Monday, September 22, 2014

To Build A Better Bomb: The Manhattan Project

A few weeks ago, on our regularly scheduled boardgame night, my mates and I were exposed to the radioactive goodness that is The Manhattan Project. Evan particularly enjoyed the game and so he purchased a copy within a matter of hours.

I, too, had a lot of fun. I had been looking over the game for several months, but had not parted with my money for it. I am always on the lookout for a game my sons and I would enjoy, but while this looked good, I was not sure about the play of it.

However, after three games, none of which I won, I do believe the game is a keeper.


The game board is actually quite small, but each player also had his/her own side board, and then there are cards which are used throughout the game play. Looking at the board itself, one sees that it is not only very busy, but also very stylized (a bonus!) and filled with play areas where one places workers.

Yes, it IS a worker placement game. Much in the style of Euro games, one one is eliminated during play. Although, one can become frustrated if an evil player chooses to make one's life miserable (insert evil laugh here).

There are three types of workers in the game, as I don't own a copy of the rules, I will use what I remember and totally make up what I don't remember: Workers, Scientists, and Engineers. Workers can do most anything, apart from design or build the actual nuclear bombs. Scientists can help produce more scientists, design and build bombs, and also create the all-important fissionable materials as ingredients to bomb-making: uranium and plutonium. Engineers get a bonus for building some buildings, help produce industrial goods, and are generally better than workers in most any of the board spaces.

Each player receives four of each kind, in their own color. There are also four of each kind in a neutral gray, which are acquired as temporary workers due to board placement or cards that are in play on a player's board.

When it is your turn, you MUST place a worker on the board OR you may recall your workers. When a recall action happens, your workers, wherever they are and also all the gray workers on the board are removed and placed back in their proper pools. If you place a worker on the board, it may be placed on any open space, subject to certain limitations. For example, some spaces require an Engineer or a Scientist and these are noted on the board space.

Cards are purchased from those available along the top of the board, with card position determining the cost of the card below it. As a card is purchased, the cards to the right are shifted, filling the now empty location, and a new card from the deck is revealed and placed in the far right position. If an Engineer is used to build the building, either of the two left most cards may be purchased at no cost. Also, if there are any funds in the area on the very far left of the cards, those are taken by the player who purchases the left most card for $2 (or for free with an Engineer).

These cards are essential to a player's ability to win the game. Yes, one can play without any cards, but doing so puts one at a severe disadvantage. This is due to the fact that once a player has placed a worker on the board, he can then place the rest of his workers (including any temporary workers that have been gained since one's last Recall) on his cards.

Notice, there are also markers for fighters and bombers on this player card. Yes, you CAN bomb opponents into well, not submission, but surely into a realm of extreme frustration.  If you look at the image above, notice the symbols along the top of each card. These indicate the costs of activating the card, whether this be through worker placement or the expenditure of money, yellow cake, and fissionables.

Uranium bombs are worth more victory points, but are also more difficult to produce, unless you get very lucky with early card purchases.

Some cards produce only one type of resource, where others give a choice between two types, and another gives both. In the image above, placing any worker on the university card allows a player to choose either a Scientist or an Engineer. But the factory in the lower left allows for a bomber and $2 for the placement of any two workers. Notice that the enrichment plant in top right needs $4, two Scientists, and three Yellowcake in order to produce two uranium.

Yellowcake is almost always used in the production of uranium and plutonium. It can be produced via cards or by placing a worker on the appropriate board space. There are quite a few wooden pieces for this, but if you run out of these during a game, you can substitute any suitable items; I recommend coins with the coin value equaling the same amount of Yellowcake.

 If a player has not gotten the needed card, there is a work around; Espionage. On the left side of the board, there is a single space costing $3. Placing a worker there allows a player to move his Espionage marker one greater and also to place his workers on ANOTHER player's cards up to the limit of his Espionage marker. So, if you have been using espionage throughout the game and now have your marker at 4, you may place workers on up to four cards owned by other players...they do not need to be the same player.

 photo Mp1_zps03a893cb.jpg


The above image is from my last game. Although difficult so see, I have seven cards that produce fighters or bombers or can be used to produce money or can do both, depending on the card. I built up my air forces quickly and then bombed two of my opponents....after sensing their frustration, I stopped in a moment of weakness. I wanted to see how this worked as none of the others had used their air forces in any of the three games we'd played.

Each bomber I used gave me a damage token that I then placed on the opponent's cards. The cards could not be activated if damaged, so they needed to then repair, which is not cheap.

 photo MP2_zpsb17377d3.jpg

Also from the last game. You can see the bomb cards, and a few of the yellowcake, in the foreground. On the board, on the right edge, you see the inventory of fissionables for each player. There are numerous bomb blueprint cards, each with a unique name and one or two victory point values. Uranium bombs are worth the most and also cost the most, but Plutonium bombs  have two possible values. If a player builds a Plutonium bomb and then "tests" it, it is removed from his play area, but he then receives the higher value from any of his other bombs. Additionally, not only do the bombs cost U or P, but also workers must be placed on the card in order to build it.

This is a good game! It is one of the "tightest" designs, with the best utilized maps that I have ever seen. Very little board space is wasted and the worker placement mechanisms give players a great deal of control over their tactics. In many other worker placement games, everyone places their workers and then picks them all up at once. In this game, you can pick up your workers as often as you want, depending on your play style.

There is an expansion available, which we do not have (Evan needs to buy it!), that includes personalities, nations, rockets, and another ingredient similar to Yellowcake (it is a slightly different colored wooden block).

There is also an iOS app, but the reviews of that version indicate that it needs some bug squashing to really make it worthwhile.


