While I’m a fan of defensive battles (unfortunately few AIs are that great on the offense) I agree with Jason that attacking is inherently more fun than defending in most cases. It’s one reason it was always hard to find people to play the Germans in games like Atlantic War or The Longest Day (big, monster board games of Normandy). The Allies were attacking and guaranteed of a “win” in the sense of holding the territory. The Germans were destined to “lose” even if they “won” on points, and they had to defend too.
Hey everybody! I wish I had time right now to talk about Korsun Pocket, but unfortunately I can’t, so I’ll just stick to answering the questions people asked: Mike, you can play the TAO campaign in the same resolution as KP. They didn’t just toss in a WinXP copy of an old game: they updated TAO to the KP system. You’re getting two games for the price of one. Note that this includes all rule changes.
Brownlee: The game has an outstanding manual and very good tutorials. If you’re the type who has the patience to follow them, then getting a grip on how KP works isn’t going to be a problem. The issue will be, rather, whether you find it engaging. There is a significant amount of fiddling in these types of games that eventually comes down to finding a way to get two more combat factors, or one more combat shift, or whatever, into that attack on 3rd Panzer. RPG fans, at some level, have to love to see stats rise, and get a +2 weapon to replace their +1 weapon. Wargamers, at some level, have to get a kick out of seeing 1st Guards Division get the divisional integrity bonus, and seeing the von der Heydte paratroops land safely, and looking forward to the turns when the weather clears they can finally use air interdiction. Otherwise it can seem like a number-crunching exercise. For wargamers, those numbers are really little tanks scooting around, doing cool tank things.
As Jason Levine used to tell anyone who would listen, the TAO PBEM function sucked because of the lack of replay. That’s all fixed here.
There are a lot of interesting points in this thread I’d like to respond to, but I can’t now - maybe tonight if I can find time. Thanks to the fatally bugged CGW rating system, I was unable to give this game one million stars. It is head and shoulders and torso and then legs I guess above any other hex-based wargame on the market. If you say why don’t you marry the game if you love it so much, I say show me how AND I WILL.
P.S. I don’t have that CGW issue yet - I just want to pre-emptively say that if the dek reads, “Two, two, two games in one!” then I had nothing to do with it.
Another point on the game system – I haven’t played Korsun Pocket yet, only The Ardennes Offensive, but this one was perhaps the most elegant hex-based wargame I’ve ever played. The ruleset has an elegant simplicity that’s almost as easy to manage as Panzer General while being much more faithful to the historical situation (supply lines, combined attacks). I would definitely recommend it to someone who wants to try wargames. There’s always the chance that you just don’t care for the historical details but other than that, it’s much easier to play than the Gary Grigsby monsters or the rather unwieldy John Tiller games.
Bruce,thanks,it’s almost worth buying this just for the totally updated TAO campaign.
Do think the game will suffer due to the one-sidedness of the historical situation?It won’t really bother me,since I enjoy playing hopeless defensive situations.It would be nice to see this engine with one of the more freewheeling battles on the eastern front,such as the battles around Smolensk in '41.
I haven’t received KP yet,but I’d second Bruce’s comment about the merits of the manual,at least the one from TAO.It’s the best manual I’ve ever received with a wargame,and one of the best manuals ever printed for any game.I don’t believe that there was any part of TAO that wasn’t explained clearly and logically.
I wouldn’t worry about the historical situation. In strategic terms, yeah, it’s one sided. But as the operational commander you should have your hands full (this based on the history and other Korsun Pocket games; I’m still waiting for my copy of this one). The Germans have a lot of leeway in how they respond to the Soviet assaults, in terms of use of their armor and when and where to counterattack or try to break into/out of the pocket. The Soviet’s have to work at making a pocket in the first place (again, judging from other experiences I’ve had) and while in the end the Germans are doomed pretty much, you have to be on your toes to make that happen in a timely and cost-effective fashion.
