time they were under serious artillery and musket fire, crossed two fence lines, made a least one stop to dress lines as well as move on the oblique twice to redirect the divisions' movements… all laid out by Lee before hand, including moving at quick march."

I absolutely agree, and in Pickett's Charge Lee's care and attention would be represented by the application of staff markers/officers. However, the point I was making about time scale was that in a battle not all units are performing at this optimum level. Whilst this is happening there are lots of other units not moving because the command is focussed on something else.

My point is that if we simply applied what seems to be a mathematically simple equation we would get battles whizzing along at speeds which bear no relationship to how long battles actually took to fight. The game designer has to accept that there is friction in the system and the battle as a whole, as opposed to some specific examples like Pickett, takes longer to fight than what would be suggested if EVERYONE was performing at their optimum rate.

In other words, if you want large battles to last an historic length of time you cannot simply multiply ground scale by time scale. You must accept that there will be delays somewhere within that time span. This doesn't mean that game designer ignore these datum points, they are absolutely key to any serious attempt to model conflict, but we also have to ignore the other fact that Clausewitz was right when he said that "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult".

As you suggest, battlefield inertia is not necessarily anything to do with units taking longer to perform an action than might be expected; it is more likely that it is a case of limitations of command ability which make for delays. For example, whilst Lee focussed on Pickett's Charge his influence elsewhere on the battlefield was restricted. For the most part we ignore the bits of the battle where nothing is happening and focus on the bits where decisive actions are potentially being undertaken.

In summation if we expect our game to last an historically accurate amount of time we either accept a flexible time-scale during play, or we have to build in a lot of down time where players are awaiting orders and doing a whole lot of nothing. That doesn't make for a game which many other than purists with a masochistic streak will enjoy.

Which, I have to admit, would include me, but I wouldn't subject my gaming mates to it willingly.

Rich

A number of very valid points have been raised about the use and portrayal of scale in wargames for different purposes, but I want to go back to McLaddie's point that we do, in fact, know a good deal about the pacing of attacks in the ACW and that we can of course use that information as guidelines. Rather than boil down to the specifics of minutes per turn and so on, I *personally* use more general guidelines, such as: a unit should be able to start its attack from beyond effective artillery range (about 1500 yards), progress under fire through somewhat difficult terrain at points, and come to an initial decision (did the charge breakthrough or devolve into a firefight or withdrawal) in about 30 minutes. Furthermore, it would surely seem that another 30 minutes (or less!) under fire would test any unit's morale, and longer firefights are things worthy of special note that seem to have burned down to desultory standoffs.

Now, however you want to breakdown those milestones in your game, it should still be able to (roughly) meet those criteria, or else you are gaming a significantly different reality than the ACW battlefield. I personally wouldn't want to game those action points by moving 1-200 yard per turn or breaking every 5 minutes, but maybe some do. The "old standard" of 15-20 minute turns seems to fit pretty well for pacing a battle at these scales, as would an abstracted 30 minute turn, while an hour turn would seem a bit too course.

As I said, these are personal yardsticks, and I'm not trying to read people chapter and verse on their own gaming. However, we also don't have to shrug away some pretty simple and straightforward criteria when discussing whether the use of "scale" in ACW wargames (at least) is possible or meaningful.

Cheers,

Christopher

PS – none of this should be seen as criticism of the new rules – which I haven't seen! – but as more general comments.

PPS – I was writing while Rich was, so haven't taken his last thoughts into account. ;)

Regarding the portrayal of "dead time" in battles and using it to somehow pad the game turn (i.e. "the game turn is 15 minutes but you are only moving for 5-10 minutes"), I'm going to go out on a limb here … and say that this (very common!) practice actually does a disservice to the wargamer. There were many very good reasons that generals did not throw all of their troops into the fight at the fastest possible rate, and if we take away that judgement call from the gamer by cooking that dead time into the game turn, then not only do we take away an important decision point from the gamer, but we actually structure our system/rules to assume more-or-less constant movement by the gamer's troops. By way of example of that last point, if we assume that, for instance, four fifteen-minute turns only represents perhaps a half hour of actual movement, then a gamer planning two assaults in that hour would have to mount them at the same time, rather than one after the other as would be possibly in reality. As a result, the system actually encourages constant movement of most troops, rather than sequential staging. Thus, not only is a vital element of command removed from the gamer's control, but the pacing of the battle is also strongly affected.