Tuesday, September 9, 2014

An Army's Stomach



I am trying to now get back in the swing of things, blogging-wise. After a heavy workload summer, I am back to the usual schedule of desperation and famine; full-time work still eludes my every advance, like a smart woman.

So, I am writing this post as a way to get back to blogging regularly, again. I still have a backlog of things to post about, complete with photos, but today's post is text heavy.

If you have been following my blog for the past couple of years, you know that I am trying to start an imagi-nations campaign, but have been thwarted by a now dead desktop, which has the custom map on its hard drive. I am THIS close to having it fully repaired, but I need a new monitor now, in addition to the internal hardware that has been or still needs to be replaced.

Anyhow, while this delay has been going on, I have been intermittently working on fleshing out and/or cleaning up the campaign rules. Much of which has yet to be posted on the "official" campaign site. However, I am working on the logistical rules, and have a revision in mind. See below.

The current campaign rules for logistics require a lot of math calculations before, during, and after a turn. Since the campaign map is nodal, with each node been a source of supply (of various sizes and capacities for supply) players, and myself as umpire, would have to calculate how much supply was available to a given army within about four nodes of a force's location. This means we'd be calculating up to 20 or more node's worth of supply for EVERY player's non-garrison force on the map.

I never liked what I had thrown together for these rules. Yes, they are more "realistic" in a sense, but they are also far too complicated to expect to last and broken/abused rules really do not belong in a campaign.

Thus, my new idea...

Begins with the premise that an infantry battalion's supply is about equal in cost (a term to describe the many factors involved in delivering needed supplies to a particular unit) to that of a cavalry squadron or artillery gun (with crew). Not everyone may agree, but in MY campaign, this happens to be true.

Next, each node, complete with population center of small to very, very large (non-technical terms), can provide a given amount of supply, roughly equivalent to other population centers of the same size. Larger population centers give proportionately more supply than smaller ones.

Meaning that a village will provide the same amount of supply as another village, but a major town will provide even more.

Now, we just need to make it easier to track how a force is supplied during a campaign turn of approximately one week of time.

Some may argue that logistics is unnecessary for wargame campaigns and can be left out, but I disagree. Logistics IS a major part of military planning and the early 18th century campaigns that did not succeed were usually the victims of poor logistical planning or execution.

I want my players to have to chose where to strike and be subject to attrition if their preparations are lacking. I also want to give them the opportunity to hurt other players by razing lands as a means to reduce another player's ability to feed his troops.

Hence, the proposed revision of the rules is:

1) Armies, of any size, must be supplied over the course of a turn, otherwise they will be subject to attrition.

2) Garrisons do not require supply neither do they absorb supply. Garrisons are handled differently if the location is under siege; see the appropriate rules for sieges.

3)  Population Centers provide the following amounts of supply:
  • Capital City: 16
  • Major City: 12
  • Minor City: 10
  • Major Town: 6
  • Minor Town: 4
  • Village: 1
4) Supply is provided locally. This means that a given force is considered as being fully supplied if its size does not exceed the supply capacity of its location. If otherwise, then the force must be within three nodes of a magazine that can sufficiently supply it, else the force will be subject to attrition.

5) Magazines may be purchased by the players during the Winter phase of the campaign. They will each provide a given amount of supply, with several magazines purchased and placed in a single location to increase its effectiveness.

a) Magazine capacity: 16

6) Magazines will provide supply up to three nodes away, with a diminishing capacity the further away from its location. In same location, 100%; 1 node away, 75%; 2 nodes away, 50%; 3 nodes away, 25% (all values rounded down).

7) As a force moves during a turn, it must check against the location's supply capacity. If the force exceeds the local supply capacity, then a check for any magazine within three nodes is made. If the force both exceeds local supply and does not have sufficient magazine capacity, then it will check for attrition losses for each battalion/squadron/gun not in supply. Only those units which exceed supply are checked for, not each unit in the force. The owning player chooses which of his units are in supply. However, only one Attrition Roll per unit per node is allowed. This means that if a player first rolls against his infantry, but there are still rolls to be made, they then must be rolled against his cavalry. An exception is that players may always choose to save his guns by forcing infantry or cavalry units to make additional rolls.

8) Attrition losses are taken at the end of the turn, before any battles are fought.

9) The logistics rules only apply to armies when marching outside one's own territory. We assume the troops are being fed one way or the other within home territory.

10) Attrition losses are handled like combat losses. Some are permanent. Some will go into the casualty pool. Some may go into replacement pool from the casualty pool. Replacement pool figures go back into units, based on the player's desires.


Example, player A orders his Army of Observation, composed of 8 battalions of infantry, 4 squadrons of horse, and 2 guns to move to a spot four nodes away.

The path tracks through a minor town, a major town, a village, and ends in a major town with a magazine. This means the supply value of that path is 4, 6, 1, and 6; the army supply requirement is 14. With the help of the valuable magazine the actual supply capacity is 8, 14, 13, and 22. This results in 7 Attrition Die rolls, six for the first node and one for the third node of movement. Attrition Die rolls can result in 0-2 figures lost per unit. The owner of the army selects to roll each of the Attrition dice against his infantry battalions as he has 8 battalions, which is greater than the number of rolls he had to make at the first node.




Note: I want players to have to take attrition an attrition losses into account. The economic system I plan for the campaign requires that players make choices and not be able to do everything they could wish in a given campaign year. The idea being that since historical commanders had to make do with limited objectives each campaign, so should they...but if they choose not to, then they will also pay a price in attrition for. So, a player might raise several extra regiments instead of stockpiling supplies in magazines, but they then risk losing large numbers of troops due to lack of supply.

Incidentally, well really by design, this means that protecting one's line of supply is vital and failing to do so will potentially have severe consequences.

I solicit responses and suggestions, but know that I am fairly well happy with the mechanics of this system.