Competition games; Pah!(?)

Wargaming competitions?

Hmmm.

OK; I'll happily go to reasonable lengths to meet like minded individuals, to get a game of little men. But competitions were something I'd generally shied away from. I'd considered that the sort of person who played competition games generally played in a style I found less than appealling; for me it isn't all about the winning, but the experience along the way.

Nonetheless, when a weekend competition in leeds cropped up I entered, as I've already mentioned on this blog. A chance to meet other gamers, and to get a look at the Leeds club, now it has moved to new premises. Also a chance to get to grips with DBA again, something I try every once in a while.

As an even the organisation was fine, but then the organisor (Trevor Bavage) didn't have too much to organise on the day, what with all of 8 competitors turning up! Tables, scenry and all the rest were set up for 16 players, but only half that number showed. Still, more or less on time we began.

I was happy to confess to pretty much everyone my complete lack of experience at DBA. For the record I'd played version 1.1 about 4 times and 2.2 once at a show prior to the day; I'd played DBM, and the fantasy equivalent of DBA - HOTT - many more times, but the subtleties of DBA are more then enough to reduce the value of the experience. And as it would turn out my reading of the rules was fatally flawed. Also, my army was as you may know, brand new; traditionally bad luck.

Random drawing provided me with my first opponent; Indians. An army I'd never faced in any rules that I could recall, But one quarter elephants! I didn't fancy them but figured my chariots had a chance against his bowmen.



Although I didn't know it, I was on the right track, and my cavalry class chariots made short work of the indians in what was a swift and amiable battle. 'Hey this is alright' I thought, but it was to get tougher, and confirm some of my expectations too...


The next match up was 'Swiss styled' moving on one to face a new opponent. This meant facing a very particular genral with what I would describe as a classic beardy army. And a precocious child in tow to boot. Kids can't help being that way, sure, but my god it's distracting in some ways. The beardy army was late medieval, tough as nails and able to swap troop types at the start of the game. In other words like bringing two armies for the price of one. Beautifully painted but with a camp model, I assume he'd borrowed, that looked like its' last job was to hold soap in a Britsh Rail toilet. The match was a protracted stalemate, to be fair he should have won but several key dice rolls went against him.

This is one of several features of the rules I find annoying. DBA hangs on abberant rolls. DBM absorbs them on account of armies being of 40-80 or more elements, needing to lose many units to be defeated, other rules tend to use many dice rolls per combat, or require several successive defeats to be accumulated for a unit to be destroyed; but DBA doesn't have time for any of this. A game can last as little as 20 minutes. Great for competitions yes, but when losing 4 units out of twelve, on the strength of single dice rolls; or worse one general, ends your game, it can be well, frustrating to say the least.

This may explain the 'cocked dice' aspect; which I just found laughable. It runs something like this:

"That dice is cocked [by which i mean it is staddling the flat table top and a piece of felt 2 milimetres high, and I don't like the result] I demand it be rolled again."

WHAT!?! This is supposed to be fun, and you are supposed to accept the fickle nature of fate, I mean Jeez the game engine is such that random negatiive results are a virtual certainty. Why insist on rerolling a result you don't like on the thinnest of excuses, when any neutral observer in the human race, who'd seen a dice before could tell you with uneqivocable certainty what the result is, which side of the thing is face ****ing up!

For the record a cocked dice is one where it isn't clear which way it is up, it has somehow come to rest on or against something that has left it sat at around a 45 degree angle, or even on a corner. Not at about 3 degrees off horizontal due to a base edge or piece of paper!

Phil Barker (author of DBA) has had to placate the penny pinching rules mongerers out there with rules to control and rationalise this sort of behaviour, and one should perhaps expect it in a competition game, but really; its pathetic.

Anyhow; my second match was at least tense and my opponent proved himself a gentleman when not facing you accross a table. My third game was destined to be a defeat based on my lack of experience and poor reading of Mr Barkers' inscrutable prose. I was beaten in short order by a bunch of camels belonging to a gamer who seemed to have drawn inspiration from Nigel Mansell, despite trouncing everbody he bemoaned the terrain he had to fight over, the dice rolls, his troops, the tempreature; everything.

After he thrashed me he pointed out I hadn't needed to deploy a built up area, fair enough I'm only learning though I said, this somehow seemed an inadequate answer though and we argued futilly for five minutes, why I may have come to the conclusion that I needed to do that. Did it matter I had, I'd lost, end of story!

