High Unit Density in 20th Century to Sci-Fi Gaming

[AngusPodgorny1969]

This weekend at our FLGS I had the opportunity to play a fairly large D-Day game in 20mm. The rules were a version of Command Decision. The scenario included action from the initial beach landing to quite a distance inland.

On a nearby table a group ran about four sessions of Bolt Action in 28mm.

And over on the other miniatures discussion forum someone recently posted an AAR for Flames of War Vietnam (15mm). It was a convoy scenario.

These three games had in common a feature which seems to permeate 20th century+ gaming which makes no sense to me: excessive unit density. We're talking unity density on par with ancient and medieval gaming.

In the D-Day game above we had the usual hub-to-hub masses of tanks. But we also had masses of infantry that looked like something out of the Braveheart movie.

The 28mm Bolt Action game looked nothing like a WWII skirmish. It looked like a 40K game with masses of troops running around in the open in huge blobs of 10+ figures (and that was consistent across four games with different players). Numerous tables hosting 40K games featured the same blobs of infantry moving in the open but at least that's science-fantasy!

The FoW Vietnam AAR said it was a convoy scenario. It looks more like a typical morning commute in a major American city with bumper-to-bumper traffic down the length of the table. To be honest they should have called it the "Traffic Jam AAR". Such high density for vehicles is standard in FoW but, to be fair, the same thing happens in games such as Command Decision.

Apologists defend this nonsense as a result of scale abstractions or "those are just bad tactics which will be punished by the arty rules".  If that were true then why does it seem to exist regardless of game ground scale and figure size? And if it were such a disadvantage in various rules why is it so common?

None of these tables looked anything like the combat footage we see in documentaries and on YouTube. Instead of isolated teams of infantry trying to remain dispersed and concealed we have massed formations marching shoulder-to-shoulder in large masses, often in the open. It just doesn't look right.

In your opinion, why do gamers do this sort of thing? Is it a matter of rules design?

I think that's the case for games such as Flames of War and 40K. They're designed to sell miniatures, the more the better. But even the Bolt Action game had a Nebelwerfer ON THE TABLE firing at targets on the table!!! That's a skirmish level weapon? Roooiiight.

I've played some 20th century and later games in which unit density was deliberately kept much lower. For example, FoW designer Phil Yates ran Flames of War at some American conventions using just a platoon per side which was great fun. Maneuver elements were squads of 2-3 stands and single vehicles. In those instances the game felt more representative of modern tactics and more tense. Losses and tactical choices mattered more. I just don't get this ancient and medieval approach to modern gaming.

[grant]

Bolt Action IS Warhammer1944K.

I completely agree - FoW and BA - they are not simulations, they are games with a WW2 veneer. And frankly, miss the WW2 mark somewhat badly.

[Cubs]

Funny enough, I heard people complaining about Rules of Engagement because they said it was too easy for troops in the open to get shot. Well dur.

You have a choice, you either stay realistic as regards deployment and weapon ranges and play only skirmish games or use very small scale models.

Or you abstract stuff; weapon ranges, what a single model represents, terrain, etc..

Different rules deal with stuff differently and not everyone wants to recreate history, some just want to play a game using the models as characterful counters.

I remember reading a Flames of War report in WI a while ago, when they were peddling the Eastern Front Armoured Trains. It looked like a big pile of nonsense to me, with units going nose-to-nose with each to slog it out. At that point I pretty much decided not to buy the rules. Not my bag.

Ditto for Bolt Action and the continual up-gunning. People asked for tanks and big guns in 28mm. Warlord make the models and that's what gets them the big bucks, not the rulesets, so they crowbar the tanks and big guns into the rules and then make the models that people asked for. It's no coincidence that ex-GW staff are running Warlord in a very GW fashion. It's successful, it makes money and it keeps (most of) their customers happy. Again, not my bag.

Having said that, neither do I feel the need to exactly replicate contacts as they would actually occur, which would probably make for a very boring game, everyone taking cover at extreme range and calling in artillery on the enemy position. Like I say, not my bag.

