Further to some of the comments made to yesterday's blog entry, I've looked at my copy of Donald Featherstone's ADVANCED WAR GAMES and the following are images of the devices devised by Ron Miles that were known as 'Miles Rounders'.
Miles Rounder for discovering the results of gunfire (World War II)
This was devised specifically to work with Lionel Tarr's modern wargame rules (as published in WAR GAMES).
Miles Rounder for ascertaining the morale state of a formation after a melee or after taking fire
Miles Rounder for the effects of fire by muskets and artillery on infantry and cavalry (Horse and Musket era)
I have reproduced the above as best I can, but better copies are available in ADVANCED WAR GAMES.
ADVANCED WAR GAMES was written by Donald Featherstone and originally published in 1969 by Stanley Paul. It is now available from the 'History of Wargaming' Project (ISBN 978 1 409 26138 4).
WAR GAMES was written by Donald Featherstone and originally published in 1962 by Stanley Paul. It is now available from the 'History of Wargaming' Project (ISBN 978 1 291 85142 7).
Lionel Tarr's modern wargame rules are available from the 'History of Wargaming' Project (ISBN 978 1 326 91498 1).
Miles Rounder for discovering the results of gunfire (World War II)
This was devised specifically to work with Lionel Tarr's modern wargame rules (as published in WAR GAMES).
Miles Rounder for ascertaining the morale state of a formation after a melee or after taking fire
Miles Rounder for the effects of fire by muskets and artillery on infantry and cavalry (Horse and Musket era)
I have reproduced the above as best I can, but better copies are available in ADVANCED WAR GAMES.
ADVANCED WAR GAMES was written by Donald Featherstone and originally published in 1969 by Stanley Paul. It is now available from the 'History of Wargaming' Project (ISBN 978 1 409 26138 4).
WAR GAMES was written by Donald Featherstone and originally published in 1962 by Stanley Paul. It is now available from the 'History of Wargaming' Project (ISBN 978 1 291 85142 7).
Lionel Tarr's modern wargame rules are available from the 'History of Wargaming' Project (ISBN 978 1 326 91498 1).
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A very elaborate look-up table! :-)
ReplyDeleteIt's of course nice to investigate older contraptions like this (out of intellectual curiosity), but there's a reason why they haven't been adopted more widely ;-)
There are other contraptions described in Featherstone's book as well such as the "Timms wargames computer" (IIRC). But I always have the impression they were presented in a more complicated manner than what they actually are, and I suspect Featherstone himself didn't really understand the simplistic calculations that these devices represented.
Phil Dutre,
DeleteAs you state, nowadays they are more of intellectual interest than anything else, and I certainly never thought about designing and/or using anything like them.
In 1969 - when ADVANCED WAR GAMES was published - I had a spell working with one of the first electronic computers used in the UK for banking. (It basically sorted and totalled piles of cheques for the bank clearing system.) At the time, the thought that one day we would be using electronic devices to do almost everything in our daily lives was science fiction.
The 'rounders' (and the Timms Wargames Computer) were a couple of simple analogue computer for wargamers. Whether or not Donald Featherstone understood or used them is something that I cannot comment on, but I somehow suspect that he saw including them in his book as a way to keep wargaming in the forefront of the move to computerisation.
The Timms Wargames Computer was nothing more than a simple, homemade set of punchcards. By today's standards they were almost laughably basic, but at the time they were thought of by some people as being cutting edge.
All the best,
Bob
No harm, no foul on your part Bob, but these are a lot less interesting than I hoped. They're still neat to look at but they are lacking in the computation department. Even the one I mentioned before would be easy to make into a single chart. As long as there is about a +7 difference between modifiers and number of men firing you'll cause casualties.
ReplyDeleteI found that fallout computer I have, right in the back pocket of that book. It's got a lot more going on with multiple windows, hairlines to twist and variables to cross reference. I guess that's what I was hoping to find in a more developed systems, something that brought multiple variables together and really crunched numbers. Maybe I hoped for too much?
Anyway, thank you for bringing these to the light of day!
Mr. Pavone,
DeleteThey also struck me as being a complicated way to do something that was essentially quite simple ... which is probably why they never became popular.
I’m tempted to comment that way the world seems to be going, you may well need to dust off your fallout computer again ... but that’s me being my normal pessimistic self.
All the best,
Bob