As I write this out, I suppose what I cam coming to is that more effort should be placed on portraying the reasons that generals didn't commit all their troops in constant movement all the time, rather than abstracting time scales to mask the practice. As Rich said, this might lead to games where some players are waiting in reserve for some of the game … but the solution to that (if you don't like it) is to play games where the decisions have already been made and the forces on the table are already on the move – as I believe is already fairly common practice.

Wool gathering over! :)

Cheers,

Christopher

That said I would still maintain the majority of gamers in this day and age wouldn't be prepared to rebase a large army of miniatures to take a punt on rules they have not played prior to purchase on the chance they would enjoy the reality it might bring.

I hated rebasing back in the day when my little men were on green painted balsa wood and not that well painted. Now after 25 years honing my painting and basing on textured and flock bases – no chance!

Big T: Yep, I hate rebasing too and avoid it like a root canal.

"To be fair to the author, my "nailed to the floor" only means units outside the CR can't tag along with their Brigade, or have independent forward movement. They can retire, evade or return to their formation, as well as reform, change formation or shoot etc."

That actually doesn't sound too bad. They can't attack on their own (I'm looking at you Oates) but can defend an area, defend themselves, or move back to rejoin their brigade if I'm reading it correctly. Sounds perfectly reasonable. And something like the 15th Alabama at Chickamagu can easily be fixed by scenario specific rules.

Brad,

Yes I thought it a reasonable way of doing things. It's always a knife edge in any rules between keeping players "honest" in historical terms and allowing people to make it up as they go along.

Devices to do this (whatever "this" is deemed to be) can vary and I guess ultimately players just have to decide on them one at a time. In this case CR is not my first choice but I'm not going to ditch the rules before I've played them as there are plenty of other things I like the look of.

Love the Oates reference BTW! :o)

McLaddie
Apologies, I cannot do the clever quote trick.

Rich:
Yes, it took me awhile to figure out how to do that… Even after I read the TMP instructions… Until then, I was CAPITALIZING anything I wanted to emphasize. Folks felt I was shouting.

You type <?> before the chosen words and </?> after. Replace the ? with a ‘q' for quote, ‘i' to italicize or ‘b' to bold.

I appreciate the thinking behind the design. I am interested in the issue of time because I am designing a Napoleonic rules set. What I'm saying isn't a criticism of Pickett's Charge. I haven't played it yet, so have nothing to say on how it plays. I have a great deal of respect for Dave B. and your work. I am particularly impressed with Chain of Command and am enjoying it.

The question of time/monitoring cause and effect in a wargame system and its relation to game activities is central to any design, be it a game like chess or a wargame like CoC or Pickett's Charge…or any simulation.

I absolutely agree, and in Pickett's Charge Lee's care and attention would be represented by the application of staff markers/officers. However, the point I was making about time scale was that in a battle not all units are performing at this optimum level. Whilst this is happening there are lots of other units not moving because the command is focused on something else.

The divisions in Pickett's Charge weren't moving at optimum speeds. Quick March is @ 90 yards a minute and the charge achieved an average of 75 yards.

This is very close to what General Dundas wrote in his British regulations as the expected rate of a line of battalions in line formation under artillery fire in 1798: 1000-1200 paces in 15 minutes. Torrens, in his 1824 manual cut that to 12-13 minutes, stating that quick march was now the ‘expected' rate of movement.