If I play a game I want to use my toys to have some fun and use a set of rules that rewards a certain amount of historical accuracy without getting too bogged down in minutiae. I prefer small scale stuff, with maybe a platoon a side, one small gun or ARV each. That's my bag.

Each to their own, brudder.

[fred]

Some of it is rules design, some of it is the players.

We have played quite a few games of CoC with 10mm figures. With this the rule scale, the ground scale, and the figure scale are all in sync. It takes quite a bit of getting used to that a 6'x4' table only has 60-70 small figures on it and a couple of vehicles. And most of the infantry spend their time hiding, as running across open ground is deadly, as we found in our first few games. But many games want a skirmish game to be played with 28mm figures, as they look better. This then forces the figure scale out of whack with the ground scale, and you get bunching up, as otherwise troops are out of range of the enemy. This is worse when the shooting ranges are reduced as well.

But we have just played a huge D-Day inspired game, and this was pretty much hub-to-hub 10mm tanks and infantry on a 9x6' table, but this was more down to poor planning (by me!) and a desire to get as many toys as possible on the table. We were using BKC rules to try to get some reasonable speed to the game - which are fairly abstract - but the artillery rules don't half punish bunched up infantry, but did little to bunched up tanks!!

[FramFramson]

Right, it really comes down to a scale issue and people wanting to game with X. If someone wanted 28mm minis, then that causes issues with ranges. If they want to play with a Cromwell, 88, or (as you mentioned) Nebelwerfer, then there is literally no realistic way for that to be on the table without scale ranges being butchered. Then, if you do add heavy stuff, you need to have the matching quantity of infantry to keep things proportional, so that adds to the absurdity and crowding.

Doesn't excuse large formations moving in the open, I suppose, but the other stuff is a pretty straightforward result of wanting to play with non-infantry items in scales larger than 10mm.

[petercooman123]

We use 10mm models with blitzkrieg commander and we do allright. Just don't overdo it onthe forces you use (so no forces made up of 20tigers or so)

The system allowing you to command stuff outside your command zone of 20cm (at a modifier that is) allows for spreading out troops more easily.

for example, a spread out line of defense and an 88 held back in support, all under the same commander:

[Gibby]

Funny enough, I heard people complaining about Rules of Engagement because they said it was too easy for troops in the open to get shot. Well dur.

You have a choice, you either stay realistic as regards deployment and weapon ranges and play only skirmish games or use very small scale models.

Or you abstract stuff; weapon ranges, what a single model represents, terrain, etc..

Different rules deal with stuff differently and not everyone wants to recreate history, some just want to play a game using the models as characterful counters.

I remember reading a Flames of War report in WI a while ago, when they were peddling the Eastern Front Armoured Trains. It looked like a big pile of nonsense to me, with units going nose-to-nose with each to slog it out. At that point I pretty much decided not to buy the rules. Not my bag.

Ditto for Bolt Action and the continual up-gunning. People asked for tanks and big guns in 28mm. Warlord make the models and that's what gets them the big bucks, not the rulesets, so they crowbar the tanks and big guns into the rules and then make the models that people asked for. It's no coincidence that ex-GW staff are running Warlord in a very GW fashion. It's successful, it makes money and it keeps (most of) their customers happy. Again, not my bag.

Having said that, neither do I feel the need to exactly replicate contacts as they would actually occur, which would probably make for a very boring game, everyone taking cover at extreme range and calling in artillery on the enemy position. Like I say, not my bag.

If I play a game I want to use my toys to have some fun and use a set of rules that rewards a certain amount of historical accuracy without getting too bogged down in minutiae. I prefer small scale stuff, with maybe a platoon a side, one small gun or ARV each. That's my bag.

Each to their own, brudder.

Agreed.

I use 28mm for Chain of Command, which is platoon level and as realistic as I've ever seen a WW2 ruleset get. Rifle ranges and movement rates just work for this, even at 28mm which is technically a bit larger than the ground scale. 15mm is true scale for CoC so it's really not far off being an accurate representation of what it's recreating. Any sort of heavy gun/mortar/artillery support is from off table, and represented on the table only by a spotter. I can see why people want to stick their toys on the table, but if you REALLY wanted to build and paint a Nebelwerfer then you are likely a modeller anyway so can stick it with your other display pieces.

