"Dice or Decisions?" Topic

What's a wargamer without dice? An historian…..
Dice have been part of the hobby from the beginning and most of us happily accept randomisation as the price we pay for battlefield uncertainty. A crude tool in many ways.
What should never be decided by a dice roll?

Most of us accept randomisation as part of wargaming, but are there aspects of battle that should be left to player skill and judgement rather than luck?

Morale?
Command and control?
Initiative?
Ammunition supply?
Spotting?
Weather?
Arrival of reinforcements?

Some rules dice for almost everything. Others assume competent commanders and abstract many of these factors away.

Where do you draw the line?

What should always be randomised—and what should never be left to the dice?

Bring on those dice.! While I appreciate the lack of chance (after starting move) and reliance upon skill, but I prefer an element of chance. I like knowing that my orders / decisions will stand a good chance of being carried out but know that even the best commanders faced obstacles, unforeseen situations, and chance. Even Caesar (no slouch himself) famously said, "Alea iacta est". I feel anything in a game can be rolled for; it's the probabilities that need to be commensurate with conditions on the field and adjusted appropriately. Propriety is in the eye of the beholder?

It depends entirely on the game. But in general, the player should have control over tactical decisions, and an understanding of where such decisions may be altered/blocked by some sort of randomizing system.
The tighter the game, the more power the player should have:
So, 1 to 1, as an RPG structure, where 1 player controls 1 figure/character— the only thing dice should determine is the level of success or failure of a player's choice of action for his character.
In a skirmish, where players control a handful of figures/units, then some variety in what a particular unit does/reacts can be random, as well as of course action-based random results (as combat, etc.).

As you go up the ladder, with the player ostensibly "in charge" of more and more figures, and thus functioning as a battlefield commander, the random friction of dice can cover things like failed couriers, garbled communications, morale, weather, unit discipline/training, and the like. I tend to prefer giving the player a high level of agency in making decisions, but allowing dice and battlefield situation/condition to disrupt (or aid) the effectiveness of those decisions.

Essentially, if it's "me," I get all the agency. If it's "me over them", they might screw up, and I need to plan for that.

I can usually live either way--depending on level and period, of course, and weighting the odds. The two I think almost always call for some degree of uncertainty are morale and the arrival of reinforcements. Things are going on at levels the tabletop commander simply can't know about.

Life is random, and so should be our wargames. I'm in Parzival's camp.

Morale
Firepower
Command
All can be a random die roll

Tacitus and Parzival have stated my views quite well.

Joe

"A plan is something we are going to end up not doing."

A story: when I was a senior in ROTC, I got tapped to command the "aggressor" force in a weekend tactical event aimed at giving the juniors some field experience before they went off to the 6 weeks ROTC summer camp at Fort Sill. I had 20 cadets, mostly sophomores but a few other seniors. We did have an M60 mg. It was choreographed, and the juniors -- about 60 -- pushed us 20 across a mile or so of flood plain near Houston, then broke off. We knew their route, which would take them down a rural highway at night, and we were to ambush them there. So I left another senior and 3 cadets to shadow the withdrawing juniors, sniping at them enough to make them think we were all behind them. And I and the other 15 then legged it back around to set up the ambush. Through various mishaps that take too long to describe -- one was my fault, two were blunders by the OTHER idiots -- I ended up at the bridge with only three guys. Fortunately one of them had the M60. And we had my car. So i prked it facing the little highway bridge -- it was DARK, moonless – and stood by the open window and my turning on the headlights would trigger the ambush. (This was a public farm-to-market rural road, and WAY out in the boonies on a late Saturday night,_so no traffic) My two other guys got up in a flood control tower next to the bridge as sinipers.

The juniors were in a rough column coming up the road,a nd had a pair of scouts out, but they were already onto the bridge and still didn't see me standing there by my car, until simultaneously TWO cars came overthe horizon in each direction. Turned out they were guys taking their dates home, VERY late. But their headlights silhouetted the juniors on the road and also me standing there, and I could see the two scouts stop and point. So I turned on my headlights and the M60 opened up a long belt of blanks, huge cone of muzzle blast. One of the cadre, an old sergeant, told me later, yup, you'd have swept half of them away with that machine gun.

