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Weekender XLBS: The Element Of Surprise
March 1, 2020 by dignity
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Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday Folks 🙂
So I’ve been thinking more about the deployment mini game we were discussing. Specifically thinking about how a military leader duped the enemy through lighting campfires etc.
It got me pondering decoys (heck the allies used inflatable tanks before dday) and should decoys be part of the system.
If you have decoys then I would imagine spys would be the counter balance to that.
Opens some interesting possibilities, the key is… are they fun? how not to make them convoluted?
If we have ideas, how do you want us to get them to you?
Feel free to post here mate or PM me 🙂
I think ‘Chain of Command’ and ‘Clash of spears’ have interesting mechanics that allow for semi-hidden deployment without creating too many additional rules.
Maybe this is where the back of the unit cards can be used ?
One side is the ‘deployment’ phase, which has generic stats and limited options.
The other side is the regular unit card which gets used as soon as enemy units ‘see’ each other (this could be a card draw with bonuses to establish initiative).
Give each player a few extra ‘fake’ cards to make the initial approach a bit more exciting.
Maybe certain commanders or unit types allow for bonus deployment cards ?
Things like the decoy tanks were planned at a strategic level so far above the level the average skirmish game exists at that it’s best done through scenarios or some sort of campaign system.
I’ve always loved written orders/map movement games. Rather than locking down units automatically when within a certain range I think a spotting roll to identify a unit which then must deploy would be better. I would also add in dummy units as per Clash of Spears and tons of other rulesets have to add a bit more confusion which us never a bad thing in a wargame
@warzan If you can find it Advanced wargames by Donald Featherstone is a great read as are any of the books by him,Grant,Young and Bath. A lot of today’s ground breaking new sytems and rules were probably thought if by these guys 50 to 60 years ago
Little note on the corona virus.
I have already received a couple of mails from KS that the production/shipping will be delayed for some time to not sure when it will be delivered because the production is slowed or stopped.
Here in Belgium it is the same, people who came from China, Korea and a couple of other countries in that region or Northern Italy have to stay home for 2 weeks.
XLBS was always one of my favourite shows, but unfortunately I have had to give up watching them as unlike all other videos you put out I seem to spend more time watching the buffering circle than i do the show. I did persevere for a while but to spend over three hours watching a 1 1/2 hour show is to much. Does anyone else have this problem?
Where on the planet are you based mate?
Bear with us we may have to rethink Vimeo anyway…
I have a similar problem, in the middle of Victoria, Australia. I often wait till the day after to get a more settled viewing.
What quality do you watch it at?
I’m using 4G data exclusively at the moment, and I *always* dial the video quality down to 360p minimum. Since doing that, it never freezes. When trying to watch at 1080 or 720 it would often freeze
Happy Sunday, I love the smell of XLBS in the morning!
Happy Sunday!
With any luck the current health scare will give the Pangolin a break; they’ve been ‘hunted’ for use in Chinese medicine for years and have become endangered. I put ‘hunted’ in quotes as they roll up in a ball when threatened and can be picked up and put in a bag.
As a D&D monster that would be interesting to play about with if a giant version became an armoured ball able to control its direction…
I was thinking Stratego like rather than Battleships… all about hidden information.
In games where deployment involves attackers and defenders (e.g. FoW) how about if the attacker has a recon value/roll that reveals the location of a certain percentage of the defenders force, but other units are unknown or even in reserve. A number of tokens can then be placed many of which are decoys but some are units or minefields.
I’m all for moving tokens on or off board to represent fog of war until contact reveals the situation; anything but “I deploy a unit then you deploy a unit…” (yawn)
My favorite show atm is definetly Gerry Can , how awesome is he ? Who can fix your missing KOW 2 player starter set prize ? Gerry Can of course , it arrived a few days ago thanks so much for chasing it up for me Gerry I shall be doing a Northern alliance / Evil twin army in your honour . Game looks awesome btw . Thanks again ❤?
sorry for the mix up and the delay, glad it’s arrived. Time to break out the snow foxes and get to stabbing!
On the element of surprise, this is what I always think of:
https://youtu.be/7xhiQgtyMH8
Now back to the XLBS
Regarding hidden movement and maps, the Admiralty Trilogy games (especially Command at Sea and Harpoon) use maps initially while fleets search for each other. Players plot their ships’ movement on map sheets while a game master has a master map, telling players when they can roll for radar detection and the like. When one fleet detects the other, they have a real opportunity for surprise, opening fire, launching aircraft or missiles. The target fleet has no opportunity to respond until they detect something, acting on their currently plotted orders. That provides a true element of surprise. It gets really intense in WWII submarine/convoy scenarios.
I can see the coronavirus having an impact in two areas, supply chain and events. In areas that are in lockdown then retail units will probably see a drop in sales. At my company we do a raft of events throughout the year and if most are cancelled it’ll have a major effect on the business, as a big chunk of sales are generated at those events.