I was starting to believe DBA players to be pretty humourless.

To my complete absence of surprise I was eliminated, along with Indian player, who was the nicest opponent I had, and two guys from York. Both appeared to have brought armies with a snowballs chance in hell of winning, and were having fun, I have to respect that. I for one was starting to enjoy just watching instead, and checking out the extra curricular club games some of the Leeds lads had set up for themselves. A couple of historical refights seemed to be going on, fairly typical, and relaxed club fare. Ah, if only...

Back with the competition and two of my opponents had qualified along with a guy I didn't know, and the rank outsider at the start of the elimination round, my local opponent, Phil W. Phil got through on the strength of a points system that rewarded his two particularly bloody defeats and a win, with more points than some others. Kinda the wargame equivalent of going through on Goal difference.

In his first play off he drew the late Medievals for the second time, but thanks to defending set the enemy a battlefield that played to his Phils' own strengths and got in early to kill the enemy general. The result stood, but whilst the other Semi-final plodded to a conclusion an epic, academic and ultimately pointless debate began about the legitmacy of the terrain placed.

It's the rules again, bringing out the worst in players. I suppose the referee could've pre-vetted all the terrain to make sure it was within the excessively precise rule dimensions, but why should that be necessary, last time I looked mother nature didn't only make hills that are less than 200 metres long in any direction! Argue the what ifs of your tactics to deal with the terrain,yes; but measuring a model hill just to hold the moral high ground as it was perhaps half an element too large? WHY?

The plodding epic of Arabs versus Sumerians finally ended, with the Arabs still undefeated. So the scene was set for a final showdown. Again the scenery played against the Arabs, and into the favour of Phils' Romans, this time the layout was conservative though; at the end of the day, Phils troops were too powerful for camels, who had so far manged to avoid an army with knights, and in a game of low dice rolls ultimately threw a few more tellingly bad ones than Phil.

I suspect no-one was more surprised than Phil himself at his victory.

Parts of the day were really good; away from the game itself everyone was very friendly and easy going. DBA itself is a frustrating beast however, you know the armies are unbalanced, you know it hangs on especially random levels of chance, you know it looks more like a boardgame than an actual battle; and the rules are in some ways so appalling it is beyond belief. Yet this isn't because they are bad; not as such. They are elegant and in their basic conception staggeringly simple. But they are wholly devoid of plain English resulting in the most slavishly precise understanding of them being essential in order to play them properly, this means playing them a lot, and I doubt many players actually enjoy their first few games of them.

You need to be a dyed in the wool, competitive gamer to enjoy DBA, by contrast, Armarti (though often no better written) can be played in the same timescale with simpler less random results, AND look like a real battle. Furthermore Warhammer Ancients is a rules system that is almost brainlessly easy and well suited to fun play, if not so geared up for competitions.

You wouldn't turn on many converts to gaming with DBA, it's like computer software, 80's software; only with no computer to run it on.

Competitions, are just that; competitive. In this situation, DBA is ideal. It panders to the rules obsessed, micromanagement perfectionists; the sort of person who spends five minutes pondering a 5mm advance, not least because it's five minutes less for the enemy to make a move in. Personally I much prefer friendly matches which a mentally stimulating, AND FUN.

I was pleased not to be last, 6th out of 8 wasn't to bad in the end, and I may well enter again. But competition gaming is only a cul-de-sac of wargaming for me. Alright to visit now and then, but it won't lead anywhere.

Probably time to set up another short campaign I think...

Another defeat at the hands of a kid...

Yes, a foray into the local GW shop produced the usual results; my beautifully painted, and lovingly crafted eldar, were thrashed by a bunch of troops who still smelt of undercoat. To be fair to him, the one figure he had painted so far was nicely done, and the models were all well made. But that was all. I don't want to sound like some puritannical paint facist; because I'm not - it took me fifteen years to become a competant painter, longer than many GW players have been on Earth - however, it is always the way that the uglier the army, the more assured it is to pound me.

As you can see I got one good photo of my Eldar Fire Prism, the only thing to survive the game, and worth every point I paid for it. That aside being outnumbered 5 vehicles to 1 was the deathknell for me.

Also bad news was the previews of lots of new Eldar models, temptation again. Another reason why I only venture in a GW shop once every few months.

