Many systems claim to offer a large battle experience but in reality only focus on a small section. ESR takes a different approach by letting you play the whole battle.
The Game We’re Used: The Micro Battle
This is the Napoleonic scenario we’ve all played or seen many times. Wall-to-wall miniatures: dense columns already formed, opposing a steady line studded with artillery. No fancy flank march because it would require leaving the table and the scenario represents a central part of a larger battle with the rest assumed to occur off-table invisible to us, woods camouflaging the table edge and dividing those invisible sectors from our table.
There’s probably some terrain and obstacles that will break up our battle line, but really it is the edge to edge miniatures that prevent much maneuver. The victory conditions are to break through the enemy line within X turns. The scenario claims the enemy is making big moves off-table and those can be stopped by success here. The downside is there may not be much for the attacker to do but advance forward while the defender patiently waits in place.
All of this: the secure flanks, the “edge of the table is the edge of the world”, the wall-to-wall miniatures; presumes the battle that is really being fought is much bigger than what is on our table. What does that battle really look like? The big battle. The whole battle.
The Whole Battle
The whole battle looks like this. That’s us, on our table, zoomed way into the micro battle happening in that red box. It is maybe two miles across and a mile deep. There’s a lot going on outside of our little red box, and while the game we play inside it might be fun, we don’t get to understand the role the fight inside that red box plays in the context of the whole battle. Why is our big attack happening here? Why not somewhere else? How did these two square miles become so important?
The Problem of Sameness
When we’re living inside that red box, playing the micro battle, the scenario predetermines our roles and tells us the only context we need: You’re the attacker, they are the defender, to win you have to break through their line. The game we’re used to playing does look good but it may not leave us a lot of options and these scenarios can all come to feel the same.
In the context of the big battle the big decision is when and where to attack, i.e. when and where will the important micro battle be? Where is the ‘red box’? The couple square miles that will ultimately determine the whole battle? Playing inside the red box, that decision has already been made. It is here and now. We don’t know if it is the best idea – often times it looks really foolish: assaulting across a stream into fresh infantry and massed guns? This looks like a terrible idea! How come we’re doing this? The outcome almost looks like a foregone conclusion. The scenario says this is our best and only option. But is it?
How do We Play the Whole Battle?
If we want to play a role in determining when and where the key action on the battlefield takes place, then we need to play the whole battle. The battles of the Napoleonic Wars were often won before the first shot was fired, the selection of when and where the key action played out was actually how the battle was won. Realizing this can make the scenarios limited to the red box seem predetermined. Yes, it was the pivotal moment, but did if have to be? What if we got to shape that key moment? What if we could change the paradigm and choose a better red box, one that favored our success? Then we’d playing as Napoléon instead of Brigadier Morvan1.
Et sans résultat! takes a different approach. Instead of the entire game happening inside the red box, most of an ESR game is all the planning, maneuver, and deployment that determines when and where the red box will become important. As one review of ESR said: By the time the shooting starts in ESR the game isn’t over… but it is a lot later than you think it is.
What a Game of Et sans résultat! Looks Like
Instead of having everything pre-staged, ESR often starts off looking like an approach march, which means the battle will naturally develop completely differently each time even over the same terrain, as players decide to concentrate in different areas with different timing. At the start of the game it can be unclear where the key point ultimately develop.
The first turns are decision making, players aren’t moving miniatures, they are issuing and activating their initial Objectives & Directives deciding where their Forces and Formations will go and how they will each behave.
Then the world is set in motion.
A Game of Maneuver
For the next several turns Formations will quickly march across the battlefield according to the decisions made in those first couple turns. Players observe the battlefield develop and contemplate if their plan is proceeding successfully or if they need to intercede with new orders.
Decision making and maneuvering are separated in ESR, so players can’t immediately react to the developing battlefield. That means once your plans are set in motion, while you can change them at any time, you risk ceding the initiative to your opponent by being one-step out of sync with the events transpiring in front of you.
Choosing the Decisive Time and Place
Eventually the opposing Armies get “stuck in” and the lines temporarily stabilize. This is the point that most systems start the game but in ESR we’re already past the mid-point. A limited attack by your left bought the space required to mass in the center, but didn’t do enough damage to be exploited. You’re wondering if your plan was the right one and if gambling on the attack you prepared in the center is really the right move.
This is when the red box comes into play, that couple square miles of real estate in the middle of a much larger battlefield. As it turns out, the two square miles in the center, despite looking daunting, is important, really, really important. Not because it’s the right choice, but because it is the only choice.
Choosing the Decisive Time and Place
While you’ve been watching the battlefield develop, calculating when to launch your key assault, so has your opponent. They were eyeing a different “red box” that you recognize as your unsupported, over extended right flank, that doesn’t quite connect with your center because of those silly woods that marked the edge of the traditional “table”. You don’t have the time and space to shift troops from your center back to your right flank, and even if you did, that would mean going completely on the defensive.
Unlike the typical game, this time when you consider the attack in the center you won’t be assuming the premise of the scenario is correct, you’ll know the greater context because you were part of creating it. Why is the attack in the center important? Because the enemy right bent instead of broke, and their left is turning your own flank. Launching a frontal assault against fresh infantry and massed guns in the center is daunting but it is the best hope of compelling the attack that threatens to cave in your right and cut your line of retreat to halt. It’s what’s known in RTS games2 as “a base trade”. Will it work? You’ll know in a turn or two.
That little red box that normally defines your entire game is now instead going to be climax of a much larger game, a much larger context, a whole battle.
Context matters. If you ever feel trapped in sameness, try playing the whole battle. Every battle was different, every game you play can be different too.
1 Brigadier Paul-Jean-Baptiste Poret de Morvan led the 3eme Régiment de Grenadiers à Pied de la Garde Impériale in their final attack at Waterloo. A seemingly appropriate example of: Is this really the time and place you’d want to commit this attack?
2 RTS: Real-Time Strategy games, one of the most famous of which, and my personal favorite, is StarCraft 2. Why do we explain this? Is there really anyone reading this who doesn’t know when the original StarCraft dates back to 1998? I have no idea, but I want them to understand the reference too 🙂