Some years ago, the late George Jeffries experimented with a system that he termed the Variable Length Bound. This is defined in the current edition of the Wargame Developments Handbook as follows:
Variable Length Bound
The technique to adjusting the time interval of a game to critical events e.g. If it is obvious that no contact will be made for a period of 12 hours, when the time in the game will be moved on by 12 hours and the tactical situation reassessed there, rather than repeat a standard 1 hour game turn 12 times in a row. A difficult concept to grasp and adopt, because it implies ignoring those units out of contact and moving the elements of a force direct to their critical events, despite the fact that some of these events occur at different times. Best used with a "standard" time slice, but with ways of incorporating multiple slices in a single turn.
Looking at this anew, it struck me that what he was trying to do was to fight wargames where there was an emphasis on the important or crucial events of a battle rather making players recreate its entirety ... including all the boring bits where very little happened!
It further struck me that the Fast Play 3 x 3 Portable Wargame (FP3x3PW) provided a potential way of doing the same thing, with each crucial event being fought out as a vignette within the battle using FP3x3PW.
I looked around for an example of how I could do this and decided upon the Battle of Waterloo. It splits nicely into the following vignettes:
- The attack on Hougoumont
- The Grand Battery opens fire
- The first French infantry attack (including the attack on La Haie Sainte)
- The charge of the British heavy cavalry
- The French cavalry attack
- The second French infantry attack (including the capture of La Haie Sainte)
- The Prussian attack at Placenoit
- The assault by the French Imperial Guard
Each of the above could quite easily be fought as separate FP3x3PW battles, thus giving players the ability to refight Waterloo without having to invest a lot of space, time, and money to do so.
I am sure that other battles (e.g. Gettysburg) could be refought in a similar fashion, and this is an idea that I might well look at in great depth over the coming months. It might even make for an interesting chapter in a SECOND PORTABLE WARGAME COMPENDIUM!
Interesting post Bob. I have been considering a similar idea, fighting sections of an imaginary front line using the 3x3PW system, though in an Interbellum setting.
ReplyDeleteMaudlin Jack Tar,
DeleteAs most battles are fought in interlocking stages, doing what you suggest makes great sense. Taking the SCW as an example, the battles fought by individual brigades or divisions were often along the lines of ‘XIII Brigade will capture the village. Once they have, XIV Brigade will advance on their right and assault the enemy position on top of Hill 203.’ That’s two nice little actions that would be very suitable for the FP3x3PW.
All the best
Bob
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, we did this at the club in June 2018 with Black Powder. We had been using them for a while for 'complete' battles and found them unsatisfying (for reasons which were not wholly clear). Regardless, for the anniversary, we decide to do three 'episodes' - d'Erlon's assault, Ney's cavalry charges and the final attack on La Haye Sainte. The tighter focus of three individual games, with fewer interactions of types, improved the experience of the rules no end.
With PW it would seem possible to fight this, and other battles, within a framework like that provided by the W1815 boardgame, where the vignettes are known in advance, the order of their use is decided by the players with the results of the games impacting the set up and or viability of other vignettes. Imagine a flow chart of battle events.
Cheers
Andrew
Rumblestrip (Andrew),
DeleteThanks for your feedback. Based on my own limited experience of taking part in large wargames, I had a feeling that this was often the case, and your example bears this out.
I like the idea of using W1815 as the framework for a series of small PW battles/vignettes. I am currently looking at the Battle of Gettysburg, which also lends itself to this approach.
All the best,
Bob
This sounds akin to the use of 3x3 for parts of a siege in the book. I think it's a fine idea for a larger battle. Could almost be a campaign of sorts - play the left, right and center of the line, then look back and decide who won overall. A bit like one of Featherstone's campaign mechanisms for playing through historical campaigns without going "off-script" if the French won Waterloo or the British won Yorktown - the winner is based on point totals and individual victories, while map movement is ignored.
ReplyDeleteJennifer,
DeleteYou have exactly grasped my thinking! I want to spend some time developing this idea further … possibly so that I can include it in a future Compendium.
All the best,
Bob
Bob, I can remember attending sessions hosted by George Jeffrey at CoW. The problem with his VLB system was that, having decided that a critical event would occur at a certain time, one had then to update the rest of the battle to that time, by multiplying rates of fire by minutes to determine how many casualties would have been suffered, so there was a fair amount of arithmetic to do. I felt such calculations would be entirely appropriate for umpires to perform secretly in a 'closed' wargame like the Prussian kriegsspiel, but destroyed any illusion of taking the role of a commander, watching a battle develop over a period of time and deciding when to issue new orders/react, in an 'open', two player game, which seemed to be the idea of the VLB system. Opposing players also had to share their intentions with each other in order to agree the next critical event! The rulebook was too thick, too complex and impossible to remember easily.
ReplyDeleteWhat you are proposing is something very different and far more practical to put into effect. I suggest you don't confuse the issue by inflicting the VLB terminology onto it.
Best wishes, Arthur
Arthur1815 (Arthur),
DeleteI well remember taking part in sessions where we tried to get VLB to work, but we never managed it. It was far too complex and required a level of cooperation and agreement between opponents that made it more like a timetabled tabletop recreation of a battle rather than a wargame where events and their outcomes were unpredictable.
My suggestion is my attempt to do what VLB was intended to achieve, but never did. In other words, to move through a battle from one crucial event to the next without the need for complex rules and umpires. As Jennifer suggests, it could be possible to fight a battle by splitting the frontline into left, centre, and right, with the victorious side being the one that ‘wins’ at least two of the sectors.
All the best,
Bob
I think refighting key points in a battle and totaling wins and loses would work just fine for a refight of a historical battle, but maybe it falls short if one wants to fight a battle not tied to just recreating key incidents in the battle. I think it would require a system for linking the smaller 3x3 battles and regulating the movement of troops between sections of the larger battlefield. I have some ideas or this and I will post them on the Portable wargames Facebook page.
ReplyDeleteMark Cordone,
DeleteI take your point, and look forward to seeing your thoughts on the Facebook page.
I have a feeling that this is going to turn into another chapter for inclusion in the next Compendium!
All the best,
Bob
I see what you're going for here and I like it. I played a similar chain of scenarios using the OHW and PWG rules on separate occasions. I split Waterloo into 3 grand parts and played each major battle (left, center and right) out in the order they would have happened according to history. Using 3x3 would certainly make it easier and splitting it up into even more granular parts would make playing the entire battle a lot more manageable.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I added were event cards. Each side got 8 cards, half were NO EVENT while the others gave each side some advantage or disadvantage, historically appropriate, for the turn. The cards also made it easier to keep track of game turns; when each player ran out of cards the game was over.
Mr. Pavone,
DeleteThis is a very interesting contribution to the discussion. I particularly like the idea of the event cards.
I’m beginning to think that this ideas has legs!
All the best,
Bob