A rash of enthusiasm...

... For Space Hulk

Part 3. Tactics, tactics, tactics!
If the timer and blips rules gave the players of Space Hulk a point-of-view from which to play, the rest of the rules brought the premise vividly to life and made the game a thrilling challenge. Given the importance I have already attributed to the timer rule, it's hardly a stretch that I would see the simplicity of the action and resolution systems as important here. This simplicity made sure that the timer rule brought tension and excitement to the challenges of the game, instead of being experienced as a punitive burden.

Beyond the rules, I would also have to say that the board itself was a key element of what made the game so good. There might've been a certain implausibility to all those narrow corridors and tiny rooms- especially in the Dark Millenium, where everything was always on a grand scale; but their effect on the game was simply excellent. I guess at the most obvious level, a more open board would've made for pretty dull play in a game where only one player had ranged weaponry. But the tight confines of the Space Hulk board created a fascinating set of tactial problems for players.

These problems arose from the way in which the maze of the board broke your forces up into discrete groups, and forced them down certain definite lines of advance. As a result of this, corners and junctions became key points around which entire strategies could hinge.

The AP rules were also crucial here, breaking movement through the hulk down into bounds requiring careful judgement. The effect was that every single action counted, especially for the Terminators. Games could be won or lost as much by a misspent AP as by the fortunes of the dice.

The combination of the impact of the tight confines of the board and the strictures of the AP system placed a high premium on carefully planned advances. Moving your pieces in the wrong order could have terrible consequences. One badly placed Terminator could block a corridor, backing up the rest of his squad and leaving them open for a vicious Stealer counterattack. One misplaced blip could be caught out by a Terminator, and subjected to involuntary conversion so that it turned out to be a single Stealer instead of the 3 on which the player had been relying.

A variety of tactics had to be developed to deal with these challenges. The most obvious one was straight out of all the classic textbooks: paying attention to your flanks and rear. The maze-like nature of the board meant that there was always a chance that your opponent might hit you in or get round your flanks. Terminators had to be stationed to cover likely avenues with overwatch fire. Blips and/or Stealers had to lurk in suitable locations to deny easy access.

Apart from these basics, each specific feature of the board- doors, corners, corridors, rooms- posed its own problems for each side. For Stealers the mission usually involved stopping the Terminators achieving some objective, so the problems these features posed were all about lurking and swarming, building a force sufficiently big to swamp the Terminators with numbers. For the Terminators, typically on the offensive, these features were often intermediate objectives to be taken on the way to fulfilling their mission.

Doors for example. These were very useful to Stealer players. Blips couldn't enter a Terminator's LOS, and could only convert before moving. So a standard Terminator tactic was to fire on the move, trying to blow as many doors as possible. The hope here was to open up long fire lanes that would slow down Stealer infiltration of the hulk- only a single Stealer at a time could cross the firelane, and it might go down to overwatch.

The Stealer response to this was 'doorkeepers': get to the door first, and open it (this tactic only worked if the door was on some kind of corner btw). Next turn, the 'doorkeeper' would close the door, maybe moving off to let another Stealer/blip take its place. Now LOS was blocked and blips could move at will. Then a 2nd 'doorkeeper' would open the door to keep it safe for next turn.

Then there were corners and corridors. As a Stealer player you'd usually have a bug or blip or two lurking off side corridors, round corners, and so on, just waiting for an unwary, careless or just plain unlucky Terminator to get too close. Smart Terminators would hold back of course, but sooner or later someone would have to take the corner or shoot the corridor ('shooting' a corridor meant charging up a short corridor to clear the area ahead).

By the time you were sending your Terminator in you'd know exactly the minimum AP- including additional CP- required to get up there and clear the area. But often you'd have to get your heavy flamer up there too, to block off the corridor ahead and prevent the Stealer reinforcements just round the corner from swarming in to leave the next guy in line to have to do it all over again. A lot of the tensest dice rolling of my gaming career has come from those situations!

Sometimes too you couldn't hold back like that. Then there'd be nothing for it but to send a few Terminators in close, set them into overwatch, and hope that they'd take enough Stealers with them for you to clear the position next turn. Truly grim stuff!

One of my favourites to come out of this spiral of tactic and counter-tactic was one we called the Dance of Death. Often there'd be a position where you'd have a lone Stealer just round a corner with a Terminator on overwatch 5 squares away. That would give you 1 attack, but only after you'd been shot at 5 times. Not great odds. But then someone noticed the rule that overwatch fire was mandatory, and that it was per action, not per AP spent. Stealers could make a 90 degree turn for 0AP, and so it began: move a Stealer out further away- overwatch; free turn- overwatch; sidle- overwatch; free turn... and so on, hoping for that jam that would let the first Stealer get in for its attack.

You could lose a lot of Stealers that way if you were unlucky, sometimes blowing a whole position, but what the heck: we figured that was how the hivemind worked anyway.

Another trick we mastered was the art of packing more than 9 bugs into a 3x3 room- clinging to the walls and ceiling in other words. This all had to do with the logic of involuntary blip conversion. You set your blips up just right and then left them there waiting for a Terminator to come through the door. The first blip would convert. Its Stealer(s) would be killed, revealing more blips, which would convert, and so on. This was a lot of fun, and a handy way of stopping powerful characters.

By the time my regular hulking stopped we were also beginning to get into the intricacies of board design. This was because we'd noticed a lot of the published missions made it easy for the Terminators to interdict Stealer entry areas, or had too many long straight corridors that made good swarming and lurking too difficult for the Stealers. Naturally enough, not wanting to make life too easy for the Terminators we decided to change this around.

By way of a conclusion
The range of tactical problems and solutions and the spiral of measure and counter-measure I've sketched out here should go some way to underlining why Space Hulk deserves its classic status. Simple basic elements giving rise to complex gameplay is a hallmark of classic games, as is immense replay value. Second edition Space Hulk- with the addition of the missing timer and CP rules from 1st edition- enjoys these in spades.

