"Who Keeps a Reserve?" Topic

Historically, Napoleonic battles often depended on reserves—fresh troops held back to plug gaps, exploit success or deliver the decisive blow. Very often, these were the best troops: Guard formations, grenadiers, reliable veteran battalions.

On the tabletop, though, good game sense is often the reverse.
Your best troops are usually committed early, because you want their combat power where it matters most, while second-rate units are left in the back line holding ground and staying out of trouble.
The "reserve" becomes less a decisive force and more somewhere to park weaker troops.

Do our games actually reward keeping a true reserve or do rules and table size push us toward committing quality troops as soon as possible?
Should elite troops be held back historically or is early use simply better game tactics?
How do your rules handle reserves, and do you genuinely keep one?

I always desire a reserve and plan for one, but in games I have played time limits the ability to need a reserve. It is time to pack up and decide who might have won before it is time to send in the Guard.

My troops go 'All In'. Death or Glory!

Dave

Its size of table that may permit a reserve, or troops appear on turn x.
But seems in games everythrows in everyy figure asap.

Rusty Musket hits the issue on the head. Time.
Another factor is whether fighting units get worn down. If I fight all of your army with 2/3 of mine they get smacked and the remaining 1/3 can't do much to save the day of your whole army still fights like it's mostly fresh. That's for battlefield level reserve formations. Local reserves (a few units in the second line to counter breakthroughs or provide a rear support bonus are a different question.

For some of our games we delay unit entry which I guess would count as a reserve

As to committing troops, at least for SYW there is a bit of a risk putting in second rate troops first 'cause if they break and flee and the line of battle is compromised it can be pretty tough to fix that – not the case I would say necessarily for Napoleonics or ACW

When I play the Zulus in Sword and the Flame, I always start with all my troops in line. Then, when the vagaries of the dice movement sorts them out, the slower moving troops become my reserve.
Believe it or not, it works.

We game using a system of command pool points calculated from the units available, command structure leadership present, and add to total as units withdraw or arrive. Every hour of game time the available points pool is reduced by losses and orders presently used with the command groups….think brigades or divisional formations. Commands under "attack" order burns points rapidity, engage or hold position (defend) less expenditure, less more for just marching about.

For example: Attack order (major advance into enemy position) unrestricted movements, allows close range combat, melee, charges etc. but cost 4 points per hour.
Defend order means holding a position, costs less than attack order (2 point per hour) but has movement radius restrictions.
Engage order (2 points) means engaging the enemy but at a distance outside short range firing, bombardment, only countercharges to declared enemy charge.
March order is basically a movement about the battlefield order. Has restrictions on formations (columns), no charges, basically limited firing. Cost 1 point per game hour.
Reserve order costs -1 point per hour so you gain command points. But no movement, firing, charges, and in a non battle ready formation attitude.

Thus the game command system promotes holding reserve commands and delayed commitments unless you have limited or no reserves…so the all out fast attack becomes a necessary action or a dogged withdraw defense.

Command point expended by:
1). Every hour the current command order is noted…4, 2 1, or -1 points from pool.
2). Battle losses typically 1 point per miniature lost.
3). Death or wound of senior commanders. Typically 5 points.
or 4). By "violating your current orders". In this case each unit (battalion, cav. regt., battery) costs 2 command points to "violate their standing order". They are then free this turn to perform whatever action they desire….but the cost is very heavy in command pool points.

The current "orders" for each command is simply marked by a colored chit placed under the actual commander miniature base. Attack orders – red color, Engage – Yellow color, Defend – Orange, March – Green, and Reserve – Blue colored chit. No written orders required and a quick visual look tells the command expenditure every hour turn.

Once a player side exceeds their pool of command points the entire side slowly starts a decline in morale and combative value every hour henceforth. In our games it is about 10%-25% combative ability every hour depending if militia, line or elite grade commands/units. There are three game turns per hour (20mins). In effect the side which goes over their command pool level will be forced to exit the battlefield quickly or suffer entire destruction since their units are reducing combative and morale values every hour. Having the Old Guard in reserve for this moment clearly reflects the huge impact they can have on the declining enemy.

Most rules don't really give you the time to bring up a reserve. This is probably an indictment of rules design. But given movement rates, table sizes, and any difficulty the rules create in turning formations and navigating terrain, you might hold back a unit, see an opportunity, and then watch your reserve slowly move toward the gap as the game winds up.

In real life I have found it useful to have a reserve in any and every situation. A little extra time, money, space. If I'm organizing a bunch of people for an event I will have one capable person with no assignment, because something is going to go awry and I can send that person to replace anyone, fix anything, find whatever. Always have one more card up your sleeve.

