The War Game by Charles Grant: A review

A while ago I received a venerable copy of “The War Game” by Charles S. Grant as a present. Mine was a good-looking hardback, still accompanied with its dust jacket and printed in 1971 (I was six years old at that time), which likely makes it a first edition. Always something to be enjoyed by us analog bibliophiles, although the magic of first editions will fade from our lives with the advent of the E-book, but that is another story. It also has one of those other fascinating elements of vintage books: a dedication. It was at one time given to “Robert, with love and best wishes from Mummy, Daddy and Sarah”. One wonders if Robert is still among us and whether he is still playing? We will probably never know.

I started the book under a wrong impression, which was that The War Game was a book about wargaming (or war gaming as it was then and perhaps still is correctly spelled). While this is not entirely untrue, it is actually more of a ruleset than a compendium. It can however be read as such when you take mr Grant’s 18^th century rules as a metaphor for war gaming in general and a pleasant read it is.

It is a well looking 190-page book with black and white illustrations, many of which feature the author’s prettily painted own 30mm plastic troops. He laments their disappearing from the market but does not disclose their manufacturer, but my best guess is they are Spencer Smith figures which fortunately are available again these days, cast in metal instead of plastic. The tabletop photos especially have a very Classic look about them and not just because they are in black-and-white. Stark wooden surfaces (presumably painted green) carry blocky Styrofoam hills, paper trees and scratch-built cardboard houses, all populated with huge 48-men units marching about. It’s Nostalgia with an Imperial “N”.

The book starts with a preface by Brigadier Peter Young, then a brief history of war gaming by the author himself. It quickly gets to the core of the matter and addresses the author’s rules for playing war games in the “Horse & Musket” period; the 18^th up to the middle of the 19^th century. All the different elements of the game are dealt with in a clear and systematic manner. Indeed, one might wish to see such accessibility in modern day rulesets! Infantry, cavalry, musketry, Melee and Artillery and its effects are dealt with. Morale is then addressed, as are terrain and buildings.

The rules are clearly from a time when hurry and stress had a lot less impact than nowadays. Players of the 60ies and 70ies took their time and who can blame them! Imagine playing with regiments consisting of 48, single-based, figures a piece! Moving the units around alone must have taken hours. The author also does not eschew little details, like the extra 1-and-a-half inch infantry move when in column! Musketry involves some serious number crunching: numbering your soldiers and your sub-units, counting number of firing sub units, rolling dice for hits, subtracting distance modifier, rolling for casualties, removing said casualties, all this with different modifiers for range, firing troop formation, target formation et cetera. The author then illustrates his rules with a battle, starting with the history, the translation to the tabletop and a narrative of how it played.

The book then gets to grips with the basics of terrain construction, its effects on the game, the use of maps in creating games and special rules like pioneers, river transports and campaigns. It ends with a final game scenario, Bunker Hill 1775, where all the elements from the book are brought together to create a fine battle scenario I really should play one day.

I encountered some surprisingly creative ideas in this ancient tome. Roundshot guns actually had a minimum range in reality (something I have never seen modelled in rule sets these days) as the cannonball was shot at an upward angle to land just in front of the target and then bounce horrendously through them. The author uses a measuring stick showing the parts where the ball is airborne and where it moves low enough above the ground to do damage. For canister he uses a metal-wire soldered Canister Cone, displaying the areas where canister had the most, less and least effect. Similar wire templates are used for grenade effects.

Houses were apparently built by him as a loose outer box, representing the intact building and placed over a slightly smaller ruined version of the same house. Just by lifting off the outer box, you created an instant ruin! Brilliant in its simplicity!

The book ends with the traditional index, but preceded by an endearing summary of manufacturers of figures and equipment of the late 1960ies. 

Mythical names like Les Higgins Miniatures and Hinton Hunt Figures are given, complete with address. 

Last but certainly not least a heart-warming mention is given to Airfix Ltd. (Haldane Place, Garratt Lane, London SW 18) “whose inexpensive plastic war game figures (20mm to 25mm – they do vary) have started the career of many a junior and not a few senior war gamers.” 