Space Hulk is also a game offering the satisfaction of mastery as a reward for serious play. For me, one of the great experiences of my years' gaming has been found at the Space Hulk table. It was the sense of my Terminators as a finely honed team, poised and ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. It was a wonderful feeling, and is probably about as close as I've come in boardgaming to that feeling of being possessed by a favourite roleplaying character.

This hymn of praise to a modern classic would be a bit academic if it wasn't for one thing. The last time I went to Games Day UK, a couple of years ago, I made a point of going to the Fanatic stand to ask why GW weren't supporting Space Hulk with their Specialist Games line which supports other old games like Blood Bowl and Necromunda. I was passed down the line to Jervis Johnson.

We had a nice chat, and he explained to me what I've already explained about margins and so on. He also told me that he hoped that GW might- just might, he stressed- want to launch a boardgames division in the future. Space Hulk could have a place there he suggested, although as a proper boardgame, and not a boardgame/miniatures game crossoever. I have to say I think this would be rather cool. Games like Memoir'44 and Settlers of Catan show the kind of thing GW could do with WFB and 40K.

So if you've never gone hulking before, check out your 40K acquiantances (you must know at least one), and see if you can't get someone to introduce you to Space Hulk (don't forget to use the timer and the CP rules). And then bug GW into making Jervis' dream come true. And then maybe this great game will get another, longer-lived, revival. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- Part 1. In the beginning was the hulk
- Part 2. The timer rule and player point-of-view

A rash of enthusiasm...

... For Space Hulk

Part 2. The timer rule and player point-of-view
Like I said, I haven't done any serious hulking in quite some time now, but when I was I played the game often enough to put it in at #3 in the 1st division of my most-played games. More than that: I reckon I played Space Hulk more intensely than any other game, including Up Front (believe it or not), because it was pretty much the only game I had for a couple of years or so (my then regular gaming opponent wasn't into Up Front that much). We used to play every other week or more, often for 2 days solid, which amounts to several hundred games.

In that time I came to cherish the riches that lie behind the deceptive simplicity of the game's basic elements. And don't be fooled by that simplicity. Space Hulk is more than just an atmospheric beer'n'pretzel quickie. It is a demanding tactical challenge requiring cool nerves and the ability to think on your feet. In short: it is a feast of riches derived from simple elements after the fashion of the old school of classic games.

There are 2 key levels on which the rules of Space Hulk work to create such a thrilling gaming experience. One is the ease of play enabled by the simple basic elements. The other is (funnily enough) the way that 2 key elements of the rules combine to give the players well defined points-of-view which mean that the game vividly generates the atmosphere of its theme.

Regular readers might remember my previous comments on the matter of creating definite points-of-view in my articles on Up Front and Memoir'44. Space Hulk contrasts interestingly with these games because it is essentially a good old fashioned board and counters game (the models, however pretty, are purely decorative).

The rules that create these points-of-view are the blip rules and the timer rule. Before going on to explain this, I should note- for the benefit of any old timers who were fans of the 1st edition- that although I played the 1st edition a lot, I was always more au fait with the whole Tyranid hivefleet thing than with the classic stealer cult background of the original game. This experience naturally colours my thinking on how these rules work to enforce the points-of-view of the 2 sides in the game.

The way I see it, the time limit rule is fundamental here. I see it as working like this: the stealer player is not subject to a time limit. Thus able to take as much time as desired, the stealer player is put in the position of the hivemind in all its mysterious workings. In contrast to this the time-limited turns of the Terminator player represents the smaller individual minds of humans (even genetically-engineered supersoldier servants of the God Emperor of Man) and their less efficient coordination based on verbal communication. Thus it is stealer player's luxury of time relative to the time-pressures of the Terminator player that enforce the basic points-of-view of each side.

The blip rules pin down the Terminator player's point-of-view by neatly unifying the perspectives of the individual marines with that of their commander, who is off-board (as ever).

Note the rather odd case I am putting forward here: that it is the Terminator player's rule that defines the essential point-of-view of both sides; that this rule defines the players' points-of-view because the stealer player isn't subject to the rule; and that it is a stealer player's rule that finishes off the defintion of the Terminator player's point-of-view. This is all evidence of subtle game design if you ask me.

I have already explained (in the articles linked above) why I believe the advent of a design focus on a clear and definite player point-of-view to be a legacy of the arrival of the rpg. I believe this same pedigree is evident in the case of Space Hulk. It's fairly obvious really, given GW's early days as an rpg importer and publisher. Interestingly enough the original Space Hulk box displayed a logo announcing the game to be a '3D roleplay game'. I have to confess that I thought this to be a bit spurious at the time. With hindsight though I would have to admit that there was more to this than initially met the eye.

Apart from enforcing the players' points-of-view, and generating gut-wrenching tension on the part of the Terminator player, the timer rule also had another important effect. This was to provide a neat solution to one of the perennial problems of games in general: sitting waiting for your turn. This wasn't a problem for the stealer player, who'd never have to wait more than 6 minutes before their turn.

More interestingly though, it wasn't a problem for the Terminator player either, no matter how long the stealer player lingered over their turn. Why? Because as the Terminator player, the key to good play was constant planning while paying close attention to each and every move the stealer player made. Add in overwatch fire and the use of CP in stealer turns, and you had a game in which player involvement was as near constant as possible, a remarkable feat for a classic I-go-U-go turn structure with simple and one-sided rules for interrupting opponents' turns.

Related@RD/KA!
- Part 1. In the beginning was the hulk
- Part 3. Tactics, tactics, tactics!

A rash of enthusiasm...

... For Space Hulk

Part 1. In the beginning was the hulk
What with the theme of some of my recent posts, I felt it was time for a burst of untrammelled enthusiasm. Where better to look for inspiration then than this classic game from GW?

