"Building Blocks": micro-blocks for One Hour Wargames

Neil Thomas clearly stated his design goals for “One Hour Wargames” right in the book’s subtitle: “Practical Tabletop Battles for Those with Limited Time and Space”. I think the basic idea was to start from the simplest and most intuitive miniature wargaming mechanisms, then keep chiseling stuff away until a quintessential core was left. The result is a set of scenarios, rules and army lists which still yields tactically rich, interesting gameplay but is much less taxing than usual in terms of time, space, budget, and mnemonic demands.

But there’s one aspect of Thomas’ book I really can’t understand: the recurring insistence on the fact that you need a 3’x3’ board, terrain and miniature armies to play the game at all. That still sounds a rather high entry fee for a complete novice just to try the rules. Moreover, OHW’s suggested board and unit size is a lot larger than what literally thousands of DBA players across the globe use with 15mm miniatures since decades (with twice the number of units, by the way). A much more versatile and beginner-friendly approach would have been to simply generalize board size and unit frontage to 36x36 and 4-6 “length units” respectively, then let players choose the real-world unit of measure most fitting the physical representation they might choose. For example, my very first (disastrous) OHW playtest featured 5cm x 1cm wooden blocks for units, and a 36cm x 36cm featureless board. Same gameplay as the original - in a considerably more practical package!

Through successive iterations, I’ve discovered that playing on even smaller spaces is perfectly feasible. But since free movement and measuring can become a bit fiddly past a certain point, I’ve switched to hexes to regulate ranges and movement – otherwise still playing the rules-as-written in every respect. In that way, I can fit the scenario map, a unit roster and a turn track into a single A4 page! For units, I’m using my trusty ‘microblock’ approach. For a variety of reasons, I like to use thin (5mm x 5mm) square section rods cut to various size for depicting units in kriegsspiel-style games in most eras (instead of the most common thicker blocks), but that’s a story for another day. For the A4-sized OHW experiment, I’ve just painted several 30mm-long blocks in suitably stately red and blue hues, then used a glue stick to apply 28mm x 3mm labels with generic military symbols and a numerical unit ID. I’ve considered covering everything in mod-podge to increase block/label durability, but that proved to be unnecessary so far.

...Aren’t they’re cute?

With this approach, I just need to print one A4 pdf file instead of building/assembling/laying terrain on a 3’x’3 board; and building a grand total of 20 small wooden blocks instead of collecting, painting, and basing two armies worth of troops. The only risk is that ‘one-hour’ wargaming might turn into something more like ’20 minutes’ wargaming. I’m willing to take the risk.

I’ve only assembled Horse & Musket-themed microblocks so far – I have different plans for other eras with respect to block/label aesthetics. After all, I only need ten blocks per side to cover all combinations of troops in OHW, so I can afford to put at least some work into them!

The first A4-OHW prototype. Now take that, “limited time and space”!!!

 

Next time, I’ll start explaining how I organized my (ongoing) OHW playtest games.

One-Hour Wargames: First Impressions

A few weeks ago I started to find mentions of the book “One-Hour Wargames: Practical Tabletop Battles for Those with Limited Time and Space” by Neil Thomas in several of the blogs I follow. This book seems to have made quite an impact around 2014-2015, then the interest somewhat waned in the small portion of the blogosphere I routinely check – but there are people out there who keep using these rules almost exclusively to this day. This has to mean something, I reasoned. Moreover, I’m a firm believer of the fact that complicatedness (as opposed to complexity!) in wargame rules is seldom necessary, and – very often – the result of sub-optimal design. Due to this, the main premise of the book intrigued me; I ordered the book and just devoured it in one go. First things first: English is not my native language, but I’ve found Thomas’ prose concise and vivid at the same time- a very pleasurable read.

You can tell whether I liked a book or not by the number of earmarks and improvised bookmarks. I count 3 bookmarks and 2 earmarks on OHW – not bad for a page count of around 150!

I’m not going to provide a detailed review of the book here: first of all because many bloggers with finer minds than mine already did. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check these reviews first:

https://johnswargames.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/one-hour-wargames/
http://shaun-wargaming-minis.blogspot.com/2014/11/ancient-game-with-8-yo-daughter-and-one.html
http://daleswargames.blogspot.com/2019/12/one-hour-wargames.html
http://hereticalgaming.blogspot.com/2014/09/neil-thomas-one-hour-wargames.html
http://keefsblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/one-hour-wargames.html
http://darkages40and25.blogspot.com/2014/11/neil-thomas-one-hour-wargames-review.html
http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-solo-wargaming-guide-and-one-hour.html

I think there’s a clear overall trend emerging:

1)     Everyone agrees that Neil Thomas’ OHW rules are very simple.

