Multiplayer gaming in my classroom...testing out a rough & ready wargame...

As the assessment, marking and report writing period has wound down, we have entered the dreaded 'nothing to play for' period of the school year, so I thought it would be interesting to devise and run multiplayer team-based wargame for one of my classes.

It was something that I had been mulling over in my brain, drafting & redrafting rudimentary rules in attempt to create something that:

• was easy to teach & play
• had elements of a typical 'area based' wargame
• could be scaled up for larger groups up to twenty players
• did not have an overwhelming variety of units
• provided an impression of strategic scope & decision making
• gave an impression of the difficulties of managing resources during conflict

It was a lot of work to devise, and although I am sure that there already exists tried & tested rules systems and even board games that would do the job perfectly, there were a few things that motivated my 'bespoke' wargame. 

A few of these reasons were:

• Costs - I didn't want to spend a large amount of money buying expensive, overly complicated boardgames with thousands of bits...
• Reuse/repurpose/recycle - I wanted to find a use for some of the tidbits I had lying around in my shed.
• Low investment - I didn't want to bring in all my miniatures to a mainstream class...there are too many people to keep track of in a mainstream class... and a little too much unpredictability to be able to concentrate on the game...if I was constantly worried about a bunch of kids wrecking my stuff, it wouldn't be enjoyable, and I wouldn't be able to teach & guide the game
• I just wanted to go through the process of drafting, editing and making my own game for fun - to be completely honest, while it was rewarding, I think I will look into other systems in future and test them out before going headstrong into making my own game again

It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, took far too long to plan and devise, took a lot of prep, and the game didn't quite gel as smoothly as I thought it would. 

I know. How VERY naive of me....

Well, of course in typical slap-dash style I basically cobbled together a bunch of different gaming mechanisms and threw a bunch of old Axis & Allies (and a few Monopoly) bits on vinyl tiles to create units.

There were a few nights of spray painting, glueing and pasting the little bits together. I know, someone out there is probably heartbroken that I've desecrated this old MB copy of A&A....but that's really the beauty of PVA.

It's pretty harmless and once that PVA is dried I can just repurpose the figures for the original game, so don't you worry you precious little petals out there.

There were three types of Army unit in the game - Light, Medium & Heavy. The units all rolled fistfuls of six sided dice and hit on 5s & 6s. 

A few years back in one of my other periods of whimsical-rabbit-hole-hunting I made a bunch of these grid style gaming mats using old foam 'gym' mats we had lying around. Back then, the mats required a couple of cheap cans of brown & green spray paint, as well as a good Saturday afternoon of cutting & measuring.

I used them once. 

Here you can see a bit of the set up with the objective 'City' tile in the centre of one the three boards.

I spent a few evening drafting the rules. Essentially the rules were sort of a cobbled together mash up of Axis and Allies meets Command & Colours...with a bunch of dice & playing cards.

The opposing sides had to capture the city and gain victory points for destroying units. If you look at the projector slides, you can see the turn sequence and most importantly, the Victory Track in marker pen above it.

It was all cobbled together with what I had at hand, and some things I was changing or still making up on the day....

I tested it with my Year 8s during one of our longer lessons. My Year 8 class is a really nice bunch of students and seemed happy enough to just jump in and give it all a go. It was something different at least, and by the time I had allocated the two sides there was a good bit of competitive banter between the friends...

Being the end of the year, there are a lot of different activities and final year excursions going on around the school, and somewhat fortuitously, the class had been whittled down to about 15 students. Not quite enough to model what I wanted, but definitely enough to make the game teachable & playable.

None of the students in this class had ever played a wargame before so there were quite a few funny oddball questions as the game progressed.

I didn't really take many photos at all because firstly, I was very occupied with questions, keeping things running along, as well as coping with the various interruptions of a typically busy school.

Plus, like all schools, we have rules about mobile phone usage and I wanted to reinforce the school's policy by role modelling appropriate phone usage.

So, how did it go?

Each side had:

* A Ultimate leader

* A spy

* Three Generals (One per table)

* A staff member / assistant 

I also had some volunteers to become the bankers & score-keepers for the game.

I won't go into too much detail. Basically the gamemaster - me - dealt out ten cards to each ultimate leader. The cards represented resources, movement points, combat bonuses and special abilities.

The ultimate leader had to decide which of his generals to give the cards. The generals would move and fight etc etc by playing cards and rolling dice. Nothing too outrageous.

The leaders could use cards to buy upgrades such as bombers and artillery that could make 'free' attacks.

If a leader had a jack card, a 'spy' could be sent to pinch one card from any enemy general and provide it to his own side for use during the turn. The students had a lot of fun with this aspect of the game of course.

At the start of the game the analysis paralysis took hold amongst the leaders, and one the score-keepers suggested we put the leaders on a minute timer. 

A good suggestion! We're learning already...

Soon enough the cards were flying and the dice were rolling.

By the third round, both leaders had tripled& blown out their country's GDP and were buying strategic bombers and trying to turn the tide of battle with 'wonder weapons'. This was probably due to the fact that even though a lot of units were being chewed up on both sides...no one could drive home the advantage.

The VP marker was sliding left & right.

We played 5 rounds and it took about an hour. The game held the students attention for the duration and one of the more surprising observations I made was that one of my least 'engaged' students turned out to be the most competitive out of everyone. She was studying her cards, moving her units to best advantage, rolling the dice and relishing the carnage as it unfolded. It was one of those weird moments when a student genuinely surprises you.

In any case, the Victory Track went left & right, right & left... and by the end....sat right in the middle where it started!

No one won.

Of course there was a good, sobering lesson in that for all of us. 

Maybe we should have just watched this old gem instead.