Video review: Winter Thunder

https://boardgamegeek.com/video/468808/winter-thunder-battle-bulge/winter-thunder-first-look-tiny-battle-publications

A 15-minute video review of Winter Thunder by “Zilla Blitz”, he quite likes it, especially the Mission Matrix combat system!

Variant: Operation ZUGSTOSS, for Berlin ’85

Berlin ‘85: Enemy At The Gates was designed by James Dunnigan, one of my favourite game designers. It was the issue game in #79 of Strategy and Tactics magazine and SPI also published it separately in 1980 in the small box format. I really liked the topic of this game – the desperate defence of the multinational garrison of West Berlin at the beginning of a Soviet invasion of West Germany – and played it a lot, back in the day. But over the years more material has appeared on the probable course of such a hypothetical battle, and my thinking on urban warfare and how it is modelled has changed.

This extensive variant takes several rule changes and modifications I wanted to make to the game’s system and applies them to a new scenario adapted from the “Operation STOSS” variant prepared for the game in 2003 by Kevin Boylan, and later modified by Morris Hadley, Richard Kelly, Richard Lloyd, Paul Rohrbaugh, Paul Smith and others in subsequent years. (Find the original variant and its revisions and commentary at https://grognard.com/Board.aspx#st79 or on the Consimworld Forum site at http://talk.consimworld.com/WebX/.1dcdf54f)

Changes to the overall game system and its Berlin 85 adaptation, to show the intensity of urban combat: players have the choice of fighting before moving; no Zones of Control; no mandatory combat; combat results replaced with system of step reductions; Concealment markers added for giving stationary defending units a slight transitory advantage; and changes to Honors of War and Victory Point schedules made in respect of psychological war against the West Berlin inhabitants. (Many of these changes could be retrofitted easily to the Modern Battles and Modern Battles II quadrigames, or for that matter the more recent folio and magazine games from Decision Games that use the “Fire and Movement” system.)

Variant goes on to update and revise the 2016 “Operation STOSS” variant to ZUGSTOSS: task-organized combat groups for reduced Warsaw Pact Order of Battle; breakdown counters for NATO maneuver battalions, reorganized into combat teams; alternative uses for the US Special Forces unit, broken down into A-teams so the NATO player has some fun while getting crushed in a three-way vise; and a Bundeswehr Luftlande (airlanding) brigade to replace the mechanized Jagerbrigade reinforcement. All of this comes with a new sheet of counters.

I’ve been working on this for a while… why bother, with a game that is over 40 years old? Well, because it is still one of my favourite games, with a lovely mess of a map by Redmond Simonsen and because it is one of the few credible older games on urban combat at an operational scale.

(new rules)  Berlin 85 ZugStoss variant 27 Nov 23

(new counter sheet, PDF) Berlin 85 variant ctrs Z85 22 nov

Merch: Wargame Swag

I don’t often shill things, but I did want to draw your attention to two items I got in the mail this week.

I never thought I’d actually make it onto a T-shirt!

These nifty items and many others are available from Lance Manion of “Wargame Swag”, as either a T-shirt ($20 unless you are enormous) or a poster ($18 flat, ha get it?). No website but here is a link to his catalogue of over 150 images.

https://www.facebook.com/download/264081589911291/Wargame%20Swag%209-8-23.pdf

It seems he can only do images of games that are out of print, or have very helpful publishers… hence you will find loads of loads of images of SPI games (Minuteman is one of my favourites, therefore I got one), among others: loads of Avalon Hill, Victory Games, West End Games, and some surprises. Quality of shirt is quite nice, printing is good too.

Contact him at WargameSwag@gmail.com.

Video: sitting down with Fred Serval

While I was in London, I spent some very pleasant time with Fred Serval, who is a kind and intelligent person. We had lunch at his apartment in the Barbican Estate, I taught him how to play Guerrilla Checkers, and we discussed the past and future of wargaming as I see it, particularly with respect for insurgency-related games. This was originally recorded for the recent SDHistcon Convention in San Diego but is up on Youtube now.

Hope you enjoy our conversation!

PS: Be sure to watch all the way to the end.

Books: new edition of Wargames Handbook

(photo also available with prop glasses)

A new edition of the Wargame Developments Handbook, 3rd edition with amendments, is available. It is a valuable history of this group of intrepid gaming madmen and an excellent guide to many different types of wargames and serious games, and definitions for things that sometimes really need defining sometimes.