What the two cars thought must have been something. The road was on a causeway above the floodplain -- near Houston, right? -- and there was no way for them to turn around. So after the cadre called ceasefire and we started to move back to camp and recover, the cars finally drove up. No cell phones then or we'd have had the sheriff's folks on us, no doubt.

So I pulled off a successful ambush of idiot ROTC kids with my OWN bunch of idiots (starting with me) in spite of cascading blunders. You will never convince me that I nor anyone was in CONTROL -- but I am still proud of pulling some modest success out of incipient disaster. Plans are something you aspire to and never end up doing. So roll those dice.

What if morale should never be diced for?

If a battalion has taken 40% casualties, been flanked and seen neighbouring units rout, do we really need a die roll to tell us it is likely to retire?

Likewise, if an elite unit is fresh, well-supported and advancing successfully, why should a bad die suddenly make it collapse?

Should morale be a consequence of battlefield events rather than a random event in its own right?

Carnage and Glory

Computer moderated?

I would love to read your review of them, if you use them, OC.

I try to include heroes in my rules, who can do extraordinary things -- at great risk -- and save the day. I thiink morale is the LEAST predictable.

Reading the interesting replies, I wonder if the real issue isn't whether we use dice but what role we want them to play?

Many gamers like a healthy dose of chance—and that's perfectly reasonable. A battle should contain uncertainty. Sometimes a plan fails unexpectedly, sometimes fortune smiles and "the dice hated me today" is almost a wargaming tradition.

But perhaps the best systems don't use dice simply to generate random outcomes. Instead, they use them to reflect the countless factors a commander cannot fully control. Morale, fatigue, confusion, battlefield friction and the enemy's reactions all create uncertainty without making events feel arbitrary. NB some of these factors are extant in various rule sets but certainly not all. They're too many.

For me, the question isn't "Should we roll dice?" but "What should the dice represent?"

IMO most rules stack to many die rolls onto another. If you dice for combat, why dice for morale afterwards? Can't you include the morale result into the combat rolls? It is only randomness on randomness.

Chance can manifest in different ways. For me numeric dice and how they are used are not good

My big issues with numeric dice

They break immersion as I need to think about things in terms of the numbers needed to operate the system. I then have to roll dice to make things happen or be resolved. Then re jnterpret those numbers back to how I visualise what's actually happening.

I also don't like how they are used to resolve choices and actions.

Sitting at the end of an interaction/decison tree, all that really matters is what number appears on the dice.

Ive had enjoyable games where we just rolled dice and the higher score won. Simple and intersting outcomes can emerge.

But for me it falls down when im given illusion of choice, to only have that arbitrated by that dice roll.

I use custom dice that give action/options the unit can use via the player to do things.

There is a range of chance in that but the real interaction or chance is how those choices interact with those of the opposition, which to me feels more in line with "reality" than hoping im going to roll a 6 despite all the choices that led to that roll.

Rolling die is reasonable IF the outcomes are realistic for the situation. If the hit proability is say 80% then a "hit" on a D6 is ridiculus.
The problem I see in die is not the die but unrealistic expectations of the desiner. All to often remote chances occour far to often, I suspect as in the real world there is anecdotal evidence of an event happening during the war. The designer decides it should happen every other game at the least, wherseas it may actually be an occourance oid say 1 in 1000 so you may not see it in 1000 games. But the autors opinion which I strongly dissagree with, is, that it is "fun" so is a regular occourance.

In our rules in a fair fight 1 team can defeat several (real world) but it is unlikely to happen in may gaming lifetime.

Die roless are often unrealistic in proability range so make a game a pointless exercise for those concerned with reflecting the real world accurately and are sufficent randon that tactics barely matter.

