Thursday 15 August 2024

Why play a whole big battle at all?

Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts ... this reflection was prompted by Jared Fishman interviewing me on his "20 Sided Gamified" podcast, which is up to an impressive 69 episodes already, including many extremely eminent guests from different areas of our hobby. After episode 68, Jared was running out of people to invite, so he kindly asked me along 😉, together with longtime BBB player and scenario designer Vincent Tsao, to enthuse about the "Bloody Big BATTLES!" ruleset. (This was my third time on air, following outings on Scott van Roekel's "Shot & Shield" and Sean Clark's "God's Own Scale".)

I told Jared and his listeners the reason we created BBB - namely, so that a few of us could fight entire 19th-century battles on a normal 6'x4' tabletop on a regular Monday evening club night at Oxford Wargames Society

I subsequently realised there is a meta-question that merits answering. It's one I hinted at during the podcast but that really deserves fuller discussion. It's also a question implied a few months ago by a podcast I haven't been on but have often enjoyed listening to: Ken Reilly's "Yarkshire Gamer's Reet Big Wargames Podcast". In one of his "Brews in the Binyard" episodes, Ken was chatting with Sean and another gamer and the topic of my GOS interview with Sean came up. (Incestuous business, podcasts ...) Ken said something like, "As soon as Chris Pringle said it was all about fighting a whole battle on 6'x4' in an evening, he lost me!"

The meta-question in question is this: why should we want to fight such battles in their entirety in this way at all? Hence I am elevating it to full "Reflections on Wargaming" status with this post.

Let's start by asking ourselves what the aim behind any game might be. In a previous Reflections essay I discussed three dimensions wargames try to satisfy in varying degrees:

- exploring military history;

- providing entertaining game mechanics;

- and generating a competitive contest.

I submit that BBB does relatively well on all three counts. Long before BBB, the biggest game I ever played in was when the whole club deployed all our Napoleonic collections for a single battle. It was literally played on a basketball court. There were probably 20 players, with CinCs sending written orders by courier, and it took all weekend. What did I get out of it? As an easily-pleased teenage wargamer, I was happy to push around my little brigade and engage in inconsequential skirmishing for hours. But:

- I had no idea what the bigger picture was, the point of the battle, what crucial decisions were taken when or by who and how they worked out. Hence, it failed as an exploration of military history (at least, I didn't learn any from it);

- the game mechanics were fine, but I might as well have played a simple brigade-sized battle and had just as much fun in a fraction of the time. I'd call that inefficient;

- I had no idea who won and I'm not sure we actually finished it, so perhaps it wasn't great as a dramatic contest either.

Of course, not every 'big game' will be like that. With clear briefings, tight management, pauses to take a step back and appreciate the wider situation, and post-battle summings-up, players can get more of a sense of the big picture and how their small part contributes to it. Still, I maintain that the BBB format of playing a whole big battle in an evening has significant advantages, including:

- You get a 'big picture' appreciation of a historical battle that is impossible to obtain by fighting it in fractions or where each player is only involved with one small corner of a huge multi-player game;

- You get to make major, substantial game decisions such as shifting whole corps from one sector to another, rather than pushing around individual battalions and doing tiny tactical stuff. It has the right granularity for the size of the battle and lets you see the wood, not just the trees. (See my Reflection on getting the right granularity in games.)

- You get to finish the game! Even with a whole day, too many monster games finish up with "in the end, we ran out of time, so we called it ..." (see my Reflection on that phenomenon here.)

- Not only does the game finish, a BBB battle most often ends with an exciting climactic turn in which two or three objectives are in play, all three results are still possible (win-draw-lose) and it comes down to the last few rolls of the dice.

- As you only need a 6'x4' table, three or four other players at most (indeed, one would do), and three or four hours, it is far easier to organise and fit in than a grand weekend event. I'd rather have a BBB game every week than six mega-games a year.

- If you do have a whole weekend for gaming, you can fight several BBB battles in the time it takes for one mega-game and get to make a lot more significant decisions in the same time. (We once fought a whole 9-battle Franco-Prussian War campaign in a three-day weekend.)

- Huge games need huge armies. BBB forces are modest enough that it relatively easy to buy, build, transport and store multiple armies for multiple wars, which is good for varying the gaming diet.