Anyone knowing my preference for 20mm plastic figures will understand why THAT brought a smile to my face.

Even though it may not become your ruleset of choice for Horse & Musket, “The War Game” is an enjoyable and valuable addition to any war gamer’s library.

Review and first game of Maurice

Last sunday we played our first game of Maurice. Maurice is an 18th century tabletop wargames ruleset produced by Sam Mustafa. I had never encountered any of his rulesets before so I was prepared for something new. I was not disappointed. 

Let's start with what was not surprising. Maurice has a standard IGO/UGO sequence. It uses d6es for every diceroll. It has relatively mundane mechanisms for shooting (4+ is a hit, then roll for result). It uses multi-figure bases. No surprises there. 

The first (so far untried) surprise is that Maurice has an integrated campaign system. I expect to dwell more on this topic in future posts. Maurice has no scale but measures distances for moving and shooting in base-widths. It could therefore be played in 10mm or 54mm without any adaptation as long as you use a consistent basing. My basing for Black Powder proved perfect, as I already based my regiments in 4 bases of 6 foot or 2 Horse. But any basing will do as long as the width is consistent. 

Then I must mention that Maurice is not so much card-driven as well card-governed. The game comes complete with a custom card deck including Action Cards, National Advantages, Notables as well as Battlefield cards and some more features. 

All units may volley fire (fire at musket or short artillery range) for free but to do anything else requires Actions. The Action Cards have the most direct influence on the game and have a double function. First, every card has a numerical value. Playing and adding these cards gives you command range counted from your C-in-C.. Every turn you may issue one command to a "Force" that is an integrated number of units within this command range. Only one you ask? Yes, only one. Usually, that is. Depending on the sort of command you may then draw no, 1, 2 or 3 new cards. If you ever run out of cards, you will have to pass and draw new cards. 

The second function is that every card offers some special ability or influence. My hapless cuirassiers below for example were drawn into a premature charge by my opponent playing a card that could disrupt my plans. Thus they charged a superior force and were wiped out. When timed right, such cards can have quite an influence on the game as it turned out. 

 My cuirassiers revving up..

 And here they charge for death or Glory! Death, as it turned out....

When building an army you can buy National Advantages. These are special abilities. I bought Lethal Volleys for example that enabled me to enhance the effect of my short range musket and canister volleys. This commits you somewhat to a certain strategy and tactics. Obviously, musketry would be a primary asset for me and my strategy should depend on that to a certain extent.  

You can also buy Notables, on-table characters that attach to a unit and give that unit certain advantages and abilities. We skipped that for our first game, but one can imagine Prince Rupprecht of Twitterling-Hupsenback and his spaniels charging into the ranks with a +2 combat result.....

Here my opponent's Guards approach my thin red line...

And here they are gone, wiped away by Lethal Volleys and First Fire....

When fired upon units collect "wounds" called Disrupts. A certain number of Disrupts will break the unit, influence their combat abilities and may be Rallied away with a Rally command. Disrupts therefore function as a kind of dynamic Morale value.

Because Actions usually occur only once per turn, the game encourages you to manage your army in a cohesive way (as was the practice then, as it is now). Moving individual units costs lots of actions and the same number of turns, so you must move entire Forces to accomplish anything. Therefore battles tend to get decided at a certain, central point as can be read in the history books but is rarely seen on the wargames table. When you are used to the fact that your entire army is in action all over the battlefield and all at once, you will not see that in Maurice.

This resulted in our small 75-points game in a battle with an early fierce and short cavalry action, a initial artillery bombardment at long range followed by steady advances of the attacker's infantry. By using my Lethal Volleys combined with a First Fire card (which enabled me to "steal" his first volley in his turn) I wiped out his center infantry Force. Units that we placed far out on the flanks did little or nothing, since neither of us was willing to pay the cards for ordeering these units to do anything. Quite like the real thing, actually.

It was a very pleasant first encounter. I expect many will follow and I will certainly come back to you on the Campaign system.

