NAPOLEONIC REVIEW BEST OF KIND
Congratulations on your Napoleonic Rules Review. The style and form of this article are the best I've seen in The Courier. Your magazine continues to improve with every issue, and is truly the spokesman for our hobby. - BARRY GRAY, Ridgefield Park, N.J. (author of BATTALIONMASSE)
REVIEW OF EMPIRE III RIDICULOUS
To put it succinctly - your recent review of EMPIRE 3rd in the last issue of The Courier has to rank as the most ridiculous, incompetent, unprofessional, and insulting hatchet job in the history of wargaming publications. If - and I repeat IF you had any credibility among the mainstream of American Napoleonic wargamers, you certainly have lost it now with your incredulous, child-like "review".
I've been a wargamer for 10 years and my regular business travels take me into major metropolitan areas across the US on a monthly basis. I've enjoyed many a game with numerous rules sets, including EMPIRE and other Napoleonic rules, with local clubs in these metropolitan areas. I know and have gamed with no less than 50 to 60 Napoleonic enthusiasts and after talking with them in the past few weeks, these gamers, who are deeply into Napoleonics, feel as I do - that your magazine's "review" of EMPIRE Is not anywhere close to reality and, I feel, most damaging, an insuIt to anyone's intelligence who has actually read and played the EMPIRE system. I have my nits to pick with the designers, as does every gamer, but that does not hide the embarassing fact that The Courier's reviewer and editor have lost al I respect with the gamers I know.
I shudder to think that I almost bought a subscription to your magazine last summer at Eastcon. - SCOTT VICKERY: Ft. Stockton, Texas.
Your letter drove me to reread the review. Are we talking about the same review? --hatchet job"! Come on! The article describes the reviewer's opinion of play complexity and points out several positive aspects. ED.
GENERALSHIP NAPOLEONICS
Bruce has done the potential consumer a service by introducing these rules to us. Indeed, I am sure that increased sales will be generated by his review. However, I must chastise Bruce on his presentation of Jim Arnold's Generalship Napoleonics. It is readily apparent that Bruce has never played the game from various quotes in his review, i.e. "it appears easily playable", "all mechanics apparently relate to the basic unit", and from his confusion over some basic concepts.
One potential source of trouble is that, judging from the cover art that was illustrated, Bruce has a copy of the 1st edition. There are several changes in the second edition and many of the concepts and game mechanics are clarified. Quite probably, this was an error on Jim Arnold's part in submitting this to you. However, the second edition wasn't off the press until just before GenCon East.
Generalship's major strong point lies in the fact that it is an incredibly playable game. I have participated in two of Jim's demonstration games and have been extremely impressed by the ease in which new players are able to grasp the mechanics of the game. More importantly, the rules reward good tactics and severly punish ineptitude. In other words, it does a good job a simulating history without becoming bogged down in self-indulgent chrome. Too many of the rules on the market today seem concerned with showcasing the author's knowledge to the point that it takes away from playability.
I am not going to engage in a point by point rebuttal of Bruce's criticism. I am sure Jim Arnold would be much more qualified to comment on this. However, as an experienced gamer who has played most of the rules that have been on the market for the past fifteen years (Vive L'Emperor excepted) I feel I can venture an opinion on the relative value of Generalship Napoleonics. It is a set of rules which accurately reflects the ebb and flow of a Napoleonic conflict. Several new "twists" have been introduced, especially in the artillery section, which add a greater sense of reality to the game. The technique of using initiative rolls in an attempt to override grand tactical orders is a superior concept and it could be incorporated into almost any rules system on the market today. The cavalry rules are also novel and emphasize the proper use of reserves.
