Thread: Re: Playing time: 10 minutes?

Allos — 2008-05-17T16:54:29+00:00

I sat down to play a game with my dad a few months ago. He'd received the game as gift in the 1970s and played it once with a few guys from his fraternity. They all thought the game was awful. My dad and I read through the rules to give the game another shot on a Saturday afternoon. Two hours into the game we gave up out of boredom.

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Monkie — 2008-03-06T23:44:06+00:00

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Monkie — 2008-03-06T23:43:10+00:00

Not a good box for Rommel to end up in.

Thread: Re: Playing time: 10 minutes?

RaDiKal — 2006-06-09T04:13:02+00:00

Yup, played once - took an afternoon and then back in the envelope. A very novel approach to map a rather abstract set of relationships to a physical system. Just wasn't interesting beyond the initial curiosity of what the physical system would play like.

Thread: Re: Playing time: 10 minutes?

Herr Niemand — 2006-06-08T01:47:38+00:00

I actually played this once upon a time.

IIRC, shortest game lasted about four hours, longest was about eight.

Excellent idea for an inter-personal game of deadly politics. The game itself, however, was just no fun.

Thread: Re: Playing time: 10 minutes?

BagpipeDan — 2006-06-07T21:28:01+00:00

This is how I imagine this game:

4 players sit down around a table.

Player A: "I'm Hitler."

*Player A leaves room*

Player B: "Should we kill him or not kill him?"
Player C: "Kill him."
Player B: "How?"
Player D: "Knife."
Players B and C: "Awesome."

*Player A enters room*

Player B: "We chose to stab you with a knife."
Player A: "Well then I probably would have died."
Player C: "Good game."

Thread: Re: Playing time: 10 minutes?

gobbeg — 2006-06-07T19:31:34+00:00

That's about how long it takes to open the box, glance through the rules and put it away forever.

Thread: Playing time: 10 minutes?

them — 2006-06-07T19:23:03+00:00

Really? C'mon...

Thread: Review and component/ counter manifest

ltmurnau — 2005-11-27T21:27:13+00:00

PLOT TO ASSASSINATE HITLER

Plot to Assassinate Hitler (PTAH) was the second of three Power Politics Series games to be released by SPI. The other two were Russian Civil War and After the Holocaust. All three games were issued within a year of each other, and while all contained some radical design concepts and application, only Russian Civil War proved to be an enduring success. PTAH did less well and was regarded as a weird-looking, weird-playing game the designer James Dunnigan probably wrote off as one of his less successful experiments.

The subject of the game is the various attempts on the part of anti-Hitler elements in the German government to assassinate Hitler and seize power. The play of the game sees the Abwehr player (nominally Admiral Canaris, head of the German intelligence service) trying to ‘recruit’ individuals in the Army, civilian government, or even the upper echelons of the Nazi Party to act against the day when he launches his coup d’etat (which he must do, or forfeit the game). The SS player (Heinrich Himmler), for his part, tries to ensure the loyalty of Nazi Party leaders and inconvenience the Abwehr player by investigating and interrogating persons who are in on the plot. All this time, Hitler himself shuttles randomly back and forth between Berlin and his headquarters in East Prussia, like a tin duck in a shooting gallery. The game is climaxes by the Abwehr player declaring a coup, which triggers a different sequence of play as both sides try to decisively eliminate the other as an effective force.

Components

PTAH was released in three formats: at the issue game in Strategy and Tactics 59 (December 1976) and in both the 2” box Designer’s Edition and Z-Pack formats in March 1977. The basic game components were as follows:

1 22x34” game map, with all charts and tables printed thereon
200 back-printed, die-cut counters
1 12-page rules folder

The Designer’s Edition had a hard-mounted map in three sections, and included a box with counter tray and die.

Counter Manifest

Personalities (69 units)
16 SS units
11 Nazi Party units
7 Civilian units
11 Abwehr units
18 OKW (Army units)
6 Allied units

Randomizer Chits (97 total)
59 Loyalty Chits: one for each character except for Himmler and Canaris
8 Fuhrer Access chits
6 Travel
6 Alibi (Arrest marked on back)
6 Double Cross
6 Friendly Assignment
6 Enemy Assignment

Markers (34 total)
8 Semi-recruited
12 Abwehr Control (SS Control marked on back)
11 Mask (Neutralized on back)
1 Game Turn (Coup Turn on back)
1 Movement Point marker
1 blank

Collector’s Value

PTAH was the only Power Politics game to appear in Strategy & Tactics, at a time when the magazine’s self-proclaimed circulation was in the 31,500 range. Hence magazine format copies of the game command prices equal to other less popular issue games from the same period (e.g. Dixie, Road to Richmond, or Revolt in the East). Designer’s Edition copies are less common and fetch a higher price.

