"Is “historical accuracy” overrated on the tabletop?" Topic

At what point does accuracy stop improving the game and start getting in the way?

Uniforms, basing, ground scale, morale, weapon ranges, command friction — all of them matter, but not equally, and not always. We've all seen games that are meticulously "accurate" yet dull, and others that bend history but feel right.

So where do you draw the line?

What level of uniform accuracy is enough?

Does ground scale trump figure scale?

Are morale systems more important than weapon stats?

What do you happily abstract, ignore, or house-rule?

Where does accuracy genuinely improve play — and where does it not?
And what does that say about where you sit on the history ↔ game axis?

You are correct saying its a fine balance! Playability and fun are the main aims in games I like.
An example being when I wrote my Coastal Forces Rules link – having fairly meticulously worked out the effectiveness of torpedoes etc. That version was accurate, but rather frustrating for me as well as my playtesters. I opted for a simple expedient and doubled the chance of a hit, and increased damage, and it worked!

No, not overrated. More rules have a problem with being ahistorical rather than overly historical. IMHO pre-gunpowder skirmish rules tend to be the worst here.

But that said, being historical doesn't mean kitchen-sinking detail. Lots of rules contain really high degrees of marginality, which at best make no difference and at worst are really fiddly AND produce less accurate results than if you just ignored them.

I think Herkybird makes the very valid point that some conflict situations can just be inherently quite dull (essentially where there are lots of low odds attacks) and you might have to spice things up by deliberate re-calibration.

What level of uniform accuracy is enough?

I'm an AWI gamer. My favorite example is the 23rd Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers.
They were part of the Boston Garrison in 1775.
Did they wear the Fusiliers cap? I wish one manufacturer, anyone (!), would make a figure in the 1768 Warrant uniform wearing that cap. I'd buy a unit.
But did they wear that coat with cocked hat?
I've seen the woodcut of the Boston Massacre. That uniform looks like a cross between the FIW and 1768 Warrant.

Okay. They were evacuated and came back for the 1776 campaign. Did they wear 1768, modified or the (in-)famous Germantown coat?

Later they were in the South. How were they dressed at … Guilford Courthouse? Yorktown?

The Light Dragoons, on both sides, seem to have worn different uniforms every year.

I cannot afford the cost, time to paint accurately the varying uniforms for a single unit. Nor find the room to store them.
They should consider themselves lucky I don't just use FIW figures. A Redcoats is a Redcoat, right?

At some point it will happen, but where is going to be different for everyone else. For me I like my battles to play out like (but not exactly the same as) historical examples. I play these for enjoyment not for winning.

What exactly do you want from your rules system: identical results to history, or ____________? Serious question.

Where am I coming from, you ask? The American College of War, in the 1930's, war gamed the US Navy versus the Imperial Japanese Navy, more than 300 times, over a period of 5+ years! They looked at the outcomes of each campaign, and they believed that the average outcome of those 300 games was true. In the 1940's, the real world battle matched the average results of their 300 games…

They played the same basic series of scenarios 300+ times. They did not play each scenario, or even each campaign series, once, then moved on to another enemy campaign to simulate and evaluate, as modern amateur war gamers do.

When I played historical games in the 1990's with history buff friends, they were all too frequently disappointed with the game results because they did not match the historical results. They played each scenario, pretty much once. A few major battles got re-played 2-3 times in their gaming careers, but usually with different players, different locales.

If you expect every historical game to play out as it did in history, what is the point of playing it? You will be disappointed nearly every time…

I play games to see what I can can do, tactically, to achieve a victory. If I do better than my historical counterpart, Huzzah! Well, it sucked to be him, back then. I got lucky, and I will take the victory lap and be happy about it.

If you want to ensure that your rules system is "historically accurate," then play a campaign series of battle scenarios, 300 times, to determine whether the average results match history: if they do, then your rules are "historically accurate."

