SCS vs. Command Ops: A Tale of Two Bastognes

This being a rainy, then snowy, and generally dreary Christmas, my thoughts as a wargamer turned to the Battle of the Bulge and I thought of MMP's Bastogne, and my friend Mike who owns a copy.

After a few short emails we set the date and he graciously accommodated our meeting in his basement game room.  Mike is a Standard Combat System (SCS) veteran, having played all the incarnations and actually helping to play-test an early version of Bastogne.

SCS is a pretty simple system, and after a quick rules read the day before, and a bit of coaching by Mike, we embarked on the historical recreation of the legendary stand of the 101st Airborne.

Mike, as the Germans, dissects Team Cherry en route to the Bastogne perimeter I was busy setting up. 

More on MMP's Bastogne in a bit.

Not quite satisfied with just one game featuring a battle from the Bulge, I loaded Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge onto my PC and fired up the closest scenario I could find to match MMP's version of the battle.

In Command Ops: BFTB, my lone Airborne Division and some ad hoc armored units  try to keep the encircling Germans at bay.

Apart from the obvious differences between a wargame and a computer game, I was hoping to get a contrasting view that would speak to the value of one gaming mode over the other.  After all, these are two very different gaming experiences built around the same historical event at very similar scales.

As any respectable blogger would do, it's best now to explain what happened at the siege of Bastogne in a few short sentences. On December 20 1944, German forces enveloped Bastogne, an important cross-roads needed in their drive to the Meuse.  Defending the Belgian town was the 101st Airborne Division and the remnants of various units that had been holding out at important junctures east of the city.  Once surrounded, the Germans laid siege to the perimeter that had been established by the 101st.  Within the perimeter, ad hoc armor and artillery assets reacted to threats and kept the Germans at bay. Bad weather permitted little to no US air support until December 23, at which point tactical air support and much needed supply drops became available.  The 101st was reached by relief forces on December 26.  There you go, "NUTS!" in a nutshell.

SCS Bastogne comes at the battle in a very straightforward, old-school board wargame sort of way.  No cards, no chit pulling, no intertwined activation schemes.  Just simple smash-mouth, up the guts, strength-point crunching, CRT reading, attack and defense. No supply rules to worry about in this grand-tactical scale game.  Players must focus on husbanding of resources and making a steely perimeter or creating a irresistible panzer spear point.

The encirclement is almost complete and I've already got some Germans needing to be expelled from the town.

In stark contrast, Command Ops (or as it was known when it first came out, "Airborne Assault") is the premium conflict simulation for the PC at this scale. It has little in common with those computer wargames that are direct ports from the boardgame world. "Fidelity" is the watchword of the Panther Games team, and their game system runs in continuous time, with orders delays, ammunition counted to the exact round, supplies dispatched to units in need, fatigue, changes in morale, elevation, unit facing and frontage, march orders, the effects of weather and time-of-day on enemy intelligence, and much much more.  It's all under the hood and highly automated, as well as amazingly simple to manage and manipulate through a really well designed interface.

So what can be learned by comparing these two games?

I have to say I am most impressed by MMP's Bastogne.  The rules are light and yet the game play is satisfyingly deep and enjoyable. The results felt fairly realistic.  My only question is the victory points assigned to keeping routes north and south of the town under some sort of control.  Was this the historical measure of success?  I had always thought that holding the town center - the key road junction - was the critical measure.

With Command Ops, the game almost plays itself yet it takes a wise commander to achieve the desired outcome.  As with all of the games in the series, you have to think ahead as command delays will prohibit the player from being able to change things on the fly.  This is the essence of the Command Ops experience.  You sit in the command bunker wondering if you should change the orders you sent out two hours ago because any advantage you hope to gain by doing so will likely be elusive as confusion and inertia take their toll among your subordinate commanders and troops.

Both are a challenge to play. Both are well designed.  But both scratch a different wargaming itch.  (Oh and both resulted in victories for the Germans).

Based on the fun I had with MMP's Bastogne, I am looking forward to their upcoming "It Never Snows in September" SCS game about operation Market Garden.