Tag Archives: Wars and Conflicts

Books, History, Scottish, WW2

Book Review – Field of Fire: Diary of a Gunner Officer by Jack Swaab

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Field of Fire: Diary of a Gunner OfficerField of Fire: Diary of a Gunner Officer by Jack Swaab

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read the hardback version very shortly after it came out. I collect first hand accounts of the WW2 and unit histories of the 51st Highland Division in particular, so this one was a must buy. That said it is one of the best first hand accounts that I have read, and certainly the best from a gunner (it comparies favourably to George Blackburn’s Guns of War series – he was also a Forward Observation Officer).

You can have no doubt about the hardships of war, what the conditions were like for both the gunners on the gun line and the infantry on the front line. The book is very descriptive without becoming flowery and it avoids glossing over some of the less pleasant aspects. Also it tells you about everything, not just the combat and the aftermath, but also of the minor details of daily life.

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Books, History

Charlie Company, Peter Cochrane

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This is a history of C Company 2nd Bn Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders in the western desert, Sudan & Eritrea, Keren and then in Italy. They were part of 4th Indian Division.

The author was an officer who did all his active service with the same infantry company and this covers his experiences and those of his company.

Synopsis

Of the many books about the last war, some offer the general’s view of an entire battlefield, others have been individual experiences or divisional histories. “Charlie Company” is something original, the story of a rifle company of the Cameron Highlanders whose record of service in the Western Desert, Eritrea, and throughout the Italian campaign fully deserves this tribute to their courage and endurance.

Peter Cochrane joined the company as a young platoon commander in 1940. He won an MC in their first action in Libya, and followed this with a DSO for his part in the grim assault on Keren. Badly wounded there, he missed the disaster at Tobruk, but was back as company commander at Monte Cassino and afterwards for the long haul up Italy. From his own experience he has told the remarkable story of a small group of soldiers of whom any country would be proud. The stresses and horrors of war are there, but so is the humour and the wonderful spirit of men whose morale was somehow sustained to the very end. It is a deeply moving book.

ISBN 0701122803

 

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CLWG, design, games

CLWG Games Weekend 2007 Reports

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Some reports from the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG) games weekend.

Siege of Yendor Tryout

Jim put on a session to try out the mechanisms for the upcoming megagame. We spent some time trying to bring down a section of wall, and also seeing whether or not it was possible to directly assault the wall without first undermining or demolishing it.

Jim’s Breeding Idea

This was a design session rather than a game, but we gave it a good go none the less. Jim had come away from the Light of the Trees megagame with an idea that it ought to be possible to do a sub-component of a game about breeding heroes using some real genetics theory. The main aim was that, like in real life, the players managing the breeding programme wouldn’t actually know what the actual genetic make up of their characters were. Over time those players that were keeping an eye on things and using the evidence that they were accumulating would be able to make some educated guesses about the best pairings that would drive their breeding programme in the direction that they wanted to take.

We all started off with a single individual each, although without worrying about whether that individual was male or female (as this was thought to over-complicate things). The idea was to work with a bloodline rather than a series of individuals, although each generation would be split into separate individuals representing the main lines. This was felt to be necessary to allow the breeders an opportunity to selectively breed those with the correct traits with individuals from the other bloodlines.

The fact that we rapidly bogged down was fairly predictable as we tried to track several individuals. There was a fair amount of mechanical detail involved in generating the offspring as well as the players not having enough information to make good decisions about which individuals to breed with which others. There would have been a better handle on it if we’d played out a bit more of the game before moving into a general discussion of the issues, approach and suggestions of how it could all be achieved.

As a design session it was very thought provoking, and I carried on thinking about it for almost a whole week, on and off. Jim’s conclusion from the session was that it probably wasn’t practically possible to achieve what he set out to do. At the time I would have agreed with him, but a few days of thought have changed my mind on that.

I come to this with more than a smattering of background, I studied “Genes, Organisms & Evolution” as an undergraduate, the course forming a major part of my degree. That said I’ve forgotten most of the detail in the intervening 15 years since I graduated. However the text books are still on a bookshelf nearby.

I think that the general premise that Jim was trying to attain is a sound one and that with some streamlining and appropriate background that it can be achieved. The key is to stick with Jim’s bloodline idea and not get drawn into dealing with individuals, except where heroes or other primary characters are required, and these Heroes should have nothing to do with the breeding stock, although their characters will be determined by it.

The key assumption I am working on is that that this is a sub-component of a game that plays over generations rather than a game in itself. As part of the background the designer of the main game needs to make some decisions about how many characteristics need to be tracked, whether these have any inter-relationship or are independent and also how often he wants particular characteristic levels/attributes to feature.

For example let us assume that a game designer wants to track both personal bravery and intelligence in the hero bloodlines. He might decide that these will not be related to each other. For bravery he might decide that there are four possible states, Heroic (no morale required), Brave (positive modifier to morale), Normal (no modifiers) and Cowardly (negative modifiers). Of these outcomes he might want Heroic to be quite rare, Brave to be common but not a majority, Normal to be the majority position and Cowardly to be less common than Brave, but more likely than Heroic.

