War Without an Enemy - Choosing Terrain

In the last but one post in this series I talked briefly about which battles to choose to represent on the tabletop as it looks like there will be too many to do. In the comments Steve J suggested a method that I think I will adopt: pick a leader and play out his battles as figure games and run the rest using the board game's battle rules.

Next step then would be how to select the terrain for these battles. One option is to use Peter's method of picking terrain cards from a deck. Here's how it works: 

https://gridbasedwargaming.blogspot.com/2018/12/ecw-campaign-cards-and-terrain-cards.html

Another option that occurred to me today was to pick an historical battle, preferably one in the same area as the battle on the board, and lay the terrain out using that. So if I chose to follow Sir Ralph Hopton around I could use the terrain from Braddock Down, Stratton, Lansdowne, Roundway Down etc. Force composition would be as described in my last post on the subject, with each Horse Strength Point converting to one unit (4 bases/troops) and 3 Foot SPs converting to a battalia (1 pike and 2 shot bases). If there wasn't a historic Hopton battle available I would find the next nearest one.

The slight down side of this second option would be that my table is narrow and long (3 feet by 5 to 8 feet) so some fudging will have to be done. If I used the card method, I would just use the requisite number of cards say, 1 card to every 1' or 1.5' square. No firm decision needs to be made. I always have the option of changing my mind mid-campaign.

Next issue is working out an efficient method of packing the board away when I need to get the toys out, and setting everything up properly again after the battle.

War Without an Enemy - Converting Numbers

Notwithstanding Iain's astute comment that War Without an Enemy ('WWAE') looks a little too involved to just be a battle generator, I ploughed on to have a look at how many models might be needed.

First off I did a stock take of my models and came up with the following numbers.

13 Jan 2021	Horse	Foot	Dragoons	Staff and Train
Command stands	20	17	1
Trooper stands	94		8
Pike blocks		16
Musket/dism.dragoons/firelocks		35
Clubmen stands		3
Mounted officers/staff				26
Field guns				8
Ships/fortress guns				4
Limbers				4
Wagons				3

To put some context on this, each Horse stand is 3 figures, notionally representing a troop of about 60 men in my rules. A Foot stand is 10-12 figures representing a pike block or a shot wing of 200-240 men. In my tactical rules ('Jacob Astley's Prayer' see below*) the command stands are supernumerary and are to show what the unit is doing - e.g. in front of the unit means it's advancing; behind it is stationary. [Aside: looking at these numbers I'm short of a Foot command stand, but have plenty of spare command figures].

Then I totted up the Strength Points on the wooden blocks that come with WWAE, and came up with the following.

Royalist	Total Strength	Units
Horse	30	10
Foot	69	8
Guns	6	3
Clubmen	3	0
Parliamentarian	Total Strength	Units
Horse	27	9
Foot	87	10
Guns	8	4
Clubmen	3	1
Combined	Total Strength	Units
Horse	57	19
Foot	156	17
Guns	14	7
Clubmen	6	2

The Total Strength shows the theoretical maximum numbers. However, it is unlikely that it would get to the point when more than 1/3 of the total armies got into in a battle. The rule mechanisms encourage you to disperse your armies in order to take cities and territories, and to avoid attrition by having too many troops in one area.

The final column shows a notional number of units if say 1/3 of the totals came face-to-face. In this scheme each Horse Strength Point converts to 1 unit and each 3 Foot Strength Points convert to 1 unit. The relative ratios of Horse and Foot to SPs fits with the fact that my horse units are a dozen figures whilst my foot are 3 dozen. Gun SPs are halved to arrive at the required number of model guns. That all works out very conveniently close to my total collection. Strictly speaking I'm about 30 figures short of the horse total - 2 packs of Mr Pengilley's excellent little models.

So a little army under the command of Old Robin like this on the board.......

Strength Points: Horse 3; Foot 12, Guns 4. The little halberd icon on Essex's block shows it is foot as well as a Leader.

....would convert to something like this on the table.

To be honest though, if it ever got to a full on mash-up I would not use Jacob Astley's Prayer, which are more suited to medium sized battles. I would run such a large game with In Deo Veritas or Ramekin ECW C&C. In both of those two I can use the command stands as whatever is the opposite of supernumerary, so I can eke out more units.

Glad I've got that sorted. I can move on to the next challenge.

* "Lord, help me today to realize that thou wilt be speaking to me through the events of the day, through people, through things, and through all creation. Give me ears, eyes and heart to perceive thee, however veiled thy presence may be. Give me insight to see through the exterior of things to the interior truth. Give me thy Spirit of discernment. O Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget [the rules], do not Thou forget me. Amen.”

War Without an Enemy - Sample Game and Further Thoughts

At the moment this is still very much a War Without a Game. Tonight I finished off the sample game in the Playbook. The sample game takes you through a hypothetical game between Charles and Robert during which no aspersions were cast on Robert's marital relations. It consisted of two turns in late 1642 - the scenario starts as the historical war did in September. Remember a turn normally contains 5 phases (with 6 in the Winter Turn). 1642 is a bit different in not having a Winter Turn.

