WBC West Report #3 - Tuesday Evening through Wednesday Afternoon

Funny story - Dave always brings this early Fantasy Flight game called Thunder's Edge to every Sunriver event hoping that someone will ask to play it but always packing it back into his suitcase unplayed. This year, when I'd suggested Titan as a potential evening game for WBC West, Dave replied that it had two problems (his exact quotes below):

• Player Elimination (unlike Thunder's Edge), and
  
• Excessive Downtime (unlike Thunder's Edge).
  

The rest of us took the opportunity to reply to many statements with the qualifier "(unlike Thunder's Edge)" and hilarity ensued, especially if someone missed a particularly good opportunity, such as "I am so looking forward to WBC West (unlike Thunder's Edge)."

Last night, Chuck and his wife Jodi went out for dinner and a movie (Tropical Thunder, no less, so there was certainly a severe weather-related theme going), so I suggested that perhaps we just put a bullet in the head of this particular long-running joke and play the damned game. I'd actually played some years ago, but to be very honest I kept being amazed by how little I recalled anything other than the box cover, and even then. 

Bad Idea.

Oh, I won the game. However, because of the way the board is set up, I was able to turtle in one corner, which let me control three Population Centers, so all I needed to do to win the game was take the center city and get an auto-victory. Which I came within a single 5 or 6 on a die of doing. Which I almost certainly would have gotten had I trusted my gut and check the rules closely to see why it was that on a bad weather turn the artillery couldn't fire (this was a poorly written expansion set rule that said that spaceships couldn't support ground troops). Given that I was going to roll eight dice, the chances of getting a 5 or 6 on one of them was, oh, pretty good.

Instead, I got pushed back to my part of the board, where I sat for the next three hours doing absolutely nothing of any interest or importance other than defending from other players attacking me (and failing). And then I won anyway. Frankly, my only interest at that point was to get the game over with. And had been since about the point where I realized that we'd gotten the rule wrong. 

Any game where I can literally do *nothing* other than build units for four hours and still win has some serious design flaws. There's an entire Consul phase where you trade cards that give you VP and determine who gets to go first, but it's completely tacked on and I ended up with a handful of action cards that were useless - I played six of 14 cards over the course of the game. 

Perhaps the problem is that the game is early FFG, which tended to favor flimsy components and poor rulesets. The designer is Christian Peterson, who does decent stuff, but this game was just a mess. See also Twilight Imperium from the same period, which went through three different editions before they stuck with something. The text on the cards was nearly impossible to read because it was so small, the counters were the same (and with graphics so tiny that you couldn't tell them apart either). Mike's purple counters on the map looked like Barney throwup. 

However, I think the real issue is that while I like wargames, I'm less enthusiastic about war-themed multiplayer strategy games. Not having a historical basis doesn't help, at least for me. Without a *reason* for the game to contain certain types of chrome, the whole thing feels like a horrendously overproduced euro, where the great thing about euros is their elegance (simplicity in mechanisms). I feel exactly the same way about Axis and Allies in it's original form - I got rid of that game and the Europe and Pacific variants years ago. 

What really surprised me is how disgusted I got with the game and how unsuccessfully I was able to hide my displeasure. I spent most of the game wanting to leave the table and never come back. Usually I try to be a good host and give the game the benefit of the doubt, but this time I simply ran out of interest and patience so quickly I was a little taken aback. Perhaps it was because I was handed the win pretty much from the start by the semi-random starting process, and also because there wasn't an interesting decision in the game for me other than to run for the auto-victory. After that, my dogs could have won the game. 

Ken liked the game as we got going, and mentioned several times that I was being too harsh. I suppose from his perspective this is true - he was starting to grok the system pretty well toward the end. But then, he had to figure out tactics because he had little in the way of resources and cities and so had to do things in order to be competitive. He had a few things go well, other things not so much. I'm glad someone enjoyed it, because Mike and I were ready to start tossing lit matches at the board in the hope that something would go up in a big way. 

At least it made War of the Ring look interesting (which, to be fair, is an interesting game when played by people who understand the priorities, if a little overdone). 

