Why play a whole big battle at all?

[Chris Pringle]

In recent years, small skirmish games have come very much into vogue. A level up from that, brigade- or division-sized games are popular. Plenty of us are happy to push a dozen battalions around. By contrast, recreations of substantial historical battles are relatively rare, and the seriously big ones like Bautzen, Leipzig or Dresden seem virtually never to get tackled.

It’s understandable, because big battles take more effort to prepare and longer to play than a simple “fight for the wagon” skirmish or “capture the bridge” brigade punch-up. I think it’s worth the effort, though (and it doesn’t have to be an inordinate effort, either). Some recent conversations have prompted me to try to make the case in my latest “Reflections on Wargaming” essay, “Why play a whole big battle at all?”, on the BBBBlog here.

I hope readers will find it enjoyable and thought-provoking. Maybe I’ll even encourage some to dip a toe in the big-battle water! Comments welcome, as always.

[Orm Embar]

the biggest issue with fighting really big battles, is time to move all the pieces (whether figures, markers, Kriekspeil blocks) whatever, and still remember what you are planning to do, unless you have multiple players per side doing it (which has its own issues).

 

Battles like Waterloo and Gettysburg are the easiest as they are basically maneuver by one side only, but then they are dull for the opposition players who are tactically not challenged.

[Chris Pringle]

Hi Orm, thanks for the comments. There’s an important distinction to make between a big battle and a big game. The point of the “Bloody Big BATTLES!” rules is to avoid exactly the problem you mention. Whatever the size of the battle, BBB’s elastic troop, ground and time scale reduces it to fit on 6’x4′ and to typically about 20 units a side. With 4-6 players, that means each player handling a very manageable 8-12 units or so. With that modest number of units and streamlined game mechanisms, the game moves quickly and cleanly enough that you actually can take that step back and see what is going on, maintain and adapt a plan as necessary, and get the big picture.

Gettysburg is not dull at all if you fight the whole three days (we did it at the club with four players in four hours including set-up and take-down in time for a post-battle drink in the pub). Waterloo was great last time we did it. In fact, most big battles are interesting with the BBB treatment because it allows the time and space for the games to have depth and the players to have options.

Chris

 

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Even the most static of defenses require a tense decision on where and when to send in the reserves (and even where to find them).  Also there is the spoiler attacks and counter attacks to plug holes.  Defense is only boring if you have no command control limitations or rules, or the player lacks a certain level of aggressiveness or imagination as a commander.  add FoW and it always remains tense.

Big battles need to be fought at the appropriate sized unit of maneuver.  As Chris says, 20 units is probably the maximum a single player is comfortable to control but too few and the game offers little nuance.  So Leipzig really should be with stands that represent divisions, not corps.  Talavera: brigades not regiments.  More players, smaller units.

Why play the big battles? Understanding history and the operational character of a battle.  Success on the left might well be way too far away to have any impact on the center, which is falling, so maybe the better solution is to commit my reserves in total to the center, because if I win there i might still be able to get the right flank some support because of allthe swampy terrain is between the left and center.

Bathtubbing a battle distorts the above tactical situation, if your artillery on the extreme left can still reach across the board to hit at units on the far right you aren’t experiencing the tensions a historical commander has.  Combat maneuvers really  should be like a vector, hard to shift direction, slow to start and slow to stop.  You have to decide when and where to point them.

 

 

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Orm Embar]

I wasn’t ruling out Big Battles in your sense (indeed I have the rules already) it was the scale of some of the battles in the real world and the logistics of fighting them. BBB does a really good job of bathtubbing them.

 

It was more a personal observation on them. Waterloo is an interesting battle to refight as it was so tight in reality (Don’t let the French player release Jerome from Hougamount or else the French are impossible to stop).

 

Yes Liepzig at 1 to 1 would be brill, but you would need a week!

[Ivan Sorensen]

So cards on the table:
Bloody Big Battles is what got me to buy armies to do Galicia 1914 in a big way and as the first “grand battle” game Ive ever wanted to build for, so congrats to Chris and his compatriots.

With that out of the way, there were three reasons I shied away from grand battles:

First is as mentioned all the work. A lot of rules for the scale means painting up legions of figures and an indeterminate amount of trucks, carts and left-handed bugle players many of which will end up playing no role at all. There are few things more demoralising in wargaming than doing a bunch of work and realising you still are nowhere near a playable game.

Second is purely personal preference. I always prefer the zoomed in view. I much prefer the man to man level and used to top out at the company level for WW2, though we’ve recently started playing ye olde Command Decision so a step up was in order.

Third is that at a certain size, you start overlapping with hex-and-counter board games and I tend to enjoy both hobbies for slightly different approaches. if I wanted to play the big maneuver battles of 1914 there was already options like Clash of Giants or Der Weltkrieg.

(also as a small fourth, I hate complicated movement/formation rules in games and it used to be traditional to have 6 pages of the rulebook filled with those).

Now 1 and 2 are just personal preference and trying new things is important. BBB addressed 1 and 4 and I am definitely curious to try it for other conflicts I am interested in.

[Norm S]

I do boardgaming and figure gaming at around a 50 / 50. I have defaulted to leaving my boardgames to do the big battles and use the figures for something like a division per side. I like both those things.

[McKinstry]

I believe it is a matter of taste. I’ve never enjoyed skirmish of any kind or period. I’ve tried but, I’ve painted and given away multiple Silver Bayonet, SAGA and Muskets & Tomahawk armies/parties simply because once the painting was done, the gaming simply didn’t engage me. Just for me, I’ve always been small scale miniatures and really big battles

The tree of Life is self pruning.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

I’d say I used to be more of a big battle tactical gamer mostly using 15mm but my gaming has become more and more 28mm skirmish if just because of my RPG efforts in which my wife plays.  She won’t touch a traditional big battle type game.  I have so many 28s now i could field a division or even corps level game…but lack the space.  I barely have room for a 6×4 table to play my 15s on.  Leipzig and Wagram are definitely out but i find the smaller battles in the Peninsular war to be doable.

For me cardboard boardgames occupy the operational/or strategic campaign level niche.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Whirlwind]

Interesting post, but feels like there are two distinct concepts being tied together: 1 – why play big battles at all and 2 – why make the necessary game design decisions to play big battles on a moderate size table with a moderate time overhead, the second being entirely contained within the first, but the first not being entirely contained within the second. Of course, for many gamers, practically the first will usually mean the second too, but not always.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

It is a nuanced topic, but I agree the top level question is the more interesting.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[kyoteblue]

Big battles are signs you like the rules you’re using and want to do the big game. You out grow the habit as you get old.

[Chris Pringle]

Thanks very much for your thoughtful and perceptive replies. I also posted on TMP and got over 50 replies there. Let me share with you the same response I sent to those:

===

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!

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