To be fair it does occour to me that those who always play with begginers and inexperience players feel that the begginer shoul win occationaly despite being hopeless and not putting in the time and effoirt to become more able. That is potentially a key defining factor for those playing primarily games, where relecting the real world is a very secondaty requirement.

You will never convince me that I nor anyone was in CONTROL -- but I am still proud of pulling some modest success out of incipient disaster.

doc: You were in control enough to communicate your intention, that's about all a commander can do.

No one actually needs to be in "control" for something to happen. I'm going to use the OODA Loop as an example in a Meeting Engagement like yours:

Everyone is always observing unless they have their head buried in the ground. How alert and where they are observing can be somewhat random. It appears you had better intel and observation giving you a tactical advantage (control).

After detecting you, your opponent scouts went to the Orientation stage where you decide who or what you are observing, are they a threat, what are our options, etc. by stopping and pointing as evidently they were not sure. Delaying in any phase means a delay in Acting/shooting. Delays give your opponent the initiative and allow him to "get inside" your loop to Act first.

You on the other hand swiftly moved through the Orientation and Decide phase quickly to Act by opening fire (control). You had another advantage as the "enemy" was in a column (enfilade fire?) and could not very well return fire.

It appears you were the more experienced and they were green or else would have reacted by opening fire and the entire unit executing an Immediate Action Drill agreed on before the exercise or during movement (control).

It appears the "randomness" in the exercise was poor communication and moving at night which would be expected, you did not have control over the movement or events after you split up. You could have stayed with them but made a decision not to (control).

Random events and SNAFUs will normally happen. When they do you react and fall back on your training and not perform some type of random action. Having a team or squad in the correct tactical formation will always help in an ambush or Meeting Engagement.

In 1972 in an exercise at Quantico against the new 2nd LTs going through platoon leader training fresh out of OCS. Our squad was the "aggressor" unit. I was walking point for the column (necessary formation to patrol through woods) patrolling through the light VA woods with about 30 yards visibility approaching a small rise. On the other side were the LTs (good guys) and I heard them before I saw them (excellent Situational Awareness for me, poor for them). I immediately signaled a hasty ambush and pointed the direction to maneuver and flank them. Yes, a new PFC was giving the orders with no delay just as I was trained and expected to do. There were only seconds before we were going to make contact.

I silently hit the deck behind a tree knowing it would be me to trigger the ambush. I waited as long as I could (maybe 10 seconds at most) for them to come over the rise. I let them keep coming until their point man spotted me only about 6 feet away (poor SA on his part) and opened fire. The front team opened fire too and the SL took the other two teams and flanked the LTs just as planned and hit them as they were attempting to deploy from their column (their reaction was too slow). It was a slaughter.

The instructors blew their whistle to end the encounter and started chewing out the LTs while we were laughing and mocking them. It was over in about 15-20 seconds.

There was nothing random about what we did and not a word was spoken, all hand signals.

The mistake the LT point man made was making too much noise while walking over the rise without stopping to observe. When I was going to get to it I was going to order a halt and crawl to the top and observe. He got to the top of the rise before me and if he had done as he should have we'd have been ambushed. Training and tactics matter. I guess you could say luck and randomness did play a small part.

Reaction and timing through the unit's OODA Loop at all levels of command is what is important for me. The higher up you go in the chain of command the greater the chance for delays in communication, intent, SNAFUs, random event, etc. to interfere and lose control and the more sub units will have to fall back on their training and initiative.

Wolfhag

"Should morale be a consequence of battlefield events rather than a random event in its own right?"

In my experience it mostly is, Ochoin. I've never played a set of rules in which it was, say, a regular part of the turn sequence or a random event card. You check morale on a unit because something has happened to the unit: the unit has taken casualties, or been assaulted, friendly units have run past them to the rear, or they've just heard their commander has been killed. The question in my mind is whether a morale test should be cumulative--"subtract 1 for each 10% casualties, 1 for being routed past and one for the death of the commander" say, making a stand a mathematical impossibility sometimes-- or whether one rolls for each event, possibly taking into account veteran status, cover or the presence of a senior officer.

