State of Play: With The Hammer: play vs. playtest

  

 

This is kind of a part two to my earlier post about Ray Weiss’s With The Hammer (Conflict Simulations Ltd, ~2025), a game about the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany in the 1520s. The game is currently under development and playtesting simultaneously; thing tend to move quickly at CSL.

I’ve played through a couple of iterations of the game over a few weeks, alone and with my brother-in-law, T. I’m not aware of a single game that deals with this particular moment of history. Ed Beach’s Here I Stand (GMT Games, 2006) covers the period but doesn’t detail this situation (though, to be honest, I’ve only played the game once; there may be an event card representing the Peasants’ Revolt, but I don’t recall it coming up in play).

Playtesting is a tricky thing, and I’m not sure I’m all that good at it. I do think I’m getting better at is, because I’ve participated in maybe half a dozen tabletop playtests (role-playing games as well as wargames), but I’m always a little hesitant in suggesting ways to improve a game, coming to it cold. I’ve never designed a boardgame*, so I’m kind of in awe of those who have or repeatedly do. Thankfully, I’m just one of a small team playtesting With The Hammer. I like to thin we all bring something different to the table.

The Noble player starts with just one Army on the board, by turn four, all three are
available. They need supplies to move though, and requisitioning those supplies
locally depletes the resources of the town (the red triangle markers at Hersfeld
and Bildhausen).

The main purpose of playtesting is to pull at the seams of a new game and see if the stitches give. It takes a special mindset. People talk about trying to break the game, but that’s not quite right. If a game is worth its salt, it should stand up to some rigour by the time it gets to the playtest stage. A play-tester shouldn’t set out to be a jerk about it (I suppose the ones who do tend not to get invited back). If you go into a game, any game, with the mindset of trying to prove it doesn’t work or that it’s somehow broken, you’ll end up finding problems that aren’t there, then doubling down on that take.

Early playtesting can bring its own difficulties. The environment is dynamic, and the game you’re presented with initially may not be the same game once you get down to it. This is doubly true in a case like this. WTH was a quite different game to what it is now compared to when I signed up for playtesting. Some of that has come from developer Fred Serval. Like the introduction of the random event cards, but some of it is inherent in Mr Weiss’s design process (I think Ray’s design philosophy might be “Move fast and break things,” but for some games, CSL has the shortest concept-to-product-release duration I’ve ever seen in this industry). A lot of the changes are cosmetically functional – some extra information has been incorporated into the map to facilitate and streamline play, so the final map will look a little different to what you see in the accompanying photos. Some are structural; the Noble Armies’ Strength Points were originally factors of 10, but this was subsequently changed to a base 12 (a number the Persians believed to be magical, for its properties of retaining whole numbers when divided by two, three, four or six). This makes much more sense, of course – less arithmetic involved in working out ratios for the CRT – but it was a significant and crucial change to how the game functioned.

The WTH PAC. Facebook got to see this before us play-testers did.
Looks good, though.

When trying out a new game, my first instinct is to see how the designer is trying to simulate the situation portrayed, how they’ve gone about it, and how well the game does that, which is maybe a part of the playtesting process, but not the fundamental part. This is more a criterion against which a new game can be measured. Dynamic play is of course important. Play balance is something I don’t get as hung up on as some. I’m happy when success is measured by whether the losing side managed greater gains or avoided such losses as the historical outcome, and I’ve complained here before about some people’s insistence that every game has to offer each side a perfectly equal chance of success. Historically, it’s often the uneven matches that are the most interesting. I honestly wonder if Bulge games keep these folks up at night. But I digress.

I’m more comfortable correcting grammar or suggesting changes to rules as they are written. A big chunk of my working life has been spent editing other people’s work, so I feel much more confident throwing my weight around on that front. There is, if not an absolute right and wrong way, at least a better way to state a rule or case, but basic communication principles are often overlooked in wargame production. I’m more cautious about suggesting changes to elements of a game I’m just starting out with. Once I’ve taken a game out for a spin a couple of times, I’ll be more ready to comment on it.

Our Peasant heroes tooling up for a fight. On their turn, Peasant leaders can try to
convince Peasant Bands to join them, While the Nobles can try to talk them into
disbanding on their turn.

An artefact of playtesting a game is I’ll often get a lot more enjoyment out of it than if I came to it off the shelf. I think this is because I’m much more engaged with the game. Nearly all playtest games I play on my own, to better understand how the mechanisms work. I’m lucky to have a gaming buddy who is willing to indulge me introducing new games with left-field subjects neither of us have come across before. These games let me seethe game working in a less clinical environment, and to just enjoy the ride. This can offer insights as well, a second pair of eyes that doesn’t come with the baggage of a close reading of the rules and evaluation of the CRT. And it’s fun.

For all my concerns, playtesting for CSL is a good fit for me. Doing this kind of work is a little like being a Baker Street Irregular, with Mr Weiss cast as Holmes. You make your small contribution to the whole. and you’re rewarded with genuine appreciation. This isn’t always the case. One time – I’m not going to say who – there was an element in a game that didn’t make sense to me as it was written up; the clause seemed to counter itself over a couple of sentences. I brought it up with the designer, who told me (a little peevishly) that it was clearly set out if I only read it properly. And it was. Right there, in the next iteration of the rules.

Unaffiliated landsknects show up in Frontenhausen (top middle). At the start of every
other turn, an unaffiliated band may appear at one of the towns on the map.
Either side an try to convince them to join or disband (leave the area).

This isn’t quite the post I set out to write. I intended to write more about the game at hand than, but I’ve ended up exorcising all my process anxieties. I will say that, for all its historical obscurity, With The Hammer is a tight little game that should appeal to a lot of people who wouldn’t normally be drawn to wargames. It’s mechanically interesting but thematically stronger than your average Eurogame. And it’s an important, neglected episode from the past that deserves a broader audience.

I’m planning to write at least one more post about playing With The Hammer. Because I’ve been involved with the playtesting I wouldn’t feel right about reviewing the game when it comes out, but this will be kind of a (p)review if you like. Talking about how the game works and how it plays out. I want to have one or two more games against a human opponent before I tackle that.

This was my first opposed game with my regular partner in crime, T. We started late
and he was hammered, so we pulled up stumps early (end of Turn 6), but it was
looking like a Peasant victory was on the cards.

 

* I do have about 35,000 words of an Apocalypse Engine-inspired Western RPG – a love letter to the Gary Cooper and James Stewart movies I grew up watching – tucked away in a drawer that I pull out a tinker with sometimes. But at this point I have no viable boardgame prototypes. If that ever changes, you’ll be the first to know.