There are three equally important reasons for having a miniatures competition, which all organisers would do well to re-state each time: 1. So that distant gamers can play fresh opponents, providing new challenges. 2. That gamers may measure their generalship against others, be gratified by any improvement, and be goaded by any slippage. 3. To convert casual spectators into gamers, creating more opponents, and a larger commercial base to encourage figure and accessory manufacturers. These should be additional to the normal miniature gamer goals of enjoying the solution of tactical problems, giving the troops some exercise and showing-off their paintwork, and providing a fund of tall stories for future delectation. The reverse is to hold a competition to "establish the best player". At its worst, these might take the following form. Since only top guns have a chance of winning, and only the first place is important, the preferred form of competition is obviously a knock-out with the top players seeded to avoid each other in the early rounds. Other entrants are only cannon fodder who are irrelevant to the competition, so need not be treated with any respect or consideration, and should be disposed of as quickly as possible by psyching out, bullying or even outright cheating. If any of them are any good, they will respond in kind, proving themselves worthy. Since only top guns win, only top guns travel, and so the same old opponents keep meeting in the finals. All irrelevancies that would distract from the eyeball to eyeball confrontation can then be swept aside. Surprise encounters, night attacks, disloyal generals and weather may intrude in real warfare, but must be eliminated from the rules to be used because they are unfair. They are unfair because they would confront top guns with unfamiliar problems and might even let a more historically minded player, who knows how real generals coped with such things, through to the top. Since top guns are evenly matched and the chance of anything unusual happening has been eliminated, the obvious thing is to play safe. Get an inch ahead and then go on the defensive. Terrain is mostly a nuisance, even after the organisers have eliminated most of the woods and marshes that would give barbarian infantry armies a chance to upset the apple cart with high dice rolls, but a river or gully to hide archers behind or a steep hill to put them on top of helps the dull defensive, and all you need to bring is a few rectangular pieces of cloth! So spectators are bored by figures squatting on or behind bits of cloth on a bare table and players glaring at each other and rarely moving a figure! So who needs recruits anyway? just more nerds to be eliminated in the early rounds. Things never got quite that bad in Britain, although you might think so from the way some of the anti-competition lobby go on. Nor are you likely to hear from that lobby at such competitions and behaviour were eliminated several years back except among the declining remnants of 6th edition players. The big breakthrough came when the Swiss Chess competition format was imported from Australia for the first World Championship at Derby. With this format, every playerplays in all 4 rounds, and his raw points total from each game is accumulated round by round. The draw for each round after the first pairs are the two players currently 1st and 2nd, then the two currently 3rd and 4th, and so on down the list. This means that after the first round players are playing against near equals, so there can be no slaughter of the innocents as top players crush beginners. At the end of the competition, each player knows his ranking in respect to any of the others. The system requires a little more work from the organisers than a knock-out but can still be handled manually, though Derby have computerised itfortheir 120 player competition, using either a 48k Spectrum or an Atari ST. An additional refinement bases the player's score on the enemy he has destroyed, routed, shaken or that are off-table, not on his own survivors or on the difference between his survivors and the enemy's. This means that two players that sit back defensively each score little, and that players in a mutual bloodbath will both score high rather than ruin each other's chances. It also means that games do not necessarily have to be played out until the bitter end. If a player resigns early, his opponent counts all the resigner's troops as off-table, and the resigner gets a bonus proportionate to the time left until the official finishing time. Less than 2/3 of games go the full distance, and the organisers get a head start in recording results and working out the next draw. The offensive style of play this encourages and the use of the full range of special deployment options provided by the rules produce varied games that are not only more interesting for the player, but also for the spectator. Extra interest can also be derived from the terrain, which in British competitions is provided by the organisers rather than the players. The terrain on each table is fixed throughout the competition, and the players rotate around them. Organising such terrain is an art in itself. British clubs have learned by painful experience that each table must have different terrain, that it must never be symmetrical, and that rectangular features or treeless woods attract ridicule. Each feature should either offer corresponding advantages or disadvantages to both sides, or be cancelled by another, different, feature. For example, a low diagonal ridge offering a good place to stand or charge can be cancelled by a wood at its end offering a covered approach to its rear, and few players can resist occupying a hill or village whose position makes it completely irrelevant except in soaking up valuable troops! There is still a tendency to have too few terrain features, and to spread them too evenly over each table. It is quite possible with clever planning to have enough features on a table to satisfy a close country army while still leaving plenty of space for an open country cavalry army to maneouvre. It is also permissible to have a few tables very dense and other exceptionally open, since with rotation between tables, a players will not have to play on the same table twice. This encourages gamers to use balanced armies and put as much thought into tactics as into picking the troops, especially as the same army is used for all their games. Too few terrain features discourages hidden manoeuvre and favours the incompetent. Rotating players around fixed terrain tables does deprive the player of choice, but it can be argued that relatively few ancient generals had much choice of battle ground, and that generalship lies in using the ground you are stuck with. There is also the telling point that players tend to abrogate their freedom of choice in a boring way. How often do you see an olive grove, a fortress or a village in an American convention competition game? Not often I bet, compared with the times a player brings two rivers or gullies to sit behind with his archers in case the dice blow one way. Fixed terrain may limit choice, but it certainly increases variety and interest. In view of the controversy over NASAMW's ill-judged amendments, which I gather most of their shrunken band of members regret and would ditch if face was not involved, you would probably be surprised if I didn't mention rules. Funnily enough, I disapprove of convention organisers forcing a particular rule set on players because they themselves happen to like it, even if I wrote it. A far preferable procedure would be to simply use the set that the majority of players are using in their home games. If there are difficulties with understanding or interpreting the rules, the logical thing is to ask the author. I get one ortwo phone calls each week from the U.S. with queries on behalf of local clubs, usually sorted out in a minute or less. the option is open to all, including convention organisers. But would these methods work in America? Well, the break-away ancients competition at Cold Wars in Baltimore used the Swiss Chess format and the full WRG 7th edition rules, and some of its games were played on fixed terrain provided by Gallia and Geo-Hex. All the participants enjoyed their games, including some that had formerly abandoned competition as a result of top gun antics, and even one that admitted being a reformed hard case to cries of "You cannot be (Paul) Serios!" It would be a great pity if other organisers of major competitions did not now take the ball and run with it. The only difficulty would seem to be the provision of fixed terrain, but this is not insuperable. Superb results can be obtained with commercial terrain models, but much cheaper methods can still be far better than bits of cloth. For example, how about 4 foot by 2 foot sheets of plywood, with three put together for each playing table? It would be nice to have raised hills, but a lot can be shown by cheap household paints and a big brush, with different shades of matt green for flat dry ground, rough ground, gentle or steep slopes, bog or scrub, brown for villages with brown, green and yellow cultivated fields, and gloss blue for water features. These would travel well by van, store easily and be available for club games between conventions. If raised hills and buildings and trees later became available, they could be placed on top of the painted ones. Lastly, I would like to make a plea for universal preregistration. It greatly helps planning and organisation, and gives the players extra time to do the things they want to. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. VIII No. 6 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1989 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles covering military history and related topics are available at http://www.magweb.com