With regards to historical accuracy in uniforms, if the period is prior to color film and video cameras, all you have to go by are drawings, woodcuts, and paintings! How technically accurate was the artist? Remember that the victors write the history. "Historical accuracy" is limited by our archeological evidence, and that is still changing, today, with new digs, new discoveries. Our knowledge is incomplete. Therefore, our "historical accuracy" is simply a somewhat educated guess.

Why do you play historical games? What do you expect from them? Set your expectations accordingly, knowing that you lack one hell of a lot of accurate details because no one present had our modern technology, and they were all biased: period historians wrote their accounts according to their slanted views; artists presented their interpretations likely based on 'first-hand accounts' (purely un-biased, of course!); leaders often 'edited' historical accounts to improve their own heritage for the ages. Cheers!

Not sure I understand the question. There are a bunch of us with different understanding of history and relative importance--and importance is always relative.

For me, history is best served when the miniatures are appropriately dressed for the war or period and I can tell troop and equipment types apart, and the decisions I make as a commander more or less reflect the options open to the real-life commander and will have (so nearly as we can determine) the same effect they would have had in real life. The important things, and the unimportant ones will not be the same for different periods and levels.

Can't do better than that with a question about the entirety of historical miniatures.

The gaming structure to achieve the historical( or the feel of) outcome, as for a guys painting and uniform accuracy that's between him and his god, Ive played 7yrs war against imaginations in a campaign. The rest scale of figs is choice., ground scale on the size of battle you want the level of command you want etc, so the question is too simple to answer. But my best shot is to play a game that reflects your and your friends opinion of the conflict and if the games give you the feel you want be that bang you dead or rules of more finesse. Like warfare and history its all interpretation until your their for real

+1 Robert Piepenbrink

Rules and Scenarios also should set the correct stage for a game that needs to be more than the game Risk – less than a historical simulation.

Also not really interested in pike units that move with the speed of a Zulu Impis. Or creating rules or scenarios that reward guerilla forces that line up in that Thin Red Line.

Well, they should be able to try, but with huge penalties in disorder, morale and fighting abilities.
"Hey! I didn't sign up for this!"

I think that the over complication equals more realism crowd is not achieving historical accuracy.

BINGO! Pay the man.
All you accomplish by complicating the rules is … complicating the rules. That does not equate to "realism".
Remember the SPI game "Sniper", where you rolled the dice while going down stairs, to see if you tripped and fell? 🙄 Yeah.

Make your figures as close to history. But to me the rules are the key to unlock history.
One reason I still play Empire 3 is yet to find some rules that arexas close as I can find.
Came to the conclusion the best conference rules in Napoleonic at least is Carnage and Glory.
I love Napoleonics so still get something out of the rules as dummed down as it gets, either a 1 page chart or anything makkng a battle go as fast as a skirmish line in real life could go through its motions.

I have a sort of rule that if I can tell what a model/figure is supposed to be, its good enough for me!

What I'm really struck by in these replies is how often "accuracy" is being treated not as a fixed standard, but as a calibration problem.

Several posters have mentioned deliberately changing things that were technically correct but produced results that felt wrong or dull in play — Herkybird's torpedo example being a good case in point. That seems less like abandoning history and more like adjusting the model so that the outcomes over time better resemble what we think actually happened.

It also raises an interesting distinction between the accuracy of inputs (uniforms, weapon stats, movement rates), and accuracy of outputs (how battles tend to unfold, what decisions are rewarded or punished).

I suspect a lot of disagreement in this hobby comes from people prioritising one over the other without realising it.

So maybe the question isn't "how accurate is accurate enough?", but where do you insist on fidelity, and where are you happy to recalibrate to get the right feel or tendencies?
And does that differ by period or level of command?
I think considering "period" will be extra interesting.

"I think considering "period" will be extra interesting."

Oh, I agree. Just as an example, Napoleonics and AOR games tend to pay attention to equipment only in the most general way, but get deadly serious about training. Compare and contrast with WWII, where the equipment stats can be a full volume accompanying the rules.

