Warning Order - Wasatch Front Historical Gaming Society

Interview With Sam MustafaGrand Armee is a recent set ofNapoleonic rules that has receivedrave reviews. In this interview, theauthor, Sam Mustafa, talks abouthis views on command &control, the Napoleonicperiod, and wargamingin general.1) Could you describehow you got intowargaming?I’m reaching into the mists ofTime here, but I think it was aroundthe age of ten. I actually think thatAvalon Hill’s Third Reich was myfirst wargame. (I was an ambitiouskid.) My first miniatures gameswere a couple of years later. I haddiscovered the old Tricolor rules.Neal Smith (nowadays of the TriangleSimulation Society) and I spraypaintedour plastic Airfix WW2figures: mine were all blue for theFrench. His were all red for theBritish. We played on my parents’living room floor. I think I lost!Since I’m 40 now, I suppose thatmeans I’ve been wargaming forthirty years.2) What was the desire that led towriting Grande Armee?I got out of wargaming altogetherin the mid 1990s, when Iwent back to grad school. I soldthousands of figures, includinghuge 15mm Napoleonic armies thatI had been using for Napoleon’sBattles. I remained out of the hobbyfor about 5-6 years, then married awoman who is very artistic, and itwas actually her interest that rekindledmine. (She painted a few figures,herself, and later did all theline-drawings for Grande Armée.)When I re-entered the hobby,though, I realized that very littlehad changed, in terms of game rulesand concepts. I wanted to do somethingnew and fresh. Iwanted to get away fromstrict ideas about time andscale.3) There have always beenarguments over commandand control in Napoleonicwargaming. What are yourthoughts on the subject andhow did you try to portray them inGrande Armee?Even if somebody were to do a“perfect” Kriegsspiel-like simulationof command in the horse-andmusketperiod, most gamers probablywouldn’t like it. Despite claimingthat we want more “accuracy”or “period-feel” in our games, mostof us in reality want very high levelsof control that no historical generalever had. (Consider all the angryreviews ofBob Jones’ gamePiquet, whichdoes a better jobthan most atdriving home thepoint that “Warain’t fair, and itcertainly ain’tpredictable.”)Most gamersdon’t like it,though, becausethey can’t beassured that theywill get the same fair chance astheir opponent.You have to give people somethingthat appeals to them as a funmechanic, first and foremost. Playersare willing to accept frustrationsand unpredictability if they feel thatthey are nonetheless in control ofsomething, even if imperfectly. Sothe idea of the G.A. command systemwas to give players a limitedamount of control, a sort of“amount” of control that they coulddistribute as they wished, with theknowledge that things that weren’tdirectly controlled might or mightnot go as they wished.4) It seems like after a long timewithout any new or innovativerules for the Napoleonic period, allof a sudden Grande Armee andAge of Eagles arrive on the sceneand both are doing well. Is theresomething about the period thatmakes gamers keep coming backto it?Well, to be fair, there were morethan just those two. When I knew,in 2000, that I was going to be publishingG.A., there were more thana dozen Napoleonic releases expectedimminently. There was apromised second-edition ofVolley and Bayonet thatnever materialized. Therewas Bill Keyser’s Age ofBonaparte, also stillborn.Second-edition Napoleon’sBattles, which was repeatedlydelayed, and then was adisaster. Scott Bowden’slatest Empire edition, Revolutionand Empire, came outin 2003, shortly after G.A.There was a new edition ofNapoleonic Principles ofWar, and Piquet’s Les Grognards.Phil Barker’s Horse, Foot,and Gun, came out at that time, albeitonly on the web. There wassupposed to have been a secondedition of Shako, which is stillworking its way toward publicationvery slowly. Dave Brown’s Generalde Brigade emerged in 2001, al-Page 2WARNING ORDER