Musket &
Saber Quickplay - Wilson's Creek: Opening Round in the West, 10
August 1861 – by Chris Perello (Decision Games)
Introduction
I
am really interested in “intro games” for the wargaming hobbies –
legitimately good, deep games with a short play time and
easy-to-learn rules. I like the Commands
& Colors
system on that basis. I'm looking forward to Mark Herman's Fort
Sumter
for the same reason (you can pre-order it from GMT Games, people).
Having enjoyed Decision Games' Fire
and Movement
system in its Folio Series representation of the Battle of the
Scheldt in World War 2, I picked up several games from another system
of theirs – Musket
and Saber. My wife enjoyed the Scheldt game, but would prefer to play Napoleonic Wars/American Civil War – the core time period for Musket and Saber. Musket and Saber seemed like a perfect fit on that basis.
Of the games I bought, one was a Folio Series game (Pea Ridge), and
three were Mini Series games (Wilson's Creek, Salem Church, and
Mansfield). The Folio Series game has 8 pages of core rules for the
series, and 4 pages for the specific scenario; the Mini Series has a
“Quickplay” version of the rules, with 4 pages of core series
rules, and 2 pages for the scenario. The Mini Series games claim a
lower-end gametime of 60 minutes, topping out at a high-end gametime
of 2 hours, and use around 40 counters total on an 11”x17” map (a
gorgeous piece by Joe Youst). These are small games and can be played
on a very small playing area. The only thing you'll need to add are
two normal six-sided dice.
I've played one so far – Wilson's Creek – and have mixed feedback
to offer. For the sake of this review, it'll be useful to, in a
sense, discuss the two sets of rules in the ziplock, and ask – are
the rules any good? And is the scenario any good?
Are
the rules any good?
The
core Quick Play rules for Musket
and Saber are 4 pages long. Somehow a lot of system fits into that. This is a
pretty standard hex-and-counter game in most respects, modelling
grand tactical (i.e. whole battles) actions in the 19th
century – players take turns moving and attacking with their
counters (usually consisting of Leaders, Cavalry, Infantry, and
Artillery) on a hexgrid map. After a certain number of turns the game
ends and the victor is determined. There are no surprises in the
basic flow of the game for players who have any experience in the
genre. The rules are fairly simple and clearly laid out.
Items of interest for curious gamer include: (1) Leaders chiefly
function as stat buffs for units they are stacked with, if those
units share the Leader's formation; (2) super-hard ZOCs (Zones of
Control, the six hexes around the hex the unit is in), ending
movement in but also restricting movement out to one hex, which
cannot be another enemy ZOC; (3) Differential-based combat, where an
attacking forces of 9 Strength Points against 3 defending is
expressed as +6 rather than 3:1; (4) a simultaneous Combat and Morale
roll during combat, with two dice rolled, one representing each; (5)
a distinction between Safe, Unsafe, and No Lines of Retreat for units
forced to retreat in combat, based on where enemy units are in
respect of the retreating units, leading to different secondary
results. There are also rules for cavalry and infantry forming
square, but these aren't germane to the American Civil War scenarios.
There are some really fun things in the system. It's simple but has a
decent amount going on behind the scenes, which is a big thing in its
favour. It has the pleasing efficiency of simultaneously rolling the
die which will determine the Melee results, whilst also rolling a die
to determine any Morale checks which are a result of that Melee. Its
approach to ZOCs is evidently an attempt to encourage the use of
reserves and of modelling the stickiness of close engagement without
resort to extra markers or dice modifiers. Differential-based combat
is a satisfying way of providing better granularity (albeit
necessarily over a smaller range of unit strength points/combat
factors) in combat than odds-based systems.
Not all of it quite works, at least in all situations – the low
counter density and generally short length of game (in terms of
number of turns in the game) means that the hyperactive effects of
ZOCs in the game is exaggerated. In scenarios where the ground scale
is 352 yards and each turn covers 1 and a half hours, it feels
strange that a regiment or brigade might take a whole 90 minutes to
move 352 yards away from an enemy it's been fighting (where a routed
unit might take no casualties whilst safely fleeing three times that
distance in the face of the enemy). That's not to say they shouldn't
be slow in withdrawal – but semi-porous ZOCs, with moving out
costing extra movement rather than causing a flat cap, seems like a
better bet, and would reward having a Leader stacked with that unit
(as his Movement buff could be used to get your troops into the fight
elsewhere quickly).