And the higher-level WWII rules can be deeply concerned with how fast orders can be generated and the chances of non-compliance, where in an ancients game some rules almost put the armies on autopilot following the initial deployment--very hard for any commander to make changes once the fighting starts. Different again for most AOR battles. And "force of personal example"--often critical in a skirmish--becomes steadily less important with higher command levels after the Middle Ages.

I think 79thPA and the OFM have it right. While we sometimes screw up the history directly, more often we fail by overcomplication--trying to know too much and breaking down in time-consuming detail something our level of command would know only in broadest outline. We know that tank platoon is facing a 37mm AT battery, which can't penetrate frontal armor at this range. All the real commander knew was the platoon that the platoon was taking fire, but continuing to advance--if he knew that much.

All the real commander knew was the platoon that the platoon was taking fire, but continuing to advance--if he knew that much.

That is why I like 'What a Tanker' so much!!!

Its also interesting that infantry had an advantage in that they could hear the enemy weapons and determine their types sometimes after even limited combat experience.

I thick it depends on as much whatthe player actually wants. To me personally (and it is personal opinion) is that an unhistoric wargame is just tedioum unworthy of my time. I play games which are utterly disconected from reality, but they are fun games. My interest in tabltop warfare is entrirely dependent on my interest in the military history of the period. Implausible rules ate to me of no interest and certainly not fun.

I do select my periods so that credible encounters are interesting. Real air combat has fewer kills than the real world, hence I have no interest in it, and the "games" that up the kill rate artificially mean they are no fun for me either.

The ballece on how you view historic pluaseability it seems to depends me wher you sit in the Ven diagram of, modelling, game play and historic plauseabity. That is unique to individuals ans groups.

PS there is to me, dependent on what you are modelling, where overmuch detail does not enhance plauseabily, same with real world simulations. So more detail, in a set of plausible rules does not enhance overall accuray, where that myth came form that detail is synonimous with accuracy I have never been sure.

Horses for courses, Brian!

Real air combat has fewer kills than the real world, hence I have no interest in it, and the "games" that up the kill rate artificially mean they are no fun for me either.

JD Webster, the designer of the popular "Fighting Wings" series of games, said if he modelled air-air gunfire historically, especially deflection shooting, hardly anyone would get shot down and the game would not be fun.

If you have a game that has only 6 turns, the game system needs to generate at least 10% causalities each turn to satisfy the blood lust and expectations of the players. That's not historical except in rare occasions but can be lots of fun.

All the real commander knew was the platoon that the platoon was taking fire, but continuing to advance--if he knew that much.

OK. I get it. So how do you simulate the commander (player) not knowing what's going on at the FEBA? Is he in another room? Who decides what the tank is going to do, who orders and moves it if it is not the player? Personally, I've always though of that as a way to not justify not going into historical details because more rules and exceptions bog down the game.

Figures and terrain aside, when you design a game you concentrate on what you think is important and leave out or abstract what is not so important. It's going to be different for most people.

A game can have a high degree of historical accuracy IF it is designed that way. "Realism" is in the eye of the beholder. That's why many of us tweak or design our own. My experience has shown me realism for most players is more about the visuals than the rules. If it "feels" real for you then it is, that's all that really counts.

I think the reason is the the vast majority of players (us being the exception of course) have no real knowledge of historical battles, tactics or weapons performance. With no knowledge or experience anyone can jump into most IGYG games that tell them what to do, how often and when so there is little real decision making involved. Players can have fun with very little real historical knowledge.

Panzer War is a free miniatures game that has a high degree of historical accuracy for WWII 1:1 combined arms combat. I can't recall anyone mentioning it.

That's why the hobby overall is more about entertainment and not historical action. That's not a bad thing and why the big game publishers don't publish historically accurate games because reality sucks and is not fun. Feel free to pile on me for that statement <grin>.

