Analogue gamer finally grokks digital? #1. In which I neither got nor 'get' computer games

My sorry excuse for a computer game collection…

Give me the damn
instruction manual!

I noted the paucity of my digital gaming experience last September in my review of Death Ray Manta. Getting a bit more precise: as far as I can remember I’ve only ever owned 5 or 6 computer games, and only 5 which I can remember for sure:-

Abe's ood, see?

• Quake 2: played a few times but abandoned in frustration when I couldn’t get past the first level (I ended up running around banging on the walls hoping to find the secrets I knew I hadn’t uncovered).
• Abe’s Oddysee: this charmed me but otherwise ditto because I couldn’t solve the problems of the more difficult screens- running around in endless frustrated circles was no fun, however cute.
• Close Combat III: The Russian Front: my most-played computer game and my favourite, naturally enough- abandoned after I'd played the scenarios when I couldn’t fathom the campaign game.
• Panzer General 3D Assault: played once or twice- meh, I'd rather'd've had a rulebook, and probably a map, counters and a FtF opponent to boot.
• Combat Mission: Shock Force: out of the shrink, but otherwise the CD-ROM hasn’t even been inserted into the computer.

Of all of these I still own the wargames.

Wargames, politics and ethics #1: Ah, that old bugbear

Reality bites

They're just games, yes?

At some time or another, many wargamers will have found themselves pondering the political and/or ethical implications of their passion for revisiting the past, present and future battlefields of the world with their maps and little counters. This reflection leads some to create boundaries and/or preferences: periods they won't game, sides they always prefer to play, and so on. For me this began in my teenage-tankie youth, when I drew a boundary at 1945. My reasons for this were twofold:

• In the late 70s and early 80s- with Thatcher and Reagan's 'second' Cold War at its height, modern warfare was too closely linked to the spectre of global thermonuclear holocaust for it to have any appeal to me.
• I felt uncomfortable with the idea of playing games about wars the casualties of which would be actual people living in my own time.

I abandoned this boundary as I grew older. That's not to say that I 'grew out of it', because that would be to imply that there's something immature about the choice to draw and to exercise such boundaries. I've no wish to be so insulting to others who've made these choices.

Fighting Formations preview #2: The frakkin' game!

(A quick note: this post was supposed to go up soon after the first part, posted a fortnight ago. Unfortunately the CSW website crashed for more than a week so that I couldn't get the information I needed to complete the article, hence the long delay.)

**********

Fighting Formations went live on the GMT P500 at the end of June. It crossed the 500 preorders line in mid-August (17th AFAIK), meaning that will go into production. An xmas release is possible although I'm not holding my breath on that score to be honest: it's just a bit too much to hope for.

Opening FF@CSW last November, Chad announced:

I'll begin by answering the obvious question first: "No, this is not Combat Commander with tanks."

The most obvious difference was made clear immediately: FF is not card-driven. This should've been obvious to fans of CC who've followed Chad's oft rehearsed explanations of why the inclusion of tanks would quickly overload and crash the CC card engine.

Fighting Formations preview #1: Some background

Readers who know me from the days of yore will remember the effort I put into designing a viable model of operational command and control for WW2 tabletopping. At the same time, regular readers should be only too aware that I regard Chad Jensen's Combat Commander as second only to Courtney Allen's classic Up Front as an exemplary gaming treatment of these matters, albeit both on a smaller scale (and that's a very close second, which has as much to do with accidents of history and biography as it does with matters of absolute quality).

Just to remind readers:- Chad's Combat Commander has enjoyed remarkable success in the past 2½ years:

• Two boxed core games - CC:E and CC:P (the first already in reprint).
• A boxed system expansion - CC:M.
• Two zip-locked battle pack expansions - BP1: Paratroopers and BP2: Stalingrad.
• The 3rd of the planned battle pack series - BP3: Normandy - sprinted through GMT's P500 system last April in record time.
• A similarly continuous stream of new scenarios, maps and counters appearing in C3i magazine.

Snippet snackage

I've not played any games for nearly three weeks and, vicissitudes having abounded, I'm reduced to a rummage through the ragbag in search of a posting.

Expo rolls!

Hot on the heels of the success of Expo'09, UK Games Expo a couple of weeks ago announced dates for 2010, 2011 and 2012 (the last two still TBC). Organising an event on the scale of UK Games Expo must be something of a mammoth undertaking and an often thankless task, so it's an encouraging sign for the long-term future of the event that the organisers are already looking ahead into the next decade of this 21st century.

After the success of CC@Expo'09, you can be sure that I've already set aside the long weekend of the 4th to the 6th of June 2010. More in due course, naturally enough.

Meanwhile...

From the readpile

Top of the pile now is Matthew Parker's Monte Cassino: The Story of the Hardest-fought Battle of World War Two. This is a very readable book, with lots of detail about the grim conditions soldiers faced in the cold and wet mountains of 'sunny' Italy during 1943-44. It's another book to feature Spike Milligan's war memoirs as source material. I wonder what Spike thought about that? Did he even know? But this isn't about the mad Milligan. No, it's about the Abruzzo.

Regular readers might remember the Millefoglie alla 'guardiese' I've served up a couple of times. It turns out that the Abruzzo, where that dish has its origins, was the scene of a major operation to break the Gustav Line in January 1944, as the Allied armies closed in on Monte Cassino. At the heart of the manoeuvre was the French Expeditionary Corps (FEC). Their attacks through mountainous conditions shocking even to German Gebirgsjäger Russian front veterans played a significant role in rehabilitating the tattered reputation of French soldiery.

Sunday session postponed by riotous assembly, and other stories

Facebooking last week I decided a day in Edinburgh was called for Saturday. The city of my birth, my student days and some years beyond, Edinburgh is a city of strong associations for me, one in which some of my oldest friends still live. So you can imagine I was expecting to enjoy myself.

Before heading out I made sure to attach the carrying strap to my digicam (Samsung P1000). Poking the thing through an open window, some 60m up, of Prague's Rozhledna (Petrin Observation Tower) to take these pictures had convinced me of the importance of that piece of kit, which I'd stupidly decided wasn't needed when I took the camera on holiday for the first time!

