Letters on terrain, moral obligations, and all arms combat rules.
THE ETHICAL USE OF TERRAIN
Seeing as Steve Herndon invited comments, sneers, and argument to his article on using terrain in WRG gaming (Vol IV, No. 4), I shall be glad to contribute a little of each. Frankly, I find his whole philosophy of the game disturbing, and I know I'm not alone, I know of many good ancients gamers, probably more than show up for the average convention, who all agree that they wouldn't get within ten miles of a tournament because of the "chicken stuff" (this letter is rated G), a chicken stuff (Tom is a Veternarian-E.D.) is what Steve's article was all about.
Probably the best example Steve cites is his plan to fill his Indian opponents deployment area with woods, thus causing the general's elephant to force march and possible expire (~ow exactly does one force march an elephant through impossible terrain?). In fact he used this plan in the finals of the Origins '82 competition, not only filling his Bactrian opponent's deployment area with woods, but also placing two gullies across the center of the board to ensure that the armies would never meet. Steve won, of course, no doubt thinking himself very clever (so much for "reserving the right to try the issue at arms" 1), and, to my surprise, the other entrants smiled and admired his shrewdness as well. Now consider a moment what the actual battle supposedly being simulated would have been like. The Bactrian commander apparently said, "Men, at dawn the pikemen will assemble in those woods, where they won't be able to form up. Then we advance across that impossible field. No one is denying that "ancient" commanders often won battles simply by forcing the issue on terrain of their own choosing. However, even in the most extreme cases, such as Cynoscephalae and Pydna, the Macedonians at least deployed on favorable ground. If anyone can name one ancient pitched battle (as opposed to ambush) where close order troops chose to deploy on ground so bad that individual units could not form even ranks then perhaps I'll withdraw my objection.
The point here is not to argue over some specifically silly terrain rule, but rather to debate philosophy. The fact is that Steve is obviously proud of winning with such "tactics". If your reaction is "Don't be so naive, what the hell does historical reality have to do with anything? The object is to win the game, with extra credit for creating nonsense situations by deliberately subverting the rules," then we have little to discuss. Ifyouprefer, "I don't like that sort ofthing anymorethanyou do, but you have to play byrules, and if it's not illegal then it's ok," then allowme a short digression. I once went to a weekend chess tournament with an elderly friend, a good five hour drive. By late Sunday my last round was finished, and he was in a game where he held a slight advantage of rook and four pawns versus rook and three. Rather than drag it out he offered a draw, which his youthful opponent declined. When asked why, the lad replied "Because I know you have to drive home, and I'm prepared to play slowly until morning unless you resign". Of course he was well within his rights according to the rules, and probably thought himself quite clever. No, I'm not trying to compare such unethical conduct with Steve's simple deviousness. However, the moral is clear-if you deliberately subvert the purpose of a contest for the sake of victory, then you should be held accountable for your actions. Don't blame the guy who wrote the rulesl
There seems to be something particularly inane in spending weeks of research and hours of painting to get every detail of that sheild pattern right, only to trash any sense of historical realism when you get to the table. I'm sure there was a time when Steve enjoyed the excitement of seeing how he could do in the place of Demetrius Polorcetes- weighing the abilities of himself and his troops to see if he could save or expand his empire against the likes of Flammius and his Romans or Brennus and his Gauls. Since then, however, in the interest winning games by pushing around colored bits of lead, he seems to have lost the idea entirely. And that seems unfortunate.
PROBLEMS WITH THE ALL-ARMS COMBAT RULES
I am writing you in behalf of our local wargames group (The February 30th Club) to thank you for bringing to our attention the second edition of the WDG UNIVERSAL ALL ARMS COMBAT RULES (Vol, IV, #4) every member of the club has purchased a copy and says that a $99.99 charge represents real value for money. However after extensive play testing during the tea break at work we would like to bring to your readership's attention one or two small anomalies that we feel need savage attacking.
