The other week I had the good fortune and great pleasure to take part in another of Jon Freitag's excellent on-line games, being a second go at Ilipa 206BC - as reported brilliantly by Jon on his Palouse Wargaming Journal blog. It was a thoroughly enjoyable game, of course, but it will stay in my memory particularly, becuase I contrived to have pretty much the most successful winning streak I've ever experienced in a wargame!
I was commanding the Roman left wing, with Tony 'MS Foy' as C-in-C ( Scipio ) against the Carthaginians Chris 'Nundanket' and Dave 'St Cyr', and the Roman deployment (which reflected historical reality ) was unusual in that the heavy Legionary infantry was deployed on the wings, leaving the centre deliberately weak - which centre faced the scary-looking Carthaginian heavy spearmen. Scipio's tactic had been to overwhelm the Carthaginian flanks and thus surround and crush their centre, while his own centre held their opposite numbers' attention. But we were not convinced that the thin Roman centre was up to the job, and we had good evidence for that, since in our previous essay at the same game, playing the Carthaginians, we had won by smashing the Roman centre! It looked a bit of tough scenario for the Romans, and Tony and I had been uncertain how to proceed. We had come up with a compromise 'half and half' plan whereby his right wing would swing in towards the centre, while I tried to push forward on the left wing. It was working, in a way, as Chris' centre was being drawn towards Tony's men on our right - I think partly because my wing was a bit slow to get moving forward! At which point Chris tried a charge at my Legions with his Celtic warbands and Spanish Scutarii in the centre, only for a poor die roll to leave the charge stalled and one of the Spanish units too close to my Legionaries. Only one thing for it - Legionaries, charge! What happened next is aptly described by Jon Freitag as follows :
The force of the legion bearing down
upon the light infantry is too much. They turn and flee. Marcius
(David B) orders his legion to pursue. They oblige. The legionaries
plow into the adjacent warband. They, too, are overpowered and retire.
Bloodlusted by their success, David's Romans press on, catching the
retiring warband. The warband turns and flees. Still the Romans
advance. Is there no stopping them? Not yet! Next victim is a hapless
unit of skirmishers. They are easily overpowered and scatter. With
the Carthaginian Center hollowing out, David's Ever Victorious
Legionaries turn to strike the elephant from the rear. With escape
route blocked, the rampaging elephant is dispatched.
As you see, the Legionaries managed to break no less than four enemy units - and then my second Legionary unit chipped in and scattered a further unit, completing the destruction of the Carthaginian right wing. At the end of the turn, our opponents conceded defeat, judging that although their heavy forces in the centre were still intact, they were now vulnerable to a flank attack from my triumphant Legions while pinned by Tony's Legions to their front. Victory completed in a single move - amazing stuff! I was roundly congratulated, and very pleased with myself. But of course, it wasn't my skill as a commander 'wot won it' - it was all down to the dice.
Jon's adapted version of 'Basic Impetus' rules has a 'pursuit after combat' mechanism whereby the victor of a melee decides whether they want to pursue, and rolls a die to test whether the troops will actually pursue, and how far they will move. If they are able to contact the retreating enemy, or another enemy unit, then a further combat occurs, and if the pursuers win that combat and the enemy retreat again, then they have the option to pursue again, and so on. Obviously all this is decided by the dice, and my die-rolling was good - Jon tells me that the chance of that sequence of events was 6.25%, or one in 16. So indeed, quite a lucky streak!
Just for local colour, here are the dice I was using :
Nothing very special - the blue dice came from a 'Pocket Battles' game, appropriately enough Romans vs. Barbarians ( the lid of which makes a handy dice-rolling area) , the red die is of unknown provenance. We've all got a random collection of dice we have picked-up over the years, I'm, sure. I am the very opposite of a 'must have all the latest kit' guy..
