Tuesday 24 June 2014

Unconventional Conventional Warfare

It has dawned me recently that most of my wargaming choices are rather unconventional, in terms of actual game mechanisms. I've always been a fan of the simple beauty of Napoleon's Triumph, but I was reading a review on Board Game Geek recently which in no uncertain terms slated NT as a eurogame, instead of a 'Proper Wargame' (whatever that is).

That got me thinking: in terms of what is currently available within the world of war gaming, what can actually be considered conventional anymore? Napoleon's Triumph is a good example: only the most backwards of Grognards would say that it isn't a wargame altogether, but it does seem to stretch the definition of the word in some ways. An entirely deterministic system would seem to defy the alleged attempts of wargames to model the chaotic nature of combat, which is usually done by the addition of randomness within the model. Some would claim that the randomness is even necessary for the wargame to exist in the first place and that any system in which it is not present, by definition isn't a wargame.

Although I can understand these conclusions, I do not respect them. Every single wargame in existence is a necessary abstraction, created in order to model something that is very difficult to model at the scales that are considered in wargames. For example, what is the difference between abstracting one element of war (the element of chaos that is omitted in most wargames by the omission of 'fog of war' elements, while not allowing the abstraction of another system (the random nature of combat)? The former is a well-established element in many war games (although block games intentionally avoid this abstraction), while to many, the latter would be heresy, as seen by some of the back-lash against Napoleon's Triumph.

To me, such arguments feel more like attempts to cling to established tradition (dare I say, almost reactionary attempts). Any arguments claiming that the abstraction in one game is too much seems, to me, to not fully understand the nature of wargames as a whole: the entire hobby could not, and would not work without abstraction, and it becomes just a matter of how much you wish to abstract away. This is why I feel that Napoleon's Triumph is such a wonderful design: because the abstraction works well in terms of what the game is trying to represent, which is a high level simulation of the battle of Austerlitz.

For me, wargames have to provide the correct feeling. The breakdown of Corp structure as the battle progresses, the way that cavalry screen ride defiantly on the flanks of enemy Corps, the mad cavalry charges, the artillery bombardments, they all feel right. The ebb and flow of the battle is also beautifully captured in simple mechanisms. But enough gushing about Napoleon's Triumph, as there are many other examples I want to give.

One of the recent games I have played is Unconditional Surrender, which I had a first taste of last weekend. For numerous reasons, the design was something that I enjoyed immensely, but the game is very unconventional in many of its ways. The combat system is especially wonderful in this regard: instead of using force ratio, or roll to hit or any of the more traditional systems, it uses a system that I have seen put to good use before in We the People: 1d6 + a LOT of DRMs (yes, yes, We the People uses 2d6 but the system is similar enough). The system is very easy to use: to calculate DRMs you just go down a list so it is very difficult to miss something out.

What makes it stand out, however, is the complete lack of combat factor/maneuver points on all counters in the game. This seems to be a punch to the face of historicity, since all the armies present in the game are exactly the same, but in actual practice it makes the game work remarkably smoothly and some of the DRMs still allow the units to be sufficiently different from each other. What really works well within the game, however, is the way that mobile/assault combat works.

Mobile assaults allow you to keep moving and potentially attack an enemy more than once: this is especially useful when using tank units to punch through the enemy lines. Since in USE you activate the units one by one, this means that you can use that panzer to isolate an enemy unit which is then mopped up by your infantry. It is also possible to assault, which can only be done if you haven't used that unit to do a mobile attack and can only be done once per activation. You can then add multiple units to the assault.

The combat in USE has therefore a much more organic, flowing feeling in comparison to most other games. (when I say this, I am aware that systems such as OCS have a much better defined exploitation phase). If I see that my tank unit is managing to exploit successfully, I can immediately do something to widen the gap. Games that allow you to move and then attack (such as No Retreat, which is by no means a bad wargame), do allow you to Advance After Combat, but your ability to react to victories is more limited. As well as that, the Advance After Combat seems to be extra movement on top of the movement allowance, while in USE, it is an integral part of the movement allowance. Units that don't need to move up to the front before attacking can exploit a lot more than units attached to the frontline already, but this is not something that is modeled very well.