Oops - Part the third

As promised the New Kingdom Egyptians, not too shabby for being knocked out in a week...

I know it's not been long, but I've managed to move to adding some units suitable for WAB to this lot rather than an enemy army I'd actually have to buy. There were some thirty quids worth of Essex Egyptians and Sherden (destined to be royal guards and mercenaries) along with the sprinkling of Phillistines in my box of 15mm biblicals.

A temporary reprise, spoiled by buying a copy of Warhammer ECW on ebay earlier.

Ho hum.

Ooops - part the second

So in short order a DBA army (New Kingdom Egyptian) a camp, and a custom 'built up area' was assembled. Seven days to paint the army (photo's to follow) and camp, with the BUA scheduled to be finished by Friday.

Doesn't end there of course, the same box I found my NKE army in contained about half the figures for a Phillistines army, so I'm wondering how long I can resist picking up the required figures to build an opposing force.

Meanwhile, I find myself contract painting WW2 Russians; and still the Samurai remain unpainted.

Oh dear...

Wet weekends...

Are always enlivened by a game, even if it is necessary to run a solo battle.

As my last game had shown no end of shortcomings in my comprehension of the rules, I thought it worthwhile having another run through of Warhammer Ancients. Two 1500 point armies were assembled; a Republican Roman army with absolutely no surprises to it, and an Etruscan Greek army.

The Etruscans used the Greek list from AoA, but with a couple of allowances for their Italian nature, Cavalry were bought as Italian allies, with shield and light armour. Peltasts similarly were Italian and thus allowed standards, unlike other Greeks (not therefore contributing to the sages points value rules). Lastly I permitted them the luxury of a unit of Ligurian mercenaries, bought as barbarian warriors.



Positions after turn 1; the Etruscans lost the initiative roll for deployment and ended up on the flat plain between a hill and a forest. A pre-game random roll had made the Roman general conservative, so his deployment had been classic Roman and his tactics fairly simple. The Romans were slightly outnumbered.


Turn 2. The Etruscans develop flank attacks whilst allowing their Cretan archers to pepper the Roman velites. The Roman commander on auto pilot advances in a broad arc, except for holding his Triarii back and hastily reversing his small cavalry force. In the early part of the game the Etruscans were able to deliver a punishing level of fire on the roman ranks, they had 4 units with javelins, including their cavalry, and the Cretan archers BS of 4 made then particularly deadly.


The Etsrucan front line, figures are Zvezda 20mm Greeks.

The Roman front line, mostly 20mm Zvezda Romans, but with Hat Velites (Macedonian allies) and a Hat general. All forces are based for DBM/DBA, which is generally fine for WAB, so long as you can mark casualties in some way, I've always used glass beads, but others prefer rings, casualty dice or paper accounting.

Turn 3. The Ligurians run out of the woodland impetuously, the velites are scattered. The phalanxes advance a little.

Turn 4. The Roman cavalry tries to face off the Italians, the Triarii move to face an expected flank attack if the Roman horse can't contain them. A charge by the Princeps results in the Ligurians fleeing the field, never to return. The centre pushed forward.

Turn 5 The Roman centre went in, One rather battered maniple was destroyed straight away, and the phalanx that pursued it smacked into the maniple behind it, to which their general and army standard were attached.


Turn 6. The Phalanxes pummel the roman centre, whilst the Italian peltasts attempt to break the right with aid from skirmishers, sadly the lightest troops already ran. Surprisingly the Roman cavaly outfought their Italian foes, and spent the rest of the game pursuing them.

Turn 7. The Romans put to rout the left phalanx of the Etruscans and destroyed their Italian allies, but in the centre the attack of the reserve on the Roman maniple, left the Roman general and his standard supported by only a few velites, a personal combat had now begun as the Etruscan general (marked by his soothsayer on the stand behind the unit, but - in rules terms - fighting in the front rank) sought out his oppostie number.

Turn 8. The Roman flank troops rally and the Triarii approach. The Etruscan general is unlucky and dies; all his units break in panic, except for the central phalanx which was able to stand and hack down the Roman leader in turn. Of the Romans though, only the Battle Standard and velites fled, both outrunning the phalanx. At this point it was clear the gig was up for Etruria!

So, an entertaining diversion, and useful to learn some important rule clarifications. Less mistakes against my next real opponent I hope!