I visited the Petrin twice. The first day was the day I was mugged by the sheer cold. Catching the tram into the city centre I missed my stop and got lost. Wandering around in blind circles for what seemed like an age was cold and miserable until I hit on the downward sloping streets. By the time I reached the Vltava I needed to stop at the already familiar Cafe Slavia, upon which I'd happened.

Warmed up, and revived by coffee and a sandwich I set off again. Crossing the most Legii (Bridge of Legion) to reach Malá Strana (the Lesser Quarter) I suddenly walked out into cold more bitter even than that I'd experienced tramping up from the station to the Hrad Karlštejn the day before. It felt crippling. Completely exposed to the elements; gloves serving little purpose other than to cover frozen ears foolishly unprotected by any hat; I was so cold that it seemed utterly pointless to continue into the quickening dusk a journey which had already taken me some 3 or 4 times as long as the simple 30-minute jaunt I'd expected to this point. I was after some photos after all. I actually spent some 5 or more minutes just standing out there deciding what to do. Believe me that standing still didn't seem to make me feel any colder than moving did!

But I wanted those levels in Tourist, so I pressed on. By the time I'd taken a seat in the Petrin Hill funicular railway I was literally dazed with the cold (that's literally literally, not figuratively literally). And it was too dark to take any photos, so I didn't bother with the Rozhledna until I returned the next day to take these other pictures from the observation platform.

The Charles Bridge from the Rozhledna

Hradcany (Prague Castle)

Národní divadlo (the National Theatre)

It was at least as cold the day I took these pictures as it'd been the day before, but I was mentally prepared this time; I made sure I got in and out quickly; and I fortified myself with some hot wine in the Rozhledna cafe before heading back down across the Vlatva into town.

Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh on Saturday my expected rendezvous for dinner with my old friend Hugh (last seen here, and here, at DiceConWest'07) turned into a Saturday night in the pub with the rest of the old Edinburgh mob, among whom Jim might be remembered by regular readers as the anonymous gamer with whom "I perfected the grub-and-gaming trick" using the original Squad Leader. By this time any notion of returning to Glasgow that night was long forgotten.

In the pub Hugh, Jim and myself - grognards and avid readers of military history all 3 - somehow found ourselves broaching the still vexatious topic of whether or not Britain and France could actually have won a quick war against Germany if they'd gone to the aid of Czechoslovakia in 1938 instead of staging the shameful Munich fiasco. Hugh and Jim both insisted over my voluble scepticism that new research had demonstrated conclusively that this was quite simply logistically and militarily impossible, naming more than 1 book as evidence. I'll be adding these to my read pile as quickly as possible once I'm reminded of their titles. Hmm. This should prove interesting. ;)

Brilliant beginnings and feeble finales

More than 2 years ago and full in the flush of my 2-year haul through Richard Borg's Memoir'44, I wrote 'another hymn of praise to cardplay', in which I listed some geeky stuff the reading or playing of which had most affected me. Looking back at that list I now realise that I inadvertently forgot where some of it began, namely the late lamented Avalon Hill's Squad Leader. That's a shame really, because it was with John Hill's masterpiece that I perfected the grub-and-gaming trick to get a regular WW2 boardgaming session going. And it was about Squaddie that I wrote, in a Top-10 (sadly no longer available) this was "the first game I knew I always wanted to play."

Like I said, it's a shame that I left Squad Leader off a list upon which it really deserves its place. Why? Because my experience so far of the new Conflict of Heroes- Awakening the Bear! has pushed me over an edge on the brink of which I've teetered for months, thanks, naturally enough, to Combat Commander. What am I talking about? About the fact that I have a still horrible feeling that I might never play son of Squaddie, a.k.a. Advanced Squad Leader, ever again. So it's a shame that this landmark game didn't enjoy its pride of place in that wee list of mine before better games came along definitively to render it a museum piece for this gamer.

You'll've gathered then that Tony and I really enjoyed playing CoH on Saturday. We played 2 games of Firefight 1- Partisans, a really well-considered introductory scenario: the barest minimum of pieces- 5 on each side; an objective the control of which will typically be the key to victory for either side- generating 5VP/game at 1 VP/turn, it starts under Soviet control; and simple setup variations meaning that each side faces a distinct tactical situation- the Soviets hold the field against Germans entering with immediate strength of numbers and superior firepower.

My Germans mauled Tony's Soviets 8-2, then my Soviets won 7-4, a bit of a comeback for Tony, especially since he had a great 'hail mary' play for a draw, but chance fell just the wrong side of mean for him at that crucial moment. Those scores also hide the fact that I only killed 1 more unit than Tony- if any- because 4 out of 8 of my Germans' VP were down to the objective, whereas my Russians held the objective for at least 4 turns out of 5. And it turns out that we'd been bringing the German reinforcements in in the wrong place too- they come in behind the Soviets, which would've made the firefight a whole new kettle of fish.

The simplicity and flexibility of the core AP/CAP system was what had been most striking to me last time, before I'd played CoH. What excites me most now is the realisation that CoH does something which I believe is unique in squad-scale, company/battalion-level WW2 tacsims- it handles absolutely all combat by the same single set of rules. This is such a bland statement that its significance might be lost on some people, so let me expand.

ASL has 3 different core combat systems, which are based on infantry and armour being defined by quite distinct statlines:

• Fire attacks resolved on the Infantry Fire Table.
• Fire attacks resolved on the AP To Kill table.
• Close Combat.

These 3 systems each come with their own lengthy lists of DRM's.

Even Combat Commander has 2 core combat systems:

• Fire attacks.
• Close combat.

You could say that this is actually 1½ core combat systems, since the attack rolls are functionally identical in each case in CC.

In any event, units in CoH, be they infantry, ordnance, or vehicles- soft or armoured, all use the same statlines. This sample armour unit shows the full statline, with the typical 7 stats plus facing indicator. These are the same for infantry as they are for trucks as they are for horse-drawn units (some units have less stats because they lack the abilities those stats represent, eg. horses and carts have no FP). Different coloured stats are used to mark the differences between the key aspects of the various units:

• Target type, ie. soft target or hard target.
• Munitions, ie. AP or HE.
• Movement type, ie. foot, wheeled, or tracked.

