To understand why Volley and Bayonet is designed the way that it is, you need to understand the intent of the game. That intent is to place players in the position of corps and army commanders and let them refight decisive battles of history in their entirety. The game should be playable to conclusion in a reasonable length of time (three to six hours) and the rules should enable the players to make grand-tactical decisions which determine the outcome of the battle, rather than requiring them to make detailed mechanical and tactical decisions which were not the province of the army and corps commander in any event.

That, we felt, was a very clear and reasonable "mission statement," and defined a task well worth doing. It was the lack of a set of rules which accomplished this to our satisfaction, as well as a genuine desire to fight historic battles out on this scale, which prompted the effort in the first place.

That was our intent. How well we achieved those goals is up to you, and on that note it would be fairly easy to end these notes. Enough thought went into the specifics of these deceptively simple-looking rules, however, that we felt that most gamers would be interested in gaining some insight into the process. The notes which follow concentrate on some of the key issues of the design, and relate the history, facts, opinions, and simple biases upon which the design decisions were based.

PHILOSOPHY OF DESIGN

There are two ways to design miniatures rules: bottom-up and top-down. Bottom-up rules designers approach the task with the notion that if all of the details can be put in and gotten right, then the end result will be correct as well. Top-down designers begin with the final result and try to put in only those elements which are necessary to produce that result.

These rules are emphatically top-down. We did not begin with tactics, or even theories of the nature of warfare in the era. We began with historic Napoleonic battles. What happened at the battle level, we asked, and how did it happen that way?

But what about all those chaotic details that make up low-level tactical combat. Don’t you have to model those somehow? We’ll get into some of the specifics later in these notes, but on a grand level the answer is, “No, you don’t.” Very low level chaotic events tend to cancel each other out, with the result that you really can concentrate on high-level decision-making.

There is an interesting example of this from the natural world - window glass. This sounds odd, but bear with us. Glass is mostly transparent, but it partially reflects light and also absorbs some light, turning it into thermal energy. Each molecule does this individually, and since the molecules of glass are arranged chaotically (it’s actually a very slow-moving fluid), and so the chances of individual photons getting through or being deflected slightly is random, you would expect that an image seen through glass would be blurred and distorted. The glass is a “chaotic region” and as light passes through it, the photons of the ordered image would be randomly deflected, reflected, absorbed, or passed through.

But the image is not blurred. In effect, all of the chaotic reflections, absorbtions, and other distortions cancel each other out, and what comes out the other side of this chaotic region is an image essentially as ordered as it was when it went in.

This is of vital important for game design, because it means that when you simplify a design to make it more playable, you are not necessarily losing accuracy. Playability is not necessarily the enemy of realism. But obviously to produce a reasonable result faithful to history, you have to know what to leave out and what to leave in. How successful we have been in making those decisions is, again, up to you.

TIME AND SPACE

If you are working with abstract notions of how wars were fought in a particular period, it’s probably not all that important to specify ground or time scales. But if you begin with historic battles and want to test your results against those specific measures, time and space become all-important. I am suspicious of rules which ignore or conceal these fundamental design decisions.

Leaving aside the smaller scales for the moment, we chose a ground scale of 100 yards to the inch because it allowed representation of all but the very largest historic battles on a reasonably-sized table, about five feet by ten feet. (How reasonable you think this size is is another matter, but that was our thinking.)

One hour turns allowed reasonable movement on the table as well as establishing a good tempo of operations and allowing the game to be completed in a reasonable time. When studied from the corps or army commander’s perspective, an hour seemed like an appropriate decision/reaction cycle time. (In “plain English”, that means that most accounts from the army-level tend to view the battle in half-hour to one-hour events.)

Given those design parameters, much of the rest of the nuts and bolts values (such as frontage and movement) fell into place fairly quickly.

INFANTRY FRONTAGE

By 1700, infantry had mostly settled into a common frontage of one "pace" (about 22 inches) per man in each rank. Often a unit would double its intervals when advancing across open ground, however, by having every other man in each rank wait for one or two paces to begin marching, thus doubling the number of ranks and the interval between each file. (There is a very nice scene showing this in the film “Barry Linden”.) When the unit halted, the ranks automatically collapsed back into a more compact formation.