Wolfhag

That's why the hobby overall is more about entertainment and not historical action. That's not a bad thing and why the big game publishers don't publish historically accurate games because reality sucks and is not fun.

Yes, indeed. Reality sucks. 😄

Wolfhag, you can make a good case for the "double blind" game, but for social reasons I've never gone that way. There's also a good case for an umpire in any hidden unit game.

But there is merit in the simplified system you call a justification--fewer equipment types and a certain amount of abstraction. Those 37mm AT guns can't penetrate frontal armor, but might still stop an advance. Might be green tankers. Might be a nervous commander who wasn't expecting any opposition at this point, or who isn't thinking clearly for any number of reasons. Might be a really lucky shot. When a tank blows up, people in adjacent tanks seldom think "I bet they can't do that twice."

Hmm. Which brings us back to Ochoin's original question, maybe. You could probably get a better representation of the commander's situation by playing a game entirely on a computer, with at most a human opponent eleswhere, and only the computer "knowing" what's actually going on in the combat. But I would give up that superior representation to have a real opponent facing me across a miniature battlefield. How about you?

I now play mostly solo or over the internet with family and friends. But for 30 years I mostly ran games for kids at my school. THEY neither knew nor cared about historical accuracy, except to the point that I (their history teacher) cared. The emphasis was always on fun, but I also wanted to "equip their imagination" so that when they read the text they had a halfway accurate picture in their mind.

(I did the Alamo in 28mm and had two young ladies, middle schoolers, who wanted to play but were shy with half a dozen high school boys. I gave them the Texans, warning that they were going to get wiped out, but explaining (which I knew to be myth) that the legend is that the last surviving officer was to explode the powder magazine. (We had all watched Wayne's Crockett do that.) So they did a credible job of commanding and were falling back on the chapel with their last few men with a zillion Mexicans bearing down on them, and one of them turned to me and announced primly, "We are going to the powder room now.)

Accuracy and precision, they are not the same thing, maybe matter less than verisimilitude. In a lot of the discussion above people have talked about getting the "feel" right.

I can remember playing the computer version of Larry Bond's Harpoon. When we played in real time we would let it run in the background and do other things because it could be hours between exciting events. Accurate and realistic, but kind of boring as a game. High accuracy, high precision.

I can do a perfectly accurate but boring WW2 game. Roll 1d6. On an odd result the Allies win. On an even result the Axis lose. High accuracy, low precision.

Perhaps surprisingly verisimilitude also matters in fantasy. We want our games to "feel" right, by whatever fiction we have developed for our world.

When I am play historical games I want them to feel like history. An Apache helicopter of the tranches of WWI is not what I want from a Canvas Eagles game.

I have seen a lot of "fantasy historical games." Especially in Ancients. A man with a pointy stick is a man with a pointy stick goes the thinking. So we get Sumerians vs Samurai and Aztecs vs Alans. I would be interested in playing such a game *if* it reflected the fighting techniques and tactics of each side beyond "these are classed as Type B MI." A tall order when we, as players, don't have the training of an Aztec general, and don't always want to play different philosophies of combat when we sit down at the table.

Style of warfare is an important part of realism to me.

Robert,
Yes, no tank is completely safe as they all have weak spots even a 37mm gun could exploit, including spalling damage so you don't need to penetrate. Russian AT Rifles turned back tanks attacks.

I do use some hidden deployment for defenders.

The historical accuracy I've strived for with 1:1 guns and vehicles is to get weapons platform performance and rates of fire historically accurate. I could only do that by using one second turns for timing through a unit OODA Loop which means immediately issuing an order as soon as you execute one. That eliminates the need for IGUG, unit activations, initiative and an orders phase. Over watch is the default order.

That combined with a playable simultaneous movement system opportunity fire is recreated without needing additional rules.

German accounts showed that if a Panzer III surprised and flanked a T-34/76 buttoned up it could get off up to 4 shots before the T-34 could fire back. I can recreate that.