My point is that if we simply applied what seems to be a mathematically simple equation we would get battles whizzing along at speeds which bear no relationship to how long battles actually took to fight. The game designer has to accept that there is friction in the system and the battle as a whole, as opposed to some specific examples like Pickett, takes longer to fight than what would be suggested if EVERYONE was performing at their optimum rate.

So, what you are describing as friction, producing the slower movement rates, is not addressed by the PC mechanics covering ‘hesitant' troops, terrain, formation changes, artillery fire and combat, spent units or any of the staff and command limitations. What is it that reduces all units movement beyond those friction elements?

In other words, if you want large battles to last an historic length of time you cannot simply multiply ground scale by time scale. You must accept that there will be delays somewhere within that time span. This doesn't mean that game designer ignores these datum points, they are absolutely key to any serious attempt to model conflict, but we also have to ignore the other fact that Clausewitz was right when he said that "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult".

Yes, Clausewitz wrote that, but most of what he wrote were how armies overcame that dictum. The question is what difficulties commanders faced and how they met them, from training to command activities.

As you suggest, battlefield inertia is not necessarily anything to do with units taking longer to perform an action than might be expected; it is more likely that it is a case of limitations of command ability which make for delays. For example, whilst Lee focused on Pickett's Charge his influence elsewhere on the battlefield was restricted. For the most part we ignore the bits of the battle where nothing is happening and focus on the bits where decisive actions are potentially being undertaken.

1. There is no indication that Lee's focus [whatever constituted that] on Pickett's Charge somehow restricted his influence elsewhere.

2. What you are saying is the staff and command mechanisms in Pickett's Charge do not address those issues… and require all units to be slower.

In summation if we expect our game to last an historically accurate amount of time we either accept a flexible time-scale during play, or we have to build in a lot of down time where players are awaiting orders and doing a whole lot of nothing.

To have a game last an historically accurate amount of time while units move at a historically accurate rate is a design problem, no doubt. The question is why and where units had a ‘lot of down time doing a whole lot of nothing'. It needs to be looked at… IF all that down time was purposeful on the part of commanders or a result of the time lag between orders given and orders received, then reducing all units' movement doesn't represent anything historical.

That doesn't make for a game which many other than purists with a masochistic streak will enjoy. Which, I have to admit, would include me, but I wouldn't subject my gaming mates to it willingly.

Personally, I am looking for design alternatives to very flexible time-scales or enforcing a lot of ‘down time.' I am neither a masochist nor someone who feels the need to be subjected to boredom… however prevalent it was for the slogger on the ground.

What I have found in my reading is that as troops moved towards the battlefield, movement and actions speeded up, if anything. For example, it required several hours for the Confederates to form up for Pickett's Charge, and at least another hour waiting for the artillery bombardment to be done. The entire advance took 20 minutes and the entire engagement was over in an hour.

That is one of the challenges of wargame design. The time-span for activities far away to close contact did not require the same amount of time to complete.

I do know that one design issue is attrition under fire, particularly artillery, and movement. If units move too quickly, then artillery never has a chance to inflict casualties. So, often the decision is to slow up movement to give artillery the opportunity to inflict attritional damage units on units. Of course, this has nothing to do with 'hurry up and wait.'

It is a complicated issue.

There is no indication that Lee's focus [whatever constituted that] on Pickett's Charge somehow restricted his influence elsewhere.

I would have said the problem was his fixation on doing it at all, rather than having too much focus on the action itself.

Pickett's Charge only served to show up an overall lack of ability in the ANV's command system that proved itself in the failure to turn what was an over elaborate plan into fruition.

The diversionary and supporting attacks didn't happen as planned due to poor communication, awkwardness of sub commanders down to Brigade level and Lee's unrealistic belief he could have some kind of co- ordinated offensive from one end of the battlefield to the other after two days of fighting.

McLaddie

My comments are not about Pickett's Charge, but merely observations as a game designer about the issue of timescale in games generally.

