Opportunityfire.com

Back to the grit-and-grind of the Great War.

In my last game-related post, I took a quick look at the mechanism for handling artillery fire in Avalanche Press’ new-ish Infantry Attacks: August 1914. It’s a very rigid system that requires pre-game plotting for every fire ‘module’ for every turn of the game. The design goal is laudable — but the implementation leaves something to be desired.

If nothing else, the physical process of plotting an impact hex for every fire for each turn of the game can be enough to drive a man to strong drink. There are some long scenarios in the package — we’re talking day-long, regimental-size engagements — and artillery is usually plentiful.

When things go off the rails, cancelling a large group of plots certainly conveys some small fraction of the infantry commander’s frustration — but I know lots of gamers who will probably only ‘enjoy’ wasting an hour of pre-game plotting once or twice before they decide to find another game to play.

Jeux Grenier Games’ “In The Trenches” series has been around a bit longer than Infantry Attacks (maybe a year’s head start), and that system’s treatment of artillery tilts in the opposite direction.

In The Trenches: Through Mud and Blood

As I’ve noted previously, In The Trenches is more of a ‘firefight’ scale game than a ‘battle’ game. At 100m per hex and 5 minutes per turn, it slices out bits of larger engagements for players to game. The game focuses on the action after opposing forces have closed to within small arms range, so artillery plays something of a lesser role. Nevertheless, artillery still consumes a decent chunk of the rule book and it still can cause a significant amount of casualties.

In The Trenches, among other things, introduces artillery fire ‘patterns’ into the mix. Your batteries can fire ‘drumfire’ (one hex), ‘barrage’ (a concentric 7-hex pattern) or ‘hurricane’ (a linear 7-hex pattern). There were lots of elegant artillery theories running around during the Great War, so the patterns are an interesting bit of period ‘feel’.

So far, so good. But the game comes off the rails a bit with regards to how all of that fire power actually gets placed on the game board.

There’s no plotting. Rather, a player has three target markers for each firing battery. On the first turn of the process, all three markers are placed on possible target hexes. Two of the markers are ‘dummies’ — only one of them actually designates the ‘real’ target. On the second turn of the process there’s a short scatter routine and then the fire mission impacts with its assigned pattern.

Since the scenarios begin at fairly close range, there isn’t much artillery to sling around in any given scenario. Which is a good thing, because the fires are far too flexible. A 5-minute call-for-fire response wasn’t all that common in 1940, never mind 1916 or 1918. Hurricane fires (’curtain barrages’ to you old-school types) in particular took extensive (as in hours-long) planning, registration and coordination. They were hardly a fire mission that could be laid on to any target in the field on five minute’s notice.

The use of a trio of ‘possible’ target markers also brings into play something of an artillery “shell game” that has a bit of a gamey feel to it. The placement of dummy target markers constitutes a bluff that can be used to influence an opponent’s actions. Does that part of the call-for-fire process have any sort of real-world analog?  Assuming, of course, that “call-for-fire” even has a place at all in a game covering the Great War.

On the positive side, in order to account for the larger, more massive bombardments that often preceded Great War attacks (or trench raids, for that matter), In The Trenches also utilizes extensive ‘pre-game’ artillery fires in some scenarios. Typically the opposing sides set up, and then the attacking player engages in some pre-game carnage as outlined in the Scenario Special Rules. Given the ‘firefight’ scope of In The Trenches, I find this particular mechanism works quite well.

So: We’ve got two game systems covering tactical combat in the Great War, neither one of which quite scores a direct hit with its artillery rules. Infantry Attacks is too rigid and uses a pre-plotting process that can be downright mind-numbing in bigger scenarios. In The Trenches features a system that’s too flexible — probably even too flexible for a World War 2 tactical game. And it can turn a bit gamey in the use of the trio of target markers.

Neither game is entirely ruined by their artillery problems. Infantry Attacks can get a bit tedious when a lot of big guns are involved, but all of the planning and plotting does force a frustrating Great War ‘feel’ on the game. In The Trenches downplays artillery to an extent, so the ‘gamey’ aspects don’t crop up as often as they could were the game set at a higher scale.

In both cases, then, it’s close, but no cigar.

My son Juan Carlos encounters a Mayan shaman in Chichicastenango.

Here in These United States of the 21st century we’re pretty proud of our technological progress, our online connected-ness and our tweet-every-time-we-fart social media.  We invented the Internet, dammit, and look how cool it’s making us. Or so the theory goes.

But I’m working on a little theory of my own here, so bear with me. I’m thinking that, contrary to current cultural myth, the Internet is an abject failure in communications. Rather than taking advantage of our new digital tools to expand the horizons of our knowledge and improve our understanding of the world, we’re instead using them to draw inward on ourselves and create self-centered villages of pseudo-information and half-truths.