After not nearly enough sleep, Mike decided in the morning to take a wee break, so the four of us pulled out Wellington. This is the first of the follow on games to Napoleonic Wars, and I really enjoy it. However, you have to go in understanding that you play the role of a theater commander who doesn't have a lot of say in how things go from a Grand Strategic standpoint. As such, things happen during the game that you have no say in, such as the Germans seeking peace with Napoleon and freeing up units for the Spanish front, or conversely the disaster in Russia. 

The game has complicated victory conditions, as you'd imagine, but the key for the French is to hang onto Madrid for as long as possible. If they can do this and keep six keys in Spain total they have a chance to win the game at the end of every turn. On the other hand, there is also a 1 in 6 chance every year that peace will break out and the war will end. This is all very historic, but feels a bit chaotic in a wargame. Normally it adds tension when people know it's coming, as you need to have all of your ducks in a row at the end of every turn.

Dave took the Spanish forces, Ken was Wellington, I was Soult and the French Army of the South, while Chuck took the north. Chuck had good success holding off several attacks by Wellington, mostly thanks to useful battle cards. Meanwhile, I brought Soult up from the south to shield Madrid and had to give up four keys in that part of the board, which brought the Spanish total way up, and at the end of the first turn I was far in last place while the Spanish were now up with the British and French-Nord key totals. Based on the start position for the 1813 scenario, we were not far off from the historical result. 

At turn end, we needed a 6 to conquer Spain through holding Madrid and enough keys to demoralize the Spanish. Unfortunately, Chuck rolled a 4. Then Dave rolled for the peace roll, which would give the game to the Allies if he rolled a six, and he, of course, did. The French held enough duchies in Spain to keep Dave from getting any extra bonus points, but because he was tied with the British and he went last in the turn order, he broke the tie and won. It may have taken longer to explain the rules to Dave and Ken than to actually play the whole game. 

On the plus side, Dave loved the game. Like Wilderness War and the other low-density CDGs, there's a great sense of story in this title, so if you can tolerate the fairly luck-driven game-end conditions, there may be a game here you'll like. Oddly, I hated The First World War (a Ted Raicer design published by Phalanx, who screwed it up beyond recognition), which has exactly the same sort of game-ending rolls every turn. Perhaps the difference is that Wellington actually has something to do with history and the fun is in knowing that the clock could run out at any time so you need to make hay while you can. Who knows. 

I do know that I really enjoy this game played with four. The interactions between the two players on each side, at least when people are actively playing for position within their faction, do a fantastic job of simulating the rivalries inherent in any military organization. The French are trying to lose Spain as slowly as possible, but if you're losing it slightly slower than your ally, all the better. Maybe you don't to your ally's aid quite as much as you would otherwise! 

I'm very interested in playing Kutuzov, which is very similar but includes significant rules to simulate morale and attrition issues, and has victory conditions that literally run for six pages of the rules. I don't know how anyone will be able to keep any of that straight for the first ten games they play. Of course, this was all very historical as well, as even Napoleon wasn't really sure what he was trying to accomplish other than "Beat Russia". 

Sort of like the US's military goals in Iraq. Except there, it was about getting back at the people that gave us 9/11. Except that the Iraqi's were never actually involved in that, but hey, they look alike and *someone* needs to pay. Except that the people who are also paying are the next three generations of US taxpayers too. Why do we keep letting people like this run our countries?

Obviously, we were all at loose ends by 1pm, so Ken went out to run a few errands while the rest of us played Team Zopp. After he got back, Ken has been looking at a prototype design of Chuck's that uses the CDG paradigm, while Dave and Mike have been playing Memoir '44, Pacific Theater style. Tonight we play Manifest Destiny, and tomorrow Chuck and Dave and I will play three-player Here I Stand while Mike and Ken play a game to be determined later. Maybe Turning Point: Stalingrad, which is a great game but that tends to bog down in rubble fairly quickly. 

At least I stand a much better chance of not being a huge grump again.

WBC West Report #2 - Monday Night to Tuesday Afternoon

Monday, Monday... Can't trust that day. 

After our busy Monday morning and afternoon, the four of us pulled out War of the Rings for our evening game. Dave and I were Sauron and Saruman, respectively, while Chuck was Gondor and the Elves and Mike took everything else. Unfortunately, not a lot else to do when you're that last bit because it takes so long to get them going (aside from Rohan, of course). 