I use 15mm for I Ain't Been Shot Mum, which is a company level game, and about the upper limit of what actions I'd like to represent on the tabletop for WW2. FoW is also a company level game, but I abjectly refuse to stick my infantry in those silly clumps - I base individually as a personal preference but also to allow for some tactical realism. For abstracted wargames I can see them working, but IaBSM aren't overly abstract and neither are FoW so I can't see the appeal of blobs.

Anyone who complains about a ruleset allowing your men to die too easily when in the open really aren't in it to wargame WW2, they are just in it for a game of toy soldiers, and that's fine. I can see why Warlord's particular brand of WW2 wargaming appeals to them. For me personally, and this isn't a dig at those rules or those who like them, I prefer to wargame the period, not mould the period into a game. If that makes sense.

TL;DR - I can see why people like those big clumpy games of toy soldiers, just doesn't do it for me as I prefer to try my best to recreate actions I've read about in the conflicts I game, and the aforementioned games don't, for me, remotely do it.

[fastolfrus]

We play PBI from Peter Pig.
A company level game played on a 4' x 4' table divided into 6" squares.
Squares are either closed terrain, partial cover, or open.
Movement depends on the terrain you are moving out of, so infantry moving out of cover need 2 AP, infantry moving in the open need 1 AP, on the grounds that they are happier to move in the open than when they are in a good defensive spot.
Vericles get heavily hit for movement in/through built up areas.

Figures are typically based in 3s, usually with 4-8 bases per platoon, but there is a rules penalty for any clustered square - more than 3 bases in a square get shot at by double the number of artillery or MG dice.
Vehicles and supporting artillery are limited to a max of 6 per side (and the points system make it unlikely that they will be big unless you have a lot of raw/novice units on table). Clustered vehicles are affected by heavy fire to stop them bunching up.
Morale is governed by casualties on table - either in your own square or just from your unit. Raw/novice units can be taken off table by just 3 hits.
Vehicles get a morale penalty for going near any built up terrain without infantry support.

[AngusPodgorny1969]

The oddest thing about this issue is that it destroys the features that make 20th century-SciFi  different from other periods.

Other periods feature dense masses of troops maneuvering in the open and going nose to nose with other masses in the open. Doing that in 20th century+ games destroys the period's unique flavor.

I should note that I'm fine with abstraction and actually prefer it if it means faster, easier play. I enjoy FoW's core mechanics and feel that 40K does a great job of representing everything from a human with a sword to a giant war machine with a few simple core stats. In both of those cases I've played "low unit density" session of those games and really enjoyed them.

As I mentioned above, when FoW was first released Phil Yates ran some demo games at US conventions using just a few squads and an AFV or two per side. It was absolutely perfect. Even with the telescoping ground scale (which I also enjoy) it was a game of angles and interesting tactical choices. As FoW unit sizes and armies grew in size it became more about flinging masses of troops at one another. I've seen Bren carrier units lined up hub to hub like chariots. And no, that isn't punished in the rules since it works so well.

When I first played 40K Rogue Trader after graduating from college our armies tended towards the small size. The rules and our budgets encouraged small armies of a squad or two and maybe a dreadnought or large creature. Today, 40K looks just like Warhammer Fantasy Battle in unit density.

But let's focus on the positive for a moment. Despite the weird incentive to build masses of "cheerleaders", the game Infinity does low unit density well. I still remember the first Infinity game that I played. With fewer figures/maneuver elements the game is more tense. With 6-8 figures a loss hurts. And with the ranges involved and weapon lethality against troops in the open the geometry of the battlefield and troop positioning becomes critical.

IMO the best 20th century+ games feature a low "force to space" ratio with no more than 8-12 maneuver elements per side. And each maneuver element is simply a single soldier figure or one stand instead of blobs of 7-12 figures or stands as in 40K and FoW. That's enough maneuver elements to provide for unit variety and combined arms (rifles, MGs, and even mortar and vehicle support at higher levels of play such as 1 stand = 1 squad or platoon) and yet not so many as to destroy the period's unique flavor.