WD-Handbook-Third-Edition-October-2022-with-Amendments-No.-1

Wargame Developments lives at:

Home

A bad review.

(sometimes you can judge a book by its cover,

but you have to open it to make sure)

I suppose I write a lot about negative things on this blog – coups, atrocities, grim-visaged war generally – but I generally don’t like to say negative things on it about wargaming or wargamers. I’ve written my share of short game reviews in over 40 years of playing these things (the first money I ever got paid for writing was $5.00 for a “capsule review” of a role-playing game in The Space Gamer in 1983) but even with less than worthy games I still usually managed to find something nice to say about them.

However, this time I think I’ve been had.

Last week I was looking on Amazon for a birthday present for my son and having located it and stuffed it in my cart, decided to look for some other goodies in order to get free shipping. I ordered a new book of selected non-fiction by J. G. Ballard (1962-2007) and then went looking under “wargames”, and up popped this new book, pictured above. It was only $9.99 and it seemed like it might have some new things to say, so I ordered it.

It arrived just as promptly as anything from Amazon does, in the usual plastic padded envelope. When I picked it up off the doormat it was so thin and light I thought at first it was my son’s present (a sort of partial glove people wear on their hands when using a digital drawing tablet to protect its surface). Instead it was this book, a grand total of 45 pages of illustrations and text.

What illustrations. And what text.

On the inside flyleaf there is a statement that “All illustrations generated using Artificial Intelligence.” About every second page is taken up with one of these obviously-generated-by-prompt pictures in grayscale, and each takes up more than half of the page, so a quarter of the book is obvious filler: imaginary battle scenes, people sitting at tables, that kind of thing.

But wait… after five minutes of reading the text with its wide margins, largish font and generous line spacing, I realized that it was all too probable that the statement “All TEXT generated using Artificial Intelligence” was true too!*

The book is divided into nine sections, each no more than 5 of those scant pages long, and the phrase “this essay aims to explore/ delve into/ …” or slight variations thereof appears in the first paragraph of each section. An italicized paragraph concludes each section, essentially repeating what the first paragraph said. The writing itself is the worst kind of overstated, mediocre, leaden, adjective-stuffed and detail-free pablum that anyone who has played with ChatGPT or something like it for five minutes will recognize right away. Random examples include the following – honestly, I chose these by literally rolling the page number on a pair of dice.

As the digital age continues to unfold, tabletop wargaming stands poised to embark on a new chapter of innovation, creativity, and camaraderie, guided by a shared passion for immersive storytelling, strategic gameplay and the enduring magic of imagination. (p. 35, concluding paragraph, sixth section)

*****

Role of Wargaming Clubs and Communities in Preserving the Hobby During Turbulent Times

Wargaming clubs and communities played a vital role in preserving the tabletop wargaming hobby during times of social and political turbulence. These clubs provided a sense of camaraderie and support for enthusiasts, fostering an environment where individuals could share their passion for historical simulations and strategic gameplay. Particularly during periods of social upheaval and economic instability, these clubs served as havens for like-minded individuals, offering a reprieve from the harsh realities of war and its aftermath. (p. 23)

The “times of social upheaval and economic instability” referred to above are the Great Depression and the Second World War!

This is one of the most absurd items I have ever bought.

It’s beyond useless; it’s comical in how badly it’s written, and how everything in it is variously trivial, meaningless or mistaken. A human could not have created this through their own efforts beyond sitting down with ChatGPT, typing in a few prompts and cutting and pasting the results without bothering to read them. I think this is exactly what happened.

On top of all this, the author, one “Tony Evans”, appears not to exist, at least not as the author of this work. The page on the Barnes and Noble website advertising this work (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144252217 ) describes the author: “DR. TONY EVANS is the founder and president of The Urban Alternative, a national ministry dedicated to restoring hope in personal lives, families, churches and communities. Dr. Evans also serves as senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. He is a bestselling author and his radio program, The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, is heard on nearly 1,000 stations around the globe every day. For more information, visit: tonyevans.org.” The website is indeed that of a legitimate and long-standing evangelical preacher who has published dozens of books but appears to have no interest in wargames, though he has written a few books with “spiritual warfare” in their titles.

Meanwhile, the publisher, “Witwise Wargames”, sells PDFs of this book and paper cutout armies and scenery on wargamevault.com. It appears to be a one-man operation by someone named Shahshank Rawat.

