Riding the Red Horse (30 page)

Tactics or Strategy?

The first decision is a key one: do we simulate tactics or strategy? This is compounded by the problem that no really satisfactory definitions of strategy and tactics exist, and neither is very well understood in the United States. For example, there is nowhere in this country a good work on modern tactics, and the study of tactics has largely been neglected for the study of something which we call strategy, but which is often not that either. This is a large subject, and not one to be settled in a single essay; the interested reader might refer to
The Strategy of Technology
, by S. T. Possony and J. E. Pournelle, University Press of Cambridge, Mass. for a fuller exposition on what I mean by that statement.

The average game of strategy, in any event, would be too complex, and simulation is extremely difficult because strategy operates against the
will
of the opponent rather than his means. Because there is no more penalty to a wargamer for losing utterly than there is for losing at all, it is difficult to make him surrender until his means of combat have been eliminated. I suppose rules could be devised in which a point system is employed, with a penalty to be paid for the number of points lost by the loser less those which he has gained against the winner, but then another difficulty arises: in the real world there are usually factors operating which make the victor anxious to accept the surrender of his enemy, in war games there is almost none, and consequently a player who is winning would be most reluctant to allow the loser to stop the war until the maximum number of points had been extracted. It is all a very difficult matter. and one which deserves more thought than we have time for in this article.

Consequently, we will discuss tactics more than grand tactics, and grand tactics more than strategy. The subject is, I think, large enough for our purposes.

Which Principles of War?

The next problem is, which principles of war do we wish to emphasize? For that matter, which list of principles will we accept? Every serious student has his own set of “the” principles of war, and few lists are alike. Again, for our purposes, we will have to be satisifed with an arbitrary set of principles which seem appropriate for gaming, leaving the question of which are the correct principles of war to another discussion.

It seems to me that the most important principle of war neglected in popular games is the Principle of Surprise. Surprise has probably won more battles than all the other factors combined. Certainly it has provided most clear wins by a side which should reasonably be expected to lose. Consequently, let us examine the characteristics of surprise as it operates in real battles, and how it might be simulated in games.

Surprise consists of doing what the opponent is certain you will not or cannot do. Classical examples are: night marches, attacks by inferior forces, the use of equipment, troops, or weapons in totally unexpected ways, attacks through “impassable” terrain, and “secret weapons” which quite often have not been secret in the sense of being unknown, but secret in the sense of a capability previously unexpected, such as when infantry has been trained to make forced marches at speeds not thought possible.

Many of these kinds of surprise are impossible in gaming. There is no way, at least none known to me, in which we can unexpectedly increase the striking radius of the gaming pieces, or change the terrain rules in the middle of the game, or combine forces in such a way that together they have a higher combat factor than they do separately. Certainly we could do any of these things, possibly by some kind of card drawing or random number system; but the resultant would not be the mind-numbing shock of the totally unexpected, because the opponent would know from the rules that such things were possible. The true effect of surprise goes beyond the immediate effect to a paralysis of the opponent's will; if he could do
that
, then what else might he be able to do? Wars have been won by exploiting that kind of surprise.

We can, however, introduce surprise by imperfect intelligence; allow a player to do, if not the totally unexpected, then at least something which the opponent has dismissed as highly unlikely. The best way to achieve this at the game board, in my judgment, is through the matchbox system. In this system, each player has a certain number of headquarters-type pieces, and for each such piece a matchbox or envelope. At any time a player may move a certain number of combat pieces up to the headquarters and take them off the board to be placed in the corresponding matchbox. The HQ then moves on the board, and the combat pieces are considered to be stacked on top of it, or, in non-stacking games, in the squares through which the headquarters has last moved. Obviously, by judicious moving of the headquarters units together and then apart, a player can create confusion as to just what units are in any given formation containing headquarters pieces, so much so that what appears to be a minor raid might well be a full armored army, while what seems to be a major attack might be a reconaissance in force. The matchboxes are used to keep the players honest; only those pieces in the matchbox can be claimed to be with the on-board HQ.

This rule alone can produce a major effect on wargames; I have seen the emergence of an army in a totally unexpected place bring about a paralysis of will that brought defeat to an otherwise winning player. I have also seen the fear of surprise attack stop an advance even though there was in fact no real strength opposing it. In my judgment the rule should become a standard rule in all board-type wargames.

The second most neglected factor in wargaming is the principle of Economy of Forces, the judicious combination of units of different types to bring about a force sufficient for the objective set. Again, the really great exploitations of this principle are denied the gamer. We cannot change the rules in the middle of the game, or discover a new use for infantry-cavalry combinations unknown to the opponent. We can, however, provide a rich variety of really different units, each with a special capability. This was discussed at great length in my previous article on “The Decisive Arm” and cannot be repeated here. Therefore, we will only examine some possibilities open to the wargamer.

First, it seems to me, we will need
complexity
, and complexity is generally the enemy of playability. ln this case there is no help for it and what we must do is strive to make our complexities such that we do not lose ourselves in them. What we need is a variety of
kinds
of units which have some
really fundamental
differences between them, not merely differences in strength and mobility.

For example: in Waterloo, the artillery should be allowed to stack without limit. This means that a player who has husbanded his artillery can bring an enormous concentration of force against a single point-much as Napoleon was able to do. The P-A-A player, on the other hand, should be prevented from stacking dissimilar units, and in particular forbidden to place Prussians with Allies. Adding this rule and the matchbox rule produces a game of Waterloo entirely different from the standard game, and one which I think is more interesting. It automatically provides a role for cavalry as well—reconnaissance becomes absolutely necessary, with cavalry making sweeps to locate the enemy artillery prior to setting up a defensive position or mounting a major attack. Without such knowledge, the player is nearly blinded and can be surprised. In modern games, armor can have unique stacking capabilities, as infantry, or infantry-armor combinations, can stack.

