Interrogation of Marshall Barrington of Command Post Games

 Interrogation Files: Marshall Barrington of Command Post Games

**Q: Marshall, thanks for taking the time. Let’s start simple - who are you and what’s Command Post Games all about?**

**A:** I’m Marshall Barrington, founder and lead designer at Command Post Games. We’re the rebels of the wargaming industry - think of us as the Apple Computer of historical gaming. While everyone else is stuck making the same hex-and-counter complexity festivals, we’re reimagining what wargaming can be. Our flagship product is Pub Battles, and honestly, it’s causing quite a stir among the grognards.

**Q: “Rebels” is a strong word. What exactly are you rebelling against?**

**A:** The tyranny of the 100-page rulebook! Look, I love this hobby, but somewhere along the way we convinced ourselves that complexity equals realism. That’s like saying a car is better now because we just added 100 new buttons that you have to push while you are driving. 

 

I was at a convention last year watching two guys spend 45 minutes resolving a single combat because they had to total up and divide dozens of combat factors and cross-reference and apply 3 different modifier charts.  When they were done, somebody noticed that they forgot a rule 14.8.2.3 about the fatigue modifiers vary depending on different types morale.  Yep, so they had to start all over again.   Meanwhile, at the next table, two kids were playing Pub Battles and making brilliant tactical decisions in real-time. Which table looked more like actual command? The answer was obvious.

The entire industry has become obsessed with simulating every rivet on every tank instead of simulating the experience of command. We’re the guys saying, “Hey, what if we focused on the command decisions instead of the calculations?”

Monmouth

**Q: Tell us about Pub Battles. What makes it different?**

**A:** Pub Battles strips away all the mathematical noise and gets to the heart of command - making decisions with incomplete information. We use wooden blocks instead of counters, so you literally can’t see what your opponent is doing until you’re in contact. No charts, no modifiers, no PhD required.  You don’t have to roll on a table to ‘simulate’ the fog of war.  You just really don’t know where they are at. 

 

Here’s a story that sums it up perfectly: A veteran GMT player tried our Brandywine game at Origins. He kept asking, “When are they going to arrive?  Where are they going to come from?” Twenty minutes later, he was completely absorbed, moving his blocks intuitively, reading the battlefield like Washington actually had to. After the game, he said, “This feels more like commanding an army than any game I’ve ever played.”  That’s why the military loves to use are games for training.

   

That’s our secret weapon - we simulate the fog of war by actually putting it in the game, not by adding more rules that try to simulate it.

Real commanders didn’t have perfect information. They didn’t know exactly how many enemy units were in that forest or precisely what their combat strength was. They made gut decisions based on limited intel and battlefield intuition.

Traditional wargames give you godlike omniscience - you can see every unit, friendly and enemy.  You know every combat factor for attack and defense, morale, supply level, organization level and can calculate every possible modifier that could influence the combat result. That’s not command, that’s accounting. At the Battle of Antietam, McClellan thought he was outnumbered 2:1 when he actually had the advantage. Our hidden blocks system recreates that uncertainty naturally.

A friend of mine, a military historian, played our Little Bighorn game and said afterward, “For the first time in a wargame, I felt like I understood why Custer made the decisions he did - because I was making them with the same limited information he had.”

Brandywine

**Q: Are your rules too simple?  Don’t you lose historical accuracy and realism with only 4 pages of rules?**

**A:** That’s the beautiful irony - we’re actually MORE historically accurate and realistic, not less.  I’m not sure I can explain it.  It’s a paradox.  Like it’s really simple to design a very complex game.  It is extremely complex and difficult to design a simple game with few rules.  Less is more.  Here’s the key:  Just because there isn’t a rule for it, doesn’t mean it isn’t in the game.  It’s very deceptive in a way. 

   

Here’s an example:  You look at the pieces and they are just blocks.  No individually rated combat factors, movement factors, morale, etc.  They all kind of look the same.  Generic.  Like playing checkers, right?   WRONG!

It is all in there.  You just don’t see it.  It’s baked into the system.  We do have individually rated units.  Instead of different combat factors, or morale ratings, they are denoted by color:  militia, veteran and elite.  We also have gold, Guards units with special abilities.  They each have a very different feel and character in combat.   

Militia are very fragile.  With a little luck, they can dish out a blistering volley as good as anybody, but they can’t take it.  Their 1st hit in combat counts as 2.  So they will often break and run after the first round of combat.  Elite units are the opposite.  They shrug off and ignore their 1st hit.  This gives them a lot of staying power.  They have the discipline to just keep coming round after round under fire.  Pub Battles has all the same “crunch” and “detail” that we are used to seeing in wargames.  You just don’t have to slog through pages of rules to tons of number crunching to play it.  The system handles most of it for you. 

