Issue 73 (Spring/Summer 2013)
Turning Point in the Central Pacific: Saipan
1944 Takes the Panzer Grenadier System to the Marianas
by Jim Werbaneth
The
Forgotten Triumph: A Review of Defeat Into Victory, From Against
the Odds Magazine
by Jim Werbaneth
Throwing Large Rocks Into Space: Space Combat and
Genocide in Double Star
by Jim Werbaneth
Free-For-All on Ancient Seas:
Simulating Naval Battles in the Classical Era with Trireme
by Jim Werbaneth
Visit the Line of Departure Online Features site for FREE articles, scenarios, game supplements and player's aids.
Accepting PayPal! Click here to order online, and here for a printable order form.
Click Here For Specials On Line of Departure Back Issues and other products.
by Jim Werbaneth
Line of Departure is back, after what I admit is too long of an
interval. I probably could have published this a few weeks ago, but decided that
it was more important to do the issue right, rather than just to put a magazine
on the street for its own sake. So I took a little more time.
The winter
was the nexus of a crisis, to borrow a phrase from Blue Öyster Cult. It started
with a major change of workload at my major day job, as the powers that be
decided to increase the student load for full-time instructors. One of the
leading reasons was the federal budget sequester, and the threatened end of
tuition assistance for military students. My employer made a decision to vastly
increase the workload for the full-time faculty to make sure that we made our
quotas. Unfortunately not much thought went into what this meant for those
instructors, and as a result I was kept working, without a day off, from
Christmas to the end of June. Plus, there were many nights in which I didn’t
finish my work until after midnight.
The good part is that that’s over
now. In addition, I was recently in a meeting in which we were assured that this
would never happen again, ever. I just hope that they’re serious, as none of the
educational equivalent of an accelerated assault turned out good for anyone, at
any level, on any level.
At the same time, I did the most adult thing I
have ever done, in my entire life. At long last, I bought a house. I’m in the
same general area, about six miles north of where I grew up. I saved for a long
time, working up to three jobs at a time for a while. I was finally able to make
an offer on a place around Christmas, and closed on January 25.
This
means a lot to me for obvious reasons, and that includes wargaming and Line
of Departure. Previously, I was in part of the house where I grew up, and
thus my library and game collection were not well organized, to put it mildly. I
had games on shelves in the game room and my bedroom, but also in the attic, in
the back of a closet, and in file cabinets. I knew where everything was, but
that was not due to any system.
Now there is one. All of my boxed
wargames, and all of my computer games, are assembled in the game room. All of
the magazine games are in my home office. As a result, games that I haven’t
opened, and in some cases so much as seen, in years are now prominently
displayed and at hand. Thus not only will I be playing these old games, I will
be writing about them too, and you can count on them being treated in the pages
of Line of Departure.
For example, since the introduction of Advanced
Squad Leader, my old copies of Squad Leader, Cross of Iron,
Crescendo of Doom, and G.I.: Anvil of Victory were stuffed in
the back of my bedroom closet, minus their maps. They were kept with my
Advanced Squad Leader stuff. Today though, all are in the Avalon
Hill/Victory Games shelves in my game room. This brings up a question: Why not
cover them in Line of Departure? These were excellent games when they
came out, and in my opinion Cross of Iron and Crescendo of Doom
are especially good yet today. It is not as though Advanced Squad Leader
came out, and the faces melted off those earlier games. From the very beginning,
one of the central principles of Line of Departure has been that just
because a game is superseded does not mean that it loses its quality, or all of
its appeal.
When I moved, one of the first priorities was setting up the
game collection and library; that was right up there with the computers and
televisions, and immediately ahead of integrating the stereo with the game room
TV and Blu Ray player. I still don’t have all of my furniture, and six months
after the move, there are still some boxes in what will be the living room. You
can tell what is really important.
