Why bother with Friction in Wargames Rules ? Just wait till you get old.
A couple of amusing events have occurred recently in our Franco Prussian War game that got me thinking about Friction in wargames rules and how hours of time are spent by Wargames Rules writers to introduce uncertainty into our games when in fact the best and funniest uncertainty comes from us, the people actually playing the game.
So lets look at the couple of examples, now I'm not going to mention Ian and Steve by name, as I don't want to embarrass them but we have all done something similar.
Example 1. The Prussian General decides that his Artillery isn't being effective enough and has no viable targets so limbers up and moves forward. The French General thinks "what the f" but as Sun Tzu say "don't interrupt your enemy when his making a mistake".
The Prussian player unlimbers and gets ready to decimate a bunch of French units in the distance from his new vantage point, unfortunately for him the battery had set up right in front of a Chassepot armed unit in a wood, they open fire and wipe out the battery in one turn.
So what happened, there's no fancy hidden movement here, no "ambush" or "overwatch" action. Just plain old human error. The French unit, had been lined out in the edge of the wood all the time, with there red trousers shouting "here I am !" The Prussian General genuinely hadn't seen them. Oh we laughed as the battery got put back in its Really Useful Box.
Example 2. In the recent Loigny FPW game we did at a couple of UK shows, the Papal Zouaves are held in reserve behind a village and only activate if certain conditions are met. The "Germans" opening fire on them being one.
The Zouaves have a thin skirmish line in front of the village, more for show than anything else. They don't fire, they are just eye candy for a demo game.
The Bavarians advance in the centre of the table and see the line of skirmishers and open fire on them, instantly releasing the Zouaves who wipe out the advancing Infantry. The Bavarian General didn't realise the skirmishers weren't French 😁
Once again human error introduced Friction when there wasn't any there, no fancy game mechanics, no bad luck just people getting older and eyesight failing 😆
So as we age can we drop all the fancy card activation and dice mechanics and just go back to simultaneous movement and make the mistakes ourselves ?
Let's hear your own human examples of a frictionless game
Regards Ken
Yarkshire Gamer
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