We the People Further playings (we stopped counting at about 20) have not dulled my interest in this game. Play balance remains slightly tilted in the Americans' favour, but every time I feel strongly about this, I get beaten while commanding the Rebels. The strategy cards never seem to fall in the same pattern, and, while there are certain useful strategies that pay dividends, there is no 'DS solution' to either the whole war or specific problems. Every game is different. I can now bore for England on this subject, but the single most important feature of the game is the speed of play. Even played at a leisurely pace, with plenty of time-outs for witty banter and keeping the Morland Brewery in business, it never takes more than 2 hours. And in the case of a sudden collapse of either side (I blame the Speckled Hen) you can sometimes squeeze in a second game in the same evening. About three-quarters of my commercial boardgames languish unplayed in the attic because they take whole days to play -- and I no longer have this sort of time available -- We the People exposes the lie that games have to be long-winded if they are "accurate". On the vexed question of what the Royal Navy is actually doing to give those 2 extra cards during a battle in a coastal area...the answer is supplying the army. A re-read of Piers Macksey's The War in North America brought home just how dependent the British army was on water transport. (CHV: A viable model for Viking raiders until they get the Army card). Since there were few roads (and lots of guerrillas) the army was only ever able to guarantee its supplies when within say, 20 miles of the coast. Campaigning along that splendidly crinkly coastline presented no real difficulty and the damn rebels were trounced almost every time. But when the army plunged into the interior, it had to carry everything with it. (And even then, the Brits used waterways whenever possible, look at Burgogyne's route to Saratoga). Born to be King Is the (obvious) title (and cue for a really bad Steppenwolf impression) (CHV: I'm tossing my hair back off my forehead even as you speak Ian, Keeeeeeraaaaaaang!) of a one-brain cell game I'm developing on the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. It is partly inspired by We the People in that (a) it's another 18th century rebellion (b) the game takes no more than 1½ hours (c) I use strategy cards to provide a strongly chaotic influence on events (d) I have a pack of 'battle cards' rather than a conventional combat system. (CHV: Well not so close after all then). Both sides draw strategy cards at the end of each turn, although they do not receive them automatically, and they do not determine which forces can move. They mainly provide reinforcements, or in the case of the plentiful 'Channel Fleet' cards, prevent Jacobite (or, God Forbid, French) landings in the UK. Cards are awarded for winning battles or capturing towns/fortresses, with bonuses for the Jacobites taking/winning in England. Early Jacobite successes tend to cause more Highlanders to rise, and tempt the Frogs in; conversely, early defeats lead to a rapid collapse as all waverers cheer for King George. So Johnny Cope is doing the right thing when he marches to Prestonpans: if he lucks out, it's Game Over for the Bonnie Prince, Cope is showered with honours and a rather fine folk song never gets written. (CHV: fear not, I have one hand pressed against one ear and am about to sing - and the audience seem to be putting their hands on their ears too). I am continuing to experiment with a card-driven battle system, because I cannot think of conventional one that leaves both sides suitably unsure of success. Cope did everything right at Prestonpans, but everyone ran away. Weirder still, the same British troops defeated at Falkirk in twenty minutes, shoot the Highlanders to bits at Culloden. In the current version of the combat system, each side draws a number of battle cards depending on how many strength points present, who's in command, who's only got militia etc. We the People tactical cards could not work as the rival armies in the '45 only had one tactic each: Highlanders charged and Hanoverians fired volleys (unless of course, the rank and file suddenly decided the preservation of Georgian manpower was their top priority). My battle card pack contains two cards: 'Highland Charge' and 'Musket Volley' plus a bunch of 'special events' ranging from 'damp powder' to terrain features that slow the Highlanders, making volleys more effective. Whoever has the most of either type wins. Jacobites can use some musket volley cards if the French send them enough guns or land some of Louis XV's Scots/Irish regiments. The point of the card system is that it defies easy statistical analysis (especially as I left 2 cards in the photocopier before the first playtests, accidentally altering the balance). I submit that a Designers' Guild session on combat systems immune from the number crunchers might be worthwhile. In the meantime, look out for people passing their wine goblet over a glass of water when drinking the loyal toast. Fall of Eagles (Foe) is my attempt to simulate the entire Great War 1914-18 in a boardgame. But not one of those boardgames with hundreds of counters that take several days to set up, and last for longer than the real thing -- I once spent a week playing SPI's WW1 variant of War in Europe: five full days play got us as far as summer 1915. I wanted a game that distilled my thoughts on WW1 into something playable in about three hours. I recommend this exercise to anyone still bogged down in any sort of wargame design where there seems no more room for simplification. There is a way. Always. It just takes some finding; I've been pondering this one since playing my first game of SPI's WW1 folio game twenty years ago. (Writes our correspondent with the white moustache). (CHV: Buffy..... is it you!). I wasted a lot of time developing games with counters representing corps or army HQs, with various numbers of divisions under their control. There is such a mass of data available, that I could have gone on compiling statistics forever. Indeed, the sheer mass of material is a problem; the more you learn, the more you try to include. Eventually I decided to ignore the lot and really concentrate on essentials. My conclusions ran as follows: The frontlines hardly moved, so any game