Vimy Ridge: Replaying the Battle: The Games

Having read and blogged a little about the battle for Vimy Ridge, I was curious to experiment with some simulations of the battle. Thanks to my short-term savings program (a.k.a., selecting the maximum income tax withholding level from my paycheck, so I always get money back at tax time), I had some funds to engage in a short spurt of WWI wargame buying. Two of the first subjects of that were the two existing simulations of the battle for Vimy Ridge, that by Kerry Anderson of Pacific Rim/Microgame Design Group and that by Eric Harvey of Decision Games.

I'm more excited by the Anderson design. For one thing, it's purpose-designed; Anderson set out to research and simulate this specific battle with his game, whereas Harvey's is an adaptation of an existing (Second World War) system to the battle. This difference

seems borne out by the way each author uses the notes section of the rules. In Harvey's version, the notes serve simply to give the players a quick historical overview of the game; no insights into the design process are supplied. Anderson's notes, on the other hand, provide a brief look at the evolution of the game design and an explanation of many of the choices he made in putting the game together, trying to give it both historical fidelity and at least a modicum of fun playability.


Looking (briefly, so far) at the rules for the two games deepens this impression (that the Anderson game is more historically based, or at least more purpose-designed). In the Harvey game, the Allied player may set up his troops anywhere in the Allied trenches or behind. In the Anderson game, Allied divisions are restricted to setting up in their historical division areas of operation (though they are not restricted to operating there once the game begins).

a portion of Harvey's Vimy map

In the Harvey game, artillery and mortar fire are represented by a supply of counters that the Allied (or German) player can place on enemy units adjacent to or in line of sight of friendly units. No representation of the Allied initial bombardment or the methodical, highly detailed creeping barrage takes place, and Allied artillery are allowed the ability to directly target specific enemy defenses. In the Anderson game, the creeping barrage is an important element of the game, moving forward relentlessly as it pounds the German defenses and screen the Canadian advance. It cannot be slowed, speeded up, or abandoned.

Anderson's Vimy map

That said, the Harvey game specifically represents two things that are abstracted in the Anderson game: air observation and gas warfare. Both of these modify the effectiveness of Allied bombardments; a special "Red Baron" (or, more appropriately, Jasta 11) rule reduces Allied air unit supply over time (though accounts suggest that the casualties that Jasta 11 inflicted, though heavy, did not prevent the RFC from carrying out its missions).


The Harvey game also includes the limitation that the Bois la Folie is not subject to bombardment due to its reverse-slope position. This seems unlikely to be accurate, however, as it was specifically targeted by the Allied artillery fire plan, which included mortars and howitzers which would not have necessarily fired at a shallow trajectory.


So I still can't help feeling that, overall, the Anderson game hews closer to history. It also includes provisions for the tunnels that both sides used to bring troops forward without fear of shelling, the mines that Canadian forces exploded at the beginning of the attack, the (fairly ineffectual) tank support that the Canadians received

Imaginative Strategist's replacement counters

I should also mention, in reference to the games themselves, these handsome replacement counters for the Anderson game, designed and shared on the Web by Ward McBurney of the Imaginative Strategist website. It's nice to see all of the Canadians' fabled regiments called out by name.


Next: Playing the battle out on the gameboard.

Great War: plans and operations

One of the enduring canards of the Great War is that attacks consisted simply of large numbers of men climbing out of their trenches and walking slowly through a nightmarish moonscape of shell holes and barbed wire into the teeth of enemy machinegun fire. In such scenarios, of course, everyone knows they are going to die as soon as they get out of the trench and, sure enough, most of them do. No support is provided to the attackers, the enemy are ready and waiting to receive them, nothing is accomplished, and the attackers perish, gallantly but pointlessly, in the archetypal example of the brutal wastefulness of war.


For the most part, this image is utter nonsense. The number of casualties suffered by both sides in the Great War was horrific, but then the scale of the war is close to unimaginable for many modern readers and viewers unfamiliar with military history. Armies of millions lined a network of trenches and bunkers that ran from the Channel coast to the Alps. In the first day of battle of the Somme, when the British and French armies famously lost over 60,000 men killed and wounded, the initial attacks had consisted of 750,000 men. For a modern American perspective, the combined strength of the US Army and Marine Corps in 2011 did not reach 740,000, counting all commissioned and enlisted personnel everywhere in the world, not just those deployed to war zones, let alone actually those in combat roles (for example, US troop strength in Afghanistan has never reached 100,000).


