Tomislav Čipčić is the designer of Brother & Unity – a new release from Compass Games covering the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995. The game is rightly garnering much acclaim for its balance, intensity, subject-matter, and being that rare-breed – a proper multiplayer hex and counter wargame. Here’s our interview with Tomislav:

What is your personal connection to the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina and your motivation for designing the game?

At the time of the war I was living in Šibenik, Croatia, which was also at war. Many of my classmates were refugees from Bosnia & Herzegovina. Some of their stories stuck in my mind. I then read a great book by a historian Davor Marijan – Homeland War. It provided a detailed analysis of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina. My initial idea was to design a game about the Croatian War of Independence, but I struggled a bit as the war in Croatia was a series of military operations interspersed with long periods of ceasefire. On the other hand, the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina was a continuous conflict played out on a wide and scattered frontline. I started making a prototype map of Bosnia & Herzegovina, created a set of initial unit counters, and very quickly realised that was the way to go with this design.

The game has got a lot of acclaim already. What was its development history, ending with Compass agreeing to publish it?

The development process was very straightforward. After deciding on the theatre of war and the scope of the conflict (the whole war at a strategic level), I had to decide on the core mechanics. A CDG point-to-point system seen in games like Paths of Glory seemed fitting. Very early on I decided to keep the game length to under 3 hours, to make it more practical for 3-player sessions. That decision pretty much defined the rest of the development process: the number of spaces on the board, number of unit counters, and the amount of cards in the player deck. It also guided me away from using a combat results table as a combat resolution mechanic – I wanted something easy to remember and implement, that allowed for occasional extreme combat results. That was a must for such a fast-paced game, and that is how I decided on using a combat effectiveness table.

After about a year of playtesting and further refining I had an initial prototype. I pitched the idea to Compass Games, and to my surprise they accepted it right away. They recognised the things that would be interesting to their market: the subject, which wasn’t represented enough, the 3-player aspect of the game, and the ability to finish the game in an evening.

Can you explain a bit more about the relationship between the Croats and Bosniaks in the war? In the game they are adversaries but can still use each other’s supply lines.

Croats and Bosniaks were natural allies. The Serbian faction, backed by the Yugoslav army and state, was a fearsome opponent at the outset. So it was obvious for the Croats and Bosniaks to join forces against the common enemy. But the whole story of the Croat-Bosniak relationship was (and still remains) much more complex, more than I could explain in this interview. Their shared history has made them adversaries and allies at different points of history. The conflicting issues between them were primarily the distribution of power and wealth, religion and cultural/national identity. The historical periods of old Bosniak state, Ottoman rule, Austrian rule, Serbian rule, and finally Communist rule, each brought new challenges and twists to this story. Finally, this war also represented a Bosniak national revolution, a war which reaffirmed the idea of Bosniak identity and their right to statehood.

To conclude – the Bosniaks needed the Croats as their base of operations and a lifeline to the international community. And the Croats needed the Bosniaks for strategic and diplomatic leverage and support. Without their Croat allies, the Bosniaks could not have survived the Serbian onslaught. And without the Bosniaks, the Croats could not have presented the war as a righteous fight against Serbian domination.

On a related point, did you think about a specific mechanic to allow for combined offences in earlier iterations?

I tried several approaches to this. I initially had complex mechanics in place to deal with alliances, supply, peace negotiations and such. Many playtests were done to shape those mechanics. But I had to let most of them go – they only made the game longer and more complex, without adding too much to the mix. They were replaced with the combination of Foreign Attitude track, and the ability of players to talk and deal openly with one-another during the game. I’ve left those inter-player communication rules deliberately vague and unscripted, in order to leave it to the players. That gives this game a social and psychological layer that can only be found in a fast 3-player game. For me – it is one of the key aspects of Brotherhood & Unity.

The war is infamous for the atrocities and humanitarian crisis. Mechanically you look to capture this by penalising the capture of a key space, and with certain card events. Did you consider other more explicit mechanics in earlier iterations?

Initially I did play with the idea of having a “refugee mechanic”. When you captured a space, a refugee counter would be placed on the board and it had to be moved to the nearest friendly space. That counter represented the wave of refugees moving through the country, influencing its ability to fight and to supply itself. There were special rules for the movement and influence of those counters on the gameplay.

But it became clear that this mechanics was too cumbersome for the game. Also it seemed a bit too extreme to move those markers up and down the map, while they represented hundreds of thousands of impoverished and poor people. So I found it better to abstract their effect with the use of strategy cards and Foreign Attitude mechanics. I concluded it was better to imply the ghastly effects of the war, rather than to try to be explicit in the portrayal.

