Mission Command – recreational wargaming with a surprising difference!

This post is an introduction to Mission Command, a set of miniatures rules that I’m working on with Pete Connew. It’s currently being written with an expectation of completion before October of this year in a state fit for publication.

Jun44: 1/125 PzGds, 21 Pz Div on dawn manoeuvres

Mission Command is a set of World War Two recreational wargaming rules for use with miniatures. The rules attempt to capture the essence of operational combat command from roughly company level to army corps level without the bloodshed, fear, death and destruction normally associated with actual warfare. The focus of the rules is on helping players to learn more about the effectiveness (or otherwise) of a national army’s operational doctrine – its way of fighting – during the Second World War using tabletop miniatures.

Why do we need another set of World War Two figure wargaming rules? Mission Command was borne out of a desire to discover a set of World War Two miniatures rules that satisfied our wargaming group’s interest in relatively large operational level games that permitted the use of ‘realistic’ national doctrines. We had experimented for several years with various rules sets, but found that differences in doctrine were rarely covered; for example in one rules set a Dutch battalion’s organisation and capability was almost identical to a Japanese one, when in fact there are some significant differences. In addition many Second World War rule sets focus primarily on tanks and other vehicles, whereas many, if not most, Second World War engagements were characterised by infantry combat or combined arms battles involving large numbers of foot soldiers.

Our distinctive approach with Mission Command is to provide a model that attempts to reflect doctrine, particularly in command, control and communications, and to enable players to integrate the various types of troops in an historical fashion. With Mission Command, if you’re handling a German Panzer Division, it will be a different experience from handling an equivalent Soviet unit. This approach places these rules at the simulation side of the simulation versus game spectrum.

Courland Jan ’45: Russian Reserves Moving Forward

A Mission Command game is founded on realistic, historically accurate or pseudo-historical scenarios that present background information and occasionally some pre-game activity. The game itself is run by one or two umpires, who will supervise and facilitate the game for two teams of players. In very large games each side may be divided up into smaller command teams, typically one operational commander, a chief of staff in charge of orders and liaison with other friendly teams, and an intelligence officer responsible for gathering information about the enemy and making appropriate plans. One player in the team may usefully be given command of artillery fire plans.

Pleskau Autumn ’44: Death Of A Tiger

In Mission Command, the exercise of command, control and communications is not as abstracted as in most modern wargames – there are no command dice, no PIPs and no artificial ‘fog of war’ mechanisms. Each command of company level or above has to be given orders at the start of the game which can be modified later, but orders are brief. Communications and changes of orders are carried out by command units, but as units are restricted by the necessities of combat, players will find that they have to make difficult choices about what they do during combat; fog of war, imperfect information and sometimes confusion emerge naturally from the interactions of players attempting to carry out operations in accordance with doctrinal restrictions and complicated tactical situations.

I hope that these few paragraphs help to convey what we’re attempting with Mission Command. As our review and re-write of the rules continues over the coming weeks, I’ll continue this blog to keep you up-to-date.

Pegasus Bridge, 6 Jun ’44: Lucky Luftwaffe

Asculum, 279 BC, 1 April 2012

Preamble

No, not an April Fool’s joke, but a genuine play of Asculum using the Lost Battles historical setup.

We played twice properly, swapping sides, having played once on Saturday with so many rules mistakes that we discounted that game (we were both very tired having been playing various board games on Friday night with late night and early rising to follow). We’re both experienced wargamers and have crossed swords many times. I strongly suspect that Bart may be the better player, so I have to go with the virtue of experience over ability.

In game one I was the Greeks, Bart the Romans. We were playing with Favour of the Gods, in an attempt to iron out some of the more extravagant combat dice results. Asculum pits an early Roman legionary army against a later Greek one that includes phalanxes (but not hoplites), a smattering of elephants, together with significantly strong cavalry. A major difference is in the leadership with Pyrrus an inspiring leader for the Greeks versus a couple of uninspiring Roman commanders, Decius and Saverius.

Game on!

My plan was relatively cautious. Although I was stronger in cavalry, it seemed to me that the power of the Greek phalanxes and veteran cavalry with the inspiring Pyrrhus in the middle ought to be enough to overwhelm the legions, while the primary danger of defeat lay in the Romans winning with their cavalry on one or other of the flanks. So my plan was to neutralise both flanks and crush the legions in the centre.

As the elephants (the Greeks have 2 x Indian elephant units) are at an advantage against cavalry, I moved them out to each flank to support the existing cavalry and discourage Bart from advancing on either flank. I advanced my whole centre line joining up with the 3 units that start in a forward position. This helps a lot on the right centre, which thus has 4 phalanx units forming 2 powerful attack blocks against heavy infantry. The Roman legions moved up to meet me in the centre, facing about their cavalry on the flanks but not advancing it. Whichever one of us advanced their cavalry first would be subject to a move and attack, so it didn’t seem to be in either of our interests to take the risk at that point.

I launched attacks along the line to commence the destruction of the legions. I had some very good combat dice rolls, with a couple of double hits by committing to all-out attacks. Interestingly he hadn’t screened his legions with the Light Infantry (perhaps misunderstanding the rules) and I recall that he moved them to support the cavalry instead. That meant he took the two hits each time on the legions. Unfortunately for me, his counter-attacks were successful and I had a phalanx and a heavy infantry shattered.

Although the early exchanges were roughly even, it was clear that the Greeks had an easier time of it – Pyrrus giving 4 exemptions is key to the Greek advantage, on top of the phalanx bonuses, only partially off-set by the defensive bonus of fresh legions. With inactive flanks the Greeks could afford to spend command points like water to give attack bonuses (especially as I rolled well on the extra dice most times). The following couple of turns were very one sided with the legions taking a hammering (all but one were spent), whereas only 3 Greek units became spent. I was waiting for the moment to unleash the Guard cavalry to complete the victory.

The Romans knew the battle was lost, so Bart decided to minimise the defeat and withdraw before I could shatter his army. As I hadn’t advanced on the flank of any of his legions, he took advantage of the free 180 degree turn, which enabled him to disengage. He sensibly covered the withdrawal of his battle line with his cavalry, swinging both cavalry units from his right flank into the centre to prevent my veterans from thundering into the rear of the legions. I wasn’t able to shatter either of the shielding units, though both became spent. He then had enough command points to abandon the field without further loss, ending with only a couple of fresh units but none shattered.

First Decision Point

Totting up the points, we found that the Greeks had achieved a major game victory by 92 points to 58. Bart was rather unhappy that he was effectively forced to withdraw by some rather excellent Greek combat rolls, and there was some truth in that.

Middle-amble

Later in the day we reversed sides. We’d discussed the first game, and Bart thought that maybe leaving the Romans on their base line might be a good tactic – if they didn’t advance, then the Greeks wouldn’t get the first infantry attack, and if the Romans could inflict some early casualties, they might have a chance, whereas if it went pear-shaped they could get away more quickly. I thought this was a bit of a defeatist approach, as you would be conceding the morale effect of losing the centre spaces without a fight.

My plan in this second game was to try out a regular Roman attack suggested by the deployment, namely push forward in the middle, and use the cavalry on the flanks to force a way past one or other flank and turn on the relatively inflexible phalanxes from flank or rear.

Game Two!

In fact, this was what happened, except *to* the Romans rather than *by* the Romans. Bart-Pyrrus reinforced his right flank cavalry with a second veteran cavalry unit from the centre and pushed them forward. In the centre I covered the legions with the Light Infantry, which gave the latter a little bit of protection, while Bart led with the eflephants – requiring only 1 command for an attack bonus is a significant advantage, expecially as they can be withdrawn if spent. Unfortunately for me the Greeks again got the best dice rolls. I attempted to fight my way forward with my right flank cavalry, so that I would have a similar advantage to his likely win on my left. I also tried a manoeuvre by withdrawing my right centre, to lure him into a very shaky (for me) trap, hoping that my right flank cavalry would win and could attack him in the front and flank at the same time. Withdrawal also saved me a command point that I could use for boosting the cavalry attack. I also hoped to gain some points advantage as he was leading with the elephants (4 points, as opposed to 3 for his infantry).

It didn’t work. Not only did my cavalry fail to sweep away the enemy cavalry, my left flank cavalry were minced in very short order, and I soon found 3 units of fresh cavalry behind me. Saverius withdrew some legionaries in good order covered by the right flank cavalry, leaving Decius to his fate. 30 points were shattered (doubled to 60 of course in the final count).

Second Decision Point

The result was 116 to 74, so although the Romans had inflicted more damage than in the previous game, they taken proportionately more through not being able to withdraw as quickly, owing to the Greeks pushing through the left flank.

It’s all Greek

Overall we both enjoyed the games a lot, and we were finding in the second game that it was relatively easy to remember the combat modifiers. The influence of broad tactical decisions is striking – for example overlapping a flank with cavalry effectively prevents a large infantry group from withdrawing without taking inordinate losses, so the flank engagements are critical (and correctly so). Timing of advances and withdrawals, even in a battle as relatively simple as Asculum (no terrain and at least the Romans haven’t got complicated troop types), presents difficult decisions. Because the luck of combat can be a swing factor (in both games the Greeks got the better dice rolls), both players were trying to mitigate the risks by getting every ounce out of the available command points and combat modifiers. There were some really agonising decisions about whether to commit to an all out attack, especially for the weaker Romans, and about whether to give up the Favour of the Gods. Keeping the Favour was a good tactic, because it denied your opponent the use of it to re-roll poor dice.

As a result of the two games (admittedly not a large sample), we would suggest that the Romans may have had some additional advantage at Asculum from somewhere, either in terms of numbers, effectiveness or terrain, otherwise a long attritional battle seems unlikely. Both our games were over by Turn 6 I think. It might be interesting to give the Romans a smattering of veterans for example. Or alternatively the historical Greeks were just not as good on the day as our Greeks were. The phalanxes (in pairs) are good against the legions. Pyrrus’ exemptions mean that the Greeks are rarely stretched for command points, whereas the Romans often are. So leadership was a major factor here, with Pyrrus’ Guard cavalry a potential battle winner. I wonder if Pyrrus was perhaps reluctant to commit his high quality cavalry? If this might have been the case, then perhaps the Greeks could be deprived of some veteran cavalry to reflect this. However, our battles demonstrated that it does take quite a lot to beat down the legions, and in both games significant numbers were able to withdraw in good order when defeat looked inevitable.

A Wolfe at the Door

Before you read any further, I’ll say straight away that I like most of Martin Wallace’s games. I’ve also helped with play testing a few of them, including A Few Acres of Snow. I play wargames, board wargames, Euros and any other kind of board or card game I can get my hands on. I’ll happily play long, complex games like Through The Ages, Die Macher or Dominant Species, and I’ll happily play Dominion, 7 Wonders, or Parade. Heck, I’ll even play High Frontier! Up Front, 7th Fleet, Panzerarmee Afrika, Paths of Glory, SPI Quad Games, Napoleon’s Triumph – bring ‘em on.

Having said that, there are few games that will hit the table frequently, and fewer still that will stand the test of time. Games that I will play more than a dozen times a year are rare. If I’ve play tested a game, I’ll often not play it again on release, because it’s already old hat. This has happened with Key Market and Automobile for example. But I’ve already played A Few Acres of Snow more than a dozen times since it was published (and 2 more times this weekend). I’ve increased the pool of opponents by teaching it to half-a-dozen friends or more, some wargamers, some not. And I found myself teaching it again to someone I met over breakfast at The Cast Are Dice a couple of weeks ago. Let’s just say, it’s had a bit of an impact.

Topical application

The topic looks like one of those ‘can you make a good game out of this’ challenges. God’s Playground anyone? It’s the long conflict between the French and the British for control of North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So the coverage isn’t any particular war – and there were several, with periods of uneasy peace and localised outbreaks of hostilities when there was no European conflict. The game doesn’t model political realities; there’s no return of captured colonies in exchange for more valuable real estate in the Caribbean or India, for instance. Neither is there any attempt to portray military organisation or tactical considerations. If you thought Waterloo was abstract, then this is an even deeper level of abstraction. You won’t get a sense of the economic or social aspects of the period either.

A Few Acres of Snow has distilled the essence of the struggle for North America. It has captured the fundamentals of the strategic situation of both sides in a way that lets players carry out typical actions that feel right for the theme, describing enough detail to put you into the flow of the historical story from a military perspective. At the same time the game system has highly developed and well balanced mechanisms to enable the British player and the French player to create challenges for each other, to experiment with periods of relatively peaceful development and periods of intense conflict, and to discover novel strategic approaches to victory.

Dominion over Canada

As Martin admits in the Designer’s Notes, the main mechanic is similar to the deck building of Dominion, a mechanic that was also used in Fzzzt!, a recent game from my company, Surprised Stare Games, but in a very different context. Never let a good game mechanism pass you by, I say. AFAoS executes this brilliantly.

Players have two types of card. Location cards, one for each node on the map that can be occupied by that side, and Empire cards, which include military forces of several broad types, cards to manage your deck, and various specialist additions, including Native Americans. Location cards go into your collection when you take control of a spot on the board. Empire cards can be purchased for money from your very limited money supply (important note: although this is a Martin Wallace game, you get no loans!).

On your turn you use up cards from your hand to take actions, two per turn except for the first turn, when you only get one action. At the end of your go, you draw back to five cards in hand. All gained or used cards go into your discard pile, and when your deck runs out, you shuffle your discards to form a new draw deck. So new and used cards will usually flow through your discard pile, back into your deck and return to your hand in a subsequent turn when you draw more cards. The primary effect of this mechanism is that you won’t normally have access to new cards or locations you’ve just captured until some time later in the game. As cards representing military forces are also discarded when used – siege warfare is the primary type of conflict – these will also take a while to return to your hand for re-use. The effect of the mechanism is to vary the tempo of the game significantly, because there will be periods when you’re waiting for the right combination of cards to appear to enable you to carry out a successful attack, to develop a location or to get your people moving to the next settlement site.

There are some clever mechanisms that players can use to overcome the limitations of this basic flow of cards. The major one is the Reserve. As an action a single card in hand can be placed into your Reserve, up to a limit of five cards in total. These cards are no longer in your hand or deck, so they don’t clog up your flow of cards. You can retrieve them during your turn as a ‘free action’, an action that doesn’t count against your two action limit, but you must pay money to get them back, one per card. However, it’s an all or nothing deal; you either buy back all of them or none, so the bigger your Reserve the more expensive it is to retrieve it, and you have to buy back the ones you don’t want as well as the ones you do.

Both sides can discard cards. The first discard is free, but if you want to discard more than one card in one action, each subsequent card costs one money. Both sides also have a Governor card that can be used to remove one or two cards back to the stock of Empire or Location cards, taking them out of your ‘live’ collection entirely, effectively thinning your deck.

Both sides also have the powerful Home Support card, the Ancestral Recall of A Few Acres of Snow. Draw three cards as a free action – no down side! Finally the French have the Intendant, a very useful guy who can retrieve a single card from the discard pile.

Asymmetric Warfare

Another distinctive feature of the game is its asymmetry. The decks are asymmetric, as are the starting positions on the board. The British start with more money, fewer cards, an exclusively coastal position and more ships. The French have more military forces – they start with the only free-to-purchase military, a Regular Infantry card – and many more victory points, but with only one card they can use for settling, they have less potential for expansion and developing villages into towns. The British have the potential for more military power than the French, but they’ll have to buy those cards. They can use the powerful Merchant action to earn revenue, combining a ship card with money-earning locations. The main method for the French to get money is by trading furs, using the combination of Trader and locations with a fur symbol.

It’s a wargame, stupid

A Few Acres of Snow is a wargame, and most games will be decided by military activity, even if it’s only purchase of military cards to thwart your opponent’s ambitions. As befits the period, the main regular military activity is the siege of villages and towns, often fortified. Sieges are represented abstractly, and each side can commit to only one attack at a time. You win a siege only when your commitment of troops exceeds your opponent’s by three at the start of [b]your [/b]turn, modified in some cases by fortification or garrisons. So military activity can boil down to using up actions to save a location, or to force your opponent to save a location. Sieges can be protracted, and curiously it can pay both sides to leave their military engaged, as this will ensure that military cards – useless outside a siege – do not clog up the deck.

While besieging places is basically a conquest strategy, the game enables players to indulge in a raiding strategy too. Native Americans can be recruited by both sides to ambush unsuspecting military forces and to raid enemy locations. Native Americans and a limited number of other cards can also block enemy raids, so raiding can become a to and fro affair.

Strategic card play

Winning the game comes in two main ways. Automatic victory can be achieved for the British by taking Quebec, or for the French by taking Boston or New York. Alternatively you can try for more victory points when one of the end game triggers happens. Victory points are awarded for control of important locations, doubled if these are upgraded from villages to towns, and for capture of enemy locations. The end of the game is triggered by placing all your villages or towns, or by acquiring 12 or more points from captures.

The asymmetric starting positions point the way to some very different strategies for each side. With more revenue potential and settlers, the British could commit to developing their coastal villages, while expanding into victory point rich new territory. This might also restrict French expansion. Alternatively they could build their military power and try to push into the St Lawrence aiming for the historically important locations at Port Royal and Louisburg, on the road to Quebec. The French, with their existing lead in VPs, might be tempted to buy more settlers and push for expansion and development, in a race for the end game condition of using up all town or village markers. However, there’s the temptation of a quick attack via Pemaquid to Boston, the fall of which would be an automatic French win.

Whatever initial strategies are chosen, it will be very important to keep an eye on your opponent’s purchases. Falling behind in military potential could lead to loss of key locations by sieges. Having a large deck with a high proportion of inefficient cards – too many unimportant location cards for example – will help your opponent to an advantage in settling or access to military strength.