Space Hulk was the first 40K game from the GW stable I got into. I was given a copy by a friend and before I knew where I was, I'd been introduced to one of the most exhilarating adrenalin-rushes of tactical skirmish boardgaming I've ever played. Playing it week after week as I did in the days before I could afford to amass a playable army back in the dog days of Rogue Trader and the early days of 2nd edition 40K, it wasn't long before Space Hulk entered the first division of my most played games.

It's been quite some time since I did any serious hulking, but those glory days live vividly in my memories, and Space Hulk is up there with games like Up Front and Memoir'44 as one I'd happily give some serious attention to anywhere, anytime.

A bit of history
Space Hulk was first published in 1989, only 2 years after Rogue Trader- the game that launched GW's Dark Millenium on an unsuspecting universe. Adeptus Titanicus- GW's gothic take on Japanese giant robot combat- had been released only the previous year. These then were the days before GW had come to bestride the gaming industry as the behemoth we know today.

So it has to be said that the publication of Space Hulk was something of an event. It came in a big box reminiscent of the kiddies' games like Mouse Trap which many gamers will have loved in their childhoods. And the Space Hulk box was full of goodies equally reminiscent of those games too: 30 clip-together plastic miniatures; a pile of jigcut board sections in thick card; lots of doors with little stands; a pile of counters of similarly chunky quality; and 2 lavishly illustrated rulebooks.

For those already fond of the style of Rogue Trader this was a real treat. And for anyone else? Well, these were the days when the better typical boardgames came in boxes not much bigger than a coffee-table book, with paper maps and fiddly wee counters. So, like I said: the sight of a product like Space Hulk being released by a British company was big news, a real heads up. Just a pity then that I had to wait 3 years before getting my hands on my own copy. Ah well, these things happen. After all, I didn't learn to play backgammon until my early 20's, and goodness knows how many centuries old the game was by then.

The setting
The premise of Space Hulk was simple, and its inspirations obvious to any fans of SF. Space hulks were giant agglomerations of space wreckage drifting randomly through the galaxies of the Dark Millenium. Some of them were infested with Genestealers- relentless and deadly creatures of chitin and slithering flesh. Their sole purpose was to conquer other species, through infiltration and genetic implantation; a kind of extraterrestrial cuckoo if you like. Genestealers were so dangerous that when a space hulk was sighted in human space, only humanity's supreme warriors could face the threat: Imperial space marines equipped with Terminator armour that made them the equivalent of a pocket walking tank.

And so the game pitted skittering bugs with an instinct for slaughter and a taste for alien genes against genetically-engineered supersoldiers with a pathological hatred of the xeno and a holy imperative to protect their geneseed. This potent cocktail of familiar themes revisited through GW's penchant for pushing the macabre to new extremes proved to be another winner.

The game
The basic game itself was beautifully simple. It was played in predefined scenarios, with specific victory conditions for each side. These were called 'missions', a nice touch immediately setting a certain tone ('mission' has a certain imperative lacking in 'scenario' don't you think?). This was enhanced by the cheerful titles of the missions in the basic set: who could resist playing out missions like 'Suicide Mission', 'Exterminate', or 'Cleanse and Burn'? The Dark Millenium was a grim place, and hulking was its grimmest business, and boy, did you know it!

The mission set-ups were quick and easy: just lay out the board- a maze of narrow corridors and small rooms- as per the mission, set up the doors, assemble your forces, and you were good to go.

Terminators came in squads of 5: a sergeant, a heavy flamer trooper, and 3 others. Standard equipment was a storm bolter and a power fist (nifty names again). The sergeant would have a power sword instead of a powerfist, something you'd be really, really grateful for every now and again. You'd have 1 or 2 squads depending on the scenario. And that would be your lot.

If the Terminators were neat (and they were), it was with the Genestealers (Stealers hereafter) that Space Hulk first got really neat. The thing was, Stealers didn't set up on the board as models, they set up as 'blips'. Conceived to represent the hidden movement of Stealers out of sight, coupled with the effects of the scanners on the Terminators' assault ship feeding data into the marines' HUD's, blips were counters representing an unknown number of Stealers- 1, 2 or 3 in the basic game.

These blips couldn't act as Stealers- eg. attack- until they were 'converted', ie. flipped over and replaced with the appropriate number of Stealer models. The rules governing this meant a major element of the game was the war of manoeuvre: the Stealer player looking for the ideal place to convert his blips so as to launch an attack; the Terminator player trying to catch blips in open sight, thus surprising the unwary Stealers (a.k.a. 'involuntary conversion') and gunning them down before they could react.

As well as sneaking about out of sight, the Stealer player also had the advantage of reinforcements. Every turn he would get a certain number of additional blips- drawn at random- which he could place at certain designated entry points beside the board. So a major tactic for the Stealer player was massing and swarming if he could- ie. was drawing good blips; or using bluff and uncertainty if he had to- ie. was drawing puny blips.

The gameplay was neat and clean. The turn structure was I-go-U-go, and models were activated using action points (AP). Terminators had 4 AP, Stealers 6, and the effects of the AP costs of the various actions was to make Terminators slow and lumbering while Stealers were fast and agile. Close combat was based on rolling d6's, highest winning (ties were a standoff). The Stealers had 3d6 to roll and choose from though, to the Terminators' 1d6, so close combat was very one-sided: Terminators who lasted more than 1 round with a Stealer were heroes; those who killed one were legends!

Of course, the Terminators had those storm bolters, so they were hoping that the bugs wouldn't get that close. Shooting was dead easy: roll 2d6 and pray for 6's. If you missed, roll again, and pray for 5's or 6's this time, unless you were storming forward with moving fire or firing in overwatch. Ah yes, overwatch! This was the core of Terminator tactics (except for the flamers that is). A marine could spend AP to set overwatch. This allowed fire at Stealers once per action conducted in LOS in their own turn. This was normal fire with the added risk that if you rolled a double, your gun jammed. You just had to pray that you'd survive long enough to repair it!

