gamers – Movement Point

Taking a Gander: TCS Goose Green (MMP) Released

September 24, 2023September 23, 2023 by Chris Baer

Though best known for their prodigious output as the current benevolent custodians of Advanced Squad Leader, Multi-Man Publishing also shepherds various other wargame series, including the Tactical Combat Series (TCS) pioneered by Dean Essig (and previously released under the aegis of The Gamers, now folded into MMP). The most recent TCS title is Goose Green, designed by Carl Fung, focusing on the initial ground combat between British and Argentinian forces in and around Goose Green and Darwin on the Falkland Islands in May 1982.

As with the last TCS entry, Ariete, Goose Green comes as a ziplocked, rather than boxed, presentation, with a single standard 22″ x 34″ map on glossy paper; half a countersheet of die cut 1/2″ counters; series and special rules on glossy paper; some charts on relatively thin, glossy stock; and thick front and back cover sheets. It’s a tidy package at an agreeable price. TCS has never seemed to be as big a seller for MMP (or The Gamers previously) as the other series in their stables, so it’s good to see the series continuing in a format that gets the games out to players at a price that is as close to “impulse buy” as wargames tend to get.

Goodness knows I’ve bounced off of TCS more than once in the past, having owned (and sold and owned and sold) several titles in the series over the past two decades. What has thrown me off—and others, I would wager—is the innovation at the heart of TCS: written orders. Like ASL, TCS focuses on tactical battles, highlighting small unit engagements, typically at the platoon level as opposed to ASL’s focus on the squad. TCS, however, requires written instructions for units to act, orders that must pass through the chain of command. No telepathic, instantaneous communication between units here—orders are orders, and just because the player wants to react to an opportunity (or mishap) in one area, the written orders take precedence until new orders can be cut.

For gamers used to pushing counters at will, it’s a difficult, or at the very least different, mindset to adopt, particularly at the tactical level, and while most TCS series games have small scenarios, the thought of orchestrating a major offensive in writing can be daunting. The relatively small focus of Goose Green feels like an ideal setting to try to come to grips with TCS; even the full campaign for Goose Green should be within the realm of the possible, given that there are a grand total of 140 counters in the game, fewer than half of which are actual units. The game contains a total of five scenarios, ranging from five to forty turns, each turn representing between twenty minutes to an hour duration, depending on light conditions.

Too, with the fortieth anniversary of the conflict in the Falklands just past, Goose Green feels a somewhat timely addition to the relatively thin conflict simulation corpus surrounding that clash in the South Atlantic. Designer Carl Fung goes to significant lengths via the special rules and scenarios to portray the difficulties facing the British as they attempt to conduct a rapid assault against numerically superior Argentine defenders, themselves well dug-in but on the receiving end of an advanced combined arms fusillade. Both sides need to make tough decisions about when to press and when to yield, decisions compounded and complicated by the TCS orders process. Besides, any game with counters for that lovely homegrown Argentinian close air support aircraft, the Pucara, deserves a place in my collection.

The components themselves are up to the usual handsome MMP standards, the maps hewing broadly to the standard Gamers style, with graphics work by Nicolas Eskubi. Love them or (more likely) hate them, the trademark Gamers’ “every five hexes” printed map coordinate system rears its head here, as does TCS’ legendarily finicky line-of-sight process, but those are small quibbles to bear for a fairly unique take on one of the most important, and overlooked, land battles of the late 20th century. Goose Green promises to be worth the effort involved in finally coming to terms with TCS, in order to examine this signal moment in military history.

Movement Points: Standard Combat System

September 17, 2023February 6, 2008 by Chris Baer

How one moves a unit in a wargame is, to my thinking, integral to how that game plays and, perhaps more importantly, how to understand the game. Game designers give us clues about the best use of units and potential strategies via the movement rules.

Movement allows you to bring your units to (or away from) combat in a manner of your own choosing. You can maneuver to assault the weakest point of your opponent’s line, make spoiling attacks to prevent his or her strongest units from operating at peak efficiency, or waste your forces in ill-advised sallies against well-fortified positions. Conversely, movement allows you to withdraw to better terrain, cut off enemy supply, and occupy vital territory, furthering your aims without attacking.

Combat is only part of a wargame. One of the hobby’s most venerable publications is called Fire & Movement, after all. Without movement, you’re simply rolling dice to see who wins. At that rate, just play Yahtzee.

One of the most succinct expressions of “how to move” can be found in the Standard Combat System (.pdf) (Multi-Man Publishing/The Gamers).

The SCS movement rules are a distillation of years of “best wargaming practice”—someone who has only played Avalon Hill or SPI games from the 1960’s or 1970’s wouldn’t have much trouble picking up an SCS game.

Idiot Rules: The Mighty Endeavor

August 30, 2023January 27, 2008 by Chris Baer

The tactical situation is dire and the course of action clear—pull back your forces to defensible terrain, shortening your supply lines and providing mutual support for your thinly-stretched units. But you can’t, because there’s an idiot rule in your way.

Wargames use idiot rules to prevent players from taking actions that are otherwise tactically sound and allowed in the rules, justifying the restrictions for historical reasons or to provide some form of play balance. After all, unless forced by the rules, very few sane gamers would throw division after division into Stalingrad or try to hold all of France in the face of a massive Allied invasion. Idiot rules attempt to enforce dictates from above the gamer’s pay grade.

Idiot rules can be subtle, offering rewards for following a particular course of action; games that use Victory Points as a means of determining the outcome of a game, for instance, can allocate a certain number of VP for control of locations that would otherwise be abandoned posthaste. Idiot rules can also be explicit, making certain sections of the map simply off-limits until a certain game turn or until certain criteria have been met.

D-Day by e-Mail

August 30, 2023January 25, 2008 by Chris Baer

I’m preparing to begin play of The Mighty Endeavor (Multi-Man Publishing/The Gamers, 2005), an operational level treatment of the Allied invasion of France in 1944 featuring mostly Divisional units. I’ll be playing against my opponent via e-mail, sending turn logs back and forth using VASSAL, a free Java program designed to facilitate online play of paper-based wargames.

The Mighty Endeavor is a series game, one of the more recent in the long-standing Standard Combat Series (SCS) designed by Dean Essig. According to the Designer’s Notes from the v1.7 rules (.pdf), SCS

was designed to be a basic—read FUN—game which can be played at times when the others seem like too much of a good thing. These games are made for the ‘break out the beer and pretzels, and here we go’ type of evening.

And indeed, I find myself gravitating towards SCS games less because of subject matter and more because I already know how to play the game.

Series games play an important role in contemporary wargaming, because they allow the time-pressed gamer to simulate different conflicts using the same basic rules structure. Once you’ve acclimated yourself to the series rules in SCS, which cover all the basics of wargaming in seven pages, you just familiarize yourself with the specific game rules and dive in. Learn once, play often.