OHW – The Wargaming Erratic

In part 1 of this series of posts I covered the background to the “Twins War” which broke out in Greater Zarland.

In part 2 I gave a narrative account of an encounter between two advance guards of the respective Royal Zarland Army (the defender) and the VinAlban Army (the aggressor).

In this, part 3 I will detail the rules I am using.

Fauxterre is my mythical realm for what I call the Vienna Treaty Wars. The period between the demise of Napoleon and the Russians wresting control from the Ottoman Turks of the Black Sea is about 60 years and offers up a fascinating choice of technology, engagements and of course uniforms.

Fauxterre 1816 is very much Napoleonic in outlook to begin with. By Fauxterre 1878 the components for World War 1 are already in place – especially technology.

My primary ruleset is from Neil Thomas – Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe 1815-1878 (NT19e). How convenient!

I now have many Neil Thomas titles in my wargames library. And this one first arrived as an “e publication”. I was so impressed I tracked down a rarely for sale hard copy version from the USA. I use both. I am a “printed” book collector anyway.

For my Fauxterre campaign I have also used some other rulesets to meet my needs.

They are

Charlie Wesencrafts Practical Wargaming
A solo wargames association article on campaign unit advancement
One Hour Wargames and Wargaming an Introduction by Neil Thomas
Table Top Battles – Grid Wargaming by Mike Smith
A Gentlemans War (e pub) by Howard Whitehouse
Piquet Field of Battle 2nd Edition by Brent Oman

In fact I am keeping the rulesets apart for battles and actions.

Why multiple rulesets?

As a soloist you can please yourself. I actually want the rules for different situations.

Table Top Battles on a grid are good for big encounters – one base equals say a battalion
One Hour wargames does what it says on the tin! quick turnround
A Gentlemans War lends itself to looking at skirmishes in more detail
NT19e simply gives you a complete package and coupled with One Hour Wargames, lots of flexibility
Piquet – simply because I like the randomness of the rules for a change! and lastly
Practical Wargaming by Charlie Wesencraft is another complete package and with some fine mechanisms it gives you a quick and interesting game (in a way Donald Featherstone offerings were not – with Donald Featherstone, I am always spoilt for his fantastic range of choices instead!).
Wargaming, an Introduction gives me some perspective on Neil Thomas thinking. It includes rules for Napoleonic and ACW wars which sort of bookend his NT19e ruleset.

Where to start?

I think for campaigns the attrition of forces is as good as any. And together with attrition is their reinforcement, gaining of experience and honours.

I came across these ideas in Donald Featherstones books first.

The ideas have remained popular. Indeed RPG games starting with D&D quite simply were all about gaining experience and levelling up: The difference – it was so personal.

In 2012 Sam Mustapha published his Maurice ruleset and in there you find a very basic three level unit quality rule aimed at Maurice being a simple multi battle campaign.

Elite
Trained
Conscript

Neil Thomas uses a 3 level scale in his book Wargaming, an Introduction.

In the Napoleonic rules he uses Elite, Average and Levy with ranges 3-6/4-6 and 5-6 respectively. He then slides these to 4-6/5-6 and 6 on D6 dice rolls when he moves to the ACW era. You can see he downgrades “elite” and “average” while levy are also downgraded and become “militia”.

Perhaps in all this is the genesis of a finer grading he uses in Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe which I have abbreviated to NT19e. Either way Neil sees unit quality as an important ingredient for this post Napoleonic era which also includes the ACW period albeit in Europe. Morale on a D6 rating are

Fanatic (2-6)
Elite (3-6)
Average (4-6)
Levy (5-6)
Rabble (6)

I used these in the Kloster Arens encounter.

For future battles though I will probably adopt the following approach.

I found it in an old copy of Lone Warrior, TLMorgan wrote “oh what a surprise!” His fragility factors attracted me because they also seem to lean towards the 19th century armies willingness to easily run away and then come back and have another go. In fact Donald Featherstone uses that very idea in chapter 12 of Battles with Model Soldiers to reflect his view of ACW armies.

And again in Neil Thomas’s Wargaming an Introduction, he contrasts Napoleonic rules with ACW era where in the latter you have rallying of quick breaks in the fighting ability of units.

TLMorgan provided the following example in Lone Warrior

Green 0-5
Seasoned 6-13
Veteran 14-16
Elite 17-20

The idea is each unit gathers small amounts of experience or attrition and moves on the 0 to 20 scale.