Chuck and Mike focused on running the Fellowship down to Mordor as quickly as possible, and I blame myself for not 'splainin' in sufficient detail to Dave how important it is to put at *least* two dice in the Hunt Pool for searching for them. As such, we whiffed a lot of Hunt rolls early, and the Fellowship made excellent progress. 

On the actual "war" front, Saruman made good progress in Helm's Deep, and was on the verge of assaulting the Rohanian (can't remember what they're called, there goes my geek cred), pushed from the south with the Southrons and was on the verge of taking Dol Amroth, which would have put us up to 5 VP. Dave assaulted Minas Tirith, but to no avail. 

None of that mattered, of course, because the Fellowship made it to Mordor with Gimli, two extra hobbits, and a pad of about five Corruption, so things weren't looking good. However, as they moved forward, it got to the point where we managed to get seven (!) dice in the Hunt Pool thanks to an event card, and when the Fellowship made the final push to the Crack'0'Doom (tm pending), all we needed to do was draw an Eye Hunt tile in order to corrupt them at the last possible second. 

And, of course, I did in fact draw an Eye tile! Hooray!

Except that Mike had this mithril armor or something silly and they made us draw again. Looking in the bag after the fact, it looked like we had about a 37% chance of drawing another Eye tile. 

We did not. The One Ring became the One Pile Of Melted Precious Metal, and all was for naught. 

Two things disappointed me about this game. There's a lot going on in the "war" segment of the game, and we were working toward that end (well, I was - Dave was not sufficiently "motivated" as far as I could tell, but it was his first game). I drew terrible events, very few of which were useful (and they are *hard* to read!) As such, the whole thing came down to the Fellowship, which seems to be a pretty common observation. 

The other thing that was horrible to realize was that I was missing the Aragon and Gandalf pieces from the game. How am I supposed to sell it *now*? I have no idea where they went, but I'm pretty sure I didn't put the game away last time as I sort the pieces by whether you start with them or they go in your pool, and the baggies were strictly sorted by type instead, so my guess is that someone else played it and the two extra companions never got put back in the box. Sigh. Perhaps FFG will be able to provide replacements. 

We finished up with a rousing game of Zopp, air hockey without the air. Good fun, although Dave and I were one point from a shutout before my flicking went totally pear-shaped and I more or less lost the game for us (made goals for the other team, kept hitting their pucks before anything else). Much smack-talking ensued. 

Ah, Tuesday afternoon - I'm looking at myself, reflections in my mind. Just the kind of day to leave myself behind. 

Tuesday was a lighter day for Dave and I, playing the campaign game of Wilderness War. This scenario gets short shrift from the CDG community, and I can almost see the argument. However, I've now played two full games (one on Cyberboard years ago), and I really like it. The map has time to develop, and the optional rules added in 2006 or thereabouts (which we never ended up invoking) do a good job without too much complication of leveling out some of the dangers (like one side or the other never getting their "9 card hand" card, especially important for the Brits because they don't get Wolfe until then). I got my card in 1757, while Dave's showed about a year later, which put him behind the curve a bit. 

It was an interesting game. We never really did much in the Ohio Forks area, other than raiding (which netted me around 6 points total, of which two were countered by Dave's two successful raids with his Iroquois and Mohawks, which he got early and kept for the entire game). I moved down to Ticonderoga early and set up a fort, but not much happened in the Hudson Valley for much of the game until Dave finally Surrendered Ticonderoga and that was as far as he got. 

Most of the action happened around Lake Superior, with the Brits making all the way to Niagara for a brief time. What killed them was me taking the fort at the NE end of the lake with the help of a couple of ambush cards, then building my own. He ended up with a sizable force in the area unable to escape because without supply they couldn't really get past the fort easily. Burning their carry at Oswego meant that once Levi could wipe out that force I only needed to focus on the Hudson and, of course, Louisbourg. 

