Wargaming Weekly #032: What can we learn from this micro game about evacuating civilians?

My review of “Spider’s Thread” by Walter Kunkle (from Sebastian Bae's Indo-Pacific Micro Games series)

My micro game obsession recently kicked back in after seeing Sebastian Bae put out a call for play-testers for a new “Warfighting” batch.

I was about to dive in when I remembered that I’m not even half-way through the Indo-Pacific Micro Games series. Basically, a case of “we have rice at home” but for print ‘n’ play micro games...

Why I played Spider’s Thread in particular

Spider’s Thread is a solitaire game just like Mr. President, whose Steam demo I reviewed for my last newsletter. In fact, it too is NOT a wargame just like Mr. President (as there’s no adversary): even the designer, Walter Kunkle, explicitly says so.

Plus, that’s a really cool story there behind the title.

Why I struggled at first

So many counters to cut out I literally slept off right after, even the designer himself pointed it out!

And some are comically tiny!

Also, I only realized after my first attempt that I actually didn’t need all of them as some are meant for the optional rules version.

When I came back around, I was too distracted with documenting my first play-through (as usual) to focus properly on the rules.

I had even missed the airfield and port markers during the base game setup.

I also thought I’d need physical dice so I decided to send my boda guy (motorcycle taxi rider) for some. Yes, here in Uganda, just about everyone has a boda guy who typically helps them with shopping and other errands on an ad hoc basis.

Heck, your boda guy can even give you some really golden advice if you’re lucky enough! Just ask 18-year-old Khaman Maluach (born in South Sudan, raised in Uganda) who got drafted into the NBA last week after his boda guy told him a few years ago that he was too tall for his age and that he should try basketball.

Anyway, because my boda guy is not very fluent in English, I speak to him in our local dialect, Runyankore (native language of the Banyankore people), which happens not to have a word for dice!

So I basically told him in Runyankore to find me “those things that people throw when they’re playing Ludo.” He quickly understood exactly what I meant because Ludo is the most popular board game in Uganda.

It is played in the underfolds of just about every urban setting (from trading centers to major towns to the capital city), in regular people’s homes (I have friends who do weekend Ludo marathons), as well as in proper tournaments (though I only found this out while putting this newsletter together, to be honest).

How did it go when I first played Spider’s Thread?

I knew my boda guy was going to take forever with my delivery (as usual, smh) so I decided to improvise in the meantime with just my dice app and memorization.

I lost on my first attempt (you can see the full play-through on X, LinkedIn or Bluesky)

My final scoring went as follows:

· 13 points for 13 Japanese Nationals evacuated

· 4 points for fully evacuating Islands 5 and 6 (2 each)

· zero points for my two Foreign Nationals evacuated since I didn't get all 5

Total: 17 points (just over half of the required 30+ points)

My immediate after-action review (AAR) thoughts after this first attempt were:

1. The steadily advancing dotted red line of the contested zone that swallows an island every turn really raises the pressure

2. The Arrival Phases are so brutal, you basically watch your work get undone

3. I want to experiment with using just ships alone and also using just planes alone (as well as a 3:1 split) instead of the equal 2:2 split I have used for this first attempt

4. I actually don't need physical dice for this game like I initially thought: my dice app and memorization can work just fine

5. I should have paid more attention to the Final Scoring guidelines before playing, it would have helped me plan and execute a more coherent strategy

6. I will definitely be playing this game again... until victory is secured!

And yes, I did play Spider’s Thread again!

For my 2nd attempt, the base game setup turned out like this:

This time my plan was to prioritize as follows:

1. Fully evacuating Islands 1 and 2 (for maximum fully evacuated island points)

2. Evacuating all foreign nationals (for 7 extra points)

3. Evacuating 15 or more Japanese nationals evacuate (for 7 extra points)

I was also looking to use a 3:1 split in favour of ships and to not worry too much about the degraded chances of evacuation success in the creeping contested zone

Result: I failed on all 3 objectives, and got only 9 points!

