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madman1960 5 years, 9 months ago.
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Well, we are getting buried under a huge slow moving snowfall tonight. But the US Post Office just lived up to their motto and delivered a goodie to my front door.
I think that I’ll probably order ‘Plausible Deniability’ next to go with this book.
Now if ‘Spectre Miniatures’ would release their second edition rules for ‘Spectre Operations’ then I think I’ll have the majority of the rules systems that have been talked about on SITREP
BTW……..if anyone here has an old copy or fresh copy, (or knows of a copy), of the first edition ‘Spectre Operations’ that is for sale please give me a heads up if you would. As they say, I’m in the market!
Okay, everyone. Once again, I’m so pleased to see this thread take off with such energy and participation. Thanks!
@suetoniuspaullinus – epic Red Earth miniatures. I love the dichotomy of the “Issue Point: Wal*Mart” civilian gear against the obviously high-tech head gear and weapons. No Chinese knockoff AKs for these guys, eh? And great job with the dirty denim. I can only suppose that’s a tough look to pull off and have it looks like messy denim, as opposed to messy painting.
@piers – that’s an amazing and huge Soviet force deployed on those tables. I like how that miniature set / table “addresses” different generations of British AFVs, like the Chieftain and Centurion, and units you don’t normally see on a table, like civilian police, the Soviet MTLB, the Rapier SAMs (Jeez, I never realized those things were quite that small, I think we were using Chaparrals and Hawks at that stage), and the Soviet chemical warfare troops (or at least, in NBC gear).
@damon and I Twitch-streamed a 250-tank wargame this past weekend, but I think even my two brigades of Soviet-made armor (one of T-55s, one of T-62s, Golan Heights, 1973) isn’t going to look as impressive as that column of T-64s.
Great pics!
@hobbyhub – You bring up some great points and questions.
First up, I should probably dial back a little of what I said in that previous post. First, I was at work, and thus in a bad mood. I should probably not post on OTT while at work, but sometimes it’s all that gets me through the day. Second, just in case that wasn’t clear, those are of course just my personal views on the “ethics” (God, I hate that word) of modern wargaming. By no means did I mean to try and imprint or impose them on anyone. I would go back and just edit the post a little, but once others have responded to a post, I think it’s kind of disingenuous to go back and edit the original post, it can but the responder’s text in an altered light.
But all that aside –
Is chess a wargame? Or for that matter, what IS a wargame?
Again, just my personal take on it …
Games like Chess or Go or Othello, etc I honestly would not consider wargames. They are “above” wargames, on something of a higher, more pure plane. Just speaking for myself, I would classify them as strategy games.
A wargame is a strategy game that hasn’t so much been “dragged through the mud,” but has stripped off its shirt and happily jumped in and rolled around in the mud. Whereas pure strategy games typically have little more no element of chance (i.e., no dice or cards, etc.), wargames almost by definition embrace some element of randomness and brute force. Of course better players will always go for more elegant solutions that minimize the impact of misfortune and chaos inherent in any combat situation (and thus wargame), but it can’t be eliminated altogether.
In chess, the pieces can never survive an attack. They never fight back.
Strictly to my mind, a wargame is a “game” (forgive me for using part of the word in its own definition, but defining what a “game” is would be another whole paragraph) that seeks not only to entertain, but also emulate to at least some degree some form of armed conflict, and some aspect of a universe or reality larger than and outside of itself. It tries to not only be “a game,” but also imagine, recreate, or interpret some dimension of an external paradigm.
So in chess, we’re not looking at the Kingdom of Black against the Confederation of White. When a rook takes a pawn, we don’t know if a knight or baron or duke is discrediting the vassal of the opposing king, maneuvering the arranged marriage of his daughter, or stealing his land or stealing his serfs, or assaulting his town, etc. It’s not trying to recreate a war, be it historical, fictional, or theoretical.
So is 40K a wargame? Absolutely. It’s a game about armed conflict that’s trying to imagine a larger context (the war doesn’t have to be “real” or historical)
Are RTS games wargames? No. At least not most of them. Games where units can be rebuilt with such casual ease removes all strategy from the game, makes most decisions essentially meaningless given enough time, and thus do not actually try to recreate the conditions of an external conflict or context, real or imagined. Of course there are exceptions. The old Blitzkrieg series is an example.