These sample foot units show some of these variations. The way the different colours of FP and DR work to give the effects of AP and HE is devilishly simple: red FP versus blue DR is halved, and vice versa. The AT gun shows the sort of neat effect this rule creates, with the blue- armoured- front DR to represent the effect of the gun shield, the single most elegant implementation of this I have seen (you should see the lengths ASL goes to to handle this detail).

And there's more. Not only do all units in CoH use the same statline, resulting in a single combat system, but the combat system involves just 1 dice roll per attack- 2d6- and a tiny handful of modifiers. Part of this is because damage is handled by chit draws, so that extra dice rolls aren't needed to determine the success and/or the effect of attacks. The simplicity of this means that you can make quick, easy and meaningful assessments of your chances in any given attack, which is a great help to a player's tactical appreciation of the situation, as you can well imagine.

The effect of all this is amazing as you leaf through the scenarios book, looking at the huge 2-4 player scenarios, using perhaps 6 or 7 times as many units on 3 or 4 boards, and you realise that all of these are done with the same, single set of combat rules which are just a delight to use. For example, a neighbour popped in for a quick visit. This guy's no gamer, though he knows another grognard, and is curious about these games. I had CoH out on the table. I showed him a map and a playing piece. He was instantly fascinated, and was soon telling me that he felt like Rommel as he pored over the scenarios and the rules. He was really excited. I was quite boggled.

That's it for CoH just now. Expect to hear more.

Score
Tony: 0
Me: 2
:)

Meanwhile, elsewhere... Ack!
Our recent long run of Descent came to a close on Sunday. Regular readers will probably remember that it had fallen to us to save the world after our previous heroic victory had delivered it, neatly wrapped, to another common-or-garden megavillain with the usual plans of total domination of what remained after the all-too-familiar mass carnage. I'd expected Andy to want to take his chance to win a heroic victory himself, but he had other ideas.

The result doesn't bear much examination, if only because our efforts were so feeble. Our brave party of heroes took the wrong turning, with the result that we attacked some very strong monsters with the minimum of loot (you might remember I talked a couple of weeks ago about the levelling-up effect inherent in the different grades of treasure). Andy pulled some fancy footwork to get past our fighters to attack the weaker heroes, and we were trashed without getting past the 1st room. So much for saving the world then.

We're going to take a break from Descent for a wee while now, but we'll be back.

Score
Andy: 1
Useless no-marks: 0

Settlers
We finished off with this old favourite: Dave had never played before; and Andy was interested in seeing how it worked with more than 4 players. Dave took to Settlers as quickly as he'd taken to Descent, and he made a good showing too, which just goes to show that the game's merits aren't overrated even as it becomes as achingly familiar to adventure gamers as family boardgamers are to the general public. It wasn't going to be Dave's day for a newb's upset though.

It wasn't going to be my day though. Left with a tricky choice of regions I just couldn't find a fit I liked the look of, and ended up with one which was somehow worse than what I'd imagined it could be- I had neither sheep nor grain in my initial setup. I didn't expect to get far, and I expectations were fulfilled.

Tony meanwhile followed a by now familiar tactic of going for a quick city; Andy followed his example; and Donald grabbed the longest road which he held onto despite Dave's best efforts (and my dashed hopes). As the midgame drew to a close, the other 4 were poised neck and neck around 7 while I trailed, hoping to pull off a coup with both the longest road and the largest army to surprise everyone. It was not to be though. Tony hit 8VP, enabling me to explain to Dave the importance of an all-out trade embargo, as you do. But before it could bite, Tony stole the longest road, to win with an unexpected 2VP leap. Gutted! But a good show by Tony.

Score
Tony: 1
The other mugs: 0

Over the weekend
Andy: 1
Dave: 0
Donald: 0
Tony: 1
Me: 2
;)

On this day...

Today is the 63rd anniversary of D-Day, which signalled the opening of Operation Overlord- the Anglo-American assault on German-occupied France. I'm not going to to review the history of the preparation, launch and development of this crucial military operation of WW2 here (but here is the Battle of Normandy wiki for those of my readers who'd like somewhere to start finding out more for themselves). No, this commemorative post will be about the best of my viewing, reading and gaming on the subject of this massive attack down the years.

From newsprint to the silver screen
Like many of my generation none of whose relatives were actually there in France during those months in 1944, I imagine that my first encounters with the story of D-Day would've been found in the pages of the The Victor, Warlord, and Commando Comics- war comics published by the august D.C. Thomson, a veritable institution of Scottish publishing. In fact, there was a strip in Warlord called 'D-Day Dawson' unless my memory fails me.

Vague recollections of those childhood comics aside, my first real understanding of what D-Day was really all about came from the movie The Longest Day. (It boggles me somewhat to think that this film was made just 16 years after the event itself; I'm not quite sure why this is, but it's true all the same.) I can't remember how old I was when I first saw this film, but I can remember the impact it had on my young mind. The epic sweep of the narrative as it wove all the individual stories together thrilled me to bits even as it gave me a real sense of the sheer mind-bending scale of the forces marshalled to get those few men onto those 5 beaches that day. Individual incidents stick in my mind right up to this very moment:

• the desperation of the US paras as landing right on top of their objective in St. Mere Eglise leaves them utterly vulnerable to the German defenders
• the tragedy of the nameless squaddie who dies when he mistakes the working of the bolt of a German Mauser 98K for the click of the toy cricket handed out to the paras so that they could identify each other in the confusion of the night drop in enemy territory
• and the relief when one of our heroes doesn't suffer the same fate when the click to which he responds turns out to be exactly what he hoped it would be.

Whether or not this film really is as flawed as some of its critics are wont to point out (and it's not my purpose here to enter into that discussion), the simple fact is that it was watching this film that imprinted on my mind forever an indelible impression of the sheer scale of the forces unleashed by Eisenhower on the night of June 5th 1944.