It’s not a big surprise. Television — another revolutionary medium pioneered here in the USA — was also a failure. TV placed in our hands the ability to both see and hear the world as experienced by others, but instead we used it primarily to recycle bathroom humor and watch Monday Night Football.

I got to thinking about this the other day after showing around my workplace some photos from my family’s just-completed vacation to Guatemala. The general theme of my co-workers’ comments was basically “Wow, that’s so strange. I can’t imagine living in a place like that. It looks like another planet.”

Well, no. It’s OUR planet. In fact, more of our planet “looks” like Chichicastenango than it “looks” like the suburban US. How is it possible, in this era of lightspeed social networking, that so many people can have such a narrow worldview?

Simple, really. Just consider for a moment the typical, modern-day social media experience. Who do you interact with most frequently on services like Facebook and Twitter? Are they strangers, foreigners, people who see the world differently and who challenge your understandings and beliefs? Or are they people you know, like-thinkers who share similar worldviews and who generally serve to confirm the beliefs you choose to hold? Do you use social media to reach out curiously to the wide-wide world, or to create a tribal ‘orbit’ that circles inward upon itself?

Obviously, I’ve got a strong opinion on the topic. Let me be clear: I despise incuriosity.

[Note: I don't use the word "despise" frequently, and I intend it here with all of its old-fashioned vitriol and malice.]

The way I see it, curiosity is THE driving force in the development of humankind.  The incurious stunt our progress, crush our capacity for growth, diminish our acquistion of new knowledge, destroy creativity and just generally screw things up. What saddens me most is the historical example — repeated frequently — that demonstrates each time we create new tools which carry the promise of exponential human growth, we instead use them to turn more tightly in upon ourselves and erase from our view everything that isn’t us.

So how did a short vacation to Guatemala turn into a rant against vapid anti-intellectualism? That’s easy. A properly-executed vacation is a big pull on the flush handle of my mental toilet. All of the crap goes glug-glug-glug down the drain, to be replaced by a new bowl full of sparkling, fresh thoughts.

Now, back on topic. Since I’m taking a dim view of collective curiosity today, I’ll further theorize that our Internet use has grown so quickly — and the formerly ‘traditional’ media have collapsed so rapidly — primarily because media like television and newspapers didn’t fail fast enough to suit us.

What the explosive growth of blogs and agenda-driven ‘news’ websites tells me is that we like our information sources fragmented and unregulated, enabling us to pick and choose those sources that most closely fit our comfort zones. With first cable, and then satellite, television tried to fragment into this same sort of universe of tightly self-centered information galaxies — but compared to the costs of running a website, TV production is vastly more expensive so the effort produced only half-assed results.

But now with the Internet we can quickly and easily get the whole ass. People who get their news from parroted headlines on Facebook and re-tweets on Twitter can get just about any version of the ‘truth’ that they want: Obama started the war in Iraq, trickle-down economic theory really works, the Earth is flat.

Take your pick. And why not? Just about everybody else does.

As the Great War of 1914-1918 opened, indirect artillery fire was just beginning to come into its own as a weapons system.  In the previous decade or so of technological development, many nations had devoted considerable attention to the improvement of explosives, propellents and fuzes. Advancements in steel-making enabled the creation of both larger-caliber and more portable guns. And modern industrial production methods allowed many nations to field truly vast numbers of artillery pieces supplied with large amounts of munitions.

Little wonder then that artillery plays an important role in two recent wargames that cover tactical combat in the Great War: Infantry Attacks, published by Avalanche Press, and Through Mud and Blood, the third installment of the In The Trenches series published by Jeux Grenier Games.

The games operate at different scales, so it’s no surprise that each treats artillery differently. They’re also set during different periods of the war. Infantry Attacks: August 1914 (as the title implies) focuses on the earliest stage of the Great War, specifically on the opening battles of the war in the East. Through Mud and Blood presents a number of ‘firefight’ scale actions set in various theaters and during different periods — although primarily the later war.

What is surprising, to me at least, is that neither game seems to get artillery quite ‘right’. In both cases I think I see what the designers are trying to do. Unfortunately, both seem to fall a bit short of the mark.

[As a brief caveat, please note that I claim to be neither a professional historian nor a trained historical researcher. I am, however, the grandson of a World War I infantryman and I've widely read and studied the subject for close to 40 years. In my distant and misspent youth I was privileged to sit many hours listening to my grandfather talk about his service in The Great War. Not that that gives me any extraordinary insight into the techncial aspects of artillery, but it did spark in me a beyond-ordinary interest in All Things Great War.]

