fuser wrote:Oh, I have never played board wargames. But I am not sure you can pull this off through skype.
A few of us would play kriegspiel through skype, it's actually not all that hard because you keep track of your own map and orders.
For example, the plan for landings happen, only three of the beachheads are secured and the troops continue with their orders to secure a railway bridge, the forward detachments arrive at the bridge and find that it has been destroyed and that the armored column cannot advance, that information would be passed up through the CoC until it reached the Staff Level (the actual players). These people are probably in France and have been reached by phone or radio. They're not going to be able to see the bridge, the enemy, or the exact situation, they will get a message saying
"3rd Panzer Division has arrived at the Brisbane Railway Bridge, the crossing has been destroyed by enemy fire, how should we proceed?"
The player will then have to decide what to order the unit to do, but the key here is that the players don't have a "perfect map", in that they have a map of the area and they know where the units were and where they are heading, but unless they get confirmation from their units, they have to make an assumption as to their location. Units can get turned around, players can have mis-plotted their location and think they're somewhere else.
It's easy on Skype because only the Umpire (game lead) has a perfect map, and actually moves the physical units.
Everyone has their owns maps that they keep track of, representing where they "think" the units are. It really helps capture the confusion of warfare, and the problems that face staff level officers.