Talking about Operation Overlord in Hollywood brings us, naturally enough, to Saving Private Ryan, undoubtedly one of Spielberg's masterpieces. It is impossible not to compare Saving Private Ryan with The Longest Day- even if only for reasons of personal history- but again, I don't here want to get into that sort of discussion.

Thanks to advances in cinematic techniques, what Saving Private Ryan gave us above all was the sense of actually being there, which was of course the entire purpose of that gruelling opening scene. Moreover absolutely everything about the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan has the ring of utter authenticity to this writer; so much so that it is difficult to select a few definitive examples beyond just reminding you all, my readers, of the sheer irresistible power of the sound and fury of that grim opening 20-or-so minutes as the grunts storm out of their landing craft into the killzone which has gone down in history as Bloody Omaha.

But I'll try:

• the bullets ripping into the men of the first wave as the bow-ramp of their landing craft opens- a moment which immediately takes us straight back to 'going over the top' at the Somme in 1916
• the guy whose helmet deflects a round, only for him to die moments later as he and his buddy celebrate such luck- because he'd taken the helmet off for said celebration
• the tone and the style of the language the grunts use to comprehend their battle situations and to develop their tactics in response thereto- whether on Omaha or in the later sequences of the film: these strike me as the unvarnished voices of the American squaddies and their leaders.

These are just a few examples I could've chosen from many, but they exemplify for me the unalloyed merits of Saving Private Ryan, a film whose strengths are those of Spielberg himself, most notable of which is a genuine grasp of the sheer power of cinema as spectacle in an age of spectacle.

Through books
Always an avid reader, you can be sure that my diet of WW2 soon expanded beyond war comics and Hollywood movies. The first book I can remember reading of relevance here today was Kenneth Macksey's Tank!, which I recall was a semi-fictional study of the actions of one British tank unit in the Normandy bocage on one day in 1944. A book I got out of the local library, the only other thing which comes to mind about Tank! is that I was really just a bit too young for it, because I was still looking for tales of thrilling wartime adventure, and not serious studies of the grim realities of tank combat in the worst terrain possible for your force-type, against troops unmatched in their abilities to exploit that terrain.

Since then I don't know how many books I've read on the subject of Operation Overlord. It's not really that many to be honest, with much of my reading on the subject being from books which encompassed the Second Front or the entire war as a whole. The last book I read on the subject of Overlord per se was Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy, by Max Hastings, surely a better military historian than he is a journalist- but then readers who know me would expect me to say that about someone who writes for the Daily Mail (pauses to spit).

Not really that bad a history at all actually, Hastings' book is in any case utterly overshadowed by John Keegan's masterly Six Armies in Normandy. This book... Hmm, this book. You know what it's like dear readers; what it's like on those great moments when- amidst all the richness of our modern culture; when you see, hear, read, watch or play something which is just so good that it becomes part of you forever. You know what I mean: the sort of thing the mere memory of which summons up to you the time, the place, and the very texture of the minutest moments of your life when this novelty came down upon you with such unexpected force.

Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy (there's the link again in case you want to go and take a look at what's inside its covers) was a book like that for me. I was lent it by one of my buddies from the Edinburgh mob back in the halycon days, and I devoured it. There is another book which was my bible as a WW2 wargamer at the time which relegated Keegan's masterwork into the 2nd rank, but no matter: Six Armies in Normandy is the greatest book on the topic of Overlord and its immediate aftermath I have ever read. If any of my readers who has read it knows of a better one, please do let me know- that's a book I want to read A.S.A.P.

To the gaming table
Unsurprisingly then, I was a teenage tankie. My brother and I started to invent rules to run the games we were playing with our toy soldiers. Then the teacher who ran the school modelling and wargaming club I was instrumental in getting started introduced us to the world of official wargames rules- in the form of the Wargames Research Group's WW2 microarmour rules (actually their 1973 vintage War Games Rules Armour & Infantry 1925 - 1950). I never looked back.

Regular readers will already be quite, quite familar with my enthusiasm for Days of Wonder's superlative Memoir'44- a game which was actually released to commemorate D-Day's 60th anniversary. Good as M44 is though- and the horrors of that first assault on Omaha Beach after the easy streets of 'Pegasus Bridge', 'Sainte Mère-Eglise', 'Sword Beach' and 'Pointe-du-Hoc' are an abiding memory which remain for me testament to the genius of Borg's design; all that notwithstanding I must confess that M44 doesn't in the end represent the summit of my experience of Overlord gaming. Unsurprisingly enough, that accolade belongs to the monumental Squad Leader/Advanced Squad Leader system.

Two stories spring to mind. The first is from a (perhaps the sole?) solo play of (the first?- I presume so) scenario from Hedgerow Hell - ASL Deluxe Module 2. What was so great about the Deluxe version of ASL were the large hexes (the same size as those in CC:E and in C&C games funnily enough), which served to save us players from the 'towering counter-stacks' syndrome. More important though was the way in which the special rules for the larger hexes gave a real feel for the hellish maze of the bocage. It really was a rendition I have never seen matched.

In my game, I remember I had this Sherman tank, which was sitting safely out of sight in a sunken road, waiting to move out to deliver its attacks when the supporting US infantry had cleared the immediate area. The thing was, the fecking infantry just couldn't do their job- the Germans were just so well dug-in, and so well positioned in that feckin' bocage. In the end, I decided that I just had to send that Sherman out in the hope that it could beat the German AT-gun to the draw. It lost. It brewed. Game over. A bit of a shocker, and an object lesson in the nightmares of positional warfare in the bocage.

But my finest hour in Operation Overlord gaming came in a scenario I played against Mark- without a doubt one of the tactical masters amongst my buddies from the Edinburgh days. I can't remember whether it was under SL or ASL, although I have a feeling it was the former. My memory is also telling me that the scenario was called 'Pouppeville Exit', but googling this gives me an ASL scenario which bears little resemblance to the game I played that day more than 20 years ago.