I’m very excited about this game (and the redone TAO). It’s unfortunate, however, that we’re not likely to see a third game any time soon, if ever. This game took how many years to come to fruitiion? Sure, SSG didn’t work on it full-time the whole duration, but that’s the point–no wargame developer can afford to turn out products like this on a regular basis. Tiller’s games may be “unwieldy,” and I’d agree that the scale makes some of them pretty monstrous in the “move every counter all the time” fashion, but they do manage to come out regularly, look good, and play pretty darn well. Would I prefer each game to be like TAO? Sure. Ain’t gonna happen.
So while I’m hoping to relish Korsun Pocket, I don’t think it’d be a good idea to get used to that sort of thing. Unless you really can sustain your wargaming jones with one game every five years, that is.
From all the comments here, I think I’ll be buying this game as soon as I’m able. :)
TSUBABABABA!
The copy of TAO on the CGW disk - I don’t supposed that’s the updated version, is it?
I’d like to try Korsun Pocket. I’ve never played a wargame (except for the Combat Mission 2 demo) but I love strategy games - MoO2, SMAC, Rails Across America, Shogun: Total War, Civ3, Myth 2 etc. Surely playing these for years qualifies me for understanding Korsun Pocket even a bit.
Tough to say. Strategy board games would make a better primer–they require more dedication and a willingness to learn intricate systems.
Buy hey-try it out. The worst that can happen is that you don’t like it, whereas the best-case scenario is that you’ve discovered a whole new genre of games.
I got through the MoO3 “tutorial” - and I liked it. And the game.
In the end, it’s not differential equations or molecular biology - it’s just a game. So if you put a reasonable amount of time into it, you’ll pick it up. That said, this kind of hex wargame is far more computational on a turn-by-turn, unit-by-unit basis than even MOO3 is. So if you’re not into that, and don’t have a particular interest in military history, this probably won’t be for you. But like Ben said, it’s worth a try. If you don’t like KP/TAO, you probably won’t like any hex wargame, because this is the best there is, and as Christoph said, it’s very accessible as far as these games go.
I agree that the game situation in Korsun Pocket has one side (the Soviets) on the strategic offensive, but unlike in a tactical wargame, it’s not really possible to have a “meeting engagement” in an operational-level game. One of the two sides will be on the attack, at least initially. And in a World War II game, it’s not possible for the sides to blunder into each other (like, say, in an operational-level Napoleonic game) because there will almost always be a front line of some sort that defines the territory under control. The only exception to the latter, perhaps, would be in North Africa to some extent, and in the Pacific (although that involves naval movement and combat). On the eastern front, even attacks that were almost simultaneous (like Mars/Fridericus around Kharkov in '42) had one side attacking at a time.
I don’t know what to think about the whole issue of “balance.” Determining victory is, to a great extent, arbitrary. In Smolensk '41, how many objective points would really constitute a “victory,” given that the operation was a strategic mistake in the first place? There is the historical metric, where is you do better than the real-life result, you win. In something like Bulge, a slightly better-than-historical result probably wouldn’t have changed the course of the war. But what about during Operation Typhoon? Or Stalingrad? And in any case, I’m not writing speculative hex wargaming fan fiction about my games. If I win a game of TAO, I win the game. If I win a game of Monopoly, I win the game. I’m not concerned with the potential future earnings of the dog or the top hat. If I win a game of Reiner Knizia’s Samurai, I don’t start thinking about what policies I’m going to institute now that I’m emperor of Japan.
I think by “balance” a lot of people actually mean equal opportunities to be on the attack. In this case, there are relatively few situations available to model as wargames. If you accept the proposition that a wargame has to have American forces in it to sell well, there is exactly one situation: the Battle of the Bulge, which is why it has been modeled to death. The funny thing is that the second half of the battle, when the Germans are spent and the Allies are on the attack, really isn’t all that interesting. The fun part is seeing how far the Germans can go. The eastern front as a whole is good for this, too, with multiple chances for the Germans to go for the knockout, and the fact that the Soviet player knows that if he can just hold out, he will eventually get his revenge. The one land campaign that would really work well in this regard would be North Africa. I wish someone would do that.
In the end, though, it’s the designer’s job to make the game interesting. That’s the whole point of design. One of the games I consistently had the most fun with was Storm Over Arnhem. It took the most static part of Market-Garden (the British stand in Arnhem) and made a challenging, tense game out of it, despite the fact that the British had no chance to do anything other than get killed more slowly. So the outocme wasn’t ever in doubt. BUT WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? Did the dish run away with the spoon? Or was the elf involved? Maybe someone can start a fan fiction thread.
