The Prague Summer - about rules

This is a long one and to some extent it's about getting my thoughts organised on the matter. Feel free to skip the text and just look at the pictures if that's what does it for you.

How does one come to prefer a particular set of rules? Whilst out walking the dog this morning my thoughts turned to TacWWII. Why am I going back to it after having abandoned it in favour of Blitzkrieg Commander years ago? I think part of the story lies in my reasons for flirting with BKC back then. BKC had three things going for it. 

I like the idea of building headquarters units as little dioramas, which BKC supports but which doesn't entirely suit TacWWII as written.

The second appeal of BKC was that it was substantially similar to Cold War Commander, the game that got my Cold War collection onto the wargaming table for the first time in years. It made sense to use common basing standards and common mechanisms for both my WW2 and Cold War collections.

Thirdly, I do think the BKC/CWC command and control mechanisms are fun. Having recently played a comparative game of A Fistful of TOWs, I was struck by the relative lack of interesting command and control challenges. Without the uncertainty of CWC's command dice rolls the game seemed very flat.

Ah, the joys of the ill-timed command blunder!

So why would I go back to TacWWII? In many ways it's an old-fashioned set of rules. It uses simultaneous movement and written orders and it's completely lacking in the full-colour, glossy-photos-on-every-page approach that seems de rigueur today.

The answer, it seems to me, is related to why I prefer Basic Impetus over DBA. Both of these rules sets use element bases representing indeterminate numbers of ancient warriors. Both would have you field armies of maybe a dozen elements (exactly a dozen in DBA's case), and both emphasise speed of play and simple rules.

DBA focusses totally on the outcome of a combat between two groups of men. The fighting may continue for some time without a decisive result, one side may somewhat gain the other hand and push its opponents back, or the fight may be decisive with one or other of the units wiped out (or more likely routed). DBA does this on the basis of a single pair of opposed die rolls. That's great in terms of moving the game along quickly and allowing the players to concentrate on their roles as army commanders but it's just a bit... vanilla.

When I discovered Basic Impetus I was immediately struck by the fact that melées were now exciting. You could envisage the swaying back and forth of momentum as both sides got inexorably closer to the point where one of them would collapse and flee the field. Yes it was slower that DBA but DBA's speed now seemed to come at the cost of an unengaging narrative experience.

This speaks to why I'm proposing to use TacWWII instead of, say A Fistful of TOWs or Spearhead. Having tried both of those, I find them unengaging. I struggle to get excited about playing either game and I think it's because the units feel like anonymous playing pieces with no connection to what the troops are actually doing below the level of the battalion.

TacWWII's mode system (every company is in a distinct tactical mode at any given time) allows me to better envisage what the troops are doing. The Volkssturm Kompanie in Prepared Defence mode in the ruins of Oderbruch are well-hidden, having scouted out the lines of sight and stockpiled additional Panzerfausts. Across the Hitlerstrasse, while the Soviet tank company in Bold Attack is perhaps being too aggressive, the dismounted tank riders in Deliberate Attack mode are more cautious. Each platoon, we can infer, has one section moving at any one time with the other two laying down covering fire.

So does BKC suffer from this blandness? To a degree, yes but there but I think it's another issue with BKC that's pushing me back to TacWWII. I'm not convinced by the tactical decisions BKC is asking me to take.

Let's say I have a battalion of six Panzer-IV lining the edge of a forest somewhere in Lower Silesia and a wave of T-34s is advancing towards me. It's my turn to shoot and immediately the sense of immersion in events takes a hit whilst I ponder the maths of the situation. To knock out a T-34 will take five unsaved hits and my Panzers are rolling four dice per gun. Should I fire two Panzers at any given T-34? Three? Am I better off just trying to suppress as many enemy tanks as I can? These are valid tactical questions in the context of the game but what do they represent in terms of real world decisions?

Another set of decisions in BKC that I struggle with from this point of view is around giving orders. There are lots of decisions to make within the game turn. I may want to use a particular HQ to order the tanks to advance and to call down some fire from more distant supporting guns. Do I try to combine both in a single order that'll have a lower chance or success or do I make sure I get the tanks moving first? Having got the tanks moving, do I risk giving them another move order or do I pass on to the supporting guns and give up on moving the tanks again? Again, these are valid tactical decisions in the game but they don't seem to me to map well onto the tactical decisions required of a real-world commander.

A final element of BKC that I'm slightly uncomfortable with is the core combat mechanic. Hits are added to a unit during a turn and they may suppress the unit. Only if these hits reach a certain level is the unit destroyed. If it's not, the hits disappear at the end of the turn. Now you can just accept this ("It's how the rules work; don't sweat about what it means") or you can justify it to yourself in terms of units ability to fight being destroyed if the stress of action meets some hard-to-define crisis level. I certainly have argued that but not with real conviction.

One thing I want from a wargame is an emerging narrative of events occurring on the field of battle. BKC and TacWWII both do this but in my view TacWWII does a better job of allowing me to command a brigade whilst showing me what's actually happening to the units below battalion level. That it does this in a way that neither bogs down in detail nor involves complex on-the-fly statistical analysis hits a sweet spot for me.