"Double Blind Wargaming Solution." Topic

Hello folks,

I updated the blog with a project I have been working on for double blind wargaming. Tonight at the club we give it its inaugural run. I'll post an update later with the result. The post covers how I made the rig and the concept behind it.

Hope you enjoy! If you've never double blind wargamed before…you gotta try it!

link

Keith

Good questions Tim. Both players use a map to track the movement of their troops (this is just a reminder so they don't have to keep opening boxes). The units on their map correspond to tokens with a symbol or number of some kind that are placed in the boxes. The unit counters stay in the boxes until they are revealed, either by one unit moving into the same grid square (revealing the counter when the other player opens the box to move his into that same square) or by having them revealed due to a player using reconnaissance of some kind to be allowed to open a box or boxes to see if an enemy is in that grid square. When a box is opened and and a unit is revealed that unit of miniatures is then placed on the game table. Firing might also reveal a unit or other actions and those units would be placed on the table as well.

Once on the table, the miniatures then act as normal for the game until they are destroyed or LOS is lost or something else that would make the unit disappear again.

You can do all kinds of creative things with this. Say one player deploys his forces on his map, then places in secret the counters into the boxes that correspond to their map grid squares. The other player is allowed a preliminary bombardment and plans that by selecting grid squares he would like to plaster with fire. He then opens the boxes for those grids and if there is an enemy token in them, he rolls for the result of the artillery.

You can do hidden minefields, beaten zones of machine gun fire, AT gun tripwires, etc.

All kinds of fun stuff.

The key here is both players keeping track of their units on their map and then making sure to move their counters in the boxes.

I'll post the first game report using this after tonight. Probably this week some time.

Hope that helps.

Forgot to add: it's one table. This means you don't have to have double the terrain or set up and you don't need a GM (but you do need honest players).

It's a lot less work, so I prefer the Perfect General's "Feldmachink":
link

I haven't seen the box array used for tactical gaming, I think of it more for large scale searching instead.

We looked at the Feldmachink. It works, no doubt. We just didn't like the look of it and wanted something like the boxes because it visually translated as a map and the game table itself.

To each his own of course.

I don't see why you couldn't use it for any scale wargaming from operational down to single squad skirmish.

We've done platoon level WWII and squad skirmish with our matchbox set as well as larger scale ACW battles and it worked fine for both

I guess its because I equate boxes to line of sight, each box being as far as you see.

Makes sense. For smaller scale games we allow spotting of boxes on a successful roll if the box is in LOS to the observer. It counts as an action for the unit. Which is kind of neat in that you can have situational awareness or you can move…but you can't have both. It makes speculative fire possible too. Recon by fire, though it gives your own positions away. Definitely creates a whole new set of tactical challenges.

Wasn't this idea also proposed by Featherstone somewhere in the 60s to track hidden movement?
IIRC, he used a 2Dgrid of matchboxes.