The last principle we shall examine in this article is the Principle of Uncertainty: No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. It is the first maxim that the aspiring commander must learn.

This was, to some extent, brilliantly incorporated into the original Avalon Hill combat results tables. It has been less and less so as time went on, and I fear the results when the new non-random combat results rules become universal as they seem destined to do.

In simulation, you can
never
eliminate uncertainties. There is always a chance that a small unit, ordered to die to a man, will in fact repulse a much larger unit ordered to attack without quarter. The chance may be small, but it is there, and the really great generals have been those who understood this and made contingency plans for unlikely events. If we are to keep realism in our wargames, we must have uncertainty.

At the same time, there is no question but that the old, rigid combat tables were wrong. The defense should have the option of bugging out to save his forces, and the attacker should have the option of making feints rather than full-scale attacks. On the other hand, the uncertainties need to be preserved. A withdrawal in the face of a cavalry attack, for example, can be very difficult and might even result in greater losses than an attempt to hold the position. The possibilities are easy to speculate on. harder to simulate.

Still, simulation is not impossible. Better combat tables could be devised by spending a lot more time analyzing what happens in particular situations and adjusting the probabilities accordingly. Other future articles will analyse the Principle of Pursuit, the Principle of the Objective, the Principle of Unity of Command, Logistics and Supply, and the Center of Gravity, a European concept almost totally neglected in U.S. military analyses.

John F. Carr is a veteran of SFWA from way back and has some sixteen novels to his credit in addition to editing literally dozens of science fiction anthologies. Among John’s novels are
Great King’s War
with Roland Green,
Kalvan Kingmaker
,
Siege at Tarr Hostigos
,
The Fireseed Wars
, and
Gunpowder God
, all set in the universe of H. Beam Piper’s
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
. There’s a new one out, too,
The Hos-Blethan Affair
, written with John’s co-author, Wolfgang Diehr. Wolfgang is also a veteran, but of the US Army, and likewise has done his part in keeping the legacy of H. Beam Piper alive with two well-received novels,
Fuzzy Ergo Sum
, and its sequel,
Caveat Fuzzy
.

Of those many anthologies, of particular interest to the readers of this one will be four volumes of the
THERE WILL BE WAR
series. In partnership with Jerry Pournelle, John edited Volume I, Volume III
Blood and Iron
, Volume VII
Call to Battle
, and Volume 8
Armageddon!
. To him, too, the modern writers of military fiction owe their respects.

As to the story that follows, there are few alternate histories as beloved as that begun with the late H. Beam Piper’s
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
, in which Corporal Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania State Trooper and former US Army combat infantryman, is whisked to an alternate timeline, where early Indo-Europeans went east to Asia and then North America, rather than west, into Europe. In that timeline Corporal Morrison, known as “Kalvan” to the locals, makes a better gunpowder, builds an army, wins the battles, saves the princedom of his friends, marries the princess, and creates a new “Great Kingdom.” And that’s just in the first book! In the process of all that, he makes an enemy out of Styphon, the local god of gunpowder, makes a couple of mistakes that turned out to be much worse than he could have anticipated, and finds himself on the short end of the financial and manpower lever. In short, he loses a key battle and finds out why Moltke the Elder, and most experienced soldiers, find retreat to be the most difficult military operation of all.

And that's where Economy of Force, Surprise, and their handmaiden, Deception, come in, with a little help from the local’s fear of Galzar, the God of War.

“Without all colorful commentary,” the troubadour Gasphros said, “the Hos-Blethan Royal Army’s scouting parties will be here in a moon quarter at least, a moon half at most.”

Captain Andros nodded, tugging at his beard. As a former officer in the Royal Army, he knew how determined the Royal Guardsmen could be. Great King Democriphon was both embarrassed and angered by the number of Styphon’s House temples they had plundered in the last four moons. It not only made the Great King look weak and ineffective, but angered the hierarchy of Styphon’s House to whom he was deeply in debt.

“And you know what routes they will take?” Captain Andros asked.

“Oh, yes,” the troubadour replied. “A few more ales and I would have had the key to the captain’s wife’s chastity belt. A look at the scouting map was easy to get.” Gasphros pulled out the skillfully inked duplicate parchment of the scouting map. “I would say they could get to this point rather easily,” he indicated the location with the tip of his pipe. “However, the enemy will have to slog through the swamp for at least a full day. That gives us plenty of time to prepare a trap.”

“What kind of trap?” Andros asked.

“A simple ambush, I would imagine,” Gycules replied. “We could meet them on the other side of that swampy area and simply shoot them down from–”

“Nay!” Andros stormed around the table and came face-to-face with Ranthar. “I told you when I joined that I would have no part in seeing my former brothers in arms killed by you or anyone else in the company. If you do this, it will be without me, and I shall not remain among you.”

Colonel Ranthar, having taken a step back, recovered himself. “What would you have us do? We cannot wait for them to come to us. Would you have all of us stand and be slaughtered?”

“I…no. But there must be another way…”

“I am open to suggestions, Andros, but if it is a choice between them or us…”

“Ranthar,” Timnos interrupted, “Killing these men would only be a temporary victory. When this patrol fails to return, more will follow in larger numbers. Men looking to avenge their missing comrades.”