The resulting overwatch corridors gave rise to another of the game's crucial conflicts, with the Terminators trying to lure the Stealers onto their guns to thin down their numbers; or trying to hold in one direction while seeking to break through in another. The narrow corridors- 1 model wide, and the small rooms - only 3x3, were useful here. But the Terminators' greatest friend in this respect was the heavy flamer.

Unlike the storm bolter, which could only shoot at one target at a time, the heavy flamer was a template weapon that could clear entire rooms with a single shot. But because they left an impassible wall of flame on the board during the Stealers' turn, their prime use was in blocking corridors. Cutting off the advance of the main Stealer swarm on one flank while storming forward on the other was the mark of a Terminator commander who knew how best to utilise the combination of heavy flamers and overwatching storm bolters.

The Terminators had another trick up their sleeve: Command Points (CP). Representing the effects of the leaders aboard the assault ship, CP were generated by drawing a chit at the start of each Terminator turn to get a value from 1-6. Counting as extra AP available to spend on any marine, these could be spent at any time- including during the Stealers' turn. Of course you could never rely on them, but they gave the Terminators an added edge, and sometimes more.

The last rule in the basic game applied to the Terminators, and it was as important to their play as the blips rules were to the Stealers, and key to the whole game IMO. This was the timer rule. Terminators had only 3 minutes per squad to take their turn. This was reduced to 2 minutes and 30 seconds if a sergeant had been lost. Once the time was up, that was it, turn over.

And that's about that.

A bit more history
As ever Space Hulk received support in White Dwarf, and its success was sufficient for the release of 2 supplements: Deathwing, and Genestealer (both 1990).

Deathwing introduced a host of new rules: Terminator characters; new weapons; rules for multi-level games and new features of the hulk; rules and points values for DIY scenarios, and for solo play. Genestealer introduced genestealer hybrids- different phases of the Stealer life-cycle; new blips; more weapons; the psychic rules; new wider corridors; and Grey Knights.

In 1992 GW also released Tyranid Attack. This was a bit of an oddity. It was a legacy of GW's collaboration with Milton Bradley, featuring the components of their Space Crusade game, and using a set of stripped-down Space Hulk rules. The genestealers had begun to mutate away from their original concept towards what they are today. This is just one aspect of the wider Tyranid species: a hivemind collective that genetically mutates its various subspecies to meet its various needs as it strives to fulfil its purpose, which isn't that much different from that of the original Stealers- ie. the conquest and destruction of all other lifeforms through the absorption of their biomass and genotypes.

The game itself was set aboard a Tyranid hiveship instead of the corridors and rooms of the space hulks of old. It featured space marine scouts against Tyranid warriors instead of Terminators against Stealers. Tyranid Attack wasn't a huge success, and it, and then the rest of the Space Hulk range soon disappeared from the shelves in GW stores.

That wasn't the end of this great game though. It was rereleased in a brand, spanking new edition in 1996, a game which IMO is up there with Blood Bowl 3rd edition and WFRP2 as the best new editions of any GW game, ever.

Space Hulk 2nd edition contained all the bits familiar from 1st edition, and a bit more. For a start it was in glorious full colour: board sections, counters, rulebooks, the lot (well, OK, there were a few black and white illustrations). There were 18 scenarios compared to the 6 of the 1st edition (reprinted in the 2nd edition), and a total of 14 from the 3 parts of the 1st edition. There were nice new Terminator models that were as good as the existing metal miniatures sculpted by the inimitable Jes Goodwin. Thre was some other chrome, like the new shooting dice. And there were the rules.

With one caveat, the rules of 2nd edition Space Hulk cleaned up a few niggling gaps in the originals, and at the same time made some valuable advances. Terminator AP options were tidied up by allowing firing while turning as well as just while moving forwards or backwards- sensible enough when you think about it. Involuntary blip conversion was tweaked to allow the Terminator player to decide the facing of the Stealers- thus giving you your full and just reward for outmanoeuvring the swarm. The LOS rules were simplified in a way that closed down any possibilty of unfortunate arguments while at the same time reinforcing the claustrophobic feel of the confines of the hulk. The blip deck was brought up to date with new blips- 0, 4, 5, and 6- which had been introduced in the expansions to the first edition.

Most important though IMO was the complete rewriting of the heavy flamer rules. The original rules were that the template covered all of the particular board section into which it was fired. This could be as few as 2 squares, or many as 12- obviously a bit dumb, and something that was houseruled away pronto. The new rules gave a heavy flamer 12 flame markers (plus a reload) which could be fired in a 'chain of fire' in a rather realistic way. The overall effect of these rules was neatly to distinguish killing fire from blocking fire while also stripping out any record keeping when it came to the blocking wall of fire. Playable and clever: I liked it!

So what was this caveat I referred to? Simple: they left out the timer rules for the Terminators. The charge of dumbing down is often levelled at GW in respect of new editions of their games. I'm not usually in agreement with these opinions. I am in this case though. Removing the timer rules gutted the game of one of its key features. Terminators in Space Hulk without the timer is like alcohol-free lager, or decaffinated coffee- it's unnatural in other words. Spending CP in the Stealers' turn was also left out, but that's not so important. Both were houseruled back in in any event.

Despite this high quality, the new edition wasn't universally popular among the fans of the original. The most common complaint I've heard was that there weren't all the expansions the 1st edition enjoyed. This is undeniable. In this respect the new edition fell victim to the corporate policies that had come to rule GW in the days since 1st edition: the game simply didn't have the margins to make it worth the company's while, whether we like it or not.

Beyond that though, it has to be noted that all the extra rules from the expansions to the 1st edition ended up making the game unwieldy. The simple shooting rules had been replaced with tables where you cross-referenced weapon and target type to get the d6 score needed to hit. And then there were the psychic rules. Even fans of the 1st edition are wont to agree that the psychic rules were simply over the top. And that's not to mention all the complications introduced by the arrival of the Chaos Space marines, power armoured marines, and so on, in the pages of White Dwarf.

