Interview with Ethan Redrup Designer of Forward Defense ’85: Company Command in WW3 from Strategist’s Den Games Coming to Kickstarter April 9th

Several months ago, we were contacted by Ethan Redrup, who is the owner of Strategist’s Den Games and we struck up a conversation about his new upcoming solitaire wargame design called Forward Defense ’85: Company Command in WW3. From that conversation, I learned more about the game and that it was coming to Kickstarter soon and we have collaborated to bring this interview to you describing the action on the battlefields of East Germany during the Cold War.

If you are interested in Forward Defense ’85: Company Command in WW3, you can learn more from the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ethanredrup/forward-defense-85-company-command-in-ww3?ref=bggforums

The campaign is set to launch on April 9th so keep your eyes peeled for those advance recon units heralding the invasion.

Grant: First off Ethan please tell us a little about yourself. What are your hobbies? What’s your day job?

Ethan: This is a great opener, because a lot of this is connected to how I ended up designing this game. I live in a small town in Pennsylvania with my wife and two children, and I work full-time in market research and consulting primarily for industrial & manufacturing clients.

All things considered, I don’t have a ton of time for gaming. As much as I’d love to play through some of the huge 2+ player wargames, finding a gaming group and the time to do it was much more daunting than picking up some solo games I could play through a bit here and there. This all led to me wanting to make a game I could play solo (my wife likes other boardgames, but not wargames as much) since getting together with gaming groups would require a decent drive elsewhere and a significant time commitment.

Outside of tabletop wargaming, I enjoy video games (mostly grand strategy, but occasionally sports or shooters with friends), and I’m a big fan of sci-fi novels, American football, and anything history.

Grant: What motivated you to break into game design? What have you enjoyed most about the experience thus far?

Ethan: I designed a lot of games as a kid, going back to drawing a board on the back of a pizza box to play with my brothers. It was always an interest. About 5 years ago I was toying around with video game development and it hit me that I could sidestep a lot of the technical things I needed to learn and my game concept would work at least as well as a board game. That initial design ended up getting shelved, but it got me started moving in this direction.

I love to think about an experience or theme in the game, and then work out how I can simulate it on the tabletop. Being able to change a mechanic on the fly and reinvent part of the game is one of the most rewarding parts of development for me.

Grant: What is your upcoming game Forward Defense ‘85 about?

Ethan: Forward Defense ’85 takes a common theme – a Soviet invasion of Europe in the 1980’s, and looks at it at a smaller scale, following a NATO unit through a campaign. The game is a solitaire tactical game.

Grant: What does the title of the game reference?

Ethan: Forward Defense is a concept that arose in NATO doctrine around placing forces far forward, ready to defend all territory. It envisioned a potential conflict with large, high-intensity battles and little time for major maneuvers and reinforcement.

Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?

Ethan: I always thought WW3 was a cool concept for gaming, specifically because it didn’t happen. It leaves a lot more room to be creative and create scenarios that are realistic, without worrying about historical accuracy.

Grant: What is your design goal with the game?

Ethan: The initial thought that led to this game was wanting to play the miniatures game Flames of War solo. I thought the game was cool, I liked the miniatures, but I didn’t have the time to drive to a local store and spend multiple hours playing regularly. It began as trying to build a solo bot I would use with 3mm scale miniatures, and really took off from there.

The main two goals I had as the design became formalized were to make it easy to get on the table and play, and to have a reason to be invested in and care about the units under your command.

Grant: What other games inspired you in making this game?

Ethan: Quite a few here – Some of the combat actions were inspired by miniatures games as I wanted slightly more detailed combat than a typical hex and counter. DVG’s Israeli Air Force Leader is probably one of my favorite solo wargames, and of my favorite parts about that is how your pilots gained experience over the campaign – I wanted to build on that experience.

I was also inspired by some of the PC games I like to play. One element that I wanted to include came to me from playing Eugen’s Wargame: Red Dragon. Unit preservation is critical in those campaigns, and I wanted it to be important not that you just win a scenario, but win in a way (or choose to retreat) so that your force remains intact for the next battle.

Also, the book Team Yankee was a very significant influence on this game design. I found the narrative following a company commander through the opening days of the Soviet invasion to be fascinating, and I wanted to create a similar experience on the tabletop.

Grant: What elements from 1985 do you need to model in the design?