It has set me thinking though, are we representing reality here? Or
just pure random chance? Well, I would like to suggest that the dice were representing not my tactical/leadership genius, but the grit and
determination of the little metal ( or plastic? ) legionaries on the
table, who in turn represent a historical 'Legion' of flesh-and-blood
warriors. In this case, they saw the enemy unit pull up in some
confusion a little to close to them, and were 'raring in to go' after
them. I happily ordered them to charge, and they did so with gusto and a
shower of Pila, and promptly routed the Scutarii, who fled - but not
fast enough. Their blood up, the legionaries pursued and did further
slaughter among the unfortunate Iberians. The Spanish unit
disintegrated, and the legionaries saw further easy targets, and kept on
charging, fighting - and winning. As a commander my only input was to
allow them their head, and not try to reign them in - in other words, keep rolling the dice. My thought was,
let's see how much chaos these guys can cause! And the fighting, winning and pursuing were decided (of course) not by my intelligence and decisiveness, but purely by the fall of the dice.
So in a way, what happened was simply a result of purely random die rolls, just pure chance. But I do like to think that the randomness does represent something, and I think that 'something' is pretty much all the stuff that is beyond the control of the commander. The general can give orders, but he can't determine how those orders will be executed ( or even 'if' they will ), and how the enemy will respond, and how his troops will respond to the enemy response, and that is where the dice come in. And somehow, on occasions the dice just seem to take charge, and deliver a result that no-one expected, but seems to have a sort of poetry of its own. I'm sure that on this occasion, the dice were telling us how the rank and file of that legion said to themselves 'let's go get 'em!', having decided that their commanders were being a bit too indecisive for their own good. I'm no expert on Roman military history, but I seem to remember that at this stage of the Republic, generals were in effect elected by the political leadership of Rome, and I tend to assume that as a result, those generals were not always necessarily the best soldiers. The guys in the ranks of the Legions presumably knew that, and sometimes maybe they would have thought 'this guy will get us all killed, unless we take things into our own hands,,,' So the result seems like it could be quite appropriate. Alternatively of course, and much more charitably for me, perhaps they thought 'that Marcius is a great guy, we'll go the extra mile for him!' But I think I know which of those two options it would have been...
I must of course add one more thing - the randomness comes from the dice, but the outcomes are decided by the rules, and they need to translate the dice scores into plausible effects. So I should give a lot of credit to Jon and the original 'BI' authors for their rules, which played a big part - not every pursuit goes on through four units, not every purusing unit has the stamina to keep going, and the probability of those outcomes depends on the rule-writers. I think they got it pretty much right in this case - but I would say that, wouldn't I? Not sure if Chris and Dave would agree!
Am I ovethinking? Probably! But all part of the fun. We are just playing a game, but I do always like to think, what's the story here, how does this line up with what might have happened in a real battle? That's what we wargamers are all about, isn't it?
And to finish, some more of the dice in my life. First is a pair of battered cheap plastic examples, which are all that remains of my copy of Waddingtons' board game 'Campaign' which would have been a birthday/Xmas gift c. 1974, I would guess. The game is long gone, but I have somehow hung on to these two little chaps ever since - pure sentimental value. I bet you've all got something similar..
And last but not least, these 'Percentage Dice' we would have called them, though now perhaps 'D10'. Acquired in the late 1970s when swept up in a craze, along with school/club friends, for WW2 aerial combat using Mike Spick's fantastic 'Air Battles in Miniature' book and rules. These have seen some action - massed dogfights of 'cut in half down the middle' 1/72 plastic models, with no historical accuracy whatsoever, quite possibly a Gloster Gladiator in the same mass brawl as a Messerschmidt Me 262! But oh dear, was it fun, spread over the floor of Rainham village hall.. I still have some of the aircraft, maybe they need to be given a go sometime - I have kept the book, too More recently, these dice have been used in Jon's on-line ACW games, so they are still coming in handy and adding new chapters to their story, after more than 40 years.
That's enough cod philosphy for now - but I think it is probably worthwhile thinking about this sort of stuff. 'What are we representing, here?' always seems a useful question. I'll leave you to ponder, or dismiss, that idea. Until next time, keep well, everyone.