At the beginning of the 1700's, infantry battalions formed their lines as many as six ranks deep. In other words, a 600 man battalion would have a frontage of 100 files (men) and a depth of 6 ranks. At 22 inches per soldier, this would give the battalion a frontage of about 60 yards. This deep a formation had been necessary when the infantry was armed with slow-firing matchlock muskets, but was no longer necessary for troops armed with flintlocks. At first, the extra ranks were retained to serve as a reserve to replace losses as they were suffered, but very quickly infantry formations dropped to four ranks, with some nations (with Prussia and Great Britain taking the lead) thinning their infantry down to three ranks. By the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars the British were fighting in their famous two-rank line.

Taking three ranks as a fair average battalion depth in this era, a 2-battalion 1,500-man regiment formed in single line three ranks deep would have a frontage of 500 files. At 22 inches per file, the regiment would have a total frontage of 305 yards, or about 3 inches in our ground scale of one inch per 100 yards. Infantry base frontages were based around this 300-yard frontage of a typical regiment.

Beginning in the mid-1700's, a number of (mostly French) theorists argued for a more non-linear approach to infantry tasks, employing columns to move the troops on the battlefield, lines to deliver attacks, and battalions employed in less regular (and generally deeper, although no more dense) brigade formations. These tactics gained wide use during the wars following the French Revolution, and, once command arrangements caught up with tactics in the Napoleonic wars, we represent infantry by larger massed stands, each representing about 2,000-3,000 men, either a large regiment or a brigade.

Line remained the principal formation used by the battalions in the brigade, but brigades seldom formed in a single line; usually some sort of reserve was held back, or the brigade formed in two lines, or part of the brigade formed in column. All of these options tended to reduce the average brigade frontage in battle. We use a 300 yard (3 inch) brigade frontage in the game as that is the average brigade frontage typically encountered on battlefields. When you look at the actual deployments of brigades and divisions in historic battles, this fits well.

CAVALRY FRONTAGE

Cavalry frontages and formations were only slightly different from those used by infantry. Cavalry troopers occupied almost exactly twice the frontage of infantrymen in formation. The Austrian Army of the Seven Years War, for example, allowed 43 inches per trooper, as opposed to 22 inches per infantryman.

The result of a frontage twice that of infantry and a similar formation meant that cavalry occupied about twice the frontage in the line of battle as did infantry, man for man. However, since cavalry brigades averaged only about half the manpower, the brigade frontage was identical.

The standard battle formation was line, with each squadron of about 100-150 men deployed in two ranks. When in line, a regiment of five squadrons formed two ranks deep would have a frontage of 250 files, or 312 yards. Since cavalry almost invariably formed two lines deep (a front line and a support, or reserve), the frontage of a five-squadron regiment in single line is also the frontage of a 10-squadron brigade formed in two lines (and also is the frontage of a standard massed cavalry base in the game).

Weaker units, represented by linear bases, have the same frontage but, lacking a second (support) line, have less combat power.

ARTILLERY FRONTAGE

Artillery, once unlimbered, was invariably deployed in line, for obvious reasons. Although works of fiction sometimes refer to the guns deployed “hub to hub”, in reality this was impractical.

The guns were drawn into place by teams of horses harnessed to light limbers. While the light battalion pieces (three and four pounders, usually) could be easily man-handled, heavier pieces had to be brought to the battle position and removed from it by their limbers. As a practical matter this meant that there had to be sufficient room for the limber to turn around and move back between the guns, especially as the guns might need to be withdrawn in a hurry and under enemy fire.

The guns also needed room for the gun crews to work the piece and, for reasons of safety, it was best to space the guns out, so that an accident with the ammunition supply near one gun would not set off a chain reaction that would wipe out an entire battery.

What this meant in practice was that artillery was seldom massed closer than one gun every twelve yards on the battlefield, although in fortifications (where additional protection was provided for the ammunition supplies) they could sometimes be deployed at half that interval.

Twelve yards per gun was in fact about the average officially prescribed interval in many armies. The Russians specified 12 yards from center of gun tube to center of gun tube. The Spanish specified 10 paces, or a little over 8 yards, between each gun, not counting the space occupied by the carriage. The Prussians specified an interval of 20 paces, or slightly over 16 yards.

This means in game terms that a 12-gun “battalion” of artillery would occupy a frontage of 144 yards, which is close enough to 150 yards, the scale frontage of a 1.5-inch artillery base.

