Last weekend I got back to my club (Tunbridge Wells Wargaming Society) after a long break for a game of Général D’Armée 2 (GDA2). We attempted the shorter Lützen scanario in the GDA scenario book. We got as far as turn 7 after five hours of play of a supposedly 20 turn game. It was in fact clear by this point that the Prussians (played by me) weren’t going to win. Is it realistic to expect us to get through a scenario of this size in 6 hours – which I think is the effective maximum playing time for a club day? I need to know because this is not a big scenario by the standards of the GDA books.
How the game went
First a little bit of after action report. If you’ve been click-baited into this article by the title, then move on to the next heading. The French (played by regular club partner Malc)had four brigades of infantry, joined by a cavalry brigade in Turn 3. They had to defend four villages (three visible from the picture, and one off to the right) and an area of high ground (at the top of the picture). There objective was to ensure that no more than two of these fell into Prussian hands. He deployed one brigade each in and around each of the two forward villages, one in between and one as an off-table reserve.
My Prussians had three infantry brigades and one of cavalry at the start, with a further brigade of infantry arriving on turn 4. Alas I was meant to have a further brigade of cavalry, but I left it at home (along with a foot battery on each side, meaning that we had to represent each battery with a single base). The missing cavalry was two units that were supposed to be there at the start. I did bring the second brigade of one unit and one horse battery – and I deployed this at the start rather than wait to turn 3. My plan was to refuse my right and send two brigades to the left to take the high ground and village on the left (Rahna), with the remaining brigade to pin down the French centre. The cavalry covered the right flank. This plan proved defective – and Malc had correctly anticipated it.
On the left, my best brigade could not reach the high ground in time. Up popped the French cavalry reinforcements in that spot, pinning it down for the rest of the game. My cavalry was on the opposite flank and although I did redeploy it, it took too long to get it where it needed to be.
On the right my brigade ran into the fire of two batteries. At this early stage the French had plenty of of spare ADCs and so could afford Artillery Assault taskings. In the first turn they scored a double six each. After that the French artillery managed two or three 11s! The centre brigade reached the Rahna, but with one unit ragged from artillery fire. Stupidly I led the attack on the village with this unit, and it got destroyed in the attempt (more artillery fire on the way in, including one of those 11s). A second attack took the village; helped by the fact that the French were hesitant and could not reinforce the combat. But they were able to retake it the following move, when it was my turn to be hesitant. I decided to use my reinforcing brigade to shore up the collapsing brigade on my right (having been severely mauled by artillery fire), and to keep pinning the French brigades of right and centre. It did this successfully, even attacking the village on one occasion, but with little prospect of being able to take and hold the village.
And so we came to Turn 7. Malc had one entirely fresh brigade. All of my brigades were looking battered, with one on the edge of destruction. A final humiliation was the loss of one of my batteries (see below). The French brigade defending Rahna was getting a bit battered by now, but the others looked in reasonable shape, and I still hadn’t unpinned the brigade from the French cavalry, which was slowly being destroyed by the horse artillery. I had used both my CinC commands in a desperate attempt to keep the attack on track. I decided to throw in the towel. A throughly deserved French victory.
One item of interest, which I raised on the GDA Facebook group, is worth mentioning here. On turn 6 the French Hussar unit pictured below decided to attack the artillery battery I had brought up to assist the pinned brigade, but which hadn’t unlimbered. That was nasty because attacking an unlimbered foot battery means automatic dispersal. The cavalry went on to attack the Prussian column next to it, but this was beaten off with losses to both sides.
I decided this was legal, even though it meant brushing past a Prussian infantry unit in square at closer than 5cm. I thought that the rules said this could be done in a charge move – but I hadn’t read them closely enough. The only time units can get closer than 5cm to the enemy is in the final step of a charge, after reaching the 5cm point when the charge process is resolved. Thanks to FB group for setting me right! The FB group also suggested that the hussar unit could not legally manoeuvre past the infantry unit to its left. But I’m pretty liberal on such things, as I think there is more flexibility in practice – especially for cavalry which manoeuvred by squadron.
Making the game faster
This scenario is by no means large by the standards of both the 1813 and 1815 scenario books. So if I want to run these at club days we are going to have to get through them much quicker. A 20 move game needs to be do-able. First of all I will cover things that don’t involve modifying the rules.