Mapping the wilderness

There has been some criticism (see other threads) of the game, largely because the relationships between locations for settling and raiding are not spelled out clearly in a small number of cases. However, these have now been entirely clarified by a couple of downloadable maps. These are only minor criticisms and mostly in corner cases. As in most games, an attentive reading of the rules and cards (a lost art amongst a high proportion of gamers!) will resolve the vast majority of difficulties.

Top of the Pops

Current rankings of A Few Acres of Snow on BGG tell a good story:

Board Game Rank: 213
War Game Rank: 20
Strategy Game Rank: 76

And the trend is still up. Even taking into account a tendency amongst some wargamers on BGG towards hyperbole, it’s difficult to gainsay these figures. My own view, having played A Few Acres of Snow regularly against a variety of experienced and inexperienced opponents, is that it deserves these high ratings and sets a new standard for innovation and replayability in board wargaming.

Essence of a wargame – V

…part V and the concluding part of a two-part series…

For the others in this series, see: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.

In this series I’ve been attempting to examine qualitative excellence under these headings:

• Convincing portrayal of topic
• Encouraging players to carry out believable actions within the game’s context
• Excellent fit of mechanics to topic
• Appropriate level of challenge

This post draws some vague and unscientific conclusions from what’s gone before.

Excellence may be purely comparative; perhaps an ‘excellent’ game has to be outstanding or extremely good merely in comparison with other offerings. This may mean that an ‘excellent’ game under one paradigm might be only ‘good’ under another. For example, what do we think of La Grande Armee, a traditional hex-and-counter SPI game with an unmounted, minimalist board and very little chrome, compared with a new extravaganza like The Eagle and The Lion? Perhaps BoardGameGeek might supply a little help here, as it does have ratings for board games, so we can get an idea of what BGGers at least think of board wargames past and present.

A quick and dirty review of the top 100 wargames on BGG by rating gives the following frequency results by 5 year date bands (these dates being publication dates):

• Before 1980:  5
• 1980 – 84:  9
• 1985 – 89:  6
• 1990 – 94:  6
• 1995 – 99:  4
• 2000-04: 15
• 2005-10: 55

As expected perhaps, the majority of the games listed were published in the last five years, but it’s noticeable that 20% are over 20 years old and 5% are even older. There are fewer from the 1990s than the 1980s, reflecting the demise of SPI and Avalon Hill presumably. Both Squad Leader and Advanced Squad Leader figure high up in the list, as does Britannia, even though these could be considered as more ‘old style traditional’ than exhibiting more recent design features. So we can perhaps conclude that ‘older paradigm’ wargames can stand the test of time.

I’ll now try to review the 4 headings I dreamt up, by looking across each of my three examples for any threads that seem relevant.

Convincing portrayal of topic

I think that the essence of this aspect is covered by the level of detail of the game, the quality and effectiveness of the chrome used, how the game is placed in its context, and the games’s historical or thematic authenticity. All these elements must gel together to convince the players that the topic is covered well. I don’t mean that the game has to have a lot of detail, or over-developed colourful pieces, excessive background or extraordinary adherence to historical reality. The design should cover all of these elements at an appropriate degree for the aim of the design. This will be different for a tactical game versus a strategic game, a short game versus a ‘monster’ game.

Encouraging players to carry out believable actions within the game’s context

Players should feel that they are making relevant and believable decisions within realistic restrictions. There is a game design problem here, in that there will sometimes have to be a compromise between historicity and competitive game play; for example World War I and II games tend not to reflect accurately the vast allied resource superiority, nor the political intricacies and personality clashes of the personnel involved. Most wargames are two player zero sum games, so there tend to be monolithic, single points of command (one player) and the advantages of the bird’s eye view (total or near total knowledge).  However, the game should present players with appropriate strategic or tactical decision-making points.

Victory in the game doesn’t have to equate to historical victory, and departure from the historical approach can be appropriate in the interests of game play; on the other hand, I recall the Kasserine Pass scenario in Desert Steel, which imposes historical deployments and historical victory conditions on both sides, making it extraordinarily difficult for the Germans to win (even though they did historically, which looks like a very against-the-odds result) – an important lesson perhaps that sometimes you’re given a task well beyond your means, and soldiers often have to just get on with it – and can sometimes succeed against all expectations. Finally the actions of the players should write a believable historical or thematic story.

Excellent fit of mechanics to topic

Here I think the game has to encourage, not just enable, appropriate game play within period or theme. It must also simulate one or more aspects of the topic extremely well or provide exemplary flavour or both. The game play should have an appropriate tempo for the type of game and its theme. The mechanics should succeed in presenting relevant and appropriate effects during the story, for example by punishing a-historic action, rather than laying down the law, or through other subtle constraint on the players, for example through sequence of play (see Unhappy King Charles for some good examples of this practice). In some cases, games have to use proxies for some of the variables, a typical example being the use of dice for fog of war or chance in combat. For a game to achieve excellence, proxies must have been carefully chosen, so that they do not introduce unwelcome side effects. For example the cards used in Commands and Colors are a proxie for various command control issues; however, they can have the side effect of randomly crippling one side, because there is no way to remedy bad card draws.

Appropriate level of challenge

For excellence a board wargame needs to be a competitive game with a significant element of skill. How the luck to skill balance is handled is very much a matter of approach and style. I would rateNapoleon’s Triumph – no luck – very highly, but also games like Paths of Glory, where there is an element of luck in the order in which cards are drawn and also dice-based Combat Results Table. My preference is for more skill and less luck, but the balance depends on topic. For more complex games with a steep or long learning curve it is useful to provide introductory scenarios or graded challenges to help beginners. Play balance is important in the interests of fairness, though in many games, if the experience is sufficiently good then somewhat surprisingly this may not be vital.

I’ve come to the end of this rather longer than expected series. I’m still not certain of the validity of the insights here, but I think it gives an idea of my own thinking along these lines.

Dutch border, January 1814

2 April 2011 was another Saturday Frome miniatures game. This time a Napoleonic outing on the Dutch – French border (hah, Belgium doesn’t exist yet!) in January 1814. The Prussians and Russians (Pete and James) are invading mother France (Mike, Richard and myself). We appoint Mike CinC on the grounds that neither of us want the loneliness of command. Rules are 2nd edition General de Brigade (complete with the appallingly bad proof-reading errors – I hadn’t realised that this included misplaced pages and no page numbers; and yet the rules were still published and sold to customers! That publisher will not be getting my custom.)

Stephen (our umpire) gives both sides a fairly minimal briefing – at least we both have the identical difficulty there! Our objective is to push back the Allies towards their side of the board (north), or at the very least stop them advancing. Later, we learn that the Allied objective is to get forces off the southern edge of the board.

Early morning mist obscures the Allied advance, but the French can hear hooves and general movement from the north. We’re deployed well back from the halfway mark with ‘Defend’ and ‘Hold’ orders. The 2 brigades of my 2nd Div are on the left and centre (one supporting 2 batteries of artillery). The centre consists of the aforementioned artillery and a 2 battalion brigade to its right. Our right flank rests on a village and fortress (!) and consists of the 6 battalions of 1st Div plus 2 batteries in the fortress. Since our objective is to attack, we first have to change our orders. This takes 4 turns, owing to crappy command dice rolls, even though the CinC is right next to the 2 Div commander and lead Brigade commander. In my view this is a major rules problem.

By the time we get our orders changed, the mist is lifting – we can now see what we’re up against, and it’s not a pretty sight. The enemy has had time not only to deploy well forward, but to swing virtually their entire force against our left and centre, avoiding our 6 battalions and 2 batteries on the right. As we haven’t been able to change our orders, the 1st Div on the right will take much of the rest of the battle getting into position on the enemy’s left flank. It’s my 2nd Division (7 battalions including 2 of conscripts, plus 2 batteries of 8 pdrs), ostensibly our attacking force, that will have to take the brunt of the enemy attack – 14 battalions of their 18, plus 4 cavalry units (including 2 cossacks). And I have attack orders!

The lead cossacks withdraw and the first lines of enemy infantry advance into effective range of our batteries. First shot of the first battery is 1 and 1 : result is ‘low on ammo, half effect for rest of game’. What a great start! We have ammo caissons in the fortress, but that’s on the right flank and these aren’t going to help in time. The second battery gets a 6 + 6, and the enemy’s brigade commander’s horse bolts to our lines – captured!

My lead brigade has to advance a little, because it has Engage orders now. I’ve deployed in mixed order with 3 up and 1 back, supporting with 2nd brigade from the rear. Eventually the reserve brigade in the centre will get orders to support the artillery batteries (300 metres away!), but our command rolls are still terrible, and this takes far too long.

Enemy dragoons on the left flank cannot charge my leftmost battalion, owing to a useful patch of icy ground, so I anchor the left on this position. The other 3 battalions advance as slowly as possible within my order restrictions. The dragoons charge our skirmishers, who evade behind the main line, and the left battalion of conscripts (having been brought up from the brigade’s second line) manages to form square in response. It rolls to stand; another 1 + 1, which means the battalion retreats! Fortunately the dragoons haven’t got the momentum to reach them, and the rest of the first line is on ice, which prevents cavalry charges. We’re taking casualties from enemy jaeger with rifles and then fight the lead battalions of line infantry. One battalion is forced to retreat, and I manage to extricate the other one (conscripts) in column of divisions, because enemy infantry columns on the flank attack my guns and not the infantry.

Third round of battery firing, my second battery also rolls 1 + 1, so now the whole concentrated artillery brigade is firing at half effect. This does not discourage the advancing Prussians and Russians. We manage to beat off two attacks and support from the flank with a light infantry battalion of the 2nd brigade, but both batteries are overrun. The brigade supporting from the right is stopped by direct attack from 2 more enemy columns, and is also threatened by enemy cavalry to the flank. Fortunately our own cavalry manage a fairly dubious charge in column which disperses an enemy battalion column, and the enemy cavalry fails its morale roll and has to retreat.

On the left flank I manage to change the lead brigade’s orders to Move and the Div orders to Defend for the last turn of the game, while the 2nd brigade is on Assault and re-takes half of the gun position (guns already spiked though). On the right, Richard’s troops are now starting to punish the Russians and will soon threaten to outflank their artillery on a hill in the centre.

So by the end of the game the Russians are in position to get *some* troops off the table, but we’ve forced the Allies to re-think their attack and are threatening to close off this gap and to outflank their left. Stephen says that technically the French have won marginally, having done a bit better than the French on the day. It doesn’t feel like a victory to us – pretty much honours even – both sides could claim a marginal victory I think.

It was a very enjoyable game, though the French felt unduly ham-strung by crippled artillery and very poor command rolls. The Allies were affected quite a lot by having to start their light cavalry at the back of their columns (this was a historical affectation apparently), so that hampered the speed of their advance.

Essence of a wargame – IV

…part IV of a two-part series…

SPI’s La Grande Armee

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9077/la-grande-armee

Convincing portrayal of topic

This game is an old hex-and-counter strategic game. It’s one of the better SPI strategic games with some good but simple mechanics for army movement (breaking large units down to divisions, then stacking and recombining for combat; d6 with possible strength point loss for forced marches), supply (separate attackable supply units and depots), and Combat Results Table combat resolution. Nowadays it’d have lots of cards and funny dice, but probably to no better effect. It gives a good feel for Napoleonic strategy, with the French having to do a heck of a lot to win – 1805, 06, 07 and 09 scenarios (from memory). Stacking and unstacking restrictions and simple combat and movement strength variations give players the opportunity to use the armies in a way that feels historical. High score in this department, despite its lack of modern colour.

Encouraging players to carry out believable actions within the game’s context

French divisions – in game and in history – could march long and fast, then combine to form very powerful stacks modified positively by the French marshals, so sweeping Napoleonic manoeuvres were definitely not only possible in both, but also necessary for the French to achieve their decisive victories. For the Austrians, Russians and Prussians there are the strategic choices about whether to rush reserves up to support relatively weak forward forces or to march more circumspectly but risk being beaten in detail. Playing the French with caution or the Prussians with elan can be punished.

Victory conditions are carefully worked out to reflect the undoubted power of the French and the weakness of its ancien regime opponents. For example the Prussians don’t have to hold a lot to win the 1806 campaign! You could win the game, even if to all intents and purposes you lost the campaign, as long as you don’t lose too badly. And making good use of the excellent Prussian cavalry could potentially save you – something the Prussians historically were unable to do.

The game system encourages the telling of the historic story.

Excellent fit of mechanics to topic

I think that the simple design captures the essence of the topic well. A more modern game might have added more chrome (or heaven forbid, a tactical sub-system), but this game demonstrates the relatively straightforward strategic choices available, and allows players to concentrate on the more complex planning and implementation. For example, depots produce a supply unit every turn, so you can arrange a string of such units to supply your armies in position or in response to a slow advance. Concentrated armies need more supplies, dispersed ones can live off the land to an extent (dice rolling for potential losses). However, a rapid or forced march will outstrip the movement of the supply units, so you have to make alternative arrangements, perhaps using up supplies to force march other supply units, altering supply routes, creating new depots (a slow process), or just fighting less powerfully with less supplies (a battle generally consumes a supply unit, or you fight with less strength). This simple mechanical sub-system covers:

• Basic logistics of static armies
• The problem of supplying rapidly moving forces
• How to ensure that armies engaged in combat are supplied
• The extra logistical problems of switching the direction of attack
• Supply problems caused by divergent lines of attack
• The importance of defending lines of supply and vulnerable depots

As I recall, the game is significantly weaker in terms of command control rules, but in general the mechanics are an excellent fit.

Appropriate level of challenge

As I’ve mentioned, the victory conditions are set so that the French don’t merely have to win, but have to win each campaign decisively to win the game. This gives the players an appropriate level of challenge. It means that if you win a decisive tactical victory, but in the wrong place or at the wrong time, then you could still lose the game – it is the strategic situation that determines the outcome. Experienced players would develop delaying tactics for the weaker Austrian and Prussian forces, limiting French forced marches through astute use of cavalry, and perhaps sending outlying forces on wide flanking manoeuvres to threaten supplies. Keeping large armies in fortresses might be an appropriate method (fortresses have their own supplies), but you also need to know the victory conditions – besieged fortresses are automatically taken at the end of the scenario, yielding only half the victory points for the city, so the Austrians or Prussians might be able to win by only losing to a siege, rather than battling in the open field.

Having played many games of La Grande Armee I would say that it provides a good level of challenge.

Next: some conclusions?, http://benthamfish2.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/essence-of-a-wargame-%E2%80%93-v/

Essence of a wargame – III

continuing with part III of a two-part series…

Paths Of Glory

Convincing portrayal of topic

Definitely. The cards and rules restrictions give huge amounts of colour in that they are all derived from historical circumstances, and they strongly encourage political background actions to reflect this.

Encouraging players to carry out believable actions within the game’s context

The game restricts players to only 6 card plays per quarter of a year. So only important operations and events can be carried out. The players don’t represent a specific role, but rather a collective command view from either an Allied or Central Powers perspective.  This permits greater co-operation between fronts than would have been possible, and perhaps an air of unreality or ‘gaminess’ in the play. Certainly believable actions are possible, particularly attritional offensives. It seems much less likely to get to some of the hoped-for results that high command had, so players can become insulated from the expectations of success that pervaded high commands at times. There is also the problem that the VPs on the Turkish and Italian fronts make these more important than they actually were. These aspects may be necessary to make PoG into a more interesting game, but they do represent a compromise.

Excellent fit of mechanics to topic

The game has had some criticism because of its draconic approach to supply lines. If armies are cut off, then they are destroyed at the end of the turn, and have no attack capability in the meantime. I don’t agree with this criticism, preferring to see this as a way enforcing a more realistic approach to continuous front warfare.

I particularly like the rules that stacks cannot both move and attack, but only one or the other, and that moving units cannot end stacked with other units designated to attack. These rules ensure that there is no blitzkrieg possibility, and deployment of vast bodies of troops is necessarily cumbersome.

Appropriate level of challenge

PoG has a steep learning curve. It has a whole list of exceptions to the normal rules, in order to include or preclude a-historical events. For example German armies cannot end movement in the Channel Ports early in the game. These exceptions get in the way of a clean game system, but they add historical flavour and make the flow of the game feel right. So I give PoG the benefit of the doubt in this department.

Play balance has also been criticised by some. The primary scenario has a historical set-up and the nature of the strategic choices give the CP less chance of victory in a long game. This can be corrected; for example in tournament play auctioning using VPs will often mean a player spends 2 or 3 VPs in order to play the Allies.

Next: SPI’s La Grande Armee, http://benthamfish2.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/essence-of-a-wargame-%E2%80%93-iv/

Essence of a wargame – II

Being the second part of a mini-series (probably of 2) about what makes a great wargame.

In Part One I suggested 4 points that a great wargame needs to address:

• Convincing portrayal of topic
• Encouraging players to carry out believable actions within the game’s context
• Excellent fit of mechanics to topic
• Appropriate level of challenge

Assessment of games against these criteria is difficult to do in an objective way. While it might be possible to create some form of rating system with defined levels that seems a bit of a heavy weight tool and a lot of work. Instead I’ve taken more of a comparative and qualitative approach, which is probably indefensible scientically – but then again, this is a blog, so what the heck!

Now it might be a good idea to look for some examples of games that meet these criteria. What follows is of course my view based on necessarily limited experience despite over 40 years of wargaming. Ahem. Let’s start by considering the three games I’ve mentioned already: Up Front, Paths of Glory and La Grande Armee.