I was the Americans, playing a small force from the 101st Airborne who'd assembled and were moving up on the morning of the 6th June to secure exits from Utah beach for the US forces who were to land there any time now. I was facing dispersed German garrison troops- who had some decent AA guns for fire-support, and reinforcements to boot. I duly got my lads on the move, and got stuck in.

As the game developed something began to nag away at the back of my mind: the Germans weren't responding as I'd've expected to my attempts to grab the 2 roads both of which were specified as satisfying the scenario victory conditions. Still, I pursued my plan. It was only when Mark's reinforcements arrived (a depleted infantry company with some more AA- truck-mounted this time; and armoured support) that I finally twigged. Instead of splitting across the 2 fronts my forces presented, these reinforcements were immediately concentrated by Mark on just one of the roads. WTF? A quick reread of the scenario victory conditions later and sure enough: the Germans didn't need to prevent me from controlling 2 roads; I effectively had to prevent them from controlling just 1. WTF! I'd been playing according to a bum plan for the entire game so far, leaving my forces split just at the point when Mark was concentrating his for the kill! Again- WTF?!

I used every trick in the Squad Leader playbook to try to pull my fat out of the fire that night. My lads were double-timing like crazy through woods to get them from the road Mark wasn't contesting across to the one he was (and it took me a wee while to get them all moving, because I just really couldn't believe that he didn't have some kind of trick up his sleeve to make a grab for that other road once I'd left it open!). And I was using the Move/Advance shuffle tactic to get my lads out of LOS in my own turn for the purposes of reducing the Germans' opportunities to bring their overwhelming firepower to bear on my ever more grim defenders.

In the end it came down to (IIRC) some 3 squads, hunkered down in the woods beside that road, surrounded by Germans who mustered a fearful amount of firepower (including a StuG III for feck's sake!) for their last fusilade. My lads held. Just. Only just- I had barely 20 men left keeping the exit open for the troops coming off the beach. It was a truly great game.

And back to reality
The Anglo-American air forces waged a strategic interdiction campaign across northern France in the months of 1944 preceding the launch of Overlord on 6th June. Its purpose was to destroy the French rail network to prevent German reinforcement of the Normandy front after the landings. It was aimed at the whole of northern France as part of the deception plan whose purpose was to convince the Germans that the much anticipated invasion would cross the Channel via the Pas de Calais. Upwards of 8000 French civilians died in this phase of the operation.

To this already widely available information, recent TV documentaries have added 2 further facts:

• at least 20,000 more French civilians died in Normandy under Allied guns on D-Day itself
• the fires of that hellish maelstrom were visible across the Channel on the night of June 6th.

Start the week @ RD/KA!

Last Words... the Current Big Thing
Grognard reflexes honed over years of Squad Leader, Up Front and HERO rules-tinkering caused my bout of the Battlelore blues: I was pining for some more classically-detailed tacsims of the hex-and-counter school; challenges which M44 just can't deliver. M44 already looking a bit patchy, core BL beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic, and my just not getting enough games of C&C:A- I needed a new gaming fix.

I found exactly what I was looking for in GMT's Combat Commander: Europe. The title caught my eye while I was browsing through GMT's Project 500 lists last year: sample counters, map sections, and fate cards. Skimming the playtest rules (here are the current rules, and the FAQ, all laid on for your perusal) my immediate reaction was no more original than most- looks like a cross between Squad Leader and Up Front I thought. This prospect excited me, and I bought the game from the FLGS around new year.

Badger and I played a couple of games, and I liked it as least as much as I hoped I would. Then Martin had a go on his recent visit. His first impressions were mixed- not bad, but a bit meh. A few games later he was singing CC:E's praises as the best game I've shown him in years. Tony is similarly enthusiastic, and we've been playing several games a week lately. Badger and Donald are keen on it too.

Designer Chad Jensen has a definite hit on his hands. My most played game of 2007 so far. ;)

DiceConEast 2006

Battlelore bonanza! #1: DiceCon dishes it up first
As I noted last week, I was expecting a bumper day of games at DiceCon over in Edinburgh, and boy, did I get what I was asking for! Registering upon arrival I couldn't help but ask Ellis Simpson- con co-organiser- if he'd managed yet to get hold of a copy of Battlelore, Days of Wonder's hotly anticipated new iteration of Richard Borg's acclaimed Commands and Colours system.

I'd asked more in hope than in expectation, hoping that Ellis might've been on some inside track to pick up a prerelease copy and, well, because (as regular readers will need no reminding) I have a reputation to maintain as an enthusiast for the most exciting boardgaming system I've seen in years. Imagine my surprise then when Ellis replied that Gordon Lamont- the 'co' in co-organiser and one half of the dynamic duo which is Fragor Games- had actually managed to bring a copy back from Essen. Imagine too the idiot grin plastered across my face as I scurried (yes, scurried!) to lay claim to this unforeseen box of wonders before it could escape my clutches. And cast your mind back, dear reader, to a moment of this ilk of your own to taste the delight that was mine to savour as I passed the day at DiceConEast 2006 immersed in this great game.

Here's a slightly blurry phone-camera picture of yours truly enjoying setting the game up (thanks Bill).

Fragor Games, the SBGA and DiceCon are clearly keeping Gordon a busy man: he'd only had time to open the box for a look inside, leaving the contents still sealed in their cellophane. Pausing only to double-check it was OK to crack everything open (a bit of a no-brainer to be sure, but I'm one of those gamers who's a bit weird about cracking his own games open first...), Bill and I set to the first scenario with a will.

Having given France back to the French at Agincourt, I then faced off against Barry- one of several gamers attracted to the spectacle of Borg's latest in action- in scenario 5: Wizards and Lore, which introduces the Lore (ie. magic) rules.

I lost this game thanks to a premature attack up the centre which was easily repulsed, and to Barry's rock solid play- especially his excellent use of his Lore; both of which left me flailing in a game of catch-up through most of the game. This was made all the harder by Barry's strategy of standing-off and raining magical death down on my units from afar, which made it impossible for me to close for melee without running the very real risk of simply being crushed by Barry's counter-attack. I was finished off thanks to a stroke of bad luck when I rashly left a single model open to death-by-plinking from Barry's archers the very turn before I was ready to unleash my own potentially game-saving Lore attack. Talk about a learning curve!