Note TLMorgan describes experience levels whereas Neil Thomas mixes it a bit with measures (average) and types (militia).

TLMorgan provides the means to reflect smaller steps of progress in a campaign compared to say Maurice where each step is the result of a major battle – a case of sequenced battles equating to a campaign. In my case I wanted a campaign where big battles were not guaranteed. In that situation you need a different approach to rewarding experience. Actually much more of a nod to incremental levelling up you get in the original D&D game.

Next TLMorgan also used a similar technique I came across in Charlie Wesencrafts Practical Wargaming. This is where a unit can have its incremental grading for the campaign but on the day of battle can have a different one! This is excellent for narrative creation – prevents the best always being at their best and delivers that campaign grist soloists need.

Again from the original D&D – a super swordsman adventurer having a hangover from too much beer the night before and not being able to wield his sword the next morning…….

Prior to each battle TLMorgan threw a 1D6 for each unit with a 1 meaning the unit was demoted one of their grades for that battle only. Similarly a 6 gained the unit a temporary promotion. Your narrative takes care of the reason.

Another Charlie Wesencraft idea I like is the weather board – ok Donald Featherstone gives you plenty on weather effects as do so many others. I have simply found the Practical Wargaming version enduring and simple in its impact.

You have a scale of 2 to 12, with 6 weather effects and each battle turn you move up or down on a dice throw (range -1,0 or +1) having thrown a 2d6 to get you a starting point.

Kloster Arens Encounter

I used my narrative map to generate some relationships to flesh out the core story about succession. It is here in an earlier Fauxterre post:

https://wordpress.com/post/thewargamingerratic.home.blog/2539

These relationships have driven the conflicts and belligerants including who might be supporting whom.

Having created the conflicted situation I simply used the NT19e minigame scenario generator for the advance guard forces and the main scenario generator for the main bodies.

To get some unit qualities I simply threw a single d12 for each unit against the following table

Fanatic on a 1
Elite on a 2 or 3
Average on 4 to 8
Levy on 9 to 11
Rabble on a 12

Zarland Royal Army Advance Guard (Commander is General Sumpf)

4th Benkendorf Infantry Regiment – Average
12th Maulhadt Infantry Regiment – Levy
13th Nurtberg Infantry Regiment – Levy
6th Dirkheim Artillery – Average
5th Gellenstein Cavalry – Average

No skimishers in this NT19e selection

VinAlban Army Advance Guard (Commander is General Stute)

11th Fusiliers – Levy
12th Fusiliers – Rabble
13th Fusiliers – Levy
1st Artillery – Average
2nd Artillery – Levy

no cavalry or skirmishers in this NT19e selection of pretty poor troops.

Both commands could control up to 6 units using NT19e optional leadership rules.

So you can see that immediately NT19e gives you asymmetrical or rather different but balanced forces. The use of a unit grading/quality then further alters the result.

Finally I have seen the reference to “zero player” wargaming. This is where the soloist takes neither side but in effect is the third person umpire you get in normal two player games that do have an umpire.

I suppose I play “zero player games”.

To help this dimension I add another layer of deviation or loss of control.

Written Orders

Long out of popularity with two player gamers, written orders are a convenient way to control a game for the soloist. First memorising one sides plans is hard enough, memorising two sides is near impossible and you live in the moment reacting to everything that has just gone before: objectivity and impartiality go out the window.

Written orders gives you a delayed reaction and contributes to the fog of war.

I write two moves ahead which further removes my immediate control. I think it still retains a degree of accuracy when units fail to always react to situations immediately. Very unrealistic situations are simply handled, with dicing for a series of revised actions to modify that one issue.

And if one general is particularly poor they may have to write three ahead – personally intervening more often, if they can, to get things changed more quickly. In contrast a very superior general may be allowed to write only one move order ahead reflecting their greater awareness to situations and independence of their officers.

Neil Thomas is not a great lover of explicit command rules believing in the wargamers ability to mess up, being enough friction in itself! Yet I think in his heart he is writing mainly for two player face to face games and his unaltered rules work really well there.

In summary I use a set of rules with their options and then add in the scene setter + unit quality (if missing) + written orders + weather.

So having had a good start to the year painting wise, by August I had enough units to do some gaming. My wargaming has always been predominantly “solo”, so road testing rules on my own is natural for me.

I should also say that from my earliest wargaming days I have tinkered with rules.

