Wednesday, 25 March 2020

Stalingrad - the Matrix Game (part 1)

While we’re unable to play face to face games it’s important to find alternatives. I’ve played matrix games before by email and it occurred to me that with systems like Skype we might be able to run such a game for several players over the course of a couple of evenings.
Thus it was that I found myself hosting a Skype call with six players located in Sheffield, Derbyshire and London.
I had decided to run the Stalingrad game written some years ago by Tom Mouat as this is a fairly simple military/political game on a familiar campaign. I printed the map onto a dozen sheets of A4 card and to represent the military units I dug out toys in what I hoped would be a truly offensive* variety of scales.



Last night we played through five of the nine turns, with part two to follow this evening.
The roles and (carefully cast) players are:
Hitler - Martin
Stalin - Jerry
Von Paulus - Simon
Chuikov - Bertrand
Hube - Tim C
Tarasov - Richard
The map at half time, with the front line marked in red. 

* 1/32, 1/48, 1/72, 1/144, 1/300. So far.
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8 comments:

  1. Duc de Gobin25 March 2020 at 18:36

    Looks super.
    Must try this with the group.
    Is this the same TomMouat who did the D&D matrix game? Do you know if that's available anywhere too?

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  2. Robert (Bob) Cordery25 March 2020 at 19:33

    Tim,

    What a great idea, and one that suits itself on distance play.

    I look forward to reading the next instalment.

    All the best,

    Bob

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  3. Pete.25 March 2020 at 21:09

    Looks like it was great fun Tim.

    Cheers,

    Pete.

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  4. Tim Gow26 March 2020 at 18:44

    Duc de Gobin
    I don’t remember a D&D MG, but then Tom is a prolific game designer so he may well have done one.

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  5. Tim Gow26 March 2020 at 18:46

    Bob Cordery
    Having proved the concept, as it were, with email all those years ago I was pleased at how well this worked with Skype.

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  6. Tim Gow26 March 2020 at 18:46

    Pete
    Now that we know it works, there’ll be more.....

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  7. Balagan28 March 2020 at 07:31

    Thanks for the inspiration. I will try to get my lot enthused.

    Are you using tactical rules for combat resolution or is everything part of the matrix game?

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  8. Tim Gow28 March 2020 at 10:56

    Balagan
    I resolved the combats using opposed dice rolls, taking into account any previously successful arguments. For for example, an early argument from the Fuhrer resulted in German units getting a +1 on the dice. Bear in mind that the entire game only consumed about 3 hours of playing time!

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