I missed the memo re Monster Games, UPDATE

UPDATE: Some new friends and I are about to embark upon playing CB and GBII linked..I hope. We have come up with an innovative approach to play remote from each other. Me with a physical copy set up, they playing via vassal.

So this brings up the old canard – what is too big to play? What is too big to play solo?

I bring this older post to your attention:

They are now cool again. With MMP’s Monster D-Day company level on the far horizon (23 maps), [UPDATE- British Beaches is soon to go to PRE-Order]. Then the Finnish Winter War.

Another monster re envisioning of Europas system – The Scottish lads attempts at re creating WWII at 5 miles a hex or less…yes all of it from London to Melbourne from what I can gather….Diffraction Entertainment is going big! 

48 sq feet of maps to cover Barbarossa…Why not! For 459 Pounds Sterling you can have it and an additional 5000 counters and 16 maps to encompass the ‘rest of the East Front’.

Now this:

43 maps to celebrate the Battle of Nations Marshall Games has an 8 module monster available to order. “  La Bataille de Leipzig – Defending Germany Against Oppresion ”

This specific module is 7 maps that can be linked to other modules apparently?

Sounds fancy…. but would anyone play all 8 modules together? How do you do that? What sized room do you need, how many players, where do you break the game up so you can reach the middle…..questions.  Is it worth it? Well of course it is, its a monster war game, but I wonder HARD about the feasibility of these size games.  What do you guys think?

I ask for a reason. I think the grand story is one worth telling.  Worth capturing, worth sharing. Most of you seem to think so too.

The sheer scale of an effort like this and the room required makes me think that while one is able to or allowed to join them all together and play, the designers really don’t expect it and likely have not tested it all the way thru in any case.

Seriously who is going to move all the formations over the course of the campaign into battle to achieve the ‘result’ Who will move every company ashore at Juno, Gold ……etc etc. Are you going to trundle Tiger Tank platoons up to plug ‘that’ hole.? How does one deal with the massiveness of 20 odd maps for the East Front. I wonder how much of this is nice to own, versus have to play?

There comes a point where grand scale meet feasible play. Where Eagles/ Dare Devils Cauldron pushes the limits, Case Blue GBII is out there of ocurse, I’d mention the East Front Series but it was never designed to be played together really and is incomplete.

So what is too big? What won’t work?

 

10 thoughts on “I missed the memo re Monster Games, UPDATE”

  2. The old SPI War in the East / War in the West might be the biggest semi-playable monster. Europa was more like the GMT East Front – lots of part but no combined game. Perhaps in the 20 years I paid little attention to wargaming they pulled something together.

    Its a good point that nobody can really test a monster compelet, so OCS with a battle tested system has an advantage. Enough have played the campaign since that it seems to hold up well – a simple tweak to Russian replacements seems to be only fix needed to play to 1943 without too much crazyness.

    My permanent fix for Soviets in GB/CB is to say that nothing could keep crummy units (AR0/1/2) from renewing in 4-5 months. So let the Sovs pick 10 percent of the dead units every 2 weeks and get them back for free. Axis could do the same for their crummy units once a month to refresh any rear area or Axis Allies.

    This at least gives the Axis some reward for killing a bunch of units without having the Soviets run out of troops.

    1. nice house rule, I may propose that to myself for the campaign. I am tracking how long turns take in TBL and trying to get a handle on the effort required to solo CB/GBII. Easy for the first bit but once all those soviets hit ..yikes.

  3. And after D-Day, I heard Starkweather is going to do a GTS Stalingrad!!!

    1. well there you go. That would be some interesting stuff. I’d actually like to play a single man version of that, some sor tof multi player squad level deal on VASSAL. perhaps 12 players 6/ a side.

      1. That would probably be done by an MMORPG. Every time you log on you have your mission. The group is forced by the commisars. If you try and leave the group, you are shot. If you are shot, you get a new character. Repeat for 5 years,

        A realistic WWII online.

      2. It would work with GTS. Each player runs a formation and you email it to the upcoming player after you pull his chit from the mug.

        1. hmm, but how about in person play. This really seems like a game for TEAM play not say 2 people. That really limits the market does it not?

  4. I took a peek at the Leipzig game – each of those 4 maps is 11″ by 17″, so a quarter of the standard “mapsheet”. So it is 10 standard maps.

    Looks like it is a download and print it yourself to play game.

    1. yes, that is right. Still huge. 10 maps…….that is al least as big as Case Blue and you need access to the middle! 😉 With CB & GBII at least you can fiddle with tables to get at the mid part of the maps and still have easy access to the 6 for GBII.

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