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Oh, if I could just snap my fingers, and every single board game wargame I have ever owned just materialized in a pile on the floor (It would be a very large pile too), in mint condition never opened state...

But, it would not be the same.

I'd need to be also back in time, the same age I was, same local buddies I had. And that is not going to happen.

I lament I gave away, sold, ditched whatever some titles.
Rebuying them, nearly impossible without massive cost in most cases.
But I'm me, and I'm 58, and those buddies are gone.

Some games can't really be played solo and be as fun. Midway, not easy to imagine sneaking up on myself
ASL, I'm hardly going to have rules clause arguments in my own head
Third Reich, I wonder what option chit I got?

Some of us like to play some games solo. Some need ftf or nothing. Some are ok with remote play methods.
It's not easy to bluff in Rommel in the desert if you are playing it solo.

Computer games promise a lot. But frankly, the state of wargaming AI remains dreadful. You'll get a better opponent with a bored non-wargaming human. When I beat the computer opponent, I couldn't care less that I won. So I beat the AI. Yippee. AIs, they are not poor sports, they won't argue about the rules. They never bring beer. They won't laugh at you rolling 4 and 6 attacking Warsaw. It's not the same.

The only thing a computer wargame brings to the table, is you don't need a table.

Today's plan is to see (yet again) if I can revive Squad Leader. The desire is to make all 4 modules, as easy as SL, as detailed as CoI, and include only the best of all 4. Find a way to locate if they exist, more scenarios. And modify the counters to be consistent. Because I don't reeeeeerally want ASL. I just want a lot more SL.

I'm also trying to sort out my PanzerBlitz and Panzer Leader stash.

I'm also trying to get back into playing A3R somehow.
Russian Front is doable.
Anzio is doable.
Fortress Europa is doable.
I've played those solo in the past.

I'm thinking of making a platform big enough to hold any of them. With a lid that is dustproof as well as windproof and catproof. Storage is always the weak link of a board game.

But much of my efforts miss the important detail. I can't really go back in time.

A table of whatever size that you need, enclosed in plexiglass that you can easily move out of the way. You can leave the game set up and use the top of the plexiglass as a table if you want to. Just leave enough space for the game between the top of the table and the bottom of the plexiglass.

The top of the table could also be either hexes or squares for miniature play.

Back in my board gaming days I made a cabinet for them. I made masonite panels from 4x8(feet)x1/8 inch that were the same size as a single map. Then cut a 4x8(also feet)x1/8 inch plexiglass into the same size as the masonite and used wood paneling sleeves to hold them together. The maps went in between. Then made a cabinet with shelves that I could slide the assembled panels into. I could set up a game of however many maps and put it away in the cabinet, counters and all. Never had to worry about cats or kids messing it up. Sometimes I had four games going at once.

All of the guys who played together got transferred to other bases or lost interest or, worse yet, got married to women who thought men should not play games. Those were good gaming days. [8D]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

Back in my board gaming days I made a cabinet for them. I made masonite panels from 4x8(feet)x1/8 inch that were the same size as a single map. Then cut a 4x8(also feet)x1/8 inch plexiglass into the same size as the masonite and used wood paneling sleeves to hold them together. The maps went in between. Then made a cabinet with shelves that I could slide the assembled panels into. I could set up a game of however many maps and put it away in the cabinet, counters and all. Never had to worry about cats or kids messing it up. Sometimes I had four games going at once.

All of the guys who played together got transferred to other bases or lost interest or, worse yet, got married to women who thought men should not play games. Those were good gaming days. [8D]

That is also an excellent idea.

Aside from not needing the table. but the table concept is a good one.

I've done the cabinet idea before, sort of. I've loved having board games that were not paper maps because they stack easily in places meant for them.
I've never made the cabinet for them, but have stored them in stacks with dividers under the boards. Not nearly as ideal as a cabinet though. I will give some serious pondering to making a cabinet. Good ideas by the way to you guys.

The table concept is something that I may try for a n scale train set. Then somehow get to a hospital or a house for the family members of people receiving treatment at the hospital. The plexiglass could keep little fingers from damaging things but the controls would be outside so the children of all ages could still play.

To be honest, I am lost where to start with ASL. Too many boxes, and no player around me anyway.

I vaguely recall there were magnetic? sleeves
you could stuff counters into and somehow mount
maps on the wall so that the counters would "stick".

I eventually tossed the fifteen or so wargames
I had into the dumpster. My sole opponent had been an
older brother and he died. So, the notion of recreating
my board wargaming past would require seance sessions.

