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Rob Zacny

Episode 370: Dean Essig

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Three Moves Ahead 370:

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Dean Essig

Bruce welcomes award-winning game designer Dean Essig of The Gamers to talk about his long history of designing wargames. Dean's experience in the military and attention to detail have helped him create long-lasting series that model combat on several different levels. Dean and Bruce discuss the process of playtesting, the challenges of tactical, battalion, and operational level games, double-blind gaming, and why Illinois is such a great state.

Tactical Combat Series, Operational Combat Series, Standard Combat Series

Dean Essig at Boardgamegeek

The promised book list:

Looking at the reality of what it is like...

The Sharp End (John Ellis)

Men Against Fire (Marshall)*

The Face of Battle (John Keegan)

The Soldiers Load and the Mobility of a Nation(Marshall)

On Infantry (John English)

*Marshall has caught flak in recent years for the methodology used and claims of making up information, regardless the volume Men Against Fire is invaluable and it would be foolish to avoid reading it in one’s studies.

And How Forces really interact…

Maneuver Warfare Handbook (William Lind)**

Fighting Power (van Creveld)

Supplying War (van Creveld)

Battle Leadership (Adolf von Schnell)

Fighting by Minutes (Robert Leonhard)

The Art of Maneuver (Robert Leonhard)

**A slim volume and pricey on the used market, but absolutely well worth finding.

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Enjoyed listening to this, though I didn't have a lot of context for it.

 

There is a "megagame" movement taking off in the US (after 30 years in the UK) that's essentially casual, more random, double-blind wargaming meets model UN. Any thoughts on how megagamers can inherit some of the depth that wargamers have been enjoying for decades?

 

Thanks for the book recommendations. Illinois is indefensible, sorry.

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I am due to run a double blind wargame / mega game (it'l have around 25 players + control) on the Chosin Reservoir campaign next month in Leeds UK. Wargame mega games are a much harder sell. Megagames are fairly popular in the UK atm, we have ran 6 this year, the two 'war' games, Chosin and Jena have both only pulled in 20-30 players, our diplomacy/risk style games (which is what most megagames are) will usually bring in up to 50 or even 80 players if their theme is reasonably popular. 

 

Other than selling it, there are a few issues with complex wargame mechanics and megagames. If you are playing a double blind game, you have to get orders off the players, play them out behind the curtain, and then return the orders, and do all this really inside 15 minutes. You might have longer turns and stretch to 20 minutes or you might try 10 minutes. 15 minutes is not long to resolve a huge stack of orders sheets and feedback intel to the players, especially if your mechanics are complex. The other way to go is open map and allow the number of players all pulling in different directions to generate the friction of war. This can work, but then the players have to understand the rules, which means they have to read them. The general experience of megagame designers is that many players do not read the rules and hope they can figure it out on the day. This is fine if the game system is simple. 

 

I'd recommend picking up one of Dean's games. Even if you are not a military history buff, the OCS series are arguably one of the best pure 'games' series ever made. Its pretty complex by most peoples standards but they allow for more lateral thinking than almost any other games I have played (I have played a lot of games). 

 

 

 

Thanks for the book list Dean/Bruce. I might have to look at the TCS system, are any of them two mappers? I am table space limited.

Also interesting to hear that Dean got into it via cartography. I do a lot of mapping for my job and as such do the mapping for my friends that design Megagames. If you don't want to lay out on illustrator Inkscape its pretty solid. Haven't worked out how to number my hex grid in it though. 

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Thanks for the book list Dean/Bruce. I might have to look at the TCS system, are any of them two mappers? I am table space limited.

 

The majority of the TCS games are one or two mappers (22" x 34" each map).

 

The latest TCS game, Canadian Crucible, is only one map and covers the Canadians versus German SS a few days after D-Day.

 

Many of the TCS games have sold out due to the last MMP annual sale so small map gems like Semper Fi (Korean War) and Bloody Ridge (Guadalcanal) aren't in stock but are available in the secondary markets (eBay, etc.).  Black Wednesday is also a two-mapper covering the Spanish Blue Division on the East Front against the Soviets.

 

http://www.multimanpublishing.com/Products/tabid/58/CategoryID/13/Default.aspx

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Very interesting and enlightening episode.  I always love the perspective of folks who have been in the service or armed forces and have also been part of the game community for a long time. 

 

I went to law school in Chicago and I will always have a fondness for the land of Lincoln from my time there.  I have had difficulty reconciling the juxtaposition of having worked in social service while there, predominantly on the south and west side of the city, and then the affluence of also being a graduate student later.  It is strange city (Chicago) and state (Illinois) and one that causes immense amounts of cognitive dissonance. 

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I'm a fresh face here in the forums, so I'm kinda learning the ropes here... stumbled on this podcast due to my recently stirred interest on heavy-duty wargames, I guess OCS is the prime example of the kind. I'm eager to hear what the episode contains (haven't listened it yet).

 

I've been warming up for the true monster games with Ted Raicer's "semi-monster" The Dark Valley, and to my surprise didn't find any 3MA episode where that brilliant game would be mentioned. Could someone more seasoned 3MA listener enlighten me how can I cast my vote on what should future episodes contain, or is there even a forum/thread for requests? I'm sure The Dark Valley would be good candidate for a deeper discussion about design-for-effect, boardgame mechanics and eastern front in general.
 

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On 10/17/2016 at 10:25 AM, Nix77 said:

Could someone more seasoned 3MA listener enlighten me how can I cast my vote on what should future episodes contain, or is there even a forum/thread for requests? I'm sure The Dark Valley would be good candidate for a deeper discussion about design-for-effect, boardgame mechanics and eastern front in general.

 

Consider your request for The Dark Valley heard.  I will see if Ted Raicer would like to be on the podcast.  He has been on my list for a while, anyway.

 

--Bruce

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I picked up Dark Valley in a trade last week, so good timing if there is a podcast on this game. I've played Eastfront by Craig Besinque, it will be interesting to see the difference in approach.

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On 19.10.2016 at 11:41 PM, spacerumsfeld said:

 

Consider your request for The Dark Valley heard.  I will see if Ted Raicer would like to be on the podcast.  He has been on my list for a while, anyway.

 

--Bruce

 

Great, thanks Bruce! I read your TDV reviews on Wargame_space and thought you might have a thing or two to discuss with Ted, about TDV or wargame design in general.

 

The Dark Valley in my opinion is a very good example of a well-executed design for effect (a topic for discussion in itself!). I've been playing Gary Grigsby's War in the East recently, and I've began to appreciate the design of TDV more and more while charging through the Russian steppes in WitE. WitE is a complicated beast, but somehow TDV captures the feel of the eastern front just as well as this computer-driven system does, with only a (moderately) simple set of rules and a paper map. I hope you're able to persuade Ted to join the podcast and give some more visibility (or airtime) for this brilliant game.

 

Sorry for hijacking Dean's episode's thread, didn't know where else to post episode requests.

 

Best Regards,

Niko

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