Ethan: It’s not mentioned explicitly in the game, but I made an effort to include historically accurate vehicles and formations in the campaigns. For example, the US 1st Cavalry Division, which the player is part a of, was a REFORGER unit assigned to NORTHAG in the late 1980’s. Units are accurate to that era, though I didn’t go to the level of detail simulating which variant (T-80B vs. T-80BV, etc.) as it just introduced more complexity without making the game more fun.

Grant: As a solitaire game how does the AI function?

Ethan: As a model, I tried to emulate Soviet doctrine while at the same time making the AI as easy as possible for the player to manage. Tanks activate first, followed by infantry. AI forces are organized into companies, so all of the platoons in a company will activate, and then move on to the next company. Most of the missions have the Soviets on the offensive, so the AI will try to concentrate its forces and push toward the objective designated on the map.

When the AI is on the defensive, only part of the Soviet force will be deployed at the start of the battle to emulate how NATO forces would likely try to counter attack where the Soviets are weakest. Then, following Soviet doctrine, the rest of the Soviet forces will join the battle and attempt to regain the offensive.

Grant: What goals drive the AI?

Ethan: Thinking in the context of a massive Soviet offensive, the AI’s main goal is capturing ground. Getting to the objective is the AI’s primary goal – destroying NATO units is more of a secondary consideration. I also wanted an experience that mirrored what WW3 was expected to be like – fast, intense engagements that are decided quickly.

Grant: What type of experience does it create?

Ethan: One of the things I wanted to achieve is a game that has little wasted effort and maximum tension. I paid a ton of attention to minimizing tracking, bookkeeping, and setup time.

Grant: What is the role and purpose of the Momentum Track, Player Attrition Track and Enemy Attrition Track?

Ethan: These are to keep track of the player’s influence on the war, and the war’s influence on the player. Momentum is how the fighting is going for the player’s side. It increases when you win battles, decreases when you lose. Certain momentum values are victory conditions for campaigns, and also affect how likely you are to be on offense/defense.

The Player and Enemy Attrition Tracks advance when units are destroyed to reflect units getting worn down by fighting. Player attrition makes it more difficult to get reinforcements for your units, while enemy attrition will lead to the enemy having fewer platoons and more second-rate units in upcoming battles.

Grant: How does the Supply Phase function? How can the player mitigate poor rolls?

Ethan: The Supply Phase is the player’s time between battles to get replacements and arrange for support. The available options are replacing vehicles in your platoons which have been destroyed, getting attached platoons from other nearby friendly forces, and getting air/artillery support for the upcoming battle.

Your Commander Prestige determines how many die rolls the player gets – if you’ve been performing well you’ll have more influence to get what you need. The way to mitigate bad die rolls is assigning multiple dice to the same place; for example, if you really need an airstrike for the upcoming battle, you can assign two dice there. If the first roll succeeds, the second is wasted, but if the first one fails you get another.

Grant: What is the scale of the game and force structure of units?

Ethan: The player’s force at the beginning is around an understrength battalion, with the ability to field 4 platoons as a company team per battle. Actions are carried out on the platoon level, but individual vehicles are knocked out.

Given typical expectations of what WW3 could look like, the player’s company team is in most cases going to be facing multiple companies of Soviet troops.

Grant: What is the concept of deployment advantage?

Ethan: Deployment advantage is where the defender has a chance to set up a planned defense, rather than reacting quickly to an enemy attack. In the game, this allows the player to pre-position their units instead of moving them in from the map edge, and gives them a defensive bonus while they remain in their prepared positions.

Grant: What is the general turn structure?

Ethan: Each turn, the player goes first and can move and then fire with each of their platoons. After that, the AI goes and will move and fire with each of their platoons, organized by company.

Grant: What decision points are forced on the player?

Ethan: There are quite a few here. I wanted the narrative experience of a lot of the more narrative driven games, but also to have a lot more player involvement and decisions.

First, is the Supply Phase mentioned above. Then, the player has to decide which platoons to bring into battle. As the campaign progresses, some will be more experienced, some will be more beat up, and you’ll have to make some tough calls about deploying your best units.

The tactical battles also have a huge variety of decisions, starting with where to deploy your units, the individual move/fire decisions each turn, and your overall strategy about winning at any cost versus living to fight another day.

Grant: How does combat work in the design? Why was it your choice to utilize a D20 in combat? What advantages does this give the design?

Ethan: Units need to be in range and have line of sight to hit.

