Campaigns of robert e lee game

I wanted to do a modern-era boardgame and the Arab-Israeli wars seemed the right subject. Within that field the Yom Kippur War appealed because both sides had a chance to win. But short of doing a monster game or a coupled pair of games, a design offering a tactical terrain representation was not possible. The solution was to choose the Egyptian front. That was also better from the chronological standpoint—on the Golan there was the initial burst of the Syrian invasion, its blunting by the Israelis, and then a long hiatus while the latter assembled their forces for a counteroffensive.

In the Sinai there was a continuous campaign which broke down easily into back-to-back scenarios. The Egyptians were represented at the brigade level and tied to their division commands. The Israelis were at battalion level. The game also has an air warfare sub-system to regulate air support available to the ground forces.

Spearhead Games, The D-Day invasion is a classic boardgame subject, but I wanted to contribute a design that presented a broader vision. Histories had emerged which furnished a much fuller picture of the intelligence and deception activities that surrounded the D-Day invasion. Instead of a detailed simulation of the invasion my goal was to present a very simple set of combat mechanics and put the modeling effort into the intelligence aspects.

The publisher, John Vanore, had a military background in the intelligence field so he was on board with this idea from Day 1. Unit representation was at the division level. I borrowed the Avalon Hill D-Day device of invasion areas with specified quantities of forces that could be landed in each. Spies, aerial photography, random events all figured in the mix.

This was a dynamic, exciting, and fast-paced game. Campaigns of Robert E. Clash of Arms Games, , A gem of a game. Leadership was an important factor in accounting for the ability of smaller Confederate armies to beat the Federal forces on many occasions. For Campaigns of Robert E. Lee CREL I devised a system that emphasized leaders—their movement capabilities could vary each time, they could benefit from the superior capabilities of top commanders, and more.

From Campaigns of Napoleon I took the mechanic of allowing forces to intervene in nearby battles. Unit representation was Federal divisions versus Confederate brigades. In combat I sought to have the forces on each side determine a result against the adversary based on their own capabilities, not any comparison with the enemy, and for this purpose innovated the Fire Exchange Results Table. This feature also eliminated the annoyance of calculating an odds-ratio versus the opponent.

Multiple scenarios represented all phases of the war in the Eastern theater. The second edition of CREL featured improved counters and a nicely re-drawn mapboard. Kanev: Parachutes Across the Dnepr, The Battle of the Dnepr became a crucial passage for the Soviets in opening the series of offensives which expelled the Germans from Russia and led ultimately to Berlin.

A scenario in Panzerkrieg modeled this action at the operational level but it was desirable to increase the granularity. Jack Radey published the first edition of this game. Being a Russian specialist Jack was well aware that Kanev offered a very novel situation.

Not only was it the largest Soviet airborne operation of the war, it was an instance where German forces were retreating behind the river while the Russians were already beginning their crossing. The German player therefore has to use retreating forces to block a Soviet offensive already threatening his rear.

This small, nicely-contained game plays very fast and has wild twists and turns. Warsaw Rising: The Uprising, One was the sheer heroism of a people, erupting with practically nothing against a trained army with tanks and artillery, and for a moment nearly winning. On the German side, it was so rare for a battle against an enemy who were neither Russians nor Western Allies. And there was the cityfight element.

If these kinds of games remained uncommon around the turn of the century, in the s they were exceedingly rare. The game has the interesting twist of regulars fighting partisans in an urban setting. Polish friends tell me it became part of an exhibition in a museum to the Uprising in Warsaw, and I know it has been emulated by Polish game designers doing the same subject.

The publisher came to me with this project: to do a pamphlet-size book on the origins and use of wargames, particularly by the military in the real world, not by hobbyists; that would have several games in it. Pentagon was a racetrack game in the style of Monopoly and was about amassing the biggest military budget. In this case the game tried to illustrate some of the vagaries involved in the design and production of weapons systems. The third game, Last Days at Saigon, was a conventional wargame covering the end of the Vietnam War in Vietnam was the most-studied, most-analyzed conflict around but all that brainpower, not to mention U.

Last Days served as a cautionary note. It originally appeared just a few months after the events themselves, in the magazine Bridge: An Asian-American Perspective , November Victory Games, This game was pure power politics. Think Risk on a global scale with modern techniques of political influence, covert operations, economic aid, and military force. The Cold War raged then and it was the obvious choice if you wanted to situate a game like this in a real historical setting.

It afforded me the opportunity to employ some of my knowledge of international relations and meld that with gamemaking skills. This game proved seminal in many ways. The subject was a good one: the heroic D-Day invasion, the key question of whether British General Bernard Montgomery could have captured Caen on the first day, the use of the British special armor, etc. But the subject got me to thinking about the nature of commitment of troops—how combat power changes with units on the move versus those arrayed for battle.

This resulted in an entirely new combat system for tactical games. Unit deployment mode determined strength and also vulnerability. In turn vulnerability was modified by types of terrain as well as the kind of combat.

I created a new style of CRT to go with these mechanics which dispensed with odds-ratios in favor of a simple subtraction of protection factors from attack strength, moderated by the type of engagement close assault, direct fire, bombardment, etc. Units were portrayed in battalions and companies. The game system worked so well I used it in several subsequent designs, including the award-winning Fortress Berlin. Spies: The Games of Espionage in Europe, Redmond Simonsen of SPI asked me to do this game.

I suggested spies. Secrets were distributed on the board, which represented cities in Europe where one might reasonably expect to uncover them, connected by means of a route-path network.

Players moved agents to capture secrets and police forces to defend them. Spies was actually designed using cards. Simonsen, pleading high production cost, made the decision to go with tiles rather than cards. While others have laid claim to the innovation of the card-driven game, there is a fair argument to be made that Spies was the forerunner, perhaps even the first card-driven design.

Some of these principles were used again in Cold War. TSR reacquired the game from us and republished it. With certain sad exceptions Russia, , Spain, Egypt , virtually all the campaigns could be modeled at the strategic level in a one-map game. I had wanted to do a Napoleonic Third Reich and this became the vehicle. Using many of the strategic model concepts I had designed for the earlier game I created a dual- or multiplayer simulation.

Leaders were crucial in play. Scenarios covered all the major actions. For Campaigns a major innovation was a 19 th Century operational system for the maneuver of forces across the board.

This worked so well I extended it later to Campaigns of Robert E. Lee and my subsequent designs covering events of that century. This became a dynamic, nicely-paced game. The success of Third Reich naturally suggested an equivalent strategic game to cover the Pacific theater.

However, thinking of the nature of the war in those different regions led me to avoid a straight remake. Airpower remained important but the role of land forces became much diminished and that of navies came to the fore. Longstreet's Disaster. Sound the Charge! Shiloh: April Glory. Great American History Games.

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