Reviews of Wargaming Books

Review of Blood and Guts, Wargaming World War Two

Review of Grand Battery Napoleonic

Philip Sabin Simulating war, studying conflict through simulation games

ISBN 978-1-4411-8558-7. 363 pages. hardback.

Book Review of Phil Sabin’s (2012) Simulating War Studying Conflict Through Simulation Games

As someone who has edited and written more wargaming books than most, I am always pleased when a new book says something original about wargaming. This book has a message. The message is micro board wargames are good for education and training. This book argues the case that wargames, in particular manual board games, are an invaluable tool for examining tactical and operational military history. The best of these games are worthy of inclusion of any study of military history.

The first part of the book is a summary of the academic potential of wargaming techniques. The value of games to education and training is indisputable in the academic and business world. Phil takes that view and argues that wargaming can be used as tool to understand military history, supporting this with some academic evidence and his own experiences of using games as part of his teaching of military history at Kings College London.

The second part of the book is a straightforward guide to building simple ‘micro-board games’. These are games that are smaller than even the smallest of commercial ‘folio’ type board games. Small and simple enough to be used as part of a two hour teaching session. Building on the work of Peter Perla’s Art of Wargaming and James Dunnigan’s The Complete Wagames Handbook, the book offers a recipe for analysing historical conflicts and distilling them into a board game format.

The third part of the book gives a number of worked examples of such micro-board games. It includes games from the ancient world and World War II. There are also two tactical games; one about a battalion attack in WWII and the other about a company level assault on a built up area. The latter is still relevant to modern conflict. Although one could cut up the colour plates in the book to play the games, most people will download the game components from the book’s web site and print them themselves or use play them on the computer using the free Cyberbox software.

The book may not appeal to all parts of the disparate hobby of wargaming. Some miniature (figure) gamers are sometimes overly keen with their mental model of wargaming that is based around a game with realistic terrain features using miniature figures to represent every battle. Such miniature wargamers may ‘scratch their heads’ about the large number of references to classic board games within this book.

Board gamers have often spent years developing their skills on a variety of complex simulation and so they may look upon the games within the book as too simple for their own tastes. Personally, I would hope they will be inspired by the book to take their wargaming to the next level and start to develop their own board games. The act of creating one’s own game is a very interesting learning experience and one that Donald Featherstone, and the other early pioneers, would all thoroughly approve of.

Professional wargaming, practised by the military, is largely insular and inward looking. Many of these professional wargamers are in apparent ignorance of the wider developments of the commercial and hobby wargaming, so some of these professionals will see little relevance to any book giving examples that are not from the immediate past, current operations or probable immediate future. However, attitudes can change. The British Army has recently started doing study tours of the 1944 Battle for Normandy and the American military has a long tradition of scholarship about military history that is often the envy of other nations. The American armed forces have long placed great value on studying military history as an essential part of the education for their potential senior commanders. Many of the books by recent American commanders make reference to historical strategies which demonstrates they have at least a passing knowledge of military history.

The book is clearly a work of scholarship, but what will the wider academic community make of the book? Phil’s writes in a lively accessible way, using many anecdotes from his own experience. This is in contrast to the many academic text books that are written in a style as ‘dry as dust’. A purely academic book would have had more on games theory (and less on practical examples) and would have included some quantitative studies of the impact of using board games for studying military history compared with traditional teaching methods (supported with statistics and graphs). I have used such games in my own teaching and I have no doubt they encourage ‘active’ and ‘deep’ learning. Many teachers struggle with using games in their teaching. Games are outside their comfort zone, games (especially ones created by the teacher) may apparently ‘fail’ or descend into lively chaos. My own experience is that such failures do not matter, the students always find the games interesting and rewarding, even if the game does not actually work that well. However, this book is aimed at the wider world of wargaming rather than just the tiny world of academic wargames.

I can whole heartedly recommend this new book to anyone who is looking to develop their understanding of wargaming. Developing wargames is great fun and this book will help get started on that path.

John Curry, Editor of the History of Wargaming Project.

Blood and Guts, Rules, Tactics and Scenarios for Wargaming World War Two

by David Hall

ISBN 978-1-4620-2556-5. 354 pages. Softcover. Also available in hard back

Book Review of Blood and Guts (2011) by John Curry and Donald Featherstone December 2011

One of the perks of the History of Wargaming is receiving books and rules to review. Opening a new wargaming book by an author just arrived on the publishing scene is always exciting. This book is written by David Hall and is subtitled Rules, Tactics and Scenarios for Wargaming World War Two. The book contains a set of rules, descriptions on tactics, sample scenarios and a detailed explanation of the reasoning behind the rules.