That was an interesting axis of advance as well. Wolfe finally showed up in 1760, and after one failed invasion (thanks to some convenient fieldworks), he managed to get in and take the fort after several siege rolls. Despite my almost-well-timed Small Pox play on his large force, he managed to restore the entire 8 unit army with Troop Transports. By then, though, I had Montcalm with a very large force sitting in Ile-d'Orleans just outside of Quebec, and this time when Wolfe and Montcalm met on the Plain of Abraham, it was Wolfe who did the howling, and I don't mean in a good way. Reduced to three flipped units while I still had every unit I started with, Wolfe retreated to New York when I pressed and that was it for the Brit's adventures on the St. Lawrence River. 

At that point, the three points I'd gotten from beating Wolfe repeatedly put me up over the total I needed to win the game in 1761, two turns from the end, and that was it. Dave had suggested conceding earlier, but I'd talked him out of it and actually he was pretty close to pulling something out. The biggest thing the British player has going for him is the ability to operate on multiple fronts, while the French have the benefit of interior lines and an excellent transportation system over the various rivers and lakes - a unit can go from Niagara to Quebec in two turns. However, the French must pick their battles very carefully and force the British to spend time and energy building their militia and stockades to make the raids difficult. 

In our game, Dave learned that reduced units are extremely fragile, especially if the French can use their Militia units around Quebec - the units aren't drilled troops or regulars, but they can flip instead of Auxiliaries, and they don't lose combat effectiveness. As such, Dave kept losing units whereas I was able to preserve my regulars, and even got two chances to rebuild the regulars up (including an early play of the card). Pressing in all areas and waiting until the French are in the position of losing Regulars is the way the British can win the game, even with the delayed entry of Wolfe and Pitt that Dave experienced, and while I'm not saying he didn't play a good game (his drive to Niagara was brilliant, if flawed in the same way the drive on Stalingrad in 1942 Russia was - too long a supply line and not something you undertake unless you have the Iroquois on your side, which he did), I think that pulling back reduced combat units and fighting with fresh units would have helped him quite a bit early on, and the game could easily have gone his way as a result. 

After the brain burner that was OCS the previous day, this was an excellent choice to play today, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Winning, of course, never hurts, but considering that I've played WW something like ten times or more to Dave's once gave me a big advantage and I wasn't surprised by the outcome. Wargames require a deeper understanding of the operational situation that only comes with experience and repeated play, especially two player wargames and especially card-driven games where knowing the possible plays is what you need to start from. 

Meanwhile, in the Glory III (Antietam) Room, Mike and Chuck are still battering away at each other. They started out, but ran into a situation where it appeared they'd be hopelessly deadlocked, possibly because of a rules misunderstanding, but I really don't know enough about the game to be able to say definitively. They aren't sure at this point whether they'll continue tomorrow, which may mean we play Sword of Rome five-player rather than Wellington three-player while they continue. We'll just have to see. My preference will be for SoW, partly because I've never played that version, partly because I love the game but at eight hours it's hard to find people to play on a weekend for the necessary time. And you really need four or five, the three player game is a good introduction but just doesn't quite do it for me. 

More tomorrow after we've gotten our (wait for it) Thunder's Edge game in tonight and whatever the heck it is we play tomorrow.

WBC West Report #1 - Sunday Evening through Monday Afternoon

Perhaps the most anticipated gaming event of the year for certain members of our group is our own wargaming nano-con, whimsically titled WBC West after World Boardgaming Championships, which while perhaps over-ambitiously named is slightly bigger than ours. By a factor of a few hundred. 

But we have fun anyway, and so it was that Chuck, Dave, Mike, and myself went out to Sunriver on Sunday afternoon to start off the week. We like to play "lighter" games (which most Euro gamers would term as "heavy") in the evenings, and Sunday was no exception. Because dinner took a while, we didn't get started on our first evening game, Britannia, until nearly 8pm, and finished sometime around 1am. It was Dave's first game, and the first time I played Yellow (in the FFG edition, purple in the AH edition), and so while I did well with the Romans and was looking forward to being competitive, my dice went stone cold around turn 10 and I went for a couple of scoring rounds with nearly 0 points gained. In fact, only the Norwegians really contributed anything, but having Mike's Danes going after me required me to either put most of my units in with my leader or hope he had other fish to fry. Nope, I was the fish. 

