Bruce Geryk

Gamers have such a skill for self-loathing that I sometimes think it’s some kind of Xbox achievement. I see this in game writing all the time.

After the jump, gamers should grow some stones Continue reading →

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The problem with History is that you can’t just go back and see what would have happened if someone had made some different decisions. The problem with wargames is that you can.

After the jump, what a difference a heavy bomber makes Continue reading →

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Recognizing a revolution is a lot easier than starting one. In 1994, Avalon Hill published Mark Herman’s design We the People about the American Revolutionary War, and the term “card-driven gameplay” started its lexical journey to ubiquitous descriptor of pretty much any game currently in print. Instead of moving all your little cardboard squares from hex to hex each turn, you moved a few of them from box to box using a deck of cards with numbers and events. You heard that right: you didn’t always play games with cards.

After the jump, it’s all in the cards Continue reading →

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There’s a particular genre of book, military history book specifically, called the “unit history”. It may have a desultory title like “The History of the 1st Infantry Division in World War II” or a slightly jazzier name like “The Big Red One: Crusade in Europe”. It’s usually a catalog of where a unit was on each day of a campaign, what it did, and a lot of name-checking and shout-outs to people who served in that unit, along with photos and other memorabilia. It’s both a historical and personal record, meant to preserve the unit’s memory and standing, and take due (or undue) credit along the way.

There isn’t anything inherently wrong with this, except that as an outsider I don’t have any attachment to any particular military organization or unit, so there’s nothing to grab my attention. I’m not a “fan” of any tank division in the same way that I am a fan of — for example — the Detroit Red Wings. I generally find this kind of stuff boring, despite my interest in military history. Someone once gave me, as a gift, a copy of Comrades to the End: The 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment “Der Fuhrer” 1938-1945. I’m not sure what kind of comment that is on him or me, and I probably shouldn’t think about it too much. It’s on my bookshelf somewhere, but I don’t particularly care what a bunch of Nazis did on, say, 14 October 1943, or any day before or after that, unless they died, in which case I’m good with the outcome.

So it’s weird that I just spent thirty bucks plus shipping on a copy of Messerschmitt Bf-110 Bombsights Over England: Erprobungsgruppe 210 in the Battle of Britain.

After the jump, eat your heart out, Detroit Red Wings Continue reading →

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I think at some point in this series I promised you some role-playing. Strategy role-playing, to be exact. Not by me, of course, because I don’t do that kind of stuff. But from a game design perspective, you can’t help but appreciate the possibilities. Because the best games tell the best stories, the chance to tell a good one shouldn’t be missed. From a strategy role-playing perspective, what could be a better story than what I’m about to show you?

Find out after the jump Continue reading →

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Everyone knows that strategic games with tactical battle engines are better than strategic games without them. Any game which tries to abstract out combat in the name of tighter, more thematic game design is eventually going to get crushed by complaints from gamers who want to fight out the battles turn by turn, or for truly advanced players, in real time. You know it, I know it, and the American people know it. So why do developers keep missing the boat? It’s so cute that you think I am about to give you the answer. I would never be that straightforward. Maybe I just don’t know.

After the jump, there are known unknowns, where we know what we don’t know Continue reading →

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So many storylines run through the Battle of Britain that it’s hard to decide where to start. The evolution of airpower theory in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The secretive growth of the Luftwaffe after the Treaty of Versailles. The design and development of the main mechanical protagonists: the Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, and Messerschmidt 109, as well as the German medium bombers, at least one of which started out as an airliner. British Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, who almost singlehandedly devised and directed a coherent strategy for fighting the battle. German Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring, who did not. The ballroom at Bentley Priory, which was converted into the first real “war room” over two decades before Dr. Strangelove. The female air controllers who served there and elsewhere, constituting an irreplaceable contribution to the war effort every bit as much a part of it as the fighter pilots. Those pilots themselves, including the refugees from conquered lands who ended up being among the highest scoring aces in the battle. A lone democratic island nation against an ascendant continental tribe gripped by an abhorrent ideology. It’s no wonder that it’s one of the most written-about battles in the English language. What if any of those storylines had read differently? Would you be speaking German?

After the jump, achtung, dummkopf! Continue reading →

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If you read my previous game diary about War in the East, you might be all ready for me to start playing Eagle Day and RAF, pull a few history books off the shelf, find some random paragraphs that support whatever point I’m making at the time, and still manage to lose the game. You must think that– like the people I write about — I haven’t learned anything from the last war I fought.