Up Front

the first of three assessed on these criteria (suggesting this series might be 4 or 5 posts).

Convincing portrayal of topic

This game is about WW2 infantry section combat. It has individual soldiers differentiated by their own characteristics for morale, and whether or not they have NCO rank. The focus on what happens to individual soldiers, and a high level of differentiation between weapons, including tanks and anti-tank guns, as well as a wide variety of scenarios and nationally characterised troops, make this a convincing portrayal in my view.  The use of individual cards rather than counters makes the troops feel more like real soldiers.

Encouraging players to carry out believable actions within the game’s context

Player actions are centred on a group structure (from 2 to 4 groups). Although this may not reflect historical doctrine, it permits the player to make fire or movement decisions that feel like believable decisions in the context of the game, as it is important to weigh up tactical circumstances against the possibilities presented by cards in hand and the state of one’s own and the enemy’s troops.

Excellent fit of mechanics to topic

Game mechanics for Up Front are designed to create short player turns with few decisions, so that action is fast and furious, interspersed with periods of inactivity, as players search for the right balance of cards for the next operation. In my view it is this aspect that portrays the ‘hurry up and wait’ nature of infantry operations.

Appropriate level of challenge

Up Front teaches the the game by gradually introducing more terrain and troop types as players progress through the rules. While this makes the rules difficult as a reference set, it improves the learning aspects. There is a mix of scenarios at all levels of complexity, and also a campaign system with points assigned to individual soldiers who can increase expertise through successes in scenarios. For those who want a tough challenge, try a parachute landing!

Next time : Paths of Glory, http://benthamfish2.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/essence-of-a-wargame-part-iii/

Last tank to Rossoszyca

Rossoszyca is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Warta, within Sieradz County,Łódź Voivodeship, in central Poland. It lies approximately 11 kilometres (7 mi) east of Warta, 12 km (7 mi) north of Sieradz, and 49 km (30 mi) west of the regional capital Łódź. The village has a population of 570. [Wikipedia]

Poland, of course, was the key country

(quote: W. Averell Harriman)

Abbey Wood Irregulars met on Saturday 5 March and transported themselves back to August 1944 into a fictional offensive by the German Army against the Soviet forces in Poland. Jerry (German CinC), J, Mike and Stephen led a German Corps consisting of 14 Panzer Division and 30 Infantry Division against Colin (Soviet CinC), Ed, Steve, Richard and James with a Soviet Tank Corps. Pete and myself were umpires, Pete having been the main organiser, responsible for most of the scenario and troop organisation with me doing a little to help, plus running intelligence briefings for Jerry and Colin. Thank goodness Jerry was running the Jerries and not the Russians – it saved a lot of confusion.

This 15mm miniatures wargame was one of our series using a revised version of the Wargames Research Group 1973 rules for the period 1925 to 1950.

Cover of original WGRG rules

Our changes to the rules have been fairly radical, starting with the game scale: we play 1mm = 2m ground scale, with 1 infantry figure = 10 men, 1 vehicle figure = from 3 to 5 actual vehicles. This means that we can play large scale battles in 15mm, as long as we have access to a large hall, which we do at the re-furbished Bennett Centre, St John the Baptist Church Hall, Frome. We’ve streamlined the rule set a little to make it quicker to play, but in the main have adhered to its design principles, stressing command, control, communications and different tactical doctrine. These are all reflected very well in the rules, such that German and Russian methods are very different, with the Germans able to operate flexible ‘mission command’ kampfgruppen created from diverse formations, while the Russians tend towards greater centralisation and are less able to react to local circumstances, their disadvantages usually off-set by superior numbers – though not today.

I covered the couple of innovations for this game in my previous blog post. Basically, we have a new method of basing infantry companies, representing company capability, rather than company structures, and we ran a series of one-on-one games across 40 grid squares, rather than one massive table. Another shift is that we play bounds as either ‘hot’ or ‘cold’. The latter are 15 minute turns when troops are relatively distant from each other, so to speed up play movement is x5 and firing x2. This represents a period of relative calm when the two sides are not closely engaged (mostly outside 500m) and reserves can be brought up quickly. Hot turns are normal turns, 5 minutes long and with normal movement and firing.

For our engagement in Poland we used about 16 6′ x 2’6″ tables. Ten of them were set out in pairs to form five 6′x5′ playing areas, leaving the remaining six for the CinCs to use for miniatures plus command, control, communications and, at times, intelligence. The CinCs were separated by a self-standing partition, so they couldn’t see into each others’ command area, and so they could pin maps up. Did I mention we had a lot of space?

Preliminary skirmishing

Before we went head-to-head on Saturday, there was a bit of argy-bargy in the form of planning and reconnaissance from both sides. The terrain in the battle area was mainly fairly flat, occasionally rolling plains, with some significant woods, sparse small towns and villages, even sparser roads, and a series of streams on the western end, leading into a lake. The German positions were off the south map edge, the Russians anywhere desired on map. The overall strategic position was that the German forces formed the southern pincer of a two-pronged attack that aimed to meet roughly at the top of the map to cut off Russian forces off-map to the west. The Russians aimed to stop this pincer using their on-map forces plus potentially reinforcements from the east, but not from the west.

West part of map

East part of the map

The German commander initially planned to launch a broad front attack from A1 to A4, leading off with infantry to clear the towns, villages and woods, then sweeping forward with the panzers later on. Looking back on it, the umpires should probably have presumed that both sides would use standard recce doctrine; but in our wisdom we decided to let the CinCs do it themselves. This led to some relatively ad hoc recce by the Germans, who kept the Luftwaffe under wraps and were not keen on using vehicles – they wanted to see but not be seen or heard. Eventually at D-Day-1 the Germans carried out some more serious ground recce, and we presumed a reasonable degree of air too – or the attack would have been in the dark. By this means the Germans found out that the Russians were deployed in some depth, but not dug in, as the Tank Corps had only arrived a few days previously and there hadn’t been time for much construction work. The Russians also discovered more or less what they were up against, but were not aware of the extra battalion of Tigers attached to 14 Pz, nor of the extra infantry (a PzGren battalion and fleshing out of 30 Div) the Germans had to beef up their attack.

The Russians were deployed in several main groupings from Okun Mahr to Szadek, Rossosyzca to Warja and occupied the woods around both Szadek and Rossosyzca, with a forward (forlorn hope?) of a tank battalion and a part of a motorised brigade north of Sieradz, but not in the town. It turned out that owing to a confusion about the map scale the Russians had deployed their artillery out of range of the German deployment area, so they couldn’t do early counter-battery fire. They also distributed their artillery across the front, rather than the normal Russian practice of concentrating it. On the other hand, the Germans concentrated theirs, so there was rather a cross-over of doctrine; the Germans had centralised artillery and a large scale infantry attack, while the Russians had local artillery support with a mobile defence.

Achtung Panzer!

Remember that saying that no plan survives the first encounter with the enemy? Well, the German plan didn’t survive first encounter with the other German players. Ditching the idea of leading with the infantry, the Germans revised their plan and sensibly led off with 14 Panzer. Their initial pre-game deployment meant they were restricted to A1 – A4, which was possibly not the best tank country. However, it turned out that the potentially awkward watery bits were only about 6″ deep and no real impediment to tanks. The Germans started with a 3 hour artillery barrage (again more characteristically Russian than German) on Sieradz, Rossosyzca and environs. Relatively little damage was done, though the Russians lost some mortars, AT guns and quite a few American trucks.

The game structure was intended to permit sweeping tactical moves, encounter engagements, rearguard actions and set piece battles, and so it turned out. The umpires initially planned for up to 4 rounds of 90 minute to 2 hour engagements, with maybe 15 minutes break between each, for players to report back to CinCs and for them to log losses, decide on routes of advance and where to direct reserves, and for the umpires to set up new terrain. We expected to have each pair of combatants fighting on one table in one round, then, if one player had crossed the table, we’d give the winning forces an advantage on the next table, dependent on the amount of time taken to achieve the victory. The next round would then follow with ground gained immediately by the previously victorious side, so getting a time advantage too.

In reality we ended up with 3 formal rounds, but also a number of rolling advances across several tables during single rounds, as small Russian delaying forces were either dealt with or avoided by the German panzer thrusts, keen to get forward as fast as possible. This worked quite well, even though it meant we had to set up new tables rapidly in response to direction changes from the lead German commanders. It also meant, I think, that Russian command control was stretched to react to many different potential threats; fortunately Colin was well organised, or it could have gone very badly wrong. For the final round, we even had a situation at C3 and C4 where two German attacks were going in alongside each other separated by a wood, so we pushed the tables together, in case they interacted. In fact the woods meant that these were treated as separate battles by the commanders.

As umpires we tried to remain flexible in our approach and to go with the flow of how the players wanted the game to develop. It would have been a mistake to stick to an inflexible approach of 4 defined rounds, especially as the rules permitted a lot of up the line and back again communication with CinCs. It was slightly unfortunate that we were 2 players short, because I would have preferred the CinCs to be sat only at their command posts, relying on reports from their sub-commanders prior to making decisions, but we had to get them involved in actual direct fighting, which had the effect of unrealistically shortening the lines of communications. I suspect this was to the slight advantage of the Russians, who were thereby able to react more quickly perhaps than they should have been. Hey ho, slightly reduced fog of war, I guess.

Looking from west to east, the Germans starting in A1 made rapid advances against relatively small forces from A1 through B1 and to C1, using the Tiger Battalion and a battalion of Panzer IVs supported by motorised infantry and recce following up from Sieradz area. The Germans starting in A2 got stopped cold north of Sieradz by a strong showing from Richard with a handful of T34s and some supporting infantry. Richard held his position all day without losing a tank, and dealing out quite a bit of damage to the Germans, despite pretty lousy shooting dice from his tanks most of the time. The Germans were slightly nonplussed by the lack of any Russians at all in the town, which they’d flattened with the late night artillery barrage. They also lost several vehicles including a Stug III to mines on the roads (a typical dirty trick from Colin!). However, to be fair to the Germans, Pz Grenadiers went round to both left and right of the Russian positions and swept on to support the main attack towards the lake. By the end of the day, the Germans had about a couple of companies in the north of Sieradz with AT guns, but they’d lost all but one of their Assault Guns in the Stug Battalion to T34s, as well as a number of vehicles to air attack. However, these Soviets were in a precarious position owing to what was happening to left and right.

German Schwerpunkt: frontages and objective

In A3 and A4 the German Recce, Panther and Pz IV battalions were storming forward against light Russian forces, who were retiring on their main positions around Rossosyzca and Szadek. The Germans made quite good use of smoke in response to taking fire – though it would have been better perhaps to put down pre-emptive smoke screens as part of a fire plan. It’s a curious fact that wargamers only seem to remember smoke reactively; perhaps because they’re not actually going to be shot at in reality. Also most German artillery fire was in response to local conditions, whereas most Russians was pre-planned, so that aspect of doctrine went well. It’s very difficult to get players to do artillery fire plans when short staffed – there’s no time.

By the time the Germans had penetrated across B3, B4, B5, the Russian artillery was becoming effective. They had some well chosen pre-registered barrage lines which upset the Germans considerably. In addition a regiment of Katyusha rocket launchers is a major event, even to Panthers and this caused a lot of pain to J’s advance, because they had a very well-sited forward observer. Fortunately for the Germans J detached a Panther company, covered by smoke, and in possibly the best tactical manoeuvre of the game this company was able to engage and destroy the Katyushas in the open, despite the covering support of a swarm of T34s, who were outranged by the Panthers. This bit of the action showed the very real danger of a German break through – it can devastate enemy artillery, and in fact this action might have been even more decisive if it had been the whole Panther battalion instead of one company – but they had other fish to fry.

While the Russians had been pushed back on their main position in the east around Szadek, on the western flank the position was dire. This main German armoured thrust pushed due north from A1, then round the east of the lake, sweeping away the small Russian defence force. They then discovered that, except for some artillery that had to make a break away from the area to survive, there was nothing barring them from the north. The Russians had not reacted quickly to the threat on this flank and were unable to get significant forces there in time to prevent the German link-up with the northern pincer, despite the existence of unengaged Russian armour (including KVs) far to the east. This was before the final round of the game, and with the backup of German infantry from the Sieradz area, it was clear that the Germans had achieved at least a tactical victory.

If the Russians could pull something out of the bag around Rossosyzca, then they might be able to reinforce their positions north of Sieradz and choke off the break through. On the other hand the Germans were rampaging towards Rossosyzca from the south and south-east with two battalions of armour, about 4 battalions of motorised infantry, a battalion of assault guns and an armoured recce battalion. Against them were a brigade of T34s, a motorised infantry brigade plus all of the Soviet self-propelled artillery. A major punch-up ensued.

While the German infantry and assault guns approached the Russian infantry positions in C3, the biggest tank engagement was happening to their left in C4. Colin had cleverly lined the edge of the wood with dummy tanks that were duly engaged by the Panthers, who were then engaged by successive AT gun positions as the Panthers came into effective range. The Soviets had hoped to squeeze the Germans by attacking simultaneously from the north with T34s and SU122s, but German smoke screened the north attack successfully. At this stage the Germans had the advantage in numbers and range, though the SU122s were remarkably effective in an antitank role, and the Panthers’ guns were not as effective as they might have been. I think the Germans should have manoeuvred by companies to flank the SUs to take advantage of the Panther turret, while the SUs would have had to move to keep them in arc.

Saving the day for the Soviets another two battalions of T34s arrived, having motored from off-map to the east through Sieradz to join their comrades. Choosing to throw these in as quickly as possible, again the tanks were not manoeuvred, but came up alongside their buddies, barely able to flank the Panthers. It would have been more audacious to swing them round to the south to cut off the Germans. By the end of the armoured engagement honours were even, with only half a dozen vehicles left on each side. The Russians were perhaps the more grateful, as stopping the Germans here meant that the Germans were unable to convert their victory into an outright strategic one, as the Russian Tank Corps still had plenty of fight left, and the right hand German armoured attack had been blunted. Panther, Panther, Burning Bright was an alternative title to this post!

So the Germans achieved a tactical victory on the day, but the Russians could take some comfort from the fact that they would have been able to fight on and the German breakthrough might perhaps be threatened in the days to come.

The Aftermath

The game designers’ main objective had been to try out our new infantry rules and the experiment of the ‘chequerboard’ style of play. The former hadn’t caused any particular difficulties, though further play testing would be required because there had been relatively little infantry fighting. It was nice to see that there was no gung ho charging into contact with infantry mounted in vehicles, which we’ve seen and seen punished in earlier games!

Chequerboard play was very well received; everyone seemed to enjoy it, and it meant that virtually everyone was busy from start to finish. There was also a much better sense of movement and a mobile tank battle than in a more conventional single table game. Here, I think we got a sense of the ranges of things rather better; that heavy artillery needs to be used effectively from distance, but that troops also need good support from mortars and lighter artillery pieces with a shorter communication distance to react to local circumstances – for smoke especially. Germans leading from the front can advance very fast, as their doctrine permits a lot of initiative to local commanders, whereas the Russians are much more conscious of senior commanders making decisions.

Many favourable comments have been received, and I present a few of those in conclusion.

“I thought the game worked very well. And gave that extra strategic edge that some of the other single table games seem to lack. Maybe a map with pins in to represent unit locations, on the day? So that the CinC can have a better idea where the troops have moved to? I think we lost a Motor Rifle Bt, because it was forgotten about! I found on all of my tables that we played almost constantly in hot moves. When a cold turn was being played, we did it in single turn steps with a short pause from J to let me ‘react’ to his movements. With the table so much smaller than normal the extra speed gained from the cold moves was almost null and void!”

“The only Inf I used died/surrendered rather quickly. The only thing that I feel might need some amendments is the morale rules. I had a company = a tank/AT gun. And in the end, I never really had to take any moral tests! It did seem a little off as my AT guns were down to 60% effectives, in the regiment. And carried on fighting. At the time I was happy to carry on brewing up Panthers but it should possibly be looked at for the next game!” [We've noted this for a rules revision - morale in this set was by company, regardless of what 'company' actually meant.]

“Everyone picked it up really quickly, certainly made things a lot swifter, & the potential bonus on the next table was a big incentive to not hang around. There’s still a few issues of communication to be ironed out. Air cover as I found out – was a must…”

“The length of cold turns could be sorted out by a roll on an average dice, air power was always a threat unless fog-bound.”

“Regarding Cold Bounds: Maybe there could be a Cold variable for say 3 x Normal movement for a Lorried/Motorised/Tank/Assault Gun Battalion under Mortar or Arty fire? Not going to move as fast as a normal Cold bound, but the intensity of plunging shells, means they could leg it as long as they don’t fire(pedal-to-the-metal, don’t-look-back-type-thing).”

Damn – I forgot to take pix, so this is a very text-heavy post! More pictures next time. [If anyone took any on Saturday, please let me have copies, and I'll add some in!]

WW2 miniatures – WGRG 1973 revised and revisited again

All preps now done for our next Wargames Research Group 1973 revised ruleset outing. This is the sixth game in our regular-ish series, running at 2 per year.

For tomorrow’s game, we’re attempting a historically based, but not actually historical, situation, set in Poland in 1944. The Germans are counter-attacking against a Russian armoured force. Both sides have considerable trimmings – can’t give away too much as the blog has ears!