I lean toward the latter. If you've done it right, the overall results should be the same, there certainly have been some unlikely stands, and "one roll per trigger" means less book keeping.

robert, yes, my rules will allow cascading morale tests. An experienced leader has a COOL of 2 so keeps his cool on anything but a 1. If the leader passes the unit ignores whatever triggered the check. BUT triggers include casualties, surprises, threats, and temptations (feigned retreat, a chance to loot)and are cumulative so it can happen that a leader has to test three or even four times, and each time in the same turn is at a cumulative -1. One failure has the unit doing something bad and a second failure usually means it disintegrates and is picked up. There is also a chance that a hero steps up and does an instant rally. Testing COOL is probably the main mechanism in the game, but it is, as you say, in response to externalities.

Several interesting themes seem to be emerging.

Gamesman6 questions whether dice should resolve actions at all, preferring them to generate choices and opportunities.

UshCha's concern appears to be less about dice themselves and more about whether the probabilities actually reflect reality. Our traditional D6 is too coarse a determiner.

Wolfhag makes the point that trained soldiers don't behave randomly; friction arises from imperfect information, communication delays and human reactions.

Which makes me wonder:

Should dice represent luck at all?

Or should they primarily represent uncertainty, friction and incomplete information?

Those seem like rather different design philosophies.

I'm not sure how much friction, uncertainty and incomplete information differ from luck from the commander's perspective, Ochoin.
I dice for movement and roll low. Did someone wait to confirm the order? Friction. Was there microterrain I couldn't see? incomplete information.

I dice for volley fire, and roll high. Microterrain kept the enemy invisible until killing range? Back to incomplete information. Something went wrong yesterday, so today that unit had all new flints, full cartridge boxes and the sergeants checking all the loads? Uncertainty. I can't check every unit myself.

I think the real question isn't "is there such a thing as luck?" but "are there outcomes a commander can't predict when he gives an order?" And for those outcomes, we have dice or cards--mostly dice. I believe von Reisswitz rolled dice in wargames because "there is nothing so uncertain as the effect of a volley."

That's a fair point, RP, and from the commander's perspective friction, uncertainty and luck may well look very similar.

Perhaps the distinction I'm groping towards is not the source of the uncertainty but how we model it.

For example, if my brigade advances slowly because of poor staff work, congested roads or garbled orders, I can represent that through scenario design, command rules or hidden information.

If I simply roll a die and move half distance, the outcome may be similar, but the mechanism is quite different.

Likewise, if I don't know where the enemy is because of fog, woods or limited reconnaissance, that uncertainty can be created by hidden movement rather than a die roll.

Von Reisswitz was surely correct that the effect of a volley is uncertain. What I wonder is whether modern wargame rules sometimes use dice as a substitute for factors that might be modelled in other ways.

Not a criticism—just wondering where people draw that line.

ochoin I am firmly of the opinion that die should never be used to substitute for factors that should/could be modelled in other ways.

I am minded of a prediciment that came out of one longer game. The battlwe had come to a pont the enemy could take one of two routes, thwy were equally reanonable. As the defende where he came fom would be unknown to me, but not to him he made the decision. He may have had good cause to choose one route or anothetr thatI did not know about. To me it would be a random event but to him a decision. That is an event that cannot be argued is plausable to be resolved by a die. In effect an event may be random to one observer but not to another in the same enviroment. A surprise to a unit may be a known quantity by another but they had not/could not or even decided not to communicate that fact. That is too complex to resolve credibly with a die role defined by none specific conditions so is implausible and hence makes for us the situation implausible and hence eliminates enjoyment.

To me its less important what the luck represents, than how we achive it.

I can tell myself what a 6 or a 1 means in reality. But no commander thought about rolling a 6 or 1. nor thought about any of their considerations in the way a player does in most rulensets, in terms that allow the dice to play a part.

They think about actions. Move, overwatch, fire etc.

