Teaching Fields of Fire

I've been asked to teach a few people in my game group how to play the recent solitaire wargame Fields of Fire. The game came out grossly underdeveloped, as regular readers of this blog will know, and GMT has said they are going to rewrite the rules, perhaps completely, so that those of us who aren't familiar with military documentation and the various light machinegun types used in the various conflicts will be able to follow it. In the meantime, it's going to fall to those of us who love the game despite it's flaws to put the word out and teach people how to play the game "by hand". 

One of the things I considered doing, aside from posting some overview materials on the game to this blog, is a video tutorial that will show the game via video captures of a VASSAL game. If only there was such a beast. Obviously, how you teach in a non-interactive environment is different from how you teach when people are asking questions, and to be very honest it's a much more pleasant experience if you are working with actual "students" instead of hoping that what you said makes sense. You also need to tailor the training strategy differently for an interactive situation, and there are a lot of choices to be made. While I'm not set on how I'll deliver this clinic, these are the sorts of decisions I'm making right up until this coming Sunday.

First of all, I think about the game itself and what sort of approach lends itself to the sequence of play. For example, with Android (which has a level of complexity commensurate with many low-complexity wargames), I could not jump in and start playing - there were too many different interconnecting systems, any of which could be used from the very first turn. In that situation, I used a high-concept approach at first, giving very simple overviews of the major systems and gradually introducing the mechanisms that supported those systems. This sort of approach requires much more thought - how much information goes into the hi-concept description, and how much gets added in with each sweep through the levels of the design? The approach I used at EGG was very successful, at least in terms of getting people up to speed, but it's a game that you simply won't get until you've played it a couple of times, so my approach could still use a little fine tuning. 

For games that are more process driven, like many wargames, diving right in and teaching as you go is a more successful approach. With some games, the way the game develops can inform the teacher as to how to proceed. For example, with 7 Ages (a game I have yet to play in any satisfying amount, but that appeals to me) you can simply begin by dealing out the 1st age empires, then telling each player to put out specific order chits in the first turn, namely expand and new empire. In the next turn, they can develop with one, expand with the second, and generate a third. Each turn, therefore, allows you to demonstrate one aspect of the game in isolation. 

Fields of Fire, however, doesn't really require this. For one thing, the actual sequence of play only really has one section where players have decision points, and that's the command phase. In every other section, things tend to happen *to* you and you see the results of your planning. In some ways, it's a lot like planning a Luftwaffe raid in Burning Blue - you don't have a lot of things you can adjust as you go, but you get to see how things work out. As such, the rest of the game is simply teaching people how to administer the AI, which is procedural rather than elective. 

However, that one phase has a lot in it. While it's easy to explain the command structure, and the impulses within the phase are clear once you understand how they work, you still need to teach a plethora of other concepts - volume of fire and primary direction of fire, communications nets, enemy actions, limited action teams, etc. There's a lot here to keep track of, and just telling them how to proceed early will only get you so far. 

Making things more complex is the vagueness of the preparation for a mission. I actually think this will consume a good part of the clinic after going through the process for myself today, and I'm torn as to whether I should approach this as a fait accompli with pre-set organization with them learning the value of the set up through play, or walking them through the process. This is an element that's still up in the air for me, although as I type I'm beginning to lean towards the fait accompli approach. 

There's a lot to set up - you need to assign your units to your platoons/staff, figure out who gets phone lines and who doesn't, determine what the pyrotechnic signals will do (and believe me, this entire part of the rule set was, to be brutally honest, fumbled in a way that usually results in me putting the components right back in the box and selling the game), figuring out what the battle plan is, setting the objectives and other mission parameters, it's all a huge amount of conceptual information that is very difficult to grasp until you've actually played through a mission. I think that I'm making up my mind quickly on this point. Except, of course, that how you plan to do all of that will be based in large part on what the terrain looks like, and I think I'm better off winging that part. Hmm.

The other tricky part of the command phase is that you issue orders, and there are a lot of orders to choose from. While you only do it in a small part of the sequence of play, it's a huge amount of choices. I think that it might help for me to produce a cheat sheet of Actions that you might consider in a variety of situations. For example, if you have units that are under fire by unspotted units, you might decide that finding cover would be a good choice, as would spotting the firing units so you can shoot back at them. Instead of organizing actions according to broad groups such as Combat, Movement, Rally, and Command, perhaps it's best to organize them by what sort of things you need to consider in each section. In the above example, while the friendlies are definitely in combat, the things you want them to consider are in the Movement and Combat charts. 