Taking the assumption that bravery is a hereditary characteristic how does this translate into genetics?

Well you could specify three variants of a bravery gene (alleles are they are known), H, O & C. HH would be the Heroic types, HO the brave, OO and OC the normal and CC & CH the cowards. In these cases the H allele is recessive (so only those with two copies are heroic). The C allele is also recessive, but dominates the H allele. The O allele is dominant over C but not over H.

This takes you into a method of at least allocating a characteristic based on genetics, but it doesn’t address either simplicity of recording it nor of proportions. Not all genes are evenly distributed in the population. Those that confer survival advantages propagate more widely and those that lead to disadvantages rapidly leave the gene pool.

In this case you would expect O & C to be widely distributed, possibly equally. H is likely to be less frequent as though it confers an advantage when hunting it becomes much less advantageous once farming is available, and in fact becomes a positive disadvantage over time. If 10% of the population carried the H gene then 1% (i.e. the proportion with two copies of it) would be heroic. If the O allele was 50% of the population and the C allele the remaining 40% then you would have a distribution as follows:

H (10%)

O (50%)

C (40%)

H (10%)

1 (Heroic)

5 (Brave)

4 (Cowardly)

O (50%)

5 (Brave)

25 (Normal)

20 (Normal)

C (40%)

4 (Cowardly)

20 (Normal)

16 (Cowardly)

Heroic

Brave

Normal

Cowardly

1

10

65

24

Let us also assume that there was a decision to track intelligence as a numeric score also with three alleles generating a score when summed. The alleles being 0, 1, 2. These would be distributed as 10%, 80%, 10% in the general population.

Tracking Bloodlines

The method I thought you would use to track each bloodline is a table with each of the attributes to be tracked down the side and the alleles to be tracked along the top. Each allele would have a score between 0 and 10 to show its relative proportion in the population of the bloodline. An example of this is shown
below.

Bravery

H (r)

O

C (r)

Bravery alleles

1

5

4

Intelligence

L (0)

M (1)

H (2)

Intelligence alleles

1

8

1

In each generation the player running the breeding would be given some feedback of their bloodline’s characteristics. In this case they would be told that they were of average intelligence and not especially brave. The breeder player would then make a decision about trying to improve the bloodline either from the general population, another player’s bloodline (with the specific approval of that player) or from within his own bloodline.

The general population bloodline should be determined before the start of the game and remain constant for the duration of the game. Player controlled bloodlines are very likely to change over the course of generations as the genealogists recommend good matches for strengthening the bloodline based on observed characteristics of other bloodlines.

Breeding from the General Population

There is a general assumption that there are other bloodlines that the genealogists are aware of but which are not part of the played groups. These probably represent the minor nobility or some other class that the main bloodline knows but are lower than those represented by player teams. When breeding from these it is assumed that the characteristic which is sought to be improved is always manifested in the individuals that are to be added to the bloodline for breeding purposes.

Using the general bloodline track (see example above) the umpire checks whether the person has one or two copies of the appropriate gene. In the case of characteristics which are recessive then there are always two copies of the gene. (e.g. If you were trying to breed heroes into your bloodline then you would start off with two copies of the H allele to breed in).

For each of the genes recorded (i.e. Bravery and Intelligence in these examples) you would determine which alleles were to be incorporated into the new bloodline. Roll 1d10 for the copy to be imported (except where we have previously determined that recessive characteristics give an exact gene). We’re already getting an H from the hero, we need to roll 1d10 to see which intelligence allele will be passed on. This is most likely to be an M result.

These alleles will then displace one of those in the general bloodline. If a 2 is rolled for the Bravery gene then the new H allele displaces an O allele. Another 2 for Intelligence has the new M allele displace another M allele, so no real change. The new bloodline track looks like the example below.

Bravery

H (r)

O

C (r)

Bravery alleles

2

4

4

Intelligence

L (0)

M (1)

H (2)

Intelligence alleles

1

8

1

The feedback to the player would be that the family was of average intelligence and above average bravery, although with a larger number of cowards than one would expect. (There are now 4% heroic, 16% brave, 32% Cowardly). This might prompt an attempt to breed out the cowards, harder than might appear as the C allele is largely recessive.

What this system needs is a proper game to sit within. Ideally one of dynastic succession and involving at least a bit of individual character impact on the outcomes. Sadly that isn’t something on my current project list.

Religion in ‘Hapsburg Ascendant’

Brian started off a discussion of the role of religion in games set in the 17th century, particularly his upcoming megagame. His wish was to get some roleplaying of the religious motivations that were what made the 30 years war happen and to get the players to warp their rational decision making process (if you can describe wargamers as rational) to fit the religious mindset prevalent at the time.