The book portrays unit level warfare, including infantry, tanks, armour and airpower. The rules use section level bases (Morschauser style) rather than the individual figure method used by many currently popular wargaming rules (Featherstone style). An interesting feature is the rolling for initiative in each movement phase and then rolling separately for who fires first (a method first used by Lionel Tarr, in his classic Tarr Rules). This can lead to a very dynamic game, particularly suitable for a solo wargamer (as Lionel Tarr was). The rules use D6, D8, D10, D12 and D20 which could be seen as an unnecessary complication, but the different dice have their purpose in the game. The rules have some standard features, such as rolls to hit and saving rolls, but they do have some interesting twists.

Both reviewers noted the +1 on the mortar/ artillery rolls for each turn they fire at the same target. Thus reflecting the historical effect of fire as it is adjusted on to the target. The flame thrower rules include hits which destroy the tanks in 1 to 2 turns. This is correct as it can take time for the flames to disable a tank rather than the instant hit/ no hit in most low level rules. Tanks can be assaulted by infantry sections, discouraging individual tanks from moving to far away from their supporting infantry. It is also necessary for units to spot the enemy who have not yet fired on them, the rules make it historically hard for tanks to observe dug in anti-tank guns and infantry. The fire combat is pretty bloody and infantry in the open will be massacred if facing machine guns. Section level bases allow for national characteristics to be portrayed in the game; such as Italian units are weak, Japanese units are more willing to close assault tanks etc.

There are many very well done sets of very glossy rules out there, what makes this book interesting? The rules are comprehensive, section level bases and give a fast game in many ways more realistic than some of the popular commercial rules out there. However, both of us agreed that what was most interesting was the rules reflected the experience of a veteran. David Hall served in the Marine Corps.

The book is a good read, particularly for the sort of wargamer who likes to write their own rules or think about the reasoning behind wargaming rules.

The book is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble (Online.)

John Curry is the Editor of the History of Wargaming Project www.wargaming.co

Donald Featherstone is one of the founding of modern wargaming with over 65 books on wargaming and military history.

Grand Battery a guide & rules for Napoleonic Wargames

by Jon Sutherland and Diane Canwell

ISBN 978 1 84415 943 9. 130 pages approx, £20, hardback.

I was a little surprised to be asked to review the first of a new range of wargaming books by Pen and Sword Books, perhaps I should not have been.

The authors are husband and wife team, who have written a number of military history books; they also run a residential wargaming centre in Norfolk. The hardback book is produced to a good standard, as one would expect from Pen and Sword books, full of images, packed full of information and including a new set of wargaming rules Grand Battery.

The book has an introduction to European warfare 1792 to 1815 and discusses the armies. It was good to see that the weapons and tactics chapter covered more than the usual British/ French focus of many books covering the period. My stereotype is that standard Napoleonic books have pages devoted to British and French tactics and then a paragraph at the end saying the Austrians, Russians etc. had similar tactics. This work is much better balanced between the armies of the protagonists.

The Grand Battery Wargaming Rules are designed for the divisional level Napoleonic battle, though they will work for army games. They use a card driven activation system for corps, with each corps having a card in a shuffled pack. Their sequence of activation, movement and firing is determined by the drawing of the cards. The authors implementation of the card activation system has an interesting twist, the other player can challenge once a turn based on their leadership rating. This represents a commander attempting to seize the initiative back.

The rules aim to portray the battle from the divisional commander’s perspective, with emphasise on commander’s ratings, unit training and experience, giving orders, defenders resolve and morale. The rules are detailed, but are well explained and are supported by playing aids and play sheets. I have tried the rules and they work fine.

Like all academic reviewers, I realise the need to be pedantic to demonstrate whatever academic reviewers are trying to do by being pedantic. The contents page has two of the chapters in the wrong order. The excellent photographs lack captions to explain what they show. The Bibliography omits the key work on Napoleonic Wargaming Paddy Griffith’s Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun (but perhaps as the editor of the latter work, I was bound to say that). I could ramble on for several pages saying my whim would be add another paragraph here, or subtract a paragraph there, but there is no need. The book is a good piece of scholarship, with an interesting set of rules for representing the divisional level Napoleonic battle. I like it and have no hesitation in recommending it to my fellow enthusiasts.

The book is available from link

John Curry, Editor of the History of Wargaming Project April 2011