Big Wars: Grander Wargaming

Chapter One: Beyond Postmodern Wargaming

Should I have interjected, well, I will now, in part, how little progress we have made. Lest we forget how saddened Wells would be to see us playing on pathetic gaming mats instead of real Country. But, lessened would his sadness be by his joyous heart after seeing the wargaming tables at Forge World, for example. And I wonder how staggeringly excited he would be for, and shocked by, the truly massive Warhammer universe, but, we can only assume, he would care for the Lord of the Rings line or the army-type lines of Fantasy more than anything else, but, he may, of course, be unhappy with the scale, after all, the standardised six feet by 4 feet is small compared to an entire room.

I stand repeating, 'What hope do I hold in adding something new?' well, we must ask ourselves the following, 'What would it take to add something new?' One may assume, hypermodern wargaming since they have mastered postmodern wargaming. I suspect that the next stage of miniature wargaming may be found somewhere between postmodern and hypermodern wargaming.

Either way, we have come to the first problem of wargaming: size of the playing field. How do we have more in less space? You see, I do believe in having an entire universe to work with, but, filling a room is unacceptable, nor is a mere table, however. So, I ask, how does one have more space within less space? This is the first thing I should want to add.

I have created a game before, a board game based on the Chess board, it was very simple and boring after a few games, it felt pointless quickly since it lacked the complexity found in, say, Chess. You may have noted that Chess never bores you, for it has endless possibilities, great freedom and individual creativity, and it is fair, based on pure strategy and logic, three is no more chance. Yet, despite this, it is easy to learn, but naturally, impossibly difficult to master. We have come to the second problem of wargaming, which Wells himself noted and made great leaps in correcting: chance. Too much randomness or chance makes a game boring, annoying, and in the end, pointless. Wells rightfully noted this instantly. And now I find myself noting that even postmodern wargaming is heavily chance based, many games have chance based mechanics and most are determined by dice, many dice, and countless rolls of those dice. To me, this gives the same feeling, albeit mild, that its former state gave, I mean to say it can become boring, annoying, and even pointless.

The task we have is to merge in harmony the mechanics of Chess, that of pure strategy and logic, and individual freedom and creativity within tabletop wargames and to remove chance.

To tie in with Little Wars, I should say I have taken some of his wargaming rules as my own, such as when Wells states: 'We decided that one player should plan and lay out the Country, and the other player choose from which side he would come.' When I read this, I found it sounded an equal idea, so I took it on board, this may mean to suggest that one will or ought to follow the rule verbatim, but nonetheless, taking it on board to use in part is key. And, I would, like others have, disregard some of his rules or use the exact opposite as a general rule.

Too, I struggled with something else Wells struggled with, that the game should not be so logical and careful that it would be endless and thus boring and, again, pointless without a decisive finish. So we come to the third problem of wargaming: reward and risk over a short amount of time to give a solid finish. Most postmodern tabletop wargames have mapped this out. But they are still postmodern and nothing beyond that. We may pause here, for much work is to be done.

How long ought a game be regardless of other factors and so forth, one hour, two hours, three hours, more? How long ought the setup or outset take, two minutes, ten minutes, more, or in Wells style of unlimited time for the outset? What if the setup was a vital part of the gameplay, would this, in turn, make a long time period acceptable? And just how much risk ought to be involved with regards to being able to achieve victory, I wonder, would this not create chance? Or, perhaps, it is merely finding the correct balance between risk and reward to give it what we may call 'fair chance'. Indeed, how is overall fair chance made? Does dice inherently create randomness and chance or is there a way to have pure strategy with dice? If it is strategy we want, and dice proves impossible for this format, then what do we use in place of dice? What dictates the movements and turns and attacks and so forth, cards, spinners, mathematics, measurement by square grid? Should it be a hex grid? How close to real or assumed warfare should wargaming be? What of taking prisoners? What climax should the game have, Wells' tested climax of getting to the back line of the enemy, the standardised style of killing all enemies, or taking ideas from Chess, such as getting one piece to the back line or capturing a particular piece? Maybe one could have modes of style, where you have the standardised way of battle as the primary gameplay and then you would have many others such as those listed. What victory would there be and to what end? Would a scoring system be wise? What deployment system would be in place to ensure equality of both players? Indeed, could there be more than two players in either a primary or secondary role? Could there be intervals if the game is too long, like Wells' games of Little Wars and old Chess matches? Let us answer these in the next chapter.