Historically, an IS-2 took 25-30 seconds to reload and shoot. A Panzer IV could shoot 4 times in that amount of time. Is that "fair", no but it is documented.

Starting after Normandy, US Sherman's were issued WP rounds. The Commander could traverse the turret at 25 degrees/second and shoot using a crude sight mounted in front of the cupola.

An experienced Commander could get a shot off up to 500 yards in 3-5 seconds with some a slight accuracy penalty and then hand the target over to the gunner who could have a new round reloaded and shoot again in 4-6 seconds.

Contrast that with a the Panther D model with a 6 degree/second traverse and 7-8 seconds reload. If the first WP round hits or lands short the Panther cannot see the Sherman's allowing them to maneuver to their flanks. However, if the Panther is concealed for an ambush or over 1000 yards range he'll shoot first. But will eventually have to relocate but having killed a few Shermans.

Using the manuals and AARs it's pretty easy to recreate.

Does it recreate an entire battle historically? Maybe, it really depends on the players. Young teens have been the best players at conventions.

If you are striving to recreate a battle historically I think you are going to have to put the historical restraints on the players and some way "force" them to make the same mistakes. This is typically done in operational level war games with turns taking hours, days or longer.

You could probably recreate Pavlov's House battle pretty easily with most rule systems and many very small unit actions too. The bigger the battle the harder it will be.

Wolfhag

Dave Crowell,
You make a good point. With highly abstracted rules and a low knowledge of actual historical performance and use of tactics, getting the right "feel" is about all you can hope for.

Some players want to know the historical factors and details that drive the action (me) and some just want to roll the dice and get an immediate effect. Neither is right or wrong, it's a preference.

Wolfhag

Perhaps a better question is when/does lack of historic plausible representation take the fun out of your entertainment.

For me no matter how "fast play" or elegant the rules, an unhistorical representation makes it no fun at all. I said in may earlier post, some historic events/periods or scenarios can be uninteresting, so again no fun. Corrupting them to make them more entertaining moves them in 90% of cases into game that to me are no fun as they lose plausibility, so fail regardless.

It really is personal preference on what a player decides a wargame is for them.

As for John the OFM's point about the uniforms of the 23rd, Royal Welch, I share the pain.

I will admit to some cheerful inaccuracies in some of my miniatures though. My 2mm Ancients are color coded by shields and tunics. This allows them to be told apart on the tabletop and to serve as wider variety of troops. Yes, I actually can paint them accurately, but on 2mm blocks recognizability and utility trumps strict accuracy. I am playing very large battles and need to know which are the Gauls and which are the Iberians among 200 20mm square bases on the table.

I have a large collection of 15mm British proudly serving in the Sudan in bright red coats. They were painted before I learned better and I don't want to repaint them all. Wromantic but wrong.

I took a dive into chariot design, tactics, construction, etc when I did my Siege of Troy game because chariots were important to the conflict and I was not satisfied with generic "chariot" as a troop type. For casual play it might have been fine. Sort of like how often "tank" is close enough for me, but for UshCha it would be nowhere near the mark.

The more I research history the more closely I want my games to reflect it.

When I just want to roll dice and kill stuff my go to is Steve Jacksons Ogre/GEV. Very simple mechanics, and absolutely no claim on realism. If it were reskinned as a WW2 game I do not think I would find it nearly as fun. Even I know WW2 armored combat didn't work like that.

A lot of it is horses for courses. For myself it can change depending what period I am playing.

Ochoin got DH'd.

Wolfhag

Dave Crowell,

The more I research history the more closely I want my games to reflect it.

Yes, I know what you mean. When I was 16, PanzerBlitz was Da Bomb. Then I joined the military, started reading military history, was always interested gunnery stuff, etc. Then I'd be playing a game muttering to myself several times midgame, "That could never happen." I don't think I'm the only one.

