"It's perfectly historical..." Topic

Why don't we see the historical matched pair of Kutuzov vs Tecumseh gamed more often?

"But that's silly," you say? Why is it silly? They fought in the same year.

Ancients tournaments, with a straight face, will see in the same tournament New Kingdom Egyptians, Sung Chinese, and War of the Roses English.

If that sampling of Ancients armies fighting together is considered "historical" then so should Kutuzov vs Tecumseh be.

Or is it time for historical tournament players to stop looking down their noses at the Warhammer players and admit their games are just as much fantasy?

The argument could be made that Warhammer match-ups are usually less fantastic than Ancients. In Warhammer opponents usually match the fictional world, in Ancients, anything goes.

Why don't we see the historical matched pair of Kutuzov vs Tecumseh gamed more often?

"But that's silly," you say? Why is it silly? They fought in the same year.

Ancients tournaments, with a straight face, will see in the same tournament New Kingdom Egyptians, Sung Chinese, and War of the Roses English.

If that sampling of Ancients armies fighting together is considered "historical" then so should Kutuzov vs Tecumseh be.

Or is it time for historical tournament players to stop looking down their noses at the Warhammer players and admit their games are just as much fantasy?

The argument could be made that Warhammer match-ups are usually less fantastic than Ancients. In Warhammer opponents usually match the fictional world, in Ancients, anything goes.

I'd play it!

True of many tournaments, but it's not an inherent feature of tournament play. Most of the HMGS-(Formerly East) conventions have ancient tournaments divided by period and region specifically to avoid this.

Well, given that our group is about to play an 1880s game, Brits vs Mexicans, seems good to me

Your argument is perfectly valid, and pointless.
I used to hit the WRG Ancients circuit in HMGS East back in the early 80s. And exactly the same whining and moaning about the matchups occurred. So, it's nothing new. Your rant is more than 40 years old. It's not new.
And, so what?

I took "inferior" armies and beat "superior" armies. Not often, but, again, so what?
My Carthaginians beat a Nikephorean Byzantine army.
My Britons lost to Macedonians after I rolled a 3 to charge Alexander in the flank with my chariot bodyguard, and routed.
My overall record, though, could be compared to that of the New York Giants this year.
My Britons did win a Best Painted Army prize once, though. 👍😄

Some tournament organizers had "historical" matchups in the first two rounds. I even had a tournament or two where my Mauryan Indians fought Mauryan Indians. (Hint. The tiny Regular A Maiden Guard unit is pointless.)
But in later rounds the matchups were based on seedings. So my Indians fought Normans or Hohenstaufen (did I spell that right?) Sicilian, or Varangians.
I don't remember any Cthulhu armies.
And the Empire and Johnny Reb players played in the Distelfink at the same time, and after hours we would share Yuengling at the bar and brag.

Hint: Vikings versus Assyrians did not frighten the horses.

Here in 2026, I don't do tournaments anymore. Not from distaste, I'm more into horse and musket now. That's all.

I'd play it!

One of my current projects is Comanche vs Spanish in Mexico, 1757.
How about Braddock vs Indians and French to start the French and Indian War? Braddock outnumbered the "savages" by at least 2:1, by the way.

So, yeah. Let Tecumseh pick the terrain, and let's roll dice!

Or is it time for historical tournament players to stop looking down their noses at the Warhammer players and admit their games are just as much fantasy?

You're using the word "fantasy" to mean two different things in the same sentence.

Both historical and fantasy (scifi, pulp, whatever genre) wargames represent violent conflict over objectives using defined capabilities. Once you encode it in the rules 2d6 damage for a fireball at 12" table range with 85% Ph is the same as 2d6 damage for a squad assault weapon at 12" table range with 85% Ph.

(This is why I often say that "magic" in TTGs/RPGs is mostly technology. It represents less the cognitive bending of reality and really is just stats the same as weapons.)

I used to play the Battle of Short Hills, NJ (AWI) with figures from a different "Empire" and "Rebels". Whether I called them Empire battle droids or British cavalry, made no difference. The unit stats were designed to show the military advantages and disadvantages of swife moving close combat units against spread guerilla opponents.