We had a fascinating discussion, aided by Arthur having a stack of relevant textbooks to hand in his classroom. We talked around the issues of not giving perverse incentives and not making it too easy for players to work out how they got advantages from religious behaviour.

The conclusions that we came to were that each of the major sects needed to have its own set of rules, that there ought to be a league table so that there was a visual incentive to act correctly (this being a lesson from the Sengoku megagames) and that once a defined level of behaviour had been reached that there ought to be a direct umpire driven reward for the correct behaviour. The reward needed to be strong enough to show that it was ‘God’s work’ but also not so strong that it caused problems. Also we felt that because ‘god works in mysterious ways’ that the players should not get to determine what might happen if they had their god’s favour.

Orange or Lemon? – Onside Report

This game was intended to show the political goings on in the attempt to get a revolution settlement in Scotland following on from the English parliament’s declaration of Prince William of Orange as their King in February 1689 (new style).

The game we played was a highly entertaining roleplay of some of the issues and certainly gave a good flavour and reached, more or less, the historical outcome. I certainly enjoyed it immensely, and I think the players did too.

I designed the game with almost a board game like level of mechanism for winning the support of the non-played members of the Convention (which is essentially an unofficial Parliament as it had been called by Prince William of Orange and not King James).

Almost none of those mechanisms were tested in the game we played, but it worked as a game anyway – almost a proof of the old saying that you could stick a bunch of CLWG members in a room with some game money and an a game would break out. Instead of money I gave them a map of the Edinburgh High Street and an idea. I’ll leave it to the players to tell you how the game actually went.

In terms of future development I will refine the player briefs (I was still working on these when I started the session and a couple are not yet fully complete). This will improve player understanding of the period and importantly make their personal objectives a bit more tailored from the generic ones of:

  1. Stay alive.

  2. Ensure that the clan/family remains in being and in control of its territory.

  3. Increase your/the clan wealth (either through plunder or by increasing territory).

  4. Increase the influence of Clan Cameron.

  5. Have your King accepted as de facto sovereign.

  6. Ensure that your enemy is diminished.

For the lowlanders you can replace ‘Clan’ with ‘family/heirs’. These do work, but there need to be a couple more triggers to get some of the characters to get stuck into being active. There is also a need to explain the general apathy of the population in their support for the King who has antagonised most of them in the last decade, even before he became the King.

Blitz Firefighting

An end to the weekend with an extended bout of firefighting during the London blitz. This game actually started at the same time as my session and I joined in when we’d finished playing Orange or Lemon? I ended up as one of the LFB professionals sent along to bolster the firefighting force.

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CLWG, design, games, WW1

Hot Blood & Cold Steel – onside Report

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This was a design session on how to do a WW1 skirmish game, focusing mainly delivering a participation game for Jerry Elsmore’s 50th Birthday con. I’d already done a first darft of the rules but wanted to talk through some of the principles about what I wanted to achieve.

I found the discussion particularly useful in clarifying my methods for running a participation game at a show. Gone is the idea of having all the action in a static circle of squares that represented all that could be seen (I may do this at CLWG sometime as I still like the idea, although it would be too time-consuming for being run at a show). I did get some ideas for making changes to the terrain though so that it would only become clear when figures entered the square in question.

Also useful was the discussion on how to simulate disorientation and when that might be appropriate. This means that I have some ideas for retaining the confusion that can happen when patrolling at night, especially when shooting starts.

The next version of the game in a complete and playable form will be around at the January meeting and again in February so that it will have had a couple of outings by the time Jerry’s birthday convention comes round. Any volunteers to help run the game on the day will be more than welcome.

In the meantime the draft rules (which are an evolution of Jim’s Starship Solder rules converted to work with 2d6 and have a WW1 flavour) are on the web. http://www.cold-steel.org and there is a fledgling mailing list (using my usual server) at list@cold-steel.org (send a blank e-mail with ‘subscribe’ (no quotes) in the subject line).

Also if anyone has photos (preferably aerial ones) of trenches or shell craters (regardless of period) then I wouldn’t mind if you could send me some scans. I need to make up a stack of terrain cards for the game and one of the things that impressed me at the conference was Jim’s use of laminated card pictures for counters. I reckon that terrain cards made up the same way would look pretty good.

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CLWG, design, games, History

Revolutionary Warfare

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When I played Andy Grainger’s A Month in Country I immediately thought of some of the parallels with the Revolutionary Warfare (RW) game that I have run myself a couple of times, although with only a few players. I would particularly like to re-do my Palestine game as the players I ended up with (well one player in particular) didn’t give me the sort of game that I was expecting as they couldn’t cope with the whole concept of the role that they were given. (I won’t name names, but those that were there know who I am talking about – the British Governor wanted to hold elections for a PR power sharing assembly between the Palestinians and the Jews).