It was good that I did run through the sample game. I would never get through a game turn unaided. The Playbook explains each phase in clear detail, but even then I found myself looking up sections of the rules to check why such and such a unit has dice in combat. I'm glad to say I got there in the end. The whole process took me 3 hours on two different days, including setting up. It would probably be quicker if my mind were more nimble, and obviously it will speed up as I get more used to it. Bear in mind that this was only a 2 Turn year - the other 4 years have 6 Turns, with the last (Winter) Turn having an extra phase!

During those two Turns there were half a dozen battles, so used as a campaign to generate tabletop action you will be setting up the figures a LOT! I played through the battles using the abstracted battle format the game gives you. Each battle has lots of clever nuances so I can this can become absorbing. And lots to learn, but if each turn is generating at least one battle you will get used to it quickly. At anything like this frequency however, playing out battles as miniatures games would drag the campaign out inordinately. This would lead me to either abandon the idea completely, and just play the game as it was intended, or decide to play some games with figures and some using the game rules.

One of the little features I like are the options to Withdraw Before Battle and General Retreat during a battle. These allow players to decide discretion is the better part of valour, but you suffer consequences. And you really should only do this if you have some cavalry left! 

The battle mechanics are quite nice. Units (blocks) have strength values which get eroded with action, and Effectiveness which doesn't. The Strength determines the number of D6 rolls a unit gets, and Effectiveness determines the maximum roll on a D6 that will inflict a hit. Thus a unit with Strength of 3 and Effectiveness of 2 gets to roll 3 D6 scoring hits on 1 or 2. Artillery only get to fire in the first of 3 Battle Turns. Infantry can opt to either Fire (-1 on the effectiveness score) or Engage (no deduction). Horse only Engage. If no enemy Horse are present, your Horse get a +1 on Effectiveness. For some reason that I haven't figured out yet, the defender gets to fire first.

One of the battles was actually a Storm (Waller capturing Plymouth from Hopton) and this had some slightly different factors, but similar enough to field battles to keep it understandable.

In terms of the practicalities, the board, cards and associated sheets took up the best part of a 5' by 3' table. The wooden playing pieces need to be handled with care. You need to make sure that the pieces face the right way in order to keep track of their strengths. They are only flipped over to show the opponent what they are when they actually end up in a battle. There isn't a huge amount of space within some of the areas on the map to fit many blocks into the same area. It won't really be practicable as a remote game.

I'll probably have at least one more walk through the sample game to make sure I get the processes hammered home. Then I can think about where I go next with this. So as the managers of just defeated football teams say, "we go again".

More on This War Without an Enemy

Not much progress on this I'm afraid. Partly the motivation is lacking for wargaming at the moment. I find it easy to do other things, even if it is just binge-watching Marooned with Ed Stafford. That is watching a TV programme called Marooned with Ed Stafford, not that I'm watching something called Marooned with a bloke called Ed Stafford.

I finished the Playbook (but haven't worked through the sample scenario). For one I hadn't got around to sticking the labels to the little wooden blocks. This is not an activity that I like doing. I don't have fingers nimble enough, nor do I have the hand-eye co-ordination to get the labels on exactly right. That task is now 90% complete, as I decided to get it done whilst watching the aforementioned survival programme.

The final 10% are the labels for the Siege Markers. It is not clear from the labels or the information provided in the rules, exactly how to place the labels, and there's no mention of them in the sample game in the Playbook because there aren't any sieges in it. There are six Siege Marker labels numbered 0-3 and two labels marked 4-6. There are 4 blocks.

The markers are to be turned during each Siege Resolution Phase, increasing the number at the top by 1. There is a Siege Attrition and Surrender Table which has the Siege Marker value on one axis and a D6 roll on the other. The higher the D6 roll and the higher the Siege Marker, the higher the chance of attrition to the defenders and surrender. The Siege Marker Value axis goes up to 5. So the Siege Marker is meant to represent progress of siegeworks and falling morale and resources in the garrison, but this is not explicitly stated anywhere. No matter. But what does a Siege Marker value of 6 represent? I could assume it means automatic surrender, but what of the other outcomes like Attrition?

It looks like a Siege Marker with a value of 5 means  an automatic surrender, but what about a value of 6?

Anyway, a query has been sent off to Nuts Publishing, the game producer. Let's see what the answers are.

*************************

So what of the Playbook? Well, the sample, scenario takes you through two turns in 1642. As there are no sieges in the play-through I could work through it without knowing the answers to my queries. So no excuses.

The sample game takes up only a third of the Playbook. The rest of the Playbook consists of historical background, army make-up during the 1640s, the cities and regions of England, main political events affecting the war, pen portraits of all the major leaders, and a rationale for all the Card Events. The pen portraits are particularly interesting and useful, and are balanced. Sympathetic even. Far from the stereotypes of popular history. Descriptions of the Event Cards are also useful, and give extra historical flavour. One thing that could improve the Playbook would be to run through a complete siege. If it was a question of space, then some of the other historical information could have been omitted.

The original purpose of me getting the game was to generate meaningful battles within a campaign context. The next step to that end, apart from running through the play test, is to convert the strength values into table top units. I think I need to tabulate the blocks of the various arms for both sides and compare this to the models I have available. I don't need to have parity between the game blocks and my figures, but I will need a reasonable ratio. What I want to avoid is being short of figures then having to delay things further (or have the excuse to delay things) while I wait for a new delivery of figures from Pendraken, then have to paint and base them. 

Fingers crossed.