Firstly, in the "Firing" section the "Tactical Appliance", firer being charged $2.35; should now read $9.71 to reflect the recent change of government in Upsulaland (See A. Hillers article "At Them With The MX - Democracy in the Third World" which clearly demonstrates the non relationship between the capitalist monetary system and tactical decisions in the field, or hedge, or river or . . .
Secondly, in the "Melee" section the tactical factor of +1 for "Aircraft in Uncontrolled Advance" must be a misprint as both Oman and Taylor agree on the overpowering effect of these units when beserk and we would suggest that the + 1 be amended to + 3.
Finally in the "morale" section it should now be patently obvious to even the most moronic gamer and the authors that -10 for all Non-British troops should in fact be -25 provided the opponent has paid points for a "Fortress Runway".
I hope these minor adjustments will be taken in the Claudian, Machivellian, nit picking spirit they were intended and that WDG will implement them immediately - IAN WILSON, England.
Your points are well made though consultation of Ammenius and Xenophon will convince you that a +2 is more accurate for theAircraft. The otherpoints will be clarified if alternate commas are changed to semi-colons starting with paragraph 4 line 6 and ending with paragraph 2 line 4.
MORAL OBLIGATION MODIFIED BY ECONOMICS
Rick Knapton (Vol. IV No. 3) states Manufacturers have moral obligations to their customers mainly by retaining all product lines (in perpetuity I presume) whatever the cost and whatever the demand. Whilst I agree the Manufacturer has an obligation to advise his Customers certain lines will be withdrawn by a realistic specific date, I cannot subscribe to the thesis as presented by Mr. Knapton. There is a thing called progress, there is saturation, there is inflation, there is competition and there is God's given gift at birth to some people to be artistically inclined who wish to continually improve (and rightly so) the work they have chosen to do.
With respect, there is no such thing as Market strategy or research possible in such a small specialized hobby as ours. As a Manufacturer I can state that in my years supplying models to the hobby not once has market research proved of benefit to the Company. the selection of periods and ranges as far as the Company goes boils down to the "gut reaction" of either Dick Higgs, the Design Director who interprets quality and quantity and myself who interprets potential, cost, return and demand. The tragedy is the two have more ideas, interest and foresight t han e t her the hobby or its participants can use or afford so one must rationalise.
Designs get dated and must be modernised. In the current economic crisis (it hits us too) there is just so much money to re-invest in redesign, an investment which no. costs more than three times the original cost. Now one must ask ones self, is there enough demand for a redesigned range of say models for the American Revolution. The original ones were good in their day but seven years is a long time for any model which if we were honest, was dated from the day it was first produced.
Besides the problems of money and time to modernize or redesign existing models, there is another problem called "Catalogue". Whether you use this term to denote the model references, other mould list or the stock, the end remains the same. If our current Catalogue contained all the models we have ever made (and Mr. Knapton's letter implies that we should) we reckon this would now be of some 150 pages. If we kept all the moulds of every model made, there would be over 25,000 a weight factor in excess of 40 tons of rubber. To offer a reasonable delivery service this Company carried or tries to carry 300 models of every reference so working on the above sums, we would require over one million dollars worth of metal in stock. Can you imagine the reactions of both the Bank Manager and Insurance Compamy to this type of inventory especially when every other type of business the world over is operating on Low Stock Levels.
What really counts these days is economics. No one can afford to carry yesterday's models. We could afford time, space and money, hopefully there would be no competition from other manufacturers, but this would be bad for the Hobby and the Games because there would be no incentive to modernise, no incentive to diversify or increase and no incentive constructively to give back to the hobby, all that it has given us and worse of all, no freedom of choice.
We do accept some of the criticisms stated by Mr. Knapton in his letter but very much doubt, the feasibility of being able to impliment them. However having said that one never knows what the future will bring or demand.
The major problem would disappear if manufacturers notified customers about discontuing some lines - with enough notice for customers to react to finish these armies. Manufacturers agree - yet the only such notice I have seen in 15 years of wargaming is Lamming's notice of their impending retirement - DICK BRYANT
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