"How Important are Leaders in our Wargames?" Topic

I wrote an article that very briefly examines the pros and cons of leader mechanics in our games. Let me know your thought, and if you enjoy it please subscribe!
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I tend to agree with your approach. Give historically good commanders a bit of a bump but not too much to overpower a player's ability. Kind of a tightrope to walk, eh?

Leaders alone are only 1/3rd of the equation. Without the other two, looking at leaders alone is meaningless. The whole equation is:

The knowledge and experience of the leaders
The knowledge and experience of the men
How long have THESE men been under the leadership of THESE officers? (This probably should account for at least 50% of a unit's rating.)

The longer the unit's composition remained the same the more familiar the leaders and men will have confidence in each other's abilities and a level of trust will be established. Without that common experience together, how could a leader know who he can trust to carry out his taskings? Without that length of time, how do the men (and the lower ranks leadership) develop a "feel" if the leaders will not needlessly sacrifice their lives? This is the basis for the concept of building Unit Cohesion.

The concept not only applies to the military as you can find it in everyday life once you know what to look for and become aware of the formal and informal relationships in your world.

If your goal is to evaluate how effective a unit is, looking solely at the leader would be like the driver of a car with only one wheel! No matter how much training and experience the driver has, his car lacks (most obviously) 3 tires (and if missing 3 tires, he must also wonder what else is missing if he/she wants to go from point "A" to point "B").

While it may be an interesting topic for discussion (analyzing and comparing the accomplishments of various historical leaders) consideration must be given to their training and experience and how long it took to develop trust among his subordinates to succeed in those tasks that made him/her noteworthy of study. We all learn something new everyday and the better of us will take those lessons and apply it to their life and interpersonal relationships. Those types of persons will excel in becoming "great" leaders over others.

I grow less enthused about commander ratings over time. Being brilliant is supposed to be the wargamer's job, after all, and we have a hard time representing it anyway.

Mostly what we do is let the wargamer representing a Great Captain issue more orders--sometimes to troops further away--and let his tin avatar boost morale and sometimes improve the efficiency of small units. I think historically, I could make a case that BAD commanders issue more orders. (Anyone else been on the receiving end of a boss who keeps having great ideas faster than you can execute them, so nothing actually gets accomplished?) And the technical term for an army commander taking over a battalion or a battery is "micromanagement."

Mind you, charisma can be a great gift, but I suspect it plays out more over the entire command than over some cavalry squadron The Leader is in front of waving his sword. And a modern staff can be a real help in keeping the leader informed and assuring that the units are properly trained, equipped and supplied, but these things tend not to figure into commander ratings.

But I argue against pretty much the entire history of miniature warfare.

I think that leader ratings at least for Grand Tactical are a sum of things like how efficient (or not) the staff are; hence I have no problem giving French Napoleonic Corps commanders a bit of a bump over the Austrians (fond as I am of the white coats)

They play virtually no role in my games.

I would suggest that the time period that you are playing affects the importance of the leader in the outcome of the battle. In Ancient and Medieval Period battles, the loss of the leader almost always meant the loss of the battle. Almost always. Even a "bad" commander was an icon on the field of battle in Ancient and Medieval battles.

Perris +1

In the modern world leaders can get in the way.

A good general can have an effect on the battle before it is fought, by 'getting there fastest with the mostest' (without real knowledge, I'm thinking of Stonewall in the Shenandoah Valley). A good logistician may get his army to the battlefield better trained, equipped and supplied (Bill Slim?). And a general like Frederick the Great at Torgau might keep fighting on when 'lesser' generals might have given up. These are factors that affect the 'meta' game – what units are present, how effective are they and how long will they fight? AK47, PBI II and Square Bashing have 'pre-games' that effectively set up the scenario, and a general's skills could be factored in here.

Good point, Perris. And level probably makes a difference in the morale thing.

Frederick, good point--except I keep circling back to Napoleon's Battles claiming that was what they were doing while providing different ratings for every individual general. I've never actually seen a rules set which says "French corps commanders issue three orders a turn: Austrians two" or the equivalent. There may well be one, of course.

My friend who likes running campaigns always says you don't have to inject incompetence via any means – eg leader rankings. The players will provide all the incompetence you need.

Robert piepenbrink +1
archon64 you can't make a good player bad or a bad player good. You may argue a real life general had better staff, but would that let him really send more orders or would it really be less orders that would do better. Thinking as has been said order, counter order equals disorder.

As ever…. It depends…
What is the purpose of the Wargame? Any game structure or rules should be driven by this, if giving commanders superpowers meets that aim then it's fine, if it doesn't then don't.

I often ponder that games should be more focused on leadership, especially as the scale gets closer to 1:1.

I think a good game should offer two levels of leadership/management:

1. +1 to advocate, the pre-battle staff management/big picture leadership of getting into the best position, with the coolest stuff, in the best physical condition possible. That should have some effect on the game-we have more bullets, were better fed and rested, or "know" the upper staff/leaders "have our backs" mentality.

2. Individual unit leadership is critical. As a former combat arms soldier, the team/squad/platoon and to some extent company leadership can have an outsize effect on morale and fighting prowess. Bad platoon sergeant=troops do less.

Wargamers seem to know this as a "given" but a poor unit with a good leader can perform way better than expected. Good case in point were Afghan National Army units that were directly coached by US Army leaders, who generally valued front line leadership, care for the troops, and thoughtful tactics compared to those led directly by Afghan national leadership, who had cultural and historical pre-dispositions to de-value those same attributes. The results were always very evident.

So, yes, some pre-battle bonus for well managed armies, and in-game units that, lets say the better they are led, the more independent from central leadership and more flexible they become. Less reliant on dice rolls to activate, can activate farther away from central leadership….

Leadership is a tough thing to model in a war-game. Strategic and tactical skill of course depends entirely on the player. I don't believe you can write a rule that will prevent bad decision making.

The effects of a given individual on troop elan and morale can certainly be modeled. Some commanders are famously inspiring or infamously uninspiring. This is an area best left to the rules. My little lead men are not going to fight harder because I am the one marching them across the table. They will fight just as hard for you.

Logistical management is a key factor of good leadership and should be handled by pre-game procedures. This could include a pre battle game phase or being part of scenario design.

I do think it is worth factoring leadership qualities into game mechanics, to what degree and how it is expressed depends on what is appropriate to the game design.