As a kid I was fascinated by military history and geography. I went to the library and pulled all the books I could and meticulously studied them. I still can walk through most libraries and recognize a significant percentage of the texts, even today.
World War One was always kind of an enigma. The war from 1914-1918 dominated popular consciousness in the 1920’s and 1930’s but was massively overshadowed by World War Two from 1939-1945 (earlier if you count Japan vs. China, probably should technically be 1937-1945). World War Two had flashier tanks and more powerful aircraft, and aircraft carriers and fleets around the world. World War Two was also ended by the atomic bomb, a singular event that shaped the postwar world.
Thus I read some about WW1 but mostly WW2. Many of the WW1 books didn’t systematically study the battles, but more the “feelings” of that war period, and many fiction books such as “A Farewell to Arms” or “All Quiet on the Western Front” were commonly viewed as summarizing the story.
As I became a bit older I became aware of wargames, and the “Avalon Hill” wargames in particular. For those not too familiar with them, the wargames had a laminated board with small, square counters, a rule book, and usually a CRT (combat results table) that was referred to after the dice were cast on a particular battle. The board was generally a topographic map of the region at hand, whether it was Europe or the US (civil war) or the Pacific. The board was usually in hexagon units, or “hexes”, since with squares you could move “diagonally” which was more efficient than moving over one and up one and “hexes” solved this problem. A few games such as “War at Sea” used “area” movement, which broke the world into bigger, non-linear units, but they were in the minority.
The counters usually had three numbers on them – the first was the “attack” strength, then the “defense” strength, and then the movement rate (how many hexes). There were always unique units, such as air and artillery, and rules for amphibious landings and movement by rail, but if you knew what I said above you’d understand 90% of what these games are right out of the box.
My first game I remember clearly was “
1914”. This was an Avalon Hill game meant to simulate World War One. The counters were pink and blue, kind of odd colors in hindsight, but visually arresting to a kid. The map was clearly Western Europe, where the vast majority of the battles occurred, on both the East and West fronts.
Although it was the game owned by the older brother of my friend, and he had the units picked out and stacked and I couldn’t touch them for fear of violence (in the good old days battles between brothers were fought out in the days before “time outs”) but I did surreptitiously look at the rules and the CRT and just thought it was amazing.
The most interesting element, one that sticks with me even today, is the audacious attempt to model or simulate an incredibly complex series of events via a simple set of mechanical rules. How do you simulate battles, attacks, and retreats? Via the attack factor, defense factor, with modifications for types of fortifications, and a random roll of the dice (modified for the “odds” based on the total attack and defense strengths). The rule book was pretty short, and in some way you could play out the amazing struggle of WW1 in cardboard in a few short hours.
As a game, I think 1914 wasn’t viewed as very successful. It is incredibly hard to recreate WW1 because the battles were kind of secondary to the overall meat grinder of each side chipping away via attrition on the other, with whole countries collapsing (Russia, almost France, Germany) when the strain of the blockade and the war becoming too great.
There were interesting technology side-shows, such as unrestricted submarine warfare, the massive naval battle of Jutland, and the air combat such as the “Red Baron”, but mostly the war was about logistics, artillery, and the power of defense. Even today I admire the insane bravery of men moving forward, without protective cover, over “no mans land” in the face of unbeaten machine guns and bunkers, and getting mauled severely. The casualties that individual units suffered in single days or a week were unbelievable; sometimes half the unit became casualties in a matter of hours. While WW2 certainly caused more casualties, for concentrated killing WW1 was a very capable butcher in its own right.
Thus part of the reason that 1914 as a game failed was because it is very difficult to model this sort of event. How do you model the point when an army refuses to go on the offensive, such as the French in 1917, weary of bad generalship and terrible tactics? How do you model the collapse of Russia, which was also tied to the end of the Tsar and the rise of communism, in the East? The battles were part of a massive political and social system that was collapsing under the enormous strain of the war.
Even today I have a special affinity for these types of games. It is very difficult to pick a few rules that manage to simulate a complex environment, and give the players a sense of these events and how the various decisions impacted history. The best games give the sense that this is possible, and then this model of thinking is interesting when deployed in general in life or business. What are the key rules, and what are the strategies? If you play even the simplest of board games without a plan, you are likely to lose against a competent human opponent (I am excepting games that are basically pure luck).
For a lot of the new computer and console games, there is a lot of physical action and reaction that constitutes who wins or loses. In these settings you are going to lose often because you are slower or unfamiliar with the controls or the cheat codes, not because your strategy is poor. I am not saying that there isn’t strategy in the games, I am saying that if you aren’t lightning quick you don’t even have a chance, regardless of your strategy. Sit down with a 12 year old and play Xbox and see how it goes if you don’t believe me.
The beauty of these board games is that physical skill was completely unnecessary – there was an element of luck (just like real life – even today whenever anyone simulates the Battle of Midway the Japanese win over, and over again) but it was the strategy that determined who won, and if you didn’t think strategically, you were bound to lose.
A friend of mine recently moved nearby and he has an empty table and we are going to buy one of these games and start it up again, with all the cardboard counters. I am sure it won’t seem as amazing as it did the first time I set eyes on 1914, but it will be good to travel back in time a bit. I’ll let you know how it goes.
It is hard to believe how many condos are going up in Chicago. These aren't small condos, either, they are gigantic!
