"We can do historical battles!" Topic

You were asked – TMP link

Can we really "do" historical battles – unit for unit, with critical terrain represented – on a tabletop and, with historical decisions, have a decent shot at historical outcomes?

68% said "yes"
25% said "no"

All the time. My preferred scenario for ancients and horse and musket era games.

Yes, of course. Not much point being a wargamer otherwise, for me anyway.

Refighting historical battles, giving the same historical orders, to see whether a similar outcome resulted, would be one way of testing a set of rules, but it's not something I would want to do regularly. Why play a wargame when you can predict the outcome without doing so?

The key question is are you prepared to 'do' the same battle at least 20 times, because anything less and your historical outcome is quite likely just an accident of statistics [dice rolls], unless you didn't actually throw any dice and made all combat outcomes fit history.

Even then you are on dodgy ground; I was recently talking to a chap involved with excavations around Hougoumont. The archology, in the form of lines of French musket balls, has shown clearly that the previous English written view of how far into the farm the French got is wrong. The French of course always believed otherwise, but everyone know the only version of history that can possible be true is the English one.

In the past with a now deceaed fried we re-fought many English Civil War battles and actions. While the results varied wildly some times it did revela in many cases that many decisions were based on sound loguic and a resolable alternative was not available. I lost a battle what went for almost all of it in a similar way to the historical account. I lost only at the last when the player general acted more conservatively and decided not to charge out of a protected area. In the original the general did and was cut down as the charging trops were far to expoed on the flanks for it to be sensible.
However ther are only a limited numbver of decently documented actions and battles and at one game a week that supply soon runs out. Would I want to repeat them? No in many cases the options for both side were not infinite so much of any of the battles would be logical repeats, of no interest to me personally.