Don't go too far down the rabbit hole <grin>

Wolfhag

"Ochoin got DH'd."

May a similar doom await all enemies of our gracious master, the Editor in Chief! All hail Bill!!

Wolfhag, your points are well made, but I think--like UshCha's--mostly or best applicable at 1:1, and I never wanted to play 1:1 historical. My absolute lower limit for tabletop historical miniatures is brigade command. And when your minimum stand is a platoon--well, I may never know why it failed to advance or lost a particular combat. So rules which have a simple die roll resolution while I have at best a rough notion of the odds are about as historical as it gets. In an odd way, a more detailed resolution would be less historical at that level.

Fullu agree about untility and recognizability trumping strict accuracy. True for all my armies, but it's most obvious in 2mm scale.

To me, the main issue here is what exactly is "realism" or "historical accuracy".
"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you want it to."

Historical accuracy is NOT achieved by trebling the number of pages in rules, and adding silly steps, cards and "Disruption Points". You are deceiving yourself if you think it does.
However, if it confuses the player to the extent that he makes stupid mistakes…perhaps then it's accurate.

But, go ahead. Pretend that 15 different morale grades is "accurate". But don't ask me to share your delusions.

Do the best you can with what you got.

robert piepenbrink,
Yes, for a 1:1 game it is but you can't roll my system out the same way to games with companies or battalions as the maneuver elements because different factors become important.

If your maneuver elements are single vehicles and teams/sections, seconds count. Platoon maneuver elements minutes would count. Company and above maneuver elements would be hours. The higher the level the harder it is to plan and execute combined arms operations.

Above the 1:1, combat needs to become more abstracted and planning, sub-unit initiative and C&C come into play.

For me, games that use issuing commands to a unit every turn immediately violate real military doctrine because that is not how a command structure works. Rules and die rolls for initiative, activation, command points, etc. are not really valid or found in any manual but they do well to parse the action and present different non-military strategy and tactics.

With most players having no military experience and more knowledge about modeling and painting than real tactics it's probably an ideal system.

The more abstractions there are in gaming a period the more latitude you have to develop your own rules. However, I think that is a double-edged sword because it also allows the big publishers to put out a new "improved version" of their rules every few years which don't seem to please everyone. It makes you think when are they finally going to get it right – actually never.

Wolfhag

In the American Civil War, a brigade commander (usually a Brigadier General) didn't just shout orders to thousands of men at once. Because of the noise and scale of the battlefield, they relied on a rigid hierarchy. If he had the high ground and a spy glass he would be able to survey the battle and send messengers as needed without needing to wait for reports.

The commander gave tactical directives to his Regimental Colonels, who then translated those into specific drill manual commands for the soldiers.

1. Deployment and Formation
Before the fighting started, the commander had to decide how his 4–5 regiments would stand.

"Form Line of Battle": The most common command. It ordered the regiments to move from a marching column into a long, two-rank deep line to maximize firepower.

"In Echelon": A staggered formation (like stairs). The commander would order this if he wanted to protect a flank or refuse (bend back) part of his line.

"Mass in Column": Used for moving quickly or preparing a heavy "sledgehammer" charge against a specific point in the enemy line.

2. Movement Commands
Moving 2,000 men through woods and over fences without losing cohesion was the brigade commander's hardest job.

"Forward—Guide Center!": The brigade starts moving. "Guide Center" told the colonels to watch the central regiment to keep the entire 500-yard-long line straight.

"By the Right/Left Flank": A command to turn the entire brigade 90 degrees to face a new threat or move sideways.

"Change Front to the Rear": A complex maneuver used when the enemy was getting behind the brigade; it essentially swung the line like a gate.

3. Combat and Fire Control
While individual captains controlled the "Ready, Aim, Fire" rhythm, the brigade commander controlled the volume and timing.

"Commence Firing by Wing": Instead of everyone firing at once (which left the brigade empty-handed while reloading), the commander could order half of each regiment to fire while the other half stayed loaded.

