Trying Solitaire ECW: Edgehill

Today I tried Mike Lambo's popular "solitaire" wargame rules. I'm using the first scenario, Edgehill.

Like Charles S. Grant's scenarios, the opposing side is randomly programmed. The rules are straightforward, and I hope to play quicker in future. I did discover that it is harder to win than it looks! There is a certain range at which units can be effective, and they are driven to attack the nearest; I learned to be cautious rather than aggressive.

Because a hex holds a single base, there is no "mix" of pike and shot as you'd normally have. Effectively, these are thus smaller skirmishes, though I suppose you could still assume each regiment has a preponderance of one or the other weapon. At this scale, the scenarios are more "inspired by" than re-enactments. But it's still pretty effective, and fun!

Starting positions. The opposing Parliamentarians have
randomly reinforced their right flank.

Here's why; the rules for placing
and playing units are pretty clear.
You could play both sides easily.

First turn. Rolled three attacks and four moves for my army on the dice. Three of the move were '3's, and thus could have been rerolled, but as firing range is only three spaces, there was no point. I can only fire the cannon, which has unlimited range 'up' its column. I moved my muskets and cavalry, but forgot to move my pikes out of sight of the opposing gun (I think I was thinking of simultaneous movement rather than moving one of the nearby units, then the pikes). My own gun required a 9+ to hit the cavalry ahead of it, and scored an 8.

I enlarged the "board" to A3; this is still not quite
large enough for the 30mm bases, but not unplayable.
The guns are deeper, but as they're limited to the
back line, they're not in the way..

The Royalist gun fired on my pikes. Requiring an 8+, it rolled a 10. This means my pikes must retreat two hexes... but they're on the first hex, so they're off the board! A cavalry unit moved forward to attack mine, and got a +1 bonus as a musketeer unit could also reach me. My cavalry fell back. The second cav fail to move, needing a 3+. The Royalist musketeers moved. The pikes all moved towards my right-hand cav.

Second turn. I rolled six dice this time - a six, five, two threes and two ones. I can use the six to rally, the five to shoot, and the other four to move. Since I hope to shoot with my muskets I rerolled the '3's but didn't upgrade to 'attack.' Because my cav rallied, its activation ends, so it traps my gun, which either shoots or cannot move. So I gave it my one 'attack' die, then shot at cavalry again and missed. My other cavalry I pulled back, as charging pikes is contraindicated. 

The opposing gun has no target so must move; I randomly selected left. Cavalry attacks my musketeers who have stupidly moved into range; they are in a forest (disadvantage to attacker) but in range of a supporting musketeer unit (advantage to attacker). The cav required 6+ to hit and scored 7, so my musketeers retreated one space and are demoralized. One more cav, and three of the six Royalist infantry units, move.

Third turn. Rallied my musketeers and missed with my gun again. (Must move it to target other than cavalry!) Next to test advantage for myself. I moved cavalry to attack opposing cav, but since two musketeer units were in range, I got +2 to the roll. This meant I needed 6+, and since I rolled '7', the support made the difference! Because two units were behind the Royalist cav, they had to pass through and were now two hexes from being off-board. (There are no rules for intermeshing, firing thru units or passing on demoralization to other units, possibly because each hex is stated to represent one or two square kilometers.) I then fired musketeers at musketeers, beating them by 1 again because of support, and because there were no clear hexes behind them, they fell back off the board! Lucky me, that the Royalists are piled up.

The Royalist gun fired on my victorious musketeers through trees (-1) and missed. Cavalry charged and drove mine back. Pikes attacked my musketeers and drove them off the board. Not doing too well here, given I have to wipe out my opponents before they wipe out me.

Fourth turn. Because I needed to rally a unit, I rerolled two fives to no luck. They fell back but at least were not yet off the board. My gun finally managed to drive back the cavalry with support from nearby muskets. In a pike-on-pike combat, I equaled my to-hit, forcing demoralization but not fallback. A second hit, however, would eliminate the unit, and I had two more to attack with. Cavalry vs. pikes normally isn't good, but I rolled a ten when I needed a 7 due to support. Clearly they were unready to fight charging cav. My musketeers were suddenly without a target, but that's okay.

You'll notice that opposing units face me, and my units
face away; but demoralized units, such as the cavalry
on my second column, face their board edge. There
is a marker for demoralized units, but it wouldn't fit.

