Matrix Games Forums

Hello fine lads and gals of the Matrix Forum!

Today I'm offering something of a strange and experimental opportunity. I'm currently preparing a wargame, in the military sense, that uses Gary Grigsby's War in the East as an adjudication engine for moves. The idea is to gather people with an interest in operational science and military history to try and replicate the conditions inside the German High Command and see where they run with it during the 1941-45 GC.

I have a manual for the game which you can access here, though keep in mind it's incomplete at this stage:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ygP ... kdLdA/edit

The game will be run out of the subreddit r/warcollege which can be found here:

https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/

What I need

I'm looking to flesh out the Umpire team for this game since my own experience with the game would be lacking (175 hours) and I have only played against AI. Right now the working assumption is that the players will be collaborating against AI, but I am open on this if a suitably motivated candidate among you would be willing to play the Soviet side.

Keep in mind the main goal for this is to develop the players' operational thinking, not competition, and the Axis side will be hobbled with certain constraints that are not present in the game. A big asset would be someone that has a good understanding of the air war and support units subsystems.

If you are interested to help me umpire this thing, please comment in this topic or reach out to me via PM. I'm looking for 1 to 3 candidates in order to provide some depth. Duties would include helping me run the turns in WiTE, give feedback to players, process their various requests and help me create the situation briefs for the players. I am willing to work with you to let you focus on the parts you would enjoy most.

If you are interested in being a player, a signup thread should be available this week through r/warcollege. I already have the support of the mod team over there and we will have a dedicated subreddit available to coordinate through. A discord server will also be created for the game.

Proposed settings for the game

Here are the settings I am wanting to use for the game to give the Germans a historically hard time and try to compensate for the AI's weakness. Feedback would be welcome on those.

Full FoW
Soviet +1 Atk
Harsh Blizzard
Soviet Admin and Morale 110%
Historical Weather

My background

I am an Army officer and one of my core interests is how to use games to improve decision-making abilities of military leadership. This is not any kind of official trial/experiment, just some personal development and fun. I have run in-person wargames before and have served in HQs up to the brigade level, so I have some experience of the real life side of the operational process, which I of course intend to simplify for players.

The game will of course have an educational component with collective AARs at several points in the game.

Hope that interests some of you!

Sounds interesting and fun. Some tips:

I have not played AI from very long ago, but I remember it being quite weak. As Germans will be so heavily impaired with lack of coordination perhaps is a good election (I think a soviet experienced player will be too much, at least if he does not act like an "umpire" and auto impairs himself)

By the way, I have the feeling that your experiment could work better with the players in the soviet side , as the game gives so much freedom to soviet side in units creation, also timetable and operational disasters are more forgiving for Russians. I remember German AI being worse but against a human German player constricted with some rules I think can be a good match.

Your settings seems ok against the AI, perhaps with the exception of Historical Weather, sound stange for the germans having so much knowledge of weather (though the seemingly unavoidable with random time august mud turn is a mess).

have you a decision about the game versin to play? BEta has very interesting rules , specially in retrreat priorities, but air system seems to be somewhat broken.