Not
only is Dai Senso about history... its evolution has its own
history, as we've documented here.
Dai Senso, as a game design project, really got going concurrently with the publishing of Totaler Krieg! circa April 1999. The Totaler Krieg! team learned that we could employ some "leftover" (unused) counters from other Decision Games' titles in the near future, so if we wanted to do some sort of "expansion kit," we could publishing it in an upcoming issue of MOVES magazine (that would have a Totaler Krieg! theme). Never being ones to resist an opportunity to get more of a good thing, we pressed on with the development of a W.W. II Pacific Theater "mini-game" that could serve both as a supplement to Totaler Krieg! as well as stand alone on its own right as a fascinating look at the subject.
Unfortunately, that won't be happening. (But now you know how it all started.)
The Origins '99 ConferenceThe Totaler Krieg! Players Guide includes a taste of Japanese, but it is not what we had in mind. At Origins '99 we came to the conclusion that the design of a Pacific Krieg! game was just too big to fit into such a small space. We've received the nod from the publisher, Christopher "Doc Decision" Cummins, to pursue a full size game to be the Pacific version of Krieg! but, frankly, the greatest challenge will be maintaining our enthusiasm. With Kos out of the picture where would we get a map? (Answer: Thomas Prowell, whose map art you should click on to see it in a larger size.) Can we flog another two to three years out of Alan Emrich? Will Sal Vasta steer us through the rough waters of the Pacific? What will your role be in the playtesting and development of this title? All of these questions remain to be answered.
Alan Emrich met again with Doc
Decision at the Orccon 2000 conference in February of that year. Once again, Ikusa!
was a hot topic (along with keeping Totaler Krieg! in
print).
It was outlined how an "upgrade kit" would be made available if any revisions were made to the reprinted versions of Totaler Krieg!. That's the good news.
As for Ikusa!, the current design format is in flux. Our original vision was to make the game a 1-mapper with somewhere in the neighborhood of 420 counters and two decks of cards (Japanese and Western Allied.) As Sal Vasta, Thomas Prowell, and Alan Emrich kick it around, though, it could shake out any number of ways. The important thing is to "do it right" and not release it before it's ready. Decision Games has indicated that they'll be ready for the next reprinting of Totaler Krieg! and Ikusa! circa the Summer of 2002.
As for Ikusa!, we're just now (in the Spring of 2000) working on maps, orders of battle, and starting to outline the Japanese card hand (see the sample card with this article). We're planning on keeping it as compatible with TK! as possible, so expect to see corps units (including new marine corps), armies, fleets (including new carrier fleets), and air support units with as few changes as possible to make them feel right in a Pacific motif in our first playtest kit. We'll make this game available for free public playtest (if you're willing to print stuff out and make your own counters).
Six months later, it
looks like we'll do a straight reprint of TK! for the time being (with
"erratacized" components, so it will have, for example, the old TK!
rules with the latest errata incorporated). That gives us, probably (my guesstimate)
until Summer of 2002 to finish Ikusa! and do a compatible new edition of Totaler
Krieg! to go with it (this 2nd edition TK! game will include all the
stuff in Further Development that works as
well as everything required to make it link smoothly with the Pacific). After
showing off Thomas Prowell's first edition (one-map size) Ikusa! map at the convention, we're on our
way to dong an order of battle (next) and then storyboarding out the cards.
Hopefully, by the winter, we'll have an Ikusa! playtest kit ready to go.
During
the latter half of 2000, we spent a great deal of time "nailing down"
the second (i.e., "World at War") edition of Totaler Krieg!
stuff (dubbed "TK2") so
that we could turn our full attention to Ikusa!. Thanks to the faithful
playtesters and discussion groupers, TK2 has really shaped up and, except for
Random Campaign Game, all that's left to do is clean up the index and other
references. The rules, cards, and countermix are pretty well set.
Over the winter holidays, I managed to get in some quality time with our Pacific cousin, and have closed in on an Order of Battle (OOB) and began outlining the Option cards (Axis and Western Allied; the Soviets will be handled by tables). We've got some clever ideas for things like Marine corps, carrier fleets, the Chinese communist forces, and a lot of the "narrative" elements of the Pacific War. What we need to do is get a real, "playable" set of Option cards and test drive the game. Hopefully, we'll have more to report after MonsterCon.
Sal, Thomas, and Alan
attended MonsterGames.Con (hosted by John Kranz and ConsimWorld). It was there
where the Ikusa! pieces first met the map. Each of us had been working on
parts separately, so it was no surprise when they didn't fit well enough
together for us to actually play the game. Instead, we spent a lot of
time looking it over and talking about it and taking all kinds of notes. Now we
have a bunch of homework to do on it to get it in shape for that first "big
playtest."
Unfortunately, everyone
on the team had a concurrent attack of "real life." Sal went back to
school to get his degree, Thomas got laid off, and Alan has been swamped with
his "real job," designing the huge computer game Master of Orion
III for his employer Quicksilver
Software. But in the Autumn of 2001, the fire under the Ikusa! project
has been rekindled and on October 27, 2001 the first solitaire playtest
occurred.
The
first face-to-face playtest of Ikusa! took place on November 18th, 2001.
Tony Z. and Alan E. met at Alan's house to push the pieces around and see how
things shook it. Not too bad for an early playtest, as it turns out. There's
still a long way to go, but the system's didn't blow up and that's always
important.
What really seemed to work well was the war in China. It appears that it will be just what we were hoping to design: a three-way snake pit between the Japanese, Nationalist Chinese, and Communist Chinese. Russian, too, loomed over the Empire of Japan and was a constant enough worry to keep sufficient Japanese troops tied down in the Kwantung army to make sure things didn't boil over. [Click on any of the pictures to see them at their full size, by the way.]
Playtest
has continued on and off for a year, even as some design issues remain
unresolved.
Pictured to the left is a play-by-email game in progress on the December 1940 Game Turn. The Japanese have been going round-and-round in China but are now building up for a confrontation to the south. The Philippines have been reinforced, so a showdown looks inevitable as the Japanese SNLF positions itself for an attack on northern Luzon island.
Note that during the past year we changed the title of the game from Ikusa! to Dai Senso! which, we're told, is a better Japanese word to describe World War 2 from their vantage point. Dai Senso! continues to evolve with special development focus on the on the 1939-41 time period as well as the opening moves of Total War in the Pacific.
With all of the knowledge gained from playtesting and developing DS, we knew we'd need to standardize certain parts of its design with Totaler Krieg! to make a combined game work. During 2001 through late 2002, the focus was on getting the 'big pieces' to all work together and this lead to the decision to make a second edition of Totaler Krieg! (e.g., TK2) that would work from the ground up in sync with Dai Senso. Into the TK2 test kit evolved some very Pacific-origin ideas such as a 1937 scenario start date, an alternate Delay Box, Carrier Fleets, Detachments, and Push markers. Eventually, we decided that we'd better back-burner DS and put the polish on the TK2 test kit first, which was finally released in the summer of 2003.