The demoralized Royalist cav fled the board. The gun fired on my musketeers - through a forest for -1 - and missed. Musketeers fired on my cav and demoralized them, but didn't beat the required score so failed to drive them back. As they're three hexes from my back line, I have two turns to rally.

I was worried after last turn, but now I'm feeling more confident. I'm still outnumbered (and two units are falling back)...

Fifth Turn. Stopped one unit falling back off the board. My gun eliminated the fleeing Royalist cav. I decided to retreat my pike rather than getting into a two-on-one fight, and my muskets are out of range (in retrospect, I should have given them a movement die to get out of the way of the opposing gun, which...

... thankfully misses. The rest of the Royalists move towards one of my cavalry.

Sixth turn. Rallied my second cav (by rerolling three '2's). Moved cav forward, shifted my gun into the spot where the cav had been, and fired my musketeers at a pike unit (not the musketeers ahead of me, as I'd have to shoot through a forest). Drove them back.

Just realized the musketeers are still in LOS of the Royalist gun, but at this point, that's okay, given how effective the musketeers have been. They're hit, but thanks to the forest '-1' they don't flee off the board. Pikes face off, but I'm not hit.

Seventh turn. Rallied again. (Woo!) Then used the support rules for exactly what they're there for and destroyed a Royalist pike unit (see next photo).

Charged with cav 1, rolled on +1 for the supporting pikes and missed.
Charged with cav 2, rolled on +2 for the supporting pikes and cav,
and hit exactly (demoralizing the Royalist pikes but trapping them still
next to my pikes). Attacked with pikes at +2,
and destroyed the enemy pikes.

Enemy demoralized pikes routed. Gun missed my musketeers. Musketeers missed my cavalry.

I'm winning, but I only have three turns to wipe the board.

Eighth turn. moved my musketeers so that I could shift my gun towards a target. Probably a mistake as I could have instead charged musketeers with my cavalry.

Luckily, my gun is missed. So is my cavalry.

Ninth turn. Running out of time here. Rolled four moves and one attack. I assign the attack to my gun and two of the moves to my cavalry. Eliminated one musketeer unit and missed the other. My gun duel also fared badly. Luckily, my opponents also missed me.

Last turn. Barring extreme luck, I won't win. I eliminate the last musketeer, but the cavalry facing them can't move - and even if it could, can't reach the gun. My only hope is to fire my own gun at it. I need an 8 to hit, 9 to force them off the board.

I roll a 7.

The Royalist gun fires back. I've forgotten that it gets a +1 for being on higher ground than target... but it misses. So at least insult is not added to injury.

Game over. The key may have been turn 8, where if I'd chosen my moves better I'd have been in position to charge the gun on the last turn. No dice...

Had there been one more turn (and for beginners,
this is permissible) I could have charged the
Parliamentarian gun and likely won the game.

Losing on the final turn suggests to me that this is a fairly balanced game. I can look back and recognize my mistakes, which were:

Moving forward aggressively, and (for example) putting my cavalry near pikes.

Choosing my actions and their order poorly. I wouldn't be surprised if the guns (which can't leave the back line) are often the last unit left on the board - pikes will only rarely reach them, so musketeers and cavalry should be conserved.

It looks possible to "game" the system, by considering the required moves of opposing units. For example, simply not leaving a unit in the same column as opposing artillery will force that artillery to move rather than shoot, and if you can spare a unit to keep moving in and out of LOS, the gun will never get to fire. On the other hand, the fields are compressed enough that there will be times when units are backed up - this can be bad if the one in front must retreat, since it will be "bounced" all the way to the back and possibly off the board.

I missed a couple bonuses during the game - in particular, the opposing gun was on a hill and should have had +1 for its rolls, while my gun for part of the game was on a forest hex which gave it a defense bonus (I didn't notice because the base covered the hex). I've learned enough to play faster and more accurately next time.

I like this system very much. I'll definitely try the other scenarios. Worth a try, especially since you don't need much in the way of troops.

Still no gaming

 Although here's part two of the Seven Days game:

Here's yesterday's game, which I missed owing to work (which included a split shift owing to working late on a sudden, though successful, outreach). The only gaming I got in yesterday was the discovery that our pop-up giveaway fans make wonderful and very popular frisbees!

The Peleliu game uses the same rules as the WWII game I participated in.

