"stacking and grid/hex unit limits ? board/wargames" Topic

Hi all

Why do games have limits to how many units can occupy a square or hex cell ?

Surely if someone wanted to put 3 platoons in one cell [ if their bases fit ?] and risk artillery or mortar fire wiping them all out then why not let them do that ?

Just thinking that is one less rule to write and have to read ?

regards Paul

Your point is valid but in boardgame design you also need to factor in the ground area that hex/cell represents (ground scale).

Would the actual units represented 'fit' in and would doctrine dictate how many would operate in that given area – ?

Blasphemy, says the old Avalon Hill fan.

All about scale. How many troops can fit the space and how would they deploy in reality. Depends on what you are trying to represent in the game.

With boardgames, it is usually the case that a single counter fills a hex, spatially. So you need to limit how many counters can (literally) be stacked in a single hex.

With miniatures you get in to the space issue (is the hex big enough to hold 3 bases? 4?). But you also have a "game the system" issue. I usually know how much artillery you have in a game. So if I know all you have is a single section of 81mm mortars, I may stack to the limit, knowing I'll win ten fights but sacrifice one….

A major factor is the size of a counter,! Unit, which can be one man to a number of armies.
So as mentioned the scale is paramount whether you are talking ground and time scale. Both will influence unit sizes.based on the ground scale both the area representation of the hex and the linear feature dominating a hex side may be important.
The time and ground scale also has an impact on the supply mechanics which will be needed to control aspects of your game design.

very 1st time we played DNO we used AH stacking as default now realize this was a couple 16 years olds in 1977 the 1st turn German attack was murderous

A single counter in a well done boardgame should be able to "cover" an entire hex in terms of power projection – and out to the adjacent hexes in many games. This determines the hex scale. When attacking, in reality, much more force is consolidated into a similar sized area so games allow this. The old 3 to 1 odds required for success is the reason why so many games allow stacking 3 counters per hex though this has been tinkered with more and more over the years.

Dynaman8789 has well covered games set at operational and strategic levels. For games of tactical scale:
Prior to the Twentieth Century troops fought in almost parade ground formation. It's just physically impossible to pack more bodies into a given space.
In the twentieth and later centuries, increases in fire power, both offensive and defensive, caused combat formations to spread out ("or one burst will get you all"). In a game you can stack these troops up like cattle in a slaughter pen. But bear in mind that these counters represent troops who by training and doctrine fight in a more extended formation. Incompetent leaders who give commands which tend to slaughter their own troops will hopefully be weeded out, either by higher command or by attrition. For this reason it is sometimes prudent to include the idiot-rules in a war game as simulation. It forces one to give a better fight for the sake of the game.

Thanks all , very good input and food for thought.

Should have said game as to be played in 3" squares with squads of 3 x 15mm figures mounted on 1.25" squares , 3 squads to a platoon.

games to be WW1 onwards ending at end WW2 , my periods of interest.

So plenty of space to get more than one platoon/vehicle in a square.

Hope both scenery and platoon be matched to a square ? so each square will be a particular scenery type and each platoon if in that square will take advantage of any cover available i.e wooded square.

So no saying some of your platoon is visible etc ?

regards Paul

Stay flexible, War of 1912-13 Balkans, Spanish Civil War. Conflicts in the 1920 s in old Ottoman territory.
Post WW2 Korea, indochina, indo-Pakistan War, all would fall into the same tactics and weapons.

The ideas of no or few stacking limits in a boardgame with little regard to the hex or squares groundscale, with little or no regard to the historical formation/unit frontages and depths And to refer this stacking discussion to miniatures(which are not traditionally played on a grid nor are stackable) exposes either an attempt to overturn some hardened miniatures traditions or is a collection of poor thinking.
If a grid can be accepted by the traditional miniature gamer and miniatures can be based on variable stands (say one set of stands for units attacking and another defending), both of these, grid and variable stands having been tried before and rejected with ignominy, perhaps this discussion will prove relevant.

If you are playing say WW2 you could go beyond the stacking limit. However your offensive power would not increase much and your vulnerability would increase massively for the reasons stated. One of the problems with many WW2 minature games, which supprisongly is gengally catered for in earlier periods is frontages. For WW2 the frontage of a platoon of infantry is about 500m in defence, 250m actual and the sides of the 500m covered by fire. This is prettymuch the same today. In attack it may need a company over the same frontage. However they will be in greater depth. For armour the frontage must be AT LEAST 40 to 70Yds between vehicles as closer than this allows very accurate gunnery once one vehicle has be hit by anti/tank guns. This leads to very spread out tanks in defence with alternate positions (again 50 to 70 yds between positions and the manuals say 2 alaternate positions is ideal).

You stacking system needs to cater for this (which is complex) or supprise, suprise put a stacking limit in).

I suppose it depends on what the rules state for how many units in a square/hex/whatever can participate in a given combat. In most games, for the sake of simplicity and sanity, every unit in a hex can fight.

If there's no stacking limit, then all I have to do is park all my units on the objective, and you'll never take it. Game over. Or, just stack all my best units into a "killer" stack that can attack and destroy somebody every turn with impunity.

So then you'll just need more rules for determining how many units in a stack can attack or defend, and then you'll have a more complex set of rules than you would've if you'd just had simple stacking limits, because now you need a rule for what happens if a big stack is attacked twice in a turn from two different places: Can/May different defenders defend against different attackers, or must the defender declare up-front who is defending in that hex this turn… And what happens if he gets a "Defender Retreat" result or something like that; who has to retreat? (Just the defenders, or everybody in the stack?) And so on.

I think many of these 'classic' wargame rules have stood the test of time simply because the alternatives are more complex and aren't worth it.