One thing to do is have more players. We had originally planned to have a third member of our group, Rod. He would have taken charge of the Prussians, while I did the game mastering, perhaps assisting the Prussians a bit. We could easily have had two players a side with an additional game master. But I’m not sure how much faster this would have made things. At the start of turn everything focuses on the overall commander of each side; and the turn is structured into a number of phases which apply across the whole table, which means there would be quite a bit of waiting for players to finish. And more players ,more chat! But it would help.
Secondly, is to spend less time referring to the rules. I’m afraid that I’m a bit of a rules lawyer, and I really like to get things right. Many players prefer to keep things moving even if it means getting things wrong. And GDA2 is difficult to master in detail. I have written a summarised version of the rules to speed things up, but this isn’t all that helpful (though an excellent introduction to the rules). The things that I need to look up tend to be in the main book – and I found myself turning to this first. The index is a godsend. Still we were checking rules much less than in earlier games, now that I’m much more familiar with the rules. The FB group is a help here. I read the rule queries coming through there, and try to answer the ones if somebody else hasn’t got there first. And I do try to make decisions quickly at the risk of being wrong – as I was about the attack on the battery. I will think about doing my own version of the quick reference sheets (4 sides) which are notoriously hard for finding the bits you are looking for. But as a game master I need to focus on keeping things moving.
Another idea we actually implemented is to make the table a bit smaller. The scenario recommends that if possible the games should be played on a table 5ft deep and 6-8ft wide. We played on my standard battle mat which 4ft by 6ft (actually a little over). It helps that my bases are only 25-30mm wide, with four to a standard battalion. That means a standard battalion is 10-12cm frontage in line rather than the recommended 15cm. The game table wasn’t overcrowded. Since no adjustment was made to the move distances or ranges, this means things should happen a bit more quickly. And I think that was so – by move 7 it was quite clear how things were heading. That would justify knocking a few turns of the game length.
After that I’m running out of ideas. Movement sabots for columns might speed up pushing the metal around the table. I could do this relative discreetly since my bases have magnetic bottoms, so this could be done with a relatively thin piece of metallic card. Still I think bases are thick enough as they are, and sabots are usually a bit unsightly.
Fiddling with the rules
Now to consider moving beyond the pale to think about any house rules that might might things happen a bit more quickly. David Brown, the author, has done a lot of this for version 2 of GDA, and I think the combat mechanisms should be left alone. the troop quality system it could be simplified a bit, that is likely to be more trouble than it is worth. We’re getting used to the existing system fast.
Instead I want to think about making things happen more quickly at the command level, and in movement outside the combat area. I’ll tackle the second issue first. Both of these should reduce dead time and help battles get resolved in fewer turns – they won’t make the turns any quicker to resolve.
Moving reserves into combat can take quite a few moves, soaking up ADCs as you try to avoid the risk of hesitancy. This applies especially to attackers bringing in off-table reserves after having advanced deep into enemy territory. There is also an issue in moving uncommitted troops from one flank to the other, as I tried to do. I don’t think either of these was particularly difficult historically, and it’s a well known wargames design conundrum that troops more quickly outside the combat area than when you approach the enemy. At 2 mph troops could be expected to cover 30cm on the tabletop for the minimum turn length of 5 minutes; the column move distance is 15cm. When following an order to reposition, outside a combat zone, things should happen much more quickly.
My current thought experiment on this works for the Redeploy and Reserve taskings. Outside the combat zone (perhaps defined as 20cm from the nearest enemy troops, perhaps 30cm) troops with these taskings should be able to move faster – perhaps using the Forwards move rate, or simply double standard, or a fixed bonus of 20cm, say, provided units are in column or limbered. I think a road bonus could be added – to reflect their use as a navigation aid as they are too narrow to handle combat formations. The tasking is not removed at the end of the turn provided the unit is outside the combat zone. However it would still be subject to brigade command rolls, and would be lost if the brigade became hesitant. (This is actually similar to the current rule for Redeploy – though I’m not sure about losing the tasking if hesitant).
If reserves are deployed far from the front line, and the Reserve tasking or is lost because of hesitancy, then this can be replaced with a Redeploy tasking.
