tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post8379507088622980070..comments2024-03-28T03:10:23.679-07:00Comments on Polemarch: How to Annoy Historical WargamersThe Polemarchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10958736917525649927noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-84755277556828532482014-05-06T00:24:21.399-07:002014-05-06T00:24:21.399-07:00I think that we have to take convenient answers fr...I think that we have to take convenient answers from time to time, probably far more often than we we would like to. We also tend to argue from analogy, which is always a weak one.<br /><br />But if we waited until we knew everything, we would never get anywhere. <br /><br />And beer does help settle these issues, although it can, of course, sometimes raise them to an intensity they do not deserve.The Polemarchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10958736917525649927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-24694463068080197222014-05-06T00:22:15.426-07:002014-05-06T00:22:15.426-07:00I think we do have to remember that it is only a g...I think we do have to remember that it is only a game. Another example is in Featherstone's Solo wargames where he give the order of battle for the Roman army in Britain at the time of the Iceni revolt. This came, I think, from a historical novel (Imperial Governor, I think, rather good except for the affair with Cartimandua). <br /><br />But further reading suggests that it is wrong. And I, too have never played the campaign because of that. <br /><br />Oh dear. Another post on models? Really? But it is an interesting question 'when is a unit a unit?' I shall have to consider the matter further.The Polemarchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10958736917525649927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-56565370332555297422014-05-06T00:18:30.173-07:002014-05-06T00:18:30.173-07:00Chris, evidently you move in different circles of ...Chris, evidently you move in different circles of historical wargamers than I do. I seem to encounter the ones who think the DBM army lists are history as it happened....<br /><br />it is funny, though. Historians often present their findings as fact in print, even when they hold them much more tentatively in real life. Mind you, scientists do the same. It must be something about how academia works.The Polemarchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10958736917525649927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-30971939426554629372014-05-05T08:38:00.185-07:002014-05-05T08:38:00.185-07:00I don't know that you're going to annoy an...I don't know that you're going to annoy any historical wargamers by pointing out that the history we spout at the drop of a hat is unreliable - just don't tell the people that we spout it to.Chris Gricehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11140516359480860914noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-81705450288693531292014-05-05T04:28:45.518-07:002014-05-05T04:28:45.518-07:00MSFoy, when a game is to be played, convenience sh...MSFoy, when a game is to be played, convenience should not ignored as a factor in the enjoyment of that game. I too am guilty of opting for convenience purely for the sake of getting a game played, because I have learned over the years that I must do so. I have a campaign game for Operation Brevity in WW2 that I would love to play. It was originally published in Miniature Wargames many years ago and I dutifully collected the figures for the game and painted them all. Then I did a bit more research into the operation, because that is the sort of person I am, and I discovered that the orders of battle given in MW were not right, based on the latest evidence available at that time. I have continued to seek new material and confirmation of various conclusions I have drawn about the campaign over the years. These days I realise that I should have taken the convenient option and just enjoyed the game that was presented in MW. It is possible to overthink things, and I know that I am frequently guilty of this. I need to learn to opt for convenience more often and to get on with the beer-drinking and gaming.<br /><br />The units issue is an interesting one. Individuals react differently from the way that groups of people react, so dealing with them in groups is right, but the question then is how large that group is and whether it constitutes a unit in the modern sense or is more like a medieval battle or Viking shieldwall. Is this a cue for another Polemarch post on models?Ruaridhhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13003128932063213463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-67366001900293898302014-05-05T03:35:05.363-07:002014-05-05T03:35:05.363-07:00Something in there reminds me that I have been gui...Something in there reminds me that I have been guilty of making assumptions about historical warfare largely because they are convenient. Perish the thought. Heaven forfend.<br /><br />As an example, many years ago a friend and I spent many beery evenings sorting out our ideas about a particular period of Ancient wargaming. At one point, we considered the possibility that the armies of this period might actually have travelled around as a crowd - in the same kind of tactical vacuum which we might discern in (e.g.) a swarm of bees. At this point we had a glimpse of the abyss - war-games consisting of very large numbers of independent (and independently based) individual figures, each subject to their own morale etc. In fact not unlike the sort of war-games I played with toy spacemen and footballers (and possibly zoo animals) when I was a nipper. Eventually we decided that such a swarm would tend to subdivide into groups small enough to obey the commands of a single leader. Units, in fact.<br /><br />This was so convenient that we breathed a large sigh of relief and ordered more beer, and never considered the matter again.MSFoyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14470241067504971068noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-5015460626497414532014-05-05T03:14:31.742-07:002014-05-05T03:14:31.742-07:00I agree; mostly, myself included, we want solid an...I agree; mostly, myself included, we want solid answers which, given our culture, should be 'scientific' proof. Unfortunately, such an animal cannot exist in most subjects.<br /><br />I think that you are right, we do measure most warfare by modern standards. One of the things which is starting to intrigue me is the possible back projection of our knowledge of standards of discipline and training onto older armies. In short, I am beginning to suspect that most armies were rabbles, except for a few elite units (like Alexander's Companions), at least until the close of the medieval period and the influence of neo-stoicism and the renaissance.<br /><br />It is really about the game, but given that we spout of about history as wargamers, I think we could do to become, if not more critical and engaged with source material (I am a monoglot myself) then at least to be aware that there may be issues.