Anyway, the concept I was playing with was similar to Andy’s but played on a slightly larger scale. At the time of design I had been toying with the idea of producing ‘Lion Comes Home’ as a megagame and the RW module had to work very smoothly. It is essentially one sided, there would be a small group of roving revolutionaries that would start a new revolution when their current one had been crushed, or at a point determined by the political control team. I haven’t completely shelved LCH, but development has stalled over the last couple of years. Anyway I’m not volunteering something like this as a megagame until I’ve written it all.

In the RW module the resolution is at province level, in the Palestine tryout there were 16 provinces. This could be too low for a megagame but I didn’t want governments suddenly losing control of entire colonies as that just didn’t happen historically. The Government players would set the rules of engagement and the alert levels for the police forces and any military units in the colony.

Each province has an unrest level that can be affected by the actions of both the government and the revolutionaries. If the revolutionaries are successful (or the government inept) then the tension levels can escalate from content to ungovernable via stable, unrest & tense.

The forces of revolution will normally start out with a small amount of support to get them going. They can gain support from the effects of their actions. They also use up support to perform actions as there is only so much support that can be called upon at any time. Revolutionaries may espouse peaceful or military action or a combination of both. At different stages of the revolution different strategies will reap the best rewards in increased tension levels and the downfall of the government. The stages of revolution are broadly:

1.Raising Awareness: getting the people to realise that there is a problem with the government and that they can help to change this;

2.Low Intensity Struggle: starting to make small demonstrations against the government and perhaps attacking key figures or installations;

3.High Intensity Struggle: making the country ungovernable and forcing the government to make concessions to the revolution;

4.Open warfare: becoming a government and opposing the old regime openly to ensure its downfall.

In Andy’s game the revolutionaries are somewhere between stages 2 & 3 depending on where they are in the country. Some parts are probably even in stage 4.

The role of the government is not a purely reactionary one, it is possible to be proactive and prevent terrorism before it has any great effect. The setting is such that there will be an overall political framework to be worked within and the government players will represent the colonial governor and possibly the garrison commander. There may also be scope for the home government to become involved in solving problems. For the purposes of a tryout I would either play it one-sided (more accurately with several revolutionary factions) or have a couple of reliable players to play the local governor and military commander.

 Government actions are determined on a matrix of the current alert state and the general intention of the active units under command. Each police district and company sized unit can be given an intention and an area of responsibility. Doctrine for dealing with internal trouble is of police primacy unless a state of emergency has been declared. Declaration of a state of emergency is not something that should be done lightly, and certainly not before the police have lost the ability to deal with the situation.

 Anyway if there is sufficient interest, and the dates are finalized early enough to let me book cheap flights, I could run this at the Games Weekend. It would need five or six players and would take about three hours all told. If interest was very high I could even run two simultaneous colonial engagements. I would also like to do a design session on modeling opinion polls and elections.

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CLWG, design, games, megagames, universe

What you missed at the January meeting of CLWG

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The Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG) January meeting (Sunday 9th January) was in Jim’s office near Holborn. This one had 14 members in attendance.

When I turned up there was a promotion board going on for one of the characters in our long-running Starship Marine campaign (details of the campaign and a history of the 130th Regiment). To make this more interesting for the players who were on the board (i.e. the interviewers) there were a couple of candidates for promotion, including one marine Captain who brought a bomb in with him to prove how easy they were to defuse. A nice piece of live role-play from Jerry (who improvised the bombs immediately beforehand.)

I was called upon to defuse the device which consisted of an ice-cream box with an anti-tilt device on it and a fuse inside which had to be unscrewed without disturbing the rest of the device. The fuse was a marker pen and the anti-tilt device was a post-it holding it onto the side of the box, if the box had been tilted or nudged then the pen would have fallen off the side of the box and set the device off. Similarly if I had pulled the pen off the back of the box it would also have set the device off.

We also had a tryout of a convoy destruction game intended for wargames shows which Michael Dollin and I are working on. This involves players attacking a convoy in successive waves of torpedo bombers, dive-bombers and perhaps also PT boats and high/medium-level bombers. We mainly tried out the torpedo and dive-bomber mechanisms. These appeared to work very well and played in around twice real time, so a full torpedo run took us around 5 minutes to do. We managed to do dive bomber attacks much faster, around one every minute or so.

The torpedo attacks were done in a conventional figure game way. You fly up with your torpedo bomber, getting shot at as you come in, and launch your torpedo on a likely track when you feel that you are close enough for it to count.

The dive-bombing was a bit different. We had two possible methods for this, but the one we tried most was a co-ordinate system (ripped off from Graham Hockley). As you start your descent you are shown a grid with a slowly moving ship on it (which was magnetic). You can also see your altimeter (a modified clock). When you have got as low as you want you say “Bombs gone” and the grid is turned round so that you can no longer see it. The ship keeps moving the same way it had before and when the altimeter gets to 0 (i.e. then the bombs hit) the umpire stops moving the ship. The player tells the umpire what co-ordinates he wanted the bomb to hit. The grid is then revealed (and with it the position of the ship) and the position of the bomb compared to the ship.