Perhaps the hardest thing for new players to understand is the entire volume of fire/primary direction of fire concept (VoF/PDF). Unlike most games, you aren't firing at units, you are firing in their general direction. As such, the issue is not so much that A fires at B, but that A is firing toward B, which generates a volume of fire in B's location, which may or may not cause problems for B. In fact, if B suddenly isn't in the picture anymore (because they ran out of ammo, or fell back), A keeps right on firing until someone tells them to stop. This is not a concept wargamers are terribly familiar with. This is a game where you are playing the role of company commander, and everyone else is following what orders you give, with a small dash of initiative if you can't tell them to do something. 

Given all of the above, here's a general outline of how I intend to approach teaching this game:

1) Generate the mission logs ahead of time. This is an easy and time-saving step, and shouldn't have to be messed with too much based on the board layouts. I will use some generic organization (one HMG/LMG, one bazooka, and one mortar team per platoon, for instance, rifle grenades all given one to a platoon).

2) Lay out the maps. Here we can discuss the basic elements of the map: LOS, terrain, the various mission parameters, what spots are going to be particularly valuable and why.

3) Discuss in general terms what it is that the mission is trying to accomplish, avoiding game terminology for the most part, but using consistent language where I can. 

4) Set up the units in the staging area based on the mission parameters. Identify where FOs and the HMG will do the most good, and the general sense of how the mission will proceed.

5) Start running the sequence of play. The first turn will feature some number of advance squads moving forward, which will allow us to resolve contact and get us into how VoF/PDF is determined. We'll also see how the command system works in a very basic sense. 

6) Continue into the second turn, where we'll discover not only how to react to enemy units, but how they react to the player. It goes without saying that the use of the action deck will be helpful. Early actions will include movement, seeking cover, infiltration, spotting units, concentrating fire, and exhortation. A big part of this will be reading the action tables in the manual to see exactly what information they give on how to proceed. For example, seeking cover uses a different number of card draws than, say, spotting. 

The games will proceed from here at this point. I expect that Grenade attacks, opening fire on spotted units, calling in arty or offboard mortars, all of these will start to come into play as the game advances. Same goes for Higher HQ Events, using the Jeep, retrieving casualties, etc. 

I'm figuring that we'll be at this for about four hours, and that we'll get about four or five turns into the mission at best. When we get down to about 30 minutes left, I will call the mission complete, and will demonstrate how to refit the company based on experience and replacement points. 

I will not be able to cover vehicles in any great detail, other than using the Jeep. For one thing, I've never really used anything else, I've not played in any era other than 1944 so no helicopters or landing zones. I've also not dealt with combat patrols or defensive missions, many of which have generated a lot of questions on CSW and the 'Geek. 

Again, the goal is to get people to a point where they can get past the mess that is the rulebook and get into the game. Once they've done that, there are a lot of sources of information online that will help, but without the foundation it's a very tough game to understand in any depth. 

I'll post after the clinic and talk about how effective this teaching strategy was. As always, you have to tailor your lesson for your audience, and fortunately these people know me pretty well. One was actually in the armed services, although it was Air Force so how much ground combat do you see there? Plus, he was an officer, and we all know what *great* pupils they are. 

;-)

Kickin' It - Old School

Like many gamers my age, I went through a period in the late 80's into the early 90's where things got a little dicey. RPGs were pretty much everything back then, CCGs hadn't reared their addictive little heads, wargames were slowly dying as AH was losing market share and GMT Games hadn't really gotten a following yet. My game library consisted pretty much of war and strategy games I'd bought when I was in high school and the early part of college. 

And then I discovered Talisman. 

Today, Talisman is an anachronism, a roll and move game where luck is pretty much everything, the game can take 20 minutes or it can take four hours, and after a while everything starts to feel very much the same. At the time, though, it was a game my wife would occasionally play with me as would one or two of my friends. There were a ton of expansions and characters for the game (I think my set, which included everything but Timescape, which was a shameless tie-in to other GW Games titles, had something like 40 or 50 characters you could play), and even if you were far behind there were a few low-odds backdoor ways you could take a shot at making it to the top of the Crown of Command and pull off a win.

