DukeofChutney

Working out when to bring in the Mori blocks is something i'm still a little vague on. A lot of the Ishida deck is Mori cards so if you don't bring them out you are not really getting value for those cards so, assuming i get castle/card advantage i tend to spend those extra cards bringing the mori stack out. Using the Mori to snatch one of the castles at the top of the board and threaten Tokugawa's flank can be worth the expense.

Sekigahara is my favourite light wargame, might be my favourite wargame. I've played somewhere between 15-20 games, there are some reoccurring patterns but the game doesn't quite solve out. For opening moves the main thing to look at is Fukushima and the fortresses either side of it. A common opening move is for Ishida to try and swoop out and snatch Fukishma on the first turn and then follow up with one of the two castles. This prevents an early strike from Tokugawa, gives Ishida castle advantage and makes it harder for Tokugawa to reinforce this side of the board later. An opening move for Tokugawa can often be to reinforce this position but that can be very opening hand dependent. In general Tokugawa has to decide whether he or she is going to build a kill stack and brute force it down one of two roads or try and conquer majority of castles and towns and go for a points victory. Which of the three or so overall strategic approaches Tokugawa takes will shift the game in quite a different direction. Consequently I haven't seen enough repetition to make the game that predictable. One element that reduces the randomness of the card deck is card counting. I don't count precisely, i'm far to lazy but having a general grasp of how many traitor cards, how many double cards and what proportion of cards of one mon or another have gone through your opponents hand is a very good way of determining the strength of their hand. Hannibal Rome vs Carthage is getting reprinted by phalanx games in the near future. I recommend checking this out. Its about one step up the complexity scale but its a bit less restrictive on your moves. Equally if you can find a copy of GMT's The Successors that's a good multiplayer lightish wargame.

Ahh yeah, great episode. The most fun epsiodes are the ones where everyone has a different view and has at it. A good spread of guests. I tend to find obtuse decisions and save scum promotions to be turn offs so might wait on this one a while. On the other hand I do like being forced to adapt strategy and have different macro strategies available. Is it possible to have one with out the other?

Since the new release I've started playing Dwarf Fortress again. Going pretty well so far, and I like the new additions. My dwarves now compose bad poetry, its like fantasy teenage angst! Also there is a tavern which is neat. I've been playing DF on an off since around 2007 so if anyone needs learning hints i might be able to help. The hardest thing is probably getting farms working, particularly for a new player.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/11/3/star-wars-rebellion/ My understanding is, that Fantasy Flight has attempted to port this game to cardboard, perhaps it will give War of the Ring a run for its money. Speaking of which, when is there going to be an episode on War of the Ring? Or has there been one I have missed. I should pick up this game, I like counter insurgency, and star wars.

gave up on reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms after about 50 pages. I did better with the Water Margin, read the first half (or volume in the printing i had). Unsure on this one, £45 (yes real english monies) is a lot for a game, only MSGV and Command ModAir warfare are at that price and interest me, and I will buy both of those before this. But.. the promise of a strategy game that rewards the decisive battle is a huge draw. Historical stories, the good ones, often boil down to the one big gambit i hate that in total war i have to rinse and repeat the same battle for 10 different armies for every city i take.

All aboard the Brian Train! good episode, i've only played two of Brian's games, The Shining Path, and Operation Whirlwind. Operation Whirlwind is really ace but tough as nails for the communists. It does a really good job of evoking a disquieting feeling of things slipping out of control. I look forward to Colonial Twilight and also his Korean war 3 set coming out in S&T magazine this coming winter.

DO NOT BUY Talisman, or at least the video game implementation. I like talisman and talisman 40k in one scenario. When I have had a hard week at work and i don't want to think, i just want to relax away a lazy afternoon with my friends and play a mindless game. I move plastic bits around a pretty board flipping picture cards and laugh about the misfortunes of my character. If I approach it as a game with strategy or any competitive element it disintegrates fast as it is incredibility arbitrary and prone to snowballing. The steam version really drives this home as the AI will not be nearly as merciful as your friends. A typical game involves a few bad rolls at the start followed by slowly (you cannot skip turns) watching the AI beat the crap out of you. I would like to hear a boardgame episode, but on games the panel know well, War of the Ring was mentioned that's a neat game. Alternatively have friend of the podcast Rob Daviau on to further discuss the woes of designing seafall. I will probably pass on Armarillo. I don't mind very random games, but i think the structure and the ethos of the game really has to sell you on it being a rather random experience. Few video games do this well.