Hits to aircraft were delivered using playing cards. We would print the actual outcome onto cards to speed things up if we did it for a wargame show. The players don’t get told what the effect of a hit is unless it is obvious (or becomes so). This represents the fact that pilots often don’t know how badly damaged their aircraft is except where it affects the handling of the aircraft.

We also developed a bombsight to simulate level bombing. This used a small periscope attached to a wooden arm and a level to release the ‘bombs’ (pieces of chalk). The test target was a block of wood painted matt black so that the chalk marks would be obvious. We did find that the bombing was a too accurate, especially given that level bombing was notoriously inaccurate and the bombs being over-scale didn’t help much. It had a good feel though.

The other game that was run at the same time was called ‘Directory Enquiries‘ by John Rutherford and was a political role-playing game about the French foreign policy immediately after the revolution in 1789. I didn’t take part for the obvious reason that I was running the convoy tryout so can’t really comment on how well it went.

After that another tryout was run, this time as a feasibility for a megagame on WWI. It was “A Great War” from Brian Cameron (an associate member of the Warlords). It ran fairly well as a game but had some pauses in it, which gave Brian doubts about how well it might run as a megagame without more work on the design of the game. I wasn’t involved in this tryout because I was too busy playing a network game of Warcraft with Jim, excellent fun if you can get your hands on it. That was pretty much all of it, we finished up around six and headed for home.

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alternative, CLWG, design, games

Invasion of the West – Onside Report

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Invasion of the West was a Cold War turned hot alternative history game that I ran at the March meeting of Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG). 

Having cast around for someone to do a plan for Invasion of the West Mukul volunteered, even though he wasn’t able to turn up on Saturday. Mukul’s plan is at the end of this report along with the umpire briefings, but in essence it was for a pre-emptive chemical strike on 1 British Corps near Hanover followed by a mad dash for Antwerp.

Division of Europe during the Cold War. Blue =...
Division of Europe during the Cold War. Blue = US led NATO, Red = USSR led Warsaw pact. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On the day Andy Reeve, John Rutherford, Dave Boundy, Terry Martin and Brian Cameron turned up. Andy and John played the Soviets/Warsaw Pact forces with Dave Boundy as their LU. Terry controlled the NATO forces with Brian joining in when he arrived.

The players weren’t entirely happy with the chemical strike but did it anyway. The results were disappointing as the combat capacity of the NATO forces wasn’t degraded terribly as had been hoped, although the civilian casualties were horrendous. (As a game fudge I deemed that the chemical strike would take a step loss when it hit and also inflict a step loss on any units remaining in the area. Fighting in an afflicted zone would be twice as deadly and all combat factors would be reduced to one). The main game effect of the chemicals was to stiffen the resolve of the German territorial forces to fight.

The Warsaw Pact advance hit the slightly softened NATO forces and punched their way past them with a few casualties. NATO correctly guessed the main axis of Warsaw Pact attack and concentrated their air effort, reserves and logs support on the thrust. In a bloody second day the Warsaw Pact air were swept from the sky. At the same time the West German Northern Corps counter-attacked and inflicted a serious stop to the follow-on forces. The forward Soviet thrust bypassed Hanover and almost reached the Ruhr before being annihilated by a British counter-attack heavily supported by aircraft and LSPs. The West Germans died with the Soviet follow-on force in a bitter slogging match.

Down south all was quiet, relatively speaking. The Czechs having been given no orders decided not to play. NATO forces dug in and fortified their positions waiting to see what happened. In the meantime the all the reserve formations were diverted north. The arrival of the Reforger air-deployed division tipped the balance. Although arguably the lack of activity in the South allowed the LSPs that might have been used there to be used in the North. As my mechanism translates LSP use directly into combat step losses this was disastrous as the forces involved very quickly lost all their offensive combat power.

I was reasonably happy with how the mechanisms worked, although I still have one or two reservations. Given that this was the second outing for the game this doesn’t surprise me. The main thing that I got from it was a few ideas on scenario generation. In the post-game discussion it was reckoned that there was some mileage in a political game set in the final throes of the Soviet Union which would provide the background for a game like this.

A Short Victorious War – Forthcoming Game

Given that everyone there seemed keen on this I intend to try and run an invitation game at the June meeting of CLWG, possibly in John Rutherford’s house. The game will need 15-20 people, which means that I need to go further than CLWG for players. The main teams will be NATO, Warsaw Pact and a few other key states to represent the UN Security Council in a time of crisis. I’ll also need a few umpires as well.

Each team will have 4-5 members which means I need around 15 players, 3 Liaison Umpires, a military umpire and myself as Game Control.

Scenario

The background to the game is that the Soviet Union has realised that its collapse is imminent unless it can do something to relieve its economic position. The choices open are either reform, which has a risk of getting out of hand, foreign aid or a relief from the pressures of the Cold War and the level of funding that the Arms Race requires.