So, about three percent of the British troops who went into battle on the first day of the Somme were killed, and six percent were wounded. Fewer than one in ten were causalities in what is widely seen as the most horrific trench battle of the war--far from the near-total slaughter generally depicted in popular images of the war.


Also omitted in most depictions of trench warfare are the tremendous amounts of preparation that went into such attacks. And of this, the battle of Vimy Ridge (mentioned yesterday) is a prime example. One of the reasons that Canadian troops succeeded so brilliantly in their attack can be seen in the months leading up to the offensive. Strategic and operational planning for the April attack began in November of the year before, and tactical planning began in January, leading to a final plan adopted formally in March. Officers studied previous engagements under similar conditions, developed new tactics, trained and rehearsed troops repeatedly in the months leading up to the assault. Officers and men learned the roles and responsibilities of their superiors and subordinates, so as to be able to take over for fallen comrades. Aircraft and patrols thoroughly explored the enemy defenses, and tens of thousands of maps were prepared and issued from the squad level and higher.


Often given short shrift in popular depictions of the war is the crucial role played by artillery. Guns had gone, during the course of the war, from weapons firing individually at targets visible to them within a few thousand yards to firing bombardments by map direction at targets often miles away. The detailed artillery plan for the Vimy attack coordinated the efforts of over a thousand field guns, mortars, and howitzers. Plans included preliminary bombardments directly on enemy defenses, a moving barrage aimed to protect the advancing troops and suppress any defenses they might face, and preparations for counterbattery fire against any German guns that might respond to the attack. (Techniques of direction- and distance-finding based on sound-ranging and flash-detection had become quite sophisticated.) Troops often did advance to the attack slowly, but when they did it was because they were trailing behind a screen of shell fire that both obscured them from enemy view, smashed bunkers and trench defenses, and tore up barbed-wire obstacles. Before the battle, engineers laid hundreds of miles of telephone wire so as to provide instant communication from observers at the operation's start line to the rear area where the artillery were located. In preparation for a new offensive, batteries would often be re-sited so that enemy guns that had previously been able to fire on them would shoot at the wrong coordinates. Multiple firing locations might even be prepared. And careful calculations would be made from all these locations to ensure that the guns were aimed precisely at the enemy defenses. And, if needed, miles of light rail would be laid to bring forward a steady stream of shells from depots deep in the army's rear area to the batteries' firing positions.


And there was more than high explosive to fear. By 1917, both sides had developed tactics for the use of chemical weapons. Some gas dissipated quickly; other forms were persistent. Some killed quickly, other types merely caused irritation or nausea. Different varieties and combinations served different purposes. Once an enemy's artillery positions or supply depots were located, those might be targeted for persistent gas attacks. If below-ground barracks were observed, heavy, long-lasting gas that would sink into them might be fired into the area. Firing on a position that one expected one's own troops to assault and capture, only gas that would dissolve or blow away quickly, so the defenders would be incapacitated but friendly forces arriving to take possession would not be harmed.


Another tool used by armies preparing for a defensive was the shovel. Not only would new firing positions for artillery be prepared, and new saps (trenches leading towards the enemy front line) be prepared, but where practical troops would engage in mining. Digging deep in the earth, sappers would create tunnels to bring friendly troops to the front line under cover--both protected from enemy artillery and invisible to enemy scouts and reconnaissance aircraft. And more tunnels would reach forward under no-mans-land to the enemy positions; chambers directly under the enemy's strongpoints were filled with high explosive which, when detonated, would destroy the strongpoint and open a gap in the foe's defenses.

So, tremendous amounts of preparation (planning, training, movement of troops, build-up of supplies) went on before an offensive was launched. Most troops knew where they were going and what they were expected to do. Enemy forces were often subjected to weeks of artillery bombardments and mining before an attack, destroying their strongpoints and weakening their morale. Enemy defenses received saturation shelling as an attack began, and troops were often preceded by a curtain of flame and destruction, making it well-nigh impossible to target them as they advanced.