Antietam

  

**Q: Your games use miniature-style movement instead of hexes. That’s pretty radical for board wargaming.**

**A:** Why should geography be imprisoned in hexagons?   This hex is half woods and half clear, so what do we call it?  This road is in 1 hex but it zig zags around so much it should really be 2 hexes.  There are tons of inaccuracies and distortions in hexes.  You just don’t see them because the designers hid them all.  Real armies don’t do the drunken stagger across a hex grid and face only in 60-degree increments.

People are just used to hexes.  We don’t have to have them.  It takes a little getting used to.  I remember it felt a little confusing to me at first.  Where exactly IS this unit?  Is he in the woods or in the clear?  With a little practice, it’s actually really and very precise.  Do you know who picks it up right away?  Non wargamers.  Kids.  Wives.  It’s very intuitive, simple and obvious to them.  It’s in the woods because I put it in the woods.  It’s right here.  See?  It’s not confusing.  As wargamers, we’re just not used to seeing it that way. 

 

This is where our Apple DNA really shows. Steve Jobs famously said, “Think Different.” The wargaming industry has been so locked into hexes that they’ve forgotten movement can be organic and intuitive.  Especially when it comes to musket warfare.  It’s very linear.  The formed up in lines, fought to hold lines and moved in lines.  Trying to force all that into a awkward geometric hex grid just looks ridiculous.  It doesn’t fit.

  

With free movement, you can actually form your defensive line around the natural curve of Cemetery and Culp’s Hills.  Wellington can place his artillery just out of sight on the reverse side of the ridge line, not this weird hex sticking out here, that can’t be used because that’s where the grid hit out. Suddenly, terrain matters in ways that hex grids can never capture.

I remember watching a couple of grognards launching Pickett’s Charge in a regular hex game.  The line of contact is all jagged, right?  So they spent all this time, trying to analyze the hex grid.  Which attacks can they get 3 hexsides on vs just 2 or 1?  How many artillery factors do they need to add to each attack to maximize their odds ratio?

I mean to an outsider, it just looks silly.  Is that what Robert E. Lee spent his time doing to prepare for that attack?  Did Napoleon organize each regiment at Waterloo by calculating the best odds ratio for each exposed hexside?  In Pub Battles, it works like it does in real life.  Do you think now is a good time to send Pickett forward.  You move him up to attack or not.  Who exactly are they attacking?  We don’t know.  It might change before the end of the turn and we resolve the combat.  We shell the defender with artillery.  Did that flip them to spent?  They may rally.  They may fall back.  New units might move up to reinforce the defense.  The Federal artillery might open up and flip Pickett to spent status before contact.  There are many things at play but this is how war really works.  The game system encouraged historically accurate tactics organically.  It teaches you to think like a real general, not an accountant.  

Ligny

**Q: You face criticism from traditional wargamers. How do you respond?**

**A:** Same way Apple responded to IBM loyalists in the 80s - we stay focused on making better products for people who want something better.

Look, some grognards are never going to change. They’re invested in complexity the way IBM was invested in command lines and MS-DOS. They’ve spent decades mastering these systems and don’t want to admit there might be a better way. I get it.

But there’s a whole generation of potential wargamers who took one look at a traditional wargame rulebook and said, “Life’s too short.” We’re making games for them - and for the secret rebels inside the grognard community who are tired of being rules lawyers and accountants when they want to be generals.

One of our fans sent me a photo of him playing Pub Battles with his girlfriend.  “She hates my wargames but she does like Pub Battles.  She will play that.”  I’ve heard the same thing with kids too.  They grew up on computer games.  Their eyes glaze over when they see a 100 page, fine print wargame rulebook.  –but they will play Pub Battles.  “Dad, this is way cooler.”  If Wargaming is going to have a future, we need to start moving in new directions. 

 

In Development

**Q: What’s your vision for the future of wargaming?**

**A:** Yeah, exactly.  We want to be the gateway drug that brings a million new people into historical gaming. Right now, wargaming is this tiny, insular community because we’ve made it too intimidating for normal humans. That’s tragic, because history is fascinating and strategy is fun - when it’s not buried under mathematical complexity.