But games are designed to be fun, fun usually means quick, quick means hit hard and see what happens. The best advantage I've ever seen achieved by a reserve is when it makes the enemy think twice and not move an important flank unit for fear of the reserve. So deterrence can be a thing. But the idea that a unit is going to move all the way across the table and save the day is not realistic.

My personal guess at a solution is to give units much, much faster movement when they are not within enemy range. Movement rates generally are designed to A) make the game fun and B) reflect the difficulty of moving when you have to be prepared to defend yourself. If you don't have to worry about that you can move much more quickly. This might make historical use of reserves work, which would be cool.

I like OFM's answer.

It really depends on the scenario and game length restraints. I try to when I can.

Most of the time, but then we have no time or table size constraints,

Tally Ho!

Really, a function of game length and board depth. If I had to state a general rule, it would be that attackers go all in, hoping to win before they run out of game "day" while defenders often have a reserve "off board" since they can't tell where the blow will fall. If my life has a typical wargame, the game conditions probably state "attacker must be on board by end of Turn 2: defender is allowed 25% off table in one of three 3' reserve zones, and needs one turn to move from one zone to another."

Clausewitz criticizes the prussian Generals in the battle of Ligny, that they used too many reserves too early, so that at the end, the French had more fresh troops left. His logic is, that it is good, if you can fight many troops with few troops.

I don't know a rule set, that has this effect. To simulate the effect, a ruleset needed to make for example five bataillon fighting three bataillons so weakened, that the two (unused) fresh bataillon would win against them.

Available time for the game matched with committed players is the largest obstacle for having reserves. The actual rules is the next obstacle.
Historical records tell us the value of reserves, but only 3-4 hours to play puts the best troops up front and in action and all units engaged as quickly as possible. I cannot think of any rules set that gives a bonus for having reserves. To me the obvious bonus would be for morale. Front line troops like knowing that someone has their back.

I think the "time" argument is probably the biggest practical reason most of us don't keep true reserves. Games end before reserves can really matter.

But historically, reserves were not just about marching across the battlefield to save the day. Their value was often psychological as much as physical.

Front-line troops fight differently if they know fresh troops are behind them. Equally, the enemy may hesitate if they know the Guard—or even just an uncommitted brigade—is still waiting.

That's harder to represent on the tabletop.

Frederick's point about timed arrivals is a good one—an off-table force arriving later can act as an ersatz reserve even if it isn't quite the same thing.

Clausewitz's criticism after Ligny is interesting too: commit reserves too early and you lose the ability to control the final phase of the battle.

I wonder if most rules reward immediate combat power more than retained options. And that pushes us away from historical reserve use.

The Clausewitz point is interesting too in that for the attrition phase of the battle, total casualties are determined by the number of troops involved total on the two sides, divided about evenly. The smaller number engaged lose a higher proportion of those engaged but the side with more troops engaged wears more troops out to generate the same effect. Compare to Wargames, troops inflict casualties on the other side in proportion to their numbers.

Depends on time, space, unit density, attrition rates, C3 mechanisms and movement distances.

Historically it was always worth keeping a reserve as units didn't evaporate instantly, and once battle started, the reserve was the only formation the CinC could actually control.

Many Wargames rules encourage you to maximise combat power in the front line instead. I hope my own rules do at least encourage players to keep reserves, particularly heavy cavalry, as they move fast and can be decisive against disordered troops. Some players will still insist on mounting frontal charges on fresh infantry on turn 1 however.

I can't think of any ruleset that really models the fatigue factor of simply being engaged, as Clausewitz describes – the physical and mental effort of standing under arms while seeing and hearing the carnage, as opposed to resting behind a hill in reserve. I'd be interested to know of rules that do model that.

The major benefit of a reserve in most rulesets (certainly in my favoured "Bloody Big Battles!") is that it preserves freedom of manoeuvre. That freedom is only valuable if there will be the need and opportunity for that manoeuvre.

Many games really only model one episode or phase: a single big clash, so it doesn't make sense to hold troops back from it. Only if the scenario allows enough time and space for more phases to develop will there then be a changed situation for a reserve to react to.

Then you need movement distances to be large enough for the reaction to take effect. Again, many games fall short in that department.

In BBB, which is deliberately designed to fight whole battles in an evening, battles do go through multiple phases, the situation does change significantly on most turns, so reserves have a chance and a need to react and make a difference.

Re elite troops in particular: in some BBB scenarios we make these extra-precious by awarding the opposition a victory point if the elite unit becomes Spent or Destroyed (eg, the Guard at Waterloo). That deters players from leading the attack with them.

I don't think fog of war has been mentioned, has it? This is a major reason for retaining a reserve. Most wargames don't have much of this. In those that do, you'll see more use of reserves.