Because rules need dice, (similar issues arrive with systems using playing cards instead) then the thing we are representing is thought about by the filter, how do I juggle this numerically so we can roll some dice. Which feels like the only thing I have is a hammer… so everything is now a nail.

If a CO orders a unit to move to, sieze and hold a postion, they expect that to be done and the unit will work to achive it.

As such the luck/randomisers are the actios the unit has available to achive that. Less move actions, they are going slow, crossing rough terrain may reduce the avaialblemovement actions. Cautious officer, may slow them further.

They contact the enemy, they want "fire" actions. That is effected by training and experience etc. But do they have them to use?

In part its also effected by my not wanting to calculate hits, saving throws etc.

Im more intersted in how the encounter affects the units abilites to continue to function. That will indicate to a degree things like casualties.
Where as conventional systems work out, hit and casualties first then how those effect the units ability to functions.

As CO. Initially I'm concerned that the unit stalled, whether that was due to casualties or just weight of fire on it comes later, so in system, I only work out is it functioning or not. I dont waste tkme determing other aspects til its timw where that is necessary.

I am never anything but fascinated by what people bring to their gaming.

UshCha does not game like me but I very much like getting glimpses into his methods & the reasoning behind them. I very much appreciate his painstaking approach with its uncompromising attitude to realism.

Gamesman6 with his Action dice reminds me of SAGA, which for reasons, I no longer game but I did very much value my Anglo-Saxon specific dice….even though they cost a motza. I would like to know what period(s) you game with them. I'm guessing WW2 to Modern?

Great thread.

Part of it is what you are looking to get out of the game. Are you looking to absolutely simulate an event as it would appear in the real world? If so, dice are an imprecise instrument, or at least one that might not be properly tuned to the situation.

Or are you looking just to have a fun game that gives the veneer of simulation? In that case dice are perfectly adequate to the occasion. For many players, they just want a fun game to kick back, relax, and move figures around a table. For them, dice are fine.

There is no one size fits all solution.

Ochion
Im aware of saga but mine is "different" 😃

I like to boil down to fundamental principles, that appear across times and places.

As such I use the syatem across periods as units, whether indivials to cohorts etc. Will need to move, attack etc.

The adaption is how those prices are used/constrained in an era.and at various levels of command.

Ive been explaining in it a more modern context, only because its in come ways easier and.other docaussion were on that rather its only focus.

In CYNTHIA ANN'S WAR the Texans and Comanche will roll d6s for move distance. Start HERE, designate the destination, then roll to see how far you get. Luck? No, not really, but friction. The tabletop is flat but the Great Plains are not and the Edwards Plateau/Hill Country is REALLY not. A bad roll probably means you had to slow down to navigate a prairie dog town you didn't know was there.

To me thats still luck, with post hoc rationalisation of what the bad luck meant.
This is a major glitch for me in wargames and RPGs, the need because were attached to njme4ic dice to translate in to and out of the system. Not only do I have to work real things in to a numeric system but I have to keep imaging what a "1" means.

Ive had great fun games with dice rolls when they've been kept simple but even then its been despite the dice.

It appears to me we are talking about designing for cause (show exactly what caused the event/action and why) or design for effect (just the event).

In Design for Cause approach, you design the underlying rules, physics, and variables, letting the final outcome emerge naturally or with a slight randomization of a die roll so the result is not entirely predictable. Players learn how the mechanics and tactics work and use that knowledge to overcome challenges and make tactical and/or Risk-Reward (taking a chance) decisions. Design for cause would be having a level of intel for a unit that can increase or decrease depending on assets (HUMINT, SIGINT, SATINT, Recon, etc.) you have and the enemy ability to counter them. Each method may have a variable level of success or rating which determines the overall intel picture. When you "fail" the reason(s) appear fairly clear and the player may be able to overcome it. You can use this method in smaller 1:1 games or in large games where the "cause" is what the designer feels is most important and wants to simulate.