Another wargame I have enjoyed playing is Maria, which has a pretty crazy system for combat. The map in Maria is divided into squares which are assigned a card symbol: you have a hand of combat card which resemble cards from a standard playing deck. If you are fighting with an army, you have to use the suit that matches the area your army is in in order to help you win fights. This seems rather gamey, but it is a very distinctive way of modelling terrain, in a way. Sometimes you might need to retreat to a more defensible area, which no doubt happened during the real war of Austrian Succession, but it seems counter-intuitive in a way. It is difficult, even for me, to go past the abstraction in this case and see what the gameplay elements are trying to represent.

Lastly, one final game which is unconventional in every sense of the word is not a game, but a series: the COIN series to be exact. I won't go into much detail (I've already delved in depth about the games in my COIN and ADP reviews), but the way that the game tries to abstract the conflicts is also very innovative, attempting to add the actual events that happened during the various insurgency in a way that doesn't make the game predictable. Yet again, this is an attempt not to make the make the game historical, but to give the correct feel to the game, while still making it playable.

This, in the end, is the point of this particular article. Abstraction in wargames is omni-present and I feel that in terms of recent games, what is acceptable and unacceptable abstraction is a moot point for me now. The game shown above are all undoubtedly wargames, yet their main objective is to make the war FEEL right, no just play like history intended. In the end, it is important to note that wargames as a whole are completely a-historical or otherwise they would not be games at all: recreating a war by constraining so tightly to the events of the war paradoxically makes a game less of a simulation and more of a historical recreation.

This is not to say that historicity is unimportant or that games that attempt to be historical should not be produced, but I feel that sometimes the design space is constrained by attempts to make wargames of all types, no matter their design space, be historical with the stigma that if they aren't, then they are not truly wargames. I think in recent years the developments within the genre have shown that this is not necessarily true and I am truly excited about what the future will provide us and that, hopefully, it will provide games that cater to all kind of wargamers, without constraining what the genre can do.

Tuesday 17 June 2014

Totaler Bonkers: A Totaler Krieg Review

So, first of all, a bit of a general update. My last review was a bit of a mess and it really drove away any desire to write long complex reviews of games for quite a while. I created it on a premise that just did not work and after writing thousands of words for it, I actually deleted it and almost started from scratch. I find I have an issue with writing something that I don't passionately care about. No game really came around that fired up my creative juices, but to get back into the spirit of it, I have decided to do a general review. Not something trying to make an overarching point through an overtly elaborate comparison between two games, but instead make a nice, straightforward review. Of two games. One which I haven't even played yet. Wait, shit. Something has gone wrong...

With that little intro over and done with, let me introduce to you a game that I have absolutely fallen in love with: Totaler Krieg. Now, I am not very experienced with Grand Strategy wargame: I have tried stuff like Here I Stand, which I can't really stand anymore (yeah I went there). I won't go into details why I dislike Here I Stand (it's the combat system), but regardless, I wasn't soured to the Grand Strategy experience: I just had to find the right game.

My experiences with World War II games are not really as extensive as some of you might think. For a long time it was limited to the various No Retreat, Red Winter (debatebly part of World War II), Combat Commander and Barbarossa to Berlin.  I had a small attempt at playing OCS and although I could see what a wonderful system it was, I couldn't get my head around it, although I have been meaning to give it a try (Reluctant Enemies looks interesting, for a start). In terms of WWII Grand Strategy though, I had only heard of the classics like the 3rd Reich system and that was pretty much it.

