1 . I received some feedback from several fellas about a current issue I mailed... the August issue. It seems the post office manhandled the issues... the staples fell out, the sticky tape came off, etc. and the pages were separated. Then what the post office did was to scoop lots of the pages together, sometimes from more than one copy, and staple them. This meant that while one subscriber received more than his share, others were penalized because their cover sheet, with their address on it, had disappeared. If you receive this mailing, the October issue, without ever having received the August issue, let me know and I'll put another copy in the mail for you. 2. I found an interesting article on MAGWEB.COM by a fella named Dean Essig, a noted designer of board wargames. The piece was in the Winter 1999, No. 35 issue, of Operations, The Wargaming Journal. Essig noted the difference between two types of games... he termed these "stable" and "unstable" game mechanics. A stable mechanic... one that is "... not very sensitive to input changes... Wild results are probably nonexistent and the player is rarely surprised by the outcome of each local situation... Stable mechanics work best in slugging, grinding affairs that actually are attritional in nature." An unstable mechanic... one that gives "... a wide range of potential outcomes for even minor changes in input ... (These)... show the physical and psychological effects of maneuver warfare... (and the) ... extensive volatility in real life. According to Essig, "unstable games... lead to more enjoyable games... (in contrast to stable games which lead to)... a contest of might which inexorably grinds toward an expected conclusion... (For unstable games)... play shifts rapidly from player to player causing each in turn to look at the brink of disaster and fight to turn it around..." Most of the games which I set out on the table are stable games. Occasionally, I set up a game with several ploys and procedures that might be termed 'unstable', and the result is a huge outcry... "This can't happen!" "That shouldn't have happened!" "Those results were haywire!" Most gamers simply don't like surprises. Take the firing procedures, for example. Firing charts are usually set up to produce a limited range of casualties... if, suddenly, a single volley results in a huge part of a unit being blown away, the participants shake their collective heads at this. They want a steady attrition rate with not too much variation. A current exception to this is the PIQUET rules. The number of casualties per volley is the difference between two dice, for example, toss a 10-sided die versus a 6-sided die: In an extreme situation, if the 10-sider produces a 10, while the 6-sider produces a 1, then 9 casualties occur, which, in the PIQUET unit organization, virtually wipes out a unit. When PIQUET first appeared, people objected to this huge potential swing. But I note that, more and more, fewer and fewer people take issue with the procedure. Back to PW Review October 2000 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Wally Simon 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