I'm going to finish by reporting some recent comments by Jim Owczarski of the Armchair Dragoons that support what I've said above. Jim regularly runs online wargames through Tabletop Simulator, using many different rulesets for many different wars. For instance, last year I believe his group did a comparison exercise, fighting Quatre Bras eight times with different rules. The publication of "Napoleon's Bloody Big Battles!" has really enthused Jim and his merry grognards. He says that after a couple of games "the consensus of the Dragoons is that they want to play ALL the BBB Napoleonic scenarios". In particular, before playing Bautzen, he said "The battle of Bautzen was a strange, sprawling affair. Curious to see how BBB makes sense of it. Not too many miniatures rules have." After the game, his verdict: "it's the best treatment of Bautzen I've played on the tabletop". That seems a good point to rest my case.

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Update 25 August 2024

Well, that was a popular post! It generated a lot of feedback on TMP, LAF and TWW. These 70+ replies caused me to reflect on my reflection. Let me add the result of that reflection here:

A big thank you to everyone who responded. I appreciate all your comments (including the critical and dismissive ones – I care about your opinions too). Judging by the quantity and quality of replies, it was evidently a worthwhile question.

As far as the charge of shameless self-promotion/advertising is concerned: guilty as charged, sorry – can I make a plea in mitigation? It genuinely wasn't my original prime intention, but I struggled a bit to structure the essay, was under time pressure, then saw Jim Owczarski's remarks, got over-excited and lapsed into stream-of-consciousness anecdotes and enthusing. There is a better essay to be written on this question that actually answers it properly, perhaps enumerating types of battle and game, listing what features each provides to players, addressing limitations and practicalities …

Nevertheless, I feel my decision to just publish and be damned is partially vindicated by the wealth of ideas in all your great comments. I hoped and expected that the resulting discussion would be better than what I'd bashed out in haste, and you didn't let me down. I hope you'll forgive me if I don't reply in great detail to the multitude of points in 50+ posts. I have just a few remarks to make now:

First: I should have made a clear distinction between big battle and big game – these are not necessarily the same thing! Small games of big battles are possible, as are big games of small battles, etc.

Second: I'll readily acknowledge BBB's limitations (e.g., the lack of fog of war, albeit the activation mechanism introduces enough uncertainty to compensate for that to some degree). Other ways of fighting big battles are possible and other rules are available. All have their merits and which is the right tool for the job depends on the job and the craftsman.

Third and finally: absolutely no disparagement of anybody else's fun was intended. Tournament games, skirmishes, monster marathons on basketball courts – it's all good and all part of our rich hobby. I ain't telling anyone else how to play toy soldiers. Have fun your way! Happy gaming!





13 comments:

  1. Many, many years ago (I am 78) I read the comment of an American (I forgot his name) who said "wargaming is about to create your own prejudices about a period and/or an army on the table". I have always agreed. First: I am not so much a player, but much more interested in history and painting. I do play, of course, but that is not mainstream. This is an important fact, because the above essay is about playing and the question of scale (platoons or divisions). In this case my answer is "I am not an armchairsergeant, I am an armchairgeneral". Within the cadre of history I am especially interested in the ways soldiers fought in the millennia behind us and in the way Faith (and I do not mean religion here) ruled the result. What, if ? is for me a challenging question and although I am quite aware of the fact that what we perform on our tables is not war (to quote a Dutch prisoner who later escaped Colditz: "war is a dirty violence") but Hollywood movies (;-)), using our little soldiers to better understand circumstances of real people and - since there are no tin widows (thank you, Phil Barker) - and experiment about possible futures. Of course the mot important part of our activities is fun. Winning is fun, but FUN is more fun !
    By far the most interesting campaign I have played was the one about the Crusades. Armies had to march from Europe to the Holy Land, crossing al those difficult countries underway (;-)) and at last tried to conquer Jerusalem. This campaign took two days, was played with around 35 players and countless 25mm miniatures and although took place in 1990 is in my group of wargames friends still talked about. So I love the big games, although they are not happening as often as used to be. But that does not mean we all have to trade in our general's stars for sergeant's stripes ;-))).

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    1. Thanks, general. I absolutely agree - I want to make the kind of decisions that face a general, not a colonel or a corporal.

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  2. Why big battles on the table? Because I've spent ~50 years playing pieces of large battles (or entire small battles). The few times we tried large battles, with rules designed for smaller affairs, my head hurt afterwards and the results could be dodgy. A-historical tactics were often featured in these aspirin-inducing affairs. Then I discovered BBB which allows the whole enchilada in an evening or two. Playing all of Shiloh, for instance, gives me more satisfaction than just the Hornet's Nest. It doesn't stop me from playing part of a battle or something small, a few thousand on a side. A full meal or a burger and fries, as the whim is upon me.