In Design for Effect, you determine the exact experience or outcome you want the player to feel first, and then build the simplest possible mechanics and/or die roll and modifiers to achieve it. Players focus on what happened rather than the intricate why. You can get the result very quickly with a randomized die roll which in the players mind reflects a level of luck because the action is based only on a variable and there may not be anything the player can (tactic or decision) do to change the outcome. When the player fails he hopes for a better die roll next turn. In large games you need to use this method because it is quicker. You can also use it in smaller 1:1 "cause" games for actions the game designer feels are not as important to simulate in detail.

In my OODA Loop system Observation is very important, it's not a chance die roll of spotting the enemy but how quickly you notice and react based on a number of factors and tactics with a small randomization or else the system gets too predictable.

So a "Mutual Situational Awareness Check" is made as soon as a LOS is established. The result with a D6 roll is do you notice and react right away or is there a delay. Delays allow the enemy to seize the initiative to Act first.

The most important SA aspect is the direction of overwatch which is a players decision. Poor crews, buttoned up/suppressed, and moving can increase your reaction time.

So if a poor crew in an inferior tank flanks a superior tank with an ace crew he'll most likely fire first because the ace crew decided to overwatch in the wrong direction and was surprised by a player who decided to maneuver to surprise his opponent. In a situation like this the ace crew might have a delay in noticing and reacting of 5+ turns/seconds because of poor Situational Awareness. If his opponent popped into sight with his gun pointed at him he'll most likely notice with no delay and fire before the ace crew notices he was there.

The base value for the reaction time is taken from manuals, AARs and experience from real tanks crews. Some actions are abstracted to show just "effect" with a die roll as timing every action would be unplayable. When a player loses he can generally reflect back and see where he made wrong decisions rather than, "I really rolled the dice poorly today and lost".

I personally don't like playing games where the main concern is about "What do I need to roll" when it is my turn. I use tactics and player "Risk-Reward" decisions to determine the outcome with a die roll playing a minor role in the result.

Wolfhag

Luck is very hard to simulate or quantify but sometimes a situation or event happens on the battlefield which someone takes advantage of or the result seems "lucky" but if you examine it you can find someone or something else factored into the event.

The Japs planned three attack waves at Pearl Harbor. The third one was to take out the petro facilities. They failed and the Americans were considered "lucky". However, the third wave was called off because the Americans were not as "surprised" as they should have been and the third wave may not have succeeded so was called off.

At Agincourt the French attacked over a muddy field. Lucky for the Brits the French did not do a route recon before the battle.

The Americans could be seen as lucky at Midway because they were out numbered but without the intel they may not have been so "lucky".

Luck vs Fate vs Choice: Many philosophers and historians liken fate to the hand of cards you are dealt, while luck represents the wild cards that randomly pop up. Your choices dictate how you actually play the hand you've been given.

The two photos below were taken by my son in Dec 2022 when he was acting as an artillery FO and ISR drone operator in a building in Bakhmut, Ukraine. A Russian 120mm mortar came through the roof and impacted on the floor. It appears only the detonator went off and not the main charge but fractured the shrapnel/casing. The markings on the shell showed a manufacturing date of 1973. Was it luck, fate or just a bad round. A year later his best friend was killed during a trench assault when a 120mm mortar impacted and fully detonated a few feet away from him. Not so lucky?

It turns out about 10% of the Russian artillery shells are duds for a variety of reasons. Later he had a Russian 1500kg glide bomb hit his building which should have collapsed the entire building but it was a dud. Russian 152mm rounds come with a delay fuse to penetrate into buildings and underground bunkers before exploding. If one hits when you are above ground most of the effect goes into the ground and straight up into the air. That saved him another time but a piece of 152mm shrapnel hit his head shattering his helmet and splitting his scalp. If it had an impact fuse he and others around him would have been killed.

When I was in Ukraine I met a British SAS guy who had a Russian 125mm tank round glance off his helmet and survived. When my son was defending a trench outside Bakhmut during a lull he decided to take a outside the trench. From about 2k away a Russian tank sniped at him and missed. He knew the next round would take about 7 seconds so he had enough time to finish, zip up and jump back into the trench before it arrived.