One other aspect of Generalship Napoleonics is noteworthy. These rules stress the fact that rules lawyers can manipulate any set of rules to suit their purpose. Generalship tries to emphasize the good fellowship and the enjoyment of aht spectacle unfolding before you. Winning is always nice when it is achieved through superior tactics but the actual playing of the game is the key. This reflects Jim's bias towards camaraderie among players and a sharing of the Napoleonic experience with all its pagentry and glory. Frankly, I wish more of us embraced this philosophy. If this is where a club or individual gamer is at, then I would enthusiastically recommend Generalship Napoleonics to them. Its short playing time (4-6 hours) is ideal for a group who can't devote a 48 hour session to their games. - TED FUREY
ED NOTE: Bruce DID have the 2nd edition. There was no change in content or approach. The 2nd edition was infinitely better organized than the first - many of the changes from the 1st edition having been made at Bruce's suggestion. A// the rules were play-tested at least once.
THE REALITY CONTENT IN WARGAMING
I must take exception to Phil Barker's comments in the October issue of The Courier. They are biased towards Phil's, (and my), own sphere of gaming. As Phil Barker was one of the f irst to recognise the importance of my own introduction to the hobby of the variable-length bound playing system, (currently being introduced to the general hobbyist through The Courier), when it was presented to the 1981 conference of Wargames Developments, (Phil even being so generous in his praise as to state publicly at the closing session that the entire conference should have attended my demonstration owing to its importance to all wargamers), I can only presume that his comments were written before he attended that conference.
The bias towards miniature gaming in Phil's piece is evident even from his title, where the inference is that realism is either in boardgaming or miniatures. The fact is however, that miniature games are just as inaccurate in their representation of formation dimensions as are boardgames.
Phil also states that, at strategic and operational levels, miniatures offer ,no competition', the board game being 'infinitely more realistic than an equivalent miniatures game could be'. With all due respect to Phil, this has been the case in the past but now quite the reverse is the case, and the writer and his colleagues normally employ armies of several corps per side in their Napoleonic battles, (the equivalent of most boardgames), and are able to get through several hours of battle in relatively short spans of their own time in a far more accurate manner than is possible with board games. The introduction of the VL bound system has given to the miniature game what used to be the province of the board game - namely the potential to fight battles at very highest levels with armies of several hundred thousand men, employing many thousands of figures to give a far more realistic aesthetic quality to the game than is offered by the board game.
Much of what Phil says is true, within the restrictions imposed by fixed length bound systems of play, where the tactical requires short bounds and the grand tactical requires long ones. The inability of rulemakers to make provision for both in their rules, has led to division of nminiaturists and boardgamers, rather than any question of 'how they represent troops'. The purpose of the board game is to permit the player to 'play the general', and commit his forces at that level.
What has been missing from wagaming as a whole has been a means of 'bridging the gap' between miniature gaming and board gaming. Most miniature gamers want to fight at board game level, however this has been impossible to date. Even Phil falls into the trap when he states that miniaturists trying to 'upgrade' their rules to higher tactical levels must remember they may be 'carrying excess luggage'. The whole point in my view is that wargamers as a whole want that excess luggage, where it fits, and that simply calling one's battalions regiments, or brigades, does not answer the need - and is no better in its end result than would be adopting board game rules in the first place. What is needed, therefore, is the ability to 'remain detached' from the blood and thunder when we are operating at grand tactical level combined with the ability to 'get right in there' at tactical level just as we have done for decades. The wargamer wants to be able to participate in his actions at all levels - to become totally involved at whatever level he is operating at that particular moment - and it has been the rulemaker who has prevented him from being able to do so. With the advent of the variable-length bound, this need no longer be the case as the reader may judge for himself.
With the new system, therefore, strategic movements may be recorded at their proper place. This means that the miniatures player, equally with his boarclgame counterpart, can count on the effects of his strategic movements coming into play within the context of his game situation, and will need to be far more realistically aware of the position of his battle within the strategic framework of his campaign than is currently the case. The miniaturist, therefore, will have to become acquainted with the playing attitude of the boardgamer, and vice versa, to their mutually greater enjoyment. - GEORGE JEFFREY, U.K.
