This will make more sense if you have
read the first two parts first. You can find them here and here, respectively. If
you haven’t read them yet, go do that. Thank come back and read this as well.
 |
| "I would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good." - Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon at Bay: the Campaign in France, 1814 (Avalon Hill, 1978); picture courtesy of Tac Ope (BGG)). |
This is the final post in a three-part consideration of game designer Fernando Sola Ramos’s short essay entitled Mando y control en los wargames (Command and Control in wargames), which appeared in Josep Oliver’s excellent blog, El desafío de las Águilas. If you haven’t already, head over to las Águilas read Sr. Ramos’s article (linked above); I'll wait. Since I began this consideration series, las Águilas has featured a handful of other short articles by Sr. Ramos examining various aspects of how wargames try to simulate the realities of armed conflict. All of these are well worth your time.
In this final part, I’ll look at the last two of six
methods Sr Ramos identified as used in wargames to mimic the limits of Command
in Control (refer back to part 1 for the complete listing). The two models we'll look at here (along with Sr. Ramos's own exemplary wargame examples) are:
- Leadership-distance chain of command (Great Battles of the American Civil War series)
- Limiting attacks to command formations (i.e.
disallowing or limiting ad hoc formations). Sr Ramos didn’t single out a
particular example here, but visually represented Mark Simonitch’s “ZoC-Bond”
family of games.
In Parts 1 & 2, I looked at the first four
models in the list, adding a couple of examples of my own. Here I’m looking at
the last two model Sr. Ramos listed. I’m considering just one game for each. Some
people might eve argue over whether the games I’ve chosen to represent each model.
Many of the games I’ve looked at would sit just as comfortably under at least
one more of the defined models.
Leadership-distance
chain of command
Redvers’ Reverse: the Battle of Colenso, 1899 (Legion Wargames, 2016) is my pick for a game that effectively represents the tribulations of Command in Control over distance. It’s a solitaire game, so it won’t appeal to everyone, and like all good solitaire games, it’s bloody difficult to successfully meet all the victory conditions. It portrays the battle of Colenso, fought in December 1899, during the Second Anglo-Boer War. General Redvers Buller had been selected to command the British Army of Natal but had a mixed bag of commanders under him; some were exhibited apprehension in the face of the enemy, some were unduly reckless, and more then one believed he should have been in command instead of Buller. The board is an area movement map, and the units are brigade-level.
A den of vipers: Buller weighing up his options before the balloon goes up.
The game elegantly captures the difficulty of leading an ad hoc force that to a degree resents being led, or downright refuses to be. The first hurdle is the delivery of orders. The game allows a limited number of Command Points. These are used to place Objective markers unique to each ordered brigade on the board.
With distance comes uncertainty. Depending on how far a brigade is from Buller's HQ, an order may be delivered in the same turn, or the next, or two turns hence. Or not at all - with distance comes the possibility of the messenger getting lost or being unable to find the brigade commander for whom the order was intended.
The Send Orders and Receive Orders Tables from the Redvers' Reverse PAC,
bringing a little more uncertainty to your well-laid plans.
The next
phase is where you see the initial outcome of your orders. Each Brigade Leader has
a rating based on their historical performance. A leader may be Aggressive,
Good, or Cautious. The player must roll for each unit ordered, and depending on
the quality of the Brigade commander, they will either ignore the order,
execute it as best as they can interpret (moving by the shortest possible path
to the Objective), or Charge to the Guns (make their way to the closest Boer troops).
In my experience it is not unknown for a brigade saddled with a Cautious
commander to ignore one order in two or more, even as their more aggressively
led brethren are being mowed down by Boer fire from the heights.
A little chaos - British forces struggle for find a way across the river.
This probably sounds to some like an awful way to run a battle. It is, but it also reflects the manner of difficulties the beleaguered Buller faced at Colenso.
Attacks
limited to command formations
Dunkirk: France, 1940 (Worthington Games,
2018) presents an operational level situation at a minute scale. The game captures
the whole of the German advance on France and the Low Countries. The game is a
study in reductionism, covering the initial Western campaign on a twelve-by-twelve
hex-grid and in a mere six turns.
The author's much-loved copy of Dunkirk.
The opposing
forces are represented by blocks (each representing roughly a corps), and grouped
into armies, except the German forces who are grouped into Army Groups A and B,
each with its own HQ block. Each side also has a GHQ block which remains
off-board, but records the extra orders that can be allocated during turns.
Activation is by a chit-pull mechanism, or more accurately a block pull – each Allied
formation has its own draw token, while the two Axis army groups have two each.
The Axis player gets to keep one draw block in hand (for either Army Group) to kick off
the hostilities, and he uses the double orders for both formations over the
first two turns (there’s an optional rule to allow use of the extra orders for the
third or even fourth turn, should it be deemed the Germans need a little extra
help).
In their
turn, a formation’s units can move and/or attack; Infantry units can move two
hexes (subject to terrain conditions), and mechanised units up to three. Up to
two units can occupy the same hex at the same time.
Dunkirk set up for play.
But this is where the Formation limitations kick
in. It starts with set up; various hexes are marked as beginning locations for
each formation. This means that they begin within command distance of the
formation HQ. At the formation’s Activation, all the units in the formation must
be within the Command radius of the formation’s HQ or suffer penalties: an
out-of-command unit’s movement is reduced by one, it cannot move to engage in
combat, and its fighting strength is severely impeded.
The Command
distance for all of the Allied formations is two hexes, for the German formations
it’s three hexes (to reflect the superior command discipline and forward
planning of the invaders). It is possible for units from two allied formations
to share a hex, but they must fight independently (and conversely must be
attacked separately by enemy forces).
Army Group A's surprise attack from the "inpenertrable" Ardennes.
The whole campaign
a tricky manoeuvre operation in a claustrophobic environment, and under severe
time constraints. Forward planning becomes crucial to ensure each side’s
ability to effectively attack or defend. It’s here that the importance of command
distance shines: out-of-command units become sitting ducks, unable to prosecute
battle, and ill-equipped to defend themselves, but in a crowded battlefield, it
can become difficult to maintain command cohesion. While Dunkirk plays out
quickly, it is always an intense and challenging game.
-----
So, that covers
my quick and dirty look at Fernando Sola Ramos’s six Command-in-Control models
in wargames. I’m very grateful to Sr. Ramos and Josep Oliver for the
opportunity to respond to the article (just a reminder that there’s a link to the
original post at the top of this piece). As I said in the first part, it’s
something that I’ve been wanting to engage with on A Fast Game for a while, and
Sr. Ramos’s piece offered an excellent entry framework. This is a concept that
I’m deeply interested in and that I expect we’ll revisit in the future.
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