VBCW HEREFORD - THE BATHTUB HYPOTHESIS (1)

Being the first in a series of speculative posts…..

              

A long time ago, back in 1986, Frank Chadwick and Games Designers Workshop (“GDW”) published a new set of WW2 miniatures rules, “Command Decision” (“CD”). CD was designed as an “operational - level” set of rules for combined arms engagements, where one “stand” of 2 figures represented a platoon or equivalent, and a model vehicle represented a platoon of approximately 5 “real life” equivalents. The overall effect was to enable players to command representations of brigades or even (in larger games) divisions on the tabletop, consisting of 2 - 6 battalions with supporting arms. While many WW2 rules were then (and remain) pitched somewhere around a “command level” of Platoon Leader or at most Company Commander, CD required tabletop Generals.

Command Decision by GDW

A couple of years later, in 1988, GDW published another Frank Chadwick product, titled “Barbarossa 25”. This was nothing less than an incredible attempt to enable 20mm WW2 wargamers to refight the entire WW2 Eastern Front campaign in a manageable way. Frank Chadwick’s introduction explained:

“…….I have never experienced more pleasure in a campaign or in individual games than I did playing Barbarossa/25 or ‘Bathtub Barbarossa’ as we came to call it…..the principle behind the bathtub campaign concept is contained in the title….Barbarossa/25 is the Barbarossa campaign scaled down 25 times. We began with the maps for GDW’s Europa game (“Fire in the East”) - which has 16 miles (or 25 kilometre) hexes and used each hex to represent one kilometre instead. With ground scale reduced 25 times, we then scaled down the Orders of Battle (i.e. the troops) by 25. The result was a good, proportional representation of the combatants which retains a nice feel for their capabilities but remains manageable for campaign purposes. Finally, time was scaled down by (roughly) 25, with each month reduced to a day, and the half-month game turns converted to morning and afternoon. There is no night turn……everyone rests at night. In the campaign which we played, our little war had much of the sweep and drama of its larger counterpart, and remained an exciting and challenging gaming experience throughout……”

Barbararossa 25 by GDW

Why did this game come to be called “Bathtub Barbarossa”? Apparently, Frank Chadwick reproduced the “Soviet Navy” for his original Barbarossa campaign - with an already small force scaled down 25 times, and then somewhat roughly modelled, a fellow player commented that, far from the “Soviet Navy”, the result looked like “something suitable for sailing in a bathtub”. In the way of wargame campaigns, the joke kept being repeated, and hence, “Bathtub Barbarossa”.

Why 'bathtub' at all? The concept of 'bath-tubbing' simply bridged the divide between available resources and outrageous expectations. In other words, Frank Chadwick's wargames group (the Central Illinois Tabletop Wargamers) already had large 20mm armies built and organised for ordinary "CD" brigade or divisional level games. To wargame the entire Eastern front, however, required not brigades or divisions, but whole armies. Instead of keeping the "CD" rule and Orders of Battle as they were (which would have been one approach, requiring years of effort to add more and more 20mm divisions to the model order of battle, and then finding a huge area of desert finally to wargame 'the Eastern Front'), Frank Chadwick simply 'scaled down' everything (troops, area and time) to make the "Eastern Front" fit the available wargame resources ("CD/25") The existing model "platoons" therefore no longer represented "real" platoons on the tabletop, but battalions; in the same way, existing model "divisions" no longer represented 'real' divisions on the tabletop, but whole armies.

Now, all this might be historically interesting (if you’re interested in the history of wargaming, that is, which is admittedly a somewhat esoteric taste), but what does it have to do with the Herefordshire VBCW? Well, while we’ve staged “Big Games” (using 3 x 6ft by 8ft tables) to represent small parts of the County (i.e. Shobdon, or Mortimer’s Cross), the “bathtub concept” might allow us to stage “The Biggest Game of All”, i.e. fighting across the whole of the County of Herefordshire on one tabletop! Instead of a player taking the part of a Platoon Commander fighting over small fields, hedgerows and country barns, in “The Biggest Game of All”, players would become “Army Generals”, fighting over all of the County’s towns, villages and hamlets, all in a swirl of action around the ultimate prize, the historic City of Hereford!

Is this even possible, and if so, how? Would it not require wholesale changes to everyone’s well-established “Went the Day Well” Platoons, with all the fuss and bother that such entails - and which must at all costs be avoided? The ‘short answer’ to these proper questions is: if the Central Illinois Tabletop Wargamers could represent the entire Soviet Union in their 1/72 (or 20mm) wargame scale and keep to their established (20mm) “Command Decision” tabletop rules, it should be possible to represent Herefordshire in 28mm with the WTDW rules. It’s surely just (a small?) matter of changing the ‘representation parameters’ of the WTDW game - but without changing the number or organisation of the troops available! So much for the short answer; the ‘long answer’ and all "bathtub ramifications" will be developed over a series of irregular blog posts to follow….