(TFT) Thoughts and random musings on TFT wargame

[Rick Smith <rsmith@lightspeed.ca>]

  I have long been a fan of wargames & really 
liked the idea that Lords of the Underearth 
(LotU) could represent PC's in a company sized
game.

  As discussed in my previous post I talked 
about one of the primary problems about such
a game: the scale.  I see 3 major decisions 
that will affect the design of the game:

1) The Scale.  Two should work, 1 hex = 21 m,
or 1 hex = 55 meters.  The smaller hexes are 
more personal but limit the system to small
battles.

2) Use hex and cardboard or a block system.
Discussed below.

3) Complexity.  If you want parties of 4 to 7
adventures to be able to impose their strengths
and 'personality' in the game (rather than just
adding a +2 to some unit's combat factor) then
you need more chrome.  

  (Chrome is a term that means adding extra 
rules that make the game more realistic or 
interesting but are not part of the direct 
game flow.)


  BLOCKS:
  I have become a big fan of the block games
such as "Wizard Kings", "Hammer of the Scotts"
or "Europe Engulfed".  They use wooden blocks 
standing on edge to give fog of war and show
partial elimination of units.  If you have
not played a wargame for a few years, you 
might try one of these.  They are really fun
and far less complex than many of the Avalon
Hill or Simulation Publications Inc. (SPI) 
games.  

  As I said, a simple fast TFT wargame modeled
on Wizard Kings (WK), could be good.  The main
problem is that these games tend to group large 
groups of people together.  For example, most 
games that fight WWII in Europe have counters 
representing divisions.  Europe Engulfed or
War in the East use ~1/7 as many hexes and 
units are at the corp or army level.  

  Since each unit, shipped in the game box, is 
considerably more expensive the games ship with 
fewer units.  Because the number of units is 
~1/7 or 1/10 the hex and cardboard games they 
play faster.  I am over simplifying here of
course...  Europe Engulfed (EE) has simple 
combat rules but there are so many turns for
the full campaign it takes all day.

  
  You could of course make a block game with 
units representing very small units, but as
the unit size shrinks, you get more and more
direct observation of the enemy and the fog
of war you get from block games becomes less
important / realistic.  Also if you have a 
big battle with each unit being 50 men, then
you can end up with a LOT of blocks.

  In a hex and cardboard game, it is easy to
add new units.  (I added plenty of new units
to my OGRE / GEV set.)  The players can cut
out some card stock, draw a counter for their
squad, and a few game sessions later (after
paying to have their wizard be taught a bunch
of new, high IQ spells) upgrade the magic 
level for their squad from a 'D' to 'C' by 
tossing the old counter and adding a new one.  
This is a major advantage to hex and cardboard, 
the expense is less and it is easier to modify.


  In summary the low counter density and 
fog of war are attractive for block games. 
The expense of blocks are the major 
disadvantage of them.

  (Note: Columbia Games polled their fans 
about using cheaper plastic blocks instead of
the handsome wooden one.  The fans over -
whelmingly preferred the wooden blocks.  But
if any you know of someone who sells colored 
plastic blocks about 1 * 2 * 2 cm for a low
price please let me know.)


  RULE COMPLEXITY:
  When I was a kid, the bigger more realistic
the rules the better (almost).  I had lots of
free time and could spend the time to master
and enjoy complex rules.  Now a days, simple
rules are important as I may only play a game
a couple times a year and relearning tough
rules every time is a pain.

  Now, the way rules become simple is that you
aggregate many different things into a simple
number.  There are less special rules for the
interesting rare cases.  There are fewer game
phases so each turn plays faster.  

  However, a goal of this game is that a small
group of tough fighters can affect a battle 
with several hundred people on a side (in at
least a small way).  If you want to be able to
detect that THIS squad has a better wizard and
THAT squad has awesome archers you need some
fine grained rules.

  
  HEX SCALE:
  As discussed below, the 21 m hexes are better
in almost all ways except many battles or 
interest to fantasy games (attacking a castle)
require maps that huge if we we limit ourselves
to 21 meter hexes.  Hexes 2.645 times as big 
also suffer from this problem but 2.645 times
less.  Block games tend to have a lot fewer 
hexes on them.  (A WK map has ~50 hexes where
as most wargames have maps with over 500 hexes.)


  I have more to write but I'm out of time
right now.  Any comments?

  Warm regards, Rick.
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