So why did so many attacks fail? Why did the fighting continue year after year? In a word, resiliency. Defenders learned to build defenses stronger and in greater depth; instead of one line of foxholes, a fortified trenchline; instead of one trenchline, two, one behind the other; instead of linear fighting positions that, once penetrated, could be infiltrated laterally, belts of concrete pill boxes with adjacent fighting positions, which could support each other with fire. Instead of one gun position, half a dozen for each gun, all carefully sighted, so that enemy attacks would have to waster fire on unmanned positions.


And attackers still lacked one vital component: the ability to swiftly communicate between advanced forces and the main body. The initial stage of an attack had the full weight of supporting firepower (artillery, machineguns, aircraft) behind it. But an attacker who achieved his objective, capturing the enemy's frontline trenches, had no way to communicate with those assets. Two-way radios were too heavy to carry forward, even to mount on aircraft. Communication lines (telephone and telegraph) could be carried forward as troops advanced, but any shellfire into no mans land was likely to break those lines. Flag signals could be used, but only for limited messages and at the reach of line of sight.


So, far too often, attacks succeeded but follow-on forces could not be directed to the right area, higher headquarters could only learn which units had failed and which succeeded by men running back across the battlefield to report. And an area pulverized by the explosion of mines and weeks of artillery fire was not suitable for the rapid advance of cavalry, motor vehicles (the Canadians had a contingent of armored trucks mounted with machineguns to use as a pursuit force).


One of the great operational breakthroughs of Allied doctrine was the development of "bite and hold" tactics. Instead of trying to make the ultimate breakthrough, rupturing the enemy lines and thrusting cavalry forces through to roll up his line and destroy his rear areas, troops focused on limited objectives, overwhelmed them, then occupied and rebuilt them as a base for the next attack. "Slow and steady wins the race" might be a way of describing this sort of action. Once the Allies adopted this sort of advance and stopped wasting men and material on huge operations that could never be fully executed, they started moving towards success.


And the battle for Vimy Ridge was, arguably, an excellent example of "bite and hold".


Next time: why this ridge?


Postscript: I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that, in addition to their tactical wargames, Too Fat Lardies has published a Great War kriegsspiel that directly addresses this sort of operational planning. It's called (in their typical hearty fashion), "Corps Blimey", and it's available in their 2008 Christmas Special. A quick description of it can be found in their blog, here, and they posted an AAR of a Corps Blimey playtest game to The Miniatures Page. As chance would have it, the playtest scenario was a British assault on Vimy Ridge.

Vimy Ridge Day

Today is Vimy Ridge Day.

This commemoration means nothing to most Americans, and it may mean little more to those from Britain, or France, or other Allied nations. But I believe it still has significance to many Canadians.

Because the battle of Vimy Ridge, which began on April 9th, 1917, and lasted for four days, served not only as one of the successful portions of the Allied Arras Offensive of that year, but as a historic milestone for the nation and people of Canada. The four divisions of the Canadian Corps, fighting together in one battle for the first time, methodically planned, prepared, and executed an operation that seized its objectives swiftly and efficiently. In doing so, they forced the German Army to give up ground it had held since the first year of the war and demonstrated that the Allies could push back the formerly immovable German defensive line through a slow and careful series of attacks.

Over time, the hard-fought Canadian victory at Vimy Ridge came to symbolize the pride and sacrifice of the Canadian armed forces and the resolution of Canadians as a people. The great monument on Vimy Ridge, commissioned in 1921 and completed in 1936, is one of only two National Historic Sites of Canada that are located abroad. The monument's figures represent universal emotions of nations caught in war: a desire for a return to peace, sympathy for those imperiled by war, steadfast faith with allies, the willingness to sacrifice for comrades, and the grieving of those left behind for those who have fallen. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa, recently the site of sad events, is based in part on elements of the Vimy memorial.


Wikipedia has well written articles on the battle of Vimy Ridge and the Canadian National Memorial.


Blogger Stanley Martens has found three rather good maps of the Vimy Ridge operations.


For more on Canada in the Great War, I recommend the Canadian War Museum's website, the Canadian Great War Project, the official history of the Canadian Army in the First World War, and the Great War site sponsored by the National Post.


There are two wargames that I've been able to identify that portray the battle for Vimy Ridge.


Vimy Ridge (first published in 2000 and still available from Pacific Rim Publishing; republished in 2001 by, but apparently no longer available from, Microgame Design Group) appears to be a moderate-complexity game with fairly good ratings on boardgamegeek.com.


