Last weekend I spent almost an entire day (from around 10:30am to 10pm with a break for lunch) playing Paths of Glory, a card driven wargame depicting the First World War. I wouldn’t bother posting in here since I think it’s a bit off topic, except that I found this article: Applying Go concepts to PoG.
This article analyzes Paths of Glory using key concepts from Go, including Sente, Gote, Katachi, Atsumi and Aji. These concepts give an elegant framework for seeing PoG and provide a better lense for seeing strategies than more familiar chess concepts like gambits, openings, defenses etc.
Unfortunately you need an account (free) to download any files from BGG, and anyway the diagrams are using some old software so it’s a bit hard to read if you’re not familiar with the game. So I re created them using the latest version of the Vassal module, and will quote some of the article.
–
In Go there are two basic kinds of Katachi ‘shape’: Sabaki Katachi ‘light shape’ and Omoi katachi ‘heavy, clumsy shape’. Naturally one goal in Go, just as in PoG, is to exert maximum influence with each play… In Figure 4 the Russian defense is very spread out and clumsy. Each point is vulnerable to attack since it is not well defended with just one army, and the AP [Allied Powers] player would need to spend many operations to activate armies to gather for an offensive. This is as example Omoi Katachi. Even though it seems like the Russians are defending a line, they actually are fairly vulnerable in this set-up because each area has only a relatively weak defense
Figure 5 shows a ‘lighter’ formation and is based on Pei v. Mecay (pbem championship 2002). Here (Summer 1915) the Russians are focused on counterattacking into Austria-Hungary, though this attack never developed. The Russian Sabaki formation combines good defensive capabilities with good offensive ones, and is a nice flexible formation. We note that there are 4 stacks of 3 Russian armies, making it easy to redeploy this considerable force with the play of one 4-ops card.
Figure 6 shows the Russian redeployment with one operation. Now the inferior German force in the north is under serious pressure, and the CP player will need to respond to this. Figure 7 shows the situation at the beginning of Winter 1916. The Russianshave created a serious threat though their Sente move, and the CP must play an OPS card to withdraw the threatened German army as their first impulse.
–
I’ve actually played this game several times before, but I am far from an expert, either in the history or in the strategy of playing this particular game. But even so this was really surprising to me, the position that the author describes as “heavy” is recognizable from my games, trying to protect your supply lines. The “sabaki” formation appears to leave a gap around Warsaw, where the Central Powers player could send German armies into Russia. But in fact that supposed weakness is probably hard to exploit, when analyzing the position closer.
The discussion of sente and gote in the article is also interesting but, I tend to feel that those are easier to apply to many games, since initiative is such a core concept in any games but especially two player games. Still, I still feel that this article is one of the more interesting ones I’ve seen trying to view another game through the lens of Go.
(By the way, bugcat if you would prefer this thread be for abstracts only, just let me know 
And I’ll make another thread for general discussion of various other games.)
Just playing two simultaneous normal games (on OGS and IGGC respectively) is much easier.
