Heretical Gaming is my blog about my gaming life, featuring small skirmishes and big battles from many historical periods (and some in the mythic past or the far future too). The focus is on battle reports using a wide variety of rules, with the occasional rules review, book review and odd musing about the gaming and history. Most of the battles use 6mm-sized figures and vehicles, but occasionally 15mm and 28mm figures appear too.

Tuesday 21 February 2023

Gaming in Context

It has been a few of things that got me wondering.  One was playing the next (the 21st) in the series of Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames scenarios and the other was reading the latest of Just Jack's campaign battle reports (this time set in Morocco in 1942 during Operation Torch); Henry Hyde has just released a couple of scenario books, which I think are mainly based in the columns he used to write for Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy; and the last, quite tangential, was reading The Elfish Gene.*  And what they were all bringing home to me is the importance of context for wargaming enjoyment.

There are lots of different ways of bringing in context to a game. The most obvious one is the competitive (or semi-competitive) head-to-head nature of some games, although for every gamer who talks about that, there seem to be a couple who are at pains to stress the opposite! I don't know how universal that trend is.  Next is personal investment - I think this is quite strong in some points-based systems, in which the tabletop army is in some sense "your army" in the way that it isn't so much in scenario games: it is almost something analagous to making up a character for an RPG.  When I played 40K as a child, although I didn't play competitions or competitive pick-up games, I noticed that this idea definitely existed.  I think there is something of it in a lot of the first few decades of hobby wargaming (from Featherstone to the late 80s) when a trip to the shops was framed as "getting reinforcements for my army".  I don't read that so much now, I don't think.

Another way is historical study. I don't mean that games are done as an academic exercise, but I do mean that people intend the games to represent history in some way and take some pains to achieve this. They might do this more or less well, but the intent is obvious and so is the feeling when it works well: the connection between the game and the historical event, no matter how tenuous, is really felt.  Next is the context that campaign games give; when I was reading about wargaming campaigns as a young wargamer, one of the main ways their virtue was sold was to give greater versimilitude to the battles, because commanders would act more realistically if there was a tomorrow, rather than the world ending at 10pm throw-out time/bed time/last orders.  And whilst no doubt true, I think of this as somewhat secondary to the ongoing narrative of the campaign, howsoever expressed. The campaign can also be a useful vehicle for the personal investment in the army I mentioned above, although I don't think that it has to take that form - but it can be brilliant when it does work.  Just Jack's campaigns are superb examples of this in action.

So why is this on my mind at the moment? Well, because I noticed during the OHW scenario game that I was just not quite as into it as I thought I might be: I was genuinely more invested in the result of Just Jack's last battle than I was in my own!  The problem is that taken as individual scenarios, the OHW scenarios are great: clear, easy to set-up, have real tactical conundrums: they are proper 'Tabletop Teasers' in the best sense.  And taken as individual scenarios, they are great for the physical circumstances I find myself in at the moment, where time and space are scarce. But I realized it wasn't quite enough, I needed more context, more investment in the whole thing for it all to come alive for me.  Now I know that many of the OHW scenarios are based on historical battles: but to make them into suitable scenarios for his rules, I think that the link becomes a bit tenuous.  The "Salamanca" battle for example felt like an interesting scenario, but had nothing of the feel of Salamanca.  In part this is because his scenarios are 'scale agnostic' - but as one wise old warrior has written, combat is not fractal: platoons, battalions and divisions fight very differently.

So, a quick re-jig is in order I think, I need to spend a few days getting some more historical scenarios and/or some campaigns prepared!

(* - why The Elfish Gene? Although written about RPGs rather than wargames (although wargames appear in there and get quite a good press in comparison!), and the writer is a pretty unsympathetic in some ways, he has (to steal someone else's ideas about it) an absolute genius for explaining why on a good day the thing is so compelling).

 

19 comments:

  1. Interesting thoughts on the 'my army' aspect of things. I'm retired now and have a couple of dozen different armies to my name that I have amassed over the years since I was a penniless teenager. Back then I had one army and it wasn't that great in terms of the figures it was made up of. But I saved and scrimped and invested in 25mm Hinchcliffe Late Imperial Romans and that was 'my army' the best I could afford, with the most units I could afford although it was never quite as large as I wanted and didn't have all the bells and whistles. It was my army because I had created it determined it's make up and it had a real opportunity cost as I went without other teenage treats to build it.

    Now I have multiple armies and they don't resonate in the same way as that first one did. I can just buy what I want, pretty much when I when I want. There is no longer that sense of achievement in getting a unit ready to play as I have done it so many times before. Oh to be young and experiencing it all for the first time again, and I'm not just thinking wargaming, it holds true right across the board.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I know what you mean; I am not retired yet but I have plenty of armies and I don't quite feel the same way about them - I do think of them more as 'pretty playing pieces' than 'my army'. It is hard to define the difference properly, but it is there.

      Delete
  2. I am travelling my own route of contemplation at the moment and finding that my mind is being pulled back to earlier wargaming experiences.

    What we have today is fantastic considering we are a niche hobby, but as in most aspects of life, we have also lost a little something along the way.

