KublaCon Games

For me, the nearest game convention is KublaCon, which is held in Burlingame, CA over the extended Memorial Day weekend (Friday afternoon through Monday morning). I try to run a few games each year, since volunteers get their admission fee refunded. This year I've signed up to run:

- Commands & Colors Fest: I ran this event at Conquest SF last year over the Labor Day holiday. It's an open gaming format. I bring multiple copies of all 4 Commands & Colors games (Battle Cry, Memoir '44, BattleLore, and Commands & Colors: Ancients), let people choose their own scenario, set up and play whatever they like. Players can come and go as they like while I can hover around to teach the rules, answer questions, or leave people alone as they prefer. This event worked really well when I ran it at Conquest on Monday morning, the convention's final day. The last day of a convention, in my experience, is always difficult for events, as people are packing up and getting ready to leave. Yet, many people may be in for a short game of some kind. The Commands & Colors games work well for this difficult time slot because they're easy to teach, play fast, and each game only requires 2 players.

- Learn Panzer Grenadier: I've been enjoying the Panzer Grenadier line of tactical WWII games. Unlike many tactical WWII games, PG units are platoons rather than a squads or individuals, so the game makes some abstractions that make the game easier to play (e.g., there is no concept of unit facing). In addition, the rules are only 16 pages in length, and there is a huge wealth of scenarios available. My goal in this event is to identify some low-counter-density scenarios that only last 8-12 turns or so that can be used for teaching and let people play them.

Battle Cry Online!

I'm a big fan of the "Commands and Colors" games by Richard Borg. For those of you who don't have (or can't find an opponent for) his ACW game Battle Cry, the Game Table Online site allows you to play against other players or against an AI.

Now this isn't particularly new; Battle Cry has been on Game Table Online for quite some time. What is new, at least for me, is that I've been able to play this game on my Mac. In the past, Game Table Online has only really supported Windows; the Java applications have not run well on Macs. Now however, I've played several solo and opponent games on my Mac (using the Firewfox browser) with nary a glitch. This is really good news.

If you haven't tried GTO, give them a visit. They have quite a few games online including Axis & Allies, Tigris & Euphrates, etc.

By the way, if you don't have the rules for Battle Cry, you can download it from Wizards of the Coast.

In Summary, I'll Summarize...

Over the last few weeks, I've been doing a number of game summaries, including the playtests for Tattered Flags, and Bitter Angels. What I try to do with summaries is to organize all the important game rules and list them in a compact bullet form. Having these summaries makes it easier to review and teach the mechanics of games, because you have all the important rules in one place so you won't forget little bits of things. I usually achieve about 4:1 compression, meaning that a game with 8 pages of rules will result in a summary of about 2 pages.

I've posted over 100 summaries for a wide variety of games from Euros, to board wargames, to miniatures rules. You can see a list of them on this BGG Geeklist:

Tactical, Operational, Strategic

I've seen a few posts about the differences between these terms. Often, I hear people saying "units are battalions, so it's not tactical" or "units are divisions, so it must be strategic". My thoughts are that the scales are differentiated by mechanics rather than the size of the units involved:

strategic: the game system involves both supply for maintaining units and production for building new units.
operational: the game system involves supply but not production. That is, the time scale is too brief for new units to be produced. You may be able to bring on re-inforcements, but you're not truly building new units.
tactical: Involves neither supply nor production. You may have ammunition limits and, again, you may have reinforcements, but at this level, the battle has been joined and fresh supply won't affect the unit's status until the battle is over.

I've also seen the terms "grand tactical" or occasionally "grand strategic". These are harder to define. To me, grand tactical is about an entire battle, whereas tactical is a section of that battle. So, for example, refighting "Gettysburg" is grand tactical, but refighting "Devil's Den", "Little Round Top", or "Pickett's Charge" (parts of the Gettysburg battle, for those of you not "into" the American Civil War) are tactical. Strategic vs. grand strategic is even less clear to me, but I would think both scales should involve production. Perhaps grand strategic might refer to all of World War II in Europe (or even all of WWII) whereas strategic might refer to an extended campaign such as the Eastern or Western fronts.

Free game day at local store

My local game store, Gator Games was holding a free game giveaway yesterday. I own a few RPG (mostly out of fond memories--I don't currently play them), so I picked up a few things of interest:

- Starsiege introductory book
- Field of Daisies Harn starter adventure
- Dart Wars game. My work buddies are going to love this one!

I had a frustrating experience with Gator Games during a "20% off Wargames" day. I was looking for some Panzer Grenadier material, and found that their PG material was scattered in 3 places: in the boardgame section near the PG boxed sets (where it belongs), in the miniatures section, and in the back of the store in the white "where games go to die" shelves.

The good news is that Gator Games is reworking their store: Jean, the owner, was telling me that RPG's aren't selling well, so she is going to move wargames into the RPG section. Now if only they would move the YuGiOh and Magic players to the back of the store so that you wouldn't have to crawl over them when you're looking for boardgames.

An Actual Catalog

Yesterday, I received "Dispatches from Decision" #18, an actual 20 page newsprint paper catalog. I had no idea that people did these anymore.

Bitter Angels (ACW Grand Armée) playtest

I've applied to become a playtester for "Bitter Angels", an attempt to adapt the Napoleonic grand-tactical miniatures rules Grand Armée (GA) to the American Civil War. I've never played GA, but I have played quite a bit of Volley & Bayonet (V&B), an earlier set of grand-tactical black powder rules. Some people that I've gamed with have complained that V&B needs a command and control system, which GA provides. So, it seems reasonable to check out how Bitter Angels works with big ACW battles.

GA uses the same basing as V&B: 1" = 100 yards, and bases are infantry and cavalry brigades each 3" square. V&B was designed so that you can play with figures as large as 54mm (though you have problems fitting 54mm artillery on the 3"x1.5" artillery bases). I prefer to game with smaller scale figures, either 6mm or even 2mm. Many people who play V&B with smaller scale figures opt to increase the ground scale and thus shrink the size of stands and the overall table size. Those gaming with 15mm figures often use 2/3 scale bases (1" = 150 yds.), while those who game with 6mm or 2mm figures opt to use 1/2 scale (1" = 200 yds.) or even centimeter scale (substitute centimeters for inches, so that bases are 3cm square, which gives a ground scale of 1" = 250 yds). Keith McNelly in NZ hosts the V&B web site, and use 1/2 scale 6mm figures.

Typical V&B battles use 6'x8' tables. With half-scale figures, you can run Gettysburg on 3'x4' tables; with centimeter scale, the table becomes 72cm x 96cm or just over 2'x3'.

I've had a long stalled project to re-work my 6mm Heroics and Ros ACW figures. What I've decided to do is to rebase my 6mm figures onto more typical 1" or 3/4" stands and use 2mm figures based in centimeter scale for V&B and similarly based rules. That will allow me to play a variety of ACW games on a variety of scales.