That should give you an idea of the sort of stuff we do at the club. Because of my schedule, I sadly only make about half the meetings. Thanks again to Oriskany Jim!

Finished a couple books, though. Osprey's compact style is popular, and the older Campaign series do have some wargaming tips (there are even ones written by Featherstone, Young et al). I finished one I bought ages ago on the Royal Naval Air Service, and started another from the Duel series which I haven't looked at before - this one on Hawker Hurricanes versus Messerschmitt BF 110s. 

I've also got several books on the way - one on Shaggy Ridge (a knife-ridge in New Guinea fought over by the Australian 7th Division) and two of the lesser-known In Action series by Squadron/Signal Publications. I'm surprised these aren't better known; perhaps because they're older, and to my knowledge are no longer published. They also focus much more on hardware, in great detail, which is why they're mostly sold in museums and hobby shops (not gaming shops). I had a lot of them as a kid and did not discover Osprey until much later. I ordered three Vietnam-era ones - M41 Walker Bulldog, M113 and M48 Patton, and finished the M41 one two days ago. Looking forward to the others. To my knowledge there isn't any popular Vietnam wargame out there, though the realistic RPG Recon has adherents and a tabletop skirmish wargame variant.

Rambling and Reading

 I've had a long and mostly-not-working week - two sick days and then a three-day weekend for Columbus Day (which really should be First Nations Day, but I don't think our governor would go for that).

So I was hoping to get some gaming in. I did join in the Virtual Wargames Club meeting on Saturday, getting to see some of the group's recent collections and showing off some of my own pictures of Kodiak. At the same time was a round of De Bellis Antiquitatis at the club, which has made it somewhat busier; but I chose the option which meant I could stay home.

The first half of the Seven Days to the River Rhine game is now available on Youtube, thanks to Oriskany Jim:

I was then going to try a round of the solo game Battles of the English Civil War by Mike Lambo. I even gave up on cutting out half-sized Paperboys and enlarged the first scenario map instead to fit my Wofun plastics. But while I've read the rules over, I haven't had the gumption to break out the minis and start playing. (One issue that makes it easy to procrastinate is that the lighting in my apartment is such that there aren't many places to play where the lights are directly overhead, hence the poor photos.)

Instead, I've been reading.

This week it has been primarily the old classic Time-Life Civil War series. I love Time-Life books for their compact style and wealth of art and photos; I own most of the Aviation and WWII series, but the ACW series was one I never did manage to get hold of beyond the first volume. So instead I started reading it online, on archive.org. Each book is 175 pages long, but with crisp text and a high proportion of images, so in the past weekend alone I've flashed through about six volumes - I'm currently up to volume eight, The Coastal War: Chesapeake Bay to Rio Grande. And becoming more interested in running something from the Civil War at work - my Battery Wagner model has seen no use yet and (having been stacked in a crowded office) isn't in the best condition. Though I may be able to get away with claiming it's been bombarded?

Others I've been reading are The History of the Lord of the Rings (available on Scribd, just started volume three) and A History of Warfare by John Keegan, a fine writer but a somewhat eclectic work. It's good, but strictly speaking it's not quite a history, as it's not entirely in order. It is loosely separated into sections on Stone, Flesh, Iron and Fire, but (for example) the section on Stone Age warfare is interspersed with comments on psychology, archaeology and anthropological studies of the Yanomamo, Easter Island, and Maori peoples, and what we might learn of prehistorical warfare from them. It's more a sociological history than anything else - why and how do we go to war? One writer regularly mentioned is Victor Hanson, whose controversial claim in The Western Way of War is that "western" peoples fight more deliberately than the "primitives" who (like the tribes of New Guinea) tend towards ritualistic and largely bloodless posturing. Yet you see that in Western literature like the Trojan War, so...

Still plenty to think about.

Wargaming Campaigns

This new book by Henry Hyde is on a plane with his Wargames Compendium - thoroughly comprehensive. It's available free from Hoopla Digital, incidentally.

He starts by breaking down the definition of a campaign, because campaigns mean different things depending on the protagonists, time, space and technology. Even the protagonists' intelligence - can they even read a map? Does it occur to them to ask the locals about the defenses? - plays into this, though perhaps more on the scale of a roleplaying game.