Teams

NATO This will have representatives from Britain, USA, a European state and one of the peripheral members. Their role will be to try and resolve the tension by bringing the Cold War to an end and negotiating market reforms with the Soviet Union and other WP countries.

Warsaw Pact This will have a Soviet Union, East German, Polish & Czech players. They will be looking for ways to relief the economic pressures that they are under.

UN members To bring some sense to things I want to have a few unaligned states to represent the UN and the peaceful influence that it may have on the events. This is likely to have 5 players.

Umpires Each of the three teams will have an LU umpire to advise and also to relay orders to map control. The game will also use the telephone system for communications between teams (although letters and face to face will also be allowed).

This means I need a total of 17 people to play the game. If you are interested, or know anyone who is then please let me know as soon as possible.

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CLWG, design, games, Government, History, megagames, Strategy, WW2

Design Session for "The Lion Comes Home" – Onside report

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This CLWG session yesterday was a very loose and rambling affair with myself and three (or perhaps four) others in John Rutherford’s living room.

Despite the great number of digressions I managed to get quite a few useful pointers about structure, level of detail, team composition and, importantly, how much more research I had to do.

With luck the game will appear some time during 1996 for a first showing, but until I’m nearer completion I won’t go as far as putting a date on it. For those potentially interested in playing the probable format is along the lines of:

Start Point – July 1945

The Labour Government has just come to power and the war is continuing against the Japanese. The basic agenda is to

  • get the war ended,
  • demobilise the armed forces,
  • implement their policies to create a welfare state,
  • rebuild Britain,
  • bring order to British occupied areas after the European war,
  • honour commitments to give independence to colonial states and
  • ensure the security of Britain and British interests abroad.

Game turns

Each game turn will represent one year and will last about 30 minutes.

The only mandatory part of the turn will be the setting of the budget for the following turn at the very beginning of the current turn. This will allow for some of the nature of Government Accounting (GA) to show through.

Other events will be conducted as the players feel it necessary – anything missed will be slipped into the next year (or lost completely as appropriate).

Public Opinion

After each event an opinion poll will be conducted and the Government/Opposition ratings given. This should help the Government of the day decide how effective the people think it is and should give an indication to when elections are best held.

Given that the electorate are a fickle lot, and opinion pollsters not necessarily unbiased, the ratings are at best only a general guide to the trend rather than an absolute.

Other feedback will be provided in the form of press cuttings (i.e. as a headline or suitable ‘printbite’ from the editorial). I hope to have a few of these made up before the game and will dish them out as appropriate.

Changes of Government

As our democratic system requires the Government to hold a General Election within at least five years of the last one I expect that there will be at least two elections during the course of the game.

In the event that the Government loses the election then all those holding Ministerial rank will be reshuffled, this may also coincide with the retirement or resignation of senior officials or commissioned officers.

Teams

Cabinet

The main decision making team consisting of the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary (FCO) and Secretary of State for War (WO).

War Office (WO)

Responsible for allocation of manpower, spending the Defence budget and protecting Britain and her interests abroad.

The team will have three players each representing one of the forces, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) will have the casting vote and will be responsible for reporting to the Secretary of State.

Foreign & Colonial Office (FCO)

The FCO will co-ordinate all external relations and dealings with colonies. One of the main sources of information about the local conditions and factions, also the key negotiators with colonial governments in the run-up to independence.

All major decisions will have to be referred to Cabinet through the Foreign Secretary.

The team will comprise the Head of the Diplomatic Service, two senior diplomats and one junior minister (the Colonial Office).

Cabinet Office

A small team looking after the Machinery of Government (MOG) and domestic policy issues.

This team will have as members the head of the Home Civil Service, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and the PM’s Private Secretary.

Umpires

Apart from myself I expect that three other umpires will be required. Two to keep the War Office and FCO busy with information from afar and one other to deal with domestic issues.

I intend that the information provided to the players will come from three distinct sources, from Diplomatic sources (embassies, experts & espionage), military sources (patrols & photo-reconnaissance) and from news media (print and radio).

These sources may not always agree and may have exclusive coverage of certain events – news media may also be prone to disinformation, political bias or censorship.

Things to tell

As the potential for information overload is very high the majority of colonies will be ignored for a variety of reasons, size, strategic importance/unimportance, lack of conflict, timescale for independence et cetera.

The main thrust of the game will concentrate on not more than half a dozen colonies – probably India, Palestine/Israel (a mandate), Kenya, Malaya and one or two other smaller areas where things could have gone wrong.

I intend to produce a compendium of colonies. This will represent the distilled wisdom of the FCO in the form of:

  • a brief history of the colony,
  • its political/religious/tribal factions
  • faction attitudes to the British, independence, the other factions, communism, and the economy.
  • The economic implications of withdrawal
  • an estimated timetable for establishing a stable native government.
  • The relative strategic importance of each colony
  • projected consequences of its loss for the viability of other colonies.

