Review of Solo Wargaming: A Practitioner's Guide

Over the last couple of days I have been reading David Heading's new book on Solo Wargaming, published by Pen & Sword. 

 

 

It is a fairly complete coverage of the topic and the name is well chosen. He defines solo wargaming as a practice and this seems a good way of thinking about it: a collection of practices which allow somewhat principled wargames (as opposed to simple 'imaginative play' as a younger child might do) to be played by a single player.

 

It is perhaps the most comprehensive overview of the subject. There are three volumes I know of on Solo Wargaming, only two of which I have read: one by Donald Featherstone, one by Stuart Asquith and one by Wally Simon. I am not familiar with the latter, unfortunately. The Featherstone book contains lots of great ideas, all lashed with that author's customary enthusiasm for everything to do with wargames, model soldiers and military history! However, it is not comprehensive at all, it is more a smorgasbord of ideas, and much of the tone seems appropriate for addressing a fellow enthusiast, who is looking for some ways to expand their wargaming universe. Asquith's slimmer volume is in a sense more comprehensive, but much slighter: there are far fewer ideas although somehow it forms a more cohesive whole. Most of them are largely land-focused and battle-focused.

Heading's work in a sense combines the virtues of both, with perhaps a lashing of Henry Hyde in there too: it is full of ideas, it aims to be reasonably comprehensive, it tries to reference (or at least nod towards) much of what has been done in solo wargaming, and it covers a much wider range of solo wargaming activities and techniques than anything else. I think one thing of note is the tone, or perhaps persona is a better word, of the author, which is somewhat unusual: it is firmly from the point of view of the player. This is a lot less usual than it sounds! Featherstone by contrast is all enthusiasm for the topic: for him, the love of the toy soldier and the love of military history and the wargame are what is to be conveyed, and he does it in spades. Asquith (and say Hyde, and Grant, and perhaps Quarrie) have a slightly more expert tone - they are conveying what they know, their mastery - to the 'student' reader. Heading's tone here reminds me much more of Wessencraft: it is very much one of the practitioner, talking of practices they have tried, created, considered, and now want to share in a 'problem-solving' way. I hope that conveys the style fairly.

The first chapter asks 'why wargame solo?' Various suggestions are proferred. I can't remember how it is done in Asquith's book, but it seems to start off at a more beginner level than Featherstone does, that is it seems possible that a very new gamer could pick this up, since much of the advice for 'starting solo' is pitched at someone who is 'just starting' in any case - as the author explains, this was his own experience starting out and wants to write the book which would have helped him: a very worthy aim.

 

The next chapter is about the battles: how to set them up, how the period, the historicity and the size of the battle can influence the solitaire methods to be adopted, and how to recreate generalship on both sides; particularly how to automate a general and play one side, and how to limit general's options and introduce more randomness into the 'narrative' of the game (the author is a big fan of considering games as 'narratives', especially in a solo context. There are lots and lots of ideas, varying from quite top-level conceptual stuff to some pretty detailed and specific mechanics. There are some useful ideas and tables for generating terrain too.

 

The following chapter is about solo campaiging. Although the author has been at pains to emphasize that solo campaigning is not the be-all and end-all of solo gaming, it does have so many great ideas in this bit it is quite hard to avoid that conclusion, especially if you follow the author in prizing narrative. And this is where we come back to the author as practitioner - it is actually just a great guide to setting up campaigns of every sort from high-level strategic campaigns, to the 3 musketeers running around the streets of Paris. I would guess that this variety comes from the author just having done a very wide variety of these things, which contrasts to some of the other wargames writers on campaigns, who have played a small number and variety of more specific types of campaigns. In any case, there are suggestions for all kinds of map, ladder, narrative, and roleplaying-light type campaigns. It is really worth the while of anyone interested in campaigns to read, whether solitaire or not. Some of the diplomacy suggestions I especially liked.  the subsequent chapter is closely linked: it covers personalities and logistics and finances and suchlike. It is very well done - the treatment of logistics is surprisingly detailed, almost along the lines of some of the chapters in Bruce Quarrie's Napoleon's Campaigns in Miniature, but more widely applicable to a range of periods. If you fancied doing a somewhat more detailed campaign in the medieval period, with supply trains and so on, this would be a great start.

The next chapter includes solo gaming of sieges, naval wargames and air wargames: all somewhat neglected activities. I thought that the siege and naval stuff was good - as was the combined arms stuff.  The air stuff was 'okay', and the author makes a reasonable stab at thinking a little bit more widely than usual here, but I think there is a lot more to say about the possibilities of air wargaming. It was nice to see some ideas for a campaign based on the adventures of Biggles though! Again, I think if you were planning a siege-based or naval campaign of any sort, you could do much worse than have a flick through this for some ideas about workable approaches - that being the running theme of the book really, finding some workable approaches.

The book then concludes with some wider thoughts about subjects suitable for campaigning - including very broadly the 'moral' side - and even how we might read military history and what we can, and cannot, get out of it as wargamers.

Hopefully, I have managed to convey a lot of enthusiasm for this book - I really enjoyed it! As primarily a solo gamer myself, did I think there was much missing? As mentioned above, I thought the air-domain stuff was a layer thinner than the rest. I think more might have been said about the approach taken by the Two-Hour Wargames' crew for example, whose very playable approach to solo & co-operative wargaming might be drawn on more directly (most of the techniques they employ appear, at least in some form in the book, but not in the perhaps coherent whole THW use). I think this might be because the THW insight is that in certain periods, e.g. small unit modern warfare, the apparent behaviour of the enemy resembles something randomly/probabistically generated at least as much as something more controlled. In any case, in the small world of solo wargaming, the approach has been influential. I noted that the programmed scenario approach used by CS Grant hasn't been mentioned either.

However, these are very minor points. The book is well-written, the author has an engaging manner and it covers most of what you might want a book on solo wargaming to contain. There are clear themes that appear a few times - most often, the importance of the narrative and mechanics to sustain it - but the tone is never hectoring or carrying the implication that others are doing it wrong, or less well. Recommended to solo gamers, those who might be termed solo curious, and perhaps also gamers interested in campaigns generally would find much of interested in here.

The author writes a wargaming blog, which is well worth a read and a follow.