MOVEMENT RATES

First-time players are usually taken aback by the high movement rates in the game. Actually, these high movement rates are a real advantage. Games which have more movement tend to be more tactically interesting, at least in our experience. But where did these high movement rates come from?

Actual march speeds. Consider that an infantry column will march along a road in march order at a speed of about 2.5 miles per hour. At the base scale of Volley and Bayonet, a mile is 18 inches and an hour is one turn, so infantry in road column will typically cover 45 inches in a turn. Road column triples movement, so we would expect infantry to have a base movement rate of about 15 inches per turn to produce this sort of movement. Actually, it has a movement rate of 16 inches, which means it’s road speed in march order is actually 2.67 miles per hour. Close enough. Cavalry and artillery movement rates are pegged to this benchmark.

ROAD COLUMNS AND STRATEGIC DEPLOYMENT

As we have already touched on speed of infantry in road column, it’s appropriate to talk about them a bit more now, as it affects both time and space, both movement and “frontage” (although in this case “lengthage” would be a better term)..

For centuries, the rate of advance of an army was based on the distance that a heavily loaded infantryman could walk in a day. A hard march of eight to ten hours, with rest breaks and one stop for a midday meal, could usually cover some twenty miles by road. This level of mobility is reflected in the game by the marching speed of infantry on roads and in march column of 2.5 miles an hour.

Roads, however, are extremely narrow compared to the frontages an army (or even a regiment) operates over when deployed for battle, and therein lies the root of the problem with road movement. A 500-man battalion in three-deep line has a frontage of about 165 men. By comparison, an army of 7,000 (or even 70,000) men, marching forward along a single road, has a frontage of precisely four men.

This narrow frontage has two important effects on the unit. First, the unit can bring effectively no fire to bear to the front. Second, because of the need to have a space of about two paces between each man marching along a road, a 500-man battalion will take up about 300 yards of road space. This 300-yard space is the depth of a single brigade base, but there are typically four 500 man battalions in a brigade, which means that a single brigade stand in march column on the gaming table will take up 12 inches of road space, or four times its normal depth.

Cavalry brigades take up similar amounts of road space, but artillery units are even more cumbersome, with each gun (and all of its associated transport and ammunition wagons) taking up 100 yards of road This means that a 12-gun battalion of artillery, with only half the frontage of an infantry brigade, in the game takes up the same 12 inches of road space as a full brigade of infantry or cavalry.

The effect of this on troop concentration is dramatic. Take as an example Howard’s XI Union Corps at Gettysburg on July 1,1863 (later thaan the period covered by this book, but the same principles apply). With Buford's cavalry already spent and Reynolds's I Corps struggling to hold against mounting Confederate pressure, everything depended on getting as many troops into the fight as soon as possible. Marching at its best speed, the head of the column reached Gettysburg at about 12:30 in the afternoon, but the tail of the column was not able to close up until after 2:00 PM, nearly two hours later.

Excluding artillery, Howard's command amounted to six brigades of infantry. In game terms the column would move at about 48 inches per turn. Since each brigade takes up 12 inches of road space, only four brigades can arrive per turn, which means that one and a half turns (hours) would be required to enter the entire corps along a single road, excluding artillery.

This question of road column lengths becomes increasingly important during the period covered by these rules, as armies grew in overall size. Obviously when an army grew to such a size as to take up more distance along a road than the army could march in a single day, it became impractical to move it along a single road. It would take more than a full day's march for the army's tail to close up on its van, making it extremely difficult to mass for battle.

This was less of a problem when armies were smaller. Take, for example, Frederick's Prussian army at his most famous victory, Leuthen, in December of 1757. In game terms his entire army consisted of 24 regiments of infantry, 13 brigades of cavalry, and 7 battalions of field and heavy artillery, taking up a total of 32 scale feet of road space, or 21 miles of road - almost exactly one day's march. The army's baggage and supply transport would make for a longer column, but these would not have to (and in fact would not wish to) close up with the van in order for battle to be joined.

Larger armies (and the Austrian army commanded by Prince Charles of Lorraine that faced Frederick at Leuthen was nearly twice the size of the Prussian force) would either have to march along parallel roads or, if in the presence of the enemy, avoid use of roads altogether for a large part of the infantry and cavalry. The alternative of allowing the army to stretch out over two or three days march on a single road in close proximity to the enemy invited disaster.