The effect of Age of Sigmar on the Warhammer fan base was sort of like this; I haven't played warhammer in at least a decade (did join a mordheim campaign very briefly about 2 years ago though) but I am not surprised that GW made this unpopular move. The vast majority of their profits (i've heard things like 70%) is just space marines. Not even the whole of 40k. Warhammer fantasy has not made money in a good five or ten years despite GWs repeated attempts to revamp it. So its no real surprise that they ditched it and went or a low risk smaller scale game that had fantasy space marines. I did play dark omen briefly, i found it... hard. Not sure i ever beat more than one mission. Might look at this now its on gog, even if its hard as nails, at least i know what im getting in to.

has the Total War mod improved a lot in the past 3 years (i think thats how long ago it has been since i played it)? I remember liking it, but feeling it was med total war with a different map and reskinned units.

I have a slightly different problem with franchises. I tend to find however much i like a game there are only so many hours i can play it before i get bored. Changing the graphics, window dressing and side mechanics tends not to be enough for me. Rome TW1 was my favourite game for about 2 years, i must of clocked over 100 hours. Medieval 2 was good enough, i played plenty, but then it sort of died for me. I think there are two reasons for this. First, i started to become unconvinced by simply reskinning the same system to different parts of history. For total war there is no major difference between the way napoleon managed his empire and conducted campaigns and the Japanese feudal warlords. Since when did Napoleon bother upgrading trade posts in cities? Makes sense for a Roman regional governor, not for the Duke of Wellington. Second, i thought Shogun 2 was probably a good game, but having clocked up several hundred hours of the series it was still too samey for me to really get into it. For me, i think the franchise needs to make quite a few bigger changes to real me back in, I have to feel like I am playing a new game with a new idea on some basic level. The same thing happened with Westwood style rts games. After about the 4th outing, i couldn't keep going. When the the main piece of news from an early promo video for Red Alert 3 was that engineers could now cross water in a little boat I knew i was done with it. That's the big new idea? I haven't bought into any combat missions games since Shock Force under similar logic. I think Barbarossa to Berlin is possibly the best pc wargame ever made, but i don't know whether i will be bored by the new offerings. Not because they are bad, but because they might not feel like a new enough experience for me.

playing an Operation Crusader scenario from Command Ops2. Knocking out PzIVs with crusader tanks 2pd guns is not easy. Also i recently picked up a Richard Berg wargame on ebay for £8, Blood and Sand. It doesn't appear to consider any changes in british tank ability or doctrine between 1941-1943 but it does separate cruiser tanks (1 damage die, but faster move) from Infantry tanks (2 or 3 damage dice, but very slow). German tanks fall in the middle of the two. going back to the episode, im not so sure i have an issue with every faction in a hearts of iron game having tanks of equal ability at tech 3 or something. Is there really good evidence for the difference in tank build quality being a determinant factor at operational or strategic scale? I appreciate tank doctrine had a big effect and crew experience, but i am not so sure the physical technology itself was so important.

alright, German armour experts, what ye think of this? http://www.operationbarbarossa.net/the-t-34-in-wwii-the-legend-vs-the-performance/ interesting view point, I cannot say on the accuracy of his numbers however.

hey Bruce, want to play some Wargame Reddragon?

on the tank radios, i agree. I guess strategy games can deal with this in their overal ratings and stats for the tanks, its mainly a comment on shooters like War Thunder or day of defeat where the only things which matter are rate of fire and damage etc. although many simpler wargames ignore command and control

i always assumed they did well at the start of the war simply because they were the only faction to start preparing for it ahead of schedule, rather than an experience boon.

if we are discussing who's kit was better is there a consensus opinion? Most of my knowledge of ww2 weapons does actually come from video games, with the older Combat Missions games holding the place of the definitive truth for me. For the most part on CM2 T34 > Pz 3&4. I have read history books, but they are usually more concerned with operational scale issues, so the exact match up of a crusader vs a panzer 3 isn't really that important against the numbers and supply situation. Interestingly there is an argument that factors not typically modelled in games could be more significant. My grandad generally viewed the German gear as superior, when i asked him why the example he gave was the gerry can. The Brits carted around petrol in tins that had to be opened with a tin opener and then use a funnel to put it in the fuel tank. The Germans opened the top of the gerry can and poured. This sort of better engineering makes a huge difference at the depot but is irrelevant in most games. In north Africa the main quality difference between the allies and German tanks in the earlier months was that the Germans had 1 radio per tank, the allies didn't. Again this isn't always modelled but is far more important than the exact size of the tank gun or front armour. Aside from the radios, training and overall tank strategy doctrine however, there is little evidence that Panzer 3s and 4s were any better than Crusaders or Matilda tanks, at least according to a book on Wavell i read.