pitting stacks of divisions against each other is rather a waste of time. What matters is the rate at which each nation expends its manpower; how long its industrial base can sustain the war and how willing the population is to keep fighting. War aims of all belligerents (except Austria-Hungary) became ever more grandiose as casualties mounted. So a compromise peace, so tantalisingly possible in 1917 never actually worked out...but it would be fun to include such a possibility in the game. No-one knew exactly when a nation was going to reach its breaking point. (I firmly believe there was nothing inevitable about the Russian revolution: the role of blind chance and human folly in bringing to power a party whose creed featured the 'inevitability' of their victory is a supreme irony of 1917-18). So I dispensed with the counters and simply drew the frontlines on a map. I've now divided the map of Europe into areas, rather like Diplomacy, but with about three times as many; placing a counter there represents national control of the area. 'National will' of each belligerent is represented by a varying number of 'Political Support' cards, numbered 1,2,3 or 4; over half the pack is made up of 1s and 2s, the rest split evenly between 3s and 4s. Each nation starts with a set number, dealt face down so not even the owner knows what he has ended up with. At the end of each game turn (I currently have three to a year, since winter severely limited operations on most fronts) each nation must surrender a total of Political Support points equal to its losses in hundreds of thousands. Lose half a million men: pay 5 points of PS by turning up cards from your pack until you have the required amount. Obviously the great stack Germany begins with suggests that the Kaiser's subjects will keep fighting longer than the Austrians -- or the French for that matter: but exactly how much longer, nobody knows until only a handful of cards remain. And even then, one side might turn out to have a pile of 1s and 2s which suddenly diminishes; their opponents might have only a few cards remaining, but they all seem to be 4s. A recipe for tense end games that has produced some damned near run contests. Losses are inflicted in a roundabout way. Nations take turn, beginning with the least militarily competent (let's hear it for Rumania!) and ending with the men in picklehaubes. You may launch as many offensives as your Tactical Competence (TC) rating, so only a couple for the Russians but sometimes as many as five for the Huns. To carry out an offensive, you declare the 'level' of your offensive (1-5) and then roll that number of pairs of D6. For example, you declare a 'level 4' offensive from Picardy into Belgium. This commits to you rolling four pairs of D6 which will determine your own losses in tens of thousands. Suppose you roll 8 + 3 + 7 + 10 = 28. Your army has suffered 280,000 casualties. For every pair of D6 the attacker declared he would roll, the defender must now roll a single D8 to determine the defender's casualties. The defender's roll is modified for terrain and for the difference in TC between the protagonists. So the harder the attacker pushes an offensive, the more men he will lose, but so will the defender. But fate played many a cruel trick on WW1 offensives, so any double rolled by the attacker counts towards his losses, but not towards the total number of D6 he must roll. In the example above, if the 8 and 10 were double 4 and double 5 respectively, he would have to roll them both again. Foe etiquette now dictates that this is done with a sustained throat clearing General Melchett would have been proud of. (WW1 trivia question: which British division on the Somme was actually commanded by a General Blackader (sic)?) I was very struck by the boardgame We the People in which a pack of event cards provides a wonderful historic rhythm to the war. In Foe I deal a number of such cards to each nation: some are tactical cards (heavy artillery, trench mortars, machine guns etc.) which are played when making an offensive to increase the opponent's losses; other, strategic cards, cover all manner of events from Bulgaria joining the war to the success of the U-boat campaign. Some cards are restricted as to whom they affect: typhoid epidemics only strike eastern Europe and the USA never has a bad harvest. Some are restricted in time: student volunteer cards (they soak up casualties) are only useful in the heady days of 1914; left-wing agitators do not appear until 1916...and neither to key tactical cards like tanks and mustard gas. The latter create the (remote) chance of a breakthrough, of actually capturing the area targeted by your offensive. I've played enough two-player games to know that the game does produce a result in an evening, and that the war usually lasts into 1918, unless one coalition is remarkably unlucky or pursues an unsuccessful strategy. Germany must deal with one front first, concentrating on France or Russia; the eastern front is generally favoured since this reduces the pressure on Austria-Hungary. The Western allies must attack, but persistent headlong offensives in the Nivelle style usually result in France collapsing. French forces are at a slight disadvantage against the Germans, and their national morale is much weaker. If France's heap of National Will cards is sadly diminished, a judiciously-timed U-Boat campaign can then take Britain out of the war and an unbearable air of smugness emanates from Berlin. Much more testing is required for multi-player games. I've tried a 6-player version once. The escalating victory conditions made compromise impossible and strained both coalitions, although not to the point of separate negotiations. It also had the bizarre effect of Italy entering the war against Britain and France, thanks to excellent negotiating skills (and the Central Powers not reading their victory conditions thoroughly, ceding so much territory to get Italy in the war that their own victory was now impossible). A three-player game revealed what I should have thought of earlier, that Russia and her allies have an essentially defensive task that is not as interesting as France/Britain or the Huns. Back to Perfidious Albion #92 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1996 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. 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