That's the most significant niggle, but in a small footprint, short
playtime game it's no big deal. There are other small issues –
Leaders are very powerful as unit buffs but not that important for
command and control, for instance. However, on the whole, the system
does give a sense of the major battlefield concerns of the era
(keeping reserves to bolster armies with fragile morale, the complex
battlefield logistics of massing forces, holding that terrain which
aided contemporary weaponry), with a fairly small rules overhead.
However, one vital thing is missing from the core rules – the
Combat Results Table (CRT), which is instead customized for each
scenario and included in the scenario rulesheet. The CRT is the final
test of the system, which if successful gives the player a sense of
being at the sharp end in the combat of the specific era; it's a
serious litmus test for simulation realism and player engagement. To
know how successful that element of the game is, we'll need to look
at its iteration in a specific scenario. On that basis, let's turn to
Wilson's Creek.
Is
the scenario any good?
The types of results available on the CRT are nuanced and show some
thought behind the design – for instance, a roll of 4 always leads
to all Leaders on both sides in the combat rolling to check if they
are wounded or killed. This makes close combat risky for all sides,
no matter how otherwise overwhelming one force is – if you get that
“middling” result on the CRT, your heroic general may be struck
down at the moment of his triumph. The CRT in general emphasizes
Morale Checks, which if passed allow you to hold your ground in a
tight battle. A few of the results also create a decision space for
players – do they withdraw, or stay close but apply a different
negative result? It is a relatively bloodless CRT – except for
“coincidental” losses to units from unsuccessful Routs, there is
only one result (Ex) which guarantees casualties on either side. In
the only other result which produces losses (Ax/Dx), the loss is an
alternative to retreating which the player may choose if they pass a
Morale Check.
Though
this doesn't completely model the relative bloodyness of American
Civil War battles (which often saw about 3 times as many casualties
as in the same-sized battle of the American Revolution), the number
of losses for each side in my play of this isn't far off the
historical percentage. The Union took 3 step losses out of 15 total
steps of infantry and artillery – historically they took about 20%
casualties, so that seems right. The Confederates took 2 step losses
out of 22 totals steps of mounted infantry, infantry, and artillery,
not far from their historical loss rate of 10%. That said, the
Confederates are able to “heal” damaged units using a special
rule only available to them, so at the end of the game they actually
had functionally suffered no step losses. That special rule, however,
is pretty insignificant given the real issue with this scenario.
Essentially,
given the bloodlessness of the CRT, and the relative possibility of
escaping unscathed when Retreating or Routing from combat, the
victory condition for the Confederates is next to impossible. For a
major victory, they are supposed to eliminate or rout off the map all
Union units (except Vedettes, of which more below) whilst also having
moved some of their mounted infantry units off the board in pursuit.
A minor victory for them still requires them to chase the Union
entirely off the board and then score more Victory Points. The Union,
to win a major victory, must simply still have a unit on the board at
the end of the game, or they must take the Confederate HQ (but why
would they even bother to try?).
Now,
in one sense, given the time scale represented in the game, this is
nearly the historical result – there are 9 turns in the game,
running from 5:30am to 5:30pm. The main battle was over earlier in
the afternoon, albeit via the Union forces formally withdrawing
rather than being routed. However, as described, there are simply not
realistically enough combat results forcing losses to do real damage,
and even when Routed I was usually able to safely withdraw my Union
troops.
This
leaves one with the uneasy sense that this scenario was not properly
playtested. That's a shame, given a lot of the scenario design is
clever or interesting. For instance: Union Vedette units who can't
fight but can slow Confederate movement; the Union player choosing
where and when to enter the map; the Confederates being initially
less able to move their units due to their surprise, and being unable
to effectively co-ordinate the two groups that made up their army
(Confederate and Arkansas troops and the Missouri State Guard);
Confederate mounted riflemen being basically just quick but unwieldy
infantry; and various historically elite units being represented
nicely (the capable and robust Confederate Army troops under McIntosh
and Hebert, the very good but very fragile regular US Army troops
which have the highest Combat rating in the game but only one step
per unit). Nonetheless, the final impression I took away was of a
half-baked design which had been churned out upon demand.
Conclusion
The
Musket and Saber
Quickplay
rules are very functional. I'll need to play them more to get a
thorough sense of how they model, at a simple level, ACW battles.
However, they do some key things well – for instance, the
prevalence of poor drill and discipline, represented by the way Routs
and Disruption work. As to the specific scenario, only play it with
some kind of “fix” in place for the victory conditions – I've
uploaded an alternative on BGG (and Confederate set-up information,
as the module as published gives unhistorical set-up positions),
which you can find at
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/150312/musket-saber-qp-wilsons-creek-unofficial-alternate.
No comments:
Post a Comment