<br /><br />Still, we can always admit that we play fantasy wargames, just with the right number of buttons on gaiters for a particular period.The Polemarchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10958736917525649927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-20484818110811565932014-05-05T03:04:47.060-07:002014-05-05T03:04:47.060-07:00I agree, and it may also apply to my answer to the...I agree, and it may also apply to my answer to the question 'what did you have for breakfast on Monday of last week?' I might tell you, but it is unlikely I can prove it or that you can test my answer for truth.<br /><br />I think that the wargamer's problem is that we would like to know answers to questions which cannot be answered; so we make up what we think are likely answers and then start to argue that they are true. <br /><br />On the other hand, outright scepticism doesn't get us anywhere near a playable game, so we just have to go with what we can do. But we do need to be aware of our limitations, the limitations of our sources, and try not to get too hung up on "history".The Polemarchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10958736917525649927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-957576454203427362014-05-05T03:00:56.757-07:002014-05-05T03:00:56.757-07:00Heisenberg sneaking around? Good heavens, I hope n...Heisenberg sneaking around? Good heavens, I hope not. I'd be getting really postmodern if I were to suggest that the closer we study history, the more uncertain it becomes. Although that is probably what I am suggesting....<br /><br />I think that the problem as wargamers is that we would like (I was going to say 'need' but that is pushing it a bit far) things which are not recorded, or not in a form we understand. And so we make plausible guesses, which then become wargame law, even though further research might show that it is wrong, or at least no longer the best guess.<br /><br />As for being pedantic, the assembled company here is one of the least pedantic set of wargamers I have encountered, for which I an truly grateful, because I couldn't write some of the stuff and get away with it if were more so!The Polemarchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10958736917525649927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-81742080018864834822014-05-03T06:14:05.152-07:002014-05-03T06:14:05.152-07:00I thought this was going to be a short post: '...I thought this was going to be a short post: 'Tell him that he is really playing a fantasy game'. :)<br /><br />As MSFoy notes, we have to take our best guesses at times, because the information is not there to provide a fully historically accurate model for our armies. The problem with those best guesses is that many wargamers are really not very good at interpreting history and historical documents, as Guy Halsall pointed out in a recent blog post. Generally speaking, most lack the critical toolkit to assess the source material. They do not consider the traditions within which authors were writing and thus interpret as fact things that are really literary devices or just traditional ways of referring to other tribes/nations. Context really is everything. Another issue is the use of translations instead of going to the primary source material, as has been discussed on this blog before. Then there is the lack of sufficient knowledge to critically assess the secondary texts, which can result in poor quality studies becoming popular within the wargaming fraternity. Finally, vocabulary is crucial to shaping the debate. It sets up particular expectations and directs our thought processes. Part of understanding the past is examining the expectations created by particular terminology and questioning it. I have mentioned before on this blog (I think) that our understanding of ancient warfare is coloured by expectations created by our knowledge of more recent horse and musket warfare, so we often discuss ancient armies in terms of units, or consider that cavalry and infantry are different, when some armies fielded troops mounted or dismounted according to need.<br /><br />As Ross writes, there is no objective Rankean truth out there for us to find, but we can certainly seek a limited probable historical reality and in doing so enrich our games a fraction. The key is understanding the source material and its context, which requires a greater level of commitment to research than most wargamers are willing to give. It is really about the game in the end for most of us.Ruaridhhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13003128932063213463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-47208338855097254302014-05-03T05:04:53.818-07:002014-05-03T05:04:53.818-07:00I'm afraid it doesn't just apply to histor...I'm afraid it doesn't just apply to history. How accurate would a history of the 21st C Iraq or Afghanistan wars be if based on news reports and official. Eye witness reports often add a different perspective but of course involve a restricted viewpoint, limited knowledge, human memory and usually some aspect of what might be called a personal propaganda agenda.<br /><br />The real problem is of course really believing that we can ever "really" "know" "the truth" about anything or that anything involving humans and other aninals etc is fixed and immutable.Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.comhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04053555991679802013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-13198516438305250682014-05-03T02:29:16.402-07:002014-05-03T02:29:16.402-07:00Interesting. In fact the buttons on the gaiters - ...Interesting. In fact the buttons on the gaiters - to the extent that fact followed regulation - may be one of the few immutable truths we can hang on to. The rest of the story is, as you say, uncertain.<br /><br />If everything lies somewhere in a probability distribution (I don't hear Heisenberg sneaking around here, do I?), then the written history, whatever its faults, has to be one of the alternatives that we take seriously. If the only version of the campaigns of Alexander that we have is known to be dodgy, it might still be the best approximation we have. Students of Montrose, for example, are advised to avoid Wishart's eulogy, but it still contains a lot of detail which should not be rejected out of hand.<br /><br />You are right, of course, but maybe this simply boils down to a standing instruction to take everything with a pinch of salt. As for historical gaming, we very quickly get into authenticity vs plausibility, and - for a game - sometimes near enough is near enough. I have little patience with the pedants of the hobby - apart from when i am being one myself. If I'm going to go to the trouble of building and fighting my own miniature version of the Peninsular War, it might as well be a version i like.<br /><br />On occasion, like everyone else, I am forced to take a stab - especially stuff like best guesses at an unknown regimental colour. If someone can confidently come back and tell me how that flag should have looked, and that I am wrong, then I shall accept their view with good grace and I shall have learned something.MSFoyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14470241067504971068noreply@blogger.com