That was second edition, generally considered to be the best of the lot. The components were not the best, being cardboard fold-ups for the characters, character sheets that had separation flashing along the sides, but at the time it was about all there was out there, and I bought into it. The third edition, which featured a 3D board but only a handful of characters, never took off and I'm pretty sure that Games Workshop took a beating financially with it. It went out of print in the mid-90's or so, and I was never tempted to get it as the box was huge (and the play less interesting than second ed).

A fourth edition came out from a small company (whose name escapes me, Black Isle or Black mumble), and it had it's pluses and minuses, but when Fantasy Flight bought the rights to print a revised fourth ed, I figured this was the time. I'd given my copy to my nephew Alex when we moved to Colorado for grad school and I wouldn't have either time or space for it. I know he got a huge amount of use out of it with his middle-school friends, and I've never regretted the gifting. However, I was interested to see the new treatment of the game, with plastic figs for the characters and plastic cones for the stats, plastic gold pieces, and the Fate tokens that can be used to reroll when necessary. There is even a "Reaper" expansion that adds some characters, cards, and the Reaper, who pretty much wacks up the game by giving players a character they can use to attack other characters, although sometimes he can come back to haunt you, snicker. 

I hosted game night Tuesday, and the allergic reaction to Charbonneau continues - I really have no clue why people insist I continue to host when no one attends. But host I do, and Alex and I were the only people here, so we pulled out Talisman to kick it old school. 

Two hours later, despite a noble attempt by me to sneak through into the Crown of Command that ran into a bunch of very pesky pit fiends (they were literally the last space before I had an excellent shot at winning), Alex took me down. During the entire game, I defeated exactly *one*, count 'em, *one* enemy on a card. I was turned into a toad, I kept forgetting to draw my spell card at the start of my turn, I used up my fate early (it lets you reroll, very helpful) and had a lot of trouble getting any back, and in general was ignored by every mystic, monk, and enchantress on the board. If I hadn't gone through a Magic Portal to get to the inner board, I'd never have had a chance. 

Alex, on the other hand, killed pretty much everything he ran into, was generating all sorts of strength and craft, had about 10,000 gold pieces, followers that let him do anything he wanted to, and I don't think he lost more than one life the entire game. Once I died in The Pit, he decided that it was time for him to head for the Crown, and he made it with no problems at all. I was dead four turns later. And about time, too.

Game play is pretty much exactly like it was back in the day, which means that you roll a die to move and then can go in either direction. The board is, as far as I can tell, close enough to identical as to be not worth investigating. There are about 16 or so characters in my expanded set, which is plenty for my 46 year old brain (50 seemed much cooler when I was not yet 30). The components are fine, and the plastic markers for your stats are nice to play with. The game is incredibly random, enough so that I won't every foist this on the regular gamers in my group unless there is a lot of alcohol around, although I can definitely see a place for it with kids of six and up (you can always help them with text, and give them a character that won't take spells for a long time, if ever). 

With my Sage character, I admit that I was starting to take missed die rolls a little personally by the one hour mark, but after a good run at the Crown, I was getting more into the spirit of things. And that's the thing about a game like Talisman - no one claims that this is a game that you'll win because you're a superior player. This is a game that you play because wacky stuff happens *constantly* and the fun is in seeing people getting surprised over and over. Like Cosmic Encounter, another classic that I purchased the latest FFG edition of (and was very pleased with it, despite me owning *two* other editions), it's more about the craziness and the company, not the game itself. Go into it with an attitude that it's nothing more than a ride, and then enjoy said ride, and it's great family fun (although there is ample opportunity for screwage, if said family has competitive members). 

The other game we played was Roll Through The Ages, a dice-based civ-building game that has some good elements but is otherwise pretty wacky. I discourage you from playing with people who have trouble figuring out where to go with what you've rolled quickly, as the game *dies* if there's downtime. Say what you will about Talisman, in a two-player game there is almost no downtime and it plays very quickly. This was Alex's first game of RTtA, and while he took a little while to understand the implications of the sequence of play, he had a good time. I won by ten points at the end, mostly because I had three turns where I rolled five or six goods, and of course that put me in position to get the Empire development, which was worth something like 14 points at the end including the city bonus. 