Of course, moving the troops overland to keep them concentrated slowed the rate of advance, and this in part accounts for the ponderous movement of larger armies.

Marshal de Saxe, an outstanding practitioner of the art of warfare early in the period covered by these rules, identified in his treatise on military science, Mes Reveries, the ideal size for an army of this time as being no more than 48,000, as "...multitudes serve only to perplex and embarrass.”

This was very close to the size of Frederick’s army at Leuthen, and that was not a coincidence.

When the French levee en masse created armies of gargantuan proportions (by the standards of the Frederick's and de Saxe's generations), some solution to this problem had to be devised, and it was Napoleon who perfected the art of parallel movement. The famous maxim, "Move divided fight united”, by itself does not constitute any useful advice; it merely combines the statement of an unavoidable necessity with a pious hope. The mechanism for achieving this result was the Corps d’Armee.

The French Corps d'Armee was a miniature army consisting of a mix of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, all under a single commander and accustomed to operating together for the duration of a campaign. Frederick's army at Leuthen would have had no use for such an organization; Napoleon's army in any of a dozen campaigns found it indispensable.

A Corps d'Armee took up about a half day's march on a road, and so in an encounter battle could be expected to hold its own for four to six hours against anything it ran into, provided its enemy was also on the move. At the end of that time any follow-on troops of the next corps could reach the battlefield and either exploit the success gained or stabilize a difficult situation. By the next morning, two to four more corps would have converged from the parallel routes of advance to either flank, bringing most of the army together for a decisive battle.

The key to understanding how and why this system of strategic movement (called batallion carre) is to realize that a corps marching on a parallel route one day's march to the flank is closer to an embattled unit, in terms of time and ability to support it, than the third corps in line behind that embattled unit on the same road.

In other words, an army advancing on parallel roads, each separated by a half-day's march, was more compact, not less compact, than one advancing along a single road.

A good illustration of this is (again from out of the immediate p[eriod of this book) the movement of both the Union and Confederate armies north from the Fredericksburg area to the Gettysburg battlefield in July of 1863. Both armies followed a number of separate but parallel routes north, and were always at their most vulnerable when they had to move through strategic choke points, such as mountain gaps and river crossings. When the concentration at Gettysburg took place, both armies converged using four or five separate roads to get the maximum number of troop to the battlefield as quickly as possible.

On a smaller scale, but also from the Gettysburg campaign, Buford's two-brigade "division" of Union cavalry was able to hold up the advance of A.P. Hill's corps for most of the morning, because Hill's corps was advancing along a single road and had difficulty bringing much force to bear. The first attacks were by the two lead brigades of Harry Heth's "division" because that's all that was available. As more troop arrived they were fed in, but it was a slow process and one which allowed the Union cavalry to hold on until the arrival of the lead elements of the Union I Corps. Of course, I Corps was itself then fed into battle one brigade at a time, as they arrived by road. An accurate treatment of road column lengths and movement rates was, it seemed to us, absolutely essential to understanding why so many battles in this period developed in the way that they did.

COLUMN, LINE, SQUARE, AND MORE

Most of the discussion of frontage earlier is based principally on units formed in line. Don't other formations alter the frontage of a brigade? Interestingly enough, the answer is that for all practical purposes they do not.

To begin with, it is important to realize that on the most basic level there was only one battlefield formation throughout the period of our rules: line. Column and square were merely different ways of grouping a number of companies, each of which was deployed in line.

For purposes of our discussion, we will consider an idealized brigade of 2,000 infantry. The brigade consists of four battalions, each with 500 men, and each battalion is in turn divided into four equal sized “divisions” of about 125 men each. In some armies, these “divisions” were further divided into two 60-man companies; in other armies the divisions were also called companies, and were divided into two 60-man sections, or platoons. The terminology is of little importance.

The "division" (we will use quotation marks to distinguish this from the larger divisions formed from several brigades of infantry or cavalry) is deployed in a three-rank line which is 41 files wide. At 22 inches per file this gives the "division" a frontage of 24.5 yards. If the battalion is deployed in line, all four "divisions” deploy side-by-side, giving the battalion a total frontage of 164 files (or 100 yards).