Rich

Lee didn't "design" Pickett's charge, he just ordered it. He did not "lay it all out beforehand." He told Longstreet what he wanted done; Longstreet then made decisions about HOW he wanted to do it; and left some of those decisions to Pickett, Pettigrew, Trimble … and Alexander.

As for the time it took the charge to cross the open space, remember that Pickett stopped to straighten/adjust his line at one point.

Don L:

Lee dictated where the attack would go, targeting the clump of trees, the speed, "quick march" and that the divisions would oblique to the center from their starting positions to hit the clump of trees. That is what he told Longstreet. There are at least two books specifically on Pickett's Charge that detail those points. Stuart's is the oldest.

Whether that constitutes 'designing' Pickett's Charge, I will leave to you.

And as I did mention above that the divisions did stop to dress lines at least once.

My comments are not about Pickett's Charge, but merely observations as a game designer about the issue of timescale in games generally.

Rich:

Understood. I was the one applying some of those generalities to PC. I certainly agree with a number of the issues you raise and see as arguments given by other designers.

The problem of units moving too fast across the table is a real problem which seems to be often solved by making units move far slower than they did in real life, exchanging one misrepresentation for another.

Bill

Don,

Mcladdie did figure in the time it took to redress the lines as well as make the oblique move to the left as they moved to the Angle.

One of my main criteria for evaluating a set of ACW rules is always the time and distance relative to real life events. In fact I have always used my own "Pickett's Charge" rule as the benchmark. As Mcladdie correctly pointed out, Pickett's division stepped off and covered the approximately 1500 yards to the Angle in pretty close to 20 minutes. This included dressing lines, crossing the Emmitsburg road (and climbing the 6 foot fences on BOTH sides of the road!).

As pointed out, the whole Charge was begun and finished back where it started in around an hour. This is one of the most documented attacks made in the war for time and distance so it is an excellent benchmark for what soldiers under fire are capable of doing.

The "fudge" factor of lower troop movement to account for orders received and acted upon is just BS because most game designers have no real clue how to represent actual events, so they give up and use this lame excuse. Heck, DBA does a much better job of modelling this then most of the convolute concepts that have been put out over the years.

I have not seen the rules, but I would assume a game titled "Pickett's Charge" should be able to recreate its namesake with historical accuracy representing the events as they actually occurred and within the actually time frame they occurred in.

Kim

I know of a couple sets of rules that had a fatigue factor that active troops incurred. You either had to slow down, halt and recover or watch your troops lose effectiveness. Almost all of these rules eventually dropped the idea as players didn't like keeping another set of markers on their troops.
Several allow intact, but damaged units to recover losses. This has a similar effect since if you pull your company back, you can recover the losses, but once that last hit is recorded the unit is lost.
There was a set of division WWII rules that required units to have a certain level of ammo and fuel available to attack. You needed to build up a good reserve to keep an attack moving. Defending was free. This provided downtime while you built up those POL assets. It also made you plan your attack since you couldn't easily move POL around the table at will.

Pickett's Charge only served to show up an overall lack of ability in the ANV's command system that proved itself in the failure to turn what was an over elaborate plan into fruition.

Well, Lee did keep the army staff down to the bare bones. Several authors have noted how inadequate his staff was for size of the ANV.

The plan wasn't all that elaborate. Having the army attack at several places at once should have been fairly easy to orchestrate, but between 2/3s of his corps officers new to the position [and relatively hesitant or ill…and several division commanders were MIA by the 3rd], the staff system proved unable to take up the considerable slack. The command system had changed, but Lee's approach to C3 hadn't.

Understood. I was the one applying some of those generalities to PC. I certainly agree with a number of the issues you raise and see as arguments given by other designers.

Rich:
I should also add that I was 'applying' those generalities as questions rather than conclusions. Again, I haven't played Pickett's Charge yet, so I can't make any conclusions at this point.

Bill

Bill,

I think the point we are both highlighting from different directions is the plan was too elaborate for that day, under those conditions, with those commanders and with that level of staff.