OK game but some tactical issues

[Grimnirsson]

Actually we've been fairly on topic. The OP mentions both non electronic and electronic subjects and examples, and it is basically about the performance of a Stug unit in the game, and how it can seem 'gamey'.

I thought more about being on topic/off topic for the wider audience since as Pip said, the debate as such is perhaps not what people think it is when they read the title of the thread.

Now it is true, Axis and Allies can get slagged off as 'just a lot of dice chucking', but then, strategy is knowing what to purchase, and what to combine, and when to use them, how aggressive to use them and a myriad number of choices.

Axis & Allies does not have 'a myriad number of choices' which is its main problem. We played this game a lot years ago, we even went to a professional shop to scan in the maps (both the A&A map and the WaW map) , then to print them out in a maxi version, glued them to a wooden board and laminated them, you can check them out here http://hfcpics.blogspot.de/2010/08/1st- ... eiler.html
That was expensive I can tell you, but we were 'into the game' so...but after that we soon realized that there's not much strategy in the game. Strategic games allow several strategic decisions each leading to various possibilities. A&A is more like a simple puzzle and when you solved it, your are thru. Every time you gonna play it again you only repeat those winning moves. Sure you can try to do something 'new' and you might get lucky once in a while to even win with an unusual move, but 9 times out of 10 players stick to the usual moves - because these have been proven as working in the game. A strategic level wargame with area movement is a problem because on that level this leads to limited maneuver and options. In A&A it's always the same, Germany rushes to Africa to get the IPCs, Russia is buying Inf stacks in Karelia, The US hops over to Britain. And this game can suck up time and offers not enough game for that - seen 30h games...

While playing a Nato vs Warsaw Pact forces setting board game back in the 80s, I realised, the Warsaw pact forces required head quarters units to gain victory points. It was an element of the game. I took several of my units that had the ability to hit and run the headquaters units. It was a death ride for the units, and not something that you could ask of a real world military, but in one move, presto, I had rendered my opponent stuck with the undesirable reality, that he had to win the game with I think Hungary's forces, as he had lost the rest effectively speaking. He still had the armies, they just couldn't qualify any victories.

It was an obvious aspect of the game and you realized it...and your opponent didn't? Even when I wouldn't know it (but after reading the rules it should be pretty clear I think) when you send your death ride units to finish off my HQs I suppose I would react to it and do something against it. It's not an action game, I can see what you attempt to do on the map. Hard to think of your opponent as an experienced wargamer when he was missing such key aspects of his VC while playing the game.

The reality there, is not one 'game' in existence is really and truly capable of actually simulating the brutal reality of war. It's ugly and it's violent and things will be dying.

That is not what a consim is trying to simulate. A consim can only be a simulation in a very narrow sense, but there are wargames that are more successful in doing that than others.

I have read of things happening in the real histories of the events of the past, and the consensus often of wargamers is 'you could never recreate that in a wargame, because wargamers play to win'.

Sure you can recreate such things in a wargame, it all depends on what you as the designer want your game to portray and how. You can have a style of game where almost everything is possible, with no real restrictions or you can have a certain scripted gameplay that is limiting your options (hopefully) on a historical base. The former will seldom lead to any historical setting if players don't limit themselves to what was done in reality, the latter will seldom give you a 'what if' scenario too far away from what happened historically. I think to recreate history is pretty easy to achieve with strict limitations for the players but that is of course not much fun - so the point is to allow as many options as possible without throwing history totally out of the window.

Some of Hitler's decisions of the war were just plain bloody moronic. He let the veteran 6th army die in Stalingrad. The man was an idiot. Great at making speeches, but a loooooong time before Stalingrad, Hitler reeeeeeeally needed one of his Generals to accept being fired, but only after telling Heer Hitler 'he was a useless failed painter that was only good at making speeches in front of adoring sheeple'. He was conned by his successes while fighting nations still fighting WW1 who had simply come to a gun fight with a knife. He was bloody lucky, and nothing else. Hitler was NOT a brilliant military mind. Manstein and Guderian, THEY were billiant.

