Battlefield Philosophy – Part I

Down in the Trenches is a blog run by one of my gaming buddies, and he started his content by offering a quote from “The Art of War.” He wanted to get a conversation started on how Sun Tzu’s writings can be applied. While he didn’t necessarily specify an area of applicability, I’m going to be applying the principles and ideas strictly to wargaming for the purposes of this “answer” article.

On to the first quote, which can be found at:

http://www.downinthetrench.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-beginning.html

Of Old the skilled first made themselves invincible to await the enemy’s vincibility.

Invincibility lies in oneself.

Vincibility lies in the enemy.

Thus the skilled can make themselves invincible.

They cannot cause the enemy’s vincibility.

Thus it is said, “Victory can be known. It cannot be made.”

The following is a second (sadly less poetic) translation of the same passage, which sheds additional light on the work:

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.

In any wargame, you must balance risk with reward, and you must do it consistently to ensure victory. Random variables on the actual battlefield (weather, courage) and random variables on the tabletop (dice) will always play their role, but their effect can be dampened by consistently striking a balance between risk and reward.

There are many practices that work to make this balance a reality. As always, knowing your own capabilities and those of your opponent are crucial to this process, and this is the main driving point from the passage.

We know, of course, that a warrior is not invincible because he is good at combat. Rather, the idea of being beyond defeat comes from proper deployment, allocation, and execution of combat principles. From there, the work of an armed force becomes like the work of a boxer. The two opponents deploy and counter-deploy, waiting for the other side to make a mistake that can be capitalized upon. This is where the last part of our passage applies. Victory cannot be made; we must wait for the opponent to make the weakness for us. Once it exists, we can know of it and exploit it.

As a working example, I’ll use a Dropzone Commander game that I recently played. The mission was Encroachment, and the goal was to destroy more of the opponent’s forces than you lost in return. You scored points equal to squads totally destroyed, and you earned extra points for getting units into the enemy deployment zone.

I was playing Shaltari Tribes, and my opponent was playing Scourge. For my 40k-only readers, the Shaltari are very maneuverable, but they aren’t that survivable when they do get hit. The Scourge are a “Rush ‘Em and Crush ‘Em” style army, with emphasis on top-end speed and maximum firepower at close range.

I knew that as long as I kept my distance, I’d be able to mitigate casualties while still dealing a fair amount of punishment in return. I deployed my anti-air assets evenly across the line to prevent any aircraft encroachment, and then settled a pile of big guns into a central killing field.

A brief consideration of the passage above is in order. The first step is to know yourself, and to guard against potential defeat. My even distribution of AA and central focus on firepower were designed to ensure this. I knew my opponent would be closing with me quickly, because it benefits his army’s playstyle and has the added benefit of aiding him in the mission. By leaving all of my forces in one area, I prevented fast runs on stragglers. This helped to force his hand and bring his units where I wanted them.

All of my units deployed on the table with the exceptions of my infantry and my gates. As these came into play I used them to reposition elements of my army, and I also used them to move deep into his deployment zone. I did this in an attempt to force his hand into a defensive posture, splitting his efforts at a drive on my firebase and (hopefully) causing confusion as to where I would make my own push.

Again, this plays to the principle from “The Art of War.” I was using these advance elements in an attempt to open a weakness in my opponent’s forces. If I could draw out particular elements of his army over time, I could use my superior mobility with the gates to force bad matchups against his units. This strategy allowed me to keep a firebase intact to repulse his initial advances, while simultaneously setting up to exploit any weaknesses that opened in his line.

Sadly, we weren’t able to finish this game due to time constraints. I’d love to go back and finish what we started, because our armies were just truly reaching the stages of engagement. With any luck I’ll have a game or two of Dropzone this weekend, which will allow me to look at this principle in more depth.

If I could summarize this passage from “The Art of War” into a single word, it would have to be patience. You cannot force the weakness to open in your opponent’s approach. All you can do is keep tight control over your own elements and retain the initiative until that crucial gap opens.