Speaking of which, it's refreshing to see fantasy, SF and tabletop RPGs being referred to and provided options from a writer who clearly cut his teeth on classic historical games. There is plenty for a DnD gamemaster to use, just as much as a more conventional "wartime" campaign. For that matter, I can split the difference, as one thing I try to do in my games is to have a backdrop, whether or not the players ever notice it. There can be a war, and major events occurring that have an impact on the individual players and their adventures. If there's a war, the players might interact with mercenary troops - helping to recruit, catching deserters, rounding up drunken troops on leave, and the like. On an economic basis, if the fishing business is booming, the players will be dealing with events at the dockyard more frequently, or even traveling out to the fishing grounds to help catch a monster ship-killer. Commanders are even given RPG-style statistics - including intelligence, which affects reconnaissance die rolls, and initiative, which affects the turn on which reinforcements turn up. A small squad of WWII soldiers is detailed and a runthrough of what could easily be a free-kriegspiel game described as the brave-but-stupid officer gets himself in trouble, the hated corporal does nothing useful and the daring private passes initiative to toss a grenade at a Nazi machine-gun post. But this can be expanded to colonels and generals too; if they have statistics, they can be rolled against to see if they can be woken in time when the enemy is attacking, or if they deliver a rousing-enough speech to their troops. Hyde even quotes approvingly from DnD 5th Edition - the sections on customizing characters, alignment, bonds and ideals can all provide useful seeds for wargame characters of any stripe.

An entire chapter alone is spent on the factors a map can address, and how these differ according to terrain, period, logistics and many other things that should be considered when devising a campaign. Some of these things are obvious (maneuver is easier in the open than in mountains or jungle) but others merit serious thought. How far can the protagonists see, for example? Before the advent of the telescope, no more than a few miles, which means it's possible for armies to pass in the night, whereas today they'd be spotted hundreds of miles away by drones, radar, aviation, satellites...

Maps are of course an important part of campaigns, and Hyde spends significant time discussing these. There is a brief lesson on geology and how it affects the appearance of terrain, and specific instructions for modifying public-domain imagery with Photoshop-type software - down to pixel and color recommendations. Despite this focus on detail, he also points out the utility of more abstract "node" maps, such as those used on subways, where there is less consideration of distance and more of relation - the Snakes and Ladders campaign comes to mind here. I do like that he provides links to many online map generators, particularly the charming Azgaar Fantasy Map Generator.

Another chapter is on weather, though it spends more on the vagaries of climate and the chances of weather than on their effects in-game. A campaign "barometer" is described, with ladders each way to track humidity and temperature, that can be modified according to taste, season or climate (more chance of rain in the jungle, for example).

Tracking campaigns is important, of course, and while there are some useful tips on using spreadsheets to follow units (one handy bit is to turn the spreadsheet itself into a map, indicating positions by column and line!), Hyde's heart is in the classic hand-written journal. I can get with this, because I use a travel journal rather than a camera when visiting foreign parts. Hasty sketches and brief notes can convey just as much as essays and precise maps; there is a warmth and memory to paper and pen (or colored pencil) that makes me understand the nostalgia that comes with looking over a wargames campaign from decades past.

He finishes off with some reviews of his favorites (Tony Bath's Hyboria and Charles Grant's imagi-nations from The War Game come in for much praise) and a hefty example of his own work as a GM - mostly done online and around a gaming weekend where everyone met up after having maneuvered around each other. He is an interfering gamemaster after my own heart - when one player sent a fireship to destroy an opposing navy, Hyde rolled a few dice and determined that the captain had got his instructions wrong and instead blew up a ship of neutral refugees. The neutral country promptly declared war! He also cautions about the ease with which players and GMs can look at the same prompts differently - for example a player mistook a border for a road and accidentally violated a neutral country's territory. It is important to catch out unknowing confusion - the classic GM's ominous phrase "are you sure?" but delivered with explanation. It's okay, says he, to describe appropriate reactions to players who don't necessarily know what those would be; or to point out that they regard something as more important than it needs to be. A lot of GMs would let things like this pass and then pounce - but of course the purpose of a game like this is enjoyment, and there can be a fine line between that of the GM and the players. The thing to remember is that if the players are having fun, the GM is accomplishing her job, and that in itself is fun. It's OK for players to run roughshod over your plot!

A little more compact and less wide-ranging than his Compendium, but that's a good thing in this. The specific advice on use of specific software suites will be irrelevant to some users, but everything else is good and totally useful. A worthwhile read.