There are two main differences in the format of this game that make it more than usually interesting. It is our first attempt to run the new infantry rules we’ve been developing. These are intended to speed up infantry combat, to represent the Command/Control, Firepower (capability) and Morale (resilience) effects of a company – not individual figures or individual stands. We’re modelling company level capability not actual structures, which, for a corps level game, is rather too much detail. We’ve focused in on the fact that a company basically has rifle power, LMG power, AT, mortar and other specialist functions, plus command. It’s the distribution and tactical use of these systems that gives each nationality its different doctrine in the use of infantry. Our design of infantry elements is intended to represent this company level capability and doctrine, rather than platoon or squad organisation. So, for example, late war German infantry have a predominance of infantry support weapons and less riflemen, whereas the Russians have large concentrations of rifles, but fewer LMGs and supports. This means that German firepower can be maintained even if extensive casualties are taken, whereas an equivalent Russian unit will tend to fade – of course the Russians will just stick another unit in! In addition the German infantry have very flexible heavy weapon support down to company level, whereas the Russians have separate battalions for support, requiring much more command effort.

The second innovation, developed by Pete, is to run the Corps level game via a series of separate one-on-one encounters between individual sub-commanders, while the C-in-Cs simply carry out the overall direction, in terms of grand tactical movement, reserve placement, and so on. Only the sub-commanders get to move the figures around. We will play up to 4 rounds of 90 minutes to 2 hours during the day. Rapid victory on one table can mean you get an advantage on the next table if following up. Also there’s the opportunity for long-range weapons to fire from one table across to another (some guns and howitzers have ranges of 4 km or more, and our tables are 2.5 km x 4km). We reckon to have up to 6 games running in a round (though more likely 4), so we may get 16 to 20 individual encounters.

We’ve had considerable pre-game action in terms of reconnaissance, and things are shaping up for an epic encounter. And at the very least we will have tested out this method.

Commands & Colours: Ancients – a few random thoughts about luck in games

I played this game a few times a while back – I believe in an online competition – and I didn’t much like it. There seemed far too much luck in it to make it a viable tactical game.

I’ve returned to it recently (online again on Vassal) as a break from playing more complex games like Paths of Glory and Through The Ages, and this experience has clarified why I don’t like it. Normally I wouldn’t post negative comments, but I think this one sheds light on why I got into game design in the first place, many moons ago.

CC:A’s rules explain the purpose behind the game:

“The Commands & Colors: Ancients game system allows players to effectively portray epic engagements of ancient history. The battles, showcased in the scenario section, focus on the historical deployment of forces and important terrain features on the scale of the game system…The Command card system drives movement, creates ‘fog of war’, and presents players with many interesting challenges and opportunities, while the battle dice resolve combat quickly and efficiently. The battlefield tactics you will need to execute to gain victory conform remarkably well to the strengths and limitations of the various ancient unit types, their weapons, the terrain, and history.”

That’s quite a series of claims in my view and may be purely marketing speak, so I’m not intending to critique the game on simulation grounds. However, the central tenet portrays CC:A as a tactical system in which you can make effective tactical decisions in a historical setting. In fact, the game system contains two major features in which luck plays an overriding role. One is the fog-of-war-creating command card system, and the other is the battle dice system.

My view of the command card system in CC:A is that the luck factor overwhelms the decisions that players must make for the management of a tactical engagement. Typically the cards restrict your tactical options as a poor proxy for ‘fog of war’. In fact, the cards can easily result in a complete inability to execute a perfectly plausible battle plan; for example I have played as Hannibal at Lake Trasimene and had no cards that allowed me to move the troops that were deployed to ambush the Romans until the very last turn of the game, in my view a perverse result. As you draw cards through the game, your best laid plans can come unstuck through simply failing to draw cards that support your battle plan or indeed any coherent battle plan at all. This means that the game degenerates into attempting to pick off any enemy units that happen to be vulnerable, while hoping that your’s aren’t so picked off, and occasionally carrying out simple combos to maximise the effectiveness of a power card, like Line Command or Darken the Skies.

I’ve always held to a basic tenet of game design that luck as a major factor must be deployed carefully, and a game system should preferably have not more than one major mechanic that is luck-based. In CC:A there’s the luck of the card drawing and also the luck of the battle dice. Troop types are differentiated by the battle dice they use (and also by movement), but with 6-sided dice, you’re basically at the mercy of the 1 in 6 limit – you cannot have a hit chance of less than 1 in 6. This means that poor troops can occasionally (note: occasionally, not rarely) be miraculously effective, and elite troops can occasionally be totally screwed. The variability of results in buckets of 6-sided dice are such that this can overwhelm your tactical planning.

Why have I brought this up? When I started gaming way back the late ’60s, pretty much all the games that I came into contact with relied on dice or random card draws for luck, and there were few well-developed game mechanisms compared to the current gaming scene, both wargames and board games. During the early ’70s when I was a relatively intelligent teenager, I was frustrated by this reliance on luck and worked on a few ideas of my own for injecting more skill and possibly a bit more historical realism into gaming, particularly wargaming, developing my own wargames rules and the occasional simple board game. Then, like many other gamers, I discovered SPI and some early published wargame rule sets, and quickly learned that there was more to gaming than rolling a bunch of dice and drawing from a common card pool; other mechanisms could be created.

Which brings me back to CC:A. I have the same frustrations with this game system that I had with the old systems of the ’60s and early ’70s. An over-reliance on luck and a game system that only pretends to provide the players with historical tactical choices, or indeed any real tactical choices at all. It has the merit of being a short game, so it’s over quickly. But this type of game is not what it’s dressed up to be. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why myself and a bunch of colleagues are working on a 21st century rule set based on the old 1973 Wargames Research Group WW2 rules, and why I keep returning to board wargame design.

Opinionated Gamers blog link added

It does what it says in the title.

Stabcon weekend

Managed to play the following games, unless I’ve missed a few:

• Totemo
• Dominant Species
• 7 Wonders several times
• Dixit
• Vasco da Gama
• Antics
• Adventurers
• CatASTROphe
• Workshop of the World
• Braggart

Thanks to Hammy and all the organisers for an excellent weekend.

Dominant Species

4-player game with 2 newbie players, plus Charlie and myself who’ve played it once complete 2-player.  When teaching D’Species I use the teaching script from BGG, which works well I think.  Maybe this is something that should be developed for all new complex games; noting that Richard Breese did this very effectively on the Geek for Key Market.  The game took 5 hours including explanation and will be quicker with players who know it.  I like this game a lot (and not just because I spent a lot of money on it!).  I’ve only started to scratch the surface of strategies – for example, my birds retreated to a Tundra and beyond domination strategy, owing to the ability to migrate to regions others couldn’t reach – and there are some excellent possibilities for tactical play, because of the large number of actions and action combinations that are available.  I believe it will be important to get out of the micro-management mindset and into strategic thinking for this game.

Seven Wonders

This has turned into the filler or short game of choice.  It’s particularly strong for this because it is very accessible, predictable in duration and can run with 3 to 7 with equal satisfaction (and has a 2-player variant I’ve not yet played).  In addition it’s not too demanding and seems not to permit the ‘expert’ player to dominate overly.

Dixit

We played Dixit a couple of times, then loaned it out for almost the whole weekend.  Possibly the most accessible and fun game for some while, and it appeals to a wide audience, including both casual and serious gamers.  The influence of the artwork alone in Dixit cannot be underestimated.

Vasco da Gama

We had a learning game of this with Paul and Hammy.  The initiative system is the core, and in my view it’s genius; I may have to nick that mechanism.  Hammy compared VdG to Caylus, and where I can see the similarities, I’d have to say I much prefer VdG, especially for its strategic aspects, which are absent from the older game.

Antics

90 minutes on the box, rather longer in real life for our first game!  Antics is much heavier than it looks, owing to the planning element.  I’d have to say, this was less fun and more serious than expected.  I’d want to play it with experienced and quick players I feel.  Please please, never ever write rules with puns and other non-essential stuff integrated into the body of the rules; it doesn’t help clarity or conciseness, and the joke wears off pretty much immediately.

Adventurers

Indiana Jones pure and simple.  Very well executed ‘temple robbing’ archaeology game, this was great fun for the start of Saturday morning; so much so that we played it twice.  There was some satisfaction from the other players in seeing Geoff’s character, loaded down with a winning amount of treasure and running for the exit, only to be crushed by the massive boulder because he failed to get a 1 or a 2 in the final 5-dice boulder movement roll!  Recommended.

CatASTROphe

A play test of one of SSG’s newest designs, still very much a work in progress.  More later on this.

Workshop of the World

Ragnar Brothers version of Brass / Age of Industry.  Not sure what I think of this one; more thought required.  I enjoyed it, but I’ll have to work out a comparison with other similar fare.

Braggart

A brilliant filler, not to be taken seriously!  Recommended.  And Vic did the artwork!

Games blog posts

Very sorry, but I can’t seem to get the habit of writing short, frequent blog posts.

Games weekend – 3-5 December 2010

First weekend of December is our regular post-Essen Games Weekend, when we get to play that large pile of games acquired at Spiel with as many of our friends as we can fit in the house.  I’m never sure of the numbers, but it’s usually around 30 people at one time or another from Friday evening to Sunday evening.  Unfortunately by the time I get to write up a blog post, it’s all getting to be a bit of a blur, owing to lack of sleep (not to mention excess of food and drink).  This time’s been no different.

I can only write from a personal perspective, so if I’ve missed out some of the significant events, many apologies, I’ve either forgotten them, or wasn’t a participant.  I’m also missing out any personal commentary on individuals to protect the guilty (except me) and indeed the innocent.

We had the best turnout on Friday evening that we’ve ever had.  Despite weather warnings, somewhat ameliorated by our emailed comment that there was little snow in Stroud (a situation that changed overnight), 9 or 10 people made it to Forest Green on Friday.  We decided to leave the meatier games till Saturday, so contented ourselves with 7 Wonders and Braggart mainly.  7 Wonders was almost never back in its box for the whole weekend, so gains the award for ‘Most Popular Game Of The Weekend’.

I managed to persuade an unsuspecting victim (sorry Bart) to play test Quatre Bras, my version of the battle of that name using Martin Wallace’s Waterloo system.  I reckon it went pretty well, though it was a bit longer than expected, owing to the unreasonable resistance of the Allies to the inexorable advance of the French – who advanced inexorably till about the 6pm game turn, then found the last mile a bit too difficult, ending up retreating in a more or less historical outcome; it’s always good if such a game can end with a believable result.  As Bart is Dutch, I’d have to say that the Dutch fought well, except for the Dutch cavalry, who were historically accurate.  Only one small tweak was necessary as a result of the play test, and I now feel it’s finished, subject to a few more games.  “Best Unpublished Wargame Of The Weekend”.

On Saturday we (well, I really) planned to play one or both of the major lengthy games purchased at Essen, High Frontier and Dominant Species.  However, prior to the arrival of all those who wanted to partake of those delights, we had time for a quick outbreak of cockney accents, in the playing of London, another Martin Wallace game.  Two of us had played before and the other two hadn’t, so it was something of a learning game – though when one of the newbies is Richard Breese, it’s going to be a challenge anyway.  I started off by expanding my city stacks to 7, which I didn’t think was excessive, except that everyone else retrenched to about 5, so the poor flocked to my bit of London, mostly south of the river.  We failed to invest in Street Lights or Sewers, so by the end of the game my poverty level cost me 30 points.  Despite 2 Undergrounds, the train system south of London and various high profile buildings, I was third out of four players in VPs, unable to overcome the overcrowding.  An enjoyable game, though there was some criticism of the rather anti-climactic end game, which lacks the pace of the rest of the game.  London was played another couple of times, so London probably takes the “Most Popular Board Game Of The Weekend”.

High Frontier: finally it hit the table in a 5-player extravaganza of high tech science and engineering.  The game that *is* rocket science!  In space no-one can hear you say “WTF?!?”  Personally the game was everything I thought it was going to be: complicated, complex, unforgiving, dense, deep and supremely challenging.  It was also very frustrating, that aspect partly generated by my hostly duties that ate into my thinking time (getting my excuses in early!) – next outing will have to be a pre-planned and dedicated HF time.  We played the basic (sic) game with the quick (sic) start rules that mean you start with 3 cards in your ‘where you put your hand of cards area’ [this is a game where your cards in hand have to be displayed next to your play mat not in kept in hand, where you burn water for fuel, where you can use water tanks to upload software upgrades and where only the Chinese can do nefarious actions].  I’m not going to attempt a rules explanation or review here; see http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/580382/up-in-space-without-a-warp-drive-a-review-of-high for my review on BGG.  Suffice it to say that there seemed to be considerable range in the speed with which players picked up the game, and I wasn’t at the top of the range.  My initial operations were to claim some areas away from the competition, but unfortunately that meant that my areas were time consuming to get to, whereas perhaps the more popular Martian landscape might have been easier.  By the end of the game I think we’d all created at least one factory and its product, so as a learning game we’d achieved the objective of getting our heads around the basics.  Rules were consulted many times, as expected, but things will go much more smoothly in the second game.  Won’t they?

Apparently not for me, because we had a second go early on Sunday, and I made a pig’s ear out of a mission to Mercury, then a further part of a pig out of a plan to go to Venus.  Bart seemed to get the hang of it pretty quickly though.  High Frontier’s definitely “Most Unforgiving Game Of The Decade”.

But I’m slightly ahead of myself.  Saturday evening, after a memorable pork roast (thanks, Charlie), four of us unpacked Merkator, Uwe Rosenberg’s latest offering and another one on my must play list this weekend.  It’s a lot shorter and, I feel, more accessible than either Agricola or Le Havre.  The game revolves around picking up goods and fulfilling contracts at various European locations from the perspective of Hamburg merchants during the period of the 30 Years War.  I’m not sure why the game has a 30 Years War theme, because it doesn’t really impact on the game at all, other than that the final card in the game is the Peace of Westphalia (and quite why that’s a contract card is a mystery). I guess the theme has been pasted on over the top of a pretty good game system – the game works, so I’m not unhappy.  Goods are coloured cubes (there’s novelty), but each colour represents one of two kinds, determined when received.  Most contracts require specific goods, or for the more expensive ones, a number of goods from a group of types, for example ’4 types of food’, which could be satisfied by wine, livestock, grain and plums.  Play Merkator and see the world – well, a bit of Europe anyway; travel is the central mechanic.  You gain or lose time counters depending on the location you choose to go to, broadly the further away from Hamburg the more difficult.  Importantly any other player can pay you time counters in order to accompany you on your journey, and though only the active player can pick up the stock of goods there, accompanying players can still gain bonuses and fulfil contracts.  This little mechanic can give you almost another whole turn for relatively little cost, if your opponent is going to a location that’s key for you.  The pace of the game is steady, with thinking time taking place primarily in other player’s turns.  Progression is via the neat mechanic that rewards players who fulfil contracts with a further contract of the next level up.  So you can progress from the starting contracts with values of 2 to 5, through 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, all of which have more difficult conditions but gain you more VPs.  The final contract is the Peace of Westphalia (14 points), awarded to the first player to fulfil a 10 value contract.  VPs are gained from the value of your best 5 contracts, the others being only half their value, with additions from special buildings that give VPs for specific conditions.  I enjoyed the game a lot; recommended for those who like solid and interesting resource management Eurogames.

Final game late on Saturday was Der Ausreisser, which was fun as always.  “Most Fun Game With Counters.”

Sunday, after a disastrous replay of High Frontier, three of us took up the Dominant Species challenge.  Another biggie, possibly the biggest heft factor since Die Macher.  Each player, for example, gets 50 cubes representing the species in his or her group of animals (ours were Mammals, Reptiles and Birds), plus 6 action pawns, quite a few cones to mark domination, and there are innumerable tiles, markers and cards, plus a very large and well-designed board.  I would put the complexity at roughly the same as Die Macher, but the subject matter (Darwinian survival of the fittest before the onset of an Ice Age) more accessible.  There are lots of pros to DS; firstly it has the best laid out and best written rules I’ve seen.  We occasionally had to look things up, but I don’t recall us having any actual problems with rules interpretation.  Most of the information is on well laid out player mats, or on a clear top left to bottom right action placement and action sequence section of the board.  This is another pro, and is where the complexity arises, because the actions interlock and affect in various ways how your animals survive and prosper.  Illustrating this:

• I want to Adapt, because my creatures will match environmental elements (bugs, sun, carrion, seeds, water for example) better, and can then dominate terrain tiles.
• I want Abundance, because I can put more of the relevant environmental elements on the board and then dominate more terrain tiles.
• I want to be in charge of Glaciation, so that I put the advancing tundra tiles (the Ice Age remember?) where I choose, so that my domination of terrain tiles isn’t threatened.
• I want to do the Wanderlust action, because I can put new terrain tiles down, so my creatures can expand into and dominate them.
• I want to Migrate, so that I can move my creatures to more suitable terrain tiles and away from the advancing tundra.
• I want to Speciate, because that means I put more cubes on the board; a cube equals another species, more cubes means I get points if the tile scores.
• I want to Compete and eliminate species of the other players, so that I can dominate terrain tiles.
• But most of all I want to Dominate, so I can score terrain tiles that I’ve got most cubes on and that I also dominate.  Then I get VPs, and I can play one of the very powerful Dominant Species cards, one of the five visible cards who’s effects I’ve been drooling about since the start of the turn.

That’s not all of the actions I could carry out, but most of them.  And I’ve only got 6 action pawns in the 3-player game.  So I’ll have to make difficult life and death choices; each of my cubes is a whole species, and some are going down to extinction, never to return (except of course through play of a Dominant Species card).  Scoring varies dependent on the terrain tile, with the player having most cubes getting most points, BUT the player with the best adapted (dominant) species picks a Dominant Species card to play; domination can come with as few as one cube.