Against the complainers, I would have to point out that the simple and deadly hi-octane carnage of the original game had got lost under all the chrome. The game needed to be stripped back to its core and reworked; maybe then it could've been re-expanded. Sad to say, when this was done- and done very well indeed IMO- a game like Space Hulk was no longer on GW's agenda. This classic tactical skirmish game had fallen victim to the very corporate policies that had made its revision possible. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- Part 2. The timer rule and player point-of-view
- Part 3. Tactics, tactics, tactics!

A rash of enthusiasm...

... For Memoir'44

Part 4: The authenticity of sheer playability
This has been the hardest part of this series to write. I mean: it's easy enough really to analyse the different elements of the rules to expound their simulationist merits. But the authenticity of sheer playability? This is a new one on me. I hinted at my take on this issue in the 1st part of this short series: with my reference to the 'learning curve'. I will expand on this, but it is not where I propose to start.

The sheer playability of Memoir'44
M44 is an astonishingly playable game. If you've been following my series on the game, then you should by now have some idea of how neat and clean its rules are. Add in components whose sheer vividness give a board that is easy to read and to keep track of, and playaids that distill all the key rules into near ideal forms for quick reference, and you have a game that plays about as smoothly as it is possible to get with a boardgame.

Among my own many games are those I played with my 14-year old cousin and a friend of mine who has played some Eurogames, but never a wargame: 2 people who represent a small sample of the wider family audience Days of Wonder (DoW) were aiming this game at. Both players took to the game very quickly. Both enjoyed the cardplay and the tactical puzzles it offered. And both- naturally enough- enjoyed the experience of winning their first game by taking Pegasus Bridge.

In terms of replay value and accessibility to new players both then, M44 is a cut above the rest. But this is still hardly an aspect of its simulationist credentials, so I'd better get a move on, eh?

'Here's the situation, Sir'
One thing that has struck me about how the cardplay makes this game easy to pick up is that it focuses the players' attentions on making immediate choices from a limited set of options. I mean to say: when you play your first game- as the British in Pegasus Bridge, say- you have a 6-card hand. This means that you don't have to sit there figuring out layer upon layer of 'what-ifs' based on premises you can barely grasp. Instead, you have a much simpler problem to deal with: unfolding your preferred sequence of events based on a clear array of choices.

In simulationist terms, this is again a matter of the enforcement of POV through cardplay. What we have here is not only the way in which players' hands represent the sitreps and available command decisions fed to a field commander by his staff. More than that, we also have a neat simulacrum of the way in which an exising staff would work gently to ease into place a newly promoted commander.

The learning curve
This last point feeds into the idea of the learning curve where I began. As I have already said: players in M44 typically represent brigade/regimental or maybe divisional commanders (unit and ground scale in M44 is notional, and ultimately dependent on the scenario in play). Although I would imagine that few officers of this rank in WW2 came through from the ranks, they would at least have been time-served soldiers, many with experience from WW1.

The upshot of this is that, through a combination of training and field experience, the prototypes the players represent would have studied, played out and taken part in dozens if not hundreds of actions of the type M44 presents. M44 is so playable and appealing that anyone who takes to it can easily play several games in a single sitting, even on their first session, with back-to-back play of the same scenario being particularly suitable for beginnners.

As a result of this, M44 provides not only a neat simulacrum of the viewpoint of the players' notional counterparts in any given action, but also a similarly neat representation of how that same viewpoint develops with experience. And this is more than just a matter of sheer replay value. Simply by swapping sides you can also get a taste for the way that good military training would include studies of the major armies of the day, especially likely enemies. More even than that: with its card-driven command system M44 is a game in which there is no such thing as a perfect plan. Add to that the sheer playability, and you have a game that really encourages tactical experimentation.

I mean to say: there are many great board wargames out there that can take a whole day- or even much, much longer- to play to a conclusion. By their very nature these are games which only the most dedicated of hardcore grognards are going to play more than a few times. So you're going to pick what you think is the ideal strategy and stick to it, if you've got any sense. Playing M44 though, you can really try out things that might immediately appear dumb. And they might even work, cardplay being what it is. This goes beyond the learning curve too:- it also recreates something intrinsic to its subject: the power of the unexpected.

Conclusion
I'm not really sure what else I can add here. I have restated my fondness for cardplay command and control, surveyed the basic rules of M44 in all their deceptive simplicity, and explained how the game's sheer playability deepens the authenticity offered by Borg's fusion of cardplay and the classic board and counters. All I can say now is: buy this game! Play it! Enjoy it! Celebrate it! ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- Part 1: another hymn of praise to cardplay
- Part 2: The Elements of Fire and Movement
- Part 3: A few little details

In the pipeline

A rash of enthusiasm...
For Memoir'44
My short series on Memoir'44:

• Part 1: another hymn of praise to cardplay
• Part 2: The Elements of Fire and Movement
• Part 3: A few little details

rounds off with a look at how the game's sheer playability is such a simulationist asset. ;)

A rash of enthusiasm...

... For Memoir'44

Part 3: A few little details
This is to round off a few details I didn't cover in my treatment of the basic fire and movement of tanks and infantry.

Artillery
The artillery rules in M44 are as neat and simple as those for tanks and infantry:

1. Can only move 1 hex, and can't move and fire in the same turn
2. Has firepower: 3/2/1 at ranges 2/4/6
3. Needs no LOS and ignores terrain effects on firepower.

The movement rules mean that you really don't want to redeploy your artillery during a battle if you can avoid it. The combat rules nicely reflect the greater deviation likely over longer ranges, and the extra power of the plunging fire, not the mention the sheer terror of being under an artillery strike. The net effect is to make artillery the best unit in the game for clearing the enemy out of heavy cover and prepared positions, which is as it should be.

A final note on artillery: there is no artillery symbol on the battle dice; while artillery units only have 2 models. So on top of the slick representation of the role and power of field artillery, we also have artillery that is hard to hit - because it is typically well dug-in; but easy to kill - because of the few cannons/unit and the vulnerable crew.