After the jump, sorry suckers Continue reading →

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Leisure reading about history makes me want to play wargames. This is what makes wargamers “wargamers,” as has been definitively proven in at least one scholarly journal article somewhere. I’m sure of it. Michael Korda’s With Wings Like Eagles, a fast-reading, intelligent history of the Battle of Britain published in 2009, got me thinking that I’d like to, you know, play some kind of Battle of Britain simulation. That’s how it always works. But which one? SPI’s Battle Over Britain? Haha, no. That’s what you think this is, right? Another excuse to explain why boardgames are better than computer wargames, and that everything totally sucks in computer game land? I’m sorry if I seem that predictable. But I did really want to get historically involved with the subject matter in some way, and thanks to my previous search through boxes of old games looking for Rails Across America, I knew exactly where my old Talonsoft games were. So pulling out Gary Grigsby’s Battle of Britain* wasn’t hard.

After the jump, what my RPG experience over Europe taught me about the Battle of Britain Continue reading →

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534:366 = Soviet Minor Victory

After the jump, I can explain Continue reading →

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Snow!

Colonel-General Guderian was near Teploie on the night of November 3-4, 1941, where the day before, the leading infantry elements of LIII Corps had run into a large Russian force comprised of two cavalry divisions, five rifle divisions, and a tank brigade. The Russians were able to make some progress thanks to the mobility of their T-34 medium tanks in the stifling mud, whereas the Germans had had to leave behind all of their heavy equipment. In the middle of this tenuous situation, Guderian’s chief of staff handed him a detailed operations plan, prepared weeks before, for a general resumption of the offensive on 4 November, including a sharp counterattack by mobile elements of Geyr von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Panzer Corps. The plan detailed extensive German movements over ground assumed to be hardened by frost and new snowfall. The commander of 2 Panzer Army was dumbfounded. “How can you prepare an entire operational plan based on the supposition that it will snow tonight?” Guderian demanded. “Herr General,” his adjutant protested, “it’s Turn 22”. “Ah yes,” the Colonel-General replied. “You are right”.

After the jump, an 8th grader shows up Adolph Hitler Continue reading →

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Mud!

Every game about the invasion of Russia includes the rasputitsa, the name for the spring and autumn muddy season when rain or the spring thaw renders the roads impassable. Something I didn’t know until I looked it up for this article is that there is a corresponding Finnish word, rospuutto, which translates to “roadlessness”. Is that true, Finnish readers? Who said wargames don’t teach you anything?

After the jump, why you should never wrestle in the mud with a Stalinist nation Continue reading →

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This year will be the 70th anniversary of the launching of the final German drive on Moscow, Operation Typhoon (in German: Taifun). And it’s the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Russia itself, obviously. Don’t bogart my point, which is that this game diary entry is about Operation Typhoon. It’s probably one of the most significant battles in the history of the world, and some would argue that the outcome was decided before it started. Others would argue that it didn’t have to happen at all. The latter group would be wargamers.

Apologies to Italians, Hungarians, and Rumanians for what they’ll read after the jump Continue reading →

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Finland’s involvement in World War II includes one of the great David vs. Goliath stories of all time. Invaded in November 1930 by Stalin’s Red Army, the woefully outnumbered and outgunned Finns humiliated the Russians, inflicting heavy casualties, and initially thwarting all their objectives. The lightly armed Finns conducted a clinic in mobile winter warfare, typified by the Battle of Suomussalmi where two entire Soviet divisions were annihilated while trapped on a forest road. Finnish casualties were fewer than 500. The war introduced the world to the untranslatable Finnish word sisu: a national strength of will that exemplified the performance of the country’s military. The Red Army eventually overcame this heroic resistance through a combination of improved leadership, coordination, and mostly just overwhelming numbers. But the Peace of Moscow signed in March 1940 fell far short of Stalin’s initial goal of the conquest of the entire country. The war captured the world’s imagination (although secured virtually no material assistance) and has been recounted in multiple books in many languages. Former PC Gamer columnist and wargaming guru William Trotter wrote an excellent account, Frozen Hell, almost twenty years ago, and a classic popular history, White Death by Allen Chew, was recently reprinted after initial publication way back in 1971.

After the jump, the darker side of the story Continue reading →

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If you’ve been following the series up to this point, you’ve undoubtedly been waiting patiently for something which up until now I’ve avoided doing, and I don’t mean taking unsolicited cheap shots at Tom Chick. That comes later. I mean talking about the AI.

After the jump, Gary’s AI Adversary, or GAIA (they really do call it that) Continue reading →

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