"But that's silly," you say? Why is it silly? They fought in the same year.

Hypotheticals have to be handled appropriately. Contemporary Force A beat Force B and Force B beat Force C does not equate to Force A will beat Force C. Team performance in a dynamic environment is not a transitive operation. If it were, you could shorten sports seasons a lot.

The further apart (time, space, technique, composition, etc.) two forces are, the more difficult to tenuous the synthesis into a single battle of them becomes.

What would have happened at Gettysburg if Lee had not concentrated on the Union center on July 3rd is a very different exploration than what would have happened if Lee faced the Russians in Kazakhstan in 1863.

Doesn't mean you can do one and can't do the other. It just means that people are going to come to the two events with different expectations on explaining why it is set up the way it is. If you treat one like the other, you'll lose some people.

I don't play ancients tournaments (or any tournaments), but I'm with Parzival on the proposed battle in the OP. I'll play.

Could this be another example of "people are playing with toy soldiers in a way I disapprove of"?
🤔

I'm going to take Kutusov and give the points.

Yes, somebody is playing with toy soldiers wrong.
Oh dear, oh dear!

I'm not saying they are wrong to play that way.

It is the snobbery of certain historicals players who play wildly ahistorical matchups that sticks in my craw.

Mostly pointing out how silly it is for certain historicals afficionados to look down their noses at the fantasy and sci-fi fans for "unrealistic" games.

Personally I think a guy with a pointy stick is pretty much a guy with a pointy stick. So the armies across time can be reasonably evenly matched, but don't pretend it's "history" and therefor either more "serious" or more "realistic" than fantasy.

The technological differences between Romans, HYW English, and Samurai are a *lot* smaller than the technological differences between 1914 and 1945. The differences between Ancient combatants seem to be much more in how they employed the technology.

Back in the day we played a fun game of Space Marines vs Sea Peoples, using the WH40K points system to stat out the Sea Peoples. The result was rather like the Battle of Endor, except the outcome was reversed.

One guy would regularly win games of 40K by fielding his fantasy Goblin army as auxiliaries. The loop hole was that a naked in the rain Space Goblin had a points cost of -1. He had a lot of those little, green, cannon fodder to offset the points cost of nasty stuff to throw at us.

As for Tecumseh vs Kutuzov, I would love to play that. Sadly I don't have the tactical acumen of either of them. Given the technology available to each it could be an even match.

Napoleon vs Rommel would be harder to make a good single battle of. In a long term campaign though… What would be really interesting to see would be cage match giving each comparably equipped and trained forces. Not something a wargame could quite capture though.

stupid

People playing with toy soldiers wrong is certainly an ongoing problem. But Dave's point was more subtle--the limits of HISTORICAL wargaming, and I think that's fair enough. Also you have the question of when it stops becoming a game and becomes a massacre. Think Samurai on a long slow death march against Egyptian charioteers in a game which was decided by the terrain roll. (I actually heard tell of that one--unsurprisingly, from an Ancients tournament.) No one wants to travel hundreds of miles to play a game they can't possibly win, and being told it's fair because if a pre-game die roll had gone the other way his opponent would have had no chance really doesn't help.

Yes, Braddock gets trotted out regularly in these debates, which pretty well ignores that armies well off their home turf fighting odd but historical opponents are usually very different armies. An 1808 Spanish army list will usually look more like La Roman's corps, and not like the ones fighting plains Indians in Texas, for instance.

I'd say tournament organizers should ask themselves--well, first, if it's a historical tournament, "could these armies have met on this ground?" and second "are the army lists to the same scale?" (Think the Balkans. An Albanian bandit gang dancing around the mountains, because the Austrian army list creates a miniature army for fighting on the Danube instead of the Grenzer company which would be the Albanians' normal opponent.) If the answer to both is yes, you have a historical wargame.

But the third question should be asked of every wargame. "Is this going to produce a battle either side might win with skill and a little luck, or is someone giving up a day off to be slaughtered?" If the answer to that one is the customary foot-shuffling and muttering--"it's allowed under the rules" or "the campaign generated it"--I suggest the game designers grab the dirty end of the stick themselves and stop making excuses for giving it to other people.