Infantry Attacks presents artillery as a completely inflexible combat arm. Off-board artillery (my main focus here) is allocated in discrete firing concentrations of bombardment strength points that represent batteries/battalions of various calibers. Each player then lists his available concentrations on a roster sheet and then proceeds to make a turn-by-turn plot of the hexes each concentration will target. Artillery affects only the hex it impacts. ‘Friendly fire’ casualties are possible if friendly forces are adjacent to the impact hex, and there is also a minimalist scatter routine (as in the PanzerGrenadier series).

A player can cancel the fire plot for a given concentration at any time — but once a fire plot is cancelled, that particular artillery concentration can’t fire for the rest of the scenario. On-map artillery batteries can fire at whatever they can spot, and they can also move. But once they’ve moved, they can’t fire for the rest of the scenario, either.

I think I understand the goal of the mechanism. Artillery wasn’t very flexible in 1914, and there were frequent instances of fires shifting to the wrong places at the wrong times or not shifting at all. The mechanism in Infantry Attacks encourages careful planning (especially on the attack) and a scrupulous adherence to the pre-planned schedule.

Historically, even in 1914, artillery wasn’t completely inflexible. Most nations made some sort of attempt to put  tools in the hands of the infantry that they could use to communicate with the artillery. Sometimes communications worked in a limited fashion; often it did not work at all. The relationship between infantry and their artillery in 1914 wasn’t exactly a happy one.

For the wargamer, the question is whether or not Infantry Attacks’ fire plotting mechanism is an acceptable trade-off between process and effect. A system that used a couple of tables and a few dice rolls to attempt communications might have a better ‘feel’ to it - but such a system would need to include target reference points and possible pre-plotted fires for each concentration. ‘Real life’ artillery fire planning can be pretty complicated. So would the results, essentially, be the same — only for a lot more work and dice-rolling? And would such a mechanism increase the complexity of the rules?

I’ve only managed to get in a few plays of Infantry Attacks since its arrival here in the swamp. While the artillery mechanism feels very limiting and is at time frustrating to deal with, it occurs to me that the strict limits on how artillery can respond to the changing battlefield is one of the fundamental differences between Infantry Attacks and its parent system, PanzerGrenadier.

The games use the same core game mechanisms to simulate two very different types of warfare. At first encounter, I think a lot of players probably wonder how the same system can accommodate both ’set piece’ infantry warfare and World War II’s mobile warfare. It occurs to me that one of the key differences lies with the artillery.

Since this subject is running a bit long, I’ll pick up the tale of the “In The Trenches” system in my next blog post.

We took the kid off to Kennedy Space Center for the weekend and it reminded me of something: I really have a love-hate relationship with Florida’s Space Coast.

I love visiting KSC and environs because I grew up during the Great Space Race and it reminds me of all the amazing things our country did when I was a youngster. I hate visiting KSC and environs because it hits me in the face with the fact that we’re not doing those amazing things anymore.

One of the places my wife wanted us to visit was Space View Park in downtown Titusville. She stumbled onto the place by accident on the morning of the last Atlantis launch when she took Juan Carlos over to see the thing go up. Even devoid of the thousands of people who jammed the place on launch day it’s an interesting little slice of history.

I’d never been to the park before. It’s a lot smaller than I thought from watching the video she shot during the launch. It’s a long, thin strip of land that runs from the north side of town out to the coast. Viewed from the town side, it points directly at the distant Launch Complex 39 and the VAB. The neatly-kept walkway is populated with various memorials to America’s astronauts and space missions, including a very nice memorial to the Gemini program just yards from the sea shore.

On the day of Atlantis’ launch, it was packed with thousands of people who had come down to the coast to watch one of America’s final shuttle launches. Last Saturday, there were six people at the park: Four members of my family and two drunks trying to bum lights for their smokes from the shade of a picnic shelter. Three more drunks were fishing from the far end of the pier at nearby Veterans Park (which includes the Project Mercury memorial) until one of them toppled into the ocean.

That sort of sums up America’s interest in space exploration and science very neatly, doesn’t it? When something ‘big’ is happening, tens of thousands turn up. The rest of the time it’s a neatly-kept facade that looks a little run down but still gets a lot of respect from a few Average Joes who remember better days — even though the people really in charge are basically a bunch of drunks lolling around cussing and falling into the smelly, mucky coastal flats.

Of course, we are the Nation of Short Attention Spans. Hundreds of millions watched Apollo 11. Hundreds of thousands watched Apollo 12. The TV networks cancelled the prime-time broadcast from Apollo 13.

If you paid attention to the Great Space Race back in the 60s and 70s, then you remember the vision promoted by all of the Big Corporate Space Vendors. There were books, fliers, pamphlets, film shorts and major motion pictures stuffed with space stations, moon shuttles, hydroponic domes and moon bases. Thousands of Average Joes living and working in space and on the moon, using science and technology to build a better world.

‘They’ promised us moonbases and what we got instead was a flock of dithering political hacks who can’t even pronouce “ineptitude”, let alone spell it.