Interestingly, Dave (the only person who hadn't played before), who had the benefit of all of us voting for him for Bretwalda early since his Saxons had a very rough start, managed to win the game in the end because his Norsemen kept scoring tons of points up north after the Caledonians and Scots were eventually wiped out. Chuck came in third even though his Normans were able to lock up the kingship at the end of the game for an extra 10 points. 

I like this game well enough, but it's brutal to be Yellow. You have six turns to do interesting things, then literally eight turns to do nothing at all (or very little), ending with a brief run with the Norwegians who come on strong on turn 13. That, to my mind, is the basic flaw of these games, and it's always good to come to the table with something to keep you occupied (I clipped the counters from the Solomon's Campaign game from the latest World At War magazine). 

After a night filled with thunder and lightning, bringing with it blessed cool air (today has been extremely comfortable in the house, last year it was a little toasty the first couple of days), Chuck and Dave played first Flying Colors (Napoleonic Era Age of Sail combat), then War Galley (take it back 2000 years or so, give 'em oars, then yell "Ramming speed!!"). Dave first beat Chuck with his British ships over Chuck's larger Spanish ones, then won again as the Spartans over Chuck's Athenians. 

Meanwhile, I had my OCS virginity sullied by Mike, who loves that system like I've never seen him get into a game before. I tried mightily to learn it solitaire, and I just don't think it's something within my capacity to do. Fortunately, while we did look up a few rules here and there, things went pretty smoothly, at least in the rules foraging parts. About three hours in I was not sure that this was going to be a game for me, but I trusted that I'd either come around or not by the end of the game. And come around I did, at least enough to want to give it another try some time in the future. 

Our game was the initial stages of the campaign in North Africa in late 1942 in Tunisia. This is a smallish scenario, having less than 100 units per side and a relatively short time-span of 15 turns. That may seem like a lot if you know OCS, but given that fully 2/3rds of the turns have better than a 50% chance of neither side doing much of anything (because of rain turning the entire country to mud) it's more like four turns of a bigger scenario. The difficulty is in managing your logistics to allow you to do all of the things you want to. However, since the Axis (for example) can only bring over 2 supply points a turn (three if it's nice weather, and that means no reinforcements from Sicily), and since it takes pretty much a supply point to move the mech units you want to move and another to fight with them, you literally have to choose your battles. I think I initiated something like three or four battles the entire game, while Mike (as the Allies) had tons of supply and was able to attack at will, further draining my own supply since I had to use it to defend over and over. 

What saved me in this game were two or three things. First, Mike had trouble getting replacement units (which you can save) early on - I think he got his first one about a third of the way into the game. This made things tricky for him as he kept losing units in attacks even though he was otherwise winning them and making some progress. His victory condition was to take three of the five key points in NE Tunisia, up in the corner near Tunis and Bizarte. He ended up taking one, and getting pretty close to two more, and even threatened Tunis. 

Secondly, Mike got some mud weather early and a few no flying turns. That hurt me as well because of my transport from Sicily, but it helped him get DG results on the units he wanted to attack. He also got his transport line up to where it needed to be and got his units into the fight quickly. Worse, he was able to win most of the initiative rolls early, allowing him to get double turns to exploit breakthroughs. Were it not for some good luck for me with his attacks somewhat blunted by me seeming to get surprise a good amount of the time, I would have been toast quickly. 

In the end, Mike made a very strong attack that punched a hole in my line, opening the way to Tunis, but instead of shoring up the hole and punching through the next turn, he decided to wheel south to put a couple of my units out of supply. I got lucky by getting the initiative on the next turn, then brought elements of the 10th Panzer down in an overrun that reestablished supply, cut off his exploiting units, and did some other damage along the way. In the end, I was able to use my tac air to disorganize his spearheads and even though the weather was better than it had any right to be at the end of December, he just couldn't punch through to any more objectives and I got my first OCS win. 

