If you play board wagames or wargames with miniatures, you will probably fight your battles on a table-top, with yourself looking down on them as if from a balloon tethered in the sky. You are "up here" while the battle is "down there". You may think of yourself as a general in command of an army - but you probably think of that army as operating at a certain distance from you. It is not "all round you", as it might be if you were leading from the front - nor does the game stop if your personal command figure happens to get killed!
The table-top game's tendency to impose distance between the commander and his troops may be fine for WW I "Chateau Generalahip", or even for Vietnam-style "Helicopter & Radio Generalship" - but it is limiting when we come to more heroic styles of front-line leadership The table-top game also makes it notoriously difficult to use hidden movement effectively, which is an obstacle to "thinking oneself into the shoes of" a real commander in battle (... or even of a real movie-actor in a war film, if you are one of those MWAN readers who play "Moviegames" and not "Wargames" at all).
My aim here is to describe in detail one of the many possible alternatives to the conventional table-top wargame arrangement. This may be called "indoor re-enactment" or "improvised re-enacttrhent" or - less respectfully - "THE ART OF THE CARDBOARD SIMULATOR". It is a technique which started as a "Wargame Developments" idea around 1980, and it has had many progenitors. Bob Cordery's W W I trench sentry game and Andy Caliun's Lancaster bomber, however, were particularly memorable early prototypes. During the past eight years, also, the genre has diversified in many different directions, and appeared at several different types of event.
What it means is that the players go a long way further towards "thinking themselves into the shoes of" main in battle than they do with a normal table-top game (Apart from anything else, they may have to go UNDER the table!). They physically act out the roles of past warriors, in order to understand something of what those warriors had to do - and also, of course, to have FUN. No one would claim that a cardboard simulator is really like real war - but at least in some respects it can come newer than table-top games. The aim of improvised m-enactment is actually the same as that of full-dress re-enactment; but without the expensive full dress and large numbers of participants. A cardboard simulator can easily be run with only a handful of participants, at no expense whatsoever, using everyday household items.
The most succecsful cardboard simulators seem to be based upon a particular enclosed space, vehicle, aircraft or ship -- all of which enable the players to stand/sit/kneel/lie in a more or less fixed relationship to each other throughout the game. This type of configuration is also especially appropriate for indoor use:- .i.e it doesn't require much space (Unlike improvised outdoor simulators such as the Flaming Pig, Greek Fleet Action, WWI tank, Picker's Charge, Modern Naval and Kokoda Trail exercises held at various "Wargame Developments" conferences in the past, .which may all perhaps be explained one day in future issues of MWAN).
Since 1980 we have done the following indoor 'cardboard simulators, among others:
LAND: Chariot battle 1480 be; Medieval siege mineshaft; W W 1 trench sentry post, W W 1 and WW2 tanks; Vietnam command bunker.
SEA : Ancient Greek Quadrireme (see "Te Slingshot" no.135); 18th century galleon, rowing boat, and naval gun crew; WW2 midget submarine, U-Boat and aircraft carrier bridge.
AEROSPACE : WW2 bomber, Vietnam Helicopter; Space Shurlp.
... or in other words, the possibilities are almost endless! As an example a illustrate the general approach. however, let us consider one specific game:
Saga of X-13: The Tirpitz's Lucky Number
When the super-battleship Tirpitz took to hiding in Norwegian fjords during WW2, the British developed a type of midget submarine to attack her. Six of these 'X craft' made the attack, and although several were lost and others captured, they did immobilise their target. Each craft had a crew of four - a commander, a navigator/diver, an engineer and a helmsman.
To simulate this operation in the comfort of your own dicing room, place two dinner-tables end to end with cardboard 'walls' along the sides and an 18 inch gap between the two tables. Your four crew players go underneath, with a couple of electric lamps and their 'motors', 'controls' &c (see below), Over the central gap place a cardboard box slightly bigger than the head of the craft commander, with a tubular aperture on one side through which he may look. This is his 'periscope', so when he wants to use it, he puts his head inside and looks around.
On the table tops around him the umpires place terrain and ship models (or cardboard c%-outs) in the correct directions and in the correct sizes to indicate what be would see:- EG if the craft is coming from the open sea and heading for a cliff, the umpires place a big terrain mass in front of the periscope, but nothing behind. The players have a compass'. and a map from which to work out their progress up the fjord, which they can confirm by calculating speed against time elapsed (the gold-plated version of the game includes calculating wind, tide and current, too!). The umpires have a master map on which they plot the X craft's position (as well as the positions/faes of the other five X craft, and of the German land & sea patrols. The latter move according to a pre-determined or dice-generated pattern, although they may have special drills if they successfully identify an aaact. These may include moving the Tirpitz).
To move, the X craft crew run their main motor (a noisy vacuum cleaner) on the surface, or their secondary motor (a warm air blower) when submerged. They move cardboard indicators to show the umpires their speed, rudder and hydrofoil settings, &c., and the umpires in turn respond with cardboard indicators for game time, compass bearing and attitude in the water, &c.
Enemy ships are indicated on the periscope model with model ships, and with sound effects - eg resonating wine glass for the 'pinging' of sonar; hairbrush rubbed on the table top for propeller wash; loud bang on the table top for depth charges. Umpires should have charts of probability for die rolls, to find if the Germans can sight the submarines in different conditions of light, distance and size of target &c. Then there should be hit probabilities for light artillery and depth charges. (Wargamers will find it easy to construct such tables).
For mechanical repairs (eg after a near miss with a depth charge) the engineer must perform a mechanical task in the dark (eg change an electrical plug). Equally to cut through torpedo nets the diver emerges (through an air lock, with appropriate drill) and must cut some thick pieces of string with scissors, in the dark. To set the charges when under Tirpitz , set an alarm clock to the scaled time, and 'throw it overboard' (Note the craft rises rapidly when the charges are deposited - the crew must react quickly to correct trim &c ... otherwise the craft may surface, directly under the enemy's guns!).
Really that's about all there is to it, although there is endless scope for extra elaboration and improvisation. The final advice, however, should be to remember that this is a wargame - like any other - that has a sound operational basis and a set of consistent rules. To make it work to best effect, the umpires must respect this and not fall into the trap of regarding it all as just a light-hearted jape. The players will expect to get consistent feed-back as payment for their careful decision-making - and in any case, the umpires need a clear operational input in order to work out whether Tirpitz has got away with it or not! (So far in our games she has).
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© Copyright 1989 Hal Thinglum
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