When I was living in New York, we tried the following crazy game, and it was a lot of fun though it didn't really work. Recruited for the game were: RPG gamers (*4) who were strategic commanders Boardgamers (*5) who played the operational level commanders (*3 "Friendly" and *2 "Enemy") Miniatures players (*Four 6mm and *two 20mm players) representing tactical level An interested "neutral" and the umpire The game was set in a VERY simple modern scenario, because we had never done this before and we wanted just to see what would happen. It was a very simple operation: "Take and hold a bridge." The first thing we discovered is that the RPG players didn't know how to read a 1:50 km map. The second thing we discovered is that the board players refused to consider the possibility of being told by someone NOT to make a certain very logical move for entirely (they felt) emotional reasons. While there were 2 pages of pre-game briefing issued to EACH player with info they may find useful (so felt the co-designer) at least 3 players (one an "Enemy" tactical commander) chose to almost disregard this. The effect was that the Army (it was a Soviet OB) tasked with the bridge objective was pushed sideways in the boardgame, ending up 25 km from the bridge, and the objective had to be reassigned. Half way into the game one of the "Enemy" players (Chinese) sent a special forces section across the river at night, and undetected they made it 5 km into the Russian formation, attacking a number of units they reported to be a Division HQ though this was in fact the forward field hospital that had just arrived there a couple of hours earlier! The Chinese SF section was eliminated in the pursuit, but the Chinese player expecting the Russian opponent to be paralyzed with the destruction of the "HQ" launched a predawn assault across the river (expecting the last reported second echelon MRD) but finding instead an independent tank brigade that was pushed into the gap which resulted from shifting directions of advance the day before. It was very ugly as the Chinese player tried to get his bulky APCs (K-63 I think) onto the opposite bank (Chinese supporting tanks had to swim, and spend time "unsealing" for combat) and suddenly faced T-72s in hasty defensive positions supported by a mixture of air assault troops that had been riding with them for about a week (ask the board gamer involved) and their own BMP-2 mounted infantry. By 1am a better part of what was left of 5 Chinese regiments surrendered having run out of ammo. Meanwhile in Chita (Front HQ) the Russian commander decided to "help" his Army commander and ordered an air strike 10 km inside Chinese rear. .. forgetting to tell others! It turned out the TACTICAL commander had sent a demolition team of his own to the same rail head, and these brave SPETZNAZ men died in a shower of bombs from the Tupolevs. All in all, the game was a disaster. By the end of it the umpire was engaged in what can only be described as a drama class. The board gamers thought that the miniatures players knew nothing about war, while the miniatures players had similar opinion of the board players. The last act of the game was the use of the entire Chinese civil airline fleet still flying (a decision by the RPG player who successfully diced for the party to agree!) to drop an airborne division at night on Chita just when the Front CO was welcoming reinforcements transferred from Germany in the "person" of the 3rd Shock Army! It was Chinese Arnhem...only worse. Back to MWAN # 129 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum 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