Despite the Deansian Statistical Distortion Field, I was starting to see ahead a turn or two and what you needed to do to get supply to your units and how best to use it. Given that I was constantly running out of supply when I most needed it, usually when Mike would make attacks that forced me to burn my remaining supply, preventing me from refitting my aircraft to make his airstrikes more potent, I felt I did pretty well. This is not a game where you just move units around the board. Like real commanders, you must first stockpile materiel in ways so that your opponent doesn't know where you plan to strike, then run an offensive in such a way that you protect your rear areas while driving on your objectives. This is not a game for everyone - it requires tremendous awareness and concentration like perhaps no other game I've played, and it's fairly draining (one reason why it was game 1 for us this week) - but if you can weather a few hours of feeling like you have nothing near what you need to prosecute the war you'd like to have, there's a really amazing system here. 

Here's the best part - the cleanest ruleset I've ever seen in almost any wargame, and the *series* rules run for 40 some pages. There's an index. Rules are, almost without exception, where you'd expect them to be. I hear ASL has a similar ruleset, although the almost constant errata (even in the updated edition from a few years back) makes keeping things up to date a bit of a challenge. With OCS, it may be that the 4.0 ruleset is going to be it. It falls, along with Wilderness War and Combat Commander, into a realm that most designers can only dream of. 

This is not to say that I'm now an OCS freak, far from it. This is not a great system for the solitaire gamer. There is simply too much going on in a turn, even in a small scenario, for one person to be able to parse and digest without a little down time between turns. Yes, downtime is a *good* thing in OCS. And the campaign games are almost certainly far from something I'd ever be able to finish, at least in any game that has more than two mapsheets. Even with Tunisia, perhaps the most accessible of the series, I'd want to play a campaign where one player took over the Torch units while the other Allied player took over the 8th Army pursuing Rommel from Alamein, and find ways to divide up the Axis units as well. Of course, the full game would require two players to more or less start for a couple of sessions, as the 8th army doesn't really show until 25 or 30 turns in. Mike and I finished our game at the very start of 1943, and there's at least a month until the 8th Army shows up. 

The OOP games in this series (Tunisia, Case Blue, and Burma are the only ones available) typically go for hundreds of dollars on eBay. I kick myself for not grabbing DAK2 when they fire-saled it last December, and I'll preorder the reprint of Guderian's Blitzkrieg.

Tonight we play War of the Ring, then tomorrow (Tuesday) Dave and I will play Wilderness War while Chuck and Mike take on the first half of their marathon two-day Glory 3 game. that night we'll play some Martin Wallace games, so while my brain load will lessen in the next day or so, it's still a long, fun slog with one day down and many to go. 

It still goes by *so* fast.

WBC Prep

WBC, the "real" one, is over and done as I type this, but it matters not to our hardy band of wargamers preparing diligently for our own nano-con that starts in less than a week - WBC West! 

After three years of spending a week or so out in Sunriver playing wargames until our ears bleed, we've learned a few things. Play lighter games in the evenings, or at least things that don't require everyone to look up things in the rulebook every 10 minutes and don't require as much careful planning and attention. Chuck noticed this trend at the one WBC we went to - everyone did much better if they played fun games like Slapstick or Paydirt in the evenings. I've learned to drink like a fish, quite literally - I over-hydrate like crazy because the week is so draining for me. 

One of the more recent lessons has been the early scheduling and preparation of games. Once the week starts, there isn't a lot of time to learn games on the fly, at least anything with any complexity at all - SCS titles, block games like Gettysburg, these are pretty light wargames by modern standards, but there are still enough crazy little rules, sometimes confusingly written, that trying to wade through such a game eats up way too many brain calories. As such, we now try to have the first three days at a minimum planned out, at least for the daytime games, and have the rules for as many games as possible read and refreshed in advance. 

The problem, of course, is that anything you do more than a week before the event has a tendency to fade right out without some sort of reinforcement. Chuck and Mike (and Dave) have been running practice sessions of games trying to get past the initial rules confusion and get at least a passing grasp on the overall situation. For me, I've been trying to learn OCS, but it's very hard to learn that particular game playing solitaire because even though the rules are pretty straightforward it's still difficult to retain all of those rules without someone to remind you when you're doing it wrong. I've gone through the Tunisia AAR that's online, and it's helpful to a point, but it's written in a very conversational tone that sometimes assumes that the reader has considerable experience with the game system. Mike thoughtfully offered to spend a little time going over the system with me, but I think we'll just have to wing it a bit. Fortunately, the initial Tunisia scenario is very good for learning as you see the situation develop as the counter density increases, and you get to go through the sequence of play several times. 