We played about half a game, then decided to call it, as it was getting late in the day.  I think we’d all cottoned on to the flow of the mechanics, though not yet to actual strategies.  I felt I had enough to work with, I could see how the game fitted together and would welcome many more plays to see how the strategies themselves evolved.  I think the other two players were perhaps less clear about how the mechanics meshed, but would certainly play again.  From my point of view, a good experience and starting point on what I hope will be a longer journey of Dominant Species enjoyment.  “Heaviest Heft Of The Weekend”.

Our final game was with Pete Burley and son, Fred, a play test of Pete’s new game Space Hockey, an abstract two player football-like game, set in space.  As this was a play test, I’ll probably write more on it another time.  Suffice to say, it worked extremely well, I liked it a lot, and I’m looking forward to playing again.

In conclusion I had a great time over the whole weekend, and it certainly looked as if everyone else did too.  My thanks go out to all who made it through the ice and snow to make it such an enjoyable gaming experience.

Essence of a great war-game – I

Whiling away some time in Birmingham airport, delayed by snow in Edinburgh, I’ve recorded some thoughts on what makes a really great war-game for me.

I’ve discussed my current list below and summarised it here.

• Convincing portrayal of topic
• Encouraging players to carry out believable actions within the game’s context
• Excellent fit of mechanics to topic
• Appropriate level of challenge

This is all personal and not terribly analytical, because players and designers have their own views of what makes a great board or card war-game. I’m looking for the essence here, not just examples, although I’ve tried to illustrate my points with concrete examples from my own experience.

First I’ll define some terms. I mean “great” not just good, so the principles have to be capable of producing excellence. “Wargame” – let’s use a fairly broad definition to include board and card games that have the topic of “warfare”. And I would include things like Twilight Struggle, that isn’t about “hot” war but is generally included amongst war-games. However, I’m excluding non-warfare conflict games and also miniatures from this exercise.

Topic is vital. This doesn’t mean that the game has to be in a popular period, or in an obscure one. Execution of the topic aspects has to make the game believable. What do I mean by “believability”?  I think this goes to the heart of the “theme v simulation” debate that I have rehearsed elsewhere. The game has to convince the players that it reflects an aspect of the reality or truth of the topic.  I think this could be achieved by theme or simulation.

An example of where this might be achieved by theme could be Up Front. I have heard it argued by people whose views I respect, that Up Front is a poor representation of WW2 infantry combat, and it pretty much fails on key simulation aspects – ground and distance relationships are abstract, command features are rudimentary, and you cannot carry out “realistic” doctrinal tactics. However, it seems to me that it captures some of the essence of fire, movement, morale and periods of inactivity that typify infantry combat.

An example of this from the simulation  perspective would be Paths of Glory. With its range of historical event cards that constrain play, and its effective strategic movement and combat rules, PoG gives an excellent flavour of the European strategic level conduct of WW1; it is a successful game and also to some extent a model of the WW1 European theatre, albeit that it compromises in favour of the game over the simulation.

The mechanics of our putative great wargame have to work very well within the game’s perspective and parameters (‘Weltanschauung’ is what I mean here).  This is not necessarily to do with how smooth and unwrinkled the game design is. Wargames are notorious for having clunky bits of law-based rules (the Germans in PoG shall not end their movement in the Channel ports in 1914 for example). Sometimes this feels necessary in war-games that attempt to portray or at least allow for what actually happened in history. Hence the predilection for card-driven systems, in which over-riding card can take care of awkward exceptions.

Great game mechanics have to do their job superbly within the context of the topic – they have to “fit” the topic. So a WW2 strategic game not only has to portray armoured warfare convincingly, but also has to have mechanics that enable players to carry out believable (theme or simulation) armoured operations. For a great game, I think this aspect of play should be positively encouraged, not just enabled.

This aspect is often helped by providing players with an historical role (a character or team) through which their actions are enacted. Typical strategic roles are high command teams, often implicit rather than explicit. “Being Napoleon” is a common wargamer role!

The mechanics have to either simulate an aspect of the topic very well or provide exemplary flavour or both. An example is the simple supply unit system in SPI’s La Grande Armee system, coupled with a forced march sub-system that allows French units greater latitude to break away from formal supply constraints than their Austrian, Prussian and Russian enemies.

The game also has to be a great game in its own right. It has to provide an appropriate level of challenge for its audience.

Component quality is a tricky one. Many would include this as a requirement, but traditionally war-games publishers have not been able to afford high quality components owing to the small size of markets. Personally I’m happy with cheap and cheerful hex and counter approaches, so I don’t include this as a requirement. Others may disagree.

To be continued … http://benthamfish2.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/essence-of-a-wargame-ii/

Dramatic Consequences Game Library

6 Nimmt	Key Market	Traders of Carthage
7 Wonders	Loco	Transamerica
7Up	London	Troyes
A La Carte	Magnum Sal	Tsuro
Adlung Land	Mai-star	Vasco da Gama
Age of Industry	Mamma Mia	War On Terror
Agricola	Master Of Rules	Waterloo/Quatre Bras
Agricola G deck	Medici v Strozzi	Whack a Catgirl
Alles im Eimer	Merkator	Zooloretto
Alles Tomate	Metro	Zug Um Zug
Antics	Mission Red Planet
Antigua	Mosaix
Attribute	Name Of The Rose
Ausreisser	No Thanks
Ave Caesar	Nobunaga
Battlestar Galactica	Notre Dame
Battlestar Galactica Pegasus	Odin’s Ravens
Bloody Legacy	Parade
Bottle Imp	Pass the Pigs
Bunny Bunny Moose Moose	Playing Cards
Caligula	Pocket Battles Celts & Romans
Canal Grande	Pocket Battles Orcs & Elves
Cartagena	Poison
Cartagena 2	Puerto Rico
Cat & Chocalate	Quirrly
Coloretto	Race for the Galaxy
Confucius	R-Eco
Coppertwaddle	Ricochet Robots
Die Fugger	Roll Through The Ages
Dixit	RRR
Dominant Species	San Juan
Dominion	Scandaroon
Einfach Genial	Sceptre of Zavandor
Endeavor	Shadow Hunters
Erosion	Small World
Fairy Tale	Spot
Farmers of the Moor	St Petersburg
Filou	Stack Market
Fzzzt x 2	String Railway
Gettysburg	Sun, Sea & Sand
Grimoire	Tara Seat of Kings
Igel Argern	The Resistance
Inca Empire	Thunderstone
Innovation	Tier auf Tier
Inquisitio	Totemo
Jet Set	Trader

Roll Through The Ages Yucata Tournie

I only decided to do this because it’s a nice quick game! However, Spiel des Jahres nominee, very accessible game and creditable online implementation has led to very large demand. Over 500 gamers had registered an interest in this online tournament several days prior to the advertised closing date. So it’s all kicked off early with yours truly as one of the many. And a few more games than expected. Lesson: read the tournie rules before signing up.

Ah well. I’ve won the first of 7 games.

In the Western Desert

Our WW2 game in the Western Desert turned out OK on Saturday.  Some players were a little nonplussed, because we allowed the Brits to carry out an extensive turning manoeuvre that placed them in the Italian rear, through the efficacy of placing some more tables.  This was somewhat unconventional, but I’m hoping that players will get used to the idea that the world doesn’t end at the table edge in our historical games.

Interestingly there was virtually no small arms fire in the game, as most elements were engaging at longer than 250m and often at longer than 500m.  Infantry was mostly smoke shrouded, or in the case of the Italians withdrew before enemy infantry could get into range, in order to avoid the Matildas.  The Matildas were pretty much invulnerable, as expected, except to Italian large howitzers, which could kill Matildas and Valentines on a 6 – quite a few 6s were rolled.

There were a few game design and development points to consider as a result of the game.  The concept of Cold Bounds (15 mins) and Hot Bounds (5 mins) certainly speeded up the flow of game time.  With the game starting well before dawn and the first pre-planned action due at 05:30, we still managed to play till 08:45 in game time, nearly 30 bounds done.  If we’d stuck to the traditional 5 minute turns, we would have completed barely an hour and a half of game time.  I think this worked well, because units at the edge of 500m range could decide not to engage (not firing) and force a Cold Bound; a withdrawal would enable their rearward units to catch up.  In a more traditional game, forward units tend to get mixed up in long range action to little effect but expenditure of time and effort.

However, there were some glitches:

• As all units can attack twice in a Cold Turn (although I failed to change it properly when I dropped the warm bound concept), artillery were able to bombard twice on the same location.  Nobody queried this, but moving units should only be subject to a single bombardment through a beaten zone.  This would possibly have made the Italian artillery a little less effective, though they did have double the normal allocation anyway.  We also failed to implement drift for newly targeted batteries, though actually most of the Italian fire was pre-programmed map fire so didn’t need it.
• We need a ruling on what happens if a battalion HQ is hit – this may not directly affect companies, except for disruption of communications.  But this still needs handling in the rules, and similarly for higher level HQs.
• The current rules don’t have an adequate sequence for air attacks, especially during Cold Bounds, so we improvised, allowing CAP to intercept and flak to fire prior to attack runs.  This was fine, so I’ll work it up to a proper sequence.
• There needs to be greater clarity in the rules on interrupting Cold Bounds – direct fire or movement within 500m makes it Hot; if the latter, then this will immediately make the Cold Bound into a Hot one, with loss of movement rate if not co-ordinated correctly by the phasing player.  This should reflect friction better in a multi-player game, but will require sensitive or at least firm umpiring.

For the next game, I want to have re-written the whole ruleset and hopefully have changed the dicing, so that we just use d10s for consistency.  2d10 would give a useful % feel to it as well.  This will give us the opportunity to review the weapons and armour penetration stats, as well as to consider our new plans for companies: we aim to reflect a company’s capability within its elements, but not its organisation.  So we may decide to have AT capability as a separate element, even though it might be integrated into platoons.

Previous games I’ve done cards for commands, which is too labour intensive.  This time we went the other way and didn’t have enough information about the commands.  The best solution is I think to have a specific play aid that includes only the weapon systems involved in the scenario, plus copies of the whole command structure of their side for each player, so they can see how it all fits together, using standard NATO symbols.  These could be crossed off as losses occur, or players can just rely on the figures.

More preparation time for players is required.  Perhaps we should have a more explicit lead-up to the day, with all details out to players a week in advance to permit planning and recce.  Both planning and recce, if taking place before the actual day, should be finished 2 or 3 real days in advance of the game, so that umpires can adjudicate and tell players what has happened.  There should only be a minimum of decisions by players for this – umpire it within the broad plans of each side.

It would help to have a complete breakdown of the whole sequence of play in detail (a la FoG).  Plus some areas need a bit more work: minefields, particularly clearing them, effect of artillery on them, time to repair, doctrines for laying and marking; effect of artillery on telephone lines needs clarification – I think Stephen was too generous to allow buried lines to survive artillery bombardment with no effect; combat within area effect smoke screens; conversion dice for well-dug-in infantry in trenches (not just slit trenches).

Just realised that I should really have taken some piccies.  Oh well, next time.

SSG at SN

An Essen veteran’s convention report from Essen Spiel ’10
From: Alan Paull, alias BenthamFish, a designer from a small UK publisher, Surprised Stare Games

It’s Spiel time again!

Tony Boydell, Charlie Paull and myself at Surprised Stare Games undertake a regular expedition to Essen in October each year that happens to coincide with Spiel. Since we always take along a van full of games on the expedition, it would be a shame not to exploit the opportunity to nip along to the Messe and present them for the delectation of the many gamers who congregate there. And with an empty van to bring back, why not add in a few new games for the return journey?

In short, it’s time for Spiel ’10.

Game Preparations [Monday]

This year Tony’s taking the van, while Charlie and I are driving across rather than flying. We can then meet up on the ferry both ways. Owing to stress levels, this is almost always a productive time for game design. Lots of notes and drawings are made, though sometimes the process can degenerate into games involving small brown cubes.

Stroud to Dover was our first leg – uneventful. Not even a traffic jam of note on the M25, though Ditzy (our satnav) took us south from Reading to link up with the M3 – didn’t feel like a great route.

We had to negotiate to get a little emergency help on the stand, because our German speaking helper was unfortunately ill in hospital – she wasn’t able to make it to Essen this year, but is happily back in action. Thanks very much to Chooi [Teik Chooi Oh] and Daniel [Daniel Danzer] for putting themselves forward and also to Philip [Philip Bolton], a friend of Chooi who was unstinting in providing his time and proved a worthy Totemo demonstrator.

Early start tomorrow (Tuesday) – up at 06:00 so we can get the early ferry and drive rapidly across to Essen, in order to put Totemo into the Press Room before it closes.

Game Preparations [Tuesday]

I’d prefer to rush through this part of the report, in the same way that we rushed through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and into Germany. Once you’ve done this drive a few times, it gets a bit stale and monotonous. Ditzy decided to give us a little bit of excitement. In preparation for the trip, I’d updated her maps, but she seemed to have difficulty interpreting the new ones. She kept insisting that we were on a parallel ‘virtual’ road at some distance from the real one. In the end we switched the SatNav off, when we realised that she’d placed the Messe to the south west of Essen in open fields with no roads and only a couple of railway lines for company. As it happens, we knew the way, so we could mostly avoid detours.

We also avoided the French fuel strike by remembering to fill up in Dover. My only worry was that there might have been a Dunkirk blockade – it’s happened before, but not around Essen time thank goodness. I guess there’s a game in there somewhere, but this time we managed our action points perfectly. Charlie and I arrived at the Messe in time to construct a nice little display of Totemo in the Press Room, complete with the large table-top blocks that Charlie had spent many an hour making and painting in the previous week.

Totemo in the Press Room at Spiel

 

Game Set-up [Wednesday]

All setup was done on time, so we were all ready by soon after lunchtime for the Thursday morning stampede! After our exorbitant expenditure on stand paraphenalia at our first Essen trip back in 2001, we no longer have special carpets and huge amounts of professional and expensive marketing materials and special furniture. We make do with 2 or 3 well designed banners, plus posters for the walls, lots of product, some shelving for the games, and most importantly chairs and tables for playing the games on. And for this year T O T E M O spelt out in large friendly blocks simulating the real wooden blocks of the game, made through the multiple talents of Mr Boydell.

Tony Boydell in SSG stand at Essen 2010

Most of our sales come from pre-orders, and converting players into purchasers. Essen is above all a convention for playing new games.

Thanks to Chooi and Philip for their help setting up. And also to all the old friends who dropped by to see us.

This year we are sharing our stand with Gavin, designer and producer of Cubiko. We’re also selling Octoputs, a game-for-charity produced by Mike Oakes.

Cubiko part of the SSG stand Spiel '10

Wednesday gives exhibitors an early opportunity to hunt out essential purchases while the mass audience has not yet arrived. It’s also press day, so it’s important with a new game to have the stand manned in case of media interest. At this time, we hope to encourage press who’ve seen the game in the Press Room to come to the stand for a closer look and a demo.

First purchases were High Frontier, Dominant Species (both on recommendation), Pocket Battles Orcs & Elves, Agricola G deck, Parade (a critical miss for us last year) and Bunny Bunny Moose Moose (and thanks, if that’s quite the right sentiment, to Kara from Leisure Games for introducing that one to us).

In the evening we play tested some stuff. Pete Armstrong had his game ‘Wild’, which looks like it has considerable potential. Its theme is African animals escaping from wildfire. Elephants, giraffes, rhinos & lions all are fighting to get away. Each player has one animal model of each type, and a hand of cards, either randomly drawn or from a pool of 3 face up cards, to try to match with their 4 animals. The cards are used to fight off opponents, though herding animals can coexist in the same space. Particular points in the design that I liked were: time pressure and graphics of the approaching wildfire; movement restrictions by keying each hex by animal; card pool for drawing from, which could probably be extended, and the basic combat mechanism – which was quick, simple and effective. We made several suggestions for possible improvemenst, and I’m looking forward to the next safari.

Then we had a quick 5-player go at Maureen Hiron’s new game ‘Up for Grabs’. I found it to be surprisingly fun! Not a game I would buy myself, but should have immense appeal to a mass market US audience.

The Spiel is A’Foot! [Thursday]

Unfortunately my post for Essen Thursday was lost when I published from the iPhone with no Internet connection . So this part of the report is a bit briefer than I’d like. After that I switched to composing the material in Notes then posting – see, I can learn!

We spent all day demonstrating Totemo (there’s a surprise). Players liked it a lot, particularly the graphics, and we were busy the whole time, which is always a good sign. Many happy gamers went away with a copy, though there’s always the disappointment when a group that obviously liked the game leave with a thank you but no copy. The nature of Essen is that people come to play and try out new games, but because of the hundreds of good and great new games that come out every year, no-one can buy everything that they want to.

Sales were moderate, bearing in mind that Totemo is not a traditional gamers’ game, and Thurday tends to be a gamers and collectors day. Totemo will perhaps have limited appeal to Eurogame collectors. We had lots of families on the stand which encouraged us for Saturday, the prime family day.

Phil demoing Totemo

We like to have a few language experts on our stand, though this year our German was not our strong point. Our best moment was Philip explaining Totemo in Japanese to Banesto Games! Not many stands can do that. Also Chooi had a chat with a Malaysian importer too, so we had a very multicultural day.

We also sold a small number of Confucius and Fzzzt! 2nd edition plus 5-6 player expansion – the new tin box edition that we have licenced to Gryphon Games.

We had productive meetings with Schmidt Spiele, FRED and Cryptozoic about future products too.

In conclusion for day one, we were reassuringly busy.