But I digress.

Even when it wasn’t beat to crap by major road construction, downtown Titusville was getting a bit dusty and seedy. Saturday afternoon downtown was very quiet — no foot traffic, only a few optimistic businesses open and most of the place looking like it had just received a fresh blast from the sugar sand cannon. So much for Spaceport America.

Across the bridge and on into the space center, things are only a little better. The Visitors Center has some great ‘content’ — don’t get me wrong — but a bunch of it isn’t quite up on current events. There’s a lot of ‘flying Constellation back to the moon” action going on. Understandable, to an extent, but even that’s a bit aggravating because I was never a big fan of the space program reaching for something it’s already grasped.

The Astronaut Hall of Fame is an interesting mix of Space Memorial and Science Museum. Or at least it used to be. On this visit I couldn’t help but notice that more than half the ’simulators’ had fallen into disrepair and no longer worked and that one of the main theaters was suffering an air conditioning failure. Most of the visitors in the place were foreign tourists, so I  wondered what they thought about the current state of America’s space program.

It also didn’t escape my notice that the indoor gun range at the Police Hall of Fame across the street had about three times as many ‘customers’ as the Astronaut Hall of Fame. It has a cool armored car parked out front, though.

Before I dive into a wargamer’s look at artillery in World War One (as mentioned in my previous post), I figured it probably would be a good idea if I first delivered quick looks at the two games I’ll be waving around during the discussion.

Infantry Attacks: August 1914

First to arrive — some weeks ago now — was August 1914: Battles for East Prussia, which is the initial offering in the new Infantry Attacks series from Avalanche Press.

The Infantry Attacks rules are close relatives of APL’s PanzerGrenadier series rules. The game scales are the same with 200-meter hexes and 15-minute turns. However, the combat units in the two series represent different sized formations; in PanzerGrenadier a typical unit is a platoon, while in Infantry Attacks most units are company-sized. Infantry Attacks devotes substantial additional “rule-age” to artillery fire and artillery ammunition (among other things), which balloons the series rules to a hefty 35 pages (compared to PG’s slim 16 pages of rules).

That said, the two series share many core mechanisms. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say most PanzerGrenadier players will be up and running with Infantry Attacks in fairly short order. Otherwise the rules aren’t as complex as you might expect from 35 pages, although I would recommend that total noobs to the series take a look at the “Infantry Attacks in Five Minutes” download on the APL website.

The game’s physical package is in line with the latest of APL’s releases in the PG series. The six cardstock maps, produced by a new artist, are another small advance for a publisher that has occasionally struggled with map art in the past. The counters are very attractive and clean (as usual) and charts and tables are printed on the familiar tan cardstock. My overall impression is that it’s an attractive, clean and very functional graphic presentation.

A more recent arrival is Through Mud and Blood, the third game of the In The Trenches tactical series from Jeux Grenier Games.

Through Mud and Blood

The first two games in the series were, more or less, “super-DTP” productions that featured pre-mounted, cut-em-out countersheets. I skipped the first game in the series (”Opening Engagements”), mostly because I found the mixed bag of scenario topics less than compelling. The second game (”The Lost Generation”) piqued my interest, however, and I’ve played it a number of times.

The game scale for In The Trenches is 100-meter hexes and five-minute turns, with most pieces representing platoon-sized units. While the game’s command system rewards players for operating their troops in company-sized formations, In The Trenches is very much more of a “firefight” scale game than it is a “battle” game like Infantry Attacks.

Unlike its two predecessors in the series, Through Mud and Blood comes with professionally-printed, mounted and die-cut counters. For gamers who wrestle DTP counters with rhomboidal cuts and slipping X-acto knives, this is a definite step up. As with all of the Grenier-published games I’ve played, the counter artwork is very crisp and functional. The production quality of the countersheet overall is excellent — better in many aspects than the counter work produced by some of the much larger players in the market.

The maps? Well. Aaa. Mmm. These are truly a mixed bag for me. Previous games in the series have featured 12 x 18 inch maps printed on a heavy, glossy stock. TMB’s maps are essentially half that size, checking in at 8.5 x 11 inches. They’re printed on the same glossy stock as earlier maps. The graphic style is also similar to the earlier games — clear and functional, if not particularly inspired — with the exception of the “Hill 06″ map that uses a color palette that’s very dark indeed. On parts of the “Hill 06″ map, in fact, the black-lined hexgrid all but disappears into the map’s dark colors.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the series, the mapboards in the ITT series are not geomorphic — they are all historical bits of battlefield from the Great War. So in general, the actions represented in Through Mud and Blood are much smaller firefights than those found in earlier games of the series. After some of the heavy-duty actions in the series’ second volume, this is a little bit of a let-down.  I imagine it does, however, make this a very good game for introducing new players to the ITT rules.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.