So I've gotten through the OCS rules, and may even get through a few solo turns to try to embed the process. I was feeling pretty good about the other games coming up: A Victory Lost, FAB Bulge, Wilderness War, Here I Stand, Victory in the Pacific. We'd also discussed playing Kutuzov, which has just come out and I thought was going to be Wellington in Russia. Which it is, but there's quite a bit of difference, chiefly in rather involved rules regarding morale and attrition. The rules are actually well laid out, but are also rather extensive and I'm having trouble getting through all of them. We'll still give it a go, but it will be a rockier experience than I'd like. 

In a related vein, Chris wants to play Napoleonic Wars, and he has the new 2nd edition. I got the update kit, which had a lot more in it than I expected. There are also a lot of different rules and I haven't played this one in a while. The delta between it, the original edition, and Welly/Kutuzov may be a little overwhelming for me, but I do enjoy multiplayer card-driven games so I'll at least get those rules skimmed. A game that may be a little tricker, at least if we play with five instead of four, is Sword of Rome. I really like this game, not least because each of the various factions has really unique motivations and styles of play, but I've not played with Carthage as a player and I *hate* having multiple rulesets to parse through. Much will depend on who makes it to the later part of the week, a roster still in some flux. 

Fortunately, I have some spare time over the course of the next week. Unfortunately, my band is auditioning for female vocalists and that's going to take up at least some of my evening time as I'm the guy doing the screening vocal auditions, and that takes about 20 minutes not including my travel and prep time. My timing, as always, is superb. 

I'm really looking forward to this particular WBC West - we are going to have a Manouevre tournament, some fun stuff during the evenings including some 2-player games but also a lot of fun multiplayer stuff including a "managed" game of Republic of Rome, Kremlin, all sorts of fun stuff that I don't get to play much. I'm a little nervous about the temperature out there, but so long as we don't have 90 degree weather we should be OK. I may look for an interior air conditioner unit (not a window mount, but one that transfers out the heat through water instead of freon or a gas), but I'm really not sure I'll have the time. 

Back to reading my Kutuzov rules, I guess. That and running the first couple of turns through to make sure I have the system down. Then OCS. Then checking Nappy Wars. Then the 5 player rules for Sword of Rome. Then, if I've got any grey matter left, a solo session of Burning Blue to see if it will work. Then...

The Price of Leadership

I fired someone today. The woman who had been singing in my band for the past six months. We had a gig a couple of Saturdays ago and it became extremely clear to both the audience and to us that she was not ready to do live gigs anytime soon, much less paid gigs. I had a long talk with her on the phone today, and I was struck by how people react when their singing voice is involved in a critique - any peripheral issues look just like the vocal quality to them. I told her several times that her voice had a lot of promise, but she kept thinking that we were asking her to leave because of her voice. It's a crazy instrument.

What this entire experience got me thinking about is the strange brew of community that is a rock band, especially one that intends to be paid to play. Professionalism means a lot of things, such as living up to what you and your employer have agreed are the terms of your hiring. You promise to do a certain job, they promise to pay you. In a music situation, very few people in the population have ever been paid to perform music, at least directly, and most of the experience is in amateur choirs or impromptu music groups. In those, the sense of family and trust in the leadership and each other is what is important. When you throw money into the mix, as has happened with me singing as a "ringer" or paid singer in choirs, things change. 

For one thing, you are on time. To every rehearsal, to every performance. Showing up after call time drives directors crazy and will probably result in you not being asked back for the next cycle unless you are *very* good. While you can negotiate in advance if you think the schedule is too onerous (such as showing up for two rehearsals per week), you don't get to just change your mind later on and stop going to one of them. When the director picks someone to be the soloist and it isn't you, and you think they've made a grave error (I've been there), you can't complain although you can ask why they made that particular choice. In other words, things change. 