    I’m not even sure what it is because in yesteryear, I was no stranger to complicated rules or doing research to get good history, but somehow there is less fun and joy about as the hobby, or our appreciation of it has turned to a more ‘serious’ thing.

    I am looking at scales at the moment and have picked up some 20mm stuff to compare with other things and I think that is partly and unfairly tugging at my Airfix heartstrings - just a nostalgic thing, which of course always carries the danger of rose tinted glasses - but there is a real effect here.

    In my youth, money was very tight for everyone, so collections were altogether tighter and focussed, no such thing as a lead mountain. So in my napoleonics, I did not have Young Guard, Middle Guard and Old Guard, I just had the Guard and one unit at that, that did hard service in every battle. Proxies were common on the table and appreciation of what I did have was high.

    I am resolving to move my gaming into the direction of the ‘small big battle’, with what we used to call bath tubbing with armies in the region of 8 - 12 units (a sort of Neil Thomas plus - he uses 8 units in his Napoleonic and Ancients books). For the game to look nice, be fun and played through to conclusion in just a couple of hours tops.

    Yesterday, I was reminded about a set of napoleonic rules that Irregular Miniatures did for their 2mm / 6mm armies. A small box containing 6 half sized index cards and each index card covered one phase from the sequence of play, so in melee, you would have one small card - the melee card, in your hand, with everything you need on that.

    Would that pass muster in todays ‘right look’, doubtful, but I remember having a lot of fun with them.

    Anyway, no real answers from me, but just adding to the sense that hobby reflection seems to be a current theme on several blogs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting comments Norm. One thing I take note of is that the WSS/Jacobite Wars armies I have been using for these OHW scenarios have put in some sterling service: they were painted up late Nov/early Dec 2021 and have taken part in 20+ battles in that time. They are a bit bigger than necessary for these OHW scenarios, but they were designed to be able to cover all the Battlegames' Tabletop Teasers, the Grant & Asquith Scenarios for All Ages and the Grant Programmed Wargame Scenarios too. So that is great but...they are in some ways too small for many actual WSS battles done as traditional historical refights, or as campaigns, so there already inherent tensions in there. I wonder if there is a gap for more scenarios to be written in the Thomas-style, but with a slightly lower level of abstraction than there is at present?

      Delete
    2. I have just picked up Miniature Wargames and this issue has 3 Rapid Fire scenarios - I like their charm and maybe charm is a little of what I am looking for.

      Delete
    3. Yes, charm is a helpful word here, I think.

      Delete
  3. Re the OHW scenarios, I have had a lot of fun mapping them onto historical battles, with some minor terrain tweaks and more accurate OBs, albeit squeezed into 4 to 8 units, depending. The 'Salamanca' one was ideal for Guderians breakout from Tula in late 1941, and didn't take much effort to make it work a whole Panzer Corps. I've been amazed at how well they map across. I also came across a WW1 campaign fir OHW, which was essentially five scenarios played in succession, each representing a different year of the war. I used modified Machine Age rules fir that with brigade sized units, and it was a lot of fun.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is an interesting/clever approach! I wouldn't have thought of that...huzzah for comments in blogs

      Delete
    2. All the OHW WW2 games on my blog are reworked stnadrad scenarios, the only exception being Arras. The scenarios themselves are so well designed they give great games, but I much prefer to use historical units. Makes the thing come alive for me, and I really enjoy researching historical OBs and mapping them onto actual units (and toys in my collection). The joy when I found a Memoir 44 scenario which legitimately let me use all four King Tigers....

      Delete
  4. I think with todays multiplicity of choice, scale, periods etc, that it is a case of 'less is more', rather like out formative days of wargaming when you had one or maybe two 'armies' at most. I think this is one reason that aside from WWII, I've gone down the ImagiNations route so that I only need two armies for say the 18thC, which I can use to play the WSS, the SYW or AWI. Heresy to many but it works for me.

    With regards to the OHW scenarios and the like, I tend to set a background in my mind as to why they are fighting, so that it gives the game context. Ditto when the action is moving towards the end game and it becomes obvious that one side would withdraw to protect its LoC etc. Campaigns are even better if time etc allows.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think it is heresy. One wise old wargaming bird told me years ago "you are never going to own every bloody army, deal with it"; another wrote "don't worry about not having the right figures, make the game fit the figures". I haven't observed these perfectly but they are pretty good as guidelines.

      Delete
    2. If I had my time again, what you suggest is exactly what I would do!

      Delete
    3. I think where I have gone (a little) bit wrong is just failing to add that little bit of personality into the series of scenarios, even the roughest-sketched continuity would have helped. I have done this before pretty successfully but I turned the dial a bit too hard towards 'speed and ease of set up'

      Delete
  5. It is always surprising how investing in pre-game activities such as constructing a narrative helps with the game’s enjoyment. While we naturally do the narrative with campaign or linked games, it is just as valuable taking time with one-off games. Providing commander characters and settings does help set the scene. Interesting post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks peter - you are quite right! a little seems to go a very long way here...

      Delete
  6. An interesting thought piece and good read (post and comments). It's all about historical context for mine!
    Regards, James

    ReplyDelete
  7. I will echo James. Great post and comments.

    ReplyDelete