"Fire by File": A rolling fire from one end of the regiment to the other, creating a continuous "sheet of lead" rather than one big crash.

"Fix Bayonets!": The signal that the musketry was over and the hand-to-hand struggle was about to begin.

4. The Final Assault
"Quick Time… March!": The standard walking pace.
"Double Quick… March!": A jog, usually ordered when the brigade was within 100–200 yards of the enemy line to minimize time spent under fire.
"Charge!": Often signaled by a bugle call or a shout. This was the final sprint into the enemy works.

How the orders were delivered: Because a brigade could stretch nearly half a mile, the commander used three primary tools to ensure his "commands" were heard:

Method: Mounted Aides
Use Case: Young officers on horseback who rode to each Colonel to deliver specific, detailed instructions.

Method: Bugle Calls
Use case: Used for "Cease Fire," "Advance," or "Retreat" when the noise of battle drowned out the human voice.

Method: Regimental Colors
Use case: Commanders watched the flags. If the Brigade Commander moved his horse to the front and waved his hat toward the enemy, the Color Bearers moved, and the men followed the flags.

I'm sure there are other commands. As you can see, not all orders come from the overall commander.

How you implement these into your game is up to you.

Wolfhag

As Miss Jean Brodie said, "If this is the kind of thing you like, you will like this kind of thing."
You are also perfectly justified in thinking that you are being "realistic" and "accurate". All I can say to that is, "Oh! Isn't that cute! How precious!" 😄

There's a set of AWI rules out there where you can start the turn with your musket unloaded. Sure. Right. You can avoid that by playing the complicated, two different color dice, turn properly. You can also give Grenadiers orders to charge a flank, but as soon as they get more than 18" from a general they freeze and don't move. I guess they forgot?
Yeah. That's "accurate". 🙄
No. It's dumb.

If someone tells me how many people there are on this board I can tell you how many different opinions there will be and since they're only opinions they are all 100% correct. The key point is 'Can you get to play with people who's opinion is near enough yours to not spoil the enjoyment'.

Mark nailed it.

Most of the game mechanics are abstractions to create a level believability while balancing playability.

Let consider abstract painting. If every member of TMP created an abstract impressionist painting of the Battle of Waterloo each one would be different but 100% correct to the creator. That's just the way it is. If every member were to create a rule set on the battle each would be different too.

In our club, I've heard discussions about different game systems and some player will feel "That makes sense" and others will disagree.

With historical board gaming there are more Bulge, D-Day and Waterloo games that come out every year and it does not seem to end.

Wolfhag

Let consider abstract painting. If every member of TMP created an abstract impressionist painting of the Battle of Waterloo each one would be different but 100% correct to the creator. That's just the way it is. If every member were to create a rule set on the battle each would be different too.

This references a fundamental failure to understand history. Maps are available from Napoionic times onward and Even in the Greek wars Thucydides measure out many of the battlefiels. This reliance on personal views of what history should do and the massive variation implies the individuals did not to there "homework" . History is not all about whjat is in the mind of a wargamer. contemporary accounts, post battle analysis is available. The ammunition penetrations is reasonably well documented as and rates of fire are available. Gut feeling is not a historical approach and if you think it is then you are not really interested in history.

That may apply to many wargamers, and I have no qualms about how they view there games but it does show a lack of commitment to the history.

Again unnecessary detail in a wargamne is as relevant, as it is in engineering models. I stress again there is no direct correlation of detail to model; accuracy. My warfare model is not dependent of the painting standard of the models used as representations in the game. QED.

Once again, you can't resist insulting those who don't do things your way.

UshCha,
I see it as a spectrum of historical preferences.

On one extreme end, is the preference of 100% visuals with minimum IGYG type rules and historical aspects abstracted with a fair and balanced simple game system.