Further game play [Friday]

And the campaign continues…

Vicki’s artwork is going down a storm! Specific companies that have been impressed included Adlung Spiele, Gryphon Games and Kosmos, amongst others. Vicki is our illustrator for Totemo, having already impressed us with the box cover for Fzzzt! last year. She has also produced the artwork for Braggart card game produced by Spiral Galaxy Games, unfortunately not out for Essen, but expected before Christmas. She’s also our daughter, and I confess that her artistic flair is inherited from Charlie and definitely not me.

Today we had the opportunity to take some more display or play space, because the stand opposite was empty. It’s a curious situation that a company can book a 20m frontage stand, then not turn up. Though I thought this would be to the advantage of the organisers and ourselves, it proved to be too expensive, because Merz Verlag wanted to charge €400, and we would have had to rent or purchase furniture on top, making an extra cost of about €1,000. I had a wonderful response from neighbouring companies reflecting cultural differences. Myself, being English, was playing by the rules; the Poles had to refer up to a higher authority for a decision, and the Italians were all for just occupying the space without asking! In the end, none of the companies potentially involved expected to be able to cover the extra expense, so the mini-project didn’t materialise.

We met up with even more old friends, including Jonathan and Lucy from Blighty. Both we and they run well-attended games weekends though at opposite sides of the country. We didn’t manage a game with them, because our evening plans did not quite mesh. Sometimes at Essen, we only get to say ‘hi’, because we’re so busy.

We bought Troyes, a new Belgian Eurogame, and played it in the evening, 4-player with Sebastian [Sebastian Bleasdale, a well known UK games designer] and Caroline, his partner. For the first try it took perhaps 2.5 hours – the rules look pretty comprehensive; no problems with them. It’s a medium to heavy traditional Eurogame, and will probably take the 90-120 mins on the box. There’s a lot going on in the game. Worker placement gives access to mechanisms to convert resources to other types, and to generate VPs. However, the resources are primarily in the form of coloured dice – yellow for civil, white for religious, red for military. While high dice rolls help, they are not essential – in this game you can pay to use the other players’ dice, the price depending on the number of dice – from 1 to 3 – that you want to use for your action. Conversion of dice from one colour to another, adding to the dice total or other dice manipulation happens as part of your action, not as a separate one. Another great twist is that bonus VPs can be achieved through meeting the conditions set by your mentor (a character card randomly dealt at the start and hidden from tht other players). But everyone can get the bonuses from all the characters, so there’s an element of bluff. Recommended.

The game hots up! [Saturday]

Frenetic Saturday arrived at Spiel ’10. For the first time Surprised Stare Games has a product, in Totemo, that could be thought of as a Saturday game; one that will appeal to families and the general public. So it has transpired.

As usual the halls were packed wall to wall – though some exhibitors have said it wasn’t as crowded as in previous years. For us, it was unusually busy. Previously we have had massive crowds ignoring us on Saturday. This time we were demoing all day. Sales were also good for a Saturday. It helped that we were high up the GeekBuzz rankings for most of the day. We were also pleased that for quite a lot of the time we had two games in the top 30 – Fzzzt! 2nd edition and Totemo.

Overflow Playing

I had earlier picked up a copy of Pocket Battles: Orcs v Elves – a follow up to Celts v Romans and one that I had helped to play test. It’s a Z-man game designed by Paolo Mori and Francesco Sirocchi. I was also lucky enough to catch up with Paolo, as he stopped by the stand. Vasco de Gama expansion is due out soon, I hear.

In the evening we met up with another Alan, Sebastian and Caroline, and Jonathan and Lucy. Caroline introduced me to Mijnlieff and promptly thrashed me (at the game).

Then we gave Ascension a go. It was enjoyable, but why buy, play or design this rather than Dominion?

Finally we had a 6-player game of Parade. Few turns and I think driven more by the draw of cards than skill (and I won). Probably better with three or four.

Game end

The final day of Spiel ’10 dawned at, well, dawn. A quiet morning (tumbleweed slowly passing by) was followed by a much busier lunchtime and afternoon.

We made a few sales to shops, including the final one in the carpark after we had packed up! Thank you to Swan Panasia!

A few last minute swaps for Totemo with other designers included Sun, Sea and Sand (Cwali), Thunderstone, Antics (thanks Gordon). Weren’t able to swap for Mines of Zavandor as there wasn’t an English one available.

We got our copy of the English 7 Wonders and special T shirt, so it paid to be at the top of the waiting list. Also picked up Sceptre of Zavandor for 10€.

Packing up was swift if fraught, as we couldn’t bring the van to the stand – something about health and safety or German bureaucracy, take your pick. It meant we had to lug the lot out to the van in the parking area, under a time limit, because you’re only allowed a short window of time (30 minutes I think) with the van on site; if you take too long, you lose €50 deposit. Thanks to all the crew (including Julian, Pete and Gavin + Gavin’s dad). It was only on the Tuesday after we’d arrived back in England that we realised that we’d not packed up the game in the Press Room, so we lost the game, the cloth it was on, and Charlie’s hard-won special cubes .

Finally we had our usual wind down Mexican meal, a very relaxing and necessary ritual.

Team Totemo

The Spoils of Spiel ’10

What we’ve bought at Essen Spiel ’10 – too much as usual.

Essen 10 Purchases

7 Wonders
AdlungLand
Agricola Gamer’s Deck
Antics
Antigua
Bunny Bunny Moose Moose
Caligula
Cartagena 2
Cat and Chocolate
Dominant Species
Grimoire
Guided Lands
High Frontier + expansion
Inca Empire
Key Market
London
Magnum Sal
Mai-Star
Mercator
Mosaix
Nobunaga
Parade
Pocket Battles: Orcs & Elves
Quirrly
Ricochet Robots
RRR
Sceptre of Zavandor
Spot
String Railway
Sun, Sea & Sand
The Resistance
Thunderstone
Troyes

Up in space without a warp drive: a review of High Frontier

The Basics

This is a very complex game.  On the scale of ‘fun’ to ‘serious’, it’s definitely well over to the dour side.  High Frontier’s theme is “realistic” space exploration in the near future, in which all the technologies in the game are presented as close to the scientific and engineering horizons. Brief checking on the internet – Wikipedia’s always right, isn’t it? – suggests they are too.  An interesting feature of the game is the interpersing of scientific and engineering information as footnotes throughout the rules, culminating in ten pages of patent descriptions. We may all learn some astro-physics from this game!

Meet The Factions

The basic premise is that there are competing blocs on Earth – the UN, NASA, Shimizu Research, ESA Powersat and Chinese Territorial Claims – that are investing in space exploration, not so that they can gather resources, but for the exotic products that can be made there.  Phil Eklund, the designer, makes a convincing case for the idea, at least to this layman.  Unfortunately it seems impossible to resist acronymitis in this particular genre, and it starts here with “basal societal unit” or BSU as a description of a faction.

Each player represents one of the factions and has a starting Crew card and an advantage. For example NASA gains a water tank in low earth orbit whenever any faction “boosts” equipment into low earth orbit.  In addition to Crew, there are cards for Thrusters, Robonauts and Refineries.  Thrusters are required to make the rockets that are essential for exploration.  Robonauts are what you’d expect – robotic astronauts; they have the ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization) required for prospecting extraterrestrial sites.  Refineries make the space products that will bring you fame and glory.

Ops

Each turn players will carry out operations to further their dreams of galactic domination – well, solar system domination actually, because we’re not going beyond the asteroids until we get to the expansion game (not covered in this review).  Through operations you will get new Thrusters, Robonauts and Refineries, you will create rockets in low earth orbit, prospect sites out in space and create extraterrestrial factories and produce whizzy and terribly scientific interstellar tech stuff (WHATSITS… only kidding, I made that one up).  You’ll also need lots of water, which is held in low earth orbit in Water Tanks (WT) – these are the propellants for your rockets, and the scarcity of water in space is a primary reason for prospecting, lest your rockets get stranded.  Fortunately some places (Mars for example) have water in relative abundance, at least compared to its absolute absence in most of space.

Don’t get too carried away though.  Phil Eklund has managed to cram a lot of complexity into very few components that players can realistically get their hands on.  Typically you’ll only have one rocket with a small payload of one or two cards, a hand of not more than 4 research items, and a very few extraterrestrial bases.  The game ends when only a handful of factories are built.

If you need more stuff, you can always negotiate with the other players, and they’re likely to be equally needy, so I believe that player interaction may be an important part of successful play and a happy experience.

Blast Off!

A major complexity is moving your rocket.  The game has a workable, if not particularly friendly, movement system based on real physics.  Your movement rate will depend on the dry mass of your rocket including its payload, coupled with the thrust rating of the engine, modified by certain other conditions related to the type of rocket.  So you’ll need some fuel (water tanks), which will increase the total mass (or “wet mass”) of your rocket, resulting in a final acceleration figure that equals the number of burns your rocket can make in a single turn.  I hope you’re still with me; we have a way to go yet.

A rocket with robonaut and refinery payload

However, as each burn costs fuel, a very limited commodity owing to its mass, you’ll have to be very careful to consider the efficiency of your engine in relation to the wet mass of your rocket before you set off, or you’ll stop halfway to your goal.

While not having an insane vector movement system that some SF miniatures games have attempted, the game board is a bewildering 2D map of the near solar system, not unlike a deranged London Underground map (including the new Circle Line).  The lines on the map may go from side to side, as Pink Floyd said, but they also go round and round, and intertwine in a way that would have made the Great Cthulhu proud.  The lines are routes that space craft can travel along, complete with intersections for changing direction, and points at which you have to burn fuel (or more correctly, use your water propellant).  There are also planets, moons and asteroids, the targets of your journey.  Happily the designer has painted the most efficient routes in bold colours and labelled them with the number of burns required, so for example I can see how to get from LEO (low earth orbit, remember?) to Mars, and that it will cost me 3 burns.  Inexperienced space entrepreneurs are recommended to stick to these motorways and not to deviate onto the sideroads.

High Frontier: map section showing Earth

Brace, Brace!

Ok, so now you know how to get to your destination. There is also the tricky question of landing.  If you don’t have large and efficient engines, landing can cost you huge amounts of fuel, which of course increases the mass of your rocket, lengthens the time it takes to get anywhere and restricts the payload.  But without a satisfactory landing strategy your rocket will be, as the game euphemistically puts it, “decommissioned”.  A lot of time and effort can be wasted by involuntary decommissioning.  Mercifully I leave the technicalities of “crash hazards” and “aerobrake hazards” to the imagination.

In short, before you even consider lift-off, make sure mission control has a Really Good Plan.

Rocket in Mars low orbit

Darkness Descends

I had received mixed messages about High Frontier prior to acquiring a copy.  I’m now glad I have it, because it covers that niche of highly complex games that won’t hit the table frequently, but will be intensely enjoyable when it does, particularly in the company of experienced astronauts.  It has the admirable advantage of a script on the back page of the rulebook that you can read out to new players as an easy introduction.  And if their eyes glaze over after that, you can break out 7 Wonders instead.

High Frontier will not appeal to players who want an accessible, easily playable and fun game. Neither will it be of short duration, and the learning curve is steep.  For those who like an extreme challenge, planning in detail, and doing desperate deals with other players who can help you out with an extra water tank or that essential piece of kit you inadvertently left behind on Mars, then High Frontier is an excellent choice.

My favourite rule: “It is felonious to voluntarily decommission crew anywhere except at your ET factory or Low Earth Orbit”.

Published by: Sierra Madre Games
Designer: Phil Eklund
Players: 2-5 (1-5 with the expansion)
Age: 12+
Duration: 2-3 hours

Revising WGRG WW2 (North Africa game – for 6 Nov 2010)

Sorry for the rather cumbersome title on this post.  It refers to the revised Wargames Research Group 1925-50 rules that Pete Connew and I are developing over a long period of time for the Abbey Wood Irregulars. It’s a lengthy project, since we tend to bring out the WW2 stuff only twice a year.

So far we’ve played four scenarios:

• Part of Operation Goodwood, in which in our version the Brits got a pasting from Kampfgruppe Waldmuller of 12 SS Pz Div;
• German counter-attack around Pegasus Bridge on D-Day – a might-have-been scenario in which 21 Pz Div attacked in some force much earlier than historically and achieved significant success;
• A small part of Operation Crusader in the Western Desert, in which elements of 15 Pz Div attacked prepared British positions; early attacks were beaten off and we ran out of time;
• Courland Peninsula in January 1945.  The Russian 1 Tank Corps attacked advanced German positions with a view to pushing through enemy lines and exploiting to the rear.  The Russians put in a creditable attack, bearing in mind the inflexibility of Russian doctrine, but the Germans held their main position; again we ran out of time, unfortunately just before a major tank exchange, but it was an excellent game.

The emphasis in our version of the rules is on simulation of the historical doctrines, rather than simply on WW2 theme.  We’re not too fussed about exact differentiation between weapon systems, but we do care about command and control.  For this reason we attempt to model the formations down to company level reasonably accurately, acknowledging that we have limited sources of information (and some of these may represent wishful thinking rather than accuracy).  Communications are vital, and we model specifically the time delays that come with the changing of orders in response to changes to the tactical situation.  Modelling this aspect, including the time required for companies to react to their new orders, means that co-ordination between arms (for example artillery or air support) is realistically difficult.  We don’t have to resort to command pips or activation rolls, which most modern rules sets use as proxies for the confusion of battle.  With realistic force mixes, command levels and time delays, we find that co-ordination is realistically difficult and doesn’t have to rely on dice rolls.

I find that we prefer to use Division or larger formations, which gives us a bit of difficulty, as players can get overwhelmed. But there’s not a real appetite for smaller battles, and for historical accuracy (and I’m doubtful about that term), it seems to me that smaller scale actions don’t give enough context, particularly in relation to what’s going on to each flank of the battlefield.

For our scale of operations to work, we generally need about 4 players per side and 2 umpires, one to keep the sequence of play flowing and the other to regulate the communications delays and historicity.  For our game in a week’s time we’re in the Western Desert again (Stephen Welford is the main umpire; I’m assisting).  For this we’ll need revised artillery templates (for 1mm:1m scale) and revision of the rules for air power, mine fields and pre-game artillery.

I introduced the concept of Hot, Warm and Cold turns in an earlier game, which helps to speed up movement prior to close contact; I think it’s simpler to restrict this to Cold and Hot (effectively scrap Cold and rename Warm as Cold).  In this game units Shoot first then Move (or Communicate or take a Special action), so the range of shooting and visibility of enemy can be used to regulate the type of turn.  For a Warm Turn (now to be renamed Cold!) the bounds are 15 minutes long.  Movement is up to 5 times the advertised rates, but must only be:

(i)             off-table; or

(ii)            on-table in areas outside 500m range of located enemy elements; AND

(iii)           no new direct fire at or less than 500m (‘new direct fire’ is fire from active elements that did not fire in the previous friendly bound).

A warm bound can be interrupted by direct fire from previously unlocated enemy at or within 500m, in which case active player movement ends immediately, but communications are completed as if the full time had elapsed, so orders, requests or reports can be completed during a warm bound with no delays.  This is intended to make players think about the priorities for movement of their own forces – if they forget, it can lead to nasty surprises, as some units can get left behind – representing delays in orders, failures to co-ordinate and so on.

Additional bits and pieces that are needed for this game include:

• New artillery templates (I think I have them somewhere, but probably won’t be able to find the old ones!)
• Sequence of Play reference chart for the wall (never underestimate large visual aids)
• A table-standing flipchart for each side, so that orders can be posted.  I need to revise this to make it simpler to operate.  (Did I mention never underestimate large visual aids?)

I used to produce large cards for each command with the unit compositions and Move / To Hit for each vehicle and weapon, which could also be used for orders, but it just took too much time; and in any case I’m not certain the players appreciated the effort – few players seemed to use the convenient tables on the cards, preferring to look them up in the rules! So now I print out the full tables, three double-sided large print A4 Play Aids for each player, and they work well. These are traditional board game style play aids that include Sequence of Play and list of Special Actions, so most of the time the players won’t need to refer to the main rules at all.

The game relies on good briefings (no pressure on Stephen then!), relatively thoughtful players and decisive rather than accurate umpiring.  It’s better to make quick decisions that give a believable historical result than to agonise at length about what is correct in relation to the rules.

Two things I’d like to try are (i) suppressive area direct fire onto unlocated enemies (for example in terrain that prevents movement), which could result in the elements being neutralised but not destroyed – this is an idea nicked from Tac: WWII; and (ii) permitting a small number of units to be in ambush – when units in ambush shoot they are not automatically detected until their second shot – this is nicked from Battlegroup Panzer Grenadier.

Age of String: a very brief review of String Railway

Played String Railway Wednesday lunchtime. It’s a new Japon Brand game (Okazu Brand) by Hisashi Hayashi fresh from Essen, where it sold out.

The playing area is made from a loop of string, as is a mountain range inside it.  A further piece of string (not looped) forms a river. Within this “field” players will place strings of their own colour, representing track, and square tiles, representing various types of station. You score points for linking up stations and the types of station can also add or subtract points from rivals. Crossing a string deducts a point.

The concept of the game is wonderfully simple. By the end of play you will have a complex cat’s cradle criss-crossing your playing area, but you’ll be able to admire each player’s network construction.  Lots of fun; recommended but may be difficult to find unless another publisher gets hold of it.

2-5 players, 8+, 30 minutes

Essen 10 Purchases

What we’ve bought at Essen Spiel ’10 – too much as usual.