Yeah, it's a dice fest (literally), and the components are horribly overproduced (did we *really* need wooden boards to keep track of goods?), but I can see a role (ha!) for this game over time. Although I really want to get Through the Ages on the table more often. 

As a bonus for me, I gave Alex my copy of 2nd ed Wizard Kings, the game that doesn't tell you it's collectible until it's too late. Maybe he can burn it for heat while it's still winter. 

Thanks to Alex for coming over and preventing me from having the loneliest game night hours before my birthday ever. But I'm not bitter. No, not me. I'm just *old*.

Warriors, Come Out To Play-ee-yay!

Anyone get the reference? Anyone? Come on, this one is easy. And it even has a connection to Joe Walsh, of all people. 

Mike and I had agreed to play Warriors of God today, as he had President's Day off. At the last minute, he needed me to come over to his place, which I did, but decided at the last minute that I should bring my copy just in case he didn't have it. Turned out that was a good idea, as he didn't own the game. 

Mike and Eric had played before as one of their Two Sides of the Coin sessions, and Eric *hated* it. Mike was so-so, feeling like the game was pretty wacky, which is how gamers say "hopelessly random". And to be fair, the game has an enormous amount of chaos. Given that it's set during the Hundred Years War, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I've posted in a previous entry about how I felt about the chaotic element, saying that this was a game about managing said chaos - there are some things you know will happen, and some things that you fear will happen, and the key is to work off of the former and hope for the best but expect the worst from the latter. 

In our game, the worst happened to Mike in the first turn or two, when I built up a 17 point lead over the first five or six turns. He lost multiple leaders, I managed to snag all but two of the III areas on the map (a key to winning), and he was never able to force me out of anything but the one area on the Channel whose name I can't recall. I also tended to win battles pretty handily early on, and several of his nobles spent time in the Tower of London (I was, clearly, the English). 

By the end of the game, he was finally starting to press in terms of points, but I think that the key element that he wasn't able to pull off in those areas was that they are all but impregnable, even to armies with cannon, if the defending armies can elect siege. The trick is to get rid of the control marker in the area during activations, thus making it impossible for the defenders to hide in the castles. That, and not bringing in your battle commander that has a 1-1 rating (which means you're stuck trying to roll a 6 on one die every battle round. Can't win that way). 

Mistakes were made on both sides, and I had astonishing luck rolling two 1's in a row to defeat Jean d'Arc with Plantagenet at game end, but I was still 12 points ahead at that point and it wouldn't have helped. As I've said before, the be all and end all of this game is area control, and if the English don't get rooted out of Burgundy and Aquitaine, they're probably going to win. Better to make those a priority and send enough armies to knock them out. Of course, having your leaders die as they get close doesn't help, but I suspect that a little more focus on those areas and that strategy would have made for a very close game.

I have to say that I like this game more than ever. We got through the whole thing in about four hours, with several rules look-ups as we were both a little rusty on some elements, and I think that if you understand what you need to do and how to do it that the chaos factor adds to the replay value rather than to the frustration level. By turn 10 (of 12) we had lost exactly the same number of leaders, and I controlled only five or six areas the last third of the game. They were all big point areas, though, and had Mike managed to take even one of them that would have been a 16 point swing over four turns. That was well over the difference in the score. Just because there's chaos doesn't mean that you can't find ways to win. I think this one is worth learning to love.

We also played the Sword Beach map from PK's D-Day, reviewed recently. I lied about one factor, that I didn't figure out until after Mike and I had played (and he'd beat me by one point when he got four units off of the map): There is a movement activation as well as the full fire and fire and movement activations. The fire/move action, as you'd expect, limits you to half of your movement, which I screwed up in our game. I find this series fascinating, with interesting decisions and very tight using the rest and refit optional rule. Next time I'd use all but Leadership, which seems to me to just add too much extra chaos to the game. I'll also note that I got exactly three artillery the entire game - Mike won that roll every turn but one. Highly recommended, and I'll be picking up the rest of this series. Victory Point Games are looking to be frequent purchases by me, I really like their stuff.

As a final note, I've become a playtester for the Hell Over Korea expansion for B-29 Superfortress. It's a very different game, with the fighter presence actually a threat rather than just an annoyance - I ran into twelve different fighters in my initial run as opposed to three in the original game's first mission. One fighter even managed to kill one crewman and send another one home from the war, on a single successful attack. That's what happens when you put an aircraft that was the most advanced bomber on the planet six years before up against jet fighters. Fortunately, no random events yet. That will be a bad day. 