It is the snobbery of certain historicals players who play wildly ahistorical matchups that sticks in my craw.

Like I said above, I was "in the life" of WRG Ancients tournaments, at least 3 times a year, back in the 80s.
We all knew what we were doing, and NOT ONCE did I encounter any of the alleged snobbery.
We had rules (do not ask me about the Thursday night rules clarification seminars 🙄) and we had lists.
We all knew that what we were doing was not "realistic", and the fact that an Imperial Roman army on the table was a loser reinforced that. We were playing a game with points. Not unlike the NFL with salary caps.

Make fun of Warhammer? Why would we do that? They were the ones who were too good to come to our conventions. They were also the ones who would not allow us at their conventions.

Someone has his "facts" backwards. 🤷

It's just a revisit to the same old feud between some Fantasy/Sci-Fi gamers and some history-based gamers. It's based on semi-fictional stereotypes and decades-past insults. It reminds me of the intra-family feuds that bubble on for generations because there's always one or two people that want to keep stirring the pot.

All wargaming/COSPlay/fantasy gaming/Sci-Fi gaming is fantasy to some extent, and there's no evidence that any is "better" than the other, despite what some adherents may think. It's just that different genres appeal to different people, the same as different foods appeal to different people.

So put a sock in it and game the way that pleases you, and I truly hope you enjoy your hobby, while I game the way that pleases me (except for the dice- I hate those [bleep] dice, sometimes).

Kutusov vs Tecumseh is silly. If I want to face off early 19th C. Russians and native Americans, I'd rather play a real battle like the 1802 raid on Redout Saint Michael, the 1804 Battle of Sitka, or a plausible "what if" like the Tlingit forming a proper coalition to resist Russian armies across a few years of campaigns in the Alaskan outback.

Those ahistorical ancients matchups are one of the reasons I stopped playing ancients tournaments. I thought they were silly even 30 years ago. I've been playing historical or alternate history games the entire time, and I still haven't run out of topics to explore.

Go play whatever you want, it doesn't hurt me, but I can't be stirred to care about a complete fabrication lacking any plausibility. History is just more interesting than fantasy. Alternate history can be fun, but I agree with etotheipi, it must be carefully contemplated and constructed (which is part of the fun).

Guys. It's a tournament. I would play 4-6 games per weekend, and sometimes it would be a genuine historical lineup! 😱🤷
We were under no illusions. Nobody claimed that reality intruded.
Seriously. I could have Assyrians (beautiful army!) matched against a Viking army in Round 3. Neither one of us were under any illusions. "Hey Mick! Meet me for a beer later?"

And the same rules could be used at the same convention for a Marathon or a Hastings game. Funny thing. These rules that "allowed" ridiculous pairings in tournaments were perfect for historical matchups. Who knew?

You know, I really dislike the "gaming police" who clutch their pearls and get the vapours over WRONG gaming.
I love to talk smack over Piquet or Empire. But I don't diss those who like them. Not my cuppa tea, but they probably don't like my AWI adjustment for TSATF. And there are AWI tules that I don't care for, but so what? I don't think that I'm da Pope of Wargaming. I'm just an opinionated twit. I can like what you don't like. All I expect is that you grant me the same courtesy.

By the way, I'm still pissed that my Forest Goblins got nuked in WFB 6. 😄

Dal, we'll have to disagree on this one. "Better" might be pushing matters, but no question historical, by its very nature, means that rule and scenario writers have a more demanding job than they do in F&SF. They have to turn out the same interesting and competitive games, but they have to do it without altering the numbers, equipment and training of the forces, or the location and effect of the terrain.

You can say the guy writing sonnets and the fellow cranking out "free verse" are both poets, but it's understandable that the sonnet-writers don't always agree.

So I'll keep my socks on my feet, thank you. Wear yours where you please.

Dal, we'll have to disagree on this one. "Better" might be pushing matters, but no question historical, by its very nature, means that rule and scenario writers have a more demanding job than they do in F&SF. They have to turn out the same interesting and competitive games, but they have to do it without altering the numbers, equipment and training of the forces, or the location and effect of the terrain.