Although the compendium can be relied on absolutely for history it only represents the belief at the time it was prepared for projected future outcomes and attitudes of factions given are those perceived by local diplomats and colonial civil servants.

Cold War Perspectives

At the start of the game the hot war is still in progress. The Americans have developed the Atomic Bomb, but have not yet used it.

As we depart from history before the Bomb is dropped it may not be, or it could be a bit earlier or later. One major point of focus for the latter part of the game (from around the third turn) is relations with the Soviet Union and the Cold War.

Although I intend to fudge history a little to prevent hindsight from being 20/20 the general attitudes of the superpowers will remain as they are.

One of the drivers of the British decolonisation must be to reduce Defence spending whilst maintaining sufficient forces in Europe to fight World War Three. In the race to go home the government must do its utmost to ensure that none of the colonies fall into communist hands.

This should have a major influence on policy and put a brake on the speed of decolonisation.

Also worth considering is the effect that the cold war has on defence spending. Britain will have to consider its independent nuclear deterrent and the method of its delivery to the target. It will also have to consider the type of conventional forces to be deployed. A list of unit types and costs will be given to the War Office and will be updated as new technology becomes available.

Military Operations

A level of commander competence will be assumed for all military operations. All that the War Office/Cabinet will be expected to provide are

  • rules of engagement,
  • directions for operations (e.g. low intensity counter revolutionary warfare, aggressive patrolling, high profile guarding of government & commercial assets),
  • the level of manpower and any extra funds necessary to conduct operations.

Obviously many of these will be dependent upon the funds and total manpower available to the armed forces. Too many conflicts breaking out in the same year will quickly drain the treasury.

Government Accounting (GA)

GA is a very horrible area to deal with. I intend to produce a simple chart for both expenditure and income.

The income chart will show probable yields for a number of taxes at several rates – these may not fit any economic models anyone has ever studied but should give a reasonable indication for the Chancellor to plan his budget.

The expenditure chart will show Public Spending as a series of categories – some controllable and others immutable. For the controllable areas, Defence, Welfare State and Foreign & Colonial spending a chart will give approximate costs of certain activities, programmes and military units.

This should give the three planning teams a chance to tailor their activities to the funds available. It is my intention to have a laptop available to do the number crunching – a bit out of period but rather necessary given the number of factors that can be altered.

Like real GA there will be no requirement to balance the budget, nor to stick with it if it is insufficient. There is also the contingencies fund to play with as well as the ability to take supplementary estimates during the year. The only constraint that will be applied is that the original budget be delivered at the very start of the previous turn.

The first action in turn 1 (1945) will be a post-election budget setting the turn 2 (1946) budget. This introduces a time lag between setting a budget and starting to work with it of one whole turn, not that far from real GA where the budget is set in the Autumn for the following April.

Mechanisms

I have deliberately not mentioned any mechanisms for two reasons, the first is that they will remain hidden on the day and the second is that I haven’t yet worked them out well enough to explain.

I do have some very useful ideas which were supplied from the design session and I will happily explain them after the event. It is a bit of a cop-out but then we are not necessarily aware of what drives real political events and I would rather keep those playing much in the dark regarding detail of the opinion polls etc. Anyone with a burning curiosity should talk to me about it quietly and I will explain so long as they promise to umpire.

Conclusions

I am aware that I have rambled a bit about what I hope the game will look like and have in its details and mechanisms. This is because I am typing this immediately from memory and a few incoherent, illegible notes the evening after the session.

All this detail is fresh and if not typed now will doubtless be forgotten, hence the stream of consciousness style of narration. Hopefully by the time of the game it will have coalesced into a more coherent whole and the details will all be readily available for my compendium of colonies.

If all goes smoothly I hope to put the first version on at an all day venue sometime in late Spring/early Summer. The game will require around 20 people to run, of which around three or four will have to be umpires.

If you are interested in playing or umpiring then please let me know and I will try and give you plenty of advance warning of the intended date and your probable role.

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games, History

A Young Officer’s Guide to Fighting in Built Up Areas (FIBUA)

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Belgian soldiers during an exercise
Belgian soldiers during an exercise (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I promised that I would do a bit on Fighting In Built-Up Areas (FIBUA) because I thought that I would be able to add one or two bits of my experience to the pool. Because of laziness I thought that I would just provide the following extract from an Aide Memoire I acquired whilst an Officer Cadet.

There is much more from where this comes. Also possible is the section on Counter-Revolutionary Warfare (CRW), the chapter on use of artillery and the ever-useful Close Quarters Battle (“Fix Bayonets!”) chapter useful for those awkward occasions when you wake up to find that you’ve accidentally dug-in in the middle of an enemy position.

