""Bathtubbing" in Historical Wargames" Topic

On today's episode, Josh and Edward dive into the topic of "Bathtubbing," or when a scenario designer changes the scale of a historical wargame to fit the battle they wish to portray. Your hosts discuss when bathtubbing works well, when it should be avoided, and a different way to think about the wargames rules on your shelf.

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No hope of me watching a podcast until I get back to my regular equipment. (Maybe not then: I can read at least three times as fast as I can listen to someone talk. I tend to think of podcasts as blogs for people who can't type.) But generally:
1) A bathtubbed battle can't get a historical battle right in a technical sense, because it's played hob with the ground scale, and things are going to be within missile range which shouldn't be. BUT
2) What you can do by bathtubbing, if you focus on it, is duplicate the kind of decisions the historical commander had to make. Richard(?) Koch of On to Richmond did some outstanding ones. My first "formal" wargame was Leipzig with CLS II. Hugely bathtubbed. We had about 4,000 castings representing 80,000 historical men to refight Leipzig. But the decisions the senior commanders faced--when and where to commit reserves, crushing the French army or attempting to cut off a French retreat, trading space for time on the French side--were pretty much the critical historical decisions.

It's not easy to do right, but sometimes it's the best way forward.

I disagree with their definition that 'bathtubbibg' includes going down in size rather than up in size. I also disagree that bathtubbing works best for gaming Ancient battles. I stopped there. Charles Grant is rolling over in his grave.

Charles Grant is rolling over in his grave.

And Frank Chadwick, who first coined the term with his Barbarossa 25 campaign module, might eyeroll so hard that he sprains them!

We "bathtub" all the time in terms of for example using 3 bases per battalion instead of 6 – not everyone has a 15 X 18 foot table for gaming! Has worked very well for Horse & Musket gaming