Vimy Ridge: Arras Diversion (published 2013 by Decision Games) appears to be a low-to-moderate complexity game, also with mildly favourable ratings (but fewer).


Also worth visiting are


Veterans Affairs Canada's page on First World War remembrance


Library and Archives Canada's page on military history


the Canadian Military Histories Digitization Project


Canadian Military History, a journal published by the Military, Strategic, and Disarmament Studies studies center of Wilfrid Laurier University


the Canadian government's military history gateway

Great War art: the Imperial War Museum

Just as a quick second post for this evening, I wanted to highlight a page on the Imperial War Museum's site, a collection of a dozen paintings of front-line life during the Great War.

Since it's not immediately obvious (or wasn't, at least, to me), what are shown are details--if you click on the image of the painting, a pop-up window will show the entire work.

The Marne: Two boardgame depictions

As promised, I'm starting a look at the First Battle of the Marne through the eyes of a couple of different boardgames.

This entry contrasts two different treatments by the same designer. As I mentioned, I recently received the new editions of Ted Racier's two early war operational games, Glory's End and When Eagles Fight. A few brief words on opening that treasure trove follow.

First, the box cover: handsome cover art, a painting entitled France! 1914 by the French war artist Leon Reni-Mel. It's quite evocative, in its depiction of a young poilu in the famous pantalons rouges at the moment of his death, rushing forward in the spirit of French Army's "attack, attack, always attack" doctrine.

The back of the box provides a look at the two major maps it contains, one of the western front (including Belgium, Luxembourg, and bits of France, Germany, and the Netherlands) and one of the eastern front (featuring pieces of Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany, and Romania). We get a sample of game pieces, a list of contents, and details on game scale. The design, development, and production crew are credited. And the box provides the publisher's assessment of the game's complexity (low-medium) and solitaire suitability (high--luckily for me!)

Inside the box we find the usual high-quality components one expects from GMT Games: rulebooks for both games, two sets of player charts for each games, three and a half sheets of counters (plus the ubiquitous GMT bundle of ziplock bags for counter storage), a mini-map for playing a short scenario of Glory's End, and the main map sheet itself. In a practical move, GMT has printed one sheet, double-sided, for the two games, with western Europe on one side and eastern Europe on the other.

Since my goal was to post a piece on the Marne battle, I was delighted to find the small map with the short, introductory scenario specifically focused on the Marne. I was particularly amused, too, since I had set up the intro scenario from Clash of Giants, which focuses on the exact same moment. Nothing would make it easier to compare the two games that to take a look at the starter's scenario for these two Ted Racier games of the early war on the western front.

Here is a look at the Clash map, set for "The Allied Counterattack" scenario, which begins as the French and British are about to spring their trap on the advancing Germans. I've provided only a small image, but to the west (left) side of the map, if you squint you can probably see the grey blob that is Paris, wedged in the loops of the Seine River. Around and to the north of it are the troops of the Fortified Camp of Paris, and in a north-south line to the northeast of the city is the advancing French Sixth Army. A few scattered blocks of grey represent the flank guards of the German First Army, most of whose combat troops are committed in the bulge east and south of Paris. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF), a few lonely stacks of khaki counters, screens the gap between the city of Paris and the French Fifth Army under it's newly appointed General Louis Franchet d'Espère. The Fifth faces not only von Kluck's seemingly triumphant German First Army but also von Bulow's Second Army, trying to widen the east side of the German penetration. To von Bulow's east is von Hausen's Third Army, Saxons all, and the screen formed by the scattered Fourth Army, the link to the (unseen Firth Army, battering the walls of Verdun and the Sixth and Seventh, deep in the hills and mountains of the Vosges.

East of the French Fifth Army is the high shoulder formed by the clustered French Ninth Army of the inimitable Ferdinand Foch, future commander in chief. And to their east, facing the German Fourth Army, is France's own Fourth Army, likewise spread thin to maintain contact with forces to the east. The date is the 5th of September, and the solid mass of Michel-Joseph Manoury's Sixth (French) Army is about to give Friedrich Sixt von Arnim's IV Corps a horrid surprise.