All the points came from my 9 Japanese nationals. I failed to get the last Foreign National on Island 6 because the 2nd Arrival Phase made me put one back on the board, on the same island.

Three unlucky rolls on the 2nd Naval Phase sabotaged my plans to fully evacuate the 1st and 2nd Islands although the 1st naval phase and the 1 arrival phase had actually gone well

For my 3rd attempt, the base game setup turned out like this:

This time my plan was to prioritize as follows:

1. Evacuating all foreign nationals (for 7 extra points)

2. Fully evacuating Islands 1 and 2 (for maximum fully evacuated island points)

3. Evacuating 15 or more Japanese nationals evacuate (for 7 extra points)

Still using a 3:1 split in favour of ships, my plan was to use my three ships on Islands 2 and 5 since they had the Foreign Nationals (two ships for Island 2 since I also wanted to fully evacuate it and one ship for Island 5 since I could use the one plane on it several times before the contested zone reached it)

On the 1st Naval Phase, I managed to evacuate both foreign nationals so I could now focus on Islands 1 and 2: I assigned two ships to Island 1 and one ship to island 2, planning to use my 1 plane to evacuate Island 2 as much as possible before the 2nd Naval Phase.

However, the plane failed on all three turns after that (turns 4, 5 and 6) even with rerolls (yes, flying in a contested zone is brutal!)

Result: I failed on all 3 objectives, got only 8 points!

All came from my 8 Japanese nationals (I failed to get the last Foreign National again)

Despite suffering a worse loss, I still thought prioritizing ships was the way to go, and that perhaps I should even consider using all four for the second naval phase.

I also realized that that base game setup really matters so I decided that I would be customizing my game plan to it going forward, especially as far as which islands to aim for full evacuation on.

For my 4th attempt, the base game setup turned out like this:

This time my plan was to prioritize only one thing: 15+ Japanese Nationals evacuated.

Why? I saw no hope of evacuating all Foreign Nationals and that if I tried to fully evacuate Islands 1 and 2, I’d end up with Foreign Nationals that wouldn't contribute to my final score.

So I decided to focus on staying ahead of the contested zone and fully evacuating islands 4 and 5. My plan was to assign two ships to Island 5 and one ship to Island 4, with my one plane reducing the population on Island 4 before the ship arrived.

Result: I scored 16 points (12 points for 12 Japanese nationals and 4 points for fully evacuating Islands 4 and 5)

I could have won this time if both Arrival Phases hadn't done me so dirty (they put 3 Japanese Nationals back on the board, one on Island 1 and two on Island 4). That would have unlocked 14 more points (7 more points for 15+ Japanese Nationals, 3 more points for the 3 extra Japanese nationals and 4 more points for fully evacuating Island 4).

I was becoming more confident about my strategy but I knew I still needed quite some luck to get through the Arrivals Phases unscathed.

For my 5th attempt, the base game setup turned out like this:

Once again, my plan was to prioritize only one thing: 15+ Japanese Nationals evacuated.

Why? Once again, I saw no hope of evacuating all Foreign Nationals and that if I tried to fully evacuate Islands 1 and 2, I’d end up with Foreign Nationals that wouldn't contribute to my final score.

So I decided to focus on staying ahead of the contested zone and fully evacuating islands 3 and 4. My plan was to assign two ships to Island 3 and one ship to Island 4, with my one plane reducing the population on both until the ships arrived.

After the 1st Naval Phase, I decided to change strategy a bit back to 2:2 split between ships and planes. I was looking to assign two ships to island 6 and use two planes to attempt to empty Island 4 before the contested zone swallowed it and hopefully Island 3 too with a bit of luck. I also needed the 2nd Arrival Phase to go well like the first one had.