Yet there is one more advantage to the
new setup. My previous game space was a cobbled together from the family game
room, but part was also my office, inherited from my dad. My new game space is a
bit smaller, and has an L-shape, due to the intrusion of the laundry room in the
back. However, it is much more specialized as a game space, with a television
and stereo. Just about everything else is devoted to games, and the space to
play them. Thus I expect to be able to set up more and bigger tables,
facilitating bigger games. It has been a long while since I was able to set up
something as big as Gulf Strike, Pacific War, or World in
Flames. Now there is room for these, and perhaps even larger titles.
This is not just good news for me; it is news for you the readers, as this
raises the probability that larger games will find their way into the pages of
the magazine. I’ll still have room to set up something smaller alongside, so a
monster game will not have to be a home-dominating obsession, and will leave
room for something smaller. That includes design and development projects,
especially for the Turning
Point Simulations line to which I remain committed.
All of the work
so far has taken a lot of time, at the same time that I was bearing a student
load that might drive others to a meth habit (for the record I’m too cheap for
hard drugs). As stated too, it’s not done by any means either.
With this big change in my life, there were things
that I had to give up. Travel is the biggest. Besides the shortage of time,
let’s face it, mortgage payments and other extras such as food and utilities
tend to eat into essential expenses, such as airline tickets and beer. This year
is the first since 2009 in which I had no major trips ― No Florida, no New York
City, and what I miss most of all, no Europe. I did not attend any academic
conferences nor go on vacation. Instead I stayed in what my former colleagues
and I in the First National Bank used to call Porchville.
I even had to
take a break from graduate school, not taking any courses from the end of
January onward. Fortunately I am able to return in September, enrolling in a
class on World War II in the Pacific. Thus while I might be behind my
self-imposed schedule to earn my second Masters degree, it will happen.
All the while, I was working on Line of Departure when I could. As soon
as I had the game room set up into some working order, and the wireless network
was working, I wrote this issue’s article on Double Star. This is
significant for a couple of reasons. The first is that I haven’t covered very
many GDW games over the years, despite that company’s importance to wargaming
through the seventies and eighties particularly. Secondly, this marks the return
of science fiction gaming to the pages of Line of Departure. In the
early years, it was a lot more common, but later it sort of faded away in favor
of historical games.
I do intend for this to be something other than an
isolated case. I really am interested in returning science fiction, and for that
matter, fantasy games to the magazine. This is not unprecedented, as over the
years Line of Departure has carried articles on the likes of
Starship Troopers, Sorcerer and even Warhammer 40K. These
will not dominate the magazine, nor can readers expect to see them in every
edition. Not unless there is a huge outcry for them, which I don’t really
expect. At the same time, I don’t expect to hear a major outcry against them,
especially among older readers.
There was a time when these were accepted
as part of wargaming’s mainstream, especially during the so-called Golden Age.
In fact, in my estimation at least, it is one of the things that made the
seventies and early eighties such a great one for our hobby. There was an
acceptance of more speculative topics, one could outside the lines of
historicity without suffering in reputation or self-esteem. In my view, the main
reason this changed was the rise of Dungeons & Dragons; borne on its
popularity, hordes of board wargamers left their hobby for fantasy roleplaying.
As a result, the remaining board wargamers saw fantasy and, connected with it,
science fiction, as the enemy. Further, that lead to a degree if jealousy, with
historical boardgamers resenting the success of the new genre.
Over the
years I committed a lot of sins, but I don’t believe that these are among them.
In consequence, Line of Departure has not been a totally historically
purist publication.
In addition, the last two issues indicated a couple
of other adjustments. One is a recommitment to supplemental material for games.
This starts with scenarios, and moves on to optional rules, variants, and
player’s aids. Once again, this is little new, and marks a return to original
principles as much as anything else. Likewise, after a short absence, magazine
games are once again part of the coverage.
That is how things stand now.
Line of Departure is back.
RETURN TO LINE OF DEPARTURE HOME PAGE