Which, did cause me to wonder about playing with a Ouija
board to direct my moves. But Ouija requires two
(living) people. There was an interesting thread
somewhere about people teaming up to play Chess with Ouija
boards though. Then there was that chap in WWI who
directed artillery fire with a Ouija Board.
Ouija Board Barrages

The original Squad Leader had an odd rulebook section
involving playing cards. A specific lineup of
units was tied to a specific card. So, drawing
a single card would choose that lineup. That
was kinda like a crude AI for OOB selection.

The only later boardgame I owned was Patton's Best
because the game was meant for solo play. It was ok
but only for one completion of "making it through
the war alive".

I will not buy any pc game that lacks a decent Ai. By
decent I mean something that presents a challenge
before you learn how to best it. I still play
Civ 1 and IV because they have challenging AI's.

I do feel that AI development will advance to
such an extent that a generic AI kit will exist that
can be retro-fitted to the games we currently play and
render them unbeatable. Though, I may not be around to
see it personally.

It is not unusual for such circumstances to remain static
for a long time and then see an incredible boost in
performance. You just have to live long enough to
see it happen.

All my Earthly possessions can be loaded into my beat-up Kia
Soul. I have thousands of books and songs because they are
digital. It would require a tractor trailer to haul just
these items alone if they were physical. But, since they
are digital, I am very mobile. I could never go back to
dragging a heavy logistics tail around.

ORIGINAL: ncc1701e

To be honest, I am lost where to start with ASL. Too many boxes, and no player around me anyway.

ASL is a complete game with just the manual and the initial module. But it often presumes you have the early genesis mapboards. The game can be 'sampled' nice enough with the ASL starter kit one.

The only real hassle of ASL, is finding it in print and on sale.

Of course you can go back. It is almost as easy as going forward. Think of it as dancing. In dancing you usually move both forward, and backwards. Even sideways. If you want inspiration you can look at some sports where they even run backwards.


[;)]

I still have an old bookcase box of the original Squad Leader sitting on a shelf in a closet. Even with the programmed instruction method where the rule book fed you chunks of the game that you could digest, I could never really get into it. Too many line of sight rules and exceptions. Too much minutiae to memorize. Too much hex cost counting. I just found my squads bogging down in a game that should be representing swift moving combat. I guess I was more a Panzerblitz guy.

I also found it odd that in the game there was no chain of command, no platoon structure, in fact no military unit structure at all. In playing Squad Leader, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Second World War was run solely by corporals, sergeants and their gaggles of squads, with no higher levels of organization or command. Maybe that was covered in Advanced Squad Leader, but I never got that far.

I still have a considerable collection of old wargames in that same closet that I keep out of nostalgia, but don't really miss playing them much. For me, even the worst AI beats playing solitaire. I don't miss deciphering, memorizing and enforcing all the rules, or doing all the math, or pushing the counters stacks around with tweezers, or keeping the table space for the games clear of prowling cats.

Hill 621 and The Road to Wiltz were my favourite SL scenarios to play solitaire. In fact, The Road to Wiltz remains one of my favourite scenarios of any game. So much so, that I visited Wiltz just to see what it was really like.

I once bought a larger house specifically so I could have a dedicated room to set up World in Flames. I played it solitaire, and it was set up for four years (no kids and no cats to disturb it!).

Cheers

Fair observations Platoonist. Some of us want the insane minutiae, some can't stand it.

Comically, I love minutiae in Squad Leader, find it a bit much in ASL. Additionally, I don't mind it in tactical, but find it overbearing in operational, and just too much in grand strategy. I like ASL, but consider Gary's War in the East tedious, and War in the Pacific is over the top with it.

AI, I suppose AI is also a command level thing for me. I know the AI is easy to cope with in Battle Academy after a few playings of a battle, but it can be a challenge on the first playing. But I find the AI makes maddening decisions in grand strategy that can completely destroy an experience. Sealion just isn't going to happen in Strategic Command. But it might play an alright game on the continent. Operational titles are usually based on the specific design. Some games like Panzer Corps are specific set-piece battles with demanding schedules.

But with a board game, I like needing to master the rules set completely before I play. With a computer game, it lets us be lazy, and I have noticed, it impacts my gameplay. I've gotten sloppy in the last 20 years. I used to think I was a reincarnated Ike. Now, I'm lucky to be Kay Summersby

I think my all time favourite command level is best offered in Panzer Leader.

ORIGINAL: Eambar

Hill 621 and The Road to Wiltz were my favourite SL scenarios to play solitaire. In fact, The Road to Wiltz remains one of my favourite scenarios of any game. So much so, that I visited Wiltz just to see what it was really like.

I once bought a larger house specifically so I could have a dedicated room to set up World in Flames. I played it solitaire, and it was set up for four years (no kids and no cats to disturb it!).

Cheers

I can relate. I went to the trouble of having a baby, just so I could grow my own opponent. Sadly it didn't work out as I expected. He's into languages and science.