2)      A not insignificant fraction of reviewers/commenters think that they are too simple to be actually enjoyable as a wargame; but most think they’re just fine.

3)      Among those who think they’re fine, most say that they are perfect for casual/occasional gaming, novices, kids, spouses, etc; a precious few think that they’re just really fine as a full-fledged wargame, with no tags attached.

4)      Everyone agrees on the fact that the scenarios are very cool and supremely useful even if you don’t plan to use OHW rules.

5)      Everyone is compelled to write house rules and mods immediately upon reading the book – often you see variants and mods discussed in the reviews themselves! These rules can’t be left alone. I think the above happens for two distinct reasons:

5a) Rules themselves are short, but they’re not tournament-tight as presented in the book. It’s not like there’s anything strange or difficult about the rules themselves – but Thomas always describes the various game procedures in simple (but somewhat vague) terms rather than specialized jargon. So, players are practically required to come up with their own answers to several open questions before (or during) play. Fortunately, that’s not difficult at all – and you can find several perfectly fine examples in the blogosphere (along with some very thoroughly-considered examples, e.g:

http://ecw40mmproject.blogspot.com/2017/05/whats-missing-in-one-hour-wargames-rules.html)

5b) OHW rules are very robust, but at the same time very bare-bone. This combination makes everyone (myself included, I confess) want to beef it up in some way, often before actually trying them out first.

Before I continue, I’d like to elaborate a bit on point 5b above. In many ways, I find there’s a strong conceptual link between what 1^st edition D&D does within the ‘RPG continuum’ and where OHW resides in the ‘wargame continuum’. Before the recent ‘old-school renaissance’, which brought forth a wide re-evaluation of mid-70’s roleplaying games as valid and functional designs, they were often ridiculed as ‘too simple’ and ‘primitive’ by RPG players from the early 80’s on. Just as an example: in the ‘original D&D’ (often called ODD) rules-as-written, entering combat means simply trading blows in turns, with successful strikes whittling a (very limited) pool of hit points. Accruing hits have no mechanical impact unless you tick all of them off – in that case, you’re toast. Sounds familiar? Well, it’s almost exactly identical to the combat mechanism used in OHW – in fact, the combat rules found in a (very cool) ODD-inspired game actually are the mechanical equivalent of OHW: https://www.bastionland.com/ [Edited to add: I can’t believe it, but when I opened the Bastionland blog to paste its url here I found a mention of… Neil Thomas’ OHW! Now that’s some synchronicity, or serendipity, or something].

 

 

Still the best version of D&D... provided that you know how to approach it. Source: WoC website

The point is, there is literally nothing else in ODD’s combat rules. You can’t scan through your character sheet, find a cool power, and say “I’ll use this to win” - because practically nobody has got cool powers. Entering combat is often just accepting to trade damage for damage until one side collapses - which is (1) not very fun, and (2) often a losing proposition from the start. So, how do you approach combat in ODD if the rules themselves don’t offer you anything useful to work with? The most popular answer is that you basically don’t. Since there are no advantageous expected outcomes in a straight ODD fight, you must not accept fair fights; you should instead maneuver your character into a better fictional positioning before committing to an attack. Yeah, ODD rules don’t really encourage heroic combat – they encourage war. The interesting thing is that this is not achieved through explicit rules, but with their absence. I think people used to call this ‘the fruitful void’ in Forge RPG theory jargon a long time ago.

What I’m awkwardly trying to hint at is that rules in OHW basically do the same thing. If you just engage enemy units frontally, one-on-one, in clear terrain… the resulting game is quite dull (the same might be said about Arty Conliffe’s masterpiece Crossfire). But! Since no one has much to gain from this kind of fighting (you’re just accepting to trade damage for damage, with a very costly victory likely going to whoever initiated combat)… the game is effectively telling you that you must try to pile on whatever kind of ‘extra’ advantage you can muster. There’s no ‘lazy’ playing in OHW – each move poses a small tactical question, however basic or abstract. And the rules are so lean and transparent that you find yourself mostly thinking about your tactical choices rather than about rules themselves – a rare accomplishment in wargaming.

