Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal - part II

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Probably both, given Phil's historical bents. Have you seen the silent and the Technicolor versions? Less 'first person' then this version, but more epic with lots of shots of ships.

I figured that Phil would have been inspired by these types of films, as probably Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax would have too.
Oh yes many times for both films. I love these types of sword and sandal epics.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Would this be:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgywD3XJaWU

We all had watched this, back in the day, and so we knew how to deploy our troops...

Huh??? Yes it certainly would be. Thanks for the save Chirine.
Shit! I wonder what the hell happened to the link I inserted when I initially posted it? It was there on the preview screen. Sabotage! Sabotage I tell you.
I agree with using this as a reference when deploying troops. If I ever deployed this many troops on the table in my current Tekumel game there would be a tonne of groans and WTF's coming from the players. It would be quite funny actually.

Shemek

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Agreed! I play my miniatures games the same way, which has elicited the same reactions from my opponents over the years...

Of course you do, because you don't seem like the type person who rushes headlong into anything, and you understand the notion of "big picture." Like I have said in previous posts I wish I was closer to the Twin Cities. I'm sure that we would have some epic battles on the tabletop.

Shemek

Originally Posted by GameDaddy

Stanley Kubrick was awesome! One of the most epic battle scenes ever filmed! with 10,500 extras. Two full Roman Legions 8,000, and 2,500 of Spartacus' Horseman and Infantry . The movie production set stripped all of the Roman armor from every museum in Italy.

The intimate scenes were filmed in Hollywood, but Stanley Kubrick insisted that all battle scenes be filmed on a vast plain outside Madrid. Eight thousand trained troops from the Spanish were used to double as the Roman infantry. Kubrick directed the armies from the top of specially constructed towers. However, he eventually had to cut all but one of the gory battle scenes, due to negative audience reactions at preview screenings. So precise was Kubrick that even in arranging the bodies of the slaughtered slaves he had each "corpse" assigned with a number and instructions. The 8,000 extras that made up the two Roman Legions were in real life active duty Spanish Soldiers who were re-tasked as extras for the movie production. The largest battle scene was filmed in the country outside of Madrid.


According to a March 22, 1959 article in The New York Times, "upwards of 50,000 [extras] took part" in the battle sequences, which were supplemented by dummies and painted backdrops.

On the side of the set that bordered the freeway in Hollywood, a 125-foot asbestos curtain was erected in order to film the burning of the camp, which was organized with collaboration from the Los Angeles Fire and Police Departments. Studio press materials state that 5,000 uniforms and seven tons of armor were borrowed from Italian museums, and that every one of Hollywood's 187 stunt men was trained in the gladiatorial rituals of combat to the death.

That's cool. I certainly didn't know all of that, and in light of what little I do know about Kubrick it makes total sense. It gives me a new appreciation for both the film and his talents as a director.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

A thought on modern wargaming: what has been lost is the idea of strategy or consequences beyond the immediate battle, really beyond the boundaries of the board or table. Every battle is fought to the last man. No risk is too great no gain too small.

I disagree that it is worse today than back in the day. Given the diversity of different strategy games there is probably more people who are aware of these things now then there was back in the 70s and 80s during the heyday of hex and counter.

For example, I play a lot of Ultimate General Civil War which plays out pretty much like a game of Johnny Reb (a Civil War miniature wargame) except on the computer. Then there are the Total War series which also play out as a miniature wargame. When I look at the forum yeah there a lot people guilty of the sins you mentioned but also plenty that really try to play historically and nitpick at the developers for anything that is not right.

I just spent last night fighting the Battle of Chickamauga and how to deal with Nathan Bedford Forrest and his horde of skirmisher in the woods. They hung up my forces on the extreme left as I tried to push them down a road toward Jay's Mill. Until I figured out that by detaching Skirmishers from my regiment and lining the road with them I was able to push the bulk of my forces through.