This is one of the classical 'wargame' v military simulation issues. If your rules don't penalise a side that doesn't have a reserve to use then they are basically bad and unhistorical rules; you are not engaged in a military simulation you are playing a game. If the issue is time then you are playing a system that focuses on too low a level of decision; with too much, probably irrelevant, detail in the mechanics. Space needn't be an issue as reserves can always be off table until involved in actual combat.

Reserves or not, they are all games with toy soldiers.

The best use of reserves I ever saw was in a massive (10,000+ figures) game played many years ago with my college club. I had brought a friend along who had played plenty of wargames but never this particular set of rules (GDW's Fire and Steel). His command was the French Heavy cavalry – 12 regiments of cuirassiers. As the game went on he just kept his forces sitting in reserve. The other players who were all of the "commit them right away!" crowd kept asking him why had hadn't committed his troops and he just kept replying: "It's not time yet". So the game went on and both sides were getting worn down with casualties and morale loss. And then my friend said: "Okay, it's time." and he unleashed his heavies. It was devastating. Fresh heavy cavalry against worn out infantry. In two turns he'd swept most of the Allied army off the table in rout. It was beautiful! :)

In answer to Chris, the only rules I know that accumulate fatigue just from being engaged is Empire 3-5 (2 is before my time and I really never delved very far into the successor Revolution and Empire). Each hourly round a maneuver element (usually divisions) fatigue accumulated. Also each time a cavalry unit charged fatigue accumulated on the unit in addition to fatigue on the maneuver element. Fatigue was then a penalty in close action combat.
His other point about moves long enough to get reserves to where they are needed Empire handles with Grand Tactical movement. Empire, however is very detailed at the combat level and there's just too much to do to play in the time I've had available in the last 25 years.
Volley and Bayonet does have the long moves that allow reserves to get where they are needed, and division fatigue so they wear out before they are completely shot up but it is still tied directly to the damage taken by units rather than just being engaged.

Reading A Reasoned Examination of the Properties of the Three Arms Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery Gen Nicolai Okunev runs through when those reserves should be moved forward and back in a retreat.

And Scott- Okunev suggests exactly that

I try to have my reserves follow opposite the enemy's reserve. Reduces surprises.

I keep a reserve, it has been said "Mike cheats, he has a PLAN!"

Reserves can only be decisive if the rules allow them to be. If units or brigades or whatever don't degrade during combat beyond a few figures lost, then reserves are a waste of time. If the rules make units lose cohesion and morale while fighting, you can have a situation where a fresh unit can indeed beat twice it's number of weakened units.

In a multiplayer situation the person commanding the reserves is an observer for much of the game… you need someone with patience!

In a multiplayer situation the person commanding the reserves is an observer for much of the game… you need someone with patience!

My way around this has always been to slice up the forces across the frontage instead by lines, so the each player has his own front line, second line, and rear area.

In battles where I have whole commands stationed in/marching up from the rear, I typically give these to the C-in-C player (along with his own pie-slice of front/middle/rear units) with the proviso that it's his responsibility to move them near where he wants them to engage, then hand over control to the player commanding that sector. Sometimes he just keeps them for himself, but sometimes he's happy to hand them off and stop dealing with them.

This system works pretty well for gaming, though it often requires me to play fast and loose with historical OOB allocations between commands. A lot of real life commands were in a single line or area that was wholly in or out of contact.

- Ix

I'd agree with ChrisBBB about "fatigue"--or, really, temporary disorganization--often being neglected in rules. I was following a bit of detail in the Ardennes lately--a roughly brigade-strength kampfgruppe against battalion-size US "task forces" if I remember the nomenclature correctly. Some of it only made sense if you figured it was taking the veteran Germans as long to sort themselves out and get back on the road after each fight as it took them to fight and win the battles.

But it often was possible for good horse & musket infantry to blow right through an opponent and keep going in good order. A simple "combat means disorder" rule may get us no closer to reality.

In the wargame world there isn't much of a difference between Defeat and Disaster. The real world is different. Reserves may not be enough to turn defeat into victory. They may be enough to let you live to fight another day. If your game has "victory points" one way to encourage reserves is to award VPs to a player that can keep units out of the fighting.

All of our wargames are derived from a long running campaign. Each game has three corps per side, each with an objective to take or defend. Each corps has a commander, who cannot move outside his one third of the table. In addition there is a commander in chief. The CinC can take command of any brigade within 4". In addition he can create a reserve before the battle starts. He does this by taking one or more brigades from any of the three corps. This reserve is normally placed to support one or more corps, and does so from the start of the wargame. For example he can create a grand battery by taking the artillery from two corps, and with them support the main attack. It is not a reserve in the historical sense, because it is involved in the battle right from the start. But it does allow the player to strengthen one of the three corps and if required switch that support to an adjacent corps. Works well in practice and is a good compromise.

