Philip Sabin's "Simulating War" Wargames

 

As part of my PhD I've finally read Philip Sabin's Simulating War, and more to the point played all the games in it. Sabin's book was one of the first professional wargame books I bought 5 or 10 years ago, and it opened my eyes a bit to this world of "professional" wargaming.

All the games are ones he uses on the courses he teaches (or taught), so they are designed to be played in 60-90 minutes, have a maximum of about 20 counters and no more than 3-4 pages of rules. All the assets are in the book and also available for download at https://groups.io/g/SimulatingWar/files. I set up most of them in Powerpoint as it was the quickest and easiest way to play them. Here's some pics and some quick thoughts on them.

2nd Punic War

This is meant to be played multi-player and heavy on the diplomacy - and it does feel like a cut-down version of Diplomacy - and probably no bad thing at that! In solo play it was all over in 2 turns when the Carthaginians managed to get a toe-hold in Southern Italy.

Rome Invicta

A more operational level game of the Roman Civil War. Sabin has the concept of nested games, where he gets students to play a strategic, operational and tactical game on each theme so they can better understand how a war works at different levels. Think I only played a couple of turns of this as was OK but nothing special.

Big Week

A game of WW2 strategic bombing. The Allies have to get their bombers to the target and home again whilst protecting them from the German fighters. A really nice little game. A clever innovation were the "Pollard" markers, dots on the four sides of a two sided counter which gave 8 strength states (or in this case endurance/turns left).

Hell's Gate

This is a nice operational simulation of the battle of the Korsun Pocket on the Eastern Front. The ration based CRT meant you were always looking for big points densities, although as the CRT was one sides you could attack at 3:2 as no loss, and hit on 6+. I tried to cut the German supply lines with a quick drive from the East, but as the German's shrink their perimeter it becomes almost impossible to keep their lines cut. A nice touch was the chioce to make a combat limited or all-out, the greater risking some own loss. The limit per hexside and the dense target rule did something to alleviate over-stacking. The ratio CRT and hex & counter model still means it feels like you could be fighting any period though. In the end the German's held on an got a reasonable victory. Certainly worth replaying a few times to try and find an optimal strategy - but a bit of an attrition-fest.

Fire and Movement

Ever since I had the honour of playing this on-line with Philip Sabin himself umpiring I thought I really ought to get it set up on Hexon with some 6mm figures, so this was my chance. It worked incredibly well, and like the other "small-grid" games I played at VCOW showed just what a good game you can get in a small space. All the rules are finely balanced, so there are continuous choices to be made, and fire hitting two hexes, as well as all units in a hex really dissuades you from bunching! The Brits only managed to geta couple of units to the baseline, so a German win I think. Definitely a permanent option for my portable wargame set-up, and I've done a 1pp QRS to help play it - but most rules are learnt pretty fast.

Block Busting

This is the "urban" version of Fire and Movement, same basic rules but with added LOS and cover for the buildings. Fire into open hexes is DEADLY though, which makes crossing the street a real problem. In the end I found that the Brits just had to wait for the German luck with the dice to run out one turn, leaving all the Brits unpinned, they could then pin all/most of the Germans and get a platoon across, and hopefully roll up a flank before the Brits lost the initiative with their own poor dice rolling. Don't think its as good a game as Fire and Movement.

Angels One Five

This is Philip's game of tactical fighter combat, with the British trying to intercept German bombers this time. Each counter is just a flight (I think). The rules are quite complex, with multiple flight levels, gaining and losing speed as you dive and climb, controls on turns etc. After 3 moves I decided it would be a lot more fun just to play Wings of War, and I think you'd learn as much.

Kartenspiel

Tucked at the back of Simulating War in an Appendix is this little card/dice game. Each stack is a Napoleonic Corps, and as the force commander you allocate your cards to each Corp as you wish each turn, but in secret. For the turn you face each Corps of against it's opposite number, picture cards counting as cavalry and then each roll a dice under you "hand" score (Cav=2, Inf=1 basically) to see if you inflict any damage. There are some extra rules around cavalry charges, and like Hells Gate you have the option of a defensive/low risk strategy or an aggressive/high risk one. A great little game and I've scanned the relevant pages into my phone so if I've a deck of cards on hand I can always play it with someone.