More Pratt material uncovered

Every few months I am lucky enough to get sent another collection of old wargaming material.

Today I opened a huge box full of previously unknown Fletcher Pratt naval wargaming material. This belonged to Dan Dorcy, who revived the Pratt game in the 1960-70's and was in touch with Pratt umpire, Doc Clarke.

At last I have the formula and equations used by Pratt to generate his game. They were apparently the same ones as used by the USN for their wargames.

I am now hunting a shoe box in Yorkshire and another small box in the USA, then I will almost certainly have everything that has survived from those early Pratt games. Life is certainly interesting.

DBA 2.2 and Bruce Quarrie's Napoleonic Wargaming in print

I am pleased to announce the publication of the classic DBA 2.2 rules, with chapters on tactics, their development, applying the to historical battles (includes contributions from Phil Steele). These were a landmark set of rules and their story is worth recording.

Bruce Quarries book on Napoleonic Wargaming is also in print. The rules are dated, but the book itself is a fine book on Napoleonic warfare, recommended by Paddy Griffith and David Chandler.

They can be bought from my site www.wargaming.co or www.lulu.com

Operation Warboard, a book about Kriegspiel, a book about early naval wargames and a lost book on Commandoes by Don Featherstone are all under way.

The development of games is not always linear

I recently played a new edition of the one of the few board games that is of global importance in the games industry, Monopoly.

The actual version played was the Cornwall edition. For those who have not played this classic, in essence it consists of rolling 2 dice, moving around a square board trying to acquire sets of three streets of the same colour. Once three adjacent streets of the same colour are acquired, the player invests in houses as they can afford them. Eventually, other players land on your streets and you slowly bankrupt them with the fine they pay for landing on property you own. Often the game becomes very exciting as two players each get sets and slowly add houses as they save enough money. Eventually, someone becomes bankrupt and loses.

The new version of the game has two rule changes that dramatically reduce the decision making in the game and reduce the fun value considerably.

In the old version of the game, you could only buy a property by landing on it and paying the set fee. While often it was sound strategy to buy up properties which your opponents want (to stop them getting a set), sometimes it is better not to. In the mid game, players often need to save money to buy the properties they need to complete their sets or to make sure they have enough money to build houses when they get sets. The new rules mean that if a player does not want the property, it is automatically put up for auction. i.e. if a player does not buy it, the player who does need it to complete their set will be able to. Therefore, players have no option except to buy up most of what they land on.

The second rule change is about mortgages. Under the old rules, a player’s can mortgage the properties they have bought for half their value if they need cash, but not when they still have houses anywhere on the board. The new rules allow players to mortgage anytime they want. So as soon as player gets a set and so is eligible to build houses, they simply need to mortgage every other property they own and get the maximum number of houses in one turn. This is a killer strategy that normally means who ever gets a set first will win within three circuits of the players moving around the board.

The story of the development of Monopoly is an example that has a general lesson for wargaming. As I go through the History of Wargaming, I find there are numbers of sets of rules where later editions are clearly inferior to the earlier versions. Some of these later editions introduce less player decisions, introduce potential ‘killer strategies’ or otherwise deemed inadequate by their player base.

The development of games is clearly not linear.

Has anyone got any examples of games where the later editions were not improvements?

WRG 6th edition ancient wargaming rules are back

The WRG rules for ancient wargaming were the first comprehensive set of wargaming rules suitable for national competitions amongst hobbyists. They were detailed by today's standards, needed 100+ figures a side and included the innovation of reaction tests; players found their troops did not always do what they expected them to (a bit like military history). 

Out of print for many years, I brought them back into print and combined them with a guide to ancient warfare by Phil Barker, the man who wrote the original rules. The reprint sold a handful per month... until recently. Now a surge in sales indicates that many wargamers are bringing these rules out of retirement. 

This renewed interest is a surprise to me, as it will be to most wargamers. The WRG 6th edition rules are a detailed simulation of ancient warfare, probably the most heavily playtested manual wargame in the world. Battles on the table top, with players using historical tactics, normally produce historically valid results. 

The unexpected rise of WRG 6th edition ancients has reminded me that is almost impossible to predict sales trends in the world of wargaming.

German Armed Forces play board games

I met some key people in the German armed forces this week. They use board games for leadership training. They use historical games from well-known companies such as Victory Point Games and Decision Games, just blown up counters and maps to four times the size.

The games are two sided, with command cells issuing orders to the players moving counters on the board. Typically, each side has separate commanders for the left, right and middle. Inevitably confusion reigns; games are punctuated by mis-communication, lack of strategy and poor leadership.

The reasoning for using such historical games is interesting. By forcing them to use a game for a military period that is not modern, military players are moved out of their comfort zone of detailed knowledge of modern weapons. Inter-service players can work in groups, with games that are not classified. They can also add in civilians as players, civilians who have to work with the military in crises or who are responsible for directing the military to start operations.

NATO is the most powerful military alliance in the world with earth shattering power (the latter is not a metaphor). However, its key weakness has now been identified as an over emphasis on teaching commanders to control operations and not enough on tactics and leadership. So the German answer is to start playing military board games. They are convinced that putting leaders in situations they are not familiar with and putting them under pressure teaches the players to remember basic lessons in leadership and tactics. The aim is for players in a real future crises, when faced with chaos and confusion, will remember how they failed with the board games and do better in the real world.

NATO countries are involved in so many conflicts, no doubt we will have feedback if the idea of playing military board games for leadership training has any value.

The cost of producing computer wargames

Why do manual military board games still get produced.

There are many board games still being produced by makes such as Decision Games. The question is asked why are the best of these games not converted to run on a computer. The answer is cost. A major computer game costs an average of $20 million in 2010 and takes a team of 20-100 people. To produce a military simulation for the computer, of a standard to match a game from Strategy and Tactics, would cost a staggering amount and would never be recouped by selling several thousand copies. So manual wargames continue to be produced in a format that the early developers at SPI and Avalon Hill would have recognised. Paper maps, cardboard counters and printed rules will be with us for a while yet.

Update on Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame

As a few of you might know I have been hunting down original material on the Fletcher Pratt naval wargame. Over the years, I had enough to publish a book on the subject.

I reckoned there were only three more sources of unpublished Pratt material in the world. Two collections the size of a small shoe box and a large box worth.

Well, at last after a period of tense negotiations and help from some random American wargamers who I have never met, I am now confident the large box of Pratt stuff being dispatched to me from a cellar in the US. It apparently includes an original model ship or two.

I was sent a random page by email and by chance it had the formula Pratt used for his armour penetration. It was in a letter from Doc Clarke (Pratt's umpire). This alone would be good, but I am hopeful of more. Of course, it may just be a duplicate of what I have already found.

Is it going to contain the other half of the Fletcher Pratt Napoleonic Ship game (I have half), will it have the missing optional rules for individual ships (I know they had the rules, I just do not have them)? Will it have new material I had no idea existed? I live in hopes.

One of the really nice things about the project has been ordinary wargamers from around the planet who put pen to paper and send me interesting bits which add to the project.