Scripted Idiocy?

Scripted Idiocy?

Recently I had Ted Raicer’s Case Yellow on my gaming table (actually desk) for several days. And to be quite honest, I cannot really create an opinion of it. It is not a bad game, not a bad simulation and quite a nice overall package but it cannot go in my top tier for several reasons. Anyway let’s have a look at it.

Picture from Boardgame Geek.

Case Yellow is a nice and polished GMT presentation. One map, back printed, covers northern France and western Germany, Luxemburg, Belgium and the Netherlands. The graphic style is pleasant to the eye and information are quickly conveyed. I like the map. I have mentioned that it is back printed one side is used for the “historical” scenarios with several “special” zones marked and the other for the “better prepared France” scenario. Counters are standard nice and well made. Play-aids are quite functional. There is also a small intro scenario covering the fall of the Netherlands playable on a separate A4 sized map. Very nice addition. My only gripe with the map is that while there are reinforcements box in the map there is no information on where these units enter. There is space for a simple notation “south” or “west” or “ports” and that would have speed up the game play.

The rules are quite puzzling. There are two booklets, a rulebook and a playbook containing allt he scenario instructions and example. Several of the rules could have easily been fitted in the main rulebook allowing for better reference. As far thr4 system is concerned you need some time to get used with some quirks, especially the ZOC rules, but is fast flowing and usually logic. It is a bit fiddly in a couple of points and the paratroops’ rules have a gaping hole3, they do not tell you if you can drop on enemy occupied hex or not, Ted told me on CSW no. What is important is that the system really depicts the several different armies involved in the campaign and, despite being game with a more broad brush approach (the basic units are corps and division with just very few lower units throw in it) rather than say Victory in the West (Division and Regiments) it does a good job of portraying the armies’ identities.

Two thing came to my attention: the action sequence and the attrition rules. The action sequence is subtle. You have chits and you pull chits out of the cup. But it is not your usual chit activation systems. Case Yellow has a tradition sequence of play; it is just the order of the sequence of play that is not traditional. On the usual turn the Allies will have one movement and combat phase. The Germans three phases and they can decide to take a phase as movement or combat while the allied not. It is not that the Germans, being blonde haired supermen, can do so much more things than the allies. They do marginally more, but they decide when to do them. This is a better representation of flexibility.

Armour attrition is another nice touch to represent the inherent weakness in mechanized operations. Your tank will break down. End of the line. Sooner or later they will break down. You will repair and refit, but far from being awfully powerful indestructible machines your tin cans or metal monsters will have problems. That will force you to slow down and regroup. Again while panzer divisions are better trained and organized their tanks were indeed crappy as any tank (let’s face it, our small city care are much more reliable than a Panzer 38T or a Char B1B and guzzle less fuel too… ok if you have a big American SUV maybe the last is not true).

All it is good. Where the game fail abysmally is in the historical scenario. It is not historical and it is incredibly fiddly. There are some rules that are, quite frankly, absurd and redundant. The French cavalry screen has no chance to stop the panzer division, with any result except elimination forcing the removal of the French Division Legere de Chevalerie involved. Ok, the panzer punched a hole in them (not really, the DLC did a quite good fighting withdrawal as they were instructed) but the main point is that except a combination of stupid moves and very bad luck every German player will kill them anyway, so why this rule? If the German player fail to do the modicum of planning required to get rid of them he has to be punished, and bad rolling is indeed an accepted component of the way we simulate friction of war. The same thing goes for the awful “blind spot” rule. Ok you do not want the allied player to react into the Ardennes, but the rules is partly superfluous (the bulk of allied units are indeed fixed on turn 1, they will be able to intervene only after the Germans are in position for the river assault if not already across. The entire absurd nature of these limitation culminates on the “dyle plan” rules. For those of you not familiar with history the Dyle Plan was the Anglo-French operation to move the bulk of their mobile force in Belgium to shore up that country and possibly rescuing the Netherlands. So far so good, allied units historically assigned to the plan are ordered to carry it out by the designer. But they are also forced to deploy in a certain way, to stay in a certain area except if you declare an evacuation from Dunkirk. Now, this is absurd. Yes, allied command and control system was slow, French and British generals reacted slowly to the German moves, but the game goes a step too far. It actually forces the Allied player to sit passively and give the German player a way to know allied moves beforehand. If the crossing of the Meuse fails the Allied units will be still fixed in their area, they cannot even counterattack in Belgium if the Germans move out of contact. The notes do a lot to talk about allied shortcoming and the poor quality of the commanders, but beside missing completely the historical point this is not about restraining the player from doing a-historical things, this is scripting idiocy on one side and giving the other side a-historical foreknowledge. It also, fails to explain the rationale behind the Dyle Plan, a rationale explained in the previous Victory in the West. The allied commanders had to support Belgium and the Netherlands for political reasons. The hope was to reach the Netherlands in time with the French 2^nd Army to prevent their collapse. Faint, irrational, or just a mirage it could have been, but the game do not give you any incentives to do that. It simply order you to move the 2^nd Army to Antwerp and then the second army is free. The rest of the allied force just sit passively without doing nothing if the Germans do not cooperate.