The Bosniak player can bring in Mujahideen fighters to supplement domestic units. What was the impact of Mujahideen fighters, both on the course of the war and the region afterwards?

Their impact and their actual involvement is still debated. Latest research suggests that there were probably not more than a couple of thousand fighters at any one time in the country. But that image of Mujahedeen fighters has stuck in people’s minds, especially the Serbian view of the war. At that time, the memory of Soviet- Afghan War was still fresh and the idea of those fighters coming to Bosnia & Herzegovina scared people. The decision to use those units only added fuel to the fire, and remained one of the more controversial decisions of the Bosniak leadership.

What in a game of this time and physical scale is being simulated with the movement points? For example the Bosniak domestic units have very limited movement capacity, even though the period being simulated is a few months and the geographic area small.

In a game of this high strategic scale, one can’t view the unit movement allowance as a distance in kilometres a unit can travel within a period of time.

It’s an abstraction of course. In short – the Bosniaks didn’t have any motorisation, and the Serbs had the majority of combat equipment. That is why the Bosniaks can’t support their breakthroughs. Even if they succeed in punching a hole in the frontline, they can’t advance beyond that hole, and the offensive stalls right away. If you read the after action reports from the Bosniak offensives in 1994 and 1995 – you’ll find that pattern over and over again. They attack, they push through, and then they stop because they have no mechanised mobility. At the same time, the Serbs, with their motor pool left over by the Yugoslav army, can shift forces from far away and plug the gap in the frontline.

All of these unit factors were designed by analysing and comparing playtest results with the actual historical events. We looked at the operational history of the war – the flow of offensives and counteroffensives, average movement of troops and such. We tweaked the movement factors until the gameplay started simulating the historical events pretty accurately. And that’s when we knew that we had very good approximation of the real thing.

The Serbs are very powerful early on, the Bosniaks weak. This flips mid-game. The Croats remain a middle balancing power throughout. Overall this simulates the changing strategic balance, but how clear cut were these distinctions in reality?

That is pretty much the historical dynamics of this war. That ‘flip’ in the middle of the game tells the narrative very accurately, while providing a great challenge for the players to adapt to. The Serbs made their biggest gains in 1992, when they exploded throughout the country, taking town after town and expelling the opposing population. The Bosniaks, even with help from the Croats and extensive media coverage and diplomatic effort, barely managed to stay afloat. The Croats fared better, since they had combat experience from the war in Croatia, but were still unable to stop the Serbian onslaught in Posavina and around Jajce.

In 1993, the Bosniaks and Croats started fighting each-other. Some historians say the Bosniaks attacked the Croats because they were too weak to attack the Serbs. Other say that Croats attacked the Bosniaks in order to cleanse those regions they regarded as their own. It’s hard to say which story is closer to the truth, but one thing is sure – the Serbs used that situation to entrench and secure their gains. In 1994, the Bosniak army finally became strong enough to launch major offensives, and by 1995 became a force to be reckoned with. But they never reached the firepower or movement capacity that the Serbs and Croats had. They lacked the heavy weapons and transport up until the end.

You have already mentioned the CDG aspects of Paths of Glory – what other games inspire you?

Lately I’ve been studying in depth some hex and counter and area-impulse designs. My favourite systems are the Operational Combat Series and Battalion Combat Series by Dean Essig. The titles in those series “DAK”, “Tunisia” and “Brazen Chariots” are just incredible example of wargaming detail and beauty.

Another great system out there is a “ZOC Bonds” system by Mark Simonitch. It’s very adaptive, easy to understand and to use. Then there is the low counter gem “No Retreat” system by Carl Paradis. Two of my favourite games are from that system: ‘The Russian Front’ and ‘The North African Front’.

Area-impulse is the system that I will probably use next if I decide on doing a game with a low counter density at an operational/tactical level. The first game with those mechanics, ‘Storm Over Arnhem’, and the more modern renditions by Mike Rinella, are great examples of how you can make a fast-learning, fast-moving wargame.

What can we expect next from you on the game design front?

I’ve been developing for quite some time a wargame set in the WW2 North African theatre. It’s a childhood dream of mine to make a game in this setting, and I’m delighted at how much the game has progressed.

I decided to make this new game as a computer game. I plan on using all of the latest ideas from the tabletop wargaming world and to combine them with the bonuses the computer provides. I’m talking about hex and counter mechanics, complex CRTs, detailed orders of battle, all set during the long North African Campaign. All that combined with true fog of war, smart opponent Al, easy to use multiplayer, and the ability to load and save the game in an instant.

Making computer wargames will also enable me to make this my day-job. I will publish the games myself, and the gamers will get a better product, with more features, for less money. If it works out, I will be able to sustain my business and create more and more games.

Words: James Buckley