What about a column? The term column conjures up an images of a long, narrow formation, but the battlefield column was invariably much wider than it was deep, and was hardly ever anything more than a reinforced line. For example, the standard battlefield column was the "column of divisions”, which consisted of the four divisions of the battalion (each consisting of two companies) forming up one behind another. Remember, though, that the companies were still each formed in line, and the two companies of each "division" formed side-by-side. This “column" gave the battalion a frontage of 41 files (24.5 yards), but increased the depth to only twelve ranks, only twice the depth of a battalion deployed in "line” six ranks deep at the beginning of the century.

Actually, the French battalion in the latter half of the Napoleonic Wars had only three "divisions" with a total of six companies, so the classic Napoleonic attack column was even broader and shallower, averaging 60 files, or 36.5 yards wide and only nine ranks deep. Even the deeper but less commonly used "column of companies” had a frontage of 30 files and a depth of only 18 ranks.

A square also was formed by rearranging the divisions of the battalion, with each division in line forming one face of the square. (The British two-rank line, however, was felt to be too shallow to receive a cavalry charge, and so the divisions formed four ranks deep in square by doubling the files.)

Although it is clear from the above that a column was still much broader than it was deep, it still was obviously much less broad than a battalion in line. It stands to reason, therefore, that a brigade with its battalions formed up in columns might take up a narrower frontage than one with its battalions in line. Usually, however, this was not the case.

The column was merely a means of maneuvering compact masses of troops on the battlefield Because of the comparatively small proportion of the men able to fire (from one third to one quarter), it was seldom intended for the battalion to actually engage the enemy in column. Instead, the battalion was to approach the enemy position in column and then deploy into line. As a result, the battalion columns invariably marched with as much as a 100 yard interval between themselves and their nearest neighbor, giving the battalion sufficient room to shake out into line formation. Thus from the beginning of the Napoleonic wars on, 300 yards remained the average deployment frontage of a 2,000 man brigade in almost all situations.

Column Versus Line: Almost invariably the first response of gamers introduced to the rules (perhaps after the shock at the large movement rates) is surprise that the game makes no provision for any combat formations beyond road column and a generalized field formation. Where, they ask, are the familiar column, line, and square, and the familiar accompanying rock/paper/scissors game mechanics which are almost a sine qua non of black powder era games?

You don't need them. Corps and army commanders don't fuss with the formation of battalions; that's the brigade or battalion commander's job, and how well he does that job is reflected in the general troop quality ratings (morale).

These ratings determine how likely a unit is to stand up to assaults, and that's all a higher level commander needs to worry about anyway.

Beyond that, the effects of the interactions of various formations is probably vastly overstated in most rules, and stems from two things. First is the simple (and quite defensible) need to have a central game mechanic in tactical games which gives a strong tactical flavor to rules and is easily understood. Formations do that, and if they assume more importance in tactical games than they probably did in reality, where's the harm? The only danger is in using game results as a possible guide to history.

History provides the second reason for the preoccupation with formations. British historians of the Napoleonic Wars, notably Oman and Fortesque, took as their theme the patriotic motif of British lines repeatedly defeating French columns, and portrayed it as different tactical approaches, one of which eventually triumphed over the other.

This theory was refuted fairly early on in the history of this debate, and in fact Oman revised his positions in later works (at least with respect to his interpretation of the battle of Maida). Ironically, it is the early works which have been most often reprinted, and so the early arguments concerning column versus line have been repeated long after their own authors repudiated them.

What is the basis for the repudiation? Two things. First, the truth is that the French seldom intended to fight in column. Column was a means of moving troops around on the battlefield, not attacking. Once the column approached the enemy, it was intended to open out into line and attack. In the Peninsula they were seldom able to accomplish this due, in part, to Wellington's skillful use of reverse slope positions. French columns crested hills and found themselves unexpectedly at very close range to a British unit in line, which immediately began firing. The French at this point usually tried to shake out into line, but this was extremely difficult when under murderous point blank fire.

Second, the basis of the line versus column argument has always been the superior volume of fire generated by the line, but the British infantry usually defeated their French opponents not by fire, but rather by melee. That is, the standard tactic was to deliver a very heavy fire for a short period of time (usually only for a volley or two) and then, after the French were in some disorder (in part from trying to shake out into line), deliver a charge. It was usually the charge which defeated the French, not the casualties caused by the fire.