Hitler was lucky but not without some personal talent. He somehow was able to predict his opponents moves, he somehow knew how far he good go but in the end thought he could get away with everything and that was the cause to make some big mistakes. Not splitting his forces in Russia as his generals told him would have been a winning move, but he decided otherwise. Again you can decide what role the player has to play in a wargame - is he supposed to be the overall leader or is he someone trying to win despite of an overall leader...the game engine can simulate that, look at TK, the players can use cards that include all that was done historically or not done but thought of and then you can play a historical game where you play the cards as they were played in history or you are free to use them as you see fit (within some limitations of course certain cards have to be played before others become available to let the overall game make sense). It all comes down to a clever design approach, then you even can 'simulate' moronic decisions'

Those Stugs would not have done that in a game of ASL. The thing is, ASL is not an introductory grade experience, and, the price tag will make even a rich person snort their coffee. The trick is to make a game like ASL as much as possible, but, to not go so far it lacks 'fun' as the dominant feature.

That's the beauty of BA, I don't see it as a 3D version of ASL but as a 3D version of SL and (when we have smoke included some day...and perhaps multi-story buildings ) in that it works well.

It's a pity they have essentially killed Up Front by not keeping it in circulation, as THAT game is one of the best simulations ever made.

Agree, played it a lot, it's sitting here on the shelf in all its glory and in pretty good condition. There's a problem with Hasbro about the rights IIRC, so MMP has no way to get out a new version beofre this issue is solved. I mean the game is great as it is, but unfortunately often extremely expensive on the market which is limiting the player base.

[MrsWargamer]

Not to be picky, but A3R is clearly not A&A and yet it too is prone to suffer 'obvious' moves and you can't tell me it suffers from being area movement design.

Games tend to be more random the closer you get to tactical is all. Try as I might, I can't play ASL the same way twice. Just too many niggling little details even when you are aware of certain key spots on the map.

My buddy and I had only played that game once, so it was just that I saw the move and maxed on it. It was his game, but he had not played it overly.

They call the 'simulators' for a reason. But the term is likely limited just as REAL TIME STRATEGY is to me an idiotic term. In real life, the human in the tank will have different ideas of what is the right choice. That is what made Up Front so great, because the card play simulated the human element, the potential to just refuse to do the obvious. That is where most wargames fail, there is no human element simulated. In most wargames, Germany SHOULD win.

Nope, Hitler was no one's idea of a great military mind. Just lucky to be the man on the scene at the moment. Case in point, Patton. He really was only good at leading an army, not an army group. He was NOT as good as Bradley. The man actually wanted to attack the Pas de Calais. But any wargamer would tell you Normandy was the right place. If Patton hadn't slapped the soldier, an action of a dolt I might add, he likely would have ended up in Italy a soon to be unknown. There is no guarantee he'd have had his chance to shine. Likely would be as useful as Mark Clarke, another man not worthy of a lot of talk. Most of Patton's fame was just luck, luck that he got to be at the right place at the right moment to make the choices he made. When he broke out during Cobra, all the really nasty work of the invasion had been done. Kicking the Germans across France was a picnic. A lot of the genius of our men of the past, was really the work of their subordinates.

Sometimes it is easy to see the obvious. Hell the praise Stormin Normin got in the gulf was undeserved. Any friggin moron could have planned what he did. What surprised me was Saddam. I guess that useless turd was only good at killing the defenseless, because he sucked long and large at desert warfare. I mean, had he never read a single bloody book from the battles of the second world war? None of the coalitions actions in Desert storm surprised me.

Sadly we have too many games we COULD be playing, but are not, all because some ^%$&^## suit owns it and doesn't seem to give a shit about selling it to someone that does. Why the %%#%#@^*$ are we not playing with an updated modernized re released Steel Panthers eh? It was made in 95-97 and the code sucks on new machines. It's hardly rocket science to realise it is what gamers want, yet no one has realized that all they need to do is remake it rename it, and sell it. We just keep getting more of the usual real time shit, the usual 3d shit, the usual 3d real time shit. None of which has anyone wanting to play any of it a year later.

If it isn't broke, don't fix it doesn't seem to occur to wargame makers too often.