Before going on, I’d like to stress that OHW’s simple rules cannot be judged in isolation. As the author himself notes in more than one occasion in the book, the chosen scenario is a fundamental part of the toolbox. In other words, the game cannot live on the strength of ‘rules’ itself; in a direct parallel to an established mantra in the ODD community, the game only puts the player in an interesting situation and empowers him with meaningful, impactful choices. In absence of any of the two items, functional gameplay is seldom obtained. In addition, OHW also provides another tool of almost equal importance: random force selection rolls. If you take the number of tactical questions posed by each scenario, and multiply it times the different ways in which you can answer them with different force compositions, then again times the nine different period rulesets… You can get an awful lot of thought-provoking tactical exercises from this book – I’d say much more than what you typically get from many mainstream games of comparable (or much higher) complexity. Excellent!

However. While all of the above might mean that we’re looking at a very good game, nothing I said so far does guarantee that we’re looking at a very good war-game. Think about chess and draughts. They’re surely tactical and thought-provoking games, but nobody would consider them wargames… I think the main distinction to make here is about which kind of tactical questions the game poses. If the rules reward and punish player choices on the basis of mechanisms that are too far divorced from what a real military commander would take into consideration, then the game is probably not a ‘real wargame’, at least not in the sense I mean. But OHW rules are laser-focused on rewarding sensible, down-to-earth tactical choices that result in broadly historical behavior if answered conservatively (with some exceptions that I will almost certainly ramble about in future posts).

Some of these choices are rewarded in an explicit fashion: e.g. “when fighting in close combat, it is 200% more advantageous to attack the opponent’s flanks rather than its front”. But most of those explicit rules also create a cascade of implicit rewards to reap. As an example, even if you can move your units however you please, forming an ordered battle line is often advantageous, simply because it’s the most convenient way of not exposing your flanks to the enemy. There are many other examples of these implicit effects in OHW, with direct consequences on fire discipline, time/space trading, concentration of force, reserves etc.

To wrap everything up: there’s much, much more than meets the eye in OHW. And since every little detail is important, rules for the nine historical eras definitely do not offer the same gameplay. I did not playtest all of them yet, but my impression is that some of the nine rulesets are totally legit (in fact, brilliant) little wargames, while others are quite weak and unsatisfactory, for a variety of reasons. I’ve got the same feeling from the scenarios: some of them seem to be worthy of dozens of replays, others give the impression of being quite boring (in some cases, only when played in some of the eras) or artificially ‘gamey’.

Anyway: since this ‘first impressions’ post is probably longer than what you need to read to play your first OHW game, I think it’s time to call it quits. I’m planning a series of posts to discuss One Hour Wargames in further detail.

Welcome to Wargamer’s Block!

Salutations to thee, O unlikely reader. I’ve decided to start this blog in order to document my wargaming ventures, even though they are currently of a rather strange sort – given that I’m writing at the end of AD 2020 and the Plague is hitting us hard globally.

But let me introduce myself first. My main wargaming interest in the past thirty or so years have been miniature rules of all sorts, with occasional brief excursions into hex-and-counter territory. I’m fixated with the concept that wargame rules should model actual combat dynamics, informed by historical insights, possibly prompting the players to face the same tactical questions (and answers) as force commanders throughout the eras. Due to this, I’m not interested in fantasy or sci-fi games, although I still remember fondly the first miniature army I’ve ever collected: my beloved WH40K Squats (yes, I’m kinda old)! The rulesets I’ve played most were WRG7th, De Bellis Multitudinis, De Bellis Antiquitatis, Lost Battles, Triumph! Armati, De Bellis Magistrorum Militum, De Bellis Renationis, Warfare in the Age of Reason, Crossfire, Spearhead- and I’m surely forgetting something (as well as purposely omitting several popular rulesets).

