21 – Designer’s Notes and Acknowledgements

DESIGNER’S NOTES

These rules were originally intended for divisional level battles fought at the same level of detail as a unit history They currently manage army corps level battles and use Corps Scale Orders of Battle (CSO). To achieve the pace needed to fight a whole battle in one 2 or 3 hour evening some compromises had to be made:

All combats had to be reduced to one operation. They had to be lumped together in the largest groups possible rather than splitting them down into fine detail. The number of steps taken to resolve combat, and the number of individual die rolls had to be reduced. Tables of factors modifying die rolls had to be eliminated almost entirely.
The first key to the speed of the game is to follow the COMBAT SEQUENCE , and use the WINNING THE FIREFIGHT Table 12. Ammunition is collected from each side, if markers are used in the DSO or RSO game, and a volley of dice is rolled. The casualties are quickly handed out and the game moves on. If players are allowed to linger over die rolling, then the game will slow down. All dice from both players must be rolled quickly as soon as they are handed over or picked up. There must be absolutely no waiting to see “what I have to beat” and the Umpire should be ruthless in stamping out this sort of behaviour in order to keep things moving.
The second key to speed is limiting the forces that each player controls. No one should have more than a single corps to command. If you want to model two army corps attacking, then you need three players; two corps commanders and an army commander to control the army-level assets such as artillery and engineers.

In our play test campaigns we used the concept of a “PLUMPIRE” or player-umpire to command the front line units that actually do the fighting. This allows the divisional and corps commanders to be fed limited information which goes a long way towards presenting the player with the sort of problems that a proper General would face. The rules have seen many changes over the years. In almost every case, this has been to cut out superfluous detail and to reduce the use of markers, and to speed up play.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted, in no particular order, to the following:

Dr. Paddy Griffith for getting the whole thing rolling at Moore Park.
Chris Ager, Dave Atkinson, Bob Cordery (See his Hexblitz), Graham Evans, Graham Fordham, Tim Gow, Graham Hockley, John (Fred) Hopper, Tom Mouat, Phil Steele, Graham Sargent, Chris Willey Will Whyler, and many others for advice during play testing, proofreading and providing toy tanks.
The Revd Ian Lowell and the Grimsby War games Club for the idea of putting bases on tanks.
War games Development and the Conference of Wargamers.
Tim Gow for introducing me to lots of tiny dice (see also his excellent MEGABLITZ).
Suzanne my wife, who is infinitely patient, can spell, and who likes ‘Concrete Sniffing’ holidays!