It was about this time that a few of my fellow wargaming goons let me know about Totaler Krieg. It sounded good but I had always felt that games like that were too big: too much to read, too much to keep track, even for a wargame. I did decide to give it a try and after having a brief look through the rules, I saw that the combat system was somewhat similar to the one present within No Retreat. After reading the rules, however, I still hadn't realised the true extent of how crazy this design really was.

The combat system in Totaler Krieg is pretty standard, although it has a few interesting points. It uses force ratios, much like No Retreat, with bonuses mostly being column shifts rather than DRMs. Some of the interesting points of it are that, in a city, you can stop your troops from retreating, although it means that your troops take additional damage. Retreat can also be stopped by using HQs, which are one of the more interesting parts of the game: they can project combat factors, meaning that they can support attacks or help defend even if they aren't on the frontline. They are, however, limited to one attack/defense per round, which means that you can sometimes do diversionary attacks to force your opponent to use his HQ before you do your main attack.

Another interesting point is that there are actually two combat impulses in the game: Blitz combat and operational combat. Blitz only occurs when a unit is blitz enabled, which requires a blitz token to be placed near the area where the unit is. Blitz tokens can also be placed in cities to force units to withdraw (although HQs will stop this retreat if they are used in the combat). I will explain how Blitz tokens are acquired later.

So far, so standard. Combat results usually determine how many spaces the enemy retreats, how many points worth of units they lose, etc. Anyone familiar with No Retreat should have no problem switching, although a few things will catch you out (like, for example, mud doing combat penalties for the attacker). The Zone of Control rules also lead to a very sticky game, especially in mud, in which you are not allowed to move out of EZOCs.

Another interesting part of the game is the way support units, like the air force, navy and convoys are handled. Instead of having a position on the board, the support phase involves attempting to place a support unit from your unified pool of tokens and then seeing if your opponent intercepts the placing or not: if they do, they are both rolled at the end of the turn to see how many turns it takes for them to come back (which is admittedly quite random).

Air units can be used to provide bonuses while attacking/defending, as well as doing the absolutely crucial task of removing potential avenues of retreat (the game has a brutal 'pick up all units you retreat through' system, which coupled with the 'destroy anything that is stacked in a hex over the limit', is an absolute killer). Naval units, on the other hand, are useful for cutting supply lines or even creating amphibious invasion (although this can only be done by air units). The system is a bit abstract (and doesn't feel QUITE right in the Pacific Theater of Operations game of the series, Dai Senso), but it's fast and relatively easy once you get your head around it.

Victory in Totaler Krieg is decided by a series of objective hexes and a tug-of-war Victory Point system. Objective hexes can either be soviet, axis or allied: controlling one of your own side doesn't give you VP, but it does prevent your opponents from getting it. It's a fairly standard system.

Now, you might wonder about the title and why I earlier referred the game as being crazy. From what I have said so far, the game sounds fairly standard for a WWII game. So what DOES make it stand out? That would be the diplomatic system, which is tied to the production system of the game. And this is where the craziness mixed with the sheer genius of the system comes in.

Totaler Krieg, really, is a deck management game disguised as a wargame. At the start of the game, each side receives a deck of card that decide not only diplomacy, not only production, but also random events AND historical offensives. The deck is divided into three phases: Pre-War, Limited War and Total War, with transition between one and the other decided by how the cards are played.

The cards are played on the first turn of each season (with all seasons, apart from summer, being two turn long). Which card you play, however, is decided in the previous season, which leads to a certain degree of risk-taking, especially with cards that require specific conditions on the board to be present. The cards themselves contain pre-conditions, how many steps you gain as replacements (either armour or infantry steps), one-off events, political events and conditional events.

Political events are how you can influence other countries and get them to your side and is the part of the game that leads me to say that Totaler Krieg is the first 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' wargame I have ever played. To understand why this is, it is necessary to understand that, in terms of diplomacy, ANYTHING can happen in Totaler Krieg. Do you want Poland to ally with Germany and attack the soviets before the allies? Sure, why not. Want to have Italy side with the Allies while Sweden and Norway side with the Axis? Again, possible.