This raises another interesting question—how important were melees in this era? The conventional wisdom for some time has been that most melees were actually just close-range fire fights, and that troops with a loaded musket would fire rather than close (while troops with an unloaded musket would stop to reload). Probably true, and studies on wounds treated in field  hospitals suggests that even in the most bitter melees the majority of casualties were caused by small arms fire.

We offer the following cautions, however, against a too-willing acceptance of this argument. Most wounds treated in field hospitals were wounds to the extremities (the arms and legs), which were not immediately fatal. Bayonet wounds, on the other hand, tend to be to the chest or torso, and are more likely to kill the opponent immediately (or in a short time). People killed by bayonet wounds obviously were not counted at dressing stations in the rear.

Second, and more importantly, close quarters combat produces casualties in the form of prisoners, and these can destroy the strength of a unit more quickly than any other cause. A battalion might fight for hours and take a hundred casualties from fire, but then lose over a hundred as prisoners as the result of a five-minute melee. The sheer number of prisoners taken in melees suggests that someone was closing to bayonet range, as it's very difficult to surrender to an entire battalion delivering rolling platoon volleys.

Square Busting: How often did cavalry break a formed square in the Napoleonic Wars? Ask a student of the Peninsula campaign and like as not he will immediately answer “Twice, but those were both flukes.” Ask a student of the battles further east in Germany and he’ll tell you, “Lots of times. Four or five at Austerlitz, as many or more at Wagram...” The truth is that, while square was as good a defense as infantry on its own had against cavalry, it was by no means a sure-fire remedy to a well-delivered mounted attack.

If the defending infantry holds their fire until just the right time and there are no fluke occurrences (although the closer you look at almost any combat incident, the more “flukes” you notice), then the infantry will almost certainly beat the cavalry. But the game manages to capture that without a “square” rule simply by use of the normal morale mechanics. Infantry caught in the open is more vulnerable to cavalry, but if their flanks are anchored either on friendly units or terrain, they have a much better chance.

Likewise, stationary infantry are more likely to successfully resist cavalry than is a unit caught while it is moving. Mostly this is a function of forming square in time, but it’s also a function of the simple combat skills of the unit. For every infantry unit hit in square and broken, there is another example of an infantry unit caught out of square but which fought off the attacking cavalry anyway.

In other words, forming square was one way infantry dealt with charging cavalry, but it wasn’t the only way. More importantly, Volley and Bayonet doesn’t care what mechanism the battalion or brigade commander uses to win a fight. It doesn’t care what formations he used or why. All the game cares about is what his chances of winning are (troop and morale quality) and then whether he actually wins or loses (morale and combat die rolls).

SKIRMISHERS

Use of the term “skirmisher” for detached bodies of troops is almost unavoidable, but it does cause some conceptual confusion. It is important to understand that these detachments do not represent integral light infantry skirmishing directly in front of a unit. That sort of skirmishing, like specific formations, is subsumed in the combat ability and morale rating of a unit. The actual detached skirmish stands in the game are battalion-sized bodies of light infantry operating together, at least partly in open order, and usually sent to occupy an area of difficult ground, screen a wide area of front, or challenge an enemy position with harassing fire.

Only certain units can detach skirmishers, and these are almost always brigades which contain a battalion or more of dedicated light infantry. Regiments and brigades made up entirely of well-trained light infantry may break down completely into skirmishers.

BATTALION GUNS

Players of the original edition will note a much evolved battalion gun rule. The new rule is far easier to play with than was the original rule and it is, at the same time, far more versatile. It allows players the flexibility to push batteries and gun sections right down to the battalion level by removing battery artillery and replacing it with battalion gun capability. This is a very simple way of showing how artillery was used in a variety of situations. For example, it was not uncommon for artillery to be deployed by sections in towns. While the rules do not allow pure artillery units to deploy in and fire from towns, they allow battalion guns to fire, and so replacing massed artillery with some battalion gun capability gives this effect.

In the American Civil War, many battles were fought in dense woods, and pure artillery units are not allowed to fight in this environment. Battalion guns may, however, and this reflects the way guns were used in this sort of close terrain - dispersed and assigned directly to infantry units, whose personnel would help the gunners move their pieces through the difficult ground.

Why, then, do we rate any units as having battalion guns? Why not just make all of the artillery massed units and give players the option? The cases where we have rated units as having battalion guns are where the guns were permanently assigned to the unit in question and never massed into larger batteries on the battlefield.

