"Do We Know Too Much?" Topic

One of the problems with historical wargaming is that we often know too much military history.

We know where the enemy is. We know when reinforcements will arrive. We know which attacks historically succeeded and which ended in disaster.

Even worse, we sometimes import ideas from later periods into earlier ones.

I've seen medieval commanders who keep a substantial reserve, refuse one flank, conduct a fighting withdrawal and then launch a perfectly timed counterattack. Splendid generalship perhaps—but it sounds suspiciously like a twentieth-century staff-college exercise!

The worst excess from my own experience concerns the 95th Rifles in Napoleonic games. These admittedly elite troops are often used more like twentieth-century SAS than Napoleonic light infantry by gamers infused with modern military thinking… and probably inspired by Sharpe.

The result is that historical battles can become strangely ahistorical. We often make better decisions than the real commanders because we possess perfect hindsight and decades of scholarship.

So my question is this:

How much of historical wargaming is really a contest between two generals and how much is a contest between two historians?

And can we ever truly recreate the uncertainty and ignorance of the original commanders?

Honestly that is why I prefer lesser known battles or hypothetical battles to well trodden battles. I have played well known battles where GMs have set the battle up in ways to make it nearly impossible to deviate from history. That is not enjoyable to me. I can read history, replaying it as a railroad is not for me. I have also played historical battles where the GM allowed deviation and then heard grumbling by the players after that it was ‘not historical' implying that the game was flawed as a result.

I like to run lesser known battles so that players can't rely on years of reading and playing to guide their game, or hypothetical or ahistorical battles that are representative of the period but not fait accompli. I realize this puts me in a minority to the majority of historical miniature gamers, but I am ok with that.

It's a real problem, and there is no real solution for fighting historical battles. Both commanders know when and where every reinforcement will arrive for Antietam and Gettysburg--highly unhistorical knowledge. But if we use randomized arrivals, we get unhistorical events.

Best I can say is that this matters much more in some battles than in others, and if you're looking to refight historical engagements, you should keep that in mind.

How much of historical wargaming is really a contest between two generals and how much is a contest between two historians?

More like a contest between two gamers. 🙄🤷
I spent yesterday bickering over the rules and scenario. I wasn't arguing history. I was arguing the liberties taken with the source game(s) themselves.
I am not proud of myself.

It is a game. That is the only way I can see it. Nothing more unless you get to complex there is no enjoyment. IMHO.

I ran Koniggratz as an ACW game, Quite a surprise for the players as First corps showed up.

I stay away from historical battles. To faithfully portray it there are many limitations you need to put on players and if you don't get the historical results your game rules will be questioned.

But again it depends on the players and their expectations. I put on a game of the ACW Battle of the Crater and the Charge of the Light Brigade for a group that basically wanted to reenact the battle. I drew up a set of rules to reflect the battle with a few risk-reward decisions the players could make and it turned out great, except for one guy. Franck Chadwick had complemented me until I explained I wrote the rules so there was almost no way the Union could have won.

For the Charge of the Light Brigade the players were all friends, knew the setup but had a great time discussing the real events as they unfolded on the table, units, painting techniques, etc. One guy did the color commentary and historical accounts. Personally, it would have been a boring game for me.

Wolfhag

I'm withe the OFM.

I'm fond of using battles and OOB's from different points in time to try and obviate the excess knowledge issues. Trafalgar or Camperdown using pre-dreadnoughts or Gettysburg terrain as a setting for a Napoleonic battle.

As mentioned above, as long as you have the figures, a change in armies will throw most people off.

I mostly fight hypothetical battles.

You are probably right
Playing Quatre Bras on British side we got ran over real quickly, the French just charged everyone at once, no worrying the British might have large forces behind a ridge, they knew there wasn't any.

You cannot game Gettysburg historically because you know where and when every unit enters the field.

If you want to game the thought processes of Lee against Meade, use a randomly generated road network and random units and entries.

OR play a campaign on a good strategic map with double blind except for the recon your cavalry can manage. Then the armies collide somewhere, maybe even at Gettysburg, and you can relight the battle historically, because not exactly historically.

As I said in another thread, wargaming is an art not a science, and that applies as much to scenario design as it does rules design.

My only real interest in wargaming is fighting historical battles, I just can't see the point of hypothetical ones except as training exercises, so I do my best to make historical scenarios entertaining and interesting for the players.

@ Martin
As I expect you'd "run out" of historical battles to game, do you re-fight them multiple times? I would like to hear more about what you game.

If re-fighting an historical battle you must reflect the respective commander's uncertainties and worries..will the reinforcements arrive in time (or at all) etc. It's the situation that is being replayed. My opinion anyway…:)

That's assuming the guys who are in your gaming group bothered to find out what happened.

I have no problem doing historical battles. Just about all of the games I do are based on historical battles. I will be wrapping up the Antietam campaign sometime this year and plan to either do the Seven Days or the Gettysburg campaign.

Run out of ACW battles to game? There are hundreds of ACW battles to do. I use to think there were not enough AWI battles but there are plenty. I have around thirty ACW scenario books and I haven't Scratched the surface. You are not going to run out.

link

"As I expect you'd "run out" of historical battles to game, do you re-fight them multiple times? I would like to hear more about what you game."

Run out? There have been an awful lot of battles….and at many levels of resolution.

I do sometimes repeat, particularly for ones I find interesting and sometimes at player request. Market Garden is one I come back to time and again, either the whole campaign or individual actions, same for the 100 Days. Ive rather lost count how many times I've run Alexanders battles.

At 80 games a year you soon ron put of battles and as a simulator that matters not, the interest is the technology and how impacts command decisions bot tactically and tempo.

"You are not going to run out."

I'm not so sure. Take the SYW. In Europe, around 20 to 25 major, historically recognized land battles.

Some of these aren't suitable for several reasons -they might lack the balance, choices, or spatial dynamics required for an engaging game.

And I don't have any Russians, so there's some I can't/won't game.

I've gamed Lobositz twice & may do it again but that's a finite number:

theminiaturespage.com

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I appreciate the concept of using, say, an Ancient battle & placing it in the, say, SYW but this practice is just another type of 'what if?'

There's more battles in my preferred Napoleonic era (1812-1815) but that number is finite, too.

Devised scenarios are, whether I like it or not, the go-to of table top gaming for me.

It's all down to the rules and what they will let a commander/player do. That said some players won't engage unless they can import all their modern and 'gaming' tactics onto the table.

Your not gong to run out of battles. We have been playing a different Napoleonic Peninsular game once a month for over two years and we're not finish with the first scenario book.

Most conflicts have some small to medium size battles that get no attention. But with a little work can be turn into great scenarios. But it helps if you play battalions. If your doing brigades then yeah I guess you might run out. But I don't play much brigade games.

I was looking to see if there was more to gaming the Hundred Days than the usual list of suspects. As it turns out, there was. Battles were being fought on the frontiers and in other lesser-known areas—things I did not know about until I started digging.

Then there are all the period-correct hypotheticals, especially post-Waterloo. With a little research, some knowledge of the conflict, and a bit of imagination, you can come up with some very interesting and enjoyable games.

Old Contemptible we ar playing at a low rate at the moment only 40 battles a year not or normal 80 (twicw a week|) so you 24 battles oin 2 years looks a bit thin to me.

We sdesign scenarios to be interesting what if's in many diffrent sorts of terrain.