The big problem we have in the UK are the zero hour contracts, because a lot of those people won’t be able to afford to go into self isolation, so many will probably still go to work with mild symptoms.
The US is worse due to the costs of medical care, one person who was recently quarantined and given a negative result was handed a $3000 bill for medical treatment. That’s going to prevent a lot of people coming forward with early symptoms. Also many will carry on going to work because they can’t afford not to.
So I think it’ll have a big impact if there is a major outbreak in the West. I’ve no doubt the outbreak in China has already affected the supply chain.
Happy Sunday! Interesting show. Congrats to the Golden Button winners and well done Warren for shutting down the app chat.. Pencil and paper for the win!
Great show.
First @warzan the greatest old wargaming book is “Napoleons Campaigns in Miniature” you want the one with the purple cover. If you can’t find it I may or may not know where to get a free pdf.
The battle you’re talikng about is Trebia. Lake Trassimani is the Campfire one and it’s the only battle in History where an Army fully ambushed another army.
The Roman Maniples/Centuries were super OP because they could move and react so quickly. Anyone else getting hit in a flank was very very bad, in fact quite a few Ancient battles ended as soon as one side was able to get that envelopment. Caesar v Labenus at Munda is a perfect example (Check out Historia Civilis on Youtube for more).
I dislike removing the maneuver phase and making it blind. You simply cannot hide an army unless you’re ambushing someone. Julius Caesar is seen as one of the best Generals of all time and yet during actual battles he’s not really doing much. He was one of if not the master of the pre Battle. Caesar was an expert at moving his men to the perfect positions then just letting his Centurions do their jobs like they’re paid to do.
To remove the visible units from the table is just inaccurate to what we see in History.
Napoleon at War has a cool system of units projecting ontrol bubbles around them. For your game you could give units a Zone of Control and if you’re outside an enemies ZoC then you can double your movement. Then you can get really Historical and have units cancel out enemy zones. So you can have a skirmish screen impede the enemy but if you engage them with your own skirmishers they lose this bonus. That way you can simulate the old school skirmish screens.
Baking in an element of surprise.
At a unit level as the guys discussed there are a fair number of examples from different game systems and genres already out there.
A heads up fight using the battleship board method seems fairly pointless unless you give some serious terrain buffs. Most I imagine would likely keep their force together in a single block laid out in a manner that best protects the more vulnerable assets.
Moving into scenarios tied to this method of pre-game build up in campaigns has me far more interested. Although I think you have scaled it for the proposed battlefield and believe a larger map would be better.
In a campaign setting commanders could pick ROM (routes of march), OOM (orders of march) and the opposing player would have to select staging points, camps and scout assets to spot the enemy force in a larger map setting. The strategic deployment of the intercepting forces would then be more critical, having to move out to make contact and decisions made whether to send faster troops ahead to delay. The potential of being outnumbered is a risk, whilst the slower troops came on in later turns from the table edge their lines of march dictated. Not to do this could also then mean the force passes through without being intercepted and the campaign put at risk, lots of potential for fun and games on a ‘big picture scale’.
A nice mental example of this would be from Last of Mohicans when the British left the fort.
Their order of march walked them into an ambush, their route one likely to have been taken due to the topography and lack of perceived enemies. Time could also be a motivator needing to meet a ship or other objective.
The big however for me though is this feels more like a campaign tool rather than a single game tool. The potential for forces and their disposition to be so mismatched as to have set an almost impossible to win scenario is a real danger. In a campaign these single battles can be offset over time but in one off scenarios you may find your games ended abruptly when games objectives are no longer achievable.
Worse this sort of addition firmly moves you into the rulebook area as many won’t have even used a similar system to have an underlying understanding of the mechanics.
Just the fact you know the pointage and likely make up of the enemy force takes away a lot of the surprise away, so maybe a card system listing what force you have available and separate hidden objective cards for each force would add an element of surprise. Neither would know the others force size prior to the game or it’s objective during the game. Again though I think this fits more into Campaigns.
Your “Achtung” is good but “Minen” is pronounced “mean-en”
Kind regards, Some Dude On YouTube
Happy Sunday … hidden deployment sucks … not my kind of game at all.
Probably not what you’re after but something which might be interesting to do:
Have two web cams set up on the board and the two players in separate rooms each watching one feed. The cams should be positioned where the general of the army the watching player would be stationed in a real battle. Each player then has a helper who is the one actually moving the units and this helper acts as a runner and each turn the general has a set amount of time to give the runner instructions to carry out and the general players have to do this based on what they can see through their cam. The runners can also be allowed to pass back limited information to represent messengers reporting in.
As for the idea put forth in the show, I think instead of scribbling things down on maps, maybe use tokens which you move around and once a token enters range you flip it to show what unit it corresponds to then place the unit. And if the unit ever leaves, you then remove it from play and replace its token. Also, if you’re doing this, maybe consider instead of a grid, using hexes and buying a modular hex board like the tile system Kallistra sells.