Thanks to Mike for hosting, and for lunch. And for his copy of Moseby's Raiders, which he was going to put up on eBay. What a guy!

Project SPQR - Pt 2b, Heraclea

The results are in, and they say that I *suck* as the Romans. Two times now I've gotten my hat handed to me, and while the dice sure seemed to go to Pyrrhus, I can't imagine that's all it is. 

After last time, the Romans were getting ready to force the river, Pyrrhus had reformed his heavy cav and was in position to threaten the Roman right flank, and the Tarentine main battle line had formed up in full to defend the river once it was crossed. 

With the Romans at the river and the Velites fleeing, the Roman left flank cav, still made up of Roman cavalry (useless against heavy cav) went up and hit the Tarentine light cav, and what a difference that was. While they didn't lose more than one unit, they got beat up pretty badly while the RC mostly took damage thanks to reactive missile fire. However, that was the end of the cavalry battle on that side. 

On the right flank, the Tarentine HC crashed into the legion flank and forcing that entire side of the battlefield to wheel to meet the cavalry. Unfortunately, since this was strictly the Alae cohorts, they didn't get the benefit of the Principe reduced side and also had poor troop quality. Let me tell you, the entire point to this game is to get a good matchup on the weapon system matrix and have better troop quality. That's where all the positive DRMs come into play. Not helping was Pyrrhus' elite status, which gave a +1 drm to all of the units within two hexes on his side. 

However, this was all moot as the Hastati plowed forward into the remains of the Tarentine skirmisher line, which they pushed back to some extent, but many of the units were able to retreat. The exception was where the Velites still generated a ZOC into the skirmisher hex, and those couldn't run. At only two rout points per, though, it was a bit of a disappointing result. Worse, a few mandatory advances screwed up the Hastati line, so the right flank was out of command (that means that they can't run away, which it the whole point - hit the enemy, then run when you get messed up and let the Principes take over). 

By now, the Romans were out of turn seizures, so they were at the mercy of Megacles and Pyrrhus taking double turns for at least three or four more rounds. Which they did. Because of the command structure, the heavy infantry out on the end of the Tarentine right flank couldn't activate with the phalanx under Megacles and the Tarentine medium infantry under Leonatus (of Successors fame). Being able to move all of these up in two phases was critical.

First, the heavy infantry on the flank ran up and whupped the allied cohorts on that side but bad. The Medium infantry did less well, forcing the better trained Roman legions back, but also losing their line's cohesion, and putting most of the force out of command. The phalanx had the same problem, resulting in only two of the eight being in command after the first rush, although they'd already savaged the Roman right at that point. 

The bright spot for the Romans was their center, of course. They were in enough command to get most of the Hastati out and the Principes in, where they did a lot of damage to the center of the Tarentine line. And that is actually what the legions are supposed to do - force a breakthrough in the center, and then take the phalanxes in the rear where the weapons matrix results in big drms, up to +4! And they did a great job, reducing the central phalanx and messing up the medium infantry quite well. And if they hadn't lost so many units on their flanks doing so (when you activate a group, you have to fight if you can with units that are out of command unless someone else takes them for you), they might just have won the day. Losing so many points early (the Velites and RC are both worth around 5 points each, and a lot were lost), and then losing so much of the Hastati really killed them. The cohorts, of which there were about twice as many as normal because the six legions were all half strength, four only consisting of alae, took the brunt of the fighting by a long shot. 

The game was a lot of work, but I do feel like I'm starting to get a grip on how to use the Roman legions. The other thing I *finally* woke up enough to figure out was to put the cohesion hits *under* the counters instead of on top of them. I really have no excuse with this, it just didn't occur to me. Putting them underneath made it so much easier to parse the board that I'll keep doing that from now on. 

Two down, twelve to go. This was a big battle, but the next one, Ausculum, is *bigger*. In fact, it takes two maps and won't fit in a poster frame, so I'm going to need to either run it as one long session when I can leave the game set up for a few days (which isn't happening in the next week or so), or else try to do it online using VASSAL. Doing that is so much less satisfying for me, for reasons that must have to do with using my fingers and tactile sensation, that I'm loathe to do it. However, this would be the one to use. Or Cannae. Or Zama. I do know that most of the battles are actually around this size. 

