Introduction: The Sands of the Sahara (#21)
I confess! I'm an inveterate tinkerer. I just can't leave well enough alone!!! I have to experiment. Sometimes the results are nasty...the less said the better (someone might demand a recount!) But sometimes all the parts come together. Such a game happened last weekend at the Indiana University Conflict Simulations Club. We did a game of Sands of the Sahara.
Sands of the Sahara is a Matrix Game but it is also a miniatures game and a role play game. The goal was to do and entire military campaign in the space of a single day. Which we did (marching, skirmishes, battle and all) in a seven hour game (only five hours actually playing).
MINIATURES AND THE PHYSICAL SETTING
Sands of the Sahara is a Matrix Game but it is also a miniatures game. I can't help it. I love toys. I think the hybrid of the two genres creates stunning games. So in this game the little men and terrain are as important as the arguments.
My props included eight, 2'x2' terrain boards (2 flat featureless, 2 flat with minor bumps, 2 hills, 1 oasis, 1 city) and a 132, 15mm soldiers (8 colonial infantry, 4 cannons, 8 mules, 12 sheep herds, 40 camel riders, 40 Arab infantry, and 20 civilians). In addition I had around 20 blank figure bases for hidden movement (a very important feature in this game) and around 80 casualty markers (blank bases with a gruesome puddle of blood on each!) A few rules sheets and about 40 six-sided dice later and we were ready to play.
I carted all this stuff in the back of my truck over to Bloomington to the third floor of the Biology building. Set up took about fifteen minutes.
A TRIBUTE TO HOWARD WHITEHOUSE STYLE ROLE PLAYING
I credit Howard Whitehouse with many of the rules mechanisms I used in this game. Howard's excellent historical role play game "Science vs Pluck: or Too Much for the Mahdi". Howard runs an historical miniatures game in which all the players are on one side, with the referee running the natives (like a game master in D+D). I used this idea (a departure from Classical Matrix Games, where all sides are played).
Howard asks his players what their intentions are to determine how long the next turn is. So a game becomes a dialogue between the players and referee, where the referee feeds them information for them to react to. Games are thus scripted, something not obvious to many players. The referee needs to know roughly what sequence of events will happen to be able to deliver a coherent game. I made use of this prescripting idea (which is in keeping with a strong Matrix Game referee, using methods I describe in the Classical Matrix Game rules as "You are there…")
Howard's games focus on small sections of campaigns rather than large campaigns. He uses wonderful terrain fields to give a John Huston/Monument Valley effect where 6mm figures disappear into the landscape. All the action happens on one table of terrain. Figures are placed on mobile terrain boards so they are easily moved in a minimum of time. Effectively the terrain moves by them as they advance.
I like the idea of having terrain flow by the figures but I find that limiting the game to one table to terrain means that the game is only about a battle rather than a whole campaign. Unlike Howard I use terrain boards. Which means I can set the players up on one board and merely add new terrain around them. I keep the figures on one terrain board on the assumption that people will stay to good open terrain where ever possible. To enter a board with hills, the players must move their men (an even I only scripted twice in the game.)
Given that my game was spread out over many terrain boards rather than just one, I had to decide how to set up the script. I cued back to Howard's use of the "variable length bound" idea, which he includes by asking the players their intentions and then adjusting the turn length accordingly. Different lengths of turn means action moves from critical event to critical event rather than a set length of time. So my script could ignore all the endless hours of marching across trackless wastes and focus on the "fun" parts (the encounters and battles).
I use the British military (and role play game) meaning of the word "encounter". It does not mean battle, though it often does. Traditional miniatures games can do nothing but battle. Howard's use of role playing adds in interaction between the players but still doesn't allow for peaceful actions to occur. Matrix Games on the other hand are great at this. So the script included encounters that were decidedly not offensive (while still being dangerous!)
So the game consisted of me asking the players what their intentions where, giving them Matrix Game arguments to carry out their goals and a steady stream of interesting encounters to test their metal.
One last thing. To do a campaign in a day, one needs to use miniature battle rules that are quick without being too quick. My game included one major battle, one small battle, two skirmishes, three negotiations and two encounters with civilians. To make battles keep pace, I used one more of Howard's ideas. The players got to choose how many turns of ammunition they would fire each turn. This pretty well assured that the poor little native they encountered would be greased but if the players did not conserve their ammo, then the natives would get them on the return trip!
Why do such a loop sided approach? Well...I have to admit this idea comes out of my years of playing and running D+D. A game where all the players die is seldom a very fun game. The referee needs to help his players live rather than view them as the enemy! Telling a story requires the players to be alive to see it!!! So the game is about working with the players to lead them successfully through the game. I script the game to tell a story which will both entertain and educate my players. This means, though I am running the natives (with whom I feel sympathy – as fellow Muslims) I am in reality feeding them to the wolves!
With that, on to the game!
More Sands of the Sahara
Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #22
To Matrix Gamer List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2000 by Chris Engle.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com