Other Articles in Despatches 6-3For dedicated BKN players.The BKN Tournament at the WBC not only attracts a good field but produces some very interesting games.This year saw Andrew Cummins achieve a Breakout to win his first game. His opponent left the Lehr east of Caen and Andrew drove off through Balleroy, Caumont and le Beny Bocage into Zone D. Game over.In his next game he successfully sent the 4th Division ashore at Utah as three separate units. First one cleared the beach, second crossed and held the bridge, third one cleared St Mere Eglise. He was able to follow this up by taking Carentan the next day, and from there victory was assured. Another game he won by drawing together a counter attack force from the 91st Division. These attacked into Carentan rather than just reinforce, and threw the US out. Another winning defence. The game in the Final was a cracker! Phil Barcafer and Alan Applebaum fought through to this. On the way Phil had met Alan on Wednesday evening in the Mulligan round and lost conclusively. ( You can ignore any losing game in this round and progress to round one).Alan is a very strong player. Past winner and several times in the finals. So Phil needed an edge. He played the Allies and on the Para drop into St Mere Eglise chose not to seize any bridges. Instead the four paras attacked the Martin guns at 7 to 5 (no air support on the para drop). In bocage it needs three spots up on the two dice to clear the area. The odds are 23% on the first throw, which he lost. So he played the Advantage for another 23% chance. Two attempts increase the overall chance to 47% (so Ron Fedin tells me). And the second time it came off. The paras took and held St Mere Eglise. At Gold and Juno his tanks drove into Brettville one after the other and cleared Villars Bocage, and there was no Michael Wittman to throw them out again. On the 7th (second turn) he took Carentan. He cleared Catz before the 1st Division got anywhere near Isigny! Meanhwile Alan was responding the only way he could. He sent the 12SS
to throw the paras out of Merville, and then counter attacked across the
Merville bridge into Sword Beach. But he was thrown out. That was enough
for Phil to win the game.
The Canadian ViewAugust 5, 2000 Games people play draw 1,000 devotees. Competition a bit like Woodstock for Super Nerds. Charles Laurence National Post HUNT VALLEY, Md.If you shut your eyes, you can smell the cordite and hear the Rebel Yell at Gettysburg, or feel the rush of terror as, just like Tom Hanks in his heroic blockbuster Saving Private Ryan, you storm the beaches of Normandy. The International Boardgaming Championships have come to a suburban hotel outside Baltimore, Md., and playing Snakes and Ladders by the family fireside was never quite like this. More than 1,000 devotees of dice, and cards, and icons shuffled across boards have gathered this week to pit their wits against fate, history and the Machiavellian fellow in the washed-out T-shirt and the baseball cap sitting on the far side of the table. It is a bit like Woodstock for Super Nerds. Nearly all the players are male, aged between 30 and 60 years, and look like Bill Gates of Microsoft. They think like him, too. "The idea here is strategic expansion, forging new trade routes, beating out the competition and taking over the world," says Jared Scarborough. He is a tall, lean fellow from Illinois who is presiding over about 100 guys playing knock-out rounds of a game called Renaissance, Enlightenment II. Don Greenwood chuckles at the definition. He is the president of the Boardgame Players Association and the organiser of the annual championships. For all the drive to supremacy -- there is even a game called, simply, Napoleon, and another called Stalingrad -- he explains that he avoids crowning a single board-game emperor in favour of finding champions at 100 different games. "This is the Olympics of boardgaming," he says, "and that is an apt analogy. People come here from all over the world to find top-level competition. They have invested a great deal of time getting to this level of play and are looking for competitive levels of expertise. "Back at home when mother brought out the Monopoly or the Clue to keep the kids quiet on a rainy Sunday afternoon -- is it mere coincidence that a thunderstorm is flashing and banging above the Hunt Valley Inn as the games begin? -- there was always someone who really, really wanted to win. And that is the sibling most likely to be in Baltimore this week. "Most of the games we play are based on military simulations, war games, and you will find a very high degree of interest in history," Mr. Greenwood says. "The key is strategy. There is an element of chance, to make the games different each time, but at this level it is skill and knowledge that counts." The players are at least as serious as their real-life counterparts a few miles down Interstate 95 in Washington D.C., where Pentagon staff work out moves a lot like Empire Builders, Battle Cry and Kreig! World War II in Europe, and the budding Henry Kissingers of the State Department are plotting like the gameboarders in Salons A or C, hunched silently over 1812 and, most popular of all, Diplomacy. They will be there, sipping coffee and conquering all, until midnight. Not many of these games can be found on the shelves of Toys "R" Us or even the neighbourhood hobby shop. This is a rarefied and increasing isolated world. Germany hosts a huge game trade show once a year in Kessel, attracting up to 60,000 fans, but most of the trading is now done over the Internet, and Mr. Greenwood says part of the profile of his players is that at least 95% use e-mail. "Like most of us, I got hooked as a teenager," says Mr. Greenwood. "I suppose I started with Monopoly, but you know we like our games to be a great deal more complex than that, and the first real one I discovered was called Tactics II. "He has never looked back. For 28 years, he developed games for Avalon Hill, the major producer of esoteric board games in America, and the organisers of the world championships for a generation. "Games have been my life," he says. But commercial strategy, as the players know, demands the empire-building of mergers and acquisitions as well as the odd hot war and Avalon was sold to Hasbro, the toy-making giant that plays in the mainstream. Mr. Greenwood quit to set up his association and take over the championships. "The new generation is not so much into games," he says ruefully. "Most couldn't tell you the date of Waterloo. They are into video games instead. This is sad, because those are just puzzles, however good the graphics, and lack the strategic interaction of a real game. "But there will be board games and championships for as long as there are people like Gihan Bandaranake, who has flown all the way from London to play Diplomacy, and Mr. Scarborough, the Renaissance man. Mr. Scarborough designed the Renaissance game that is a big hit with the buffs. He sold the idea to Mr. Greenwood at a championship match, and getting his own game made and played has made his dreams come true. He came up with the idea of basing the game on trade, rather than war, after feeling guilty about using a mustard gas card in a game set in the trenches of the First World War. Now Mr. Scarborough is working on a new concept: pre-historic empire building in the time of the Kon-Tiki. "It will be about sailing the oceans, and competing to build temples, that sort of thing," he says, eyes gleaming. Mr. Greenwood, meanwhile, is sticking to his favourite game Break-Out Normandy, D-Day, and aiming to claim the game's championship for himself. Like Victory in the Pacific, it has proved hugely popular among the sons who learned to roll dice on the knees of the men who actually fought those wars. And at least one member of the new generation has learned to fight that battle, too. Tara Greenwood, a teacher, is 22, and has been playing board games as "guinea pig" for her dad since she was 12. She has adapted the old adage of joining those you can't beat. "That's why I play, to beat him," she says. And two years ago, she did, taking home the very championship her father covets. Mr. Greenwood leans back in his chair and smiles at his daughter with all the pride of the old general after a hard, but victorious, campaign. Mike LewisI don't know if it is too late for the latest Despatch, but if you could get it in it would be appreciated. Mike Lewis died last Saturday, 8th July, after a long battle with a brain tumour. Mike was known to many of us as a long-time naval gamer and enthusiast and was still active until the end in a number of multi-player games. Mike was very knowledgeable about naval history and his input on a couple of the older games on the subject was appreciated by both designers and publishers. I have known Mike for many years and he was always the politest and fairest of opponents, always willing to correct my errant play. He leaves a wife and family and all of us in AHIKS tender our deepest sympathies to them all. We will miss another friend.Chris. Return to Despatches 6-3 |