Brian Train has an interesting post up on Guerrilla Checkers (which I’ve covered here) being used in the training of real life officers:

He reported that it went over well, but as so often happens with this sort of thing a lot of time is spent in explaining the game to people who are unfamiliar with manual games (even though this one has extremely short rules, and the mechanics are derived from two existing ones, it is different) and getting them to play it less gingerly.

It’s true that there has been a tremendous shift in the culture in the past couple of decades. Math teachers can’t take it for granted that students will even be familiar with playing cards or even the foundational “two six sided dice” of Monopoly sets. Still, while the idea of actual soldiers struggling to master a checkers variant is hard to accept, this game really is about as counter-intuitive as they come. It’s going to take a several games for even a die hard gamer to get the hang of it!

Meanwhile, over at The Players’ Aid, Alexander has a review of GMT’s Sekigahara:

I love this game because there’s no number crunching and there’s few minutia to get hung up on, you just kind of have to be gutsy and go out there and fight, and run across the board to capture the resource points. Turtling does you nothing, because you will not have enough points at the end to win.

That sounds like the sweet spot for the sort of complexity level I can handle at the moment. When your primary opponent is thirteen years old, there are limits to how much complexity you can bring to the table. Strangely enough, those limits seem to evaporate if the theme is the sort of thing they’re into, in which case there seems to be no limit to the amount of detail they’re willing to endure!

What if you want to play a miniatures battle with an eleven year old…? Warren Abox has gotten ahold of a one page ruleset called Warstuff!

This is just the sort of game that I’ve been looking for, given that my normal mode of play is essentially solo-play with the added sandbag of helping my young opponent understand the rudiments of strategy and tactics. Much as I’d love something deeper and more complex, you really do need an opponent who can help you remember the fiddly bits and rule exceptions that more rigorous rulesets demand.

Read the whole thing!™

—

PaxSims (Simulations)

• Noise in the gray zone: more findings from an Atlantic Council crisis simulation (10/14/16)
• Duke University: “Gaming in support of the Middle East peace process” (October 20) (10/12/16)
• 2016 NATO urban wargame: first impressions (10/12/16)
• RAND video on (wargaming) Russia and the Baltics (10/10/16)
• Last Turn Madness: Jim Wallman on megagames (10/10/16)
• C-WAM: Center for Army Analysis Wargaming Analysis Model (10/06/16)

—

Inside GMT (GMT Games)

• The Pendragon Chronicles Vol. 3 – Counter-Raider Warfare (10/18/16)
• MBT Example of Play (Part 1): Basic Game AP Combat (10/15/16)
• Two Good Years Out of Seven: The View from Paris After a Game of The Seven Years War: Frederick’s Gamble (10/13/16)
• First Time Into The Maze: Beginner Strategy in Labyrinth: Awakening (10/11/16)
• Terrain in Skies Above the Reich (10/07/16)
• B&T Biweekly Issue #3: Action Tokens Part 3 — Full Action Round Example: French & Indian Rampage, British Resilience (10/05/16)

—

Castalia House (Wargames)

• SCENARIO DESIGN: The Last Ten Percent (10/14/16)
• WARGAME WEDNESDAY: Crisis: 2000, A Game of Fourth Generation War (10/12/16)
• BattleTech and Do-It-Yourself Gaming (10/07/16)

—

Ludic Futurism (Brian Train)

• Playing the Recent Past: presentation to UVic class (10/13/16)
• Guerrilla Checkers at Sandhurst! (10/13/16)

—

VASSAL (News)

• Update: Moscow ’41 (10/12/16)

—

War in a Box (Warren Abox)

• Dicks Out (10/17/16)
• Quick Hit: Kid Stuff (10/14/16)
• Wargaming Report: One Page Rules (10/10/16)

—

The Players Aid (Grant A. Kleinhenz)

• “To the last, I grapple with thee…” – AAR for Scenario #9 Rush to Contact for Combat Commander: Europe by GMT Games (10/18/16)
• Review: Colossal Arena by Fantasy Flight Games (10/18/16)
• Interview with Lee Brimmicombe-Wood Designer of Wing Leader: Supremacy 1943-1945 by GMT Games (10/17/16)
• Best 3 Games with…Combat! (10/14/16)
• Unboxing Osprey Games’ Escape from Colditz (10/14/16)
• A Look at Strategy and Tactics for the Russians in Combat Commander by GMT Games (10/14/16)
• Best 3 Games with…Pick-up & Deliver! (10/12/16)
• Interview with Grant Rodiek Designer of Cry Havoc by Portal Games (10/11/16)
• 10 Games that taunt me from Essen Spiel 2016! (10/10/16)
• Review: Sekigahara – GMT’s latest P500 (10/10/16)