All of which means that M44's rendering of artillery fills out and complements Borg's clever treatment of tanks and infantry very nicely.

Various terrain features
Wire
The way the wire rules work, once you're in wire, you will not be moving any further that turn under any circumstances. In addition, if the unit is a tank the wire will be removed from play. If the unit is infantry, you will be faced with a choice: fire, with -1 firepower (which can often be the difference between having an attack or not); or spend your combat action clearing the wire. So tanks just plunge through wire, though it will give them pause (ie. no overruns in particular!); while infantry can get hung up on it for as long as you choose to leave them there. All very credible.

Hedgehogs
These are impassible to tanks, naturally enough. They offer flag protection to infantry, which is a nice touch: they don't reduce enemy firepower, but all that solid steel is still reassuring. Need I say more?

Bunkers and bridges
Bunkers in M44 can only be used by the owning side; their hexes can't be entered by tanks at all and give tanks the max -2 firepower reduction in combat. Bridges let you cross rivers, surprisingly enough.

These are not the most interesting thing about them though. What is most interesting is that they both block LOS (which ties in with the prohibition on entry by tanks). At first sight, you could say that this is a bit dumb, in that both of these features are elements of their hexes, and not the hexes themselves. The point is though that that approach would've resulted in dual-type hexes, which would've undermined the essential simplicity.

So the bridges and bunkers represent locales which to some extent 'warp' the already abstract scale of the hexgrid. Is this a matter of authenticity? Well yes, insofaras it strikes me as another example of the enforcement of the POV enabled by the cardplay. This is because terrain features of this type would indeed loom large in the awareness of the commanders the players represent in a game of M44, because of their supreme tactical/strategic importance.

It is as a result of this that making these features fill their hexes works so well: it makes them locations with environs and approaches, instead of just a feature of an existing hex. Abstraction and simplicity in action yet again.

So far then I have tried to explain how M44's cardplay command and control and its treatment of basic fire and movement give a game whose simulationist authenticity arises from the subtle interplay of deceptively simple elements. I will return to M44 just as soon as I can to explain why I believe that the simulationist merits of this delightful gaming engine are capped by the game's sheer playability. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- Part 1: another hymn of praise to cardplay
- Part 2: The Elements of Fire and Movement
- Part 4: The authenticity of sheer playability

A rash of enthusiasm...

... For Memoir'44

Part 2: The Elements of Fire and Movement
Basic fire and movement of tanks and infantry
Disregarding terrain effects for the moment, the basic fire and movement rules for tanks and infantry can be summed-up as follows:

1. Infantry can move 1 hex and fire ('battle' in Borg's terms), or 2 and not.
2. Infantry firepower ('battle dice' in Borg's terms) is 3/2/1 at ranges 1/2/3, respectively.
3. Tanks can move up to 3 hexes and still fire, and always with their full 3 firepower.

Immediately then we can see a neat representation of infantry closing with the enemy to bring their weapons to bear, or of deploying at the double to cover, or to some other position from which to launch your attack (eg. moving round a flank). The firepower structure gives a nice feel for long-range 'plinking' with heavy weapons and desultory rifle fire, as against a close range firefight where all of an infantry unit's weapons can be brought to bear at full effect.

All of which contrasts nicely with tanks' ability to zip around much faster, always able to bring their full firepower to bear, because they have cannons.

It is obviously technically inaccurate that there is nothing in the rules to reflect the effect of range on the accuracy of tanks' guns, but the point here is to represent the relative prowess of these 2 fundamental arms of fire and movement on the WW2 battlefield.

The smoothly modelled expression of these relative strengths is deepened by the simple fact that infantry units have 4 models, while tanks have only 3. This means that, all things being equal, it will take any unit a minimum of 2 turns of good shooting to destroy an enemy infantry unit. Tanks, on the other hand, always face the chance of being destroyed by a single good turn's shooting by any unit firing with full firepower.

In addition to this, there are 3/6 kill results on a battle dice against infantry, as opposed to 2/6 versus tanks.

So, without even considering the effects of range and cover, the basic structures of Borg's system of fire and movement give a nice feel for:

• The vulnerability of the infantryman on the battlefield relative to the armoured tank;
• The survivability of infantry units, by virtue of their numbers; which tank units don't enjoy because their numbers are always smaller.

To round this section off, attention must be paid to the rules for advancing after combat, and armoured overruns.

In a rule that will be familiar to grognards everywhere, if a battle at 1-hex range (a.k.a. 'close assault') results in the target hex being empty for any reason, the firing unit may advance into the vacated hex. More than that, if the advancing unit is a tank unit, it might well be able to conduct an overrun attack, which is another attack at an eligible target (which could be the same or a different unit according to circumstances).

This rule is the key to tank tactics in M44, and it is the rule which most neatly conveys how dangerous massed armour is in open country. If you can get several tank units in among the enemy, you can wreak utter havoc in no time at all. Or you can have them cut off, surrounded, and destroyed. The effects of this on play are just plain brilliant, everything would-be Rommels and Pattons could wish for.

Already then we can see that, with rules that could literally be written on the back of an envelope, Borg has given a finely nuanuced rendering of the fundamental aspects of fire and movement of tanks and infantry on the WW2 battlefield. His approach isn't to present each in painstaking detail. Instead he presents the distinguishing features of each relative to the other in a form appropriate to the fast and fluid game he wants us to play.

Terrain effects on movement
One thing that is missing from M44 is that mechanism familiar from so many other simulationist boardgames: a table of terrain effects on movement expressed in terms of various deductions from movement factors according to unit and terrain types.

M44's approach to this is much simpler. In M44, terrain typically either:

• Has no effect on movement at all, eg. hills.
• Stops further movement upon entry, eg. towns and woods.
• As above, plus you must start adjacent to the feature to enter it at all, and/or may only exit it to an adjacent hex, eg. hedgerows.