Anything and everything can happen. The Republicans can even win in Spain. Or maybe they don't win, but the Basque country becomes a breakaway republic. Or maybe Poland gives in a cedes the Polish Corridor to the Germans. Or maybe Czechoslovakia doesn't give in to German demands.

This doesn't only extend to outside diplomacy, but also internal policy. As the Soviets, you can decide NOT to purge the army (although this forces you to face an red army mutiny later). Or maybe you want to construct the Stalin Wall and use it more extensively in your defence. Maybe you decide to be a Nice Guy Russia and go for a co-prosperity league rather than trying to gain land like Soviet Russia did historically.

As the Western Allies, you can decide to create not only the maginot line, but the Gimelin line as well. Or maybe you opt to modernise your army and make it more mobile instead. The amount of freedom given in the game means that games are NEVER gonna be the same, because all sort of crazy things could happen depending on dice rolls of political events and what cards are being played. This isn't JUST World War II, this is YOUR World War II, and every single time it is going to be completely different.

In effect, the game sets a stage for what the combat later in the game (where diplomacy is more limited) is going to be like. The differences in allies gained/lost can make a lot of difference. What if Italy remains neutral? What if Germany attacks Russia first? The game almost feels like it is in two phases: one where you set the scene and the other where you actually get to fight in the universe you created. It's a very incredible feeling, really.

This is what makes Totaler Krieg crazy, but it also makes it stand out. ETO games can get rather boring: you are always facing the same situation in the end. For Totaler Krieg, that couldn't be further from the truth.

There are some issues, however. For a start, sometimes you can play diplomacy cards that do absolutely nothing: maybe realistic, but rather boring and disappointing as well. As well as that, the rolls sometime tell you to roll on one table, which tells you to roll on another, which rolls on another and then just says 'nothing happens'. Funny, but frustrating and seemingly pointless at times.

The only major issue with the game, however, is the balance of some of the cards. This is kind of understandable: some of the options that could be chosen are historically worse than others. Unfortunately, some of the choices either limit your choices or are so obviously superior that the only reason why you would pick the other option would be for variety and attempting to try something different. For example, modernizing the French Army is almost always a bad choice, as well as choosing co-prosperity for the Soviets or not picking Fortress Europa (a card which changes the victory conditions so that the Axis can go on the defensive).

Another issue is that, at the start, your deck of cards is incredibly intimidating. You don't know what choices to make, what should be played when or what shouldn't be played if you want to remain competitive. This of course gets easier with more in-depth knowledge of the decks, but even I got caught out in my last game because of a card which outright knocked out the Italians out of the war for me. It is frustrating to get blind-sided by something that you didn't know was there in the first place.

Overall, though, Totaler Krieg is an incredible experience, although it takes a very long time to play. I played around 17 hours and I was still around 2 years away from the end of the war (going from 1937 to 1946). Fortunately, there is a pretty good Vassal module online. I wouldn't recommend buying the game, however, since here in England it costs around 100 pounds, which is an incredible amount of money for a single game. You also need a fairly large table, and an even larger one if you are planning to play Axis Empires (the combined Totaler Krieg/Dai Senso game). Overall, I would still strongly recommend trying it out if you get the chance, although be prepared to be confused by the rules at points.

You might be wondering what OTHER game I was referring to at the start of the game. The game in question is Unconditional Surrender, a new Grand Strategy game just recently released by GMT. There are many things within US that remind me of Totaler Krieg and having recently bought it (and clipped it), I might get a chance to give it a try soon. Reading the rules seemed to suggest a slightly easier to play version of TK, so I am very interested in giving it a go. Look out for a small AAR soon.

Overall, I really really like Totaler Krieg, but I don't know if the future will see me just playing US instead as a quicker, easier (and cheaper) game that packs the same emotions that are present within Totaler Krieg. Only time will tell, but in the meanwhile, Totaler Krieg is a solid 4 angry King Philips out of 5.