Hey, I’m a grognard too.  I love games like World in Flames or Advanced Squad Leader.  Pub Battles is too simple for you?  Fine, get it and play it anyways.  Here’s why:

Imagine walking into a restaurant and seeing a dad or grandpa playing Pub Battles with a kid.  Where regular families and people might actually see it.  Hey, what is that?  Looks like fun.  How does it work?   Imagine history teachers using games to show students why the South lost the Civil War and what command decisions really feel like. That’s our moonshot.

The traditional companies can keep making games for the 5,000 people who want to spend their weekend calculating combat ratios. We’re going after the 500,000 people who want to experience history without needing an engineering degree.

Coming Soon Austerlitz!

**Q: Any final thoughts for wargamers who might be curious about Command Post Games?**

**A:** Try thinking different about wargaming. Don’t take my word for it – go pick a Pub Battle at commandpostgames.com and try a game. We have a 100% money back, satisfaction guarantee.  Thirty minutes with Pub Battles will teach you more about command than thirty hours with a traditional monster game.

We’re not trying to destroy traditional wargaming - we’re trying to evolve it. The same way Apple didn’t destroy computers, they just made them human.

And to the grognards who are secretly tired of being spreadsheet warriors when they want to be Napoleon or Stonewall Jackson- welcome to the revolution. We saved you a seat at the pub.

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*Marshall Barrington is the founder and lead designer of Command Post Games. Their Pub Battles system covers conflicts from ancient Rome to World War II, all playable in under two hours with rules you can learn in ten minutes. Visit commandpostgames.com to join the simplicity revolution.*

 This is a rundown of games that are in development:

Pub Battles:  2nd Bull Run

Gruppenfuhrer:  Tactical WW2 Combat.

Supremacy SLBMs & Bombers

Fall of Berlin & Bulge:  Berlin is very close.  We are trying to rectify the system with Bulge and France 40.  If it works in all those places, it should be good for anything in WW2.

Pub Battles:  Borodino

Gettysburg Campaign:  Operational Scale.

Command Post Games

 

 

Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War

by

Matrix Games

 This is a piece that comes straight from the designers of Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War. If you play computer wargames, you will be well aware of their last two releases:

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm

Flashpoint Campaigns: Southern Storm

My name is Robert Crandall and I’m the founder of On Target Simulations, the studio behind the Flashpoint series of games.  I started work in 2002 after talking to Matrix Games, and I’ve been working on it ever since.  It was a solo project for the first few years, but then I smartened up and started recruiting partners to help out.  We divvied up the jobs, and I found that the game itself improved significantly once the others joined in on the design.  The downside was that the rate of development actually slowed as we added more people.  We had so many ideas that we wanted to do that starting them all made it very hard to finish anything!  (Cue the eye-rolling by Matrix here).  Such is the life of a software development team.  

We currently have a core group of perhaps 19 people who are seriously contributing to Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War.  Some are full-time, and some are evenings and weekends.  All get a say in what the game looks like. During our six-month beta testing period, we had over 60 devoted testers who provided feedback on scenarios, identified bugs, and made suggestions that we considered. There were over 700 surveys filled out by testers with feedback! There is no doubt about the players helping shape this game and will continue to do so beyond our game launch on November 20th.

The game itself?  Ah, yes, it is a tactical ground combat simulation set in 1989 West Germany, positing a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.  It is as high intensity as combat can get.  You command a force ranging in size from a reinforced battalion to a reinforced regiment on a 500-meter hex map, 15 by 25 km or larger, for 4 to 14 hours of game time.  Maneuver units are typically platoons for NATO and companies for the Warsaw Pact.

We model equipment right down to the individual vehicles, guns, and sensors, but the real game is at a much higher level.  You are the overall commanding officer, and you must give orders that have time lags and uncertainty associated with them.  You don’t have time to micromanage your forces, you must think big and see the total picture through the fog of war.  

If you can operate a standard Windows program, then you can operate this game.  Yes, there is a learning curve, but we try to make it easy to start.  We have tutorials and lots of docs to get you going.  As much as possible, you just need to point and click to get things started.  The game is hard to master, though, because it tries to reward good tactics.  Good tactics are, well, hard and very situational.  With practice, though, you will develop an eye for these situations and get a feel for when and where you should push hard and when you shouldn’t.

As you get going, you will find yourself dipping more deeply into the support reports and map overlays to get a better sense of potentials and possibilities.  You don’t have to, but they are there waiting for you.  If you take the time to study the terrain and think about the capabilities of both your and the enemy units, you will find yourself doing better and better.

