Re: Very Large Scale Wargames

From: tommyk@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Tommy Kelly)

Date: Fri, 22 Jun 1990 13:10:37 +0000

In article <1990Jun20.171524.19663@cs.umn.edu> thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley) writes:
>
>[Discussion of a miniatures campaign covering all of WWII omitted.]
>
>This seems overambitious to me.  The problem of map movement to contact
>followed by minis in WWII is that forces are in contact over such a wide
>range of time and space.

This is only one of many problems, but I'm sure its soluble.
Obviously a high proportion of table:map movement would force the map moves
to be made on a monthly (or more) basis.  However if only a small number
of map contacts were translated to the table then I think it is
possible.  In other words the default method of resolving a map conflict
would be to use map rules.  But under certain conditions a particularly
interesting conflict could be blown up to table scale.

>
>I would recommend looking at some of the following:
>
>_World_in_Flames_, Australian Design Group.  This is the only commercial
>game I can remember (aside from SPI's unplayable _Global_War_) covering all
>of World War II with land, air, and sea units.

I checked this out over the weekend.  It looks promising.
On a general note - how expensive are these board games in the U.S.?

World-in-Flames is about 25 pounds here (~$40)
Squad-Leader is similar.
ASL is around $48 and Module 1 is nearer $64 - do these compare?

I'd like to try out some of these, but I can only afford one or two.

Could someone describe the merits of:

World-in-Flames
Squad Leader
Adv. Squad Leader
Panzer Leader

How does ASL fit ino a very-large-scale game?
How is ASL for tank warfare?

>
>_Command_Decision_, GDW.  This is a set of miniatures rules for WWII that
>might be of interest.  In its rerelease, it includes rules to play Operation
>Barbarossa in miniature.

This is also interesting, although I've recently bought a different but similar
(and cheaper) rule set -"Korps Kommander".

>
>My last advice is not to get too ambitious, at least at first.  Too many of
>these things get frustrating and are then abandoned.  Also, games with
>significant land/sea/air interactions are *very* easy to bog down.

I am concerned about this too.  Regardless of what happens, I'm going
to buy a decent AH-type game to start to get used to the general
principles.  It may be that my ideal game is not possible...I'll wait and
see.

Thanks for the input ... keep it coming.

tommy

References

Very Large Scale Wargames
tommyk@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Tommy Kelly)
Tue, 19 Jun 1990 16:18:22 +0000
Re: Very Large Scale Wargames
thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley)
Wed, 20 Jun 1990 17:15:24 +0000