I managed to squander the opportunity yesterday to post something labour-related in celebration of May Day, but I will blame it on the work week and general fatigue and weather.
Today, however, seems a bit brighter, not the least of which because I have several hours of quiet to myself, whilst Herself is off working. Up early, coffee, breakfast, now a bit of puttering before the VWC meeting.
I recently was gifted a book on the applied use of deception in wargaming. For a tabletop miniatures gaming perspective, there are several challenges with applying the use of deception and making it look or feel "right", so I was very interested in reading this book by Dr. John Curry, who has a number of titles he's reprinted or published on wargaming.
The book is a short read and has several short stories about how a certain technique was applied or how a principle worked out in a game. It describes A-type and M-type deception and different styles of games where these were applied. The late Dr. Paddy Griffith has a short piece he wrote in here, which really makes this book more valuable, in my opnion.
Overall, I think it would be worth buying, if you like running games, which I do.
After reading it, I've chosen to change my game that I will be running at OttoDotCon at the end of May, from an Irish Civil War game based around the song "Johnson's Motor Car", to a 6mm Cold War Gone Hot scenario using Bob Cordery's wonderful The Portable Wargame rules.
If that doesn't telegraph my intent to use deception in my game, I'm not sure what else I have to do to advertise it....In any event, I think the players will appreciate it. There's nothing evil, just a little "indecision" and friction to keep things...interesting.
We'll see.
And it seems the weather is cooperating too.
Just maybe.
Eric, I recall many years ago, there was a fashion for the "disguised scenario" ; it's where you take a real battle but set it in a different era or country - so say Waterloo transferred to the ACW, so that players didn't have the advantage of hindsight.
ReplyDeleteThe other one is the use of markers for units ( now called "blinds") where it doesn't appear on table until seen, with the use of dummies.
The main disadvantage is your beautiful painted figures are not on table....
I've had mixed success; completely fooled an opponent by aggressively moving a dummy behind a screen of Grenzers (Koenig Krieg) to the abject cock-up (Combined Arms CD modern) of leading the advance of a Soviet tank battalion in the regimental commanders jeep ( that I could have sworn was the counter for the recce BRDM).....he survived unlike his battalion following him!
It seems anything post C20th needs such things. There was even the infamous "back to back" wargame idea....
Neil
That looks an interesting read, thanks for highlighting. I think especially in more modern periods, concealed units should be important. The typical wargamer possibly has far too good a view of what is in front of him, in reality you only see the enemy when they start shooting at your recce units.. and maybe not even then! ( as Neil points out, maybe the problem is we want to see our lovely troops on the table!)
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