Copyright Lars Rössle.
Legal note:
This work may be distributed freely as long that nothing of the contents is changed. It may NOT, without a written permission, be distributed as part of a commercial product, distributed through a “pay-site” or in any other way that involves transfer of money or equivalents of money in order to get access to the is document.
General notes:
A
while ago I started to look at war gaming the 19century and I ended up with a
copy of a rule set called "19th Century Principles of War". I like the rules,
but I must say that I had some problems to figure out all the details. In order
to get things strait I decided to write a sample game and then post it on the
Principle of War
Yahoo group for comments. It turned out great as I received lots of support
and a load of positive feedback from the group members, many thanks guys!
The "game" is not played to the end, and that was never my intention. The tricky thing is to get things started, then as in most games, it's more or less the same basic mechanics repeated over and over again until there is a winner.
To fully understand all the details you will need to have access to the rule set.
I hope you will enjoy it and maybe we can have a game some time in the future...
Pages published so far:
Part 1: Introduction and set up of the gaming area
Part 2: Inspection of the troops, the battle plan, issuing orders and deployment
Part 3: Sequence of play, Commanders initiative, movements and finally some spotting…
Part 4: A lot of movements and manoeuvring but no gun smoke yet
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents:
Allocating points to terrain objects
The Principle of War rule system is more focused on the problems of command and control then on the actual body count out on the battle field. The player takes up the role as the Chief in command (CinC) of a force made up by brigades. The player issues orders to each subordinate officer which then will do their very best to execute them. As the game runs along the CinC will have to react to the opposing forces actions by trying to change the orders already given. The rules also have a concept for creating “the fog of war”. Initially, most units will be represented by “movement bases”, large anonymous counters. A movement base indicate that there is some military activity in the area, but gives no information of strength and type. In fact the movement base might even be a “dummy”. The actual units are not placed on the board until the movement base have been successfully scouted or “spotted”.
Unfortunately, these rules aren’t that easy to get into, so the purpose of this document is to give an example on how to set up and to play a game using the 19th Century POW. Together, we will go through the game step by step as if played in real life. As we go forward, please remember that the focus will be on sorting out the rules, not tactics.
Scale, measures and graphics: Since the rule-set uses a mix of centimetres, inches and foot, I will use the following figures for conversion – 1 inch is 2,5 cm, one foot is 30 cm. This document will be accompanied by a power-point presentation with slides for each step that I find important to show.
Ok, Generals, enough of these academical “blaa-blaas”. Let’s enter the Head quarter and see what briefings our staff has prepared for us.
The set-up procedure is created in order to present the players with a balanced game. Even though it’s not written in the rule-book, players may choose to set up forces, terrain and victory conditions according to their own choice. In this tutorial I will follow the concept as it’s described in the book.
The game will be played between a Turkish and a Greek army (no 1 and 2 in the rule-book).
The first thing that the players have to sort out is who has the “Initiative”. The Turkish player rolls a “5” while the Greek rolls a “3”. The game will therefore be an encounter game with the Turkish player having the initiative.
The player without initiative (the Greek) will set the terrain. This game will be played on a 6x4 foot area and the set up is done according to the Random Terrain Set-up chart (p31).
The size of the board gives 6 objects, and according to p 32, “Terrain objectives”, para b the Greek rolls a “2”, giving us a total of 8 objects to set up.
The following objects are rolled from the Settled-Europe chart:
Four hills, one wetland, one built up area (BUA), one open and one close cultivation (OC/CC). The objects are placed on the board (see the ppt). Finally the LOS, line of supply (which in this game is an object, not a line) is placed on the edges of the board (p 33 “Supplies” para a) and a road connecting them with the BUA is drawn (p 32 “Placing terrain” para e).
When the map is drawn, the player with the initiative gets to chose from which long-side to start. The Turk picks the upper edge.
This is the final step before we can start deploying. These points serves as a victory points, the more points you get hold of the closer you get to the over all victory. Once again, the players may set their own victory conditions, but for this tutorial we will use the written instructions.
The amount of points to allocate is a bit confusing. In "Game setup" (p10) c4, the players allocate up to 100 points to terrain objects. It doesn’t say whether there may place 100 points each or if they allocate 50/50. In fact, players can obviously choose to allocate fewer than the 100 points. Referring to the table on p10 it’s possible for a class two army (and ours are of that class) to allocate up to 60 points to objects on the opponents side of the table. On the other hand, in the picture on p11 you can get the impression that it's the later method (50/50) that should be used. Let’s go for the 100 points each method.
The allocation process is performed along the guidelines on p32, terrain objects and the table on p 10. Once again there is some lack of information. A dice is to be rolled to establish the number of available objects, but it doesn’t determine weather the process is to be performed "joint" by the players or secretly by each player. There are also no special guidelines, except the chart on p10, on how to distribute the points between the objects.
Since we are talking about victory points I assume that the distribution is done by each player and in secret. I also assume that the players have to allocate points to all objects. The result is noted on a secret map that is to be reviled after the game.
In our play one player rolls a “3”. Following the guidelines on p32 they each can distribute their 100 points between the enemy LOS and three objects (the BUA and two of the hills). Two Hills must be designated as “lower” and therefore not allowed to carry any victory points. Hill 2 and 3 are designated as lower.
The players secretly allocate the points as follows:
|
Object |
Turk |
Greek |
|
Turkish LOS |
- |
10p |
|
BUA |
30p |
40p |
|
Greek LOS |
30p |
- |
|
Hill 1 |
20p |
20p |
|
Hill 4 |
20p |
30p |
 |
 |
Well Generals, now we know the map and our objectives. Our next step will be to inspect our forces, draft our battle plan, and start deploying.
Part 2: Inspection of the troops, the battle plan, issuing orders and deployment