On terrain, part 2

Yesterday I rambled on and on about how important terrain is, and how it's nice to have a fully painted table of terrain, over which you can play games with your fully painted armies.

In that article, i mentioned being able to cram a few large tables full of terrain. By that, i don't mean dressing the table with more than the required minimum of 2 items per 2' square, or whatever. By that i mean crammed to the point where there is little to no table visible, just terrain with occasional cracks where pieces meet.

This got me thinking on what is the topic of today's post: terrain density.

The amount of terrain you put on a table, as well as the type and size of such, can greatly affect the game in terms of how units move, where they deploy, and how they fight. To explain this further, I'll take 2 extremes, and look at how they will shape the game. The first is the open field, with maybe a few knolls, hedges and such; the second is the hyper dense terrain, say the Battle of Berlin in 1945, fighting in dense forest, like the numerous armies that were lost, throughout history, in the Black Forest, or a fight inside a modern warship, or an office block.

Open field

With an open field, there's very little to provide cover from enemy fire, or to obscure line of sight. There's also little to impede movement. This sort of terrain suits big units, whether tanks, cavalry blocks, artillery or regiments of infantry in tight formation.

For the tanks, they can move fairly freely and quickly to wherever will give them the best shot, take the shot, then move on, since there's nothing stopping them. This is, essentially, why tanks became so important in the North African front in WWII: across the desert, speed and firepower can do things that infantry, slowed by the loose sand, can't. Of course, the lack of cover makes tanks vulnerable, especially against other tanks, but most have enough armour to survive a few hits, and so the game becomes one of movement rather than static bombardment.

Whenever we think of cavalry, whether the charge of the Light Brigade, knights at Agincourt or Hastings, or the 7th Cavalry in the Indian Wars, it's almost always an image of them charging, in formation, across an empty field. On an open field, cavalry can really put their inherent speed to good use. A true cavalry on cavalry action is almost balletic in its flow. Whether it's squadrons of lancers aiming for the perfect charge or waves of pistol armed Ritteren delivering devastating volleys of fire at close range before they swing away to reload, an open field gives them the space to perform their dance without tripping over terrain.

Artillery's ability to dominate an open field cannot be overstated. With little to obscure the view, little to block shots, and a range to make the most of that, while, hopefully, staying out of small arms range, a battery of cannon, mortars or such can pick and choose its targets freely, without having to worry about return fire, unless from enemy artillery. The aforementioned charge of the Light Brigade, is a case in point: the Russian artillery was well dug in, with controlling arcs of fire, and enfilading batteries, an almost insurmountable foe.

The last category that excels in the open field is less a unit type, more a way of war. The Crimean War was a turning point in military thinking. It was the last major conflict wherein both sides used fixed formations. For more than 2 millennia, most significant European armies had been focused around the use of formation and repetition to maximise utility of their forces. Think the Roman legionary block, with a wall of shields with swords sticking through, or the Napoleonic rifle company advancing slowly, as the forward ranks fired and the rear ranks reloaded, ready to step forward to firing positions. Over open terrain, with primitive weapons, these large formations can move freely and choose their attack fronts and such, like tanks and cavalry, above. The huge blocks of troops make casualties less crippling, and so allow the formation to maintain its fighting strength far longer. They also allow for rotation of troops on the front line, so, when a soldier begins to weary in the front ranks, he can swap out with a more rested comrade from further back.

Of course, while these formation tactics worked well in Classical Greece, and held their own into the early 17th century, the increasing shift to firearms, especially the rise of cannon and rifles, simply made them too vulnerable. Those vulnerabilities, of course, were always there. The Romans lost legions in Scotland and Germany because of their being totally unprepared for anything but formation fighting, some of their few, but most devastating losses of the expansion of the early empire. Similarly, while the battle of Thermopylae was a great example of formation fighting, with a comparatively small number of Greeks holding a narrow pass against insurmountable odds, by restricting the ability of the Persians to manoeuvre and optimise their attack, it also shows the weakness of formations, with the Greeks falling when the Persians got a unit behind them, restricting their ability to manoeuvre and rotate troops.

Well, that's a decent sized ramble on open field tables. Look out for part 2, when we get down and dirty in hyper dense terrain.