Cuirassiers!

As I wrote earlier I am planning to expand my 18th century cavalry options. For this I need more hussars and dragoons, but especially the powerhouse of all 18th century shocktroops: the cuirassiers.  

Of course no cuirassiers are made in 1/72 plastic and even metals are rare. I found the Outland games ones but so far have failed to acquire any. So I turned to conversions. 

I started with Zvezda and HaT Napoleonic Russian Cuirassiers, removed their heads and replaced them with heads from the Imex AWI British infantry. The horse harness seemed appropriate enough and so a further paintjob led to the results below. The one with the raised sword is Zvezda, the other one HaT. After the headswap and the paintjob they look remarkably similar and I am quite pleased with them. Another 22 to go to finish the two Cuirassier units I have planned. 

Hussars and dragoons are to follow. These are both made by Zvezda for the Seven Years War and the Great Northern War. Wait and see! 

The Bridge at Kronstadt

A few years ago I bought Tabletop Teasers Vol 1 (no Vol 2 has surfaced so far, alas!) by Charles Grant. I have wanted to play one of the scenarios for some time and now we played The Bridge at Kronstadt. Originally placed in 1805 I moved it backwards to the mid-18th century in a fictional war between the Grand Duchy of Twitterlingen and the double princedom of Doppelstein-Hupsenbach. We used Black Powder as a ruleset. 

In the scenario Twitterlingen defends the bridge across the unfordable river near the town of Kronstadt. The player will have to defend the bridge against a superior force while undermining the bridge. This will take a certain amount of time (not known to his opponent) and then he will have the emergency option of blowing up the bridge (and hopefully) destroy it. 

Here the town of Kronstadt lays serenely near the river. The old bridge spans the stream towards the village of Nieder Kronstadt. 

Nieder Kronstadt is defended by the Twitterlinger Grenadiere (if these look familiar; yes, I painted these as French for the American Revolution) supported by artillery. 

 From across the plain the large Doppelstein-Hupsenbacher army approaches the Ribbeling stream. Scouting hussars have identified several defensive positions but who knows what else is hidden behind the hills? But time is of the essence, since the dastardly Twitterlingers will undoubtedly labour to undermine the bridge. So forward! 

On the left and center massive columns march toward Kronstadt, while on the right the cavalry division made a wide sweep to turn the Twitterling flank. Having foreseen this, the Twitterlinger general had placed his cavalry and two regimants of foot behind a hill on his left flank. Here the Doppelsteiner Hussars charge the Twitterlinger Dragoons, only to be driven off with bloody losses. The subsequent charge of the Hupsenbacher Dragoon regiments swept away first the Twitterlinger cavalry, then their infantry. Already their left flank was crushed!

In the center however things progressed slowly. The Twitterlinger cannon, their only numerical superiority, caused serious disorder in the approaching Doppelstein-Hupsenbacher lines, greatly hampering their advance. Slowly but inexorably however the mass of the Doppelstein-Hupsenbacher line drew nearer....

Twitterlinger Grenadiere regard the approaching multitudes with stoic resolve.

Here the battle is starting left and center. Twitterling guns tear into the Doppelsteiner ranks.

While slowly driven back, the Twitterlinger right wing causes terrible losses amongst the Doppelsteiner troops. Stubbornly they hold on to their positions. Hupsenbach infantry meanwhile passes them by to attack Nieder Kronstadt itself. Time is pressing!

In order to force the matter, Doppelstein-Hupsenbacher cavalry charges the depleted Twitterlinger left wing which tenaciously hangs on the the village. The charge has disastrous results: both cavalry regiments are utterly blown away with deadly musketry! The charge in the center meets the same fate, losing greatly. Then the dreadful insight arrives. The unthinkable has happened! The Doppelstein-Hupsenbacher army is broken! While the Twitterlinger army has little more fight left in them, they at least have held on to the bridge. Victory for Twitterlingen! 

A great game with a great ruleset. Thanks to Folkert for a pleasant afternoon and an enjoyable defeat :o)