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There are rules for large-scale battles, rules that balance different types of troops, so that if one player has, say, soldiers of the Trojan War totaling 300 points and another has 300 points' worth of soldiers from the Persian Wars, much later, it will be an even matchup.
"There are a dozen very focused rules for the Frederick the Great era, accounting for the special characteristics of each army." For instance, Napoleonic armies had light infantry or skirmishers, who move at a certain pace, and more heavily armed grenadiers, who move slower and act differently in a given situation. "Infantry might move six inches per turn on open terrain, but only three inches if crossing a river or going through woods."
Other factors cover fighting ability — the difference between feared Guards troops and militia — or the impact of morale. And dice are used to add that element of luck that can thwart even the best general.
The rules for a game in which you are following historical fact would be different from those for a battle you are making up. Sometimes you can move troops and have them fire in the same turn; the dice decide how many you kill. Sometimes the rule proclaims that communications failed, so your men move but are too confused to fire.
Try imagining a chess game in which one of your knights goes lame. Or a pawn refuses to advance.
"I do have some World War II troops," Mudd informs me, "but basically I stick to pre-19th century. I don't do Napoleonic wars anymore. I just don't have the time to paint those large armies. You need 120 to 150 figures for a battle [the usual scale is one figure for 60 men], but if you want a large army you need some 300 figures."
Mudd's speciality is the wars of Frederick the Great, from about 1760 to 1780, "although recently I have been involved in the Italian wars, so I have an army of Charles V of Hapsburg, and I've also got Spanish, German and Italian troops of the 1550s." Mudd has built a considerable collection of books on battles and uniforms. It's amazing, he says, how a skilled painter can give character and identity to even a flea-size soldier two millimeters high.
Uniforms greatly aided morale. The tremendous shakos and busbies worn by grenadiers made them look ten feet tall, and with their trademark piratical mustaches they looked as fierce as Gauls. In the age of gunpowder, uniforms were a vital means of keeping a unit together, for as soon as the first volley was fired at a range of 50 yards the entire field would be obscured in dense smoke "and you couldn't see men five yards down the row," explains Mudd. Thus, each company often had two flags, six feet square, designed to be seen.
Mudd, a Washington native who is only distantly related to Dr. Samuel Mudd of Civil War fame, has about a thousand 15-mm figures and 500 of the 25-mm soldiers, plus many still unpainted. He says a fan gets excited about a period or battle, collects the soldiers for it, then moves on to another one. A half-dozen major firms handle war games, some specializing in figures, some in rules, some in paints, a few in a variety of items. Some also produce fantasy-gaming products, though most historical games manufacturers are purists who prefer not to be identified with the fantasy field (big with younger crowds brought up on games like Dungeons and Dragons).
War-gaming cannot be blamed for the shootings in Littleton, Colorado, and similar tragedies, I think. For one thing, the average age of the players is around 35. And even though some youngsters do tend to start with fantasy gaming, "it's like the whole TV issue: most people know it's not real life," says Mudd. Moreover, many young players get into historical gaming from the start.
I ask about the role of electronics, which seems to play a large part in fantasy gaming. "The computer is perfect for certain random events," he replies, "and it can keep track of a complex situation, but it's not easy to combine with gaming. It's certainly better than rolling the dice forever, but it's most commonly used in sea battles, which are very technical. If you fire a 16-inch shell, you know how much damage it will do, so you don't need charts — the computer figures it instantly."
But it's the hands-on aspect that fascinates Mudd and many others. He will spend hours painting a single tin-and-bismuth figure (lead soldiers being medically incorrect) in acrylics, sometimes two hours just on one flag. His coin research shows him the designs that might appear on, say, a Theban soldier's shield. His soldiers have won first place in the Masters Category at the Historicom Convention, put on in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by the Historical Miniature Gaming Society. And he has won quite a few tournaments in a fairly abstract game involving 12 pieces on a side. "It can be played in under an hour, it's fun and very simple, and it's a decent simulation, 60 percent skill, 40 percent luck," Mudd says. "On the other hand, I haven't done very well with my Charles V army. I spend a lot more time painting and researching those figures than fighting with them."
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