Essen 10 Purchases

7 Wonders
AdlungLand
Agricola Gamer’s Deck
Antics
Antigua
Bunny Bunny Moose Moose
Caligula
Cartagena 2
Cat and Chocolate
Dominant Species
Grimoire
Guided Lands
High Frontier + expansion
Inca Empire
Key Market
London
Magnum Sal
Mai-Star
Mercator
Mosaix
Nobunaga
Parade
Pocket Battles: Orcs & Elves
Quirrly
Ricochet Robots
RRR
Sceptre of Zavandor
Spot
String Railway
Sun, Sea & Sand
The Resistance
Thunderstone
Troyes

Essen Sunday

The final day of Spiel ’10 dawned at, well, dawn. A quiet morning (tumbleweed slowly passing by) was followed by a much busier lunchtime and afternoon.

We made a few sales to shops, including the final one in the carpark after we had packed up! Thank you to Swan Asia!

A few last minute swaps for Totemo with other designers included Sun, Sea and Sand (Cwali), Thunderstone, Antics (thanks Gordon). Weren’t able to swap for Mines of Zavandor as there wasn’t an English one available.

We got our copy of the English 7 Wonders and T shirt, so it paid to be at the top of the waiting list. Also picked up Sceptre of Zavandor for 10€.

Packing up was swift if fraught, as we couldn’t bring the van to the stand. Thanks to all the crew (including Julian, Pete and Gavin + Gavin’s dad). Then we had our usual wind down Mexican meal.

Hopefully there will be a more considered blog post later, but now we have to head ferrywards.

Essen Saturday

Frenetic Saturday arrived at Spiel ’10. For the first time Surprised Stare Games has a product in Totemo that could be thought of as a Saturday game; one that will appeal to families and the general public. So it has transpired.

As usual the halls were packed wall to wall – though various exhibitors have said it wasn’t as crowded as usual. For us, it was unusually busy. Previously we have had crowds ignoring us on Saturday. This time we were demoing all day. Sales were good for a Saturday. It helped that we were high up the GeekBuzz rankings for most of the day.

I’ve picked up a copy of Pocket Battles: Orcs v Elves – a follow up to Celts & Romans and one that I helped to play test. It’s a Z-man game by Paolo Mori and Francesco Sirocchi. I was also lucky enough to catch up with Paolo, as he stopped by the stand. Vasco de Gama expansion is due out soon.

In the evening we met up with another Alan, Sebastian and Caroline, and Jonathan and Lucy. Caroline introduced me to Mijnlieff and promptly thrashed me (at the game).

Then we gave Ascension a go. It was enjoyable, but why buy, play or design this rather than Dominion?

Finally we had a 6-player game of Parade. Few turns and I think driven more by the draw of cards than skill (and I won). Probably better with three or four.

Essen Friday

And the campaign continues…

Vicki’s artwork is going down a storm! Specific companies that have been impressed include Adlung Spiele, Gryphon Games and Kosmos, amongst others.

We had the opportunity to take some more space, because the stand opposite was empty. This proved to be too expensive, because Merz Verlag wanted to charge €400 and we would have to get furniture on top. I had a wonderful response from neighbouring companies reflecting cultural differences. Myself, being English, was playing by the rules; the Poles had to refer up to a higher authority, and the Italians were all for just occupying the space without asking!

We met up with even more old friends, including Jonathan and Lucy; we didn’t manage a game with them, because our evening plans did not quite mesh.

We bought Troyes, a new Belgian Eurogame, and played it in the evening, 4-player with Sebastian and Caroline. For the first try it took perhaps 2.5 hours – the rules look pretty comprehensive; no problems with them. It’s a medium to heavy game, and will probably take the 90-120 mins on the box. There’s a lot going on in the game. Worker placement gives access to mechanisms to convert resources to other types, and to generate VPs. However, the resources are primarily in the form of coloured dice – yellow for civil, white for religious, red for military. While high dice rolls help, they are not essential – in this game you can pay to use the other players dice, the price depending on the number of dice – from 1 to 3 – that you want to use for your action. Conversion of dice or adding to the dice total or other dice manipulation happens as part of your action, not as a separate one. Another great twist is that bonus VPs can be achieved through meeting the conditions set by your mentor (a character card randomly dealt at the start). But everyone can get the bonuses from all the characters, so there’s an element of bluff. Recommended.

Essen Thursday

Just lost the whole post for Essen Thursday; iPhone lost it when I published with no Internet connection So this may be briefer than usual. I’ve switched to composing this in Notes then posting – see, I can learn!

We spent all day demonstrating Totemo (there’s a surprise). Sales were moderate, bearing in mind it will have limited appeal to Euro collectors. We had lots of families on the stand which bodes well for Saturday.

Best moment was Phil explaining Totemo in Japanese to Banesto! Not many stands can do that. Also Chooi had a chat with a Malaysian importer too, so we had a very multicultural day.

We also sold a small number of Confucius and Fzzzt! 2nd edition plus 5-6 player expansion.

We had productive meetings with Schmidt Spiele, FRED and Cryptozoic about future products too.

More later I hope; we’re reassuringly busy.

Essen Wednesday

All setup was done on time, so we’re all ready for this morning’s stampede! Thanks to Chooi and Phil for their help. And also to all the old friends who have dropped by.

First purchases were High Frontier, Dominant Species (both on recommendation), Pocket Battles Orcs & Elves, Agricola G deck, Parade, Bunny Bunny Moose Moose.

In the evening we play tested some stuff. Pete Armstrong had his game ‘Wild’, which looks like it has considerable potential. Theme is wild animals escaping from wildfire. Elephants, giraffes, rhinos & lions all are fighting to get away. Players have a hand of cards, randomly drawn or from a pool of 3 cards, to try to match with their 4 animals – one of each type. The cards are used for fighting off opponents, though herding animals can coexist. Particular points in the design that I liked were: time pressure and graphics of the approaching wildfire; movement restrictions by keying each hex by animal; card pool for drawing from, which could probably be extended and the basic combat mechanism – which was quick, simple and effective. We made several suggestions for possible improvement.

Then we had a quick 5-player go at Maureen Hiron’s new game ‘Up for Grabs’. I found it to be surprisingly fun! Not a game I would buy myself, but should have immense appeal to a mass market US audience.

Essen – start of Spiel ’10 expedition

Trip to Essen now started. Stroud to Dover was our first leg – uneventful. Not even a traffic jam of note, though Ditzy (our satnav) took us south from Reading to link up with the M3 – didn’t feel like a great route.

We’re currently negotiating to get a little emergency help on the stand. Thanks very much to Chooi and Daniel for putting themselves forward.

Early start tomorrow – up at 06:00 so we can get the early ferry and drive rapidly across to Essen, in order to put Totemo into the Press Room before it closes.

Quatre Bras next version ready for more play testing

I’ve been working for some time now on the Quatre Bras game based on Martin Wallace’s Waterloo system.  This is the first step in making the Waterloo system into a generic Napoleonic one with the object of making more battles available without having to design separate systems and components for every game.

There have been several challenges with this mini-project.  The main one has been that Quatre Bras was an encounter battle, not a large-scale set piece like Waterloo. Both armies were coming off line of march straight into the fight, and on the Allied side were to an extent thrown into the action wherever the worst threat appeared to be.  So, many of the troops arrive as reinforcements and relatively few are set up on the board initially.

The ratio of forces between the sides was subject to change as reinforcements appeared.  This is modelled by limiting the action discs and damage cubes appropriately, while not permitting one side to run down the clock so fast that the enemy is prevented from taking actions.  Removing both the ’5′ action discs helps to sort out this problem, and it’s justified by the small size of the forces compared to the Waterloo game – only about a third of each army took part.

The second potential problem was one of ‘figure scale’, a term I hesitate to use, as this is not a miniatures or figure game.  Martin was careful in the Waterloo game not to state a number of men or a type of military unit represented by each piece.  The units in the game are merely a representational feel for the strength of the armies.  The advantage of this approach is that, within limits, the game system can be scaled to suit different battles.  So Quatre Bras can use less actual pieces but proportionately more pieces than Waterloo.  For example it uses 11 French infantry, compared to 17 in the larger game.

Quatre Bras was a see-saw affair that only stabilised once the Allies had received several doses of reinforcements.  So there is a danger that the French might overrun the Allies, resulting in a relatively short game. On the other hand the French suffered from some handicaps, primarily undue caution on the part of several generals who had fought against Wellington in the Peninsula, and the often overlooked fact that Marshal Ney had only joined the army the night before, so was unfamiliar with its contents, its staff, some of its commanders and more importantly, exactly where all its components actually were.  For this game, I’ve introduced a special rule for the first turn to reflect the French wariness, such that French morale suffers a handicap in the first two assaults.  This feature is designed to limit in a realistic fashion the possibilities that the French had to overrun the Allied forces quickly.  For French players, such a tactic is still possible, but does not guarantee victory.

Most of the other rules are the same as in the original game.  However, the extensive fighting in the wood of Bossu during the battle causes a further difficulty.  The French pushed the Dutch very hard in the woods, but were unable to clear it, despite committing veteran light infantry to the fight.  The battle of Waterloo was not much influenced by woods, so the original game system doesn’t make woods particularly hard to take – both sides suffer a one right column shift for morale and there’s no firing benefit to the defender.  I’ve changed this so that infantry suffer a -1 modifier when firing at infantry in defensive formation in woods.  This type of woods represents open woodland, which often has paths and clearings, but also lots of useful cover for a defender, so this defensive bonus seems appropriate.

Finally, victory conditions in an encounter battle are usually rather different from a set-piece, being dependent both on taking positions and often more pertinently on the relationship between this battle and a decisive set-piece later in the campaign.  For Quatre Bras each side has two levels of victory, tactical or strategic, dependent on places they take, and for the French, exiting pieces from the board.  A French strategic victory represents aid from Ney’s force to Napoleon’s main army fighting the Prussians at Ligny, giving an opportunity for a decisive victory against the Prussians.

DBM at Frome – October 17

A better day points-wise.  Steve and I scored 14 points, with 4-6 and 10-0, so ended up on 21 out of 40 – not bad for a scratch army and two players neither of whom knew much about how to play DBM.

Final match-ups were v Hungarians and then Ed’s Ancient Brits (Ed’s in the AWI Club, so a derby match to end with!).  Luck was variable in these two games.  We got all our poor dice rolls versus the Hungarians, including approx 10 6:1 rolls against us, then all our good dice rolls versus Ed, including killing his CinC and ending the game in 2 hours.

My opinion of the game is not changed (see yesterday’s post).  I prefer FoG for this type of game, because the ‘battlegroup’ system seems more manageable, rather than the micromanagement required in single element based DBM.  FoG seems to have a better tactical feel and to have less stress on technical knowledge.  There are still some awkward corner-cases in FoG though – for example, a unit charged in flank or rear cannot evade so that it continues in the direction it was already moving (which in reality it might well want to do, if it was trying to escape from the enemy behind it or to its flank!) but only in the direction of the charge or to its own rear; this might result in an ‘evade’ move more into the path of the charge, which seems nonsensical to me.

All in all, I’d prefer to go with historical simulation games rather than themed ones.

DBM – October 16 at Frome

Yes, I’m playing in a DBM competition – get over it; I probably will eventually.

This has been a long-standing date in our Frome miniatures group calendar (Abbey Wood Irregulars), and it’s a chance to show off the re-furbished church hall to more people.  Nearly finished now, and it looks great with the new custom-made lights.  Congrats to Pete and Colin and the team.

Steve Etheridge and I are playing Polybian Romans.  Neither of us have played much DBM at all – Steve’s done a lot of DBA competitions, while I play mainly FoG nowadays.  So it’s been a bit of a mixed bag so far, as we attempt to get to grips with the rules.  And many thanks to our tolerant opponents for helping us out with occasional clarifications.

We’ve played v Later Carthaginians and Early Libyans so far.  We managed to squeak a 6-4 win v Hasdrubal, complements of some fine gladius work against the reluctant Spanish allies, who eventually collapsed.  We managed less well against the Libyans, in fact they gave us a right drubbing.  Knowing they had mainly Psiloi and Auxilia we figured that our blades and cavalry would give them problems.  We opted for a fairly forward initial deployment, despite 5 steep hills in the vicinity.  Unfortunately (mostly on my end of the table) this left us little room to deploy our blades into lines, and the legions prefer not to fight in deep blocks.  We also made a few technical errors, quickly exploited by our opponents – I let them get round the right flank of my front line a little too easily, and wasn’t able to cope very well with a couple of offset Psiloi half-in half-out of a steep hill.  So although we broke their main group (out of 4 commands) in the centre, we shortly thereafter lost two of our own, thus losing the battle.  Maybe we can turn it around tomorrow.

It reminded me of the reasons why I moved on from DBM in the first place, which is the reason for this post really.  DBM seems to be more about the game mechanics that enable a single system across 7,000 years of armies, rather than about any semblance of historical modelling of battle.  The curiosity for me is that there has obviously been considerable effort and cost to produce extensive army lists (which almost any research will show are pretty ropey history), suggesting a historical bent.  And yet it doesn’t permit use of historical tactics, or at least they don’t work in the game.  That combination of attempted historical authenticity in the construction of the armies, and yet the lack of historical authenticity in the use of them in the game is what I find striking.  It’s the essence of a historically themed game in contract with a simulation game.  FoG exhibits the same problem.

This type of game is much more about the game and its technique – for example where exactly do I put this element, so that it makes counter-moves illegal owing to the rules – than about how that army would have been used historically.  As others have pointed out, you can take a Roman army to the table, but you cannot make it use Roman tactics.

These are examples, therefore, of historically themed games, not historical simulation games, and that means they may tend to attract players who like complex competitive games per se, rather than those who favour games that reflect history.  I’m beginning to think that there isn’t a continuum of where games lie on the theme versus model line, but clear blue water between the types.

Game design and development: part of a LinkedIn discussion

This post is an edited version of part of a discussion on the game design and development process that occurred on one of the LinkedIn board game groups.  I think someone in the discussion was going to pull it all together and do a useful PDF of ‘how to do it’!  This was my attempt to distill some of the process out from my experience over the last 25 years or so of my own, and Surprised Stare Games, board and card game design and development.

First be clear about your objectives as a game designer.  Is it your intention to design a game for sale, or for your own personal enjoyment.  If the latter, then it’s much easier on the stress levels.  If the former, then before you start, immerse yourself in what’s already been published.  The Board Game Geek website is a good place to start.  Will your game add anything to the field?  If not, then, even if it works as a game, it may not sell.  Bear in mind that at the Essen Spiel 2009 some 690 new board and card games were launched – if you don’t know about the Spiel fair, you should find out as a matter of urgency at http://www.merz-verlag.com/spiel/.

Decide on your market segment (there are many) and likely geographical areas of sale.  There are 3 major segments (well, simplistically speaking, I’m not a marketing specialist!): toys and simple games for children, mass market games for the family, specialist games aimed at hobby gamers.  Naturally, these segments have multitudinous sub-segments.

The first two segments – toys and simple games for children, mass market games for the family – are worth billions of dollars (or pounds) per annum and are dominated by large international corporations (Hasbro and Mattel, for example).  To break into these markets you’d probably need a very good agent or high quality corporate contacts.  Unless you’re wildly lucky or exceptionally talented, an independent game designer is extremely likely to experience very high levels of disappointment operating in these segments.  In-house designers and ‘known’ independents tend to be used, or those with a good track record of successful invention.

The third segment is much smaller.  While there are some large companies (Kosmos, Ravensburger – they’re mainstream too – Days of Wonder, Games Workshop, Zoch – they do children’s games too) there are many more small publishers (such as our company, Surprised Stare Games).  Even breaking into this smaller world is difficult for an independent, because there are so many aspiring (and talented) game designers out there, including very well known ones like Reiner Knizia, and in the UK, Martin Wallace and Richard Breese.

So having started with all the discouraging stuff (you need to know that!), in terms of the game design process, there are some guidelines (NOT hard and fast ‘best practice’) that we’ve found very useful.

1  Have a good idea that no-one else has had.  This can either be in terms of a central game mechanic, a game system or even a theme.

2  Check carefully that your good idea really is a new one.  It’s actually fairly easy to design something that you *think* no-one’s done before, only to find that you’ve actually designed ‘High Society’ or ‘Modern Art’.

3  The design process: this tends to be individualistic.  You need to flesh out the game mechanics so that the game works, it has internal consistency, and is an enjoyable game (in your view).  Some designers do this in a formal way, writing a design brief and meeting design objectives; personally I’ve found this approach can help, but it’s best not to be rigid about it.  Design contains a lot of inspiration and hope, then a lot of iterative work to find out if the inspiration and hope can be actualised.  Sometimes a design might pop into my head pretty much fully formed; other times it will be hard graft.  Sometimes the idea starts with abstract mechanics, sometimes with theme.  At some point during this process you should have a prototype and some rules – then you may ditch the whole thing, or take it on to the next stage.

4  The game development process: don’t miss out this stage.  When *you* think the game is finished, I can pretty much guarantee it isn’t, if you haven’t gone through this process.  Inflict your game on as many different friends as you can.  At this stage, it’s usually helpful to run the sessions yourself, because you need to know about and record all the rough edges and comments.  Keep your expectations low at this point!  Preferably use a high proportion of people who you trust and who know about development.

This is the period when you find out about and modify the ‘playability’ of the game.  You or your favourite game developer friend need to concentrate on the experience of the gamers.  You must be prepared to sacrifice parts of your design in order to get to the point where gamers will play it, so being a purist is not a good idea.  Do not expect the development process to be quick – it can take a couple of years or more to ‘finish’ a game (the average lifecycle from idea to finished unpublished game is 2 to 4 years).

For some games, the design can be handed over to a developer, and you can stop at the end of the design process.  If you’re working with a company, they may insist on this if they like the design – this independent game development process carried out in-house by a publisher may take months or years, and the game may end up with a different theme.  You shouldn’t care too much – after all, you’re being paid!

