Rules for the last kilometer?

My thinking so far is to have a a sequence of play consisting, broadly, of

1. Grand-tactical movement, which would leave troops out of effective rifles range of their opponents (more or less).
2. Some sort of bombardment/counter-battery phase for artillery fire
3. An assault phase that covers movement through defensive fire and into close combat, with a resolution of the assault.

While we are looking at a 2 hour turn, most authorities agree that the time that men would stand actively exposed to fire is pretty limited - measure in minutes not hours.  That makes resolving the whole of infantry combat for a single turn quite sensible, and keeps the pace up so that we are not swamped with detail and fail to make our time target.

However, we do want the combat process to tell a story -- the process should drive out results like a repulse, or being driven to ground as well as varying degrees of success in taking or holding the position.

There should be some level of give and take as well - I could see a series of attacks and counter attacks as the two sides move and resolve combat until basically the front goes quiet.  Maybe something like this:

1. Players determine initiative.  I would suggest that whichever player has the most stands withing assault range of the enemy and in an offensive posture has the initiative, and must attack first.  Some mechanism should probably force some, if not all, such units to attack.  Let's call that player the "attacker" for the moment.
2. The attacker advances all units which will/must attack to within one inch of the enemy.  Some units may already be there because of previous results.
3. On a unit-by unit basis, resolve combat- ideally one roll per unit. Results would be

•  Repulsed - back to 4" from enemy, change various stats
• Go to Ground suppressed  - find a nice hole, and stay in it, 2" (500m) from enemy  Will need intervention to get moving again.
• Go to Ground firefight - find a nice position and stay an inch from the enemy, still scrapping.
• Close Combat Engaged - still fighting, indecisive
• Take ground - defender falls back and goes to ground - firefight
• Take ground - defender falls back and goes to ground -suppressed
•  Take ground - defender repulsed.

One the attacking player was finished, eligible defending units could/have to assault or counter-attack.  This would be followed by a counter-attack cycle for the attacker and that is that?  Or more such cycles?

Next post I'll muse on stats/attributes/whatever?

Morale and other unknowns

Here's a good point well made:

http://prometheusinaspic.blogspot.com/2010/11/grand-tactical-game-morale-or-not.html

I agree with the idea that the effects of combat on units in a game should mostly be morale effects; and that separating morale and casualties into separate tests is avoidable and probably best avoided.

That does not mean that there are not cases - many cases - in the war in which the primary effect really was physical. The 52nd Brandeburg regiment, for example, during the battle of Mars-La-Tour, lost a third of its strength mostly in the attack on Flavigny. In the same battle Cuirassier of the Imperial Guard lost more than a third of its numbers in a single charge.

Still, while dead men cannot advance morale is still an important effect. It was the remnants of the 52nd that the Cuirassier charged; they stood their ground and decimated their attackers.

Still, the morale of a unit is not always clear to its officers -- or to the men in the unit themselves. Patry, in The Reality of War, describes an incident during the defense of St Privat. His battalion was pinned down, tanking casualties but shooting back and apparently in reasonable shape. The commander stood, gestured, encouraged his men -- it was time to move into a more forward position. Party describes himself a standing up, certain he was about to advance -- then he and everyone else in the battalion heading for the hills.

On the other hand the Prussian Guard, which lost a quarter of its strength in about 20 minutes in front of St. Privat, and was pinned down for an hour, was able to stand and advance as the Saxons turned Canrobert's right and the French defense started to break down.

Here's roughly the mechanism I want to use. A moving, active unit accumulates hits which are resolved immediately and have their effects which may include degradation in capability or an unwillingness to move. If enough hits are take, the unit breaks and will probably just be removed from the table. Some hits should probably be reversible with a deliberate effort to rally the troops. Some proportion will not.

Once a unit goes to ground - either voluntarily or pinned as a combat result - fire will not cause immediate hits, but potential hits. Those hits will be accumulated until a unit faces a "test" - a "moment of truth" (I like the second phrase better, since it does not have the baggage of "morale test") and then they will be resolved and the actual hits applied and resolved. Potential hits may still cause effects such as a slacking off of fire (are they dead, or conserving their ammunition?).

I have two moments of truth in mind at the moment.

• The player attempts to move the unit, either forward or back.
• The unit comes under close assault

The sense I get from the accounts I have read so far is that once infantry have settled in, you have to use the bayonet to get them out.

Lets talk about blinds and dummy units.

One way to provide real uncertainty is to use dummy markers or blinds to represent the real or suspected presence of forces not yet confirmed by the enemy.

I have played one game of this type -- I Ain't Been Shot Mum from Too Fat Lardies -- but only once. I do plan to test some of these ideas with Hearts of Tin the next time I have a chance to get out my SYW armies.

One observation is that the common images of blinds in Too Fat Lardies show fairly large sheets of paper more or less attractively displayed. Having though about the matter a bit, and looked at these lovely examples by Steven Thomas, I think that we can have a board with quite a few blinds on it without having it look like I accidentally spilled my paper crafts on the table.

So, purely on speculation, what do we need in the way of preconditions and rules to make blinds works (and I need a better name for them, too).

Well, we need to not actually know the enemy OB. If I know what forces the enemy starts with, eventually I will know if I have found them all, or how much I have to worry about them. To get the full effect of Mars-La-Tour on Bazaine, for example, you need the possibility to exist that in fact the whole German army is moving into his line of march. The latest version of Volley and Bayonet includes the Road to Glory subsystem for dealing with uncertain OB, and I will look at it in more detail in a later post.

To continue the uncertainty, I think you need to have some way to keep blinds in play. If they are not ugly, then as units -- or empty blinds -- are revealed there should be a way to bring them back. This could include splitting existing blinds into two, allowing units that have moved from sight to re-blind, and of course having blinds return on entry points as possible re-enforcements.

We need to decide what can be in a blind. Since the basic maneuver unit will be a division, clearly a blind can contain a division. It can also, of course, contain nothing. I suppose it should be able to contain detached cavalry regiments for doing recon (and what rules shall we have for detachments - something for another post).

We need rules for revealing blinds. Should all reveals be complete, or should I be able to reveal one stand (which may be all that is there) to force an enemy blind to reveal?

We need rules to keep unrevealed blinds out of sight of each other. Blinds should not be a free recon unit.

Not a huge list I think. Should be interesting.