At the other end are the "hard-core historical simulation" guys who would be willing use wooden blocks, cardboard chits or abstracted models because the historical action and game play are more important than the visuals. This includes board gamers.

No matter where you are on the spectrum, there are games to fit your interest. It's evident the vast majority of miniatures players are at the visual end. For them, history can be recreating the visuals and a narrative with the emphasis on a friendly and social game.

I prefer to have tactics, weapons platforms and rates of fire historically simulated. For me, that generates the historical action. The visuals don't have to be museum quality. I think you fit in there too.

Gut feeling is not a historical approach and if you think it is then you are not really interested in history.

Gut feeling is about all you can hope for if you are mostly on the abstracted visual end. The visuals fill in the level of believability/realism that the rules can't. It's all about balance and the group preferences.

Wolfhag

This references a fundamental failure to understand history. Maps are available from Napoionic times onward and Even in the Greek wars Thucydides measure out many of the battlefiels. This reliance on personal views of what history should do and the massive variation implies the individuals did not to there "homework" .

What? That is crazy! Have you ever read a selection of books about Waterloo? Or Normandy? They disagree with each other a lot! What is the effective range of a Charleville or Brown Bess musket? How accurate is an MG42 under battle conditions (and which conditions)? Two people could read literally everything ever written about Waterloo, or Normandy and still disagree on very fundamental things . Of course in the case of Normandy that is literally impossible, so you are left with even more variation. History, absent a proportionately minute set of more or less scientific studies and a somewhat bigger set of 'account' type records, is basically all 'personal opinions' in the first place. No one can recreate what happened in the past with the kind of fidelity you imply.

@ Whirlwind I can give you a good example. On D Day the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry supported 231 Bde of 50 Div. Recently someone from 231 Bde brought out a history that claimed that the tanks had gone back to the rear and not landed until the afternoon, or something similar. He based this assumption on eye witnesses who saw the LCTs going back with the tanks still loaded.

Needless to say as an ex SRY I wasn't very happy with this idea and neither was our friendly historian. He looked into the matter; yes the LCTs had gone backwards because it had been decided not to launch the tanks at 3,000 yards but only at 1,000 yards to try and get them ashore without being swamped in the rough seas. Since an LCT is a lot faster than a swimming DD Sherman they needed to reposition back to avoid the tanks being on the beach totally without infantry, or any other, support. Unfortunately another effect of the bad seas was that the landing craft tended to get blown sideways and different types of craft got blown at different rates. As a result some infantry landed on beaches with no tanks and some tanks landed on beaches with no infantry. No previous history seems to have sorted this out in the detail that he did so about 2 years ago a bit of the 'story' of D Day was significantly revised.

Quite so Mark. There is always the chance that there is another account somewhere from someone who had an even better perspective on a specific event. Things really do look very different, depending on where you are standing. And knowing, or inferring, states of mind and intentions are even worse.

Mark J Wilson your comments on the D day landing begs some interesting questions. One is why this is, or is not, relevant to a wargame. It was an event that may not have been recorded well. However is that relevant to a wargame? The physics was always there, the option was a real worldd option. From a historic narrative, a decision to recall and try again was not recorded which is an issue. However in a wargame that is not relevant, what is relevant to a player is that this option woulkd be a possibility. A wargme is about presenting options, history is about tracking a specific set of decisions within the battle space, they are not the same thing.

Sea worthiness of DD tanks was understood at some level. US forces, particularly naval, seemd to be less well informed than the British who landed Tanks directly from the LCT onto the shore as they understood the risks. The US either did not understand or committed their tanks to fail due to strict concourance to illogical orders, or lack of understanding of the vehicals limitations. The fact that some years ago they found US DD tanks had floundered in a line being swamped by the crossing sea indicates a lack of the skippers understanding basic seaman ship. All are key issue in recording the actual progress of the battle but may or not reflect on the accuracy of the wargame.

If all those possibilities are captured in the physics of the models then the imact on a wargame played by other midds is immaterial.