I've spent a few years with enough space. But I'm likely heading towards having a cat.

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer

Fair observations Platoonist. Some of us want the insane minutiae, some can't stand it.

Comically, I love minutiae in Squad Leader, find it a bit much in ASL. Additionally, I don't mind it in tactical, but find it overbearing in operational, and just too much in grand strategy. I like ASL, but consider Gary's War in the East tedious, and War in the Pacific is over the top with it.

It's funny because there was individual tank/squad level game that Avalon Hill put out a bit before Squad Leader. It was called Tobruk and covered the Gazala battles in North Africa in 1942. I found I could handle the minutiae of AFV vs AFV, gun vs gun and section level combat in that game rather easily, because in the flat open terrain of North Africa there were virtually no line of sight complications except for dust and smoke markers. Because Tobruk focused on a single slice of WW2 it was able to get a lot of the tactical details right. However, there was lot of dice rolling to determine the hits of EACH shot and where they hit on a tank which could be tedious.



Obviously, the map art of Tobruk was never going to win any graphic awards though. Happily, there were no nations involved with orange as a counter color.

ORIGINAL: Platoonist

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer

Fair observations Platoonist. Some of us want the insane minutiae, some can't stand it.

Comically, I love minutiae in Squad Leader, find it a bit much in ASL. Additionally, I don't mind it in tactical, but find it overbearing in operational, and just too much in grand strategy. I like ASL, but consider Gary's War in the East tedious, and War in the Pacific is over the top with it.

It's funny because there was individual tank/squad level game that Avalon Hill put out a bit before Squad Leader. It was called Tobruk and covered the Gazala battles in North Africa in 1942. I found I could handle the minutiae of AFV vs AFV, gun vs gun and section level combat in that game rather easily, because in the flat open terrain of North Africa there were virtually no line of sight complications except for dust and smoke markers. Because Tobruk focused on a single slice of WW2 it was able to get a lot of the tactical details right. However, there was lot of dice rolling to determine the hits of EACH shot and where they hit on a tank which could be tedious.



Obviously, the map art of Tobruk was never going to win any graphic awards though. Happily, there were no nations involved with orange as a counter color.

And of course this game too got the "Advanced" treatment:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/399 ... ced-tobruk

Advanced Tobruk was always a scam meant to give the proverbial finger to Hasborg. It was a thinly disguised effort to use one game, to pretend at being another (ASL). But you'd need to go back quite a few years, and read a daunting array of forum traffic if you hadn't been there at the time.

Is the game any good though? Hard to tell. Is it 'advanced' Tobruk, not really. It's ASL in the desert. Made to look like 'Tobruk'.

I'm currently trying to understand PRECISELY what it is I'm missing.

Was it Squad Leader, was it ASL. Was it pushing the cardboard? Was it arguing over the rules?
I have a vast sum of scans etc. I COULD print out the entire experience. Manuals, boards, counters, Journals, scenarios from all manner of places.
And when you consider the going price of ASL modules (OUCH !!!), well, colour printing costs just ain't going to intimidate me.

I played a lot of ASL against two individuals. One liked playing the Germans a lot. We played a lot of military-themed stuff in the background. One was a big fan of ABBA (I was too), and we played it a lot (when I hear ABBA I immediately think of The Guards Counter Attack ).

Best wargaming of my life.

Then it all just faded away (like my youth). The collection sat unused for years. Why did I finally sell it?
Is reaquiring it a good idea? Or am I forgetting something that finally made me decide to sell in the first place?
I periodically reinstall Civ V only to play it for a day or two only to remember why I uninstalled it. It lost its shine.
ASL is not the same as most operational level wargames though. It never plays the same way twice.
In A3R there's only so many ways to attack Warsaw. If you botch it and mangle France, you might have just thrown the game.
In most squad tactical games, there are just too many teeny tiny variables. It's not easy to have any firm fast established most do actions.

I have always laughed, "with ASL, even losing is ok, because the darndest things happen with each playing." It's several hours of "Wow, Kelso was sure on fire there." With Grand Strategy it's often like Chess, you win or you lose, much like a round of Poker.

Why a board game? Why not a computer wargame?
It's not the human vs human thing if you play the board game solo willingly.
I know I always liked needing to master the game's mechanics.
With most computer wargames, I'm just clicking a mouse, and not really understanding why I won or I lost in a specific attack. The program might give you the specifics, but in the past with board games, I already knew the specifics before I rolled the dice. I had to, otherwise, there was no game.
I think tutorials have also made us lazy. With board games, you either learn the game, or you don't get to play it.

