The Seven Years War - Number Crunching

"Look. just bugger off. We're trying to concentrate here."

Trying to work out how well our rules create games that might approximate to real events is one of the central conundrums of wargaming. Of course it gets harder the further back in history we go, as the stream of film, photos, statistics and written records thins out and then disappears.

A rare chance to check out my own rules occurred this week whilst I was reading Christopher Duffy's The Military Experience In The Age Of Reason. On page 209 he briefly tackles the problem of how many bullets might have been fired for each death caused to the enemy. There was enough there for me to take things forward and see how my own rules squared up to historical reality.

Getting Down And Dirty

Apparently, after the battles of Mollwitz and Chotusitz, Frederick instigated an investigation to try and discover how effective his troop's fire had been. A gentleman writing in 1756 used the figures to estimate that around 650,000 rounds were fired at Chotusitz, resulting in about 2,500 deaths, 'and as many wounded'.

This gives a figure of 260 rounds expended per death. According to Duffy, this is in the same ballpark as figures arrived at for a number of other 18th century battles, although the examples Duffy gives are for some of the lesser known actions rather than the main battles of the SYW. Looking up Chotusitz online, it is easy to discover that the total Austrian casualties in that battle (killed, wounded, prisoners, missing) were around 7,000. In round numbers, this gives about 100 rounds per casualty. As Duffy explains, this ratio would be reduced by an allowance for casualties produced by artillery and cavalry, but increased by the fact that a good proportion of the rounds expended were not actually fired but quite likely simply discarded by the soldiers. We can already see that this whole 'investigation' is a very rough and ready process. However, let's continue.

And so to my own rules. I designate a turn length of up to 10 minutes (which seems to be the fashion these days. Those old 2 minute turns seem to have gone for good). As I'm not saying a turn is exactly 10 minutes, let's assume that an infantry battalion which is firing does so for an average of 5 minutes in a turn. So 600 guys fire 3 rounds a minute, making 9,000 rounds heading the enemy's way during 5 minutes. Using 100 bullets per casualty gives us an average of 90 casualties per turn. This would give 180 casualties (nearly a third of a typical enemy battalion) in 2 turns, and 270 casualties (nearly half a battalion) in 3 turns.

I found this generally reassuring. Firefights using my rules are generally resolved, at least temporarily, in 2 or 3 turns (retreating units may rally later). Whilst it was not uncommon for battalions to suffer more than 50% casualties in hard fought battles, even when winning, I am reasonably happy that a third or half casualties would be enough to take most battalions out of the fight for a bit, if not permanently.

Now of course the various assumptions and estimations used in arriving at these figures may well be inaccurate, or may have varied from situation to situation. There's not much we can do about the inaccuracy, except perhaps devote a lifetime of research to the surviving primary sources. As for the variety, I am prepared to let the dice and modifiers take care of that. At least my rules didn't seem to be wildly at variance with these particular calculations.

The Old Moving And Firing Problem

Following the example of Black Powder, I have left out a negative modifier for moving and firing in my rules until now. However, prompted by this post on Ross Mac's outstanding 'Battlegame of the Month' blog. I have decided to relent. My original decision was based on,

1. Simplicity. One less modifier, and more importantly no need to remember who's moved and who hasn't.

2. Encouraging aggression. I found that knowing your fire would likely be less effective than the standing enemy you were attacking made players (me included) reluctant to close to musket range. This is, I believe, a main reason the modifier doesn't appear in Black Powder.

Nevertheless, I find I can no longer ignore the rather obvious conclusion that the fire of moving units would be less effective than those not moving. Therefore a -1 modifier for moving and firing now appears in my rules.

As for aggression, players will have to behave more 'realistically', and gain advantage in an attack by artillery preparation and/or by arranging to outnumber the defending troops in one way or another, even if this means counting a first line as expendable.

In Black Powder, I have also succumbed in the area of moving and firing, by accepting a house rule developed by other players based on one of the special rules introduced in the Last Argument Of Kings supplement. My rule reads as follows,

'Infantry deduct 1 firing dice if they move twice, and 2 firing dice if they move 3 times.'

I give Prussian infantry an advantage by only making them deduct 1 dice if moving 3 times, with no deduction for moving twice. I suppose for really poor infantry (Reichsarmee for example) you could disallow firing completely if moving more than once. 

For any Black Powder players reading this blog, this set of house rules posted by Bill5549 on his blog are well worth your attention.

I'll Be Back
I wish I could promise some real wargames action on this blog in the near future, but spare time for proper battles is limited at the moment. The wargaming world will, however, be relieved to know that I have ordered some new deciduous trees to take the place of the lumps of lichen on sticks I have been using for the past 20 years or more. So the battlefields might look a bit better when they finally feature again on this blog.