Good afternoon all,
The Iwo Jima Valor & Victory game is running today at 1PM EST / 6PM GMT.
We’ll be looking at “E” Company, 2/28th Marines, trying to scale the eastern slope of Mount Suribachi against elements of 312th Independent Infantry Battalion, 2nd Mixed Brigade, 109th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Check out the Sitrep Podcast Channel on YouTube or Twitch:
Sitrep YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrsewixu9dXUIMTQKJYPuEQ
Sitrep Twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/sitreppodcast/
a great Iwo Jima podcast Jim.
Melbourne is misspelt, if that has an impact on the code.
It does have a minor impact, but you should be able to work out the destination anyway.
I also like the way that clash of spears handles the deployment using tokens on the battlefield to denote units with some decoy ones. If you had spies then it would give the opportunity to flip over a token and find out what that represented – whether it be a unit of heavy cavalry or a decoy. You’d need to think about when to play the spy – too late and there isn’t very much you can do about your deployment to adapt to the information.
happy Sunday folks.
the pangolin looks like a mobile fir cone?
is that not a school of arms? @warzan
a great XLBS show Guys.
Various observations-
Roman Numerals:
VIC = 94
DC = 600
only addition and subtraction. no multiplication
Flanking:
The smaller the unit, the more susceptible it is to flanking.
Armys get surround. They have the manpower to face many directions at the same time. Smaller units do not.
2 boxes in the ring circle each other to get on their opponents flank…
Rules:
I know Warren doesn’t want to have a rule book. Cool. But, every week there are more and more note cards in his game. Perhaps he should bind them together, so they don’t get mixed up or lost…
Surprise:
If you are using an Umpire, then the options are tremendous. There are all sorts of opportunities for hidden movement, ambush, surprises, partial intel, false intel. useless intel, partial engagements, hold until reinforced. Just about endless.
Trying to integrate surprise depends a lot on the era or technology levels of the opposing forces.
In the black powder era Muskets and Tomahawks uses sighting distances based on terrain, weather and unit type combined with tokens that move that may or may not be actual units.
In the Alien vs Predator board game, there are blip tokens moving around the ship but each force has different rules when their token is revealed.
There’s an old Avalon Hill game called Napoleon that was an operational level game of the Waterloo campaign. Units were simple wooden blocks placed so that you couldn’t see the unit type until you moved into the same area. You might figure out that a rapidly moving group of units might be cavalry but it could be infantry doing a forced march. And that infantry doing a forced march might be moving fast but it ran the risk of losing strength due to stragglers not being able to keep up.
Another Avalon Hill game that covered naval combat was Jutland. It had a mode where the fleets plotted out there movement on a hex map. We did a scenario where we mapped out our whole movement for the game then revealed the maps simultaneously. When the compared maps and plotted the interception points and played out those battles.
That Pangilona thing is crazy! Also, I deploy hidden and roll D10+5 ×8 Corona virus-bombs from a Techpriest off table.
Can you check the sound levels on the mikes, post studio change Jerry and Justin have a tendency to sound quiet/faint compared to Warren who sounds loud by comparison. I notice it most when I’m listening at nite and am trying to keep the volume low. Otherwise love the show, even If there were no cream pies this week!!!
@warzan: What if both sides would deploy as counters. Then when a counter moved within “X” range of an enemy counter both units would be revealed. You could have units that have a special ability to spot units at a longer range. You could also give leaders a special ability that allows them to deploy extra fake counters.
I’ve been enjoying the development you rules and I had a few thoughts:
If you wanted to be able to hit a unit in the side/rear then you could delay the combat resolution until the end of the round, the facing would be set for the units in the initial contact and then other units could be added during the rest of the turn (provided you had any activations left), this would also allow you to pile extra units in and maybe allow a group of smaller units to overwhelm a larger one. Also you could allow light cav to hit and run, in that their combat would be resolved immediately.
On the surprise side of things you could allow units previously in reserve to enter from the side to feature outflanking but the number of activations spent to bring them on could be high and additionally they could arrive damaged to represent being caught be off table forces or a dangerous mountain pass they have had to travel through.
Last thought on the disposition maybe being near the commander to help recover this and being further away means it decreases even if you haven’t taken any losses. Changing this distance between types of army might help flavour the different forces and also give you a focal point and allows the commander to influence the fight without resorting to herohammer.
The element of surprise segment was really interesting and gives plenty of food for thought.
I know I’m probably alone in this, but can we make the part of the show that you discuss this game your creating smaller? Maybe more “Gerry can” more Loyd terrain projects, more News, more anything else? I know I can just fast forward through but I try to listen cause your putting so much effort into it. Just tell me at some point you will move on from this….please!