An alternative house rule is to allow reserves to be deployed anywhere on the table where there is a clear line of march outside the combat zone from the entry point. Where troops are forced to deploy in the combat zone, then they can do so deployed. But there would be no reserve movement. On reflection, this may be a better way of handling the reserve tasking as it is altogether quicker.
Command rules
Changes to non-combat movement amount to tweaks of the existing system. I next want to consider something much bigger, which will be beyond what most players of GDA2 will want to contemplate. But not all: because I know some people who have done this already. Iain from my old club, South London Warlords, explained this to me when we were involved in a big reconstruction of Castaglione played using GDA2 – though I’ve forgotten what he said his replacement system was! But it went to the point that I am now going to make.
The issue is the brigade command roll: this has a one-third chance of failing, reduced to one-ninth if you invest in a Brigade Attachment tasking for that brigade. This is often severely disruptive. In many cases it is entirely realistic. The brigade commander (incidentally I think the use of the word “brigadier” in this context is an anachronism – I suspect the word more usually referred to an NCO at this time, and certainly for the French, where it still does) might well get confused, or orders might get lost. But this is unlikely under the nose of his superior officer, and certainly not for more than one move in a row (a not infrequent occurrence in GDA). If the brigade was the divisional/corps commander’s focus of the time, then the brigade was very likely to do as wished. But Commander interventions are limited to two in the whole game. The rules don’t reflect this commander focus well. In any case hesitancy would be pretty obvious to the CinC in the relatively small battles in scope of GDA.
Let me digress a little at this point. The Napoleonic (and Revolutionary Wars) era was a period of command transition. In the earlier 18th century command was focused on the commander, who would array his army in one or more lines. Junior officers were expected to hold their place in the line until ordered to move by the commander. The commander would take himself to the main locus of the action and take control there. The classic pattern was Frederick the great’s “oblique order”. The commander would start on one flank and progress towards the centre as the battle unfolded. Nothing much would happen on the opposite flank unless the enemy was able to seize the initiative there. The best Napoleonic example of this was Wellington at Salamanca. Wellington’s command model was very much in this 18th century mode, though he adapted it with an intermediate divisional command instead of the inflexible lines of battle.
Roll on to Bismarck’s wars of the later 19th Century (and maybe the American Civil War or the same era – but I’m less family with this). Here the battlefields were vast and a delegated model of command was in operation. The role of the battlefield commander during the battle was limited. His main contribution was to plan of battle the night before and issue orders to his subordinates. Battles could get very muddled. We can see this devolved model developing in the Napoleonic era. Napoleon’s marshals had wide discretion when Napoleon was not breathing down their necks. In my view the most developed example was the Allied armies of 1813/14 (especially Schwarzenberg’s Army of Bohemia) – battles often turned on intermediate commanders using their initiative, while central command looked distant.
In wargames terms the best way to reflect the old model is Phil Barker’s PIP system – players get a variable allocation of PIP points which they allocate to junior commands, with those further from the commander model being harder to allocate to. No PIP, no movement. The new model is best reflected by the Fire and Fury system developed for the American Civil War, and used in Chris Pringle’s Bloody Big Battles for Bismarck’s Wars, where junior commands are subject to activation throws (called movement throws) to see if they move, and the commander has little influence over this. GDA uses elements of both: ADCs are its version of PIPs, but the brigade command roll is like the Fire and Fury movement throw.
But GDA2 games (in spite of their name) reflect smaller battles between extended divisions – so their model should be closer to the commander-centred one – which in any case was far from dead in bigger battles. So how might the rules be tilted to reflect this?
My thinking revolves around a more active Commander. The commander model can be placed with any brigade, which automatically then operates under orders, and may take on one or two taskings (two would cost an ADC). Perhaps there would be a distance restriction for moving the model around between brigades at the start of the move. ADCs and taskings would be issued to other brigades as usual. But the very powerful CinC commands would disappear. That would be a pity as these add a lovely touch of drama. They might be used to represent the intervention of a more senior commander on the field – but if so they would not be under the complete of the player. Also something on the Destiny table should knock out the CinC figure for one or more moves.
This needs more thought. One idea might be to use an event card system – cards drawn at the start of the turn might allow a senior officer intervention (i.e. CinC command), take the CinC out to deal with staff, comms or intelligence tasks, and perhaps other events. There also needs to be some mechanism for allowing for the difference between more active and passive generals.
This all needs a lot more thought – but I thought I’d put it out there!
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