Wargames Illustrated 374

The latest issue of Wargames Illustrated crossed my path this week and, having had a perusal, I thought it worthy of comment. You see, the December issue has a piece about Warlord Games latest cash grab, Cruel Seas and as I have more than a passing interest in naval warfare, the article piqued my curiosity.

So, Cruel Seas, a new boardgame  wargame that centres on small scale naval actions in World War 2. The starter pack costs £50 and for that princely sum, you get 10 1:300th scale plastic vessels and all the gubbins including the rules to get you going. Think MTB's and E-Boats and there you have it. Needless to say, there are expansions planned but I'll get to those in a moment. As a gift, WI also includes either two MTB's or two E-Boats on sprues, worth about £6 if you go by the flotilla prices on the Warlord Games website. They're not bad, but my better half (who doesn't wargame at all) did comment that they looked like something out of a cereal packet - I can see her point.

Coming to some cornflakes near you soon???

So, onto the article and it sets the scene and describes a game played at Warlord HQ in some detail, reading like a very long infomercial, truth be told. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing as it means I have no interest in buying the game even though the period is of interest. Let me explain.

The play through guides us through the familiar Bolt Action dice system used by Cruel Seas, ship movement and weapons firing. The scenario they use is one of the simpler ones suggested by the rule set and it does seem to play quite quickly, though they don't half like their dice throwing. The torpedo attack described uses a total of 17(!) dice to ascertain one hit and its effect. True, one dice to determine whether the torpedo was a dud or not but 16 for effect. All I can ask is why? I know some rules use buckets of dice (Tactica being one that I have played but I can see why, one dice per figure, you have lots of figures, therefore lots of dice) but it seems to me that the "need" for 16 dice to determine the effect of one hit is plain overkill and extremely gamey. I don't think that you need that many dice and I don't wargame purely for the dice throwing. Never have and never will.

Another observation - the lack of realism, taking this another step away from an historical wargame and more towards a fancy boardgame. Despite being 1:300th scale and a skirmish game, weapons ranges are a lot shorter than reality and the range bands are suitably "unreal". Similarly, the "advanced" rule section contains aircraft that are one shot wonders that have no mechanism for loitering. How advanced to you need to be to understand loitering fighter/bomber cover?

If it feels like I am being too hard on Cruel Seas without even playing it then maybe I am. But there are plenty of other rule sets out there that cover the same type of naval action and to greater detail and historical accuracy. Ok, you don't get pretty models with them but there are plenty of suppliers who will sort out any requirements and scale you need.

That brings me to the add on packs. You can get additional flotilla's for £18 that contains 6 ships. There are also Fleet packs containing 6 to 10 ships (some metal) and one aircraft for £65 (numbers vary depending upon which country you select). Bear in mind that in the US Fleet pack, five of the ten ships supplied are landing craft, so in effect scenery. Finally, there are the Coastal Forces for £95 (discounted from £103). They have between 12 and 16 ships and comprise of a Fleet and Flotilla pack plus a rule set. That might seem a tad pricey but that is a discount instead of buying the separate national forces and the rule set, which alone costs £20 in softback. I do, however, think they are royally taking the piss with the limited edition hardback rule set for £75!!!

The cynical part of me thinks that Cruel Seas will be the Cinderella of the wargames scene for a couple of years before fading away. You can spend a ton of money with Warlord Games or you can do a bit of research and shopping around and get something that'll do the same job for less money. And be more historically accurate. Unless it's just about the game (innit!) in which case the nice packaged boardgame Cruel Seas will do you nicely.

As for the rest of the magazine, well, it was fairly crap, the most enlightening quote being in a profile piece on The Plastic Soldier Company: "... a rule set only exists to sell your miniatures." Whilst I know a few manufacturers who would disagree with that, certainly Warlord are on it like a bonnet!

Interest or Hobby?

Part of the joys of work is that you interact with people of different ages and this can lead to some interesting conversations. I got talking to a gentleman who is a few years younger than myself who has an interest in videogames. Aha, I thought, this could be enlightening. It was, but not necessarily in a good way. You see, whilst he has fifteen years of console and PC gaming to his name, he has very little awareness of the history of his chosen hobby and, more importantly, no interest at all in expanding his knowledge. His is a transitory hobby, whatever new thing is in front of him is either great or shit. There are no levels in between these two extremes, just a binary yay or nay. So me being me, I raised this question: "Is this a hobby or an interest that you have?"

Now we each have our own approach to our hobbies. Indeed, how we approach a hobby defines that hobby's appeal to us (so the history and design of console hardware is of particular interest to me as an off-shoot to actually gaming itself). In the case of this younger gentleman, his was almost proud announcement that he knew nothing of gaming before he started playing back in the early 2000's and had no interest in what had happened before then, even to the point of not playing games that were released on his first console before he started gaming. I wasn't particularly surprised but it was quite saddening to hear.