The funniest thing I ever witnessed, these two young friends (young at this time in my past), were playing a Battle of the Bulge game. They were using ALL the pieces, no start-up specifics, no real rules, they were just playing with the pieces on the map. It was a brutal version of Army Men really

Today, I think a lot of us just want to turn on the program and start playing, without a clue what the game is supposed to do. And then we get frustrated and blame the game, and not ourselves. Don't deny it, I've read posts about this matter for decades We Do it.
In the past it was "hear read the rules, let me know when you're finished." There was no game until you had. No tooltips. No intuitive play. I think that's why we complain about some computer wargames where the designer has assumed the purchasers were old hands and would actually read the manual first. Just staring up Gary's War in the East and expecting to just start playing is brutally unrealistic It's a great manual too.

I think I'm missing the tactile experience. I think I'm missing the need to actually know the game's guts inside and out.
I think I'm missing not needing to scroll, not needing pull-down menus. Needing to actually do the math. No easy shaded movement options.
Do all of the computer perks make it easier to game? Well duh, yes of course. But, has it dummied down the process of learning to wargame? I think it might have. Is that a bad thing? Well, there were only certain types playing board game wargames in the 70s.
But who are we marketing to now?

I saw 'wargame' to someone under 30 and presto they think Call of Duty.
I suggest a board game wargame to them, and they think I'm nuts.
I tell them they have to pay attention during my turn as well, and no cell phones and they laugh and you have lost your opponent.
I'm not sure I even want to wargame against someone that is under 30 and unable to turn off a cell phone for several hours.
I certainly don't want to listen to the complaining and the excuses.

I have all day to game, no one to game with. No one likely to leave their cell phone at home. It sucks.
And I don't want to play a board game wargame via my computer with someone I have never met in a distant place. It's solo or be in the same room.
If I'm staring at my computer, I might as well be playing a computer wargame too. If I must play a computer wargame, I might as well play it solo me vs me. The fun of a human opponent, is they are there in the room. When it's their turn, it's their turn, and there isn't a lag waiting for them while they have walked away from the computer for who knows how long to do something else.

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer

Oh, if I could just snap my fingers, and every single board game wargame I have ever owned just materialized in a pile on the floor (It would be a very large pile too), in mint condition never opened state...

But, it would not be the same.

I'd need to be also back in time, the same age I was, same local buddies I had. And that is not going to happen.

I lament I gave away, sold, ditched whatever some titles.
Rebuying them, nearly impossible without massive cost in most cases.
But I'm me, and I'm 58, and those buddies are gone.

Some games can't really be played solo and be as fun. Midway, not easy to imagine sneaking up on myself
ASL, I'm hardly going to have rules clause arguments in my own head
Third Reich, I wonder what option chit I got?

Some of us like to play some games solo. Some need ftf or nothing. Some are ok with remote play methods.
It's not easy to bluff in Rommel in the desert if you are playing it solo.

Computer games promise a lot. But frankly, the state of wargaming AI remains dreadful. You'll get a better opponent with a bored non-wargaming human. When I beat the computer opponent, I couldn't care less that I won. So I beat the AI. Yippee. AIs, they are not poor sports, they won't argue about the rules. They never bring beer. They won't laugh at you rolling 4 and 6 attacking Warsaw. It's not the same.

The only thing a computer wargame brings to the table, is you don't need a table.

Today's plan is to see (yet again) if I can revive Squad Leader. The desire is to make all 4 modules, as easy as SL, as detailed as CoI, and include only the best of all 4. Find a way to locate if they exist, more scenarios. And modify the counters to be consistent. Because I don't reeeeeerally want ASL. I just want a lot more SL.

I'm also trying to sort out my PanzerBlitz and Panzer Leader stash.

I'm also trying to get back into playing A3R somehow.
Russian Front is doable.
Anzio is doable.
Fortress Europa is doable.
I've played those solo in the past.

I'm thinking of making a platform big enough to hold any of them. With a lid that is dustproof as well as windproof and catproof. Storage is always the weak link of a board game.

But much of my efforts miss the important detail. I can't really go back in time.

MrsWargamer I think sometimes you spend too much time analysing and not enough just playing and enjoying.

Personally I love both board and digital games. Just the big restriction with board is that usually you need a like minded opponent, which is why I stick with solo boardgames. This isn't an issue with digital, and before the AI's get slagged off I'm a totally useless gamer so on the whole an AI will do. I also don't try and take apart and analyse a games AI to find it's weakness and limitations, sometimes it feels some gamers set out straight away to game the AI and find all it's faults. That's not for me and I'd find that would just ruin many game experiences I've had. Rather be ignorant of this myself.

ORIGINAL: wodin



MrsWargamer I think sometimes you spend too much time analysing and not enough just playing and enjoying.

Yeah, and put Dancing Queen by ABBA on continous loop in the background. It'll all be good. [8D]