Ooops

So the Japanese battalion was swiftly finished, I was getting ready to start the Samurai when I spotted this on a DBA related webpage:

"Scheduled as a substitute for the cancelled Fiasco convention, DBAL is a
DBA 15mm competition using version 2.2 of DBA organized by the Leeds Wargames Club for club members and players around the region. It will be held on Saturday, 17th June 2006 (n.b. the only Saturday in June when England will
not be playing a game in the World Cup) at the New Headingley Club, St Michaels
Lane Headingley, Leeds 6. The event runs from 11am to about 5.30pm.
Cost will be £3 per player. Contact Trevor Bavage on 0113 2759762 or
taj.bavage(at)ntlworld."

Well, that's me suckered in! I had a pile of 15mm ancients lying around awaiting painting, so now a new army (thankfully only 50 odd figures) is on the painting table taking shape. Can I get them ready in time? I reckon so, I've got 4 weeks...

The Battle of Walkensvaard 1382

My first game of WAB in a year or so. I picked out two 2000 point forces from my favourite armies from the Age of Chivalry supplement for my two players to command, whilst I got familiar with the rules again by umpiring. The Forces were respectively a Hundred years war French army with 18 cavalry and 90 or so foot; and a Low Countries army (hereafter referred to as the Flemish) of 14 cavalry and 120 foot.



The French Array in full. Around 2/3rds of the force was either Nobles, knights esquires or men at arms on foot. Discounting the peasants they were outnumbered almost two to one.


The French Brigands, one of the few citizen units they fielded. Figures are a mixture of Essex and Games workshop. Other troops on display are by Foundry, Irregular and Black Tree Design.

The Flemish army, Five cannons and two large pike blocks were the core of a solid, if somewhat static force. It proved to have little in the way of attack, but a dogged defense

The Initial Dispositions. As it turned out, a mix of placed terrain and random movement of it resulted in a wide open plain for the battle. Suiting the French knights perfectly, but also giving the Flemish cannons free range...

By the third turn the Parisian milita had charged and bounced of the particularly stubborn Coutrai crossbowmen. The French knights however were about to deliver a devastating charge that would overrun the artillery on their right and catch the Flemish general, with his handful of knights in the flank and rout them off the table.

The French cannon blew itself up the second time it fired, but this opened the field for the esquires and foot knights to advance. With their lord gone, panic thinned the Flemish ranks, and they had to begin an advance simply to block the enemy cavalry from hitting their vulnerable sides.

The esquires however repeated the sucess of the Knights, and rolled up first a Flemish unit of seargents, and then a unit of Targedragers it hit in the flank. The Flemish realised the gig was up, and with the army reduced to only some crossbowmen and a unit of Pikeman, gave France the field.

Like many games not played in a while, we got a few things wrong (well, I as umpire did), but they probably balanced out, and anyway the two players were quite new to the game anyhow; so it didn't effect their enjoyment. Battle standards were allowed to re-roll all Panic and Break tests, when it should have only been break tests, but the french knights should've also been allowed back into the game after chasing two units off the table.

Always nice to get the 28's out again, next time I'll take some better pictures...

Going east...

Having finished my last long term project of a 20mm DBM Camillan Roman army, the next projects rumble into view; despite the ever present mixture of bits and pieces that exist on most modeller-wargamers' painting table, it was naturally time to start two new projects.

The first one was accidental, I intended to rummage through my big bag of WW2 leftovers, mostly from my childhood and teens, when it seemed necessary to have one pack of everything, and paint off what units I could. It was onto ebay for the lot of them, maybe get a fiver for every ten or so?

Apparently, there really are a lot of people out there who are too lazy to paint there own figures.

Fine by me; there are a lot of things I can buy when I get £2 per figure for my paint jobs. It's a pay off for the years of practice and time spent trying techniques, that led to ways to knock up attractive figures for a reasonable expenditure of time and effort.

But rummaging to sell stuff, always leads down those dusty corridoor, to half decided plans.

So I ended up with some of my favourite figures back on the painting table, after nearly twenty years. Matchbox Japanese infantry. So it turned out, more than enough to defend a small island in Crossfire, or Rapid Fire. A couple of quick purchases from Frontline, and MMS soon provided a couple of tanks, an infantry gun and an anti tank gun to support them. In a week or two the Japanese will be ready to defend their atoll to the last against my innumerable americans...