Everything went according to plan (at least, mostly):

· I emptied Island 4 on turn 4 using the two planes

· The 2nd Arrival Phase went well (no evacuees placed back on the islands)

· I emptied Island 3 on turn 5 despite it already being in the contested zone (one of the two planes managed to get the one Japanese National that was left there)

· I used the two planes to reduce the population on Island 6 before the two ships arrived (one of them actually failed so I only managed to get one Japanese National out before the 2nd Naval Phase but that couldn’t stop my momentum)

· The two ships cleared out all the remaining 4 Japanese Nationals on Island 6

Results:

· 17 points for 17 Japanese nationals

· 7 points for 15+ Japanese nationals

· 4 points for Island 3 fully evacuated

· 4 points for Island 4 fully evacuated

· 2 points for Island 6 fully evacuated

For a grand total of 34 points! I finally won!

What do I like about Spider’s Thread so far?

This game is deliciously hard to beat, you have to make hard choices to even stand a chance!

You also need quite some good luck on your side. Half the game is played in the base game setup rolls (if you get a good distribution of Japanese and Foreign Nationals across the islands, your game is easier). And if the dice rolls in the Arrival Phases go bad for you, it’s hard to bounce back from that!

Plus, it plays really fast after your first play-through: easily 15 to 20 minutes per session.

What are my top 3 player tips for Spider’s Thread?

SPOILER ALERT! Skip this part if you want to explore the game for yourself from first principles!

1. Leave the foreign nationals alone. Yes, it’s cruel, I know but you most likely won’t manage to get them all unless of course you’re lucky enough to have them all end up in just one or two islands during the base game setup.

2. Start with three ships and one plane, transition to two ships and two planes after the 1st Naval Phase. This way, the 1st Arrival Phase is very likely to go your way as you’re likely to not have enough evacuees to put back on the board, especially if you’re not bothering with the Foreign Nationals.

3. Operate outside the contested zone as much as possible. Whenever it makes sense, assign two ships to Island 6 for the 2nd Naval Phase, it will still be outside the contested zone so you can get full capacity.

What game design lessons does Spider’s Thread offer?

I like how Walter Kunkle represented the steadily creeping contested zone with the red dotted lines, this mechanic is so great for building pressure on the player and it greatly influences gameplay strategy.

I also like how the game base setup is a core part of the game because it gets tense as you roll, watch how the people are being distributed to the various islands and start thinking of the most optimal strategy.

The game also captures the constraints of logistics well with the tradeoffs between ships and planes, I’m biased toward the ships even though I don’t think using them alone would be optimal.

All in all, I have a better appreciation of how difficult and frustrating non-combatant evacuation operations (NEO) can be and I think there’s a lot of potential for this Spider’s Thread game to easily be “remixed” for other disaster relief scenarios as it captures 4 key elements that I think are universal to them:

· priority evacuees

· logistics constraints

· creeping “danger zone”

· the element of sheer luck

And upon further thought, I have coined the word "entambiko" as my Runyankore word for dice, literally translating to “those which are thrown” from the verb “okutambika” (to throw). My boda guy came late as expected but he did deliver exactly what I sent him for so check out my six brand new entambiko!

Lastly… what’s that over there in the Business Corner?

Palantir is teaming up with an AI company to boost nuclear production.

I just know something really cool will emerge out of this partnership, and who knows… some of its fruit might eventually contribute to our own nuclear power ambitions here in Uganda.

Yours in hex,

Rwizi.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Wargaming Weekly is curated, written and published by Rwizi Rweizooba Ainomugisha, a freelance writer, game designer and startup entrepreneur. Rwizi currently serves as Co-Founder, Co-CEO and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Lupiiya Books - the social finance app that is gamifying the fundraising process for young African entrepreneurs. Wargaming Weekly is a curiosity chronicle of Rwizi’s exploration of the wargaming world… for the love of games in general, for the desire to contribute to the growth of wargaming in particular as a discipline, and lastly, for the hope of finding cutting-edge game design innovations to bring back with him to the startup world.