Tactical wargame

A Tactical Wargame is a type of wargame (such as a board game, card game, miniature wargame or PC game) that models military conflict at a tactical level, such that depicted units range from individual vehicles and squads to platoons or companies. These units are rated based on types and ranges of individual weaponry. (Military conflict at the level of the individual is generally referred to in the board gaming hobby as "man-to-man" wargaming, and in PC terminology, a wargame at the level of the individual is usually referred to as a "First Person Shooter". Some PC games do exist in a third person perspective and may arguably be referred to as tactical wargames also.

Tactical wargames are designed so that a knowledge of actual military tactics will facilitate gameplay. Tactical wargames offer more of a challenge to the designer, as fewer variables or characteristics inherent in the units being simulated are directly quantifiable (as opposed to Operational level wargames, which depict combat by larger units or formations.

Modern commercial board wargames avoided tactical subjects for many years, but since initial attempts at the subject appeared, it has remained a favourite topic among wargamers. The most commercially successful board wargaming system ever designed, Advanced Squad Leader, is set at the tactical level.

Tactical board wargames

History

The genesis of tactical board wargaming goes back to 1969. Up until that time, wargaming - which in the modern, recreational form only dated back to 1958 - tended to concentrate on operational and strategic subjects.

Tactical Game 3 was introduced by Strategy & Tactics Magazine as a game set at the platoon and company level game focusing on tactics on the Eastern Front. In 1970, game designer James F. Dunnigan sold the rights to the game to Avalon Hill, who turned it into PanzerBlitz. This began the so-called "Second Generation" of wargaming. PanzerBlitz eventually sold 250,000 copies, though it was not without critics (including Dunnigan himself).

In the early 1970s, several tactical games made their way onto the expanding wargaming market, including Grunt (1971) Combat Command: Platoon-Company Combat, France, 1944 (1972) billed as a western front sequel to PanzerBlitz, and Soldiers (1972) about World War I, all by SPI. Dunnigan then crossed another boundary and became the first publisher to release a game on the then-ongoing Cold War, called Red Star/White Star: Tactical Combat in Western Europe in the 1970s. The game was a success, though Dunnigan felt there were still insurmountable difficulties in realistically portraying tactical combat in a tabletop board game.

Tactical games moved in a new direction in 1973 with KampfPanzer and Desert War, which featured simultaneous movement, expanding on an optional rule for PanzerBlitz. The quest for greater realism had a large price, as complexity and "bookkeeping", or recording of moves on paper, became a factor. Nonetheless, other tactical games on a man to man level were released with simultaneous movement, with Sniper! being released by SPI in 1973, Patrol!: Man to Man Combat in the 20th Century and Tank!: Armored Combat in the 20th Century in 1974. Avalon Hill's western front Panzerblitz sequel, Panzer Leader: The Game of Tactical Warfare on the Western Front 1944-45 was also released in 1974.

Lorrin Bird, writing in Special Issue #2 of Campaign Magazine addressed what he saw as a major stumbling block in the depiction of tactical level combat in board wargames:

The major disappointment with the three major Avalon Hill games (Panzer Leader, PanzerBlitz and Arab-Israeli Wars) was the obvious sequential nature of the whole situation. A shoots, A moves. B shoots, B moves. With a little opportunity fire thrown in. In situations like the Battle of Kursk in Panzer Blitz confronting the enemy meant possible extinction. The hardest part to accept was the situation where three German tanks block a pass and cannot be seen by the T-34s on their combat phase. On the Russian move they move up to the Mark IVs and have to stop. The T-34 move might have taken only a two-hex advance (500 metres) and then they idle their engines for the next 5 minutes. On the next German move, the Mark IVs cleverly dart away, in and out of cover and take position again. The T-34s...move a few hexes, stop and idle, awaiting the German movement which frees up the next few hexes for them. Another funny situation is where a Tiger unit sits in the open and a Sherman comes out of nowhere and ends up adjacent to the Germans. With ideal conditions, the Tiger can decimate the Shermans in no time flat without any "defensive" fire by the M-4s at all, and then move off....While Panzer Blitz, Panzer Leader and Arab-Israeli Wars are wonderful games, and demand a high degree of tactical ability to play, victory can be obtained in a manner very often that runs contrary to reason and a player's intelligence...

Nonetheless, the much anticipated sequel to PanzerBlitz was a success, and SPI replaced their earlier titles with games featuring a new "Simultaneous-Sequential-Play-System" (SSPS) , eliminating bookkeeping and attempting to address the problems described by Bird. MechWar '77 replaced the earlier Red Star/White Star, Panzer '44 replaced Combat Command, and Search & Destroy replaced Grunt.

SSPS allowed for greater realism without sacrificing playability, and became the new "state of the art" for tactical wargames. The first era of tactical wargaming had come to an end. The new state of the art occurred in 1976/1977 with two titles destined to be the frontrunners of the entire market. Avalon Hill's Tobruk was released in 1976, followed by Squad Leader in 1977. SPI released Firefight at the same time as Tobruk But neither game did well, with increased realism in the form of detailed penetration tables in Tobruk and rigid rules for modern Soviet doctrine forced on the players of Firefight making games once again less playable and fun. Both also suffered from unattractive game components, particularly the mapboards.

Avalon Hill had approached developer John Hill to "do a game like Tank! (but) a squad level game...." Hill was well known, and had recently written an article in Moves entitled "Desiging for Playability." He had recently published BarLev and Battle for Hue.Template:Ref num

Squad Leader

The result was Squad Leader, which became a huge success and the flagship of the Avalon Hill wargaming line. Three add-ons (called "gamettes") followed, with Advanced Squad Leader following in 1985, which itself produced twelve "official" core modules, several historically based modules, a solitaire version, and hundreds of third party add-ons and variants.