But besides them it's another Japanese force that I really want to get stuck in to; hundreds of 20mm Samurai are beckoning. Two Warhammer armies are the plan - a Mix of Zvezda, Caeser, and Milton Bradley figures, timely as well with the Art Of War supplement on oriental armies due any day soon. Compared to Romans or World War two uniforms though, the Samurai are an altogether more daunting proposition. The only consolation being the small size needed to get started. A thousand point Samurai army will only need about 50 figures.

On top of them though there are still 30 28mm American GI's and Wermacht Inantry, on the paint table, along with a 1/48th Pak 40, a White Half Track, a 20mm German Flak wagen, a bunch of other oddments...

I don't think many wargamers have the will to avoid this situation though.

The dirty truth about Warhammer 40K

Recently, I've noticed it has become socially acceptable for wargamers to play Warhammer ancients. Not so many years ago, admitting to playing warhammer in any form was akin to suggesting you liked to decide games by throwing pencils at each others troops. Wargamers are seldom in a position to feel socially superior to any group, but the teenage audience for Games Workshop were generally seen as the lowest of the the low.

To date this transformation of attitudes, driven as it is by a trend towards bigger figures, painted in more cartoony fashions - presented as more realistic on the most doubtful of evidence - has not really cut in to the one aspect of the Games Workshop market I actually play regularly. Warhammer 40,000.

Why is that?

Associations with rather too much cryptofacist regalia, blocky weaponry and badly designed rip offs of variously their own fantasy ranges and certain obvious films were bad enough, but the first edition of 40k, as it became known was largely unworkable; fine for a couple of dozen figures a side, and certainly flexible, but over complicated and lacking any realistic structure for the games people wanted to play. Big 'ole battles. After a few games under the old rules, which saw me thrashed by rulemongerers using all the as yet unrestricted tricks in the book (Orks with photon and warp grenades anyone), I gave it up as a bad thing; stored my figures for a while before selling them off.

I still earned a meagre living selling the things in a shop, but that's by the by.

Many years passed and I lieu of any other local opponents when I moved, I was seduced into trying the game again. Oh my! I don't know what edition they officially were, third perhaps, but finally the rules made sense. All the problems were more or less ironed out (and fourth edition has sorted most of them); forces were balanced, games manageable to play to a conclusion in a reasonable period of time. And even to a point realistic tactically (accepting the huge exagerations implicit in the alien forces).

I got sucked into it all again.

But of course I started this with a question; why isn't there a developing scene of Warhammer Moderns players? Well to a point there are, they have a yahoo group (virtually silent) and a version of the rules (http://mywebpages.comcast.net/kpavlick/ww2/ww2intro.htm). And having tried them out I found that with some simple adjustments WarhammerWW2 works really well. Yet the few versions of modern gaming using the core system of Games Workshops rules, have stuck to using the Ancients core system. Why?

Well; I can only speculate really, myself. But I was once told that GW themselves liked the idea of one day selling historical figures in its' own shops, having games of Alexander versus Darius alongside Dwarves and Orcs. However they got really uncomfortable about the fact thet world war two was the obvious line to take 40k down, Kevin Pavlick developed his version of 40k years ago, and this meant Germans, which equals Nazis.

Big problem that, for a company with a chronic image problem to begin with.

Many parents, I know from selling stuff to them for years are really uncomfortable with some of the content of Warhammer 40,000. I firmly believe that whislt certain elements became more realistic, the 'Teutonic' overtones prevalent in both early Space Marines, and their arch enemies (Orks and oddly enough early Genestealers) were steadily airbrushed out. It's not a route they seem prepared to go down, too many negatives that would impact on their core business. I understand Mr Pavlicks rules are quietly ignored by GW (there's something too about it not being an infringement of copyright in the USA to modify someones rule system if not for profit); but they aren't ready yet to plug a version of them in their magazines, as they do for the latest 'Ancients' supplement. Too risky.

Which to conclude is a shame for there are certain obvious points to having a historical version of 40k; my regular opponent was gently weaned onto historical gaming through Warhammer WW2, after all when he already knew the rules it was just an army that he didn't know. All the concepts are familiar, and the forces remain at least of some interest, thanks to endless war movies and TV shows.

Fact is you can always find a 40k'er, not always a wargamer.

It's nice to make the two the same thing.

It just needs an accessible set of rules and a little support to work...