If the true author of this work, “Tony Evans” or not, would like to correct me on my supposition that this book was not written but assembled from items made automatically by a piece of software, I would be interested to hear it… but either way, it’s still a useless item.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

You have been warned!

We’re going to be drowning in this garbage before very long, I suspect. In a few years almost no one will be able to tell the difference, for so few will have the time and energy to winnow out the falsehoods (where these large language models don’t have citations, they will simply make up new ones). We are continually writing and rewriting past histories that never existed, over and over again, to suit the demands of the most recent enquiry and interest. Not only is there no need for historians, there is no need for Winston Smith… the Ministry of Truth has been completely automated, and the self-assured voice of baseless authority will be found everywhere.

Philip K. Dick in his last books wrote about VALIS – Vast Active Living Intelligence System – as his notion of God, though sometimes it was an extraterrestrial communication satellite network. I would refer to ChatGPT etc.  generally as VAPID – Vast Artificial Plagiarism-Insufflator Devices, in that they suck up likely-sounding language written by other people, turn it into smoke and blow it up your fundament.

* Artificial Intelligence: it has a long way to go, but it doesn’t even know how far it has to go. In fact, it’s not AI at all; it may be artificial but it isn’t intelligent. Things like ChatGPT and other “large language models” are, as Noam Chomsky and others put it, “high-tech plagiarism” and “a way of avoiding learning” (https://www.openculture.com/2023/02/noam-chomsky-on-chatgpt.html ) .

[Edited to Add: the brilliant Rex Brynen used ChatGPT to summarize this post itself! Chuckle, snort, guffaw… https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2023/11/12/brian-trains-really-bad-wargaming-book-adventure/ ]

Play Algeria online at Rally The Troops!

(screenshot of completed game)

One of the latest things to come along in the world of playing wargames online (which, I confess, I almost never do) is a new site called Rally The Troops. It is different from other sites or programs like Vassal, Tabletop Simulator, Roll20 or others because it actually enforces the rules for you, instead of just being a digitally manipulable image of the components of a physical wargame.

The trick is that the game has to have its rules programmed in for it to do that, and only a few people can do this work… so right now the selection of games on RTT is not a very long list, just 16 games but some very good choices (https://rally-the-troops.com/). And, as you can see, one of them is my game Algeria, the first game ever designed on the Algerian War of Independence. The programming was done by Mischa Untaga, a very clever fellow who came all the way over from the Netherlands to attend the Class Wargames public demo play of Civil Power in London (Eighteen busy days away) and to meet me and discuss this project. I’m so pleased at the great job he has done!

The sharp-eyed among you will notice that the four-box square of squares layout from the earlier version of the game, and others using this system, has been broken out to four separated boxes of different shapes in each area. I thought that this might make better use of the total space in each area, and help people to associate location/box with mission a bit better. (Boxes and the court of public opinion ). I’d be interested to hear people’s reaction to this when playing, though to many it may not make much difference at all.

But anyway, go play it, it’s great! Thanks Mischa!

You have to sign up to play the games on RTT, but it’s free.

https://rally-the-troops.com/algeria

By the way, Mischa has also created a digital version of Guerrilla Checkers with a credible AI opponent: https://mischa-u.itch.io/guerrilla-checkers

Update: QUICK V2 changes and new map!

New map, of downtown Manila.

After some more testing of ideas and work I had done since the May 2023 serial of the Urban Operations Planner Course, I’ve posted some new files for the QUICK game. Major changes include:

• Created a single intermediate version with many optional additions: hidden movement, criminal and insurgent elements, supply routes, varied initiative, fast and slow Enablers, popular support, random events, infrastructure, and wet gaps (crossing, bridges, demolition etc.).
• Created 6 x 7 Execution Matrix: player selects 6 cubes and places them singly on 6 rows for 6 steps of a plan each round; each row has 7 choices and players step through round executing actions in row order. Simplified choices of actions, using only 2 colours of cubes.
• Created irregular area movement map of downtown Manila with 88 spaces, depicting the same area used by students in their COA and IPB practical exercises. Rewrote scenarios for new map. Added random space table and table of probable locations for actual infrastructure. It was a lot of work but worth it I think.
• Many adjustments to effects of Civilians, Enablers, Infrastructure and combat system.

Help yourself to the new stuff!  The QUICK Page