The gentleman's first console was the Sony Playstation 2. A fine piece of hardware that hosted some of the best games of its generation, but my colleague expressed a narrow minded view that other console hardware released around that time (the sublime Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo's under-appreciated GameCube and the ground breaking original Microsoft X-Box) didn't matter because the PS2 won the sales war and as the other three lost, they didn't matter. As he wanted the best (in popularity at least), all other alternatives were discarded. Once the PS2 was replaced by the PS3, the older hardware was discarded and the games collection sold on. They were now old and of no further use. The latest was now, in his mind, the greatest.

A classic of its time.

Horses for courses I suppose, but then I have always been a collector (or hoarder as my better half would have it). Since the last house move, I have sold on most of my collection due to space issues but I did keep a few titles that have never been replicated since their original release. For example, Sky Odyssey for the PS2. The aim of the game is to pilot your aircraft successfully from A to B, encountering various obstacles and challenges along the way. There is no shooting, no whizz bang explosions, just pure flying. This title was in some way a slightly more realistic spiritual successor to the "Pilotwings" series that had releases on the Nintendo SNES (1990), the Nintendo 64 (1996) consoles. That such titles are few and far between demonstrates their sheer niche appeal and since then, only the lightweight Pilotwings Resort, released for the Nintendo 3DS (2011) has offered anything similar in the flying genre. I know Pilotwings Resort is lightweight by the fact that I have played both of its predecessors. Sky Odyssey, by the way, is still a great experience today and well worth a try if you can pick up a copy and have the hardware to play it on.

But what really made me think was how shallow my young colleagues approach to his hobby was. I struggled to bring together the two ideas of loving a hobby but having no knowledge or interest in anything outside of your own sphere of experience. In fact, he wouldn't countenance any move to expand that knowledge - it's old and therefore it's shit. That attitude, it must be said, is not just limited to videogames. Wargaming also has a similar issue.

Now, to be fair, I am not going to be tarring everybody with this brush, but lack of knowledge seems to be a badge of pride, and not just for the younger generation. Without a depth of knowledge in your hobby, how do you put what is current market offering into perspective? How can you judge any perceived improvements when you have no background on the subject you are purported to enjoy? That was evident when, at a show a couple of years back, one guy wanted fighting camels for his forces. When told they weren't used for that during the period he was fighting, he replied "It doesn't matter, you can still put them on the table." Historical wargaming indeed!

Back to my colleague. As gaming to him doesn't exist prior to 2002, he has never, and proudly claims will never, play classics like Command and Conquer, any LucasArts point and click adventure, Super Mario 64, Goldeneye, Resident Evil, Half Life and countless other titles because they don't matter. Yet without those titles, we wouldn't have the games we have today. True, time has not been kind to most of these, but some have aged well and to miss out on those today, if you are a gamer, is a crying shame.

From a wargaming perspective, I'll use Team Yankee. I like them for what they are (and the chance to tinker with them at will adds some of the depth that a hobby needs), but subjectively, how different is the core mechanism from Operation Warboard? Or Featherstone's rules? Not much, but because TY has shiny hard-backed rule sets with lots of pictures, they are perceived by quite a few gamers as better - and that is a conversation I had at the Durham show this year where I ran a demo game. It also revealed that most of the people who asked questions about my amendments (which were based on my reading of texts both modern and contemporaneous) had taken what was offered in the rule sets as sufficient knowledge of the period - further reading was something that seemed like an anathema to them. Woe betide anyone (i.e. me) to use actual knowledge to dis-abuse them of their ignorance. Hey ho.

Take your pick...

Personally, I don't follow the "newer is better" mindset - after all, I am typing this on an 18-year old Alphasmart 3000. Yes, there are new niche text entry products (looking at you, Astrohaus) but I'm not willing to spend a few hundred quid on something when a more convenient (and cheaper) option exists. The same can be said for wargames rules - our recent attempts at playing Charge (I picked up a re-print at Salute this year for my own perusal after the first kicking I received) and other older rule sets have been interesting. They don't have lots of pictures or specialised kit, but they do the job and (this is important) they follow the historical period they model. Certainly compared to some more modern rules (Black Powder, Pikeman's Lament and others), the older set's adherence to history is refreshing, possibly demonstrating how far the modern wargaming market has lost its way from historical knowledge and focuses on rolling lots and lots of dice.

It does make me wonder if we are moving to a point where the history and context of any particular hobby no longer matters to the individuals partaking in that hobby. Whilst people may demonstrate a breadth of knowledge, there is so little depth that the individual misses out on the richness that makes a hobby enjoyable. Without that depth, could the hobby be classed as such at all? Is it not just then a passing interest? Also, without context, how do you judge whether the latest rule set/game/whatever is an improvement on what came before or just a money making enterprise by the creator and will it enrich your enjoyment of your hobby? As far as hobbies go, surely this is a bad thing?