 

The first time I tried to decipher WRG 7th I was also studying for a quantum mechanics exam at the University. I clearly remember telling more than one fellow player how all the quantum physics books I was reading were absolutely simpler and clearer than this. Aaaah, good old times! Also, while I still remember most of what I've read about atomic orbitals and stuff, I can't remember anything about these rules :-)

But you might notice I wrote “the rules I’ve played most” in the paragraph above, without any mention to the rules I’m playing now. Well, here’s the problem. With work, kids and all the stuff I’ve found it difficult to pursue my hobby in a satisfactory way. Miniature wargaming needs lots of time and space- both of which are something of a luxury in my current life. That’s why I started to get into smaller and smaller miniature scales: Baccus’ excellent 6mm range, then Magister Militum’s interesting but somewhat quirky 3mm range, then good old Irregular’s 2mm blobs, which despite their several design flaws (IMHO) have a lot of potential. But I’ve learned that- with the possible exception of a few specific 2mm models- going smaller does not translate into painting faster, for many reasons. So several of my recent projects stumbled and crashed before any playable army was assembled. No playable armies, no games. Add to this that it’s increasingly difficult to find opponents in this pandemic world, and you’ll understand why, a couple of years ago, I’ve decided to quit my wargaming days for good.

But it didn’t last. I continued reading military history books, wargaming blogs, forums… You just can’t shake off a decades-long obsession like that. And the fever returned. I’ve started to collect and study hex-and-counter wargames as a possible alternative, but in the end it wasn’t quite the same thing. For one, biblical and classical eras are among my main interest, and there simply aren’t many ancient era games of this type, barring the ponderous Great Battles of History series. Phil Sabin’s Lost Battles boxed edition helped a lot (I’ve read the book literally dozens of times), but I longed for more. Moreover, there’s something I’ve never liked much about hex-and-counter games: they look terrible. Yes, it’s a totally subjective comment, but I just can’t stand moving piles of 10x10mm pink and yellow cardboard chits around. Even the best painted miniatures can ruin immersion in some cases (I’ll talk about this sooner or later), but most ‘grognard’-oriented wargames just don’t pay any kind of attention to aesthetics. Moreover, the hex-and-counter community seems to be fixated with games involving a huge number of counters, for some reason. Which I can’t really understand- some of the battles are so zoomed-in and cramped that you literally cover half a board with counters, rapidly converge to a scrimmage line and then slog through the micromanaging for hours with very limited grand-tactical decisions. What am I missing?

Here, a squadron of red numbers in wedge formation is attempting to break through the sparabara line (source: BGG).

Then I discovered the so-called ‘block’ wargames (Columbia Games’ first and foremost), which I found to have a good mix of playability, complexity (which doesn’t mean complicatedness!) and looks. I still missed some of the open-endedness afforded by miniature wargames, but I was sold on using blocks as a downright superior (IMHO) alternative to cardboard counters both in terms of aesthetics and tactility.

It didn’t take long before I started to think “hey, wait a minute: can’t I just play the miniature rulesets I like most, but with blocks instead of figures?” This is how I decided to take a serious look into Kriegsspiel, which I had never done before. And it literally was a game-changer. Not necessarily because of the 19^th-century game itself, but because of how it looked. Kriegsspiel maps and blocks seem period pieces even during play. I was hooked. If I couldn’t have miniature wargaming anymore, I wanted that look for my games- yes, even those pertaining to the ancient eras. In the process, I’ve discovered Command Post Games and their Pub Battles series – which is in many ways very close to the holy grail of my current wargaming preferences. I’ll surely talk about them here sooner or later!

Kriegsspiel pieces from Command Post Games.

Anyways, as a test, I started to build my ancients kriegsspiel pieces (labeling MDF miniature bases!) to play Triumph games on simple maps, then started to draw my own maps… I was in business again, and all this because of those humble wooden blocks! After some time, I’ve discovered that wooden blocks have several distinct advantages over both miniatures and counters. Fog of war implementation, step loss display, etc etc- there’s ton of stuff you just can’t do as easily with anything else.

I considered calling this blog 'the wargaming blockhead' or something like that, but a quick google search revealed that I was very late to the party, by bringing me to this (very interesting!) blog: https://wargameblockhead.wordpress.com/

So, to make a long story short, this will be a blog about wargaming with wooden blocks on maps. I know some people only consider one type of block to be ‘the real thing’ (eg only square blocks that you rotate to record steps, or only kriegsspiel blocks which actually depict in-scale space occupation, etc etc)… But I like them all! Also, the recent exposition to many rulesets and ways of playing which are completely new for me made me start to think about finally collecting a series of notes I have in my laptop since a long time and finalize one or two complete sets of rules to use with blocks. Stay tuned…