(NQM Squared: the armoured thrust at El Alamein)
Over the Summer a lot of thinking has gone into the Operational Game and into grids – squares and hexes. I have long advocated that Chris Kemp’s NQM might gain something from the structure grids are able to offer (who is – or is not – in contact with the enemy … who likewise can contribute or support etc.) …
Meanwhile, Trebian has been exploring the Great War, in part, through recreating campaigns using Op 14 by historian and wargamer Richard Brooks (whom many readers of this blog will know through Wargame Developments and his many contributions to the Nugget).
Then, whilst these options were in our minds, Bob Cordery published Hex Blitz (a variant of Megablitz played on a hexagon grid with a card driven unit activation mechanism).
We ran a couple of playtests … we used offset squares rather than hexes … they have exactly the same effects but they aren’t hexes (and Trebian has cloths already marked up in offset squares) …
Personally I think offset squares look a little less ‘star wars-y’ than hexagons – but that’s mostly a taste/style issue. Board gamers seem to love the little six-sided thingies.
(Offset Squares: Hex Blitz on the Eastern Front)
(Offset squares: Hex Blitz Spanish Civil War)
I have to say that, for me, the 20th Century seems the age in which most military operations were planned on maps that had orthogonal grids on them … so my top candidate for a grid system to apply to a ‘modern’ wargame (with inverted commas as we’ll get to a time when WWII etc. is no longer considered ‘modern’) would be orthogonal squares.
In Burma, of course, they fought in an Admin Box … and I can’t help thinking there’s a way, somehow, of translating the Admin Box into the Operational Square.
But I think that’s a bit of literate candy-floss which would only go over a set of robust mechanisms. So where have we got to?
So far, in all honesty, I don’t think we’ve quite reboxed the fluidity and simplicity of either NQM or Megablitz into the gridded wargame.
(Royal Artillery 25pdrs bombard Italian positions in a night phase of CK’s prototype Alamein game)
(NQM Squared – El Alamein: the ‘crumbling’ attacks grind down Axis positions)
I think we have succumbed to the temptations of too many toys and/or of squares that are too small and try to do too much.
Using a large number of models apparently ups the scale of the game … and smaller squares enables more real ground to be scaled onto the same table area. Both these seem to be win-win choices … but if the battle area becomes confused – and difficult for players to manage easily … then the primary benefit of shifting to the grid – clarity – is lost. If the umpire is going to have to arbitrate positional and orientation issues then you may as well revert to NQM’s freewheeling style of active umpiring.
I think the looser, less cluttered style of the first experiments with NQM Squared (above), or the simpler figure numbers of Op 14 (below, in a Russo-Polish battle recreated in Jockey’s Fields a while back) can be played more quickly because the table space can be understood more easily.
Some things are not really working for me though … card activation and the unit by unit activation that goes with it … well these are tools to do a job. I’d argue that whilst they suit a small game … solo game or similar, they are not solving problems you have if you play with a larger number of players and an umpire.
Further, unit-by-unit activation brings a whole host of other problems along with it – as units may end up sequentially attacked by a number of enemy actions in a temporally inconsistent pattern during a phase of otherwise apparently simultaneous action.
Being more abstract, this methodology can allow the resolution of a lot of complex interactions in a series of simpler small phases … but it can equally lead to near surreal episodes of play that defy the willing suspension of disbelief.
If this post seems to have failed to get to an eloquent conclusion that may be a fair impression. I did get to a nicely worded and coherent conclusion on my laptop – and then the unresponsive page gremlins failed to save any of it … so I am trying to rebuild the thoughts on my phone (which doesn’t just ‘break’ the way PCs and laptops seem to in the age of Windows 10).
So I was arguing for simultaneous action in big games and umpire resolution.
I was arguing against troop positionings straddling square boundaries and intersections … there are many ways of breaking the apparent limitations of the grid but in breaking the limitations there is a significant risk of also breaking the gains in clarity and legibilty that were the reasons for turning to the grid in the first place.
I think I’m arguing for embracing the grid’s advantages rather than constantly butting against its limitations.
P.B.Eye-Candy 