It is a quirk of fate that the first wargames book I read on rules came from my local public library (remember them?). So being a child you take what you can or rather see. So what did my local library have in the adult section? Well a single Donald Featherstone book. And his book was called “Advanced Wargames”. It was a book about wargames and the advanced bit meant nothing to me.

So armed with Advanced Wargames I started rule based wargaming and of course met a big problem. Advanced Wargames is a set of chapters dealing with “aspects” of wargaming. Drawing on multiple sources and authors the book covers most areas of rulesets yet they are not joined up to provide a single useable ruleset.

The assumption was that you had a wargames ruleset/s already and some prior knowledge of the whole idea of rules based wargaming. Then you would cherry pick additions and improvements from the book.

I think this is the origin of my “tinkering” with wargames rules. Give me a set of rules and I will invariably add in some “house rules”.

So back to my road test of the rulesets of Neil Thomas and Daniel Mersey.

In Ancient & Medieval Wargaming (AMW) by Neil Thomas there are four period rulesets

Biblical Wargaming 3000BC – 500BC
Classical Wargaming 500BC – 300AD
Dark Age Wargaming 300AD -1100AD
Medieval Wargaming 1100AD – 1485AD

My choice here was obvious – Dark Age Wargaming.

I used his rules without house rule changes on this occasion. Well with one exception.

I use Impetus sized elements having abandoned DBA with its restrictions on depth. And I had settled on 1/72 20-25mm figures on 80 mm wide bases which Impetus assumed would be for 15mm although the rules clearly gave you the option for 1/72 basing.

In fact Impetus rules whole approach to basing was so refreshing when I encountered them. And for me they have set the tone for most of the last decade.

I think they were in the vanguard of “BW” measurement or base width’s. This simple decision meant the end of the need to “rebase” figures when switching between rulesets. Of course if you only have one ruleset it is never an issue.

I have almost as many rulesets as guides to painting figures if not more……..dozens.

AMW assumes you have DBA based figures so uses 4 40mmx20mm bases giving you an 80mm x 40mm element and 8 of these make an AMW army.

In effect you need 32 dba bases which is not so good if you have 12 unit dba armies: And most of my thinking had been on these compact DBA army lines.

Then I read an article in the Lone Warrior magazine of the Solo Wargamers Association. There the writer suggested a cheap way to build armies was just use the 40mm x 20mm bases as single elements and/or reduce figure count to just say 1 for light troops, 2 for medium and 3 for heavy troops. Well it was something like that because it was the principle that made the difference to me. It broke me fully away from DBA “figures per base rules” and Impetus gave me the solution of 1/72 figures which I prefer – yet now on a smaller 15mm scale base size I also prefer.

The net result is I use 80mm wide bases and actually a generous 60mm depth for all units. This allows the impetus suggested “diorama” approach, better showing individual figures you have carefully painted rather than their being very squashed together under DBA.

You sacrifice ground scale though. I guess in this I have followed favourably the increased “abstraction” approach on ruleset design. Abandoning figure removal for losses in the 1990’s? was the start of this “abstraction” and for some the descent fully into gaming and away from any simulation. I love history yet I love gaming so the compromise matters.

Using single base elements meant that required base removal in AMW rules was not now possible. The fix here was simply to use two dice. The first was used to show the 4 “virtual” bases while the second showed the 4 points value each virtual base could sustain before being knocked out and removed from play. I have also used three dice in other games (18 so showing 6+6+4 at the start). But the rules in AMW use base counts to indicate available attack dice. Unless you like mental arithmetic, showing the two aspects gives a simple visual indicator.

A few years later Neil Thomas used this “one number” technique to good effect in his fastplay “One Hour Wargames” (OHW) rules where units are a single base elements with a value of 16 which equates to all the elements morale/resistance/casualty value and overall strength in one number.

So I played two games with AMW. The first was essentially two shield walls crashing together and the second was a cavalry led force attacking a shieldwall.

The third ruleset test game was another shieldwall versus shieldwall this time using Dux Bellorum.

These rules are aimed at a narrower period AD367-793 and with a nod to fantasy gaming called “Arthurian Wargaming Rules”. These rules use the “BW” concept, being published in 2012, 5 long years after AMW.

Again there were no tweaks for once. Indeed in both cases as I fought shieldwall battles a side benefit was to better understand the design of these two rulesets. Because shieldwalls in both rulesets result in quite a static and very balanced game you can see the effect of a limited number of the author’s variables in action.

In my next blog I will consider what happened in each game.