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  3. But then I am a fan-boy, if a grey headed elder can be described as such.

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    1. And I am honoured to have you as a fan and happy that you are enjoying your BBBBanquets!

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  4. I find that wargamers have some engrained ideas and even prejudices that determine their view of what a "big game" means.
    As much as I enjoy the Yarkshire Gamer podcasts, I'm irked by the rather narrow definition of "big games" = lots of miniatures.
    As a consequence, this results in cramming as many figures as possible on a table that's never quite big enough.....with 8x4 becoming 10x5 or larger....
    What they are advocating, is aesthetics; lots of figures look spectacular. Smaller scale allows even more figures, more units to fill that space.....
    Little thought is given to footprint: the important thing is not the number of figures but the size of the base and its relationship with the table and ground scale......
    The classic example is 1:300 / 1:285 armour with tables resembling carparks....
    The "big game" inevitably becomes a brutal slog devoid of manoeuvre as there is no room for flanking moves, the remedy a yet bigger table, that allows yet more figures....
    Alongside this is the strange desire to be Napoleon while simultaneously playing detailed tactical rules that allow units to form squares.
    While a competitor, Volley & Bayonet and the design notes therein cover this very well.
    The intellectual adjustment required is to accept miniatures as tokens, not as determining mechanisms by their numbers etc, but instead work around the base they stand on....it took me a while, but it's refreshing once you see things differently from the orthodox. It depends if you want to fight battles or large skirmishes...☺☺
    Neil

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    1. Yes, you've put your finger on a few things there, Neil. I do love the spectacle of a big game, of course - who could not? I wonder, if I set up a typical BBB game on 12'x8' instead of 6'x4' and fought it with 28mm figures on 2"x2" bases instead of 6mm on 1"x1", would that 'big battle' then also be respected as a 'big game'? Or would it still fail because it was over in less than four hours?

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  5. I've hosted (and played in) mega battles of the sort you describe (also Napoleonic: an era that seems to lend itself to them). Your experience, though, I would suggest is also a valid one. The situational awareness of combatants is local, and these games bring that to the front. In fact, they deliver the "big battle" experience in that regard better than actual "big battle" games. This also goes for the higher level players in those games: they, too, experience conveying intent, orders, and trying to execute an operation through proxies. You might peruse my battle report on a big Napoleonic game we did in our club to see what I'm talking about:

    https://edmwargamemeanderings.blogspot.com/2017/10/ramillies-1815-twenty-foot-table-twenty.html


    On the other hand, playing at a higher level, as in BBB, you are put in a different position, and you get a different experience--also equally valid. At the higher level, you can actually effect higher level "operational" choices, such as an economy of force action on one wing and a concentrate elsewhere (think Austerlitz). Furthermore, I would suggest that some eras are of little interest at the tactical or operational level, but of great interest at the BBB (battle) level: playing an afternoon getting your battalions mowed down by needle guns and Krupp cannon is of zero interest (to me). However, at the battle level, the Franco Prussian war is an entirely different animal...and the same goes for World War One (in particular).

    So, in summary. You play "big battles" to get something you don't in tactical (small?) battles. And vice versa. Or at least that's what I would say.

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    1. You make some great points, Ed - closer to what I'd intended my essay to do than it actually achieved.

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  6. A good post Chris and I pretty much agree with all of your points. In the BBB games I've played, I've gained greater appreciation of why battles unfolded as they did and the challenges faced by both sides with regards to terrain and the limits they create. Going back and reading a book (or in advance) and it does enhance the gaming experience IMHO. Now I do like playing smaller battles or parts of bigger ones, but it is nice to see the whole picture unfold on a normal sized table and in 2-4 hours playing time.

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    1. Thanks, Steve. Yes, the different types of games all have their place. A varied diet is healthy.

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  7. My dear Chris. I missed the whole fracas because I was devoured by move from Nevada to Georgia. And I am not going to wade into it. All I will say is a big thank you for your rules and your support for wargaming, especially the 19th century.

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    1. Maybe you can do one of your own: "Why drive across a whole continent at all?" Happy to count you as a comrade.

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Comments welcome!