Crossfire - Game report and thoughts

...A and B company of 'B' battalion, 22nd Infantry were tasked with a reconaisance in force North of the village of Bomal in the Ardennes, the date was September 9th 1944...

For those who don't know, Crossfire is not your average set of wargame rules, in terms of what it tries to achieve, I think it sits somewhere between a tactical simulation and a roleplaying game. It employs several unique game conventions, or should I say abscence of conventions: lack of a fixed game turn, lack of measuring, uncertainty as to composition of one's own force, etc, etc.

So anyway We had a game on Sunday afternoon where two companies of US infantry with limited armoured support faced an unknown quantity of Germans late on in 1944.

The game unfolds over the terrain with no troops deployed on table. The Germans are all hidden and the Americans are yet to advance on.

Notice the density of the terrain, This is a 6 foot by 4 foot layout, and is covered with blocking terrain. In crossfire, everything blocks line of Sight! Whilst an accurate convention for French Bocage, Stalingrad or Burma; I do wonder how well these rules work with the rolling plains of Russia or the trackless deserts of Libya?


Troops have no set moves, the attacker simply advances until the enemy does something to interrupt him, or one of the attackers actions fails in such a way as to pass the initiative over. Me and my subordinate commander decided that we'd deny the right flank entirely, knowing that the enemy was out there in some force. We figured he'd throw most of his forces at the defence of the village, sure fire tank killer terrain. Instead we advanced from the enemy's old bunker positions towards the forest.

Our war correspondent records the US advance, sadly the next thing that happened was that the forward platoon advanced into the forest, never to be seen again! It became clear later on that they'd been ambushed by a machine gun and around two platoons of the enemy, Bayonet and close quarter gunshot wounds confirmed the few survivor's reports of a swarm of elite SS soldiers ravenous as wolves pouncing on them without mercy. At least, if the reports of replacements are to be believed.

The nature of Crossfire is such that whilst the enemy had to appear to fire on us, he took the first opportunity to disappear also. A second cautious advance towards the emplacement on the hill allowed some emericans to lay fire on the enemy, and call in a tank, that made short work of the survivors. By the time the position was occupied the rest of the enemy had melted away.

This set the nature for the next phases of the attack. The Germans tried to redress their lines to deal with the tank; a Marder III - correctly identified by the Americans as a Tiger tank - was repeatedly missed by American Bazooka fire whilst trying to ambush the Sherman. Meanwhile redeployed machine guns and infantry squads used their guns and mortars to decimate another American Platoon. At this point if it hadn't been for the tank support, the US commanders may well have withdrawn.

It has to be said Tanks are of doubtful value in Crossfire; the defender can buy 3 anti tank guns for the cost of one Tank to the attacker, tanks can either move - in a straight line only, change face, or fire in a turn. Not all three! This makes them staggeringly slow to deploy; however when used correctly they can bring a hell of a lot of fire to bear. The Sherman accounted for more than a platton of the German infantry, without any harm coming to it.

Despite early success, the German flank began to wither under the concentrated US fire, American mortars and machine guns played merry hell with the next, rather exposed positions they found.

The Germans were forced to withdraw under pressure, and fell to relying on Volksturm hiding in the village to try desparately to stop the tank and a sweep by A company, accounting for one squad they too were put under steady fire, from now more cautious troops.

Incidentally, there are no morale rules that I recall using, whether they exist is beyond me, certainly troops are rated with different qualities, but common sense moves them more often than not. The main problem is troops becoming pinned and suppressed under fire. Troops tend to get wiped out rather than running away.

By the end of the game the Marder had been forced to withdraw under threat from Bazooka teams, The Sherman tank, and gutsy infantry armed with grenades and rifles. Each side had lost more than two platoons to enemy fire, which left he American troops pretty much spent, We were happy to hunker down and consider it a draw of sorts.

As to the rules, they have many strengths, but really only for representing certain types of warfare. They are excellent for those situations where the defender is holed up in determined defence and the attacker has only the most basic idea where they are. For more mobile games their application seems limited. More than a couple of vehicle either side simply would not be practical. Moreover it is impossible for the attacker to go on the defensive in the same manner as normally applied to the nominative defender. In short whilst the attacker has a realistic lack of idea about the enemies movements the defender has a godlike power both to see the every move of the enemy, whilst being able to conduct all his deployment and moves in secret. If this seems unfair, then these are rules you will not get along with; but they work in the right situation, with small enough forces.