This is essentially an example of the enforcement of the point-of-view (POV) engineered by the cardplay. I have already outlined my thinking on the POV issue (here and here).

The point here is that the M44 player represents anything from a company to a divisional commander depending on the scenario, though I would suggest that most games put you in the seat of a brigade/regimental commander. What I mean to say is that, at that level of command and degree of remove from the sharp end, the tactical details of terrain effects on movement are quite irrelevant. What would be important are the general effects of the different terrain features on your manoeuvre elements. This is what the above-noted effects do: terrain either having no effect on your units; slowing them down; or really slowing them down and requiring a potentially risky approach march.

A neat feature of these rules is the effect of terrain like towns and woods. These allow any unit to enter such terrain while moving at full tilt, only to be reduced to a 1-hex/turn crawl thereafter. This gives a great feel for cover beckoning to and welcoming your units, but bogging them down thereafter.

It also has to be noted that these rules for terrain effects on movement are more or less essential in a game in which the regulation infantry move is 2 hexes. Cut it no matter how you will, traditional mechanics for dealing with this decisive feature of warfare couldn't've worked. But that's not a matter of authenticity as such, so I won't be pursuing this point here.

Terrain effects on combat
This subject falls into 3 categories:

1. Moving fire.
2. LOS.
3. Cover.

I will take each in turn.

Moving fire
The M44 rules for terrain effects on the fire of moving units are quite simple: some terrain types - eg. towns and woods- prohibit fire the same turn that a unit enters those terrain features; others - eg. hills - don't. At first sight I guess some might find this overly constraining. I know I did, at first sight. It could be argued that it allows for a measure of opportunity fire by the enemy as your units take up their firing positions. I wouldn't find this persuasive though, because the same cannot be said of moving in the open, a situation in which this kind of enemy fire would be all the more likely.

For me, this is once again all a matter of enforcing the POV offered by the cardplay command and control. The effect of these rules on play is that you typically have to plan at least 2 turns in advance to get the full effect of advancing to a covered firing position - the best such positions at least. That is:

• An order to get into position.
• Another order to open fire.

And so we have another simple rule reflecting the reality, in this case the way in which dense terrain - eg. woods and towns - can disrupt your units' formations, temporarily reducing their combat effectiveness.

LOS
The M44 LOS rules are a simple variant of the Squad Leader hex-centre to hex-centre rules. Most terrain features, and all units, block LOS traced through their hexes. The authenticity lies in the fact that this enforces careful disposition of your units to avoid them getting in each others' way. The simplicity lies in the fact that the short ranges over which LOS is traced mean that you can eyeball this without ever actually having to trace a line from centrepoint to centrepoint.

Cover
Though it's not unique, perhaps the most striking feature of terrain as cover in M44 is that each terrain type's cover is defined according to the firer's unit type, not the target's unit type. This is striking because it is in some sense counter-intuitive, or so it would seem from the simple fact that these rules are those which have caused the most confusion among the people I have introduced to the game. That's still not very much confusion at all, but it has been enough to be notable.

Terrain as cover in M44 takes 2 forms:

• Firepower reductions.
• Ignoring the 1st flag result in combat (the flag results are retreats).

The latter is confined to prepared positions, and nicely reflects units' reluctance to leave entrenchments and pillboxes. This is neat, but there is little more to say about because it is so straightforward.

Firepower reductions can be summed up as: always a reduction of 1; unless you've got tanks firing into certain types of 'dense' terrain- eg. towns and woods- in which case it's 2.

The effect of this is to cap the basic structure of fire and movement with rules that make tanks pretty useless against those 'dense' terrain types, where their impressive 3 firepower will always be 1. Infantry, on the other hand, can close in for a respectable 2. What we have then is a smooth rendering of the reality that, in close terrain, you really need to send your infantry in to winkle out the enemy.

Add in such things as the need for infantry to close to medium range (ie. 2 hexes) to have any effect at all on units in cover, or the still juicy 2 firepower tanks enjoy against more open terrain types, eg. hills, and you can see that M44's 3 simple layers of rules: basic fire and movement, terrain effects on movement, and terrain effects on combat; all unite to give a rendering of its subject matter in which all the distinctive elements interact to give a degree of authentic detail that belies the game's simplicity.

All of which is enhanced by a degree of sheer playability which I believe is itself an aspect of the game's simulationist credentials, but that's for another day. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- Part 1: Another hymn of praise to cardplay
- Part 3: A few little details
- Part 4: The authenticity of sheer playability

A rash of enthusiasm...

... for Memoir'44

Part 1: Another hymn of praise to cardplay
Every so often a geek comes across something big in the history of that which floats their boat, something which in some meaningful sense changes their lives: D&D; the works of Philip K. Dick; Howard Chaykin's American Flagg; Up Front; 40K and Lawrence Block's Scudder novels being significant examples of my own down the years. I guess it's not hyperbole to say that Days of Wonder's Memoir'44 has had that kind of impact on me, it being the most exciting WW2 boardgame I've played since I first encountered UF over 20 years ago.

Designed by Richard Borg from his earlier ACW game Battlecry!, the pre-release buzz for and early reviews of Memoir'44 (M44) were among the most enthusiastic I've ever seen, for any product. It got rave reviews all round (check them out on the DoW site), all of which were fully deserved, but none of which could, for all that, capture just how damn exciting this game is. I mean, I'd played it a few times before I finally got my own copy (I only had to wait a few weeks, but it seemed longer), but that first night me and an oldtime gaming buddy played it over a dozen times in a single sitting lasting well beyond sunrise.

I won't bother rehashing everyone else's positive reviews. What I'm going to try to do with this piece is to get under the skin of the system, to explain why, for all its apparent beer'n'pretzel simplicity, M44 is a simulation of some serious authenticity.