I haven't played enough F&SF [good acronym] to comment on that, Robert. Instinctively I agree, but you can't really make judgements based on only part of the evidence. Certainly some of the F&SF fiction I've read is detailed enough to give a history-level support to a game (if one was based on them). Some barely rates as dunny paper, too. But the fictional nature doesn't preclude someone doing the same level of research for F&SF rules/figures/scenarios. Perhaps they have?

More importantly, who cares? Someone pushing ghost or zombies around isn't going to interfere with my enjoyment of my hobby. Nor will someone using different rules, figures, models, etc. If some <BLEEP> does try to interfere then I will, and have, deal with it in an appropriate manner.

You can say the guy writing sonnets and the fellow cranking out "free verse" are both poets, but it's understandable that the sonnet-writers don't always agree.

This is a great underlining of the core incoherence comparing historical to F&SF gaming.

People who write and study poetry acknowledge that free verse and sonnets (or other structured verse) are not more or less structured, but structured in a different way.

link

And, generally, those people would reject the assertion that something like complexity of verse can be ranked on a linear scale.

PDF link

Ancients in particular help illustrate this. The assertion that historical wargames have a demanding standard is equivalent to saying they have to very strictly adhere to vague, generalist descriptions with wide degrees of variance and tolerance.

For F&SF games, designers have to adhere to canon. Write a Star Wars scenario where the Jedi don't have force powers and see how well that flies. By being fully constructed, F&SF actually has a more well-defined baseline than much of history. It's in the book or it's not canon.

Both of those referents have gaps. At the level of the category of "Historical" or "F&SF" gaming, neither sets of gaps is fundamentally more or less constraining than the other. Individual engagements could be compared. And for ever example one way in one there is a counter example the same way in the other and the other way in the same.

Nice try, but no sale.
(A) lots of F&SF has no canon--See Dragon Rampant--or invents its own--see everything from Games Workshop to Operation Last Train. This is very different from gaps in the historical record, however often some F&SF defender trots out Ancients. The author of historical rules & scenarios has inescapable ranges, frontages and movement rates. Elven bowmen have whatever range and accuracy I find convenient, and Centaurs move at whatever speed I need.

(B) I can always find a professor willing to deny the possibilities of excellence and/or knowledge. I stopped taking them seriously--well, no, actually I never did take them seriously. But I treasure the recollection of a Phlosophy prof telling me when I was 17 that the man who could explain the working of a watch in terms of springs, gears and pinwheels had "different, not better" understanding of a watch from the man who said "God makes it tick." (I asked him which he'd take his watch to for repairs, and thereafter avoided any department which thought he was qualified to teach.)

Doesn't mean I don't play and enjoy F&SF games. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy them. But they're not the same.

lots of F&SF has no canon

Please provide your exhaustive list of ALL F&SF so you can justify "lots" as opposed to the miniscule portion you can think of off the cuff.

But they're not the same.

In terms of a wargame, they're exactly the same. You have a referent, you build a model from it, you encode entities and relationships from the model, and provide instructions to execute.

The delta between the referent and the source information fot both are filled in using exactly the same techniques.

Again, unless you define what you mean by historical or fantasy in a consistent way, this is just another collection of circular arguments.

Oh, eto, eto. I don't know when or how you decided that I murdered your sister, killed your dog and stole your Bible, but I assure you it was someone else.

I may not have much of a life these days, but even I have better things to do on Saturday night than run inventories of all published fantasy and SF rules for your amusement--unless you'd like to refer me to a master spreadsheet? All the additional I can give you from my own shelves for "no canon" would be HOTT, Dragon Rampant, Xenos Rampant, "Happiness is a Warm Raygun" "Sci-Fight""As Real as You Really Want It" and "Fast Play Science Fiction Rules." Everything else was sold off in flea markets years ago.

