Sunday, June 24, 2007
Squad Leader in 3D
Some years ago, I had a conversation with John Hill, the designer of Squad Leader, about how to convert the board game rules to a miniatures game. To my surprise, Hill told me that the game had originally been designed as a miniatures game, and that he had pitched it to Avalon Hill as such. He was told that, while AH had no interest in a miniatures game, if he converted it to a board game, they would buy it. So he did, and they did, and the rest is history.
Hill’s advice was to simply use the rules as-is, converting measurements from hexes to inches. He suggested a straight one hex to one inch conversion, but I think that’s because he envisioned using micro armor. Our group decided that a two- or three- inch to one hex conversion was better for 15mm figures, and we have played it that way off and on for a couple of years.
Then recently, the owner of the WWII figures (I had painted them for him several years ago) bought a couple of Hotz Artworks hex mats. This past Saturday night was our first using hexes instead of rulers.
And what a difference it made! Squad Leader played fairly well with rulers, but is a delight with hexes. Having the hexes sped up things considerably, taking measurement out of the equation, and leaving us to concentrate on the other aspects of the game.
The scenario involved a group of Germans defending a fortified position and a collective farm, separated by eight hexes. A large force of Russians was dispatched to clear them out.
After the Germans deployed, the Russians entered on the opposite side of the board. The initial strategy was to concentrate the entire attack on the fort and ignore the collective. The Russians would mass in a wood close to the fort, shoot to attempt to disorder the Germans, and then close assault.
The plan didn’t work. As the Russians attempted to take positions in the wood, they were slaughtered by massed German firepower, both from the fort, and at long range, from the collective. An assault finally was attempted, but by then there were far too few Soviets left.
Since the game took just an hour and a half, we set up again and restarted. This time, the Russians sent a smaller contingent to keep the Collective busy. Again, the horde moved up to the woods. This time, the Germans were far less effective in their fire. Part of that was that their dice had gone cold; part was that the troops in the collective now had their own problems and could not fire with impunity.
The Russians facing the collective farm then got lucky and rolled snake eyes on a low odds shot. The German leader in the hex failed his morale check, as did the rest of the unit. The second round of morale checks eliminated a third of the German flank.
The Russians facing the fortification got a similar break and were able to force their way in for a Russian victory.
Squad Leader turns out to be a terrific system for miniatures when using printed hex mats. The basic game is elegant and relatively simple. While ASL has moved on to Multi-Man publishing, I’d really like to see basic Squad Leader re-released as a purely miniatures set.
You can see more photos here.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The Death of Print
Wargames Journal recently announced that it’s abandoning its print edition and returning to a free pdf download. That’s sad news, for it had quickly become my favorite magazine.
But I don’t find it surprising. I honestly think that printed magazines are going the way of the dinosaur. I recently stopped subscribing to a couple of computer magazines because I frankly can find anything they offer online. Just as important, the printed material is of necessity a couple of weeks—if not months—old, while the online information is far more timely. I’ve also made the decision to cut in half the number of hobby magazines that I get (golf and wargaming). Most of the stuff they offer, I can get in a more timely fashion online.
Online magazines also have the illusion of being free. I say illusion, because you pay for them by looking at advertising, just as “free” television is ad supported. (I am always annoyed by the people who think they are being clever in using ad blocking software. If enough people block the ads, then there is no incentive for people to produce material, and the publishers will quit, leaving us all poorer. Then the ad blockers will complain about the decline of the free stuff on the internet, without ever realizing their complicity in the slide.)
With the increasingly reduced cost of color printing—color lasers are the wave of the future—it makes sense to have magazines available as a download and to allow people to print those parts that interest them. But in fact, I think that even the magazine format is dead. I think that it makes more sense to me to offer the articles individually, as they are produced, rather than packaging them.
This site (MiniatureWargaming.Com) is a good example of that. Rather than offering a link a day, I suppose that I could wait until the end of the month and then offer thirty or so links, hobby news and commentary in a digest format. But where’s the immediacy in that? The Miniatures Page also offers info as a continuous stream. You keep going back to see what’s new.
I also think that the day is coming when printed versions of rules set will disappear. Already, forward thinking publishers, such as Two Hour Wargames offer pdf downloads for immediate satisfaction. If the rules are in black and white, I can print the rules on my laser. With printed versions, there is generally enough of a discount that I can afford the cents a page that my laser printer expends in consumables. A pdf version also allows me to print an extra copy or two of some relevent and pressing section for people to reference during a game. (Puplishers who just dont’ get it are the ones who charge the same for a download as for a printed version).
Drive Through RPG and a couple fo other similar sites offer hundreds of rules sets at relatively cheap download prices.
But I’ll go a step even further. I think that the day is coming when rules sets are all offered for “free.” As this site proves, there is an amazing amount of material available for free online. And for those who want to reap some financial reward for their efforts, there are a variety of ways to do so.
The easiest is to join an online advertising program, such as Yahoo! publishers, Adbrite, Performics, Chitika or Google. These can all produce a small, but steady income stream. You won’t get rich, and you won’t be able to quit your day job, but the same holds true selling printed rules sets through the mail and at conventions. Start a website that consists of a download page, slap on a couple of ads and watch the money trickle in. (Unless everyone uses an ad blocker. Then you won’t make any money and will have to return to selling hard copies at $30 a pop. The o-so-clever ad blocker guy will then have to pay real cash, and will complain about the high price of rule sets, never realizing what he has done).
If you’re offering a rules set free for the downloading, why not approach a manufacturer or two and get them to advertise in the content of the rules? Rules sets have for some time had manufacturer ads in them. If you’ve got a Napoleonic rule set, offer to include a live link in the pdf to the web site of a seller of Napoleonic figures. You could even include a photo or two of their figures in action in the text of the rules.
The nice think about an electronic version is that you can vary the ads. Publishers could take a page from magazines, offering ads on various pages at different rates for set period of time. Every couple of months, you could put up a new version fo the rules with new ads.
Or take the Gillette razor approach. Give away the basic rules and sell the add-ons. (Gillette made his fortune by giving away handles and selling the blades that fit them).
Again, no one is going to take in bucketsful of money (there are not buckets full of money to be had anywhere in the wargames industry). But the distribution costs are virtually nil. There are no printing costs (printing books is an enormous up front outlay). And owning a website is very cheap—as little as a couple of bucks a month. You can even get your rules hosted for free. I, for example, am more than willing to host your rules and bear the bandwidth costs, as I have with the fine Instant Thunder rules found here at MiniatureWargaming dot Com.
Another advantage of online publishing is that it eliminates errata sheets. When you make a mistake in a hard copy edition, it is prohibitively expensive to fix it. That’s why publishers offer errata sheets. But in an online version, you can make the correction, renumber the rules version to 1.1 and replace it on the website at no cost but time.
In an online version of rules, you also can continually upgrade and expand. Hard copy publishers have to wait until they have enough material (and have made enough money) to warrant a “supplement”.
I have been working on a rules set for some time now and am close to releasing a version (next six months or so). And when I do, you can be sure that it’ll be free and online.