The essential authenticity of Memoir'44
To begin to pin this down, I would have to identify the following elements:

1. The card-driven command system
2. The subtle interaction of the elements of fire and movement
3. The sheer playability

Taken alone any of these might've resulted in a inferior simulation, a game of little depth and less replay value. But taken together these 3 elements make M44 a game that neatly simulates the experience of battlefield command in WW2.

The card-driven command system
It'll come as no surprise to my regular readers that this is a part of M44 that I really like.

The definitive merit of this approach to command and control is its creation of a plausible model of the fog of war in a format that is easy to handle because it doesn't rely on cumbersome double-blind or similar rules. Cardplay command and control systems are also very good at putting the players in the head of the leader they're supposed to be, instead of creating some generic viewpoint that simply cannot relate to any single individual that could really exist.

Sure, the credibility of this kind of cardplay requires players to get their heads round a certain level of abstraction. That is to say: it entails a certain 'willing suspension of disbelief' if you are to understand it as a simulation.

This might seem an odd thing to say. 'Willing suspension of disbelief' is - after all - a term most associated with dramatic narrative, with movies in particular AFAIK. That said, even the very notion that a traditional wargame's Combat Results Table (CRT) is a plausible simulation; well, anyone who has played games using that venerable old mechanic has already enacted that same willing suspension.

This matters because of what cardplay command and control systems bring to wargames, which is the utter frustration of watching your forces just sit there and get humped because you didn't draw the right cards.

In the old counter-pushing games, this same thing could happen, if you rolled crap dice. But at least your forces could always do something, even if their efforts proved laughable. It's the sitting there like numpties... Well, frankly, it is the willing suspension entailed by the sheer frustration of this that remains at the very heart of why cardplay command and control systems might not immediately appeal to some grognards in search of a game that simulates the experience of generalship at least as well as it does the minutae of the actions of that general's armies.

To say any more on this matter at this point would be idle wittering unless it simply repeated what I've already said in this respect in my piece on Up Front.

What immediately marks M44 out from UF is that it is a company or higher level game (to UF's squad level), and that it resorts to the familiar old hexmap and counters. What Borg has achieved with this format though is really quite something. To get to the heart of the matter, I would have to say that not only does M44 recreate the immediate perspective of the commanders grappling with the uncertain disposition of their forces across the battlefield; but that he also recreates the learning curve whereby the same commanders come to grips with the capabilities of those same forces.

UF does this too to be sure. It's all a matter of just playing the game as often as possible, as ever. Borg's genius lies in the utter simplicity- not only of his game's cardplay, but also in his rendition of fire and movement and all the aspects pertaining thereto. It is to this, and to the consequent unparelleled playability- for a game with such high simulationist credentials- that I will return just as soon as I can. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- A rash of enthusiasm for Up Front
A rash of enthusiasm for Memoir'44:
- Part 2: The Elements of Fire and Movement
- Part 3: A few little details
- Part 4: The authenticity of sheer playability

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

A Rash of Enthusiasm...

This is the heading under which I will sing the praises of all that excites, delights and entertains me most about my favourite games. Without further ado then, RD/KA! presents a first regular feature, 'A Rash of Enthusiasm...'

... for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP2)

I've been having a good time running this after buying it a couple of months ago. The well-designed shiny hardbacks have grabbed the completist in me, and I'm gleefully gloating over the horrors in store for my hapless players. The Warhammer Old World is without a shadow of a doubt my lifetime hall-of-fame fantasy rpg setting, my 'desert-island' fantasy rpg of choice.

There are various reasons to maintain that GW's hi-octane take on all that Tolkeinesque stuff is simply the richest fantasy adventure-gaming setting ever created, but I must here confess that I really wasn't into all that 'Chaos, death and spikey bits' when Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) first hit the gaming shelves. It took WFRP and then Warhammer 40K (40K) to give me a taste for the lush gothic of the Warhammer vision. There ensued the 90's slump that laid waste to the rpg industry, leaving WFRP (the true heart of the Old World naturally enough) on life-support as a licence in which GW long displayed no particular interest, and in the hands of dedicated fans clinging to the dark underbelly of the hobby like veritable encrusted barnacles.

So I've been waiting a long time to get a proper WFRP campaign going. This is my first regular roleplaying in several years. And with WFRP2, the GM's and Character packs, and Plundered Vaults, I got my first session going in 5 days flat. From a standing start. Which speaks volumes for the essential coherence of the revised rules, not to mention introductory scenarios that should give players new to roleplaying- let alone to WFRP- a satisfying introduction to this grim world of perilous adventure. Full marks from this satisfied customer.

To single out one and only one 2nd ed. revision that I most like I would have to choose the magic system. I really like all the systemic revisions of this new edition, but this is the one that has delighted me most in play, and which intrigues me most as a GM.

When mortal combat finally broke out in session 2, I was amazed when Alane (female elf apprentice wizard, party's sole magic-user) just got into the thick of things (the goblin encampment in 'Pretty Things') and started firing off spells. Amazed, and delighted: because that meant that with just the spell list he was given at character creation the previous session Alane's player (a WFRP novice mark you) had taken charge of magic. This was a unique moment in my GM'ing career: to see magic-use erupt appropriately from nowhere in the face of peril, truly epic stuff!

Novice WFRP PC's being what they are, Alane's magic missiles proved interesting, but the decision in this first taste of the dread of combat still went to prowess at arms. All the same, the idea of magic as a force to be reckoned with, instead of as a measurable resource to be rationed out by the system- well that was seen in all its glory. This magic system is just so good that even if every single other rules revision was just plain crap, then WFRP2 would still rock the realms of magic in rpgs. And we all know that WFRP2 is much, much better than that already. ;)


Related@RD/KA!
Prologue: Getting to Middenheim
- Blogging my WFRP campaign: introducing the party.
- My little Old World: at the gates of Middenheim.
- My little Old World: mission accomplished?
- My little Old World: clearing the cludge: the GM gloats.
- Index:- My little Old World: Ashes of Middenheim