Contrast that setup with the same scenario, more or less, in Glory's End, set up on the mini-map provided with that game (it's the same scale and size of hex as the main Glory's End map, but easier to set up in a small space). One thing you'll notice right away is that the map covering the same area is much smaller, the counter density higher, while at the same time the overall number of counters is much lower. That's because Glory's End packs the entire western front into its main map. Each hex is 9.5 miles wide, instead of the 3.3 miles of the Clash of Giants: Marne map. Most of the units in Glory's End are corps or corps-sized formations, while CoG:M units are most of them divisions. (Those three hexes covered with ignominious "Out of Command" markers contain the regrouping forces of the BEF.)

So, that's a quick look at the new title, and a swift visual comparison with another treatment of the same action by the same designer. I have a number of other titles that cover operations on the western front in 1914 (The Great War in Europe and Grand Illusion, both also by Ted Racier, and Michael Resch's 1914: Offensive a Outrance), but none of them specifically call out the First Battle of the Marne for scenario treatment. There are half a dozen games that specifically focus on the First Marne, but none of them are in my library, alas.

Next time: that promised letter. And, soon, hopefully, an account of playing through one of these Marne scenarios.

preview of coming attractions: the Battle of the Marne

I decided that a walkthrough of playing of the Clash of Giants: Tannenberg game, even solo (with all the deficiencies in competitive thinking that that entails) would probably create an undue influence on developments in the triple-blind running of the game that's underway (we're partway through Turn 2). So I thought that instead I'd embark on the other title in the first CoG pairing, the battle of the Marne.

This idea was reinforced by the timely arrival of Ted Racier's latest effort, a reboot of his early war operational games, 1914: Glory's End/When Eagles Fight, just published by GMT Games. The western front portion of this package features a short introductory scenario, also featuring the Marne battle. Between this, CoG: The Marne, and possibly a look at (though not a full playing of) relevant portions of GMT's other 1914 west front offerings, 1914: Offensive à outrance and Grand Illusion: the 1914 Campaign in the West, we should be replete with lovely maps and examinations of the opening portion of the war, which everyone thought would go so quickly and which instead lasted a very long time.

The First Battle of the Marne was, of course, not the beginning of the war on the western front. That had been what was called the Battle of the Frontiers, where both the French and German armies began plunging swiftly into the breakneck operational advances that their pre-war planning had assumed would be the key to success. The French, underestimating German numbers and resolve, had committed on a tremendously wide front and were driven back bloodily. The Germans, partly due to superior numbers and more effective concentration, had succeeded in their offensive moves.

And because the British and French armies had not engaged in as much pre-war communication, planning, and liaison as they ought to have done, the Germans had also found an opportunity to drive a wedge between the British Expeditionary Force and the French Fifth Army, creating a gap they were at pains to exploit. French and British forces scrambled backwards in the Great Retreat, an exhausting pell-mell attempt to redefine defensible positions somewhere short of the outskirts of Paris.

In the battle of the Marne, French (and allied) commander in chief Joseph Joffre used the success of the German armies against them. Rushing forward to capture their operational and strategic goal, the French capital, the German First Army had become dangerously separated from the rest of the German front line. By pulling together a scratch force, the Sixth Army, Joffre enabled the Franco-British forces to attack the Germans' most successful force in detail, driving it backwards and halting the enemy advance. One of the best-loved, if historically uncertain, elements of the battle's narrative was the delivery of several battalions of the attacking French Sixth Army at a crucial point in the engagement, but a fleet consisting of all the commercial taxis and buses of the city of Paris, pressed into service to rush 6,000 men fifty kilometers to forestall a German advance.

I'm hoping to post a quick "unboxing" preview of Glory's End this weekend (I'll confess, dear readers, I didn't wait to unbox it...). If I have time to walk through an attempt at playing its Marne scenario, as well as one of CoG: The Marne, I will, but that may have to wait until next week.

I hope to have time to post another of my grandfather's letters this weekend. We'll see how overly ambitious I'm being.

Tannenberg--lumbering closer

The Labor Day holiday weekend didn't give me the time I hoped it would to prepare for this campaign on paper, as a friend of my partner's was visiting us, and my game table is in the basement, which also serves as our guest room.

