A month or so ago I put a pitch in to a wargaming magazine of some repute. It was about the methods I use to teach wargames, and how to run a teaching game for others to introduce them to a new game. I wanted to use my professional experience to present a different ‘slant’ on gaming, and it turned out the magazine really liked the idea. I wrote up a few pages of text and sent it in, and sure enough it should now be available.
Then I did something stupid. I signed up to run a game at a gaming day.
Normally that’s not a big deal, but if you a magazine publishes an article about your teaching techniques and you then immediately run a game you better make sure you’re on form. Imagine running a lemon of a game, only for those people to go home, open their magazine of choice, and see my face awkwardly staring back at them, talking about how great my methods are. There were no two ways around this: I had to nail this game.
In a yet-more-awkward turn of events, I was also running a Toofatlardies game at a Peter Pig day. I’d taken part in the Peter Pig day before this one, had a lot of fun, and was told the following event was open to all kinds of games, not just Piggy ones, so I offered to run Kiss Me Hardy. The problem was that nobody else offered to run non-pig games, and the event reverted back to its piggy form other than my table.
I’d picked Kiss Me Hardy (KMH) for two main reasons: I think as a game it’s a very easy one to teach a lay person, and being a naval game the amount of stuff I’d need to bring was minimal.
Time to get things ready. I took out my collection of ships and established what extras I’d require to run a game for 4 players, settling on 4-5 ship squadrons for each player and ordering a couple of extra minis to supplement what I had. Handouts-wise, I’d already designed my own QR sheet (found below) and ship data sheets, so it was simply a case of printing these out and laminating them. I’d already made my own set of KMH cards, so that was ready to go without any extra work.
Other supplies needed were dice and measuring tapes, but there were a few other bits that might not come to mind. Dry-wipe marker pens were needed to make notes on the ship sheets, the laminate meaning I can clean and re-use them. Warbases sell acrylic movement templates and a compass for KMH, so I bought some rather than use flimsy paper templates. I also brought ‘bookmark’ style sticky notes – these were to be placed under the ship bases and the names of the ships written on them, to make identifying ships easy. Oh, and some fluff to use as gunpowder smoke.
Wanting to sharpen my skills before the game day, I held a ‘dry run’ of things with my other half, who has never wargamed before. It turned out to be a great litmus test both of my setup for the day and my methods, as there was nowhere for me to hide when it came to explaining things, no lexicon gained from playing other games. It proved a success and we had good fun, even if I did end up getting absolutely battered and losing half of my ships.
In between this practice game and the game day itself I’d also started playing a DnD campaign which I was running as DM. Though it was another layer of gaming things to keep in my mind it also proved great fodder for the gaming day, as I had two players totally new to tabletop RPGs who I had to teach, a great way to ‘get my eye in’ for the Piggy day. It did a lot to assuage my nerves about running KMH at the Piggy day, despite learning that one of the people playing my game was the organiser himself.
The scenario was simple: the squadrons begin at opposite ends of the table and have to cause enough damage to break the will of the opposing side. We started by addressing the elephant in the room: the ship sheets, and what looks like an inordinate amount of information to take in if you’ve never played KMH before. My first point, therefore, was to explain how little there was to actually track on the sheets, and that the information is very straightforward and simple. I compared it to an audio mixing desk you’d find in a recording studio, which looks intimidating when you see all those buttons and faders, but actually it’s just a handful of buttons repeated; learn one vertical ‘strip’ and you understand the entire thing. Once we got playing I’d also keep checking in that they knew where to find information on the sheets.
A primer on naval tactics was required as none of the learners had played an age of sail game before. Nothing too in-depth and jargon-free where possible, mainly a case of understanding how to use the wind, the difference between the ships, and the importance of trying to ‘cross the T’ in formation where you can. The table was also big enough that the players had 2-3 turns as the game began to start moving their ships into position and get used to things, which also helped people get used to the turning templates and how they work.
A quick chat about how the turn order works with cards and we were off. The nice thing about card-activated turns is your teaching is naturally broken up into little chapters as you go: a ‘squadron move’ card comes up and you show that person how to move their squadron; ‘squadron fire’ and you show them how to shoot; ‘wind change’ and you go through the wind change mechanics. It’s great at focusing the player’s choice down to a single thing, helping negate that sense of being blinded by choice, and giving the teacher a more structured approach to taking the players through each element.
In terms of abstracting things, the players had no choice as to their squadrons or their composition, we just did a rock-paper-scissors to decide who would be French and who would be British. The learners got all the 1st rate ships of the line, whereas I took the frigates and 5th rates – the big ships can really bully the smaller ones so this gave the learners a greater sense of power, and meant they got to shrug off hits while rolling buckets of dice in return – lots of positive reinforcement for them! The rules for using small craft and shooting at rigging were taken out entirely to streamline things, because while they add to the game they also add to the amount of admin required and the number of things the learner has to remember. We didn’t bother with land or shore fire for the same reason (it also cut down on the amount of stuff I had to bring.)
The combo of ‘teach as the cards come up’ and those pared-back rules meant the turns of KMH ran pretty quickly and the players started to pick up basics without much support, so much so that towards the end of the game they picked up on me forgetting a movement rule at one point! The game itself started relatively evenly but the British ships’ needed to get up close and personal to really make their seamanship count, the French managing to pick away at the lighter ships at a distance and even sink one. When the British made it into position however the dice went against them and they quickly found themselves outnumbered and heavily outgunned, losing their entire light squadron in two turns of heavy fire. The British had been holding out desperately for a change in the wind’s direction to try and steer their squadron of 1st rates into action, but at the last minute it turned the other way and the ships found themselves dead in the water, trying to tack into action while the French pounded away. What started evenly ended in a French total victory.
The big question is did the new players enjoy it? The feedback was really positive, you could feel the energy when players got to roll a fistful of dice on a broadside and the only sticking point really was the ship sheets. I’d expected that and done what I could to bypass it where I could, but there’s only so much you can do other than just reassure players that the sheets aren’t as intimidating as they first appear and work your way through them together. Just having faith in your skills and sticking to the ‘go through it as it comes up’ gameplan really does go a long way.
I only ran the one game of KMH on the day – there was a morning and afternoon game, and I wanted to try something out myself. ‘The Men of Company B’ ran by God’s Own Scale’s Sean Clark was the game I got to partake in, and Sean did a tremendous job of introducing someone utterly new to the game (me) and getting everyone involved, so much so that the following week I started looking into what I need to pick it up myself. It is well worth jumping onto Twitter and seeing some of the incredible pictures of the event, I wish I’d taken more myself but my phone is crap, frankly, and I do try and keep my phone away when I’m playing to give the people I’m playing with my full attention. I’ve taken part in two Piggy days this year now and really haven’t had a bad game there; they’ve also gone above and beyond with things like discounts at the store they run the games from and raffles with some brilliant prizes. My initial ignorance of Piggy rulesets was no setback whatsoever, and I’ve been met with nothing but enthusiasm.
The following day I got an email. It was from the game day’s organiser, thanking me for taking part. He also asked what scale my ships were, where he could pick them up, and where he could get the acrylic movement templates, too, having bought the rules when he’d gotten home from the game day.
I love it when a plan comes together.
The Text Dump 