Player’s Value

As indicated earlier PTAH was the “ugly duckling” of the three Power Politics games. And frankly if you do not have an open mind about this design, it will never turn into a swan for you. Greg Costikyan, an SPI staffer who helped with the development (well, at least he is listed in the credits) sputtered thusly: It is, in my opinion, an unadulterated turkey. The mechanics are better suited to an armor game, the situation is ridiculous, the game is basically boring, and the victory conditions are unbalance. Otherwise, it’s OK.”

Maybe Greg should have put in a bit more time on the project. I’m not so sure that his specific objections to the game elements militated against its success so my as designer Dunnigan’s decidedly off-key and abstracted approach to the subject.

For example the game map: while it exhibits the old, familiar hexes, it is divided into a large number of areas representing the hinterlands of the German Reich (Russian, Southern France, the Vatican, etc.) on the borders of a single large area representing Berlin. Berlin contains several HQ areas within it which serve as defended localities for the different parties in the game. Thus, having two counters adjacent on the map does not necessarily meant they are physically close to each other, only that they are “organizationally” in contact and able to influence each other. This kind of representation has never gone over well with the majority of gamers – perhaps it is difficult for many people to visualize, accustomed as they are to seeing pieces of Virginian or French real estate tessellated into little honeycombs.

Next the game counters: the units represent highly placed individuals in the complex and fractured hierarchy that was the government of totalitarian Germany. Each unit has an Effectiveness Rating, a Defence Strength, and a Movement Allowance. These three qualities mean different things in different situation: the ER functions like an attack strength, but represents an individual’s ability to organize, coerce or convince other people; the DS is a combination of resistance to coercion, cajoling or just plain slipperiness,; and the MA is the measure of ability to move around in the circles of power and “attack” other individuals, either to sideline them or get them on-side. The quantification of these numbers seems like guesswork, based on the way things fell out historically in the several actual plots to kill Hitler. It does not see to resonate with many gamers’ sense of How Things Ought To Be, though (What? Whuddyamean “Schnell” Heinz Guderian is only a 2-6-3?).

Almost half the counters in the game are randomizer chits. Players are constantly drawing and tossing these around to bollix up the other player’s plans or advance their own. A nice twist is “loyalty chits”: having one of these for a particular character means you are sure of his loyalty (since the other guy obviously doesn’t have it), or it presents an opportunity to recruit him, or it can be used to divert an enemy character who is bothering one of “your” people. I do not recall if this interesting mechanic was ever used again in an SPI game, though the concept was suggested several times in proposals for other revolution/ spy-themed games.

Finally, time is heavily abstracted in this game. There are only eight turns before the Abwehr player must declare a coup, but the period simulated is up to five years long. The outer areas of the Reich start falling under Allied control in turn 6 (D-Day and the Destruction of Army Group Center); apart form that, one turn can cover anywhere from two weeks to two years. The game is climaxed by up to six coup turns, each of which represents only 8-12 hours of action and reaction. Again, this elastic times-sense was something the gamers of 1976 could not readily identify with, although the concept is familiar now.

Unlike Greg Costikyan, I do not assert that what Dunnigan did in designing PTAH was mistaken or wrong; I say only that it was on an unfamiliar subject, it looked weird and it played oddly enough to turn off most gamers (a notoriously conservative lot, as almost 30 years of feedback results in S&T have demonstrated).

Support Material

This game is a near orphan. A small amount of errata, mostly clarifications, is available on Web-Grognards (http://www.grognard.com).

Other Games of This Type

There are no directly related titles. Assassination is a popular game mechanic, but entire designs on the subject are not common (let us draw the veil over the unfortunate Avalon Hill design Assassin). Dunnigan resurrected many of the aspects of the game system in Minuteman, a game that appeared very shortly after PTAH and dealt with the process of fomenting a revolution in near-future America.

Some games related to the execution of the coup d’etat, such as Junta, Coup and Power Play, are similar but rely on a directly representational map and more straightforward mechanics.

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kimbo — 2005-01-27T12:44:46+00:00

S&T #59, Plot to Assassinate Hitler (cover)

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capt yid — 2004-04-28T10:36:07+00:00

Map

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capt yid — 2004-04-28T10:36:06+00:00

Counters Front Right

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capt yid — 2004-04-28T10:36:03+00:00

Counters Front Left

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RaDiKal — 2002-12-15T19:39:51+00:00

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2002-09-09T11:46:36+00:00

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fuzzyfife — 2002-09-09T11:46:34+00:00

Game: Plot to Assassinate Hitler, the

Thread: Re: Playing time: 10 minutes?

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Thread: Re: Playing time: 10 minutes?

Thread: Re: Playing time: 10 minutes?

Thread: Re: Playing time: 10 minutes?

Thread: Re: Playing time: 10 minutes?

Thread: Playing time: 10 minutes?

Thread: Review and component/ counter manifest

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