In a rock band, everyone is a paid singer in a choir, but everyone still treats it like they're amateurs. People show up for rehearsal late all the time. People don't carry their weight in setting up or tearing down. People decide they can't make a particular gig because their SO decided they were going on vacation instead and they didn't have the cohones to let the band know in advance. These people are called "flakes" and I avoid them like the plague. It's difficult to do in rock and roll, but it is possible. 

In a rock band, the ultimate goal (for me at least) is to have fun playing music in front of people who are enjoying the experience. To do that, I have to behave like a professional and hope that the by-product (fun for the band) of what we've been hired to do (in a bar band, attract people to the bar and encourage them to drink by providing a dance environment) somehow happens. The amazing thing is that there's such a strong convergence between those two goals. However, the band still needs to behave in a professional manner. You take the agreed upon breaks. If the owner hates a particular song, you don't play it. You honor the contract. You pay for your drinks if they aren't part of the deal. You don't encourage people to fight (I've seen bands do this - it's amazingly stupid when you consider that a possible side-effect could be someone landing on your PA or drumset). 

At the same time, people play in rock bands because they love doing it. Me, I could care less if I got paid, but I have to be because a) if I am not paid, my "product" is somehow considered inferior, and b) if I'm not paid, I am taking money out of the mouths of people who do this for a living. In other words, by doing something like this for free, I devalue the skills of everyone who is a musician. I never work for free unless I'm doing something as a gift for a friend or relative, usually a wedding or class reunion, and then I insist that the band is paid, but I don't accept compensation personally. I would absolutely play for free were these conditions not a part of living in a capitalist society. On the other hand, I have a talent and skill set that are not shared by 99% of the population, yet I would almost surely starve were I to rely upon it for survival. Thank you, radio, for hiding the value of popular art in advertising costs. 

When  you're in a band, you also have to be able to trust the other members. Things as simple as stepping on someone else's solo or vocal line are rampant in some bands, simply because one person has most of the attention and someone else is jealous. I've been in a band where the guy running the PA thought it was hilarious to delay the mic signal of someone sitting in with the band on a tune, making it sound like they had terribly timing. Ha ha. Another person I won't play with in the future. Musicians and actors are notoriously both self-absorbed and certain they don't measure up, so they engage in all sorts of messed up behavior to try to compensate, thinking that by winning some sort of mind game that they are in fact becoming better artists. 

So when I find a band where I feel the professionalism and musicianship are equivalent to the amount of trust required, I feel pretty fortunate. Having to fire someone to get there is no fun, especially when the person should never have been hired on in the first place. It's also no fun when the person has no idea of what it really means to be in a band. It's hard work, the industry is cruel, the participants are socially maladjusted, you have no guarantee that your ultimate goal (a good gig with a good audience with good pay) will be the final result, and then the whole thing comes crashing down when someone gets transferred to Orlando. 

Yet we keep doing it. We do it because we must. We do it because if we don't, we feel as though there is a gaping hole in the earth right below our feet that we can't see. We do it because the feedback loop between a good performer and the audience is like no other experience in the world, and there is no musical experience as visceral and direct as rock and roll. It's like tapping into the power line coming off of Hoover Dam. I suspect that what I experience is very similar to prayer, a connection to the Divine through the joy and power of music performed well. If I do it right, everyone gets in on it, and that's even better. 

So I'm willing to fire someone who was in over their head, who should never have been hired to do the job we were looking for. Of everyone in the band, I was the one looking out for her best interests from the start, and I was the person who had the guts to tell her what needed to be said. She didn't understand what we meant by "professional" in the context of a rock band - it's that your family can cast you out at any time if you aren't considered to be up to snuff. It is a task I take very seriously, and a task I hate to do, but I do it and I will do it again because sometimes the art demands it. 

Funny that I should think of a rock cover band (one that plays popular music by other people) as art, I know. It is. It's not as complex harmonically as classical music (some, anyway) or jazz, it's not as rhythmically complex as some other forms, but as with all things, the art is in how it's done, not what is done. When it all comes together, when you've put a piece of your soul in the final result, it's art. I'd go so far as to say that it's love as well. It completely and totally sucks that there must be a cost to get there, worse to be the guy with the bulldozer. For me, I'm not completely sure that I have an actual choice in the matter, but at the same time I will endure part of the cost to make sure that firing someone is done right.