Nonetheless, I'm plowing forward (slowly) with preparations for our triple-blind simulation of this opening East Front campaign. I took a look at the rules for The Cossacks Are Coming and its successor, 1914: Twilight in the East, and decided to go with a simpler option, Clash of Giants: Tannenberg. While I can simplify a great deal of the information management for the players, they need to be able to grasp the mechanics even if they don't see them all, and the mechanics of the other games are complex and will slow things down too much. So my next step is to put together a precis of information (basic parameters of the game system, how the refereed version will work, starting order of battle and positions) and share it with the players.

In the meantime, I've found a nice image of the starting positions on the map at Boardgamegeek; I hope the poster, Kevin Moody, doesn't mind my using it as an illustration here.

You can see the full-size image on BGG if you log in there (membership required, but free).

The map depicts East Prussia and some adjoining sections of Russia (including Poland, at the time a part of the Russian Empire). If you look closely, you can see the thin broken brown line that represents the border. In the northwest corner of the map is the Gulf of Danzig, a southerly projection of the Baltic Sea. Also visible is the Frisches Haff, now called the Vistula Lagoon, the large inland sea that lies between Danzig (to its west) and Konigsberg (at its eastern end). Spreading southeast from the Haff is an area of forests, hills, and other rough terrain, in the center of which are the Masurian Lakes. These are over two thousand large and small bodies of water, formed when retreating glaciers deposited piles of debris that blocked rivers and streams and many of them later linked by canals to provide transit across this dense terrain. Further south and east is a large body of marshland. This rather forbidding region is the area that lies, roughly, between the advancing Russian First and Second Armies.

The Second Army starts with much of its force on the board, along the south edge. Most of the First Army is just about to arrive--it's stacked on two entry points on the east edge of the map. 

One part of German forces begin scattered in a defensive screen, some distance back from the southeren border, many of them in fortified positions or guarding railway junctions. Guarding them to preserve them for German use, rather than protecting them from Russian capture--Russian railways used a different gauge to German ones and were useless, for the most part, to Russian forces during the campaign. (This makes that thin broken brown border line we looked at earlier rather important.)

The main field force of the German Army in East Prussia lies in and around the town of Gumbinen, near the northeastern border and directly in the path of the slowly arriving Russian First Army.

Another part of German forces is guarding the East Prussian capital of Konigsberg and its extensive defensive network. They include troops standing along one of the main German rail lines (more important for supply than movement), which runs from the border to Konigsberg and then southwest to Marienburg. Another line runs roughly parallel through the center of the province, and a third runs more or less through the lake district. These, too, connect eventually at Marienburg and lead west to Berlin, though there is also a line through the fortress of Thorn to the southwest towards Silesia.

I mention the rail lines not only because the Germans will rely on them for supply, but because the Russian objectives lie most of them along the northern and central lines (as well as at the Frisches ports of Konigsberg and Elbing and the university town of Braunsberg).

The iron cross counters show victory locations that start under German control. The Germans will gain victory points for these if they hold them at the end of the game. Small red dots forther north and west are locations for which the Russians will get points (IIRC, some locations covered by German troops at deployment are also Russian VP hexes).

The game's sequence of play is fairly simple. Both sides check to see which, if any of their forces are out of supply. Then the Russian player places any arriving reinforcements or replacements, moves first one army, then the other, and resolves any combats. The the German player brings in reinforcements and replacements, moves his troops, and conducts combats.

One unusual mechanic exists in this Clash of Giants series. Both sides roll for the movement points of their armies; all units in an army (or, in the case of the Germans, their Eighth Army and the separate I Corps) receive the same amount of movement (exception: cavalry always receive a fixed amount), but it can vary from turn to turn from as few as one movement point (essentially slwoign the army to a crawl) to as many as six.

Another twist to this mechanic in the Tanneberg game is that, starting on Turn 4, the German player--before moving his troops--nominates which Russian army will move first in the next turn and watches the Russian player roll for movement points. Thus the Germans know while they execute their move which of the Russians will move next and how far. (On Turn 1, only the Russian First Army moves--the Second Army is still assembling itself in this period.) This advantage tot the German player is the designer's simple way of reflecting the superior intelligence the Germans got during the campaign when the Russians, outrunning their hard-wired telegraph network and short of trained radio cryptogrpahers, were forced to transmit most of their military communications between armies by wireless with no encoding. German radio operators simply listened in and copied down the orders being transmitted.

I'm going to brief the players now and, with any luck, we should have the first move underway soon!