I guess sometimes you are just plain lucky.

The way you could simulate that in a game is whenever a round impacts the defender rolls a D10 and on a "1" it is a dud.

Wolfhag

Time is another factor--as are the length and complexity of rules and scenarios. I'd say the general rule is to look at the command level of the tabletop general. If something might go seriously badly--or unexpectedly well--for reasons he can't know about or can't influence at his command level at the time he makes the decision--well, that's what dice are for. Keep the game moving.

I keep going back to Kipling in "Drums of the Fore and Aft" observing that many things go wrong for generals which they simply can't know or control.

I have found that game designers don't always understand the probabilities that dice, particularly complex mechanisms, create

This explains the gap people experience between wanting randomness, but finding unlikely events happen more than they should

For example, buckets of dice mechanisms provide non average results less frequently than a single (or opposing dice) mechanism

John

@ John. Good point. As a (mediocre) rule writer whose maths can be a little shaky, after working out dice parameters, I throw lots & lots (& lots) of dice to see how it works in practice.

This normally reveals the potholes. On occasion, I move to D10s, D20s & D100s if I find the D6 spread to be too narrow.

"I keep going back to Kipling". Generally good advice for all sorts of things, RP.

Dice can represent many things on the table top. I think their best use is to adjudicate the results of a player decision. Hopefully this is through weighted probably. This could be the results of a infantry charge, Calvary movement or machine gun fire. As John mentioned, it helps to know your math when you are designing.
Great discussion, thanks.
Joe

I would love to read your review of them, if you use them, OC.

I first played Carnage & Glory about a year ago at Historicon, and I really liked it. There were three of us attending the convention, and one of our group was so impressed that he bought the software. Our first game with it was Austerlitz. The battle did not unfold historically, which is fine; that is part of gaming. However, the Austrians had battalion guns, which I had not realize were still a thing in 1805. In our game, those battalion guns were the main reason the French lost. We all agreed they seemed too powerful and ended up skewing the game.

That is the only game we have had a chance to play so far, so the jury is still out. Our next game will be an English Civil War scenario. My takeaway so far is that I really like the lack of clutter on the tabletop. There are only a few markers, and, of course, no dice. The lack of dice did not bother us at all. In fact, after a while we forgot about dice entirely and did not miss them.

One thing you do have to get used to is knowing when a unit has taken too many casualties. Since casualty figures are not removed, it can be easy to lose track of a unit's condition. One of our players kept track by writing things down on a pad, but I do not plan on doing that myself.

When I played a couple of games at the convention, I came into it without knowing the rules. The host simply asked if I had ever played Napoleonics before. I said yes, and he said, "Good," and we started playing. I did really well and never had a rule issue. In fact, at the time I did not think there were rules at all. I thought all you really needed to know were the formations. So, we were surprised to find out later that the rules run over forty pages. However, most of those rules appear to be for the person running the laptop.

The other issue, while not a major problem, is something to be aware of. In order for the software to work properly, you need to know how many troops were in each unit for the battle you are playing. Nafziger helps with some of that, but you still need to do a fair amount of research when preparing your scenarios.

A lot of things which may or not fail from what you the ubiquitous master (but with a theoretical command position in the game) wanted to do, that could fail in real time.
because of dice producing possibly too many random things and also can kill a game actually without claim to reality (DBM with two rounds of 3x1 cd dice can finish you), I advocate for the use of "event cards" that will mellow total chaos, limit the number of times some stuff can happen I can go with the dice too. The opposition plays them on your actions, a few a turn (3-4), and they are not magical so they have only 50% chance to "work".
fully random activations and similar systems means you don't really can do planning just play /react each turn to what happens or not. Not realistic.

Decisions are for who the player is representing in the command chain, or any actions they actually takes; everything else should have a dice component because it is not entirely within their control. How big a dice component and at what level of detail are however big questions.