Digital, Old School Printed Resources Material

The title at left, is but only one of those available from the Australian War Memorial as part of their digital collection at their site.
 

I'd printed off the chapter on Tel El Eisa, so I could go through it without need for a computer screen, and for me one of the best parts of physical, board, war-games is the tactile element to them. 

It's also good to get away from purely digital games; they're good too, but in some ways, while they are more flexible, and can keep track of 'more stuff', the programming can actually limit areas as well (probably more than a lot of people might be aware of).

As mentioned earlier, I am building up a little collection of Advanced Tobruk System material (ATS); it is one of those system type games, and I guess there are a lot of parts to the hobby, as a whole, that aren't, necessarily, immediately evident - and one of these areas is about how to learn a 'system style game' (frankly, I'm not even sure that is a real phrase - in that case, I'm claiming 'ownership' of it :] ). I hit upon maybe breaking down some of the various mechanisms and will try to learn them in isolation from other concepts; building in tying different concepts together as I gain a bit more proficiency with some of the more central ideas.

With that in mind, and with something like Civil War ATS (CWATS), was to maybe make up a very simple map - probably of a valley -and just set up some cannon for an artillery duel. Not exactly memorable stuff, but it should be able to walk me through the to hit, and damage processes, and try out some of the variety of types of guns. 

Movement is another natural area to work within, as is infantry v infantry firing, and command control formations.

Speaking of command control, since that plays a HUGE part of CWATS (both movement and firing), keeping straight which leaders/ADCs etc are assigned which group is pretty important; some of the scenarios can get pretty big (the combined Wheatfield/Devil's Den titles had a combined scenario in an earlier iteration of CWATS) - it made me wonder if maybe some version of colour coding might be able to be used, as opposed to the markers from the system for more of an direct visual cue. It might be something pretty simple like a ribbon somewhere on designated groups; I get why it wasn't done - it's about interoperability, and not wanting to limit players' use to just one set grouping all of the time.

More as it happens.