Even when nominally organized as batteries (as in the case of Russian light batteries in 1806, or Austrian brigade batteries from 1809 on), if the guns were always assigned to specific infantry units, and tactically deployed as half-batteries or sections to maneuver with sub-units, we rated them as battalion guns. In these cases, the player does not (and should not) have the option to mass these batteries in larger grand batteries on the battlefield.

THE TACTICAL SCALES

Although the original edition of these rules ventured tentatively into the area of reduced scales, this edition plunges into them enthusiastically. Why? Doesn’t this violate the intent of the game to place player’s at the corps and army level?

Not at all. The real intent of the rules has always been to allow players to fight complete historical battles. Some historical battles, however, are so small that at the basic scale of Volley, Bayonet and Glory, they are trivial exercises.

Take the battle of Culloden in 1746, for example. This is the most famous and historically significant battle fought on English soil in the black powder era. In the base scale, the British would have five stands of linear infantry (a total of about fifteen strength points) and perhaps one stand of linear cavalry. The opposing Jacobites would have three or four stands with a total of 10 strength points of infantry. Not much of a game. But at the wing scale, the battle can become a tremendously rich game, and the same is true for scores of complete historical battles which just happened to be fought with fewer troops.

But can a game system originally designed for grand tactical play be modified to suit tactical combat? You be the judge, but our experience has been that the results produced are extremely historical.

COMMAND CONTROL

Finally, some thoughts about command control. Is it possible to have a fully accurate “simulation” of battles from this era without a more detailed command control rule? No.

So what?

These rules are not intended to be a detailed simulation of black powder battles; they are intended as a game. That isn't given as an excuse-in-advance for any historical failings of the rules, since for them to make an enjoyable game they must be faithful enough to the period to satisfy enthusiasts and historians wishing to tinker with the past. But many detailed command control rules attempt to force the personality of various types of commanders on players. In other words, corps and army commanders are often rated as to aggressiveness, tactical skill, and so forth, and these rules studiously avoid anything like that. Why?

Because we believe that players, who will usually be filling the positions of corps and army commanders, bring enough of those characteristics to the table as it is. Some players are timid, some rash, some “just right.” Some are quite tactically skilled, others less so. The interaction of the personalities of the various commanders is really what the game is all about, and the intent of the game is to allow you to see how YOU would have done in Archduke Charles’s position at Aspern-Essling. It is not an attempt to make you be Archduke Charles, warts and all. You will bring your own warts, and it does not strike us as fair, or particularly instructive, to make you carry the burden of your own failings and those of some historical counterpart as well.

But Ney, for example, was a dangerously reckless commander whose battlefield behavior could upset Napoleon’s careful plans. Shouldn’t there be rules covering that?

No.

There are Napoleons out there amongst gamers, and there are plenty of Neys as well. The command philosophy of this game is: “Let the Napoleons be Napoleon, and let the Neys be Ney.” That doesn’t mean that you need to match the talents and personalities of your players to their historic counter-parts.

Instead it means that slavish recreation of each move of historic battles, by forcing players to make the same bad decisions as their historic counterpart, is of no interest to us at all. We give you the game equivalent of the same military tools your historic counterpart had; you provide the skill.

Or not.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that many of the variables which most command control rules treat as random factors are much more under the control of real-world army and corps commanders than is generally assumed. For example, was the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava really a random event? Can you really say it was due to Lord Raglan “getting a bad die roll” on some random command control table? We don’t think so. The Light Brigade charged because Raglan was a terrible army commander; he was almost completely unable to phrase an order simply and clearly, or communicate the overall situation and his command intent to his subordinates.

When subordinate officers willfully disobey, or simply fail to understand, the order of a commander, it is the commander's fault. When troop are confused about what is expected of them, or when they lack confidence in the commander's intentions, or when they simply don't believe that their personal actions make much difference in the grand scheme of things, it is certainly the commander's fault.

Few of those variables are directly covered in a game, and are clearly beyond the scope of these or most other rules. But it does persuade at least us that putting more control in the commander's hands, and more responsibility on his shoulders for the outcome, is a step in the right direction, not the wrong one.

Frank Chadwick and Greg Novak

[Return to the Volley & Bayonet Page]