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Rob Zacny

Episode 252: Magic Hills and Body Count

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Oh man Time Commanders! I remember watching that back in the day, looking back it was kinda interesting to have a show where a game was played with a verbal chain of command even if it was a little bit naff in the end.

 

I do think there is something to saying that the whole magic hill thing is basically as shorthand for introducing a outside context to a smaller scale battle without modelling every single thing.

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Interesting discussion. I think that the issue with the magic hills is that their importance is very situation dependent. For example it can be  very important to hold this road junction, because, for a while it provides a critical connection between two major parts of your army.  See the example of the defense of the intersection of the Orange Plank Road with Brock Road by the Vermont Brigade at the Battle of the Wilderness. This was so important at that specific time that this veteran brigade took 60% casualties to hold it against a very determined CS attack.   A couple of days later, it was on the distant flank of the army and of no importance whatsoever. The use of the VP in a scenario of this action would be to indicate the importance of the location where the overall operational level of the battle that dictates the importance of that specific location cannot be displayed.  

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This episode got me thinking about victory conditions. One thing I think we forget here is that victory is as much driven by the designer's point of view. To give this a context here let's think about operation Barbarossa and about the question how do the Germans win? You can take the very fashionable view that to win is take Moscow. It is a huge population centre, it is the main seat of government, the Soviet rail network radiates from Moscow etc. etc.. Capturing this city is game over for the Soviet Union and Germany has won. Then you are very much in the magic hill situation. Moscow is the magic hill you need to take to win the game. You can of course take another view that an all out drive for Moscow would put the Germans in the same situation as Napoleon with the same result and to take this conclusion a step further there is no technical win for a German player in 1941. What the German player would be playing for a is the best position for a 1942 campaign that could be decisive. Then you would be looking not only at multiple objectives but also how many casualties both sides have taken.


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What Jim_NSD said.  "Magic Hills" are very situation dependent, and that situation changes over time, and changes depending on the decisions of both armies.  Sometimes the the importance of a particular location isn't made clear until subsequent events play out.  Sometimes commanders choose the wrong "magic hill".  As a gamer, I suppose it's just something you need to digest and accept.  Still, goofy "magic hills" do tend to leave a sour taste in your mouth.  

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"Oh, The grand old Duke of York,

He had ten thousand men;

He marched them up to the top of the hill,

And he marched them down again."

I think this is why a participant on an English TV series such as Time Commanders would perceive a Hill as valuable.

This Nursery rhyme is so ingrained in our culture that children will hear it in our school system, almost devoid of all context except for a 'Horrible Histories' type of caricature I.e Redcoats and wigs.

Kids will also play games where a hill is an important part of play.

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Yeah, the classic problem (mentioned in the podcast) is the old "but you've got nothing there but a shot-up supply truck, and I've got three divisions of tanks in the next hex!" thing. I remember when I was a relatively newly minted wargamer having the epiphany about winning by the rules, not by common sense.

 

Which, having been in (for instance) a WW2 game where Japan bombed the continental USA to dust from air bases in Morocco, has always stuck with me.

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"Oh, The grand old Duke of York,

He had ten thousand men;

He marched them up to the top of the hill,

And he marched them down again."

I think this is why a participant on an English TV series such as Time Commanders would perceive a Hill as valuable.

 

 

Hills are tactically useful; they let you see further, they let you shoot down at your enemy, and charging downhill is rather easier than charging uphill. Hills are definitely valuable in a lot of cases.

 

What they aren't, usually, is *decisive*, and that's the critical distinction here.

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Great podcast as a new listener.

However Troys mic needs to be replaced it sounds awful, really puts a downer on everything.

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Hey Rob, when you guys were talking about asymmetrical victory conditions - I couldn't help but think of Volk Ruhnke's COIN series of counterinsurgency games...particularly A DIstant Plain. Troy's instincts were spot-on. In any event, if you haven't played them they're worth looking at. Pretty remarkable stuff.

 

http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/review-distant-plain/

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I've only played Andean Abyss, but I assume it is representative of the rest of the COIN series in that it is excellent. The way victory conditions are modeled in Andean Abyss is definitely interesting. Some factions have "easier" conditions than others, but also have more limited means. The Colombian government has a relatively difficult victory condition to achieve, but they also are the faction that can bring the most force to bear in the conflict (of course, they are also the least nimble of the factions, so this causes problems as well, the player who is the government has to play the most precisely to achieve victory). The victory conditions also will influence how the players negotiate with one another. The drug cartels have a strong interest in negotiating in a way to keep everyone off their backs because if left alone they should have no problem cruising to victory. The FARC is stuck in an interesting position where their real opponent is the government, but the force they really have to deal with are the right-wing guerrillas.

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Yes. they all operate in a similar fashion. In Cuba Libre, for instance, the Syndicate wants to open Casinos as part of their victory condition, but they've got very little manpower...six guerrillas total. So they don't really have the power to take over and maintain control of provinces. Buuut - what they can do is a maneuver called 'Muscle' where they can shift government troops to areas where they have Casinos...in effect, they bribe the government to shift resources to areas where they need protection. However, the government wins by fostering popular support - and the Syndicate can reduce this support by terrorizing the populace. 

 

They're all excellent examples of using mechanics to model asymmetrical goals.

 

I've only played Andean Abyss, but I assume it is representative of the rest of the COIN series in that it is excellent. The way victory conditions are modeled in Andean Abyss is definitely interesting. Some factions have "easier" conditions than others, but also have more limited means. The Colombian government has a relatively difficult victory condition to achieve, but they also are the faction that can bring the most force to bear in the conflict (of course, they are also the least nimble of the factions, so this causes problems as well, the player who is the government has to play the most precisely to achieve victory). The victory conditions also will influence how the players negotiate with one another. The drug cartels have a strong interest in negotiating in a way to keep everyone off their backs because if left alone they should have no problem cruising to victory. The FARC is stuck in an interesting position where their real opponent is the government, but the force they really have to deal with are the right-wing guerrillas.

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