Geometry Is a Harsh Mistress

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Matt Foster

Tactical wargaming is probably my favorite gaming genre, at least judging by the amount of playing time and money I have invested in the stuff. For my purposes of looking at usability in wargame design “tactical” includes unit scales that range from fire teams up to platoons, mainly because games set at those scales tend to try to accomplish many of the same things regardless of the specific design mechanisms. “Skirmish” scale games — where the game pieces represent individuals — are a bit of a different beast, so they lie below my definition today.

One of the things that strikes me about graphic design in tactical games is how little things have changed in more than 40 years. Compare the counter layout in 1970′s PanzerBlitz to the counter layout in a more modern game like PanzerGrenadier, World at War or Conflict of Heroes. Looky there; numbers in the corners, artwork in the middle. Is that one of those unwritten game design “standards”? I’d think it is, especially considering that one of those contemporary games — World at War — is so loath to part from the standard that it actually screws up usability by cramming too much information into too little space.

World at War: 11 values? Count 'em. And squint.

Note that I’m not advocating sticking values in the middle of a counter. But I will point out that the geometrical judgement is fairly harsh: Cramming 10 values into four corners is simply not a recipe for great usability. I like the World at War system quite a bit, but I don’t get it on the table as often as some other games (or buy as many of the add-ons, to make an economic point) simply because of the usability issues.

Within the limitations of a square counter format, how many practical options are available for a designer to experiment with alternative, useful locations to place information? Some designers have experimented with alternative locations that weren’t so useful — the teensy values for command range or whatever they were (it’s been a few years) on some of the Fortress Berlin counters come to mind here — but are there any realistic options for the format?

I don’t consider spreading different bits of information across both counter faces a win for the user experience. Only one face is visible at a time. Asking a gamer to reach halfway across a table and flip multiple counters over to view the information he needs isn’t a gamer-friendly design choice. One of the things that has always put me off the La Bataille series of games, for example, is the design decision to place critical combat information on the plain, reverse side of the counters. I friggin’ hate having to pick up pieces, turn them over and squint at tiny type just to figure out their combat values.

Front vs. Back in LaBat. C'mon man!

Using the reverse side of the counters to indicate various unit formations — even those used primarily in combat — doesn’t resolve the issue. The design decision at that point seems to acknowledge the basic uselessness of the colorful obverse side of the counter, exchanging it for a much more bland reverse face that is essentially just a slate of numbers which are still too small for easy reading. The graphic design in this case doesn’t marry good art with usability; in practice, it slices them apart with a straight razor.

Now, obviously, in the case of the La Bat games, the very nicely done obverse counter faces are an important part of the game’s user experience. They look good individually; they look good in play on a map. Change formation and flip them over, though, and you’re suddenly playing with counter artwork from SPI’s old “USN”. There has to be a happier medium than that.

USN looked like this. Catchy.

For today I’ll plant the suggestion that perhaps the game system design and the game interface design need to cooperate a bit more in many cases. Given the basics of the interface format — a hunk of cardboard slightly over a half-inch square — a wise system designer might consider reducing the number of system values that a counter needs to deliver.

Dust Tactics: Hit the Beach

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Matt Foster

One of the questions about Dust Tactics that I encounter most often is, understandably, an important one to most of the wargamers I know. While many folks have read by now that it’s a board game, what exactly does that mean? Is it a highly stylized “board game” with a wargame-like theme layered on top along with some nice plastic bits, or is it a wargame squeezed into a board game format?

My two cents is that it sits pretty firmly in the latter category. It’s a wargame that takes advantage of many of the conventions of the board game genre to regularize play and create appeal for a cross-over audience that otherwise might toss it off as just another tabletop figure-pusher.

The square-gridded gaming surface does indeed stylize play, but no more so than a hexgrid stylizes play in games like Memoir 44 and Tide of Iron — or ASL, for that matter. Important details like weapon ranges may seem contrived and “board game-y” to tabletop purists, but when you compare the interaction between weapons and movement in Dust Tactics to the same dimensions in popular game systems like Warhammer 40k, the numbers aren’t out of line at all. And has anybody noticed that the 4-hex range of the basic Soviet rifle squad in ASL is exactly equal to an infantry squad’s unaugmented one-turn movement allowance of 4? In Dust Tactics, “standard” rifle fire has a 4-square range and the average squad of grunts can move a maximum of 2 squares in a turn. Continue reading →

Dust Tactics: Iron and Blood

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Matt Foster

So far in my explorations of Dust Tactics, I’ve written at length about just one element of the force a player has at his disposal — his grunts. But the infantry units in the game, whether protected by heavy armor or not, aren’t the whole focus of the game. To play well consistently, and to get the most enjoyment out of the game, you also need to work the game system’s vehicles and individual heroes into your battle plans.

