From: John Best Subject: Re: WW3 operational level (was Re: WW3 strategic level games) Dave Kohr asked for evaluations and opinions about Superpowers at War: >I recall having some fun with the operational-level game "Superpowers at >War", from S&T 100. (Though we didn't actually finish a complete >scenario.) What did others think of this game? What other operational- >level NATO/Warsaw Pact games are out there, and how good are they? > >Dave Kohr Silicon Graphics, Inc. Mail Stop 22L-178 (650)933-8694 I had fun with it too. S@W was something of an experiment for S&T at that time in the sense that the two scenarios had different maps, and these were printed on the same piece of paper (so that each map was actually folio sized). The map scale was 4 kilometers/hex, 24hrs/day and the units depicted anything from a company to a brigade, but mostly battlions--making it pretty clearly "operational" in our sense of this term. (But let's go to parentheses for the sidebar interrupting my comments on the game. In what other sense of the term is this game, or any, "operational"? For an interesting, although too brief discussion of this term, see Gudmunson, B. I. (1989). Stroomtroop tactics: Innovation in the German army, 1914-1918. New York: Praeger. On p. xv, under the heading, "Note on definitions", Gudmunson cites the 1982 edition of the US Army's field manual, FM 100-5 Operations. There, the US Army's position was that the operational level was the concern of corps commanders and higher, while tactics is "the province of echelons below corps." (Gudmundson, p. xv). Would we buy into this pegging of the operational level strictly in terms of the size of the unit depicted? I doubt it. Even given the high correlation of wargame parameters that I alluded to above (hex, time and unit scale are highly statistically correlated in our hex-based games, as I'm sure all of us have noticed), I still don't think one parameter is all that is needed to "fix" in our minds, any given game's "level". Now let's close the parenthetical, "theoretical" discussion and get back to the game.) One of the features of the game that I did not care for was the fact that the counter set for one game was backprinted on the counter set of the "other" game. If you accidentally flipped a counter over in play, it might take you a few second to determine which side of the counter was the side that actually had been in play in that particular scenario. The game was not too complicated--a 16 page rule book, but it had a lot of pictures of tanks and other stuff in it. The designers were David Cook and Douglas Niles. Douglas Niles played a role, I think, in a couple of other S&T games during that time period, but consistent with some other observations that I've made, to the best of my knowledge, neither man plays any active role in commercial wargame design today. Here are some summary notes from a playing that I concluded on 4/27/85: Me and Joe set up "Drive on Munich" at 8:00 AM Saturday. Turn 1... (just kidding--here is the outcome from "Drive on Munich": Victory Points: For Units Destroyed For Geographic Objectives Total NATO 24 55 79 Soviet 41 15 66 NATO marginal. It looks the Soviets didn't kill 'em fast enough to take the geographical objectives they needed. Overall, I thought it was a fun "little" game--held my interest, had decent "excitment value"--no showstopping boo-boos in the rules, and a reasonably nice looking game besides. Worth your time imo if you're looking for a quick playing operational level WW3 game. Thanks for reading. John Best jlbest@tuscola.net Oh wait, and before I forget--when we start talking about operational level WW3 games, I wonder if we'll remember to include "Jacksonville: Beaches of Doom" from the very interesting "Death of a Superpower" series?