With regard to balance (particularly when dealing with historical scenarios), I think the most important thing is that both sides have ample opportunity to make interesting decisions. I’m not so married to the concept of balance as being “each side has an equal chance to win,” especially in a single-player game. And I wouldn’t apply that only to wargames, either. I think it’s odd when people complain about lack of balance between character classes in, say, solo RPGs as well. So what if one class is likely to be easier to play than another? As long as both offer an interesting game experience, it doesn’t matter much to me.
Sorry to hijack your wargame ruminations with RPG examples, Bruce. I probably shouldn’t mention my efforts to create a custom scenario in which Erich Von Manstein discovers a magical toadstool ring by the banks of the Dnieper, and then proceeds to break out of the pocket and crush the Soviets at the head of an army of leprechauns and unicorns.
On a completely unrelated note, does anyone here remember the size of Grigsby’s War in Russia? How many hexagons were there on the map? It was the biggest hex map ever, right?
Just wondering because I’m thinking about doing a Roman Empire game with about 40,000 hexes. :P
Sorry to continue the hijacking, but I wanted to say that the latest Tom vs Bruce article was great (RON). How did RON rank on the enjoyability scale in comparison to the other Tom vs Bruce battles? It seemed to have some pretty good back and forth elements. Any chance we’ll see a Korsun Pocket version? I know its not mainstream enough for Jeff Green, but Jeff’s been known to buckle (Combat Mission for example).
By the way, what’s up with the first two entries, which were at 3 seconds and 7 seconds? Do those represent reaction times for figuring out your strategies for the game? Just thought it was kind of funny.
I play wargames as sort of extensions of historical monographs, and as a sophisticated form of solitaire, primarily. Only secondarily do I play them as competitive games, where victory (on the game’s terms) is key. So historical oddities aren’t much of a problem for me, either. I agree that you have to approach these things as they are set up–if the game covers Bagration, you don’t go into it expecting an equal chance for the Germans to steamroll the Reds.
However, I do indeed ponder the intangibles, like an operation being a strategic mistake, or what might happen after the scenario ends. I just don’t let those things bug me too much.
My copy of Korsun shipped yesterday, USPS. I’m hoping it comes by Saturday. The $18 FedEx shipping charge was ludicrous.
I pretty much agree with Bruce and TheWombat’s views on historical wargames, although I have to admit that I enjoy balanced games more. Which probably explains why I generally seem to prefer strategic and tactical level games to operational ones.
It may also explain why, when I do play operational-level games, I seem to favor American Civil War games. Many of the battles modeled in those games, if not equally balanced, at least are close enough to give both sides a realistic chance of winning the battle as opposed to merely garnering enough victory points to “win” in the game sense. In fact, in some of those games it was pretty damned hard not to reverse the historical outcome. I remember from my old Avalon Hill days that it was damned near impossible not to win as the Union in Chancellorsville. Well, I guess that’s not “balance” either. :)
Oh, got any particular favorites?
Oh, got any particular favorites?[/quote]
Oh, yeah. As far as computer games go: Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, Sid’s Gettysburg, all the Talonsoft games, particularly Chickamauga, but I especially like Bull Run (the second battle in particular) for multiplayer. That one is about as balanced as a historical operational-level game can get. Back in the Commodore 64 days, I had all the SSI titles. Now there was an interface for you. Scrolling around the screen with that keyboard, squinting at 4-8 pixel long blocks of blue and red that represented your units. And we liked it!
Well, since you people are so useless I had to go and download War in Russia from Matrix Games (where it’s available for free). Turns out it had only 72 x 66 hexagons, or 4,752 in total! And that was supposed to be a monster game? Ha, I can top that! :D
Hmm. According to William “Desktop General” Totter, Lock 'N Load is a fairly accessable and good wargame. It’s also got some pretty graphics. Have you had a chance to play this yet?
I’m just looking for the right game. I really don’t want to play a game that turns me off from wargamming all together.
Too bad it’s difficult to find wargames in places like EB and Future Shop.