Empire Made Simple: A Review of Struggle for
New France
by Jim Werbaneth
Designer’s Response to “The Forgotten
Triumph: A Review of Defeat Into Victory, From
Against the Odds
Magazine”
by Paul Rohrbaugh
Plan Colombia: Counterinsurgency in GMT’s Andean Abyss
by Jim Werbaneth
Imagining the Modern: The Birth of Hypothetical Modern
Tactics, in SPI’s Red Star/White Star
by Jim Werbaneth
Mission Capable: The
Understated Problems of the Ambush in Firepower
by Jim Werbaneth
Coming Attractions: Developer’s Notes For
The Battle of Hastings, for Turning Point Simulations
by Jim Werbaneth
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by Jim Werbaneth
Here it is, the newest Line of Departure.
This comes close to being a modern war theme issue, with the main obstacle being
the lead review of Struggle for New France. One can actually find
trends in here regarding how we have looked at contemporary combat over the
years.
Red Star/White Star was the first
major modern hypothetical tactical game, going back over forty years. It
might seem a little quaint to think of T-62’s and M60’s as state of the art
armored fighting vehicles. Yet that is part of the educational value of
the game, to remind us that the world was not always one of composite armor,
turbine engines and sophisticated command and control systems. In 1972,
tank combat was closer to the world of Sergeant Elvis Presley, or World War II
for that matter, than it was to today’s battlefield.
Then we step forward to Andean Abyss. Gone
is the high-intensity mechanized warfare of West Germany in the early seventies,
and instead we see a much more incremental form of guerrilla war. Panzers
dashing across the fields are largely irrelevant; the Colombian civil war was
essentially a struggle for control of people as much as territory. This is
not always a matter of appealing to the “hearts and minds” of the populous
though, as it often was based at least on coercion and terrorism. However,
that should not be much of a surprise, as this is a recurring theme of irregular
warfare. For all the recurring talk of civic action and the people being
the sea in which the fish called guerrillas swim, revolutions involve the stick
along with the carrot.
Firepower occupies a place somewhere
in the middle. It is a micro tactical game publish about halfway between
Red Star/White Star, and at that scale the greater context of the
conflict means a lot less than the immediate goal of winning, or just surviving,
an engagement lasting minutes. The larger context is a lot less important
to private, specialist, corporal or sergeant in a Firepower battle than the
immediate situation. It is close to irrelevant, as the character of the
overall conflict is determined at a level way above his pay grade. If this
does become relevant to him, it is because it helps determine what his enemy
looks like; political considerations can be pivotal in determining whether his
foe is a lightly-armed guerrilla, or comes at him in a tank.
Plus, there is no inevitable progress from conventional
to unconventional conflict, or vice versa. During the 1960’s, during era
of the Vietnam War, counterinsurgency [COIN] was a dominant thread in American
military thought. Then with the end of the conflict, attention shifted
back to Europe, and the prospect of fighting mechanized battles against a Soviet
conventional enemy; this is the subject of Red Star/White Star. This
emphasis continued through the decade, and into the next, until the end of the
Cold War offered the prospect that the United States would be a superpower
without rival, and even the possibility of an end to history itself.
Such projections proved false. The
United States experienced the conventional wars of Panama, Desert Storm and
Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the Soviet Union fell, and afterward. There
was also the intervention in the former Yugoslavia and the air war against
Serbia.
Still, insurgency did not go away. Just
as the Second Boer War went from a conventional war of maneuver to a guerrilla
war against the British, Operation Iraqi Freedom went from a conventional
mechanized war, easily won by the United States and its allies, to an insurgency
in Iraq’s cities. Then the terror attacks of 9/11 led to the
counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, the site of the Soviet Union’s final conflict.
History did not end so much as repeat itself.
Likewise, there were other conflicts that did not quite
fit in with the old superpower versus superpower paradigm, or the new one of
terrorism versus civilization. Colombia was such a war. There was a
state fighting a Marxist guerrilla insurgency, but there were other parties too,
especially drug cartels. There are other examples too that take this
pattern even further, in which the main combatants against the state are
narcotraficantes, with the familiar Marxist guerrillas in a secondary role at
best. One such war occurs even now in Mexico, between the government and
an assortment of cartels. There are politically motivated guerrillas, such
as the Zapatistas in Chiapas state. This is the world of Andean Abyss.
Yet the threat of a high-intensity, mechanized
conventional war cannot be wished away. While it may not involve a United
States, at least not immediately, at this writing Russian aggression toward
Ukraine threatens Europe with a new conventional war. After years of
disarmament and wishful thinking by the West, old threats become new menaces.
It is not that Putin represents a new threat, so much as the latest
reincarnation of many old ones.
In the coming months, readers can expect more features on
modern warfare of all sorts. They have always been an important part of
the magazine, and are not about to go away. If anything, a more dangerous
world gives them extra currency.
While modern games will be a covered consistently in
Line of Departure, others will see their profile raised. As noted in
the last issue, science fiction and fantasy games are making a comeback within
the magazine’s pages. Recently, I invested in this in a big way, and I
mean big, as in a game whose box is as big as some or my furniture. This
is the deluxe edition of Ogre, from
Steve Jackson Games. It is almost certain that it will be profiled.
Plus, the chances are very good that Line of Departure will present new
scenarios.
There will be some other trends in the
magazine’s coverage. I’ve noticed that in the last few years, features on
Civil War titles have become less frequent. That will change, with both
classic and newer games to be addressed. Likewise, computer games will be
coming back, though not in a dominant role. The print edition especially
will always be an overwhelmingly boardgame-oriented venture, and there is
neither need nor desire to change that. Still, there are some newer
computer games, and a lot of older ones, that are suitable subjects for Line of
Departure.
All of this will be easier as my living space and
computer infrastructure is much better than it was a year ago, or even last
summer. The game room is set up, and really is devoted chiefly to games.
Well, games, along with my big screen television and stereo. Plus, I
purchased a new Windows 8 computer, now running Windows 8.1, in September, for
my office. I know that this generation of Windows is among the most
aggravating, and quite possibly the worst since Windows ME, or “Mistake
Edition.” But it runs my games well. For those that are too old for
the latest but not necessarily greatest iteration of Windows, I’ve done some
experimenting lately with virtual machines, and found a really good way to run
Windows XP that way. Then too, there is always DOSBox, for the really old
titles.
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