Quote:
Originally Posted by bwridge
In M44, you can rationalize the card play as a simulation of the breakdowns in communication that occasionally plagued armies of the time. You could easily say, "Damn, my radioman was killed so I can't give them orders," and view your lack of options as a feature of the game. But in a fantasy milieu... does this comm breakdown make sense? Wouldn't there be psychics to handle this sort of thing? Or magic?
|
Historically, command and control was a huge problem in armies, especially pre-modern ones. The Battle of Hastings, for example, was being won by the English until two things happened: the arrow to Harold (which he initially survived) and the success of the Normans into taunting a significant portion of the English line into a counter charge. The failure to communicate that Harold lived and to control the army enough to hold formation turned the tide.
As for the psychics or magic controlling it, how are those better than modern radios? Your mage gets killed, the sgt. in a unit a psychic keyed into is slowed down by an injury, the other guys psychics are shielding your units from communications, etc. If magic was widespread enough and reliable enough to provide such communication it would probably be used for other things and remove the whole army from swords and grunts in general much as technology improved not replaced runners with radios but bows with rifles and catapults with artillery batteries.
Instead, magic in this game seems closer to early medieval cannons, a devestating but limited and unreliable plus.