I'm excited! In the last two months, I've run four convention games featuring the calculated risk idea. The went over perfectly! I feel like this is the approach I want to use for miniatures games for years to come. Which raises some issues.
The first is the name - "Calculated Risk Game." As a name, it is very accurate about what the game is, but it is also a bore. So the name has to be changed. I think they should be call "Great Hand-fulls of Dice Games". GHOD for short. This name is equally accurate (though focusing on a different aspect of the game) as is much more sexy. I think gamers, reading a convention flyer, would be attracted to a "Great Hand-fulls of Dice" game. Which is exactly what a name is suppose to do.
I'm using special dice for the games which I want to highly praise. The dice are just half inch wooden cubes that I got at the local craft store (bass wood I think). One side is painted white. The opposite side is painted black. The other four sides are painted gray. When rolled, white is good, black is bad, and gray is a shade of grayl They are extremely easy to read and have one major aesthetic advantage.
Normally dice tend to clutter game tables. Presenters spend hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours putting together beautiful terrain layouts, with exquisite figures, only to mar the table with ugly multi colored dice. GHOD dice are different. The game requires many more dice (l have as many as fifty dice out, spread around the table) but due to their colors they tend to blend into the scenery. One person walking by asked me if they were supply boxes! So they do not detract from the visual effect. I need to make some more dice. I want to have up to one hundred dice out!
I ran the following games: Robin Hood Storms Nottingham (twice); Get Dillinger, Ak Ak Akl and The 1721 War of Succession in Neukleindorff. Robin Hood and Kleindorff were combination Matrix Game/Great Hand-fulls of Dice games. Dillinger was just a shoot out game.
This first game out was Neukleindorff, which I ran at the Seven Years War Association convention in South Bend, Indiana. The situation was this. The tiny Duchy of Neukleindorff sits on the Baltic sea between Hannover and Pomerania. During the Thirty Years War it came under the sway of Sweden, and thus by proxy France. The town's major trading partner are the English, who buy the produce of their mines. The Old Duke has long wanted to get out from under the thumb of the French.
Unfortunately, he truly was a man of the 17th Century. So when it came time to chose allies to help him in the goal, he chose Poland and Denmark! The army is outmoded (they still use pikes!) and there is no cavalry. So when the Old Duke dies, the Young Duke is caught in the open. The Danes and Poles send no help. While the French send troops from Bavaria, and the English walk in from Hanover.
The game was remarkably lacking in bloodshed. The English and the French almost fought a major engagement for control of the center of the board, but the British commander decided to fall back into the hills instead. Cavalry pickets skirmished a little, and money was extorted from the local townsmen but the only real blood was spilt when they young Duke executed a disloyal Nuekleindorff miner for trying to steal the Ducal jewels! The Young Duke himself never brought his antiquated infantry units out from his fortified castle.
In the end, the Young Duke was the big winner. The French held the strategic center of the board and the only town of the land. They accepted the Young Duke's weak pledges of allegiance and did not occupy the castle themselves. Meanwhile, the British coward in the hills and woods. Eventually they pulled back into Hanover, due to fear of French raids. The Young Duke accomplished all his personal victory conditions and was still Duke at the end of the day. Quite a coup given his complete late of forces.
The game was played on a terrain field loosely divided into strategic areas. Players moved their forces from area to area. The French moved into the open road that ran from the town to the castle - the area that touched on all the other areas of the board. Holding that area won them a victory without a fight. Truly an 18th Century campaign, all maneuver no fight. The GHOD game showed the players the risk of entering an area unformed for battle. It takes time to form up. Time which the enemy will not let you have.
I ran Robin Hood at the Little Wars convention in Chicago. The set up was straight from the movies. Robin Hood wants to rescue the Maid from the Evil Sheriff. The scene is complicated from the following: Sir Guy can decide to be a good guy (if he wants to), Sir Ivanhoe wanders in seeking to do good, a Scots mercenary in the pay of the Exchequer comes in to check on the sheriff's books, Sir Falstaff is marching through with a newly recruited company of North country foot soldiers (heading for France), and a itenerate bell maker come through trying to sell his services as a gunner!
In the first game both Sir Guy and the Sheriff were played by women. Robin Hood and Little John were run by twelve year old boys. The rest of the players being middle aged men. The game was remarkably lacking in bloodletting. Mainly due to the Sheriff's position being completely compromised early on. Eventually the Maid married Sir Guy, with Ivanhoe's blessings! The Sheriff (with most of her loot) joined my band of sturdy North countrymen and lighted out for France and glory. It was interesting how who the players were effected the game. The Robin Hood player said "I have to rescue Marian, but I don't have to marry her!"