Phil's article was written sometime BEFORE the WD 1981 Conference. George will be expanding on his VL BOUND concepts at length in the pages of The Courier. - ED
A REBUT TO PHIL BARKER
What is the significant difference, to answer Phil Barker(article in III-2) between boardgames and miniatures? It is basically in the symbols we use to represent military units: men, ships, dirigibles, horse cavalry.... Most readers of THE COURIER may be content to think of boardgamers and miniaturists as two extremes, with boardgamers using little squares of cardboard and miniaturists using 3-dimensional figures cast from lead and carefully painted. In fact, between one extreme and the other lies a continuum of symbols. We do have figures, of course, of lead, plastic, bisque china, and paper-mache. Then, though only as antiques, we have "flats": metal stampings of the profile of a soldier, on which the soldier has been painted. Very recently, we have seen cardboard flats: 3-D foldable cardboard counters on which a figure of a person (regretable, usually from some fantasy line) has been printed. Only then do we reach cardboard units. Of course, we also have people who take their figures and cement them to pieces of cardboard, thus doing both at the same time. These people could (but won't) be divided between basic miniaturists (who measure distances from one lead figure to the next, using the stand only as a technical convenience for balance) and covert boardgamers (who judge melees by whether or not the cardboard stands are in contact, treating the figures as fancy ornaments). Had the notorious GDW System 7 been sold as a set of miniatures rules, complete with pre-cut stands (on which you were supposed to mount your own figures), there might have been less argument about its nature.
Other than this, differences between miniatures and boardgames are really all differences between different ways of writing rules. There are indeed boardgames in which units move by the inch rather than by the square: there are also miniaturists who lay out their battleboards with hexagons (for photos, see the old "Armchair General").
Phil Barker, in the last issue, would perhaps have it differently, with miniatures having intrinsic virtures over boardgames. I have great respect for Phil Barker's writings on history and miniatures, but to compare miniatures with boardgames it is also necessary to have a knowledge of boardgames. I am obliged to take exception to most of the specific claims that are made in this article about what boardgames are, or have ever been, like. Corrections of some of the grosser errors follow:
First of all, while there are a lot of large-scale board games, the largestselling single historical titles from Avalon Hill (effectively, the largestselling single titles) are Cross of Iron, Squad Leader, Panzerblitz - the AH series of platoon and squad-scale games. A set of miniatures rules with a 20:1 figure scale, and 2 figures to stand, a not unknown combination, is on this same scale. Boardgames with 1 counter = a man or vehicle are also not unusual. So much for the claim that boardgames do not have the same resolution as miniatures.
There is also the "Hexagonal rut" - the thought that movement is possible in any direction from any point. In fact, even the earliest boardgame (Tactics, 1953) had a substantial set of rules dealing with the effect of terrain on movement - an army corps could maneuver far more quickly in column along a road than through dense woods. By using a gridded movement system, one at least avoids the ridiculous sight (in more than one miniatures tourney that I have seen) in which the game stops while it is argued whether charging cavalry, after moving 12", is now in contact with the enemy, or is separated from him by more than the statutory 1/8'.
Remarkable, cardboard counters are no better at hiding terrain than are stands of the same size; I will be prepared to consider transparent unit counters when I see miniatures players who want transparent (glass) figures ...
Finally, not one fact in Phil Barker's closing paragraph is other than wrong. Boardgames in which units can subdivide into subordinate units, capable of separate maneuver, date back to the early 1960's. The subordinate counters can cover terrain of different shapes. One can also find Napoleonic-era games in which units can move from line to column to square, covering different areas in each case. Nor is the effectiveness of a unit counter "the average of the effectiveness of . . . " rather than the total. In games in which the scale makes this a relevant factor, it is entirely normal for a squad or platoon of infantry to have one strength when engaging soft targets with rifle fire, and an unrelated strength (reflecting their anti-tank weapons) for use in engaging hard targets, Lastly, boardgames are commonly available on all scales, so it is not true that "the basic building block (in miniatures) is one or two orders of magnitude smaller." Indeed, (though the game was meant as a joke!) the highest resolution game, representing "biological warfare" inside a man's body, with different units for different vital organs, was the board game "Snit's Revenge".
Other than these minor details, which do (I admit) invalidate the thrust of his arguments, I have no real quarrel with Phil Barker's article. GEORGE PHILLIES, Ann Arbor, MI
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