TRICKS OF THE TRADE: ‘AFRIKA KORPS’ PBeM PLAY AID

MOVEMENT & COMBAT TURN RECORD TEMPLATE FOR THE TAHGC GAME, ‘AFRIKA KORPS’ (1964/1980)


There is really nothing like face-to-face competition when it comes to playing wargames. Unfortunately, most players will find — particularly, once they leave college and get on with their lives — that local opponents who share the same gaming interests can often be hard to find, and once found, hard to stay in touch with over the long haul. Circumstances change: gaming clubs break up, opponents move or even, heaven forbid, drop out of the hobby completely. Thus, one of the great benefits to traditional board wargaming conferred by the internet age — speaking as a long-time competitive player — has been the now almost universal ability of modern players to substitute ‘Play by Electronic Mail’ (PBeM) for its tiresome precursor, traditional ‘Play by Mail’ (PBM). This has meant that most games between geographically separated opponents can now — if both players are conscientious in their move-making — be completed in a matter of months or even weeks, instead of the year or more that postal play used to require.

Happily, the ‘internet revolution’ has also led to the appearance of subscription (pay-as-you-go) wargame sites such as ‘Hexwars,’ and also to the development of easy-to-use gaming software applications such as ‘Vassal’ which has made ‘electronic’ wargaming even faster (no set-up time) and more convenient. In fact, in the case of ‘Vassal,’ players who are familiar with a game system no longer even have to have physical access to a copy of a favorite title in order to play it. Of course, reliance on software applications like ‘Vassal’ or ‘Cyberboard’ is not always either practical or even preferable. In many cases, players will find that platforms for their favorite older games are not yet available on line. Moreover, even when their favorite title is available on line, players will occasionally find that existing internet gaming software — programmers being human — will have map or ‘order of battle’ mistakes that seriously detract from the actual playability of the game.

Finally, there are still a few modern ‘Luddites’ like me who just don’t much care for the ‘point and drag’ method of moving counters on a screen; gamers who, instead, would actually rather have the real map and counters in front of them when they play. For this type of player, using a ‘spreadsheet’ format for internet gaming is a convenient alternative. And it is also, not surprisingly, the online gaming format that I personally prefer.

The Excel ‘spreadsheet’ file offered with this post is for the 3rd Edition version (1980) of the Avalon Hill classic game, AFRIKA KORPS (1964). This file has been set up to permit competing players to exchange new game moves via email attachments and, at the same time, to keep an accurate and detailed, ongoing record of all of the various game operations that can potentially occur in the course of a complete thirty-eight turn match.


Excel Spreadsheet AFRIKA KORPS PBeM PLAY AID


Additional Resources:

Hexwars
Vassal
Cyberboard created by Dale Larson
The Play by Email Emporium Walt O’Hara
Boardgame Players Association World Board Gaming Championships®
Posted by JCB III at 6:58 AM

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