Have you wargamed by mobile phone?

[barr7430]

For reasons of a personal nature, what was inteded to be a face to face FOUR EMPIRES game between Bob, Ade and I had to be conducted on two identical tables 350 miles apart and by mobile phone...

We successfully completed 7 turns of a Sevastopol game and wrote up a battle report to boot.Bob and Ade were in Nottingham, I was in EK.

It will appear together with photos in the public domain very shortly. It has proved to me that our hobby is very flexible and anything is in fact possible!!!

Maybe we'll hear from Toggy and Ade about it.

Was a great game too!

[obriendavid]

Sorry to hear you couldn't make the game.

How did the rules work out or is there anything else we need to work on?
Cheers
Dave

[barr7430]

I did make it! Just not in the flesh!!

[toggy]

There's talk of a new Olympic sport...synchronised wargaming!!!!

A fantastic game on a specially commissioned piece of terrain in Nottingham & a lets see what I've got in my garage to mirror it in East Kilbride.

But despite a geographical distance of over 200 miles the little men moved across both tables in near perfect symmetry.

Using the new Crimea rules that Barry has been working on the 3 of us, plus many of the great & the good from wargamings capital city,enjoyed a superb game involving lots of stiff upper lip type assaults from the British troops, and some typical bellicose resistance from the Ruskies.

Great fun, especially the mortar firing rules.

So if you know someone who lives 200 miles away, set up duplicate tables, up your mobile phone tarriff and off you go, a most worthwhile exercise!!

Bob

[18th Century Guy]

Someone passed on to me a link where a group of gamers used Skype to complete a game. Not sure I want to game that way but in a pinch I guess it would work.

http://sharpbrush.blogspot.com/2012/01/ ... mment-form

[Rob Herrick]

Sounds like a good system for a WWI or WWII game, or any Fog of War, really!

Especially if you're having your players simulate higher level commanders, then having them phone in orders and get reports that way ideally simulates the command and control issues. You could even allow them to "drive/ride to the front" as it were - the inability to issue orders or receive reports when away from the CP would be simulated by not being allowed to use their phones while driving.

If you really want to be dastardly, the umpires moving the troops could not pick up every time it rings . . .

[quindia]

Barry ran a WW2 campaign that I took part in a few years back from across the ocean. Locals played the table top actions when it came to it, but I got situational updates and issued detailed strategic orders to adapt to events as they happened (or as I thought they were happening).

It was actually really fun and I didn't have to paint a single thing to play!

[barr7430]

I loved that campaign. It was actually the most absorbing wargaming project I ever was involved in. It ran for about 3 years on and off. The people who started it were not the people who finished it, the collection grew massively during the playing and the battles got more brutal and crazier as it progressed.... hmmmm rather like the OSTFRONT itself

[Friedrich August I.]

Reading Barry's article in WI 295 with great interest...