Reflecting a World War II era style of classification, both sides have light, medium and heavy combat walkers. A single “chassis” is available for each class, but they feature a number of different customizable weapon fits. The Allied medium walker box set, for example, ships with four different configurations: a 17-pounder tank-killing long gun; a short 75mm howitzer; a wicked short-ranged napalm thrower and a nasty artillery version with a rack of bombardment rockets and a “petard” mortar. The weapons easily interchange by snapping on and off the walker’s turret. Continue reading →

Dust Tactics: Hard Knocks and Flamethrowers

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Matt Foster

After a few games of Dust Tactics, I think it’s safe to say that I’m pretty happy with the results. But that statement bears a word of caution to my fellow minis enthusiasts out there: Dust Tactics is not a tabletop miniatures game. As I noted at the end of my last post, it is first and foremost a boardgame. As a standard of comparison, it has more in common with a game like Memoir 44 than a tabletop game like Command Decision, or even Warhammer 40k. The very nice mini figures aside, it is not in any way an attempt at alt-history simulation. But it is a lot of fun.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Dust Tactics has plenty in common with many tabletop rules sets; it’s much more than a military “themed” boardgame. Sound wargaming tactics will win games more often than not, but there are elements of stylized boardgame play that you have to account for in order to succeed consistently. “Classic” fire-and-maneuver play, for example, is certainly viable in the game, but it depends on what the terrain allows and your style of play. Continue reading →

Dust Tactics: A Quick Overview

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Matt Foster

A significant amount of time has passed since the last time I wrote about my Particular Addiction. Much as Sherlock Holmes had trouble resisting the siren call of his seven percent solution, I occasionally fall victim to the allure of “plastic crack,” known to the wider world as wargaming miniatures.

Like many other, more serious, forms of addiction, the urge to fiddle around with plastic crack can go into remission for long periods of time, but the addict is never truly free of it. Sometimes a glimpse of some new product can trigger a collapse; at other times, the irresistible urge seems to manifest for no particular reason. And sometimes I simply cave in after a lengthy struggle against the gnawing idea that something new looks like a lot of fun.

It’s that last one, this time. “Dust Tactics” isn’t exactly new, but it has now officially arrived here in the Swamp Bunker. “Arrived” with a big thump, more specifically, because I recently snagged a good deal on one of the game’s “old style” core box sets, which ships in one of Fantasy Flight’s giant-sized game boxes. Continue reading →

Temporary Insanity

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Matt Foster

Another little round of Real Life Interference isn’t the only reason this blog has again been too silent for a span of months. I’d also like to blame a bout of temporary insanity.

The primary symptom of the insanity was a sudden onset of time-consuming wargame complexity. For some reason — or lack of reason, more precisely — I decided to indulge in complex gaming exercises that I’ve managed to avoid for quite some time while still having lots of gaming good times.

Ah. Now I remember why, with few exceptions, tactical games set in the Pacific consume an inordinate amount of time.

Here’s a quick list of the new, somewhat fiddly, terrain types that appear in ATS Peleliu: coral outcropping, palm groves, bamboo, elephant grass, flimsy huts, casuarina forest, beach, shallow ocean, coral outcropping/shallow ocean, palm tree/coral outcropping, coral outcropping/casuarina forest, special anti-tank ditch, mangrove swamp, ponds, the japanese headquarters building, water cistern building, fuel bunkers, cave dugouts, airfield, airfield debris, pillbox/tunnels, aircraft hangar and fuel drum emplacements.

Name that terrain in ATS White Beach One.

Each special terrain type gets its own special rules. They’re usually a sentence, but some of them rate several paragraphs of combat, movement and line-of-sight effects.

On one hand, I understand the need for special terrain types. Landforms in the PTO were quite a bit different from the landforms found in ATS’ more “stock” European settings. On the other hand, I wonder if every single oddball terrain type needs its own specific blob of rules. If I played four or five PTO scenarios in a row, most of the terrain would likely become second nature. As it stands, though, I tend to flit from game to game on a regular basis, so the barrage of special rules means a lot of look-ups for me.

The terrain on the White Beach One map is also very close and cluttered. That means a lot of line-of-sight checks. When a number of stacks of playing pieces in close proximity are involved, those little sight checks can be pretty time-consuming as well.

Long story short, after one of my wife’s cats single-handedly defeated the Japanese defenders of Peleliu, I managed to get in a couple of short scenarios.

Then I really flipped the nutjob switch.

The next game to hit the table was “Birds of Prey,” from Ad Astra Games. Despite the fact that I’m a grunt at heart, I’ve always enjoyed the idea of air combat games. By “idea” I mean that I like all of the hardware, the sleek lines of beautiful jet aircraft and the mano-a-mano nature of play. What usually burns me out on them after a short spasm of air gaming is the complexity.

Yeah, I lost my mind for a while.

Birds of Prey is a very clever design that goes to great lengths to get the physics of air combat maneuvering “right.” It’s involved enough that I won’t even attempt a short description, but rather I’d invite you to look it up on BoardgameGeek if you’re curious.

I’ll just say that a lot of numbers are involved. A LOT of numbers. And some hefty 3-D imagineering using the game system’s “PHAD” (Pitch, Heading, Attitude Display). Once you grok the mechanisms of flight — which is enough of a challenge — you then face a daunting array of additional calculations in order to add in detection and weapons systems. Laminated play aids let you write out all of these calculations using a dry-erase marker. Individually, none of the calculations are that tough — but there are SO many of them. Even a “simple” one-on-one furball can easily take upward of 20 to 30 minutes to work through just one 6-second game turn.

I felt pretty satisified with myself when, after a couple of weeks, I got the whole thing to come together. After a few turns of serious dogfighting, however, it occurred to me that I was doing a whole lot of math and much less moving stuff around on a game map. The game is also very narrowly focused on only the “furball” aspect of air combat. Some of the more “grand tactical” aspects of air warfare that I really enjoy (hey, I wrote a series of college papers on electronic warfare…) are outside the scope of the game.

So back in the box it went.

Currently on the Big Table: “Semper Fi: Guadalcanal,” the PanzerGrenadier system sails into the Pacific. That’s something quite a bit less complicated. More on this one soon.

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