Anyway the problem people are seeing is that gaming expanded enormously. There are more people playing incompetently but it is mostly due to the fact there are more people playing all kinds of wargames in a variety of forms. This includes people using software like Vassal or Virtual Tabletop to play the original games over the internet.

Originally Posted by estar

I disagree that it is worse today than back in the day. Given the diversity of different strategy games there is probably more people who are aware of these things now then there was back in the 70s and 80s during the heyday of hex and counter.

For example, I play a lot of Ultimate General Civil War which plays out pretty much like a game of Johnny Reb (a Civil War miniature wargame) except on the computer. Then there are the Total War series which also play out as a miniature wargame. When I look at the forum yeah there a lot people guilty of the sins you mentioned but also plenty that really try to play historically and nitpick at the developers for anything that is not right.

I just spent last night fighting the Battle of Chickamauga and how to deal with Nathan Bedford Forrest and his horde of skirmisher in the woods. They hung up my forces on the extreme left as I tried to push them down a road toward Jay's Mill. Until I figured out that by detaching Skirmishers from my regiment and lining the road with them I was able to push the bulk of my forces through.

Anyway the problem people are seeing is that gaming expanded enormously. There are more people playing incompetently but it is mostly due to the fact there are more people playing all kinds of wargames in a variety of forms. This includes people using software like Vassal or Virtual Tabletop to play the original games over the internet.

I wasn't really talking about exposure to wargaming as such, but the whole notion of actually using tactics and immersing oneself in the scenario, and not treating it as an episodic "computer game" type of event. Computer games, which I also enjoy tremendously, (John Tiller's Civil War Battles, and Modern Campaigns are great, and can be used on Android, Kindle and iPad based devices) and in fact are the only type of wargaming I do these days, are not the best substitute for a real opponent. The AI can often be too predictable, and too often the "solution" to a scenario devolves solely into surrounding individual enemy units and isolating them. Fine, this is a good tactic, used brilliantly by real world, modern, maneuver type armies, but it's not the only way to skin a cat. Also, I don't feel that surrender and morale is always covered as well as it could be.
Most of the "serious" wargamers back in the day, and by serious I mean those who either played these games very frequently, or only played these types of games, were also "students" of history. They read the memoirs and personal accounts of the participants, they read what historians had to say, they re-fought the same battle multiple times in order to achieve a particular result, or see what would happen if a certain variable was added or removed, etc.. I just don't see this as being as widespread today amongst the typical new generation of wargamers. I feel that it's usually those who were around in the "heyday" that you mentioned in your post who still do this. Perhaps I am wrong, but I just haven't seen this to be the case nowadays. I don't think that it's a larger amount of people playing wargames, hence the visual increase in incompetence, I think that it's the general dumbing down of society as a whole, and the instant gratification nature of our Western society. I think that this goes a long way in explaining the popularity and dominance of skirmish style wargames. I wonder, how many modern wargamers would go to the bother of actually reading a historical of Chickamauga, or study a map of the terrain before fighting the battle...

estar,

In your opinion what would you say is the most popular historical miniature wargame these days? What about fantasy miniature wargame? I think that WH is no more, at least in the form that it was when at the height of its popularity?

Shemek

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Understood; I feel the same about games like 'Tractics'. Although I did get my start using 1/35 and 1/32 scale stuff, which is why I have a 100' tape in my gaming stuff. (We used gyms.) Fighting 'sword and sandal' epics means smaller tables, and bigger figures, which I'm all for.

Watching Mike Reese run Tractics at GaryCon has been very educational. He runs platoon level stuff, and Tractics works a treat for that. Using all the data in von Sanger und Etterlin to resolve a regimental level battle ... um... takes a while.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Would this be:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgywD3XJaWU

We all had watched this, back in the day, and so we knew how to deploy our troops...

Tantantaraaa!

The scene George Lucas cribbed in "Phantom Menace" where the Trade Federation battle droids attack the Gungans.