These 2 defeats under my belt I managed to squeak a win against Bob in the same scenario. Undaunted by this turn in my fortunes I went down to ignominious defeat against Bill in a 3rd play of the same scenario, thanks to a sound plan well executed on Bill's part, and to some frankly appalling Lore management on my own. A veritable hail of death from his archers (green pennants with bows on the left and right sections at the top of the map) aside, Bill's game was noteworthy for his very clever use of a Lore card- Greater Portal. This enables you swap the position of 2 units anywhere on the board. Bill used this to swap one of his medium cavalry units (blue standard with horseman) with one of my units. Arriving behind my lines, Bill's cavalry unit ran riot at great cost to my forces. I was impressed, and mortified.

I swear that I didn't hog the game all day on purpose: I did offer to let others play, honest! Maybe I looked like a good mark or something. Whatever. You can be sure though that I had a great time discovering that Battlelore easily lives up to the hype, delivering a whole new game that is neither just M44 with the serial numbers filed off, nor merely C&C:A with bells and whistles. Bill, Barry and Bob were very impressed too.

It was also great meeting Barry and Bob. It turns out that they're just 2 of a group of gaming buddies who play Commands and Colours regularly. As fun as it was to chew the fat with other afficionadoes, I was also encouraged by the prospect of C&C events at future DiceCons. Not content with this, it turned out that Bob and I had actually gamed together before, some 20-odd years ago. He used to work in the old Games Gallery in Edinburgh- my first FLGS- and we'd got together to play John Hill's classic WW2 tactical boardgame Squad Leader. Neat, eh?

On top of all this fun, I also managed to maintain my tradition of not winning a thing in the regular DiceCon entry-ticket raffle. This was all the more spectacular this time because everyone else with whom I was there- Bill, Antony and Donald- walked away with a prize. Antony in particular lucked-in, going home with a copy of Avalon Hill's Axis & Allies: D-Day. With prizes numerous, and as grand as this maybe I should be saying that 'my day will come', but who's to argue with tradition?

The pleasures of the day were rounded off by the presence of a French market just round the corner from Overseas House. I couldn't resist the lure of the fromagier, where I picked up a wedge of a perfectly ripe Brie at a very reasonable price. Eaten on oatcakes and washed down with a cheap red plonk, this later proved to be a delicious end to a fine day out.

So thanks to the lads for getting me up, out and off to Edinburgh, and to Ellis and Gordon for all their hard work in running DiceCon. And of course, a special thanks to Gordon for bringing Battlelore because he knew that there'd be someone there to appreciate it. See you all again next year I trust. ;)

Commands and Colours: Ancients- the Richard Borg engine rumbles on! #1

I mentioned recently that I had got hold of a copy of GMT's latest version of the Richard Borg Command and Colours system- Commands and Colours: Ancients. I've had the game for a few weeks now, which has given me time to play a few games, and to search out some online references. Here are: John A. Foley's site, which gives an interesting overview of the development of GMT's production, among other things; Tom Vasel's review; and the C&C:A page at BoardGameGeek.

Regular readers will know of my enthusiasm for and many recent games of Borg's Memoir'44. That alone would've guaranteed my interest in C&C:A, even though I must confess that the ancient period isn't one for which I have a passion as I do for WW2. All the same, picking up a copy of C&C:A on sight proved to be a real no-brainer in the end! So, what do I think?

What's in the box
Well first, to be more precise- what's on the box? And no, I'm not talking about the graphic design which is all fine and dandy, but which had no effect whatsoever on my decision to buy this game. No, I'm talking about a little test I did of a statement I've read more than once on the net: people praising the sturdy qualities of the game box have suggested that it is sufficient to bear an adult's weight. And it is.

That little wheeze aside, it has to be said that this is an impressive package of gratifying heft when you pick it up off the shelf. Sure, you can no more judge a game by its weight than you can a book by its cover. All the same, C&C:A's combination of raw poundage and Richard Borg's design credit make this particular heavy box one the opening of which you have every reason to believe will live up to expectations.

What you find when you open the box is a battle map, double-sided terrain hexes, a deck of Command cards and a rulebook exactly as you'd expect if you'd already bought Memoir'44. There are also 2 player reference sheets and 7 plastic dice. Finally there are some 345 wooden blocks in 4 different sizes and 3 different colours complete with 5 sheets of sticky labels for all the different units in the game.

Production standards
First things first. One feature of M44 that gives it a special appeal is the superlative production values Days of Wonder brought to the game. From the tactile appeal of the models, to the vividness of the map and terrain tiles, M44 enjoys a lush visual appeal that gladdens the heart of this old-time miniatures gamer and Squad Leader player.

These were production standards that GMT were never going to be able to bring to C&C:A, an issue that has generated much discussion across the net. C&C:A's map is unmounted and terrain tiles are of thinner card stock than their equivalents in M44, and they are printed in a more limited and muted colour palette. The game also uses wooden blocks for the units instead of models, and you have to apply sticky labels to the blocks in addition. There are also plastic dice requiring the application of labels.

By and large these work just fine. In fact I am in the camp that believes that the more muted colours work better for the swords and sandals of the ancient setting than the lush palette M44 uses for the plains of Europe.

Likewise, the wooden blocks have proved much better than I had feared when I first heard about them. Sure, having to spend 5 or more hours applying nearly 700 sticky labels to each side of more than 300 wooden blocks was a bit of a pain in the ass, but it wasn't really all that bad compared to the amount of time I've devoted down the years to painting miniatures, or to preparing an rpg session. And the blocks have turned out to be more suitable for the game than models in any case: battle lines are a crucial feature of C&C:A and the blocks seem to me to work much better for these purposes than models would've. They turn out to be more evocative of the massed ranks of units in the period; are easier to move; and are much less likely to get snagged than the models of M44. So the blocks turn out to be less fiddly to use once you've got past getting them ready.