Yuk, girls! The women were also very effective in the game - which is uncommon in most miniatures games. The only combat was when Falstaff ran Robin Hood's men back into the forest, killing a few, routing the rest.
In the second run blood flowed much more freely. Sir Guy remained loyal to the Sheriff (at least for a while). Which lead to a street battle between Sir Guy and Ivanhoe. The townsmen rallied to Sir Guy's banner and held off the looting hordes of Ivanhoe's men. This Sheriff parleyed more furiously and was able to secure his castle from harm. Even though his mercenaries all deserted him (and then switched sides) he was able to drive off three assaults on the castle and end the game negotiating a withdraw with the honors of war (so he got out with all his loot intact)!
Lastly I ran Get Dillinger at Little Wars. I had planned to run this one again at Gen Con in August, but for some reason (unknown to me) they turned down my purposal. Oh well, their lose. This game used the same terrain field as Robin Hood only with the inclusion of 1:43 scale die cast cars, and 25mm gangster figures. The setting was Little Bohemia Wisconsin 1934. John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson (a nasty little shit, whom even AI Capone found to be too violent!) are targeted by Melvin Purvis and three car fulls of G-Men. The local sheriff, Janos Menish, comes on the scene as well (with the idea that the G-Men are the real gangsters)! The board contains plenty of innocent civilians to get in the way.
Baby Face Nelson walked out of the front of the house after one of their gun molls (and one innocent bystander) was shot by the arriving G-Men. If the game had been a movie then what followed would have been one of those slow motion shots where Baby Face stands there shooting his Machinegun wildly while being shot by every G-Man on the planet. Dillinger and some others ducked out the back and into a car. They tried to shoot some innocents as they drove by but missed. Not to worry though, the G-Men hit those same innocents when trying to shoot the fleeing gangsters! The game culminated in a highspeed chase which, in true Road Warrior fashion, ended with Dillinger being crushed between two cars. The only gangster to get away was to one who failed to roll enough movement to make it to the car before it sped away!
This was a fun game, that really showed the strengths of the GHOD system. Players realized they could take more risk with machineguns than with pistols. They also realized that thought they could shoot from any range, they were not likely to hit unit they got real close. The game is worth doing again. Maybe if I call it "Cops and Robbers" I could get it past the censors at Gen Con.
WHAT NEXT FOR GREAT HAND-FULLS OF DICE?
I think that GHOD games do have a place. They seem to work very well when used in concert with MGs. I like the idea of having all the figures laid out on a terrain field that is also a strategic map. The players then get to fight a real campaign without having to switch back and forth from strategic map to battle field.
I am certain that I am no where near to the final form of GHOD that I will use. I like using individual 25mm figures mounted on washers, formed into units on magnetic strip. But I'm also moving towards the idea of using 6mm figures with slightly different rules. The advantage of 6mm troops is not doing a one man one figure game, but in being able to game a game table size terrain field of and entire country to campaign on. Just think of it! All of England, Waterloo fought out in all of Belgium! And since the terrain stays the same, different periods could be played on the same terrain field (From Caesar to WWII).
Charles Stoll suggested that I try marketing the GHOD dice. They are easy to make, but I don't know. Business is not my strong suit. What do you think? Would any of you be interested in buying 50 or so white, gray and black dice? 6MM Project ECW
At Little Wars, I took the plunge into 6mm figures. I picked up enough English Civil War figures to fight the whole war out (using 12 figures to a regiment) with slightly scaled down force totals.
One thing about 6mm figures just jumps out at me. They are so tiny that they get lost when set down in anything but large clumps. They are so small in fact that they can not carry a game. Clearly 6mm games are less about the figures and more about the terrain. Howard Whitehouse has been on to this for years. Unlike Howard, though, I am more interested in Green England than Brown Sudan. Kitty litter will not suffice. So I have formed a strange project in my mind.
Why not built a 1 mile equals 1 inch terrain field of England using Blue board and model railroad techniques? The figures would be slightly off scale (about as off scale as most 25mm figure games are now) but the whole of England could be fit on one large game table (just right for a game convention).
It will take some money, and a lot of work. But this could be a terrain board to be proud of for years to come.
Back to Experimental Games Group # 30 Table of Contents
Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1994 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