Are TCGs / CCGs / LCGs wargames? Some of them are, some of them aren’t. This is actually too broad a category to fit into a yes or no answer, I’ve seen some that definitely are (Star Wars Pocket Models), some maybe not so much.
Are Eurogames or “construction” games like Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride wargames? No. Strategy, yes. Addressing a larger external context or paradigm, yes. But armed conflict is not a key component of these genres. You’re trying to best an opponent, but not necessarily destroy, defeat, or dominate them. These games are, by design, “non-kinetic.”
Are games like Kingdom Death a wargame? Ehh …. yes? Sure, it’s cooperative (lots of great cooperative wargames out there, including modern-era, Advanced Warfighter is a great example), and yes there is a construction / development aspect to it. But you also have to fight and survive and appropriate from a hostile environment. This is a tough one since the “enemy” is the world itself, but there definitely is combat in it.
In the ongoing theme of “Snag a Normie” month, one of the first hurdles wargamers face when recruiting new players is trying to explain what a wargame is. Many people ask if wargames are like chess. Speaking only for myself, I would say no. But then the challenge is … so what is like a wargame? What games that “normies” play can best analog into wargaming hobby?
I often offer poker as that analog. Especially high-stakes variants like no-limit hold ’em.
- The game is skill-based and tactical.
- Yet the game is also “muddied” with a degree of chance and luck.
- That said, a skilled player will almost always overcome the variances of chance over time.
- Battles are lost but the war can be won.
- The game is based in no small part of deception.
- Poker contains a strong element of resource management (not your cards, but the chips. 80% of the game is about your stake, not your cards)
- The game also includes a vital element of brute force. Players with larger stakes can, with proper timing and conditions, use the sheer weight of their chips to overpower their opponent, forcing them out of hands even if they hold winning cards. Again, winning battles but losing the war.
Just a few thoughts on the topic. 😀
So I’ll put up a few highlights of the 1973 Golan Heights game @damon and I played (system: The Arab-Israeli Wars). In all, the game took 6 hours and 43 minutes. It is posted in its entirety on Twitch for those that are interested. Needless to say, an entire blow-by-blow battle report would be a little too large to post here, so I’ll post some highlights and if anyone has any questions, I will certainly do my best to answer
Full Twitch Stream: Damon v. Oriskany – Golan Heights
So here is the full map again, only this time with Damon’s forty tanks of 77th Armored Battalion, 7th Brigade (Lt. Colonel A. Kahalani) deployed on the Tel Hermonit and Booster Ridge, extending north of Kuneitra along the Purple Line at daybreak, 7 October 1973. For my money, this is where scaled wargaming (regardless of the medium) really shines. With enough attention paid to scale, distances, real-life numbers, etc., you can build a board and set up a force, and get an instant “feel” of just how desperate a situation really was. This is forty “Sho’t Cal” Centurions (five tanks per platoon / counter = eight pieces), which sounds like a big force … and would be a big force on a six foot 15mm table … but then set it up on the actual battlefield that measured 6+ kilometers (250 meters per hex), and that blue line suddenly gets very very thin.
I suggest “open image in new tab” for full resolution.
Some of Damon’s Sho’t Cal Centurions on Booster Ridge, overlooking what history would soon call the Valley of Tears.
The total Syrian force. Two full brigades of Soviet-built tanks, 100 T-55s, 100 T-62s, plus support vehicles, a reinforced mech infantry battalion, engineers, Sagger antitank missiles, you name it. Historically the Syrians also had formidable artillery off-board, but this scenario out of the AIW book doesn’t include it so we’re leaving it out (I changed the map, that’s probably enough alteration to the published scenario already). Also the Israelis have 20 air strikes ready to go, but I get 2 VP for each air strike Damon feels forced to call in. A special rule allows for one platoon of standard Sho’t Centurions to enter the table (the four along the bottom) on a die roll at the beginning of each Israeli movement phase.
Turn one, and first blood is drawn! Under a massive pall of sand and dust, almost 300 Syrian AFVs roll toward the Purple Line (cease-fire line between Syria and Israeli-occupied Golan Heights). But at the range of 12 hexes (3000 meters), Damon’s Sho’t Cals have already opened fire and scored the first kills, as the Syrian armor pushes through the antitank ditch dug along the 1967 cease-fire line.
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