So GMT have taken the limitations imposed upon them by their business model and turned them largely to their advantage, which is nice. Well, except for those dice. The C&C:A dice are plastic, with indentations on each face into which you have to stick labels featuring the various symbols. The labels are just a wee bit too big for the indentations, which has led to excessive wear after a mere 5 games or so. And this has been all over the dice labels too, not just on the higher surfaces where wear might be expected. I have also found that the dice don't really roll very well once they land after being thrown, they just kind of plonk down. There will be new dice in the imminent first expansion set, so we'll see I guess.

New rules
With a gaming system as abstract as Borg's Commands and Colours there is always the risk that variants might turn out to be cut-and-paste versions of the same game which all end up feeling very much the same. So the rules changes relative to M44 are fundamental to the success of C&C:A in conveying an authentic feel for the ancient period.

The key rules changes in C&C:A relative to M44 are:

• the battle dice: in C&C:A these feature 1 hit each for light, medium and heavy troop types, and 1 each of leader, swords, and flag results
• the Command deck: this has been significantly rejigged, with variations in familiar cards and entirely new cards
• unit types: there are 12 unit types in C&C:A
• terrain: the battlefield is much more open and terrain isn't as useful as cover in C&C:A as it is in M44
• leaders: these are a standard feature of C&C:A, and they are crucial in the game
• support: units are less likely to retreat when they have friendly units beside them
• ranged attacks: not all units can make ranged attacks, and these are also weaker than they are in M44
• retreats: retreats are more headlong in C&C:A than in M44, though they are often less likely to happen
• evasion: some units may evade before close combat in the hope of suffering fewer hits
• battling back: units may often strike back at their attackers in close combat.
• elephants: an utterly characteristic feature of the period with rules so entertaining that they deserve to be looked at under their own category!

I'll be back another time with a more detailed look at these rules changes. ;)

THIS is more like it!

So, that big trip I´ve been talking about: well, here I am in Prague, blogging from a Russian-run cybercafe and struggling with the peculiarities of a Czech-language keyboard (some keys are reversed, and there´re some things I´m not sure I´ll master at all!). No matter: this is the internet age, and this is as cyber as I´ve ever been. Wootage!

I flew in from Glasgow yesterday, via Amsterdam. I had to go with KLM because I left my booking too late to go with any of the cheaper carriers. I was annoyed at first, but the approach to Schipol over the coast turned out to be worth every last penny. I mean, both my flights were just great: flying through clear blue skies bathed in sunshine, with following tailwinds making us prompt if not early. The sort of flights, in fact, that are beginning to make me positively enjoy flying (something I´d never´ve expected to have been saying only a few years ago).

But coming in over the coast of Holland was something else entirely. As soon as I caught sight of land, I could see the famous lowlands. Mist still shrouded the depressions, making the place look like some kind of ethereal extraterrestrial landscape. I saw the canals, and what must´ve been a dyke. Then I saw a tanker parked in a side canal... WTF?! I thought: look at the size of that thing!

Flushed with excitement, I only had time to grab a snack before heading off to wait to board my flight to Prague. I have several nice memories of this flight, but one in particular is just geeky beyond belief. As we descended in our approach to Prague the details of the roads, buildings and other features below us became ever more apparent. Something about them struck me as strangely familiar. Then I realised what it was: everything looked like a giant Squad Leader mapboard, even down to little details like having paved (grey) and unpaved (brown) roads.

I had a peculiar moment of insight: those lovely mapboards that so marked Squad Leader out from everything else at the time of its release? Well, it looks like they were a product of the advent of cheap air travel in America in the 50´s and 60´s. How else could the game´s mapmaker have got the idea for what he did with those lovingly detailed maps which were as much part of the game´s immediate charm as Hill´s groundbreaking design?

Arriving at Prague I also rediscovered one of things that makes me really hate air travel: bloody baggage claim! I mean, having been through 2 flights in the space of some 4 hours, I then had to wait at least half an hour to get my luggage. I was livid, I can tell you! Especially because I knew the pal whose wedding I have come to attend and his bride to be, and perhaps another guest would all be waiting for me, and I was at least as keen to see them all as they were me.

A rash of enthusiasm...

... for Up Front

Readers who know me might be surprised that I haven't already filled page after page about this great game (or about, y'know... No, no, he's another story).

Up Front (UF), designed by Courtney Allen and published by Avalon Hill in its pre-Hasbro days back in 1983 is, in my opinion, the greatest wargame since chess. Such (possible?) hyperbole aside, it is certainly my desert-island game of choice. With the possible exception of backgammon it is the single game I have played more than any other, ever.

So having announced my fondess for UF in such grandiloquent terms, how can I explain what it is about this game that makes it the WW2 tacsim which comes closest to giving me the same buzz that I get from a good roleplaying session with a favourite PC in the hands of a class GM?

I think I can make a stab at a start by summing up its appeal as:

1. Sheer playability
2. Superb authenticity
3. Groundbreaking design conception

Sheer playability
Well I've already said that this is the most played game ever in my adventure games collection; which amounts to some thousand and more games, most of them over a period of 5/6 years' intensive play right after I'd got it.

This is the game that, back in the days when none of us had day-jobs to worry about, we would literally play for 24 hours or more at a stretch. And that's a gang of us playing winner-stays-on round robin with a single set. Just how many boardgames can you think of that are so compelling that more than half of a group of hardcore gamers there assembled would be willing to sit out all that time just for their game? (Not unlike playing pool in a pub.)

UF is also the only boardgame that's ever reduced me to a heap of hysterical laughter rolling on the floor due to the sheer madness of the play.

More objectively, UF is a game that a smart player can learn in less than half an hour with the help of a good teacher; which you can play in 45-90 minutes once you've mastered the rules- allowing several games in a reasonable evening's gaming. UF was also the first game that gave us what we came to call the 'arcade game' effect - that irresistable desire to have another go because you just know you can do it next time.

You don't have to be a grognard - let alone a WW2 buff - to enjoy UF; you just have to enjoy a supreme tactical challenge and the experience of increasing mastery of a vivid recreation of the problems of squad-level combat in WW2.