Game development should involve huge amounts of play testing involving as many different groups as possible.  Keep good version control, or you’ll go mad.  Identify and use gamers who will give you high quality, critical feedback.  Use gamers who always try to break the game (and if they do, then take that very seriously).  Use ‘serious’ gamers who play at a high level.  Use casual social gamers who play for fun.  If possible, use groups in different countries.  When you’re sick of play testing and don’t want to see your game ever again, take a short break, then keep going – you haven’t finished.

The game development process is only finished when the development team (which might be just you, but should include other trusted people too) is happy that the product is as good as it can be.

5  Sale.  Try to get a slot at a games publishing company – I’ll not go into details of this step.  Most games fall at this hurdle.  Alternatively publish the game yourself.

6  Production.  Make sure the production team thinks the game will sell, at an acceptable price, for an acceptable profit level.  Don’t be too disappointed if it fails at this point; a lot do, but reaching this stage is very positive and I would say that most games that reach production will reach the shelves.  There’s a lot more detail that can be offered on this stage, but ‘real work’ beckons!

Multiple games from the same components

Multiple games from the same components is very often done as a ‘game design challenge’ (see BGDF), but only rarely as a production.  One exception is Stonehenge (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20436/stonehenge); I’m not sure how successful that was commercially.

The problem tends to be the compromises you have to make to ensure that all the games work – those can reduce the focus of each game.  Expansions (usually charged for) or variants (usually available online) are the more normal way to go.  Expansions that require the original game (cheaper to produce, but smaller market) are common, as are self-standing expansions that are fundamentally the same game, but don’t require the original one (Carcassone: Hunters and Gatherers vs original Carcassone).

Expansions that increase the number of players are very common, because they increase the potential market too (Settlers of Catan is a good example).  They may not, however, increase the playability of the game .

Poorly Written Rules = Everybody Loses: some comments on a LinkedIn discussion

This was an extensive comment about rules writing that I made.  See here for the original LinkedIn thread.

Good article Kim. In fact it’s not necessarily the size of company that dictates the quality of a set of rules. While many large publishers have staff writers, they don’t always get it right.

A common example is our old favourite, Monopoly. How many people actually play Monopoly by the published rules? This is at least in part because many versions of the published rules were poorly written and open to multiple interpretations.

Writing rules for games is a technical skill; it’s a type of technical writing. As such, it is amenable to a traditional quality process approach. At Surprised Stare Games (we’re a small UK publisher, who’s staff all have non-gaming jobs) we have the following process:

• Designer writes the first draft, which could be notes rather than a full rule set.
• In-house team plays the game extensively as part of our normal development, then our in-house rules writer (primarily myself) produces a second more or less comprehensive draft rules set.
• * As development continues, the rules will commonly be re-written two or three times from scratch.
• * Once the in-house team is satisfied with the game (note: game not yet finished!), we’ll produce another draft set of rules, reviewed in-house, for inclusion in prototypes that will be used in our play-test groups. Then the game will be play-tested, supervised by members of our team.
• The rules will be revised following play-testing. Up to this stage, we’re looking at the draft rules to answer the questions: “Does the game work?” and “Does the text say what we mean?”
• Towards the end of the development process, we re-write the rules again, this time laying them out with pictures and diagrams in a format that is as close to the published one as possible.
• This draft is then shared with our external ‘rules lawyers’ – a couple of people who have a good track record for writing rules. Result: A comprehensive draft rules set that we will use with our 4 or 5 blind play test groups (these are not blind people, just people who have not previously had contact with the game!).
• Blind play testing will usually come up with further suggestions for revisions, so we will have a final review prior to producing what we hope will be the final draft.
• We then play test the final draft.
• We also (usually alongside final testing) get the rules translated into German (we usually produce multi-language games) – the translation process often picks up English language problems because of the differences between UK English and International English (let alone US English). We’re finding this so useful that we’re revising our process to push the translation back into the development process rather than leaving it till the end.

As you can see, the rules will have gone through at least 10 drafts over this process, including several re-writes. Our latest game (Totemo, see http://www.surprisedstaregames.co.uk/Totemo/index.htm ) has gone through this full process, although the rules would fit comfortably on 4 sides of A4. In fact, looking through our Totemo files, I can see 13 versions of the rules. With larger games than this it’s easy to get to dozens of versions.

Game play stages

In my view, the trajectory of game play goes through four principal stages:

1. Learning
2. Competence
3. Expert
4. Moving on

The Learning stage is typified by players fathoming out the game rules and basic strategies.  In most gaming groups only one or two players will read the rulebook, so the Learning stage will usually involve a combination of trial and error and teaching.  Depending on the complexity of the game, this stage will take from one to as many as a dozen plays.  In groups in which players rotate a lot, teaching the game may last months, and some players may never move out of the Learning stage, because they are consistently teaching new players.

At some point most players will become competent with the game mechanics and basic strategies.  During this stage, a proportion of players will improve their technique and develop more successful strategies that take into account the strategies used by other players.  Many players will go from the Competence stage to Moving on, as new games take their fancy.

A small proportion of players become Expert, with an advanced knowledge and deep understanding of the game (if it is the type of game that permits this level of play).  Typically Expert players will be able to tailor their strategies to those of other players and will have a range of optimum plays easily at their disposal that mean they can readily win against competent players and can only be seriously challenged by other experts.

Moving on occurs, as you might expect, when the game has been played so much that it has grown relatively stale, and new games have more appeal.  The game might still get occasional nostalgic play, but not the concentration of previous stages.

These four stages are likely to be run through by different players at different rates and times, but there is likely to be some polarisation within playing groups, simply because the players play together.

Innovation – initial comments

I played this new card game with Charlie the other day.  I’d played it once before with Tony at UK Games Expo, and that experience had been enough for me to pay out an exhorbitant sum to get it from the US, rather than wait till Essen.  Was this a good idea?

I’m not going to write a straight review of Innovation; there’s plenty of those on the Geek at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63888/innovation.  My comments are about game design and development.

Innovation comes from a specific stable of games, namely Carl Chudyk’s, designer of Glory to Rome.  The particular gaming niche here is an adult (14+) CCG-playing audience.  This is a different audience from Euro board games or board war games and reflects the increasing market segmentation in the hobby games market, brought about by an all pervasive internet and lowering of production costs.  CCG players are generally more tolerant of complexity and complication in games than Euro board gamers.

Innovation, like Glory to Rome before it and to a lesser extent Race for the Galaxy, is one of those ‘love it or hate it’ games.  Unlike Dominion (a different audience) Innovation is not particularly accessible to new players.  With a core pack of 105 unique cards, all of which contain many icons and often extensive text with technical language, there is a lot of information for new players to absorb before they can become competent.  The effort required to learn the game is considerable, because knowledge of the cards that might come up is an important part of the game.  Some potential players will not wish to put in the effort and will fall by the wayside before playing it, or after a single play.  Others will be caught by the game’s very complexity and challenge, and player groups have grown up around this.

Like many CCG-style games Innovation does not adhere to Euro game design principles.  It includes, as I’ve mentioned, extensive text on the cards, rather than the more intensive iconisation that is used on Race for the Galaxy.  RftG uses iconisation to make the game more accessible to a wider audience, such that even some text on the cards clarifies icons rather than replaces them, while Innovation (possibly because it is very difficult to iconise the dogma effects) is more reliant on appeal to the audience through other means, primarily game mechanics and its civilisation theme – always a crowd pleaser.

The game is nevertheless heavily iconised, because its central mechanic – dogma effects – relies on players being able to count the number of icons of each type in each player’s array.  The icons are coloured and contained in a square of the relevant colour, and have a symbol that should make the game playable by colour blind people.  The cards use a strong template, akin to Magic: The Gathering for the dogma effects – this is an excellent idea for making the game accessible to its target audience, who will be familiar with this ‘standard’.

The game will appeal to the existing Glory to Rome audience, as it uses similar mechanics.  This is an interesting phenomenon – with niche selling of games, the target audience will often buy the next big thing from a known designer, and companies can publish on this basis.  This concept has often been a factor in the hobby games industry, but I think it has been more prevalent in the Euro board game arena then elsewhere.

Innovation uses extensive technical language, by which I mean language that is relevant directly to this particular game.  Examples include the terms ‘meld’, ‘tuck’, ‘return’, ‘achieve’.  Even ‘draw’ has a specific technical meaning which is critical to game play.  Such technical language can be viewed in two ways, and we came up against this problem with our own first published game, Coppertwaddle.  Initially and importantly it is a barrier to accessibility, because players have to learn, for example that ‘meld’ means play a card from your hand to your play area (the play area itself being called your ‘board’, though no actual board exists).  However, secondly it makes the game more exclusive, and therefore players can gain the psychological advantage of being in an ‘elite group’ (in a sense, reversing the organisational problem of an elite group into a positive force).  So, once players are hooked, playing group dynamics can help to extend its reach: “I want to be part of the elite group”.  As a game design component, extensive use of explanatory text, especially technical language is often frowned upon (in fact, Coppertwaddle was criticised by some reviewers for this very problem), but for the adult CCG audience it may be a positive benefit.

The Learning stage (see other post) for Innovation may be quite lengthy.  This is alleviated by the fact that each game is relatively short.  It is interesting however, that the box claims 30-60 minutes duration, a significant understatement for games played in the Learning stage.

The game design does not seem to attempt to balance the power of the cards, like many other games of this type.  In fact it may celebrate the ‘take that’ effect, and the perception of ‘power cards’ may form a significant challenge to players achieving competence.  In some senses this may be another barrier, as another group of players may give up after being on the receiving end of Combustion (for example).  There is even the Fission card that can effectively re-set the game (except for Achievements) if the dogma is used.  This type of game effect is often frowned upon in Euro game designs, as it obliterates the previous hard work of the players.  However, it is likely that the target audience is tolerant of this type of effect.  There are other examples in CCGs (some Magic: The Gathering cards spring to mind), but these tend to be components of designed deck styles, whereas in Innovation such a card can be randomly drawn.

The production standard of Innovation is high.  Asmadi Games have produced it in quite a large box for the original components, but that makes it big enough to be sleeved easily – a definite boon for a card game.  And there’s space for expansions – you’ve been warned!

A mechanic that I’ve not seen elsewhere is the ‘splay’.  To splay a pile, you take the top card and slide it in the indicated direction (left, right or up).  Splaying reveals additional icons depending on the direction, and the game has left revealing 1, right 2 and up 3, giving variable power to each type of splay.  The power of cards is therefore not just the intrisic card itself, but also extra icons that they can give when their primary use is over.

There are some hard challenges in design terms, which may be ameliorated by aiming at its specific, largely tolerant market:

1. Extensive text on the cards and the Reference/Actions card
2. Rather small icons next to the text to which they apply
3. Width: competent play requires knowledge of a large number of cards, rather than mastery of the mechanics and the strategy
4. Play length during the Learning stage.

Innovation is probably assured of success because of the following elements of its design:

1. Complexity, aimed at a CCG audience, focusing on appeal to an ‘elite group’
2. Theme – civilisation being a constant favourite, with Through The Ages and Roll Through The Ages being recent successful additions to remind the audience of the power of the theme
3. Building on the existing Glory to Rome design by the same designer; GtR seen as a highly successful one with a market as yet not sated with this type of game
4. The new mechanic, splay, while otherwise containing relatively straightforward mechanics
5. Good attention to iconisation where that is possible
6. Celebration of ‘take that’ cards, making the game a tough challenge to master
7. For experienced players, relatively short playing time.

Charge Pikes! – Trying out a new ECW miniatures ruleset

Yesterday was Frome day, our monthly miniatures session called the Abbeywood Irregulars – first Saturday of the month.  We usually play historical battles, ranging far and wide through time and space, with some alternative history thrown in.

For October 2010 we had two games: several players took another outing to Shepton Mallett, a third recreation (or at least re-creation) of fighting in the 1930s, A Very  British Civil War.  Meanwhile the slightly more serious wargamers, Pete, Colin and myself (and later John), tried out a set of tweaked 15mm English Civil War rules called Charge Pikes!  These were loosely based on Wargames Research Group 1685-1845, as revised by Wesley Rogers, and additional material from Charge Yr Pikes.  We played an encounter skirmish with roughly 3 units each of infantry and cavalry on each side, plus a couple of light guns, also known as ‘leather guns’.  Overall the rules seemed to present a good ‘feel’ for the period, with troop quality and the presence of generals very important.

I much prefer ‘friendly’ wargaming to tournament games.  We still play hard to win, but we don’t go mad for measuring to the millimetre nor for exploiting the rules.  We’re all more interested in ‘how it might have happened’, rather than winning at all costs.  So a lot of our gaming is experimenting with, and improving upon, rule sets.  I can see this ECW set getting a bit of our development treatment, as the framework looks sound, has obviously been lovingly revised by knowledgeable people already.  Play wasn’t too slow, even though we hadn’t developed play aids (we were going straight from A4 printouts of the rules, so were regularly leafing through pages), as evidenced by the fact that we finished a whole game.  By ‘finished’ I mean we got a result (a Royalist victory as it happens), over a game of approximately 20 turns; and we are notorious for not finishing in the time allotted.

Areas to tweak or smooth out were:

• Musketry – possibly a little too effective, and it wasn’t quite clear how to exploit salvo fire; we’re considering whether 1 or 2 ranks (in terms of stands) of musketeers should be able to fire each round.  If only 1 rank, then we’ll need a slick way of indicating this, especially as we’d want to permit double-rank salvo firing as an option.
• Some clarification of the charge sequence, particularly in respect of evade moves and pursuit.  We played that if a routing unit was hit again by pursuers the sequence began again, forcing cavalry in particular to carry out lengthy pursuits – I suspect this is OK, because it strongly suggests that generals should arrange to supply supports to pursuers if possible, lest they pursue into dangerous situations (as happened in our battle).
• Melees involving several units need an example or two, particularly in relation to moving up stands after impact.
• Movement and combat for unformed units needs to be sorted out.

I found it particularly interesting and very playable that morale checks were pretty easy and straightforward without a great need for reliance on dice.  Generally it was Green or Raw troops that had problems (as you’d expect), while Elite, Crack and Line were OK in most situations if led by a general.  Relatively few situations really required recourse to the morale tables (other than that we were learning them!).  We were helped by having ‘natural born leaders’ (and I quote) as our leaders – two on each side.

The other good point was the influence of troop grades on manoeuvrability.  Green and Raw troops, for example, took 2 full moves to change formation and could only wheel at half speed.  We frequently found that a move that would have been simple in most rule sets was much more realistically difficult with relatively untrained troops in this one.  I think that this will mean that larger armies with poor troops and average leadership will be quite beatable by small well-led experienced ones.

Looking forward already to the next ECW game.

Fig 1: The Royalists advance! A the top of the pic you can just make out the Parliamentary forces marching left to right beyond a muddy stream towards a village out of picture top right.  Royalist cavalry are to the right of the road, dragoons on it in the middle distance, while the infantry in the foreground are moving out of march column into line.  The first infantry unit is supported by a couple of light cannon and is about to march to the left beyond a darker green gully, which forms a steep slope that will protect its right flank.

Fig 2: Parliamentary forces march towards the village – their cavalry by the bridge at the top are busy dispersing some Clubmen, which was their original objective before the Royalists showed up.  The stream is actually less of an obstacle than it looks – it just halves movement rates and doesn’t prevent charges across, though charging units don’t get impetus benefits.

Fig 3: Parliamentary forces marching right to left in the foreground with the scouting Royalist cavalry and dragoons in the middle distance and the rest of the Royalists in the far distance.  The final act at the end of the battle was the Royalists smashing an Elite unit of Parliamentary infantry that was attacking from left to right (from the direction of the village) by the wall in this picture, the main body of Royalist infantry having marched to and across the stream just out of picture to the right.  Parliamentarian cavalry, having raced back from dispersing the Clubmen, had marched swiftly along the road to the rear of the Royalist infantry and routed the rearmost (Raw) infantry unit.  But its pursuit made it vulnerable to Royalist reinforcements entering the battlefield down the road (elite cavalry!), and it was routed.  A sister unit that charged a Royalist gun was rendered ineffective by musketry from a crack Royalist infantry unit in support.  The elite Royalist cavalry, supported by the dragoons and anchored by some stalwart fighting from Royalist line infantry, dispersed a second unit of Parliamentarian infantry in a notable charge across the stream.  Parliamentarian losses left them with a single isolated infantry unit in the village and a couple of light guns.  However, they had fought hard and well and were able to negotiate their withdrawal with honours, leaving their guns behind.

At the start of the engagement the Royalist cavalry pictured to the left of the road opportunistically charged a body of Parliamentary cavalry as it was crossing the stream, fortuitously routing it from the field.  As the Royalist cavalry was green, it found itself reluctant to about face in front of a deployed unit of infantry, so opted for a semi-circular march right round the enemy army, debouching eventually through the gap in the hedge on the edge of the wood in the picture.  It then charged towards the village, engaging the aforementioned elite infantry unit, and was beaten off with heavy losses, eventually rallying some distance back and playing no further part in the battle.

My First Post

Just to make sure that anyone reading this blog has no illusions:

• I’m not yet a good blogger.
• I don’t post enough material.
• I don’t post regularly.
• Whether it’s interesting or not is very much a matter for the readers.

However, as I’m intending to make this a public blog about my gaming – mainly game design and development, I expect – I’ll try to put interesting material in here.

To paraphrase my friends in the recently defunct podcast Into The Gamescape – this blog will be “one English bloke blathering on about games”.