Seamus Bradley I was most grateful to receive the copy of Swashbucklers and issues #15 and #16 of 'EGG'. Reading the magazines, and in particular your comments about the time it would take to play a game of 'Swashbucklers' I think I will have to revert to a more traditional skirmish game approach for my 'Three Musketeers' game. The players will be expected to cross the length of a 6' table meet various challenges and rescue Buckingham. Also the participation games at shows like SALUTE are normally expected to last an hour to an hour-and-a- half maximum. I intend incorporating some MG elements, as there must be a place for such simple mechanisms. I will keep you posted. Enclosed is $20 in bills to pay for a subscription to EGG, and for a copy of your Campaign in a Day MG. Would it be possible for my subscription to begin with issue #17? Despite the possible set back to using MGs for the 'Three Musketeers,' I am already using it to run a small, daily turn, campaign based on Marlborough's breaching of the Lines of Brabant in 1705. I am using a matrix incorporating those elements in your Peninsular campaign plus others I have seen in recent MWAN articles with some additions of my own. The latter are intended to bring out the flavour of late C17th - early C18th warfare and to anticipate some of the wild cards the players would want or need. I also took the opportunity to number the elements. This has made it easier to record the use of a particular element and meant we could dispense with actual cards. A list of the additional elements follows; Night March Blockade Build Bridges Line poorly sited Siege Seek Terms Leave the Lines Lines strong Sortie Forage Cross the Lines Spy/Deserter  Most of the players found the MG style reasonably easy to grasp. One or two even began to develop the system in quite a creative manner. However, there are still a Couple who need their campaigns to be "real" and who want to spend weeks pouring over maps, messages and orders of battle before committing their thoughts to reams of paper. They have still to grasp the most obvious benefit of using MGs, which is that we have completed 12 campaign turns in one night culminating in a large (open) battle. Meeting once a week as we do, this would normally take 2-3 months using more traditional methods. One area that has not worked quite as well as it might is the use of "strong" and "weak" arguments. The extent of the partizan behaviour has made it difficult to manage, particularly as I want to avoid direct interference by me as umpire in the playing of the game. One suggestion is that we use "Jokers" , limited to perhaps one or two, per side, per evenings play. By playing the joker the side can make their argument "strong" or their opponents' argument "weak". Initiative is won on the throw of a dice and is retained until a player's argument fails, when it passes to the opposition. If both arguments fail then both will have to throw again to see who has it. Marlborough always gets a +3. If the exercise is as successful as I think it will be, I intend to run the 1708 campaign using areas based on the Flanders fortresses and weekly turns. Thus where there are a of fortresses in close proximity, movement will be restricted. This reflects the constricting influence fortresses had, even on generals such as Marlborough and Eugene. Well I have waffled on for long enough. I look forward to receiving 'EGG' and the 'Campaign in a Day' MG in due course. (Thanks for the letter! This Marlboroughlian game you are running with the MG sounds interesting. By this time you will have received "Campaign in a Day" and found that I have a scenario for the 1703 Blenheim campaign. Maybe it is similar to what you are doing. In either case, I think that the War of Spanish Succession Is an excellent war to play out in a campaign. There in not a lot of grand strategic movement like in 1703 but there is the constant tension of what is going on in Flanders. Obviously the two sides thought so, otherwise they would not have fought all those big bloody battles there. I believe your assessment of how MGs can speed up campaigns but I am now running into players who even when shown this, fail to see that point. I was running a Star Trek naval MG for the local gamers (all college students now gone home). The campaign produced one or two major battles EVERY play session (one or two hours each). I thought everything was going fine when one of the players says "The matrix game is fine but it never produces any decisive battles." I was strongly tempted to make the argument that his entire battle fleet would move just one area more into the home world of his main enemy. Then he would have had to make the choice, do I fight or run. Either choice would be decisive! As it was, the players decided to end the game for the year before I could do this. I did learn one thing from this exchange (aside from how to become frustrated). Never run a campaign where you do not control both the campaign and the tactical rules of the game. I let my players run the battles, since I have no interest in Star Fleet Battles. They did so, but they changed the tactical rules EVERY TURN! Then they started interjecting rules changes to bypass the MG so that not only did I not have any idea what was going on, but there was no way I could find out since they kept changing it. The campaign was being destroyed by the same dynamic that ruins  standard campaigns. Better luck with your game.)  Nick Falzon I'll send you the basic start up on my Civil War game when I have them done. I'll also send you both the Confederate and Union reports. I look forward to seeing how your game works out. For those of you who don't know, Mick is starting up a Civil War MG about Gettysburg. If you are interested In playing, send him a letter. Also Nick, I Invite you to play in the French Revolution MG so I can continue to keep sending you the turn report through EGG.) Marvin Scott Wargamers who are interested In the history of wargaming should enjoy reading Visions of Infantry: the untold story of how Journalist Hector C. Bywater devised the plans that lead to Pearl Harbor by William H. Honor. The title stretches things a bit. The closest Bywater came to Pearl Harbor was predicting a sneak attack by surface ships on the Philippines. He did, however, know Fred T. Jane, inventor of the 1898 wargame and founder of the Jane's publishing empire. There is a picture of Jane playing his wargame on a table. Bywater had his own game. He sailed model ships on a pond near his home and staged battles with them. His ships even had guns that fired. The book also contains a lot of material on naval developments during the 19209 and 1930s.  