Sekigahara is probably my favourite board war game. It is an abstraction but, without having read a detailed account of the campaign (I have read a brief one) it seems historically reasonable to me.

I can sympathise with Bruce's pov, with board wargames i often use terms such as 'light' to try and entice people to play but grognard elitism is an issue.

some easy questions; what historical topics are there that you find interesting but that there are no decent games on? What are the most interesting things you have learned from doing the podcast?

Wargame is good enough to be immersive, and thats what i look for, do i feel convinced rather than is it complete realistic. There is the range issue as you mention. The BUK missile system is accused of shooting down a passanger jet over Ukrain travelng at 9000m+ up but in game has a range of 4000-5000m. The main issues from a strict realism pov are; 1 death rates are very high, this is in part due to the victory conditions and the fact that casualties don't matter politically in this game, you can afford to suicide your Eurofighters if the payoff is there, something few real commanders would do i suspect. 2. there are no long range strike missiles or ordinance, no cruise missiles. 3. the infantry modelling is rubbish. Its really a game about vehicles but outside of towns infantry get spotted from long distance far too easily and taken out by tanks amazingly fast. Also infantry are basically rated by their guns more than their training which is rather questionable. 4 Command and control is completely perfect, apart from the occasional tank choosing dumb way points units basically do what you want when you want with out error. 5 whilst the double blind system (Fog of war) is great its probably not thick enough, you can spot some units far to easily imo. 5 Aircraft return to base, reload and refuel amazingly fast, and 6 armies don't function like real forces operating as formations, rather you spend points to bring them on to the field. But wargame isn't trying to be a milsim, its an rts that uses some milsim tech and ideas to create variety. Also i do recommend board war games, game design has advanced a lot more on the table top than it has at matrix games over the past few decades.

Very insightful episode, much appreciated. Interesting to hear Bruce favour Andean Abyss, the only coin game i've played. I had two thoughts whilst listening both which were covered to some extent in the episode; First, to what extent is history a fluke and how do you make a decision on that as a designer? For example Wellington beats napoleon at Waterloo, did he roll a 6 or did he only need to roll a 3 or 4 to get that result? Is history the mean result, or is it actually largely comprises of outside cases, is there an alternative history that should have happened if the die rolls were closer to the median result. Second, and I think i've bemoaned this before, why are there so few middle weight war games on pc.In the world of more milsim war games most either seem to be very simple approaches (Unity of Command, Ultimate General Gettysburg) or overly complex (War in The Pacific etc), there are relatively few games that seem to fall between these bounds. In the boardwargame realm I like games that do have a sophisticated supply system and unit activation system beyond Igougo or trace supply but don't require me to track every bullet or bog down in minutia. On pc games appear to be skewed at either end of the scale.

I think War in the Pacific, from what little i've played, is a solid simulation but it highlights the issues with heavy computer war games. In the analogue realm, even the more complex games like the Operational Combat Series or Empire of the Sun focus in on one or two elements of a conflict and give you detailed systems for managing them but simplify everything else. Board wargame designers seem to understand that there is a limit to what the player can deal with and focus on a few things. In video game land, it seems to me that the heavier games try to do everything with all the detail possible, rather than condense the situation down to what the designer feels is genuinely important. Unfortunately there are few games that fall in the middle ground on the PC. We tend to either get simple war games (sometimes made complicated by the UI) or very complex monsters.

never really managed to get into the panzer general games, largely for the reasons discussed, puzzle like nature etc. The Pacific war does game well at the operational and strategic level. War in the Pacific is absurd. Not sure who thought it would a good idea to make the turn resolution daily. In the boardgame realm however there are a few good titles. Mark Hermans Empire of the Sun is quite good. It really is all about airfields, airfield = unsinkable aircraft carrier. This comes out in that game. The main issue with the boardgame attempts is they are all long and mostly very complex given the strategic payoffs involved.

good episode. I have played Storm Over Dien Bien Phu and read A Street Without Joy. I might pick up one of the Legion titles sooner or later. also, great film on Algiers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-7j4WVTgWc I look forward to the videos, i have played one Rohrbaugh game on Operation Goodwood, so interested to see your take on his work.