It would, I think, be useful to observe that I doubt there are as many as ten "intellectual properties"--terrible name--anyone's based a rule set on. My count is eight: LOTR, Game of Thrones, Star Trek, Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Babylon5, Hammer's Slammers and Burroughs' Mars stories. (You could do two--RPG and fleet actions--based on Doc Smith's "Lensman" books, but despite an old board game titled "Triplanetary" I don't believe anyone ever has.) And given what they're doing to Star Trek and Star Wars these days, canon would be different next year. Everything else is either no canon or invented canon--meaning weapons and armor effects, movement, ranges and everything else are whatever the author feels would make a good game. I don't say some of them aren't good games. I do say it's like juggling with fewer balls.

I'm sitting here paying for primary source material trying to get a good feel for infantry company and battalion frontages in the Western Desert, and you're saying "well, making it all up or having to watch the movie first is the same thing."

No, it's not.

Oh. And "General Veers, Prepare your Men." My son wrote it in high school. A nice little SF skirmish set of which I may have the only surviving copies. The universe of wargame rules isn't infinite, but it's effectively unsearchable. We just take larger or smaller samples.

I have better things to do on Saturday night than run inventories of all published fantasy and SF rules for your amusement-

Your better things includes generalizing about an entire category of things you say is not infinite, but "effectively unsearchable", based on a small sample.

If you want to say "the pittance of ones I know are like this", fine. But if you want to make broad statements about all of them, you should have some concept of what all of them is.

are whatever the author feels would make a good game

This is also the same for all historical games. It includes the subset of the known things (a subset itself of reality) that they author thinks will make a good game.

I'm sitting here paying for primary source material trying to get a good feel for infantry company and battalion frontages in the Western Desert

Robert, have you tried for an inter-library loan of the British Official Histories (OHis)? The few maps I've seen are quite detailed and may give you a good idea on frontages- in defence and on advance to contact/attack. Here's a list:

The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume 1: The Early Successes Against Italy (to May 1941) (1954)
The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume 2: The Germans Come to the Help of Their Ally – 1941 (1956)
The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume 3: British Fortunes Reach Their Lowest Ebb (1960)
The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume 4: The Destruction of the Axis Forces in Africa (1966)

I haven't seen the Australian OHis, but the annual's released by the Australian War Memorial may be of interest, too. They have some very good maps and campaign studies as well as participant's stories. The three covering the Desert are:
Active Service (1941),
Soldiering On (1942), and
Khaki and Green (1943).

Thank you Dal. I should have already tried that. I might not even need ILL. The local library is (or was) quite good. Sadly, maps in the US official histories tend to stop just a little short of the level of detail desired.

RP. I think you make a valid point about the difficulties of working within rigid historical eras as opposed to the flexibility of creating rules for F&SF.

eto, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. You may game any way you please. You have my permission. Refer anyone who challenges your right to game as you please to me.

I thought it was about whether all ways to wargame were the same, which they clearly are not. Note that "not the same" is NOT saying "one is better than another." It's a subtle distinction frequently missed in a number of fields.

For the record, there are both fantasy and SF rules on my shelves and castings in my game room. And I would rather play them than certain historical rules and scenarios. My point was and remains that, other things being equal, the author of a historical rule set or scenario has an additional box to check--historical accuracy--and thus a more difficult task than an author who doesn't have to concern himself with that. I would concede that adhering to the events of a given film or book is a sort of intermediate state. But does anyone think that having additional boxes to check makes no difference, or makes the task easier?

Ah. Let me add the short-lived "Down Styphon!" based on Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen to the list of F&SF rulesets based on fictional material, and remove "As Real as You Really Want It" from the list of F&SF rules. I misfiled a scenario.

And if anyone wants to drag this out further, PM me. I think we've about beat it to death.

Once again, read the posts you are replying to.

I did not say anything about "better" or "worse". You seem to think I did. What I what I said makes you think that?

You said historical games necessarily have more constraints in design than F&SF games. So you're telling people about how they game. Something that isn't true.

Constraints on design are not a function of "historical" or "F&SF". They are a function of fundamental design choices orthogonal to the genre of the game. The genre scopes what is in the game, but not how it is modeled.

You can have an F&SF game with more constraints on its design than a historical game.