Squad Leader used a semi-simultaneous system as well, focusing on infantry combat. Its appeal lay in the physical components for the game, with full color painted mapboards on rigid mountings that had the added advantage of being isomorphic.

While some observers felt Squad Leader was too romantic a view of infantry combat, the system of "design for effect" described in the Designer's Notes by Hill mixed playability and realism to an unmatched degree. Bird felt that the game "completely sidesteps the effect of widespread panic and morale breakdowns (contagious hysteria), and treats every soldier as if he were totally dedicated to the cause..."Template:Ref num Others felt that games like Search & Destroy had received short shrift.

Few tactical games during (the 1970s) are comparable to Squad Leader ... which is quite popular and is of a similar scale (to S&D), but has a needlessly complex combat system, leadership rules that would be more appropriate for 18th Century combat and ridiculously simplistic casualty rules...The wargame industry has basically ignored the more accurate portrayal of company level combat in S&D for the more glamorous version portrayed in Squad Leader.Template:Ref num

Even the developers of Squad Leader admitted that "our troops assault with a tenacity that would make Kelly's Heroes proud."Template:Ref num

Squad Leader vs. Tobruk

The Tobruk game released by Avalon Hill prior to Squad Leader got little support, from either gamers or Avalon Hill itself. "With the exception of a few articles and scenarios in The General, there was never a follow-on game or expansion product for Tobruk enthusiasts. We now have the benefit of hindsight to point to the years between the release of Squad Leader and its progeny Cross of Iron through GI: Anvil of Victory represented AH's commitment to tactical-level World War II gaming. As most readers are aware, that series led to ASL, followed by its own progeny over the years. Thus, one should not be the least bit surprised that Tobruk appeared to be expendable circa 1987, a year that happened to be the height of the ASL craze." Template:Ref num

Developers Hal Hock (Tobruk) and Don Greenwood and John Hill (Squad Leader) debated the merits of the two games shortly after the release of the latter in the pages of The General Magazine.Template:Ref num The differences between the game systems were made clear, and in an unprecedented move in July 1987, Avalon Hill sold the rights to Tobruk back to Hal Hock.

The challenges facing tactical wargame designers were made clear in that article:

Hill's is the artistic approach akin to the impressionistic school of painting where subjects are abstracted until the overall effect on the viewer is such that the artist can will his impressions upon the viewer. Hence, an artistic designer studies history with concern for the overall battlefield environment and how each specific weapon relates to it, as opposed to proving ground statistics. Regardless of a weapon's value, if the soldier wielding it has confidence in his handling of the weapon and its overall effectiveness, his performance will be greatly enhanced. He subscribes to the opinion in vogue these days in battlefield research that technical differences of weapons is not nearly as important as the psychological perception of the individual using the weapon...

Hock is the scientist and indeed has been employed in such a capacity by the government. He believes that since a battle is primarily a clash of technology, it can be measured. Proving ground data is his bible. Armor actions can be studied by careful study of "projectile penetration" vs. armor....The artist responds that this shell vs. armor test does not always hold true in the battlefield environment...The artist concludes...that when shell hits armor, anything (such as hits on vision ports, slung equipment, oblique angles, variable metal quality of cast armor, etc.) can happen and that only a most generalized statement of probability can be made.

Other land-based wargames

As videogame consoles and computer games became more sophisticated, they offered greater appeal than previously to those who enjoyed board wargaming as an intellectual challenge. Board games such as Eastern Front Tank Leader (also designed by John Hill), Western Front Tank Leader and Desert Steel failed to find large audiences. In the meantime, Advanced Tobruk was released by game manufacturer Critical Hit, Inc. in 2002. This game was a makeover from the original, and Raymond J. Tapio, who had been designing third party ASL add-ons for sale by his company Critical Hit, developed the new line in conversation original designer Hal Hock. Tobruk was expanded into a system covering the entire Second World War at the tactical level, with a game scale similar to Squad Leader/

As both ASL and ATS competed with each other, tactical wargames for the computer began to infringe on the market, with Gary Grigsby's series of games for the Commodore 64 and Apple II: Panzer Strike, Typhoon of Steel and Overrun! being early entrants. Under Fire was released by Avalon Hill in 1985, which bore resemblances to Squad Leader but, remained a very limited effort constrained by the realities of contemporary computer hardware limits.

A version of Sniper! was created for CompuServe for online play. M-1 Tank Platoon was released by Microprose in 1990 as a hybrid tank simulator and tactical platoon level game. Steel Panthers was released in 1995 by SSI, very much resembling a board wargame translated to the computer with a traditional overheard view.

Two attempts to convert Squad Leader to the computer resulted in the Close Combat and Combat Mission game series.

Fusion

With the use of javascript, direct translations of board wargames for play on the computer gained in popularity through three main systems; "Vassal", "Aide-de-Camp" and "Cyberboard".

Notes

1 Template:Note Information in this section condensed from the article "20 Years Later and 10 Years After Squad Leader" by Rodger B. MacGowan, Fire and Movement Magazine, Issue 53, May/June 1987

2 Template:Note Lorrin Bird, writing in Special Issue #2 of Campaign Magazine

3 Template:Note Nick Stasnopolis, Fire & Movement, May/June 1991 issue.

4 Template:Note Don Greenwood, The General Magazine, May/June 1983 issue.

5 Template:Note Raymond J. Tapio, Fire & Movement Summer 2004 issue.

6 Template:Note Don Greenwood, John Hill, and Hal Hock, "Game Design: Art or Science", The General Magazine, Volume 14, Number 5, January-February 1978.