For attacking vehicles, it works on a basic premise of a roll to hit and a roll to kill. Each active vehicle in a platoon (typically 4 for NATO and 3 for Soviets) gets its own die to roll, so the unit gets proportionally less likely to do damage as it is worn down. Each unit has a “hard accuracy” value used for attacking vehicles – roll less than or equal to this after modifiers, and it’s a hit. Then, for each die that hits, roll again for a kill. Take the unit’s hard attack (like a penetration value), subtract the defending unit’s armor value, and roll less than or equal to that for a kill.

I had to come up with something new to make infantry work in the game. I tried a bunch of different designs to simulate how mechanized infantry work together with their vehicles without getting too granular and slowing down the game. What I eventually came up with, after consulting with a friend who is in the US Army, is a system where infantry are treated as an extension of the vehicles that carry them. When infantry is dismounted, it needs to be suppressed first or else there’s a significant penalty to units attacking those vehicles.

The D20 is important in my design because it offers both granularity and simplicity. I felt like a D6 didn’t offer enough “steps” – going from rolling 3 to hit to rolling 4 to hit felt like too big of a jump in probability. In nearly all cases, there’s a set value and rolling under that value is a success. This allows, for example, the M1 Abrams to have an accuracy value of 15, so any roll of 15 or under (after modifiers) is a hit.

Grant: What role does Morale play in the game?

Ethan: I used a measure called “unit quality” – this is a single value to reflect a unit’s training, professionalism, and morale, and influences a lot of die rolls. For player units, it increases when they survive battles and decreases when they receive replacements.

Morale during the battle can be damaged two ways. First, when half of a platoon’s units are destroyed, its unit quality drops by two. Then, if half of a side’s platoons are destroyed during a battle, each remaining platoon has to pass a morale check (influenced by unit quality) or break and run.

Grant: How does the game utilize cards? Can we see a few examples of these cards and you explain their use?

Ethan: The simplest cards are enemy deployment cards. These are just randomizers to determine where the enemy enters the battlefield while hiding it from the player.

The main cards are the platoon cards. These are off the board and contain all of a unit’s statistics. Unit status is tracked by placing chits on the cards.

Grant: What does the board look like?

Ethan: There’s not just one board. I’m not a mathematician (but I asked a friend who is), and there are about 8 billion possible board combinations. There are 18 map tiles, of which 12 will be laid out randomly in a grid each mission.

Grant: How is victory achieved?

Ethan: Victory for each individual mission is determined by holding the objective at the turn limit, or by driving off all enemy forces.

For the campaigns right now, victory is achieved by ending above a certain Momentum Value, which is done by winning battles.

Grant: What different scenarios are included with the game?

Ethan: Each battle is procedurally generated – I don’t want to say randomly as it’s influenced by a few different factors in the campaign to carry on the narrative – and multiple battles make up a campaign.

The base campaign is the US 1st Cavalry Division trying to stop a Soviet spearhead toward the city of Hanover. The player has top-of-the-line US units and it’s a best-on-best setup against the Soviets. I have an expansion campaign as well which functions as a prequel campaign. The player has some advance elements of the West German 2nd Panzer Division attempting to slow the Soviet/East German advance at the initial border crossing. In that campaign, a “win” is avoiding total devastation and buying time for the units behind to organize.

I have a few more campaigns that I have ideas for or have started looking at, the most interesting of which (to me, at least) is one covering a Soviet/Polish invasion of Southern Sweden in a bid to block off the Baltic. The system can potentially support a wide variety of units and conflicts.

Grant: What do you feel the design excels at?

Ethan: One thing I’m proud of is how the AI functions plausibly for an actual Soviet commander. Some of the problems we saw with past Soviet engagements, and also with Russian forces more recently, is a lack of flexibility for lower-level commanders. This fits perfectly to an AI system in a tabletop game as an AI will never be as creative and dynamic as a human player. Relying on the sheer numbers of Soviet troops provides a plausible and thematic way to fit these challenges together without breaking immersion.

Another thing I think it does well is intuitiveness. I tested it with a friend who is not particularly a gamer, and he was able to pick up on the systems and have fun with it. There are also difficulty levels, to turn up the challenge for more experienced players or to play through a campaign again after winning it.

Grant: What other designs are you currently working on?

Ethan: I have a few other ones in the development process. One I have a very early version of on my table right now is a Lexington & Concord mini game from the British perspective. I’m also fleshing out ideas on the 1814 Battle of Lake Erie and the US invasion of Grenada, though those are really just in the idea stage.