This being the Cold War, there is a lot of interesting new stuff for a gamer to play with beyond the usual tanks, infantry, and artillery.  We have attack helicopters, ATGM firing units, weapon locating radars for counter battery work, and off-map artillery that you can call in.  We have air strikes and air defense suppression assets.  We have ten nations in the database (so far) and 80 maps to play on.  The maps are some of the most beautiful you will play on in the wargaming realm. 

 

There are over 50 standalone scenarios and another 46 between 10 campaigns. We paid special attention to researching the historically accurate units stationed in the various locations across West Germany. Where we could find accurate orders of battle, we use them. It’s amazing how many fans and our own team members bring forward anecdotes from their own time serving in their respective military and share resources that we can draw inspiration and information from. 

 

New in this iteration of the game is tactical transport.  This allows you to load leg infantry into helicopters to do air assaults, something that was a big part of the Warsaw Pact plans and something the NATO allies really wanted to use as well.  Look for a scenario called “Rendezvous with Destiny” to see a big NATO air assault by the 101st Airborne Division.  I strongly suggest you do the “Tutorial -  Air Assault Operations” first though.  There is lots to wrap your head around here.

If you are familiar with the predecessor game, Flashpoint Campaigns Southern Storm, from three years ago, you will see numerous improvements in the UI, speeding up the orders giving, more variety of unit types, and new features like tactical transport, group movement, artillery fire support groups, and new Staff reports. We have also brought in Belgian and Polish forces to the battle, bringing the total nations represented to 10. I should mention that the game needs a 1920 x 1080 minimum screen resolution but otherwise makes no particular demands of your hardware. The standalone scenarios can be played from either side, but the campaigns are for one particular side only. All of the scenario editing tools ship with the game. Flashpoint Campaigns has always been designed to be played while wearing your tactical thinking hat on to be successful. It’s a classic wargame in the sense that it’s a safe environment for planning a bold course of action and witnessing as it unravels your force or pays off.

Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War

Matrix Games

Steel Centurions

 Italian Armored Formations of the Second World War 1940-43

By 

Paolo Morisi

 In WWII the Italian armored forces started the war with an Albatross around their necks. The Italian Navy had some very well-designed ships at their disposal. The Italian Air Force also had some designs that were comparable to the best in the world, although in limited numbers. However, the Italian tank forces were never equipped to fight in the war. Their tanks were found to be woefully inadequate even during the Spanish Civil War. There they had faced some Soviet Union tanks that put them to shame. Luckily for the Italians the British tanks early in the war were not much better. So, forced to go to battle with old designs and not much better officers, on the whole, it is a wonder how much the Italian tankers were able to accomplish. This book is about their story during the war. The author has given us a comprehensive account of their history from 1940-1943. This book proves that the Italians were just as brave and full of fight as any other participants in the war. They were just so handicapped by design and staff that what seems on the outside to be woeful attempts at warfare is really a story of complete frustration, with bits of brilliance at times.

 The book takes you from the beginning of the Italian Armored formations and tactics until the end of the Sicily campaign. These are the chapters:

The Birth of the Italian Armored Units and Their Development

Minot Armored Campaign (France, East Africa, and Albania/Greece)

North Africa

Further Advance

Gazala and Tobruk

El Alamein

Tunisia

Sicily

M Armored Division and Ariete II

Followed by five appendices

 Naturally, the book's main focus is on the North African campaign, simply because it encompasses almost the entire Italian timeline in the war. The Germans did not find the Italian soldier to be unworthy. Not in the least. When commanded well, even with their outdated equipment, they were viewed as Allies in every sense of the word. Their bravery under great odds is shown throughout the book. I have always been interested in the role of Italy in WWI and WWII. Their forces in WWII are now seen as a cliche or a punchline to a joke. I have always believed that the reality was something entirely different. This is another book that shows that it actually was.

 If you want to know the truth about the Italian Armored formations during WWII and not just read the usual pap, then I suggest you pick up this book to find out for yourself. Thank you, Mr. Morisi, for another excellent book on what some people would call the obscure parts of the world wars. I also want the thank Casemate Publishers for allowing me to review this excellent book.

 The author Paolo Morisi Has also written two other excellent books in my opinion. The first, The Italian Folgore Parachute Division: North African Operations 1940-43. The second is, Hell in the Trenches: Austro-Hungarian Stormtroopers and Italian Arditi in the Great War. This is a link to my review of the second book:

Hell in the Trenches by Paolo Morisi - A Wargamers Needful Things

Robert 

Book: Steel Centurions: Italian Armored Formations of the Second World War 1940-43 

Author: Paolo Morisi

Publisher: Helion & Company

Distributor: Casemate Publishers