Chapter 11 – Fighting in Built Up Areas (FIBUA)

Following lessons learnt in the latter part of WWII where many young officers were killed, maimed, or lost the confidence of their men in house to house fighting it was decided that all officers had to be trained in the techniques of surviving FIBUA with their reputations intact. The following points should always be borne firmly in the front of your mind every time you and your men enter a Built Up Area (BUA).

Entering Buildings

MILES simulation (note the laser emitters atta...
MILES simulation (note the laser emitters attached to the rifles’ barrels, and the laser receptors on the soldiers’ helmets and harnesses). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Don’t run at a plywood door and then try to open it by giving it a good kick right in the middle. It is highly probable that your foot will go straight through the door. Not only is this uncomfortable it will not inspire confidence in your men. Let your platoon fool do this instead, it will be very good for morale.

2. When someone suggests that you stand atop a ladder while four of your men hold it and run at a first floor window remind them that you cannot adequately control the battle from atop a ladder and that your platoon sergeant would be a better candidate.

3. Don’t go in first, or second, third, fourth or fifth, in fact if possible wait until the building has been declared clear before going anywhere near it. Best of all is to sit a couple of hundred metres back and ask to have the village shelled flat for an hour or so before going in.

4. If you must go into a building avoid using holes anyone else has made – this includes doors and windows, especially doors. Always do it quickly with full auto selected, along with a nervous paranoiac disposition if you can manage it. (It must be stated that this cannot ever be real paranoia because the people in the building will be out to get you.)

5. Avoid windows with wire across them – wire tangles – the less said about this the better.

In the Building

1. Remember to give whoever is in the room you are about to enter the respect they deserve – at least one grenade and the contents of your magazine. This is where plenty of practice at the game “I bet I can empty my magazine faster than you” really pays off.

2. When you’re in a fortified house always remember that your helmet makes your head bigger (or your beret if you’re a Para) and avoid all those beams and ammo-box sangars inside the building. Especially worth remembering if your command post is set up under a table.

3. Whatever you do remember not to brew up with your hexy stove on wooden floorboards! If you need smoke then it’s much more effective to pop a signal grenade.

4. Keep all your smoke grenades inside your jacket, or at least securely taped up with the pins bent. Smoke indoors is an absolute bitch and the little buggers tend to catch on doorways, wire, etc and go off. If they do you need to wear a respirator or get out fast, neither is to be recommended.

5. When the building is safe stay in it, any excuse will do – local defence, protecting a flank, establishing an OP, setting up a Command Post, organising resupply, guarding prisoners, treating the wounded. All good officers should be able to think up something original and appropriate in order to let their men carry on without them. Besides, everyone knows what soldiers think of their officers and they would far rather they weren’t there. If all else fails a simple “Well done Sergeant – Carry on” will do the trick. It’s worked for generations, there is no reason why it should fail now for you. (Possible exception here being lack of intelligence on the part of Paras requiring their officers to actually lead them and thus risk their lives. Not a recommended course of action – but then anyone foolish enough to leave a perfectly serviceable aeroplane when it isn’t on the ground must be rather suspect.)

Leaving the Building

fibua1. Avoid if possible, if not use the back door. This is the only circumstance in which you should lead from the front. Make sure that you have identified some good cover within five metres or so of the door or window you intend to leave from. Once you have get up and run as fast as you can and dive for the cover rolling into it to present the smallest possible target. This will undoubtably have alerted the enemy and any poor sod that follows you will almost certainly get shot at, the more that follow you the higher their chance of being hit. Hence the advisability of leaving first.

2. When making your mad, frantic dash for cover remember that bushes can conceal barbed wire. Also watch out for loose cartridge cases, they tend to be very destabilising on concrete/roads. Going arse over tit will not do your reputation much good.

3. Remember to take all your kit with you, and tie it down so that you don’t lose it on the way out either. It can be rather frustrating to find that you have left your hip-flask behind, and one does not want to have to risk one’s life more than is necessary. If you leave something behind send a soldier back for it – they are expendable, you are not.

Being Outside

1. Don’t do it – unless you’re a few hundred metres back and have access to artillery. If you do then you can have some good fun – especially if you mix White Phosphorous (WP) with delay High Explosive (HE). The WP sets the buildings on fire and the delay either explodes inside them or weakens/collapses drains and cellars. It should be borne in mind that using WP for anti-personnel or incendiary purposes is against the Geneva Convention.

2. If you must be outside get in cover. Nowhere is truly open and if you can’t find cover you’re not scared enough. Puddles always lie in low ground. Gutters provide decent cover if you are being mortared or shelled, but bugger-all if it’s a sniper. Cars are okay, but most high-velocity rounds will go straight through them – although they’ll stop 9mm quite happily (at least on the way out). As high-velocity rounds go there is not much you can hide behind – an old fashioned stone built wall or building is your best bet. If it’s a fifty calibre machine-gun don’t bother hiding, just pray that he’s a lousy shot and none of the rounds come anywhere near you.

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