Herb Petro - Jan 25, 2004 2:09 pm (#19779 Total: 19779)   
North Carolina    
 
ArmChair General #1 and Operation Iraqi Freedom game mini-reviews

Has anyone seen/read Armchair General Magazine? It is a little light on
the histry, but it may be mainstream enough to attract new wargamers. 

My trial subscription copy of issue #1 arrived on Friday. The heft of
the magazine, the professional writing and editing, and the potential I
see in it convinced me to write a check for the invoice. 

The magazine is slightly geared toward PC gaming, but gave a passing nod
to table top gamers by providing a downloadable paper map and counters
game: Operation Iraqi Freedom. The wording of the editorial makes me
believe that the game was intended to be printed in the magazine. There
is also an article about the game that appears on the website that
sounds as if it were written for inclusion in the magazine. In one way
it is a shame the game was not printed in the mag, since it may have
been a good vehicle to bring more folks into the consim fold. However,
the game itself was at average DTP quality or at a decent beta playtest
stage, so would have brought down the professional quality of the
magazine had it actually been included. In the end, the game was
mentioned on the cover and a has a one page advertisement style
description in the magazine itself with instructions to download it. 

More on the game, and then more about the magazine. 

The game designer is Mark Walker of Shrapnel Games and Lock n' Load
fame. The game covers the April 2003 liberation of Iraq by coalition
forces, using 35 mile hexes and brigades/divisions/special units. The
game is very basic, playable either solitaire or I-go-you-go, but has
some interesting chrome with the unit special abilities, and the use of
action cards (random events). The rules are clearly written, 4 pages in
length (rulebook formatting would have condensed this to 2 pages), and
seem to be geared toward folks not used to playing hex-and-counter
games. Groggy terms, such as ZOC, are avoided even though ZOCs are used
in the game (they stop opponent movement and block supply lines for the
Iraqis). The CRT and TEC are standard fare, but eleven types of terrain
or hexside features is a bit of a mismatch to the effort made to present
the game to non-wargamers. The CRT is based on force ratios and a roll
of a d6. However, no die is actually required since the action cards
each have a number on them which allows them to be drawn in place of
rolling a d6 (the rules do not even mention using a die). Initial
placement of Iraqi forces is noted on the reverse of each counter, a
nice touch. One hex of the initial set-up does violate the stacking
rules, but that was the only error that I noticed. 

The biggest drawback to using this as an intro game to non-wargamers as
presented is the need to backmount the counters. The counters themselves
are reasonably nice (little pictures and tiny NATO symbols), but there
is extremely little margin of error for mounting front and back since
the information on the counters is placed too close to the edges (I
barely got usable results in my mounting, but did not bother redoing
them). There are also no instructions for mounting the counters, so a
non-wargamer may be at a loss. The map itself is reasonably nice, but
the terrain is too subtle considering that it is going to be printed on
a range of printers. The file format choices were also puzzling, JPG for
the counters, bitmap for the map, and Word doc for the rules and charts.
At a minimum RTF is preferred over DOC for distribution to a wide
audience with varying platforms and software. PDF files for everything
would have been the safest choice, since experience tells me that some
people will be clueless about how to scale the graphics files (perhaps I
am just overly sensitive to this issue since color choice, resolution,
file format, etc., are serious issues in the electronic versions of maps
and documents I output at work). 

The winning conditions are tough, but reasonably so since the coalition
has force superiority (capture five cities in eight turns and only incur
a single step loss for all allied forces in the solitaire version or
just two step losses in the two player version). Overall, this is a
simple game, but I found it interesting to play through. I think I will
reprint the map at 150% or so, which will make the counters a
corresponding 5/8", before I run through it again. 

The magazine is 124 pages in length on slick paper and is perfect bound.
A double sided pull-out 11x17 inch map that accompanies one of the
articles were counted as four pages (the pages on either side were 104
and 109 and there was clearly no missing text). At first I was
disappointed that the Operation Iraqi Freedom game map was not printed
on one side of the pull out, but there is advertising for Osprey on each
side of the map so they probably paid the expense of having the pullout
inserted. 

Pictures and maps are abundant throughout the magazine. The layout is
professional and I have not yet spotted any typos. While the articles in
Armchair General would not make it into MHQ, they are professionally
written and edited. The publisher's notes indicate that the magazines is
intended to be an "exciting and entertaining experience in military
history and strategy." The magazine also aims to take an "interactive
approach". As a first issue, it accomplishes these objectives. 

For example, part 1 of a "historically accurate interactive fiction
series of a tank commander in World War II" invites the reader to see
the outcomes of decisions by choosing between two courses of action and
turning to the appropriate page to see the outcome. At first I groaned,
since I thought this was a poor take on the 'choose your own adventure'
books that were once popular (however I did enjoy those books as a
youngster and still have all of them). On further reflection, I accepted
and even enjoyed this approach as a legitimate literary device to
present the importance, and sometimes futility, of the on-the-ground
decision making that takes place in combat. 

The highest page count was devoted to WWII (three out of four feature
articles and half of dozen plus department articles), but there was a
feature civil war article, an article about the future of modern
warfare, an article about paintball (paintball really does offer a taste
of small unit tactics), a movie preview, two PC game reviews, and an
article on the Byzantine General Belisaurius. 

The website for the magazine is at http://www.armchairgeneral.com and
has additional articles that didn't make it into the magazine and
discussion boards. 

Based on the first issue, I definitely recommend Armchair General.
Although some of the articles don't have a lot of depth, the magazine is
taking an intersting approach to presenting military history. It
definitely has potential and is worth the $24.95 for 6 issue price to
see how it shapes up. The professional presentation, writing, editing,
and the presence of a variety of advertising (video games, the History
Channel, magweb.com, Osprey, International Napoleonic Society) makes the
long-term success of the magazine a very reasonable proposition.