Superb authenticity
Sheer damn good fun aside, the authenticity of UF as a simulation of its chosen subject is the single issue that most strongly divides its fans from its detractors (and the latter most certainly outnumber the former I'd have to admit I guess). It's the cardplay that is the kicker here, with the opinions of the nay-sayers most often summed-up under terms like 'floating terrain'.

This arises because everything that happens in a game of UF is driven by an action deck. That's not just doing the obvious things like issing orders, eg. movement, firing and rallying; nor even the use of card-draw action resolution; but also determining the very shape of the battlefield itself, eg. that building out there you're looking for?- well you don't know where it is until you draw a building card from the action deck; and you can't get there without a movement card.

The M:tG generation might find this unexceptional, but I can assure you that those aging fans of hexmaps, CRT's, ZoC's of the 70's school of SPI, GDW, and so on, well a lot of them just didn't get it, so that UF has basically taken on geek cult status amongst grognards. All the same it remains my contention that precisely what UF lacks - ie. the omniscient overview and the omnipotentence of the turn-by-turn counter pushing; well, this is what gives the game its unique feel for that old chestnut of wargames design - the fog of war.

In UF, you know your enemy - your opponent's squad; and you know your mission - the victory conditions; otherwise, well you can have a pretty good idea of what's out there, but you're not sure where it is, how long it'll take you to get there, nor even how well-prepared the enemy will be in the face of your plan. And even if you do figure that out, you can't be sure how well your men will perform, if their morale will hold, or if there'll be enough of them left once you've closed with the enemy for you to be able to achieve your objective.

On top of this psychology provided by the action deck, UF also enjoys some neat games mechanics demonstrating a painstaking study of its subject. The best features of the mechanics aside from the cardplay are the morale and shooting rules.

Morale is handled by the by now familiar 2-state: good order and pinned. Pinned men can't move or fire, which hampers and slows down the rest of their group (fireteam).

Firepower works as volume fire against morale instead of individual direct fire conducted man-to-man, which was the typical mechanic back in UF's day. Basic infantry weapons are richly rendered, with simple rules reflecting the differences between rifles, SMG, and MG's, and between, say, the bolt-action, semi-automatic and fully automatic versions of the former. Actual fire attacks are executed via action card draws, with some simple and neat mechanics which work out to give an excellent feel for the effects of cover, and for the difference between sporadic fire that keeps your men's heads down, and sustained bursts that gun them down in droves.

Around this core of fire and movement are many other neat rules: infiltration and close combat; weapons malfunctions and repairs; special weapons, eg. the dreaded flamethrower; pillboxes, minefields, ordnance, and tanks.

The tank rules are really nice, smoothly presenting them in a form appropriate to their power at this level of combat, which includes their vulnerablities too naturally enough. Even something as complex as the difference between solid and shaped-charge AT munitions is presented with rules so subtle that you might not even notice what's going on.

All in all then, I would be very surprised if someone could present a sustainable case that UF is a poor simulation of its chosen subject, even if the game was to remain not to their taste.

Groundbreaking design conception
The use of cardplay to control and to resolve actions wasn't pioneered by UF. Avalon Hill's Gunslinger is but one example of a game that uses cards for both these purposes. What marks UF out from the other examples with which I am familiar is the integration of these functions into a single deck (Gunslinger gives each player their own - fixed - set of action cards, and uses a separate resolution deck). More than that too is the integration of the battlefield itself into the very same deck (Gunslinger uses the familar board and counters).

It is this integration of space and time on the battlefield into a seamless whole via the medium of the action deck that was unique to UF. The overall effect was to give the game a definite viewpoint analagous to that of a PC in an rpg. I mean, tabletop military simulation games had hitherto presented a viewpoint that was, by and large, totally unreal: that of the top-down map view.

This is something that was just about credible in the days of Napoleon and hilltop generalship on the field of battle. Even then the lie of the land would typically give the lie to this perspective. In the 20th century this viewpoint basically could and did not exist. What UF confronted then was a deeply rooted trend in simulationist gaming where the players' viewpoints in practice represented some nebulous notion of the staff and the command structure, not the generals themselves as so fondly imagined by grognards everywhere.

In UF, the players represent the platoon commanders (they have to: if they were actually on the table, then their death would be an immediate defeat, surely?), located somewhere just off the table. The effect of the cards is to distill into an easy playable form the way in which they would receive information and give orders about a situation they basically cannot see, and over which they have limited control.

It has to be said that Allen himself wasn't completely responsible for the design innovations that he was using here. The simple fact that UF was billed as the "Squad Leader card game" tells us that he owed a debt to John Hill's trailblazing work on the idea of modelling the effects of a given thing (or set of things if those things all have the same overall effect) instead of modelling each particular way in which that effect is delivered. I happen to believe that Hill's work also influenced George MacDonald and Steve Peterson - whose similarly groundbreaking rpg Champions used the same approach to the modelling of comicbook superpowers.

I also happen to believe that this posited parallel influence is more than merely fortuitous. What I mean here is that what underpins the levels of abstraction that make the UF action deck such a joyous gaming engine is exactly the principle Allen developed from Hill's work, ie. model effect and not mechanism.

In this case though Allen went further than just reducing the effects of a variety of different weapons to a single unified mechanic, as had Hill. In UF, Allen went on to model the 'effect' of the squad level action on the platoon leader existing in a location separate from the action the game actually plays out, and vice versa. In other words the uncertainties of the action deck are a mechanism to model the effects of the distance between leader and led, with the resultant communications lag and general lack of specific information.

What made this so exciting at the time was the sense that this was a design concern - that of adequately modelling a single and definite viewpoint - which we were all convinced was a direct product of the advent, in the preceding decade, of the rpg.

And that's it:- Up Front: great game; fine simulation; and tacsim schwerpunkt of the post-D&D history of adventure gaming.

"Take fire 10!"

Related@RD/KA!
- A rash of enthusiasm for Memoir'44, Part 1: Another hymn of praise to cardplay