Doug Rockwell Rob Dean loaned me his EGG collection and I really like the concept. I'm starting a campaign using the DBA fantasy rules Hordes of things and I want to add in something like Howard Whitehouses' Blood Eagle format, as well as a political aspect such as the political matrix In EGG13. I think that the DBA combat concept along with matrix gaming will really revolutionize our hobby - campaigns are now possible with quick results and without making the umpire devote his life to it. I was waiting for a table at a restaurant and the person next to me saw me reading the Peninsular campaign article - turns out he is a plastic modeler. This made me attempt to create a matrix game based on building a virtual model in order to win a competition. I wanted to stretch the "gedanken experiment" aspect. The matrix seems to be a laundry list. I'm listing physical objects more than states of being. What do you think? It also seems that the matrix game concept is conflict oriented Just gaming the steps in building a model is boring. Have you done any thinking about non-zero sum matrix games? Perhaps a detective game where the umpire reveals clues to the players based on questions and actions formed from matrix elements. Better , yet, one side is actively creating the history of the crime while the other team is trying to find clues. They might build themselves a trail of evidence and have the other side suddenly argue that it is a false trail ... here we go into conflict again. Your article "Cheating at Tic Tac Toe" in EGG16 was very good. Are you familiar with the concept of thinking "vertically" vs "horizontally"? A couple of years ago someone came up with a deck of cards that had off the wall thought patterns printed on them, and you were supposed to use them when solving business problems. They became a fad for a while, but I can't remember the name. I would like to find a deck and merge It with the matrix concept. One thing I am not clear on is how often to put used matrix cards back into play. [I put all the cards back after every round of arguing]. I guess It depends on the ratio of cards to players. But what about PBM games? [I let players use what ever cards they want to. Naturally, they can all use the same cards if they want to - and probably end up making completely different arguments while doing so.] What happens if several players write in using the same card? I like the matrix for the 2nd Russian Revolution game (EGG15 and 16) where some cards were unique to each player.  [Sounds interesting. Early wargames can be very interesting to look at since they show us how little our hobby has changed (rule wise) In a hundred years. The really nice thing about the Jane books are how one can read them and get something out of them without really knowing much about naval war. I once thought about doing a naval campaign game of the small ship actions in the Adriatic Sea during WWI . I still have the photocopies of maps and mine fields of the war zone. Maybe with an MG I could do it some day, but I think I would used a more simple set of battle rules like Panzershifts or something.] Bob Cordery THE FLEET THAT HAD TO DIE or ROUND THE CAPE INTO THE BATH ROOM A semi-mobile, semi-detached game suggestion I have recently been trying to persuade the Editor of THE NUGGET to consider developing a game which recreates the events which led to the destruction of the Russian 2nd and 3rd Pacific Squadrons during the Russo- Japanese War. The story is beautifully told in Richard Hough's book THE FLEET - THAT HAD TO DIE, and it is a story of military ineptitude, unthinking bravery, downright stupidity, political chicanery, terrible mistakes, and hilarious interludes. In other words, it is the ideal scenario for a WARGAME DEVELOPMENTSstyle game. One way in which I think that it could be played is as a semimobile committee game which takes place in a series of different rooms in a house. The players would be split into two groups. The first group - who would represent the Russian Admiral commanding the 2nd Pacific Squadron and his staff - would begin in the Box Room (The Baltic). Here they would plan their voyage, suitably hindered by the Umpires. The latter would take on the role of the Russian Admiralty, Foreign Nations, The Dockyard Superintendent etc. A major part of the group's planning would be to ensure that sufficient colliers were available at various venues along the projected route from the Baltic to the Pacific. Only then could they be sure that they could refuel every three or four days and thus actually get to their destination. The group would also have to undertake discussions with the various nations whose facilities they would like to use en route. Once they were ready to sail, this group would move on to Main Bed Room (The North Sea, The Channel, and the coast of France and Spain) where they would encounter a series of further problems. As these were solved - or not as the case may be - the group would move into the Second Bed Room (The West African Coast), and then on to the steam filled Bath Room (Madagascar and the East African Coast). Whilst this was all taking place, a second group of players - who would take on the role of the Russian Admiral commanding the 3rd Pacific Squadron and his staff - would also start to plan their voyage East in a different part of the Baltic - the Kitchen. They would "set sail" when the first group reached the Second Bed Room (The West African Coast), but their journey would be via the Main Bed Room (The North Sea, The Channel, and the coast of France and Spain), the Box Room (The Mediterranean), and the Bath Room, (Madagascar and the East African Coast), where they would join with the first group. The two groups would then move into the Living Room (The Indian Ocean) and the Dining Room (Sea of Japan) where - hopefully - they would bring the Japanese Fleet to battle. Back to Experimental Games Group # 18 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1991 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com