Maybe I'll try to set up Raphia, the scenario from War Elephant that was excluded from the reprint, that uses two maps and every elephant counter they can find. Something like 40. Really. It's a lot of elephants. 

The next game will determine if I decide to finish up the resolution or not. I was thinking that it was an awful lot of work just to satisfy a whim of a resolution about halfway into this scenario, but seeing the Romans come *so* close to breaking the Tarentine line and figuring out that the game was easier to play with the cohesion hits under the counters, I think that this next one will either see me tire of the system (at least in terms of playing every scenario - I may try this with the "real" rules), or else I'll finally have everything so internalized that I won't have to spend time every five minutes looking up yet another rule. 

Anyway, expect another report, this one hopefully in one piece, in about two or three weeks. 

Project SPQR - Pt 2a, Heraclea

After a few days of finding SPQR markers hidden in various parts of the game room (see previous post), I think I finally got them all. Sure, I did. Anyway, I got B-29 set up on the side table as I'm doing playtesting for the Hell Over Korea expansion due out later this year, and finally put Heraclea back on the main table. 

Man, having that many more units makes for a much longer game. I can't imagine how long this would take with the regular rules. Too long, I think, even though I'd prefer the ability to remove cohesion hits and rally routed units (you can't do either in Simple GBoH). 

I decided to start with the Roman right flank cavalry in it's historical position on the far side of the river from the rest of the Romans, and started the game with their surprise attack on the Tarentine left. I chose to have two of the units go after the two archer skirmishers within range, and the remaining five disrupt Pyrrhus' heavy cav. They managed to flank two of the units, which both flubbed their reaction facing rolls (and with TQs of 7!), and both took heavy damage, although not enough to rout them. Pyrrhus responded by encircling them, and I suppose the Romans should have protected their cavalry's flanks instead of going after the two skirmisher units, which was mostly a bust anyway. The result was a complete rout of the Roman cavalry on that flank, but I did manage to get Pyrrhus and three HC units to pursue off of the board, which could be very useful as he's the OC for the Tarentines.

Next, I brought up the Velites to throw javelins at the Tarentine skirmisher line, which didn't go as well as I'd have liked. While they did some damage, they also took some damage, although I screwed up the Hit And Run Tactics rule a bit, which assumes that they run forward one hex (which was into the river, which affected their throws), and then back. In the end, they lost a couple of units with only one Tarentine loss, although their skirmisher line is largely useless as a fighting force at this point. 

The Tarentines used a few activations to get their phalanxes, medium infantry, and heavy infantry into a longer line that matched the Roman line, and formed up poised to charge once the Romans crossed the river. The Romans responded by bringing up the Hastati and Principes behind the Velites, with the idea that they'd get across the river, then take the Tarentine charge by shifting their stacked legions into the empty spaces. Unfortunately, Pyrrhus had by now managed to bring his HC units back onto the board and they have formed up to challenge the flank. The force is down to five units, as two were too badly damaged to risk, but it will still take a few Roman units to deny that flank, and I have no idea how they'll prevent them from just rolling up the line once everyone is stuck in. 

At the end of my play session, the Velites had forced the river with little success, and have begun to pull back. Unfortunately, most of the units were out of command and couldn't retreat easily, so I expect to lose a few more. At this point, I've lost seven Roman Cavalry and three Velites for a total of 50 rout points to the Tarentines losing a whopping 2 for their lone archer. This isn't as bad as it might seem, as the Romans can take 185 rout points to the Tarentines taking 120, but the margin of error is much tighter than I'd have liked for it to be.

On the bright side, the Roman Hastati and Principe lines are both exactly where they should be, and the Velites created just enough confusion with the skirmisher line that the Hastati can get across and prepare for the Tarentine charge. The scary part is that the flank with the Tarentine Phalanx units is the same side as Pyrrhus' heavy cav, so I may keep that side of the army on it's side of the river and engage the less dense units first. The risk is that the elephants are behind that flank and there are special "Scary Elephants!" rules for this scenario (it's where the Romans first saw the beasts in combat, much less at any time). 

I should have the second part of this report up and the scenario finished in a few days.