On Clausewitz (whose work I'm pretty well acquainted with these days)
link
He says one way of determining victory is that one side has won the battle when the other has committed its last reserve. (The other way is that one side withdraws before committing its last reserve, using that reserve instead to cover its retreat and ensure there is no devastating pursuit, because that is where the real damage gets done.) To reflect that, you could use a victory point mechanism that makes committing that last reserve a high-stakes gamble: sure, you might take the objective or two that earn you a draw or a win, but if you fail you lose extra-big.

He characterises battle as a slow, smouldering fire that steadily gnaws away at the forces engaged in it; a protracted attritional firefight, punctuated by occasional assaults. Reserves are kept out of the fire initially, then slowly fed in to keep it smouldering.

On the "whoever has the last reserves left wins" point, he suggests battles are already decided from the start by the pre-battle arithmetic. (He contradicts that somewhat elsewhere, as the chance element of his Trinity does come into it as well.) His point being, once you've factored in terrain, morale, defensive advantages, etc, and boiled it all down to comparative strength, the stronger side will win, and the rest is just going through the motions.

On "How do your rules handle reserves, and do you genuinely keep one?"
BBB rules do encourage players to hold cavalry in particular in reserve (either that or lurking out on the flanks). Cavalry in BBB tends to be something of a potent but one-shot weapon, it tends to die a lot if shot at, so you want to save it for that one potent shot to have maximum battle-winning effect. That often means waiting until the enemy line is disrupted and some of his units depleted and disordered, so that there is a vulnerable gap in which cavalry can exploit its mobility and launch a devastating charge.

I particularly remember the Household Brigade doing this in a Waterloo game in 2023:
link

Whenever I play Tactica II I always keep a unit of light cavalry in reserve. They are very maneuverable and can quickly fill a gap if a front line unit is destroyed.

Games (Napoleonic and later) that don't reward a reserve are fantasy.
rules sometimes, more often space and allocated time (or twisted game time-too short but still finish) are the main culprits.
As usual, in Historical games, whatever comes to be usual and not historical means it ends up as fantasy.

Well, there are cases where holding back a reserve should be penalised, not rewarded.

Our friend Clausewitz highlights the Prussians in 1806. At the strategic level, the Prussians were at fault for holding back 30,000 men further east. At the tactical level, he contrasts Jena – where an additional 12,000-man reserve under Ruechel was committed and uselessly sacrificed – with Auerstedt, where the 18,000-man reserve under Kalckreuth that could have turned the battle was never committed at all.

Later on, in 1866 and 1870, there is the interesting case of artillery. In 1866, the Prussians realised that their doctrine of committing their guns later was losing to the Austrian doctrine of getting guns in the front line as early as possible. Hence, come 1870, the Prussians' attitude was that guns not firing are guns wasted, they pushed as many into the front line as possible from the start (they actually burned out some guns' breeches at Beaugency IIRC), whereas Napoleon III's army was still following his uncle's practice of maintaining a large artillery reserve until the best location for a grand battery became clear. There were other more important reasons why the French lost, but I suggest this excessive artillery reserve was one.

I'm going to be in the minority here, but our group still plays Empire for large Napoleonic battles. We're an experienced group and with smaller battles 30k to 50k per side as in Italy in 1796, we can get close to one hour of game time in real time.
These rules address many of the issues noted above. Units accumulate fatigue each hour they are engaged and this modifies combat and morale. You can use fewer troops to fatigue a larger force. We just completed a campaign set in Italy in 1796 and in two battles I used one of my columns to engage and fatigue several French divisions, approximately 3x my number. Then using my reserves, my grenadiers supported by hussars, I was able to break the French line and force them to retreat.
Under these rules if you do not have depth in your deployment, more often than not you will regret it.
I understand these rules have fallen from general popularity because they are more simulation than game which was the focus of many wargames in the 70's and 80's.

I often keep reserves. I wrote a short article on deployment back in the 1990s for TPP. It was on Magweb.
The need is possibly the best in mobile formations at the joints of a command. The joint of adjacent command or players.

I was playing a Napoleonic game myself and a friend each had a brigade we were both in reserve waiting for orders. My friend on the 4th turn suddenly started moving his brigade with no orders. I asked him what he was doing? He said I only get so much time to game each month and I am not going to spend it in reserve for 12 turns.

One reason to keep reserve cavalry at least is to stop what I did.

As soon as we contacted the enemy on a Talavera game – one of my first wargames, I went around the enemy's back and barrelled into the rear of their units that were locked into facing front.

It didn't necessarily go well for them.