@jamesevans140 –

I am knee deep in 4″ hexes. – Sounds great!  That’s my kind of gaming.  Not only hexes, but big hexes, on a big board, so there’s plenty of elbow room for minis / counters / tokens.  I think this was one of several failings of that part of the industry in the 80s and 90s, for physical publishing reasons the hexes were barely bigger than whatever was supposed to go in them, so the boards became very fiddly in high-density areas.

Maths are good for modelling many things but it does have its limits.

I both agree and disagree with this.  I mean, obviously, everything anywhere has “limits.”  But without math, and analysis, and statistical review, all a game is left with is “color.”  Gut feeling.  Preconceptions of how something “should” be.  The “rule of cool.”   All of which I absolutely cannot stand.  I acknowledge it’s part of the “cost of doing business” in wargaming, but that’s always where a game starts to lose me.  I think a big part of that is “where the dice are” in the game, if that make any sense. The “dice” represent where the game design “gives up” in terms of design, fidelity, and granularity of statistical resolution.  Nothing on a battlefield, or the universe, is random.  We live in a cosmology governed by mathematics.  Of course (and this is where I agree), any game has limits vis-à-vis the detail to which the factors are actually represented and modeled.  This is often “where the dice are” – where the game shrugs and says “I dunno, chuck a dice and see what happens.”

So when I’m looking at a game, I want to see where the dice are in the rule set, and the structure of the turn sequence.  I can usually tell ion about 3 minutes whether a game is for me.  For 95% of candidates, you can probably guess the answer. 😀

So I agree that math has its limits in a wargaming context.  I just don’t know if we should “accept” that, and not always be striving for better fidelity, “resolution of detail,” and removal of chance from a system … and incorporating higher degrees of the qualities in designs that are smooth, fast, and engaging.  It’s challenging, and it will never be perfect, but that’s what makes game design fun.

Anyway, now that I’m back from Historicon, I won’t be on OTT / BoW that much going forward.  The SItrep Podcast channel is back from summer hiatus, and most of my time will be there.  If you’re not subscribed on YouTube or PodBean or Twitch or any of our other channels, consider giving us a look.  We have quite a bit in the works for the coming weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrsewixu9dXUIMTQKJYPuEQ

JIM