Wednesday, October 5, 2022

3 x 3 for Me?

When the fast play 3 x 3 portable wargame phenomenon broke out earlier this year, I was uninterested. After all, I experimented with something akin to 3 x 3 many years ago, but my efforts went nowhere. I felt like the game was simply an exercise in dice-rolling without any maneuvering.

After my test of Battles of the English Civil War, however, I found myself hankering for some fast play battles. This led my thoughts to 3 x 3.

While I am not keen on restricting my games to a 3 x 3 grid, I see some advantages to such quick play systems. This has given me ideas that will speed play.
  • Units do not operate independently. Instead, they are grouped into 3 or 4 divisions with each division acting as one entity,
  • Combat would be between divisions rather than individual units.
  • Destruction of one division will result in an army morale test. Lose two divisions and your army is done.
But this leads to some questions.
  • How do I adjudicate combat between divisions with disparate sizes and compositions?
  • What happens when a division loses a combat? Does it lose a unit? Retreat? Lose strength points?
  • If units are lost, how does one determine which unit goes?
  • Can divisions split off units? What happens then?
Things to ponder.

6 comments:

  1. I’d be interested in reading your thoughts on this, and to publish any completed rules as part of a future Portable Wargame Compendium.

    All the best,

    Bob

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    1. Thanks Bob. I think I missed your comment the first time around. Sorry about that. Hopefully I'll get back to fast play games but I'm in a bit of a lull right now.

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  2. The Portable Wargame Compendium contains lots of 3x3 rules and example games. In any event, there’s no hard-and-fast answer to anything as the rules are more a “tool box” with which you can tinker to do whatever you want. I’m not sure that’s the answer you were looking for Kevin, but I’m sure you’ll find something that suits you/your games.
    Cheers,
    Geoff

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    1. I have the Compendium and am looking through it. Details later.

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  3. Another source of inspiration might be the Army Corps in Action in Charlie Wesencraft's Practical Wargaming. If you haven't got either the original or John Curry's reprint edition in the History of Wargaming Project, let me know and I'll scan the relevant pages and email them to you.
    Personally, I think many battles, Waterloo being an obvious example, need more than three columns across the armies' fronts to reflect the different possible axes of advance.

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    1. Thanks for the suggestion. I picked up a copy on my Kindle. Some interesting idea; I will need to peruse it some more.
      And I agree about the grid size. I'm experimenting with a somewhat larger grid.

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