To be quite honest in the view of this historian the “historical” scenario is pure fantasy. The best way is to scrap the “blind spot rule” and the French DLC restriction altogether and use a toned down version of the dyle plan. Follow the script on turn 1 but then operate freely in Belgium and Netherlands. At the end of turn 4 (Dunkirk) just scrap any restrictions. The engine will restrict the allied player to do too much anyway. Also have the allied player able to declare Operation Dynamo only if there is a pocket. There is no reason to go for the evacuation if the front is holding (oh there is one, grab VP…)

I have also problem with the way some of the options in scenario 3 are presented.

Still the problem is that instead of recurring to sensible incentives to gently led players to historical decisions in this case Ted has simply put everyone in a cramped train following a track.

Case Yellow is certainly a good game, it has some fiddly bit, but the system is indeed good, accurate and appropriate. But Case Yellow has also some of the worst rules I have seen around. It is scripted idiocy at his worst. It is not an historical simulation but a train wreck in the attempt to rail history. As historical simulation scenario 1 deserve an 1, but the game still get its merits. Just ignoring the historical aberrations can make scenario 1 a better experience and has you appreciating the effort the Germans had to pull out to achieve the historical results. It rewards pre-war gamble on tactical air support and mechanization and the gamble of Manstein approach. Still leave you with a window for failure and show what the Allies got right.

The game is not bad, it is actually above average, but there are problem with historical accuracy, problem that have been grafted on a surprisingly accurate system. Minor gripes here and there slow down you game play as the fact that you need a couple of plays to get the system run smoothly because there are several minor points you will forgot easily, yet it pack surprisingly a good punch for its size. Buy it, but beware that the history the game tries to tell you is highly suspect.

Wargames in the Class, a slightly different view.

Recently I have read with interest professor Phil Sabin article on “supplying wargames” appeared in the latest issue of Battles. I have to confess that in my day job, or at least pseudo job, I am one of professor Sabin assistant and some of the events referred in the article were already know to me as a direct participant. Strengthened by the experience I have acquired in the past year with him last December I ran a simulation session with my students from the “Aspects of Naval History” class using Flying Colors from GMT. MY experience shown some striking differences from what Phil told us in the article and with things I had been told by him in the past.

Before discussing them I think it is necessary to introduce a bit my “experiment”. I had 8 students, all very motivated (got a very good seminar group), one of them with simulation experience and some of them already exposed to Professor Sabin Second World War game. Still with the exception of Tom I would say an inexperienced class. The aim of the session was to illustrate some aspects of age of sail naval warfare, mainly dependence on wind, strength and weaknesses of linear tactics, relative ineffectiveness of gunnery except on prolonged time and the cumulative nature of damage modelling in the era. Flying Colors was an obliged choice, it is easy, quite accurate and does not requires extensive book keeping. I used the action of Cape Ortugal (a small French squadron trying to escape back to France after Trafalgar) because it has only few ships involved.

My experience was, that despite Phil statements against using commercial products in class, the experiment was successful and probably more effective than using Phil tailored games. Certainly it compared much more favourably that my experience in running Fire and Maneuver at Shrivenam. A lot of that is related to the game “ergonomics”. Commercial design tend to have a much better system to present information. The students were able to pick up the basics of the game quickly after a turn and read the information necessary to make decision (I was responsible for running the game and working with the tables anyway). At Shrivenam the “cheer and cheerful” (or awfully crap according to your point of view) approach to ergonomics of fire and maneuver was the biggest obstacle to play. I reckon that in the same time I used to run my Fire and Maneuver session it the DCDC, including the fact the Brigadier “ordered” (actually politely suggested, but he is an one star and I am a former equivalent of a 2^nd Lieutenant and that will never change in my mind) to play a couple of introductory turns very slowly to acquaint the players with the game I could have run a comparable sized scenario of Nations at War or Panzergrenadier.

Rules complexity is indeed a critical component of playing time but how information and results are presented is also critical. In Flying Colors the students were able to read the info on the counters, look at the damage roster and making decisions. They did not know the gunnery tables but realized gunnery was more effective at close range and the number of guns in the ship. Sails were progressively torn away and movement was thus reduced. The information was readily available and readable. On the opposite side Fire and Maneuver hide information. The differentiation between German and British counters is awful, losses and turns are tracked in an awkward way after a while, especially for the British player tracking losses is difficult. The players had to ask me of the situation. Not to mention the terrain on the map was quite unreadable for the non initiated. I was the only one able to have all relevant information and retransmit then to the players. While the other games we use in class are definitely more “player friendly” still they lack the ability to present information on the same way of a commercial game. Or you know everything in advance or you have to rely on the “referee” to constantly supply information. No on map information the quirky point of the rules, the “counters” are not visually indicating what they are doing (yes cheep and cheerful and chunky 3D but they do not convey any real information… plus the player reaction when they see knocked down pieces is to stand up them…) .

After my little experiment I am no more completely following Phil approach. Yes, long and detailed does not equal better, but the inverse is not true. Certainly the bias shown on the article against commercial simulations is misplaced. It also meant that the package itself is important as the engine if not more when the “playabilty” of the simulation is concerned. That remind me of a chat with a friend who happened to be a fighter pilot. He flew Mirage F1, F4 Phantoms and now F-18. The F1 was a nightmare, he did not like it too much and the controls seemed to be in the wrong places. The F4 was great, he loved tow more pair of eyes, but again some of the controls he needed were closer to his backseater than him. The F-18 was a Cadillac, everything was where it was needed.

I would say that if a game is purported to take 10 minutes by the designer the designer had failed to cater for players. He knows how to deal with the information flow, but the players will be able to gather info so quickly?