
In the world of war games, Volko Ruhnke has become a hero - mcu
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/in-the-world-of-role-playing-war-games-volko-ruhnke-has-become-a-hero/2014/01/10/a56ac8d6-48be-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html
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kriro
Labyrinth is indeed brilliant. The best wargames recreate history and suck you
in. Twilight Struggle is another excellent example. But that's also the
highest level of complexity I'll tolerate. Friends of mine enjoy the super
detailed a rule for everything games but I think those are better left for the
digital realm...just too fiddly for my taste.

I'm an avid gamer (>150 games in my collection) but I only own three war
games. Twilight Struggle, Napoleon's Triumph and Maria. I'd recommend all of
them :)

Andean Abyss is on my to buy list.

Edit: Link to BGG, wargames only:
[http://boardgamegeek.com/wargames/browse/boardgame](http://boardgamegeek.com/wargames/browse/boardgame)

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roberthahn
I'm not a war gamer (Steam is my favourite game these days) but I've played
Maria and it is brilliant. I wish it could play within 90 minutes though.

Those of you who played Twilight Struggle might also know of a similar game
called "1960: The Making of the President". First time I played that I was
Kennedy and beat my opponent (Nixon). By one seat. Absolutely exciting!

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wlievens
We had a tradition of playing 1960 on election night. Great game, and complex
enough to play it as 2v2. With running mates.

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res0nat0r
Awesome to see this on a big site like WaPo. Labyrinth is a great game and I'm
looking forward to playing A Distant Plain.

Also if you want tons more info and pics, the best place to go is here:
[http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/127518/a-distant-
plain](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/127518/a-distant-plain)

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mcu
We covered "A Distant Plain" on Shut Up & Sit Down last month:
[http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/review-distant-
pla...](http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/review-distant-plain/)

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walshemj
Interesting though HG Wells arguably produced the first "wargame" with little
wars published in 1913. And even in the USA Fletcher Pratt and Jack Scruby
predate Tactics

Will defiantly have to see if I can get a copy as i am sure my war-gaming club
woudl enjoy it.

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mwfunk
In my experience, for a lot of people who are into them, the term "wargame"
implicitly means old-school Avalon Hill-style hex-and-counter board wargames.
The same people would just refer to miniatures games like Little Wars as
"miniatures games", but out of convenience rather than ignorance.

Pedantically, they should be calling them "board wargames" and "miniatures
wargames", but the terminology somehow got simplified to "wargames" and
"miniatures games". Mechanically the two genres can be very similar though, if
not identical.

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walshemj
Actually at least in the UK its the inverse "wargame" tends to be applied to
games with figures the AH type of game would be lumped in as a board game.

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oblat3
What is interesting about volko is that he was the the deputy head for
terrorism in the middle east for the CIA during the bush era. The CIA claimed
it was a time when they were pushed unwillingly into providing bad analysis
and shonky evidence to support the neocons worldview. So when in 2010 volko
designs a game where muslim states that are not pro american are necessarily
pro-terrorist, a key part of the justification for the attack on Iraq - its
pretty clear that there were resonably senior CIA analysts who were hard core
neocons and remain so.

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fidotron
This is a fascinating article. The ethos here reminds me of the work of Dan
Bunten (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Bunten_Berry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Bunten_Berry)
), in the sense of combining entertainment with solid messages about reality.
It's disappointing the market for such things doesn't seem to be bigger or the
legacy from that strand in modern video games would be much stronger.

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VLM
Its an OK piece of journalism. He's a popular designer and its a popular game.
Not the best or the most popular and there wasn't much discussion about the
lively ecosystem other than some company 30 years ago went out of business,
which is like claiming computers are dying because Atari stopped making the
800 about three decades ago. Its a fairly healthy marketplace.

According to boardgamegeek the avalon hill "up front" is more anticipated or
whatever than this. I like the solitaire wargames and I'm really looking
forward to Nimitz (which incidentally beat Distant Plain in the "anticipated"
rankings for solitaire). I'm waiting to hear about the solitaire rules in
Distant Plains before playing it.

The internet is whats driving modern tabletop wargaming, first excellent
desktop publishing tools, second excellent printing-over-the-internet and
third the community rallys around places like boardgamegeek, probably not so
much WashPost.

One interesting thing about cardboard games, of which I have quite a few
indeed (like, almost everything DVG has ever made, along with many other
games) is the costs aren't flinched at very much because they last a long
time. I have very little use for the first Bioshock game I bought many years
ago for like $30, but the copy of DVG's Napoleon (probably long out of print)
around the same time for about a hundred bucks is still perfectly playable.
Given the cruddy weather I may do some gaming tonight...

Before someone pipes up about "putting these old fashioned things on a
computer" there's already VASSAL although I don't like it because its so low
res. By low res, imagine professional printing at 600 DPI across an eight foot
wide dinner table, thats like, what 60000 pixels across, and there are no 60K
pixel tablets available the size of a kitchen table anyway. So, no, online or
on a tablet has little artistic appeal to me for playing. On the other hand I
lurk BGG and other websites to learn, its hardly a technophobic hobby by any
means.

One interesting social media type effect is the designer might not be able to
financially swing certain addons or feelies in the game, but the community
will host them anyway online for printing at home. So if you always thought
"Alexander" was supposed to be a card game instead of a counter game, there's
a printable set of cards available at BGG to replace the random counters. I
have a set and I agree Alexander should have been a card game not counter
game. I'm sure you'll be totally shocked to hear that designers / distributors
who support / tolerate their communities tend to be dramatically more
financially successful than the cease and desist crowd. Another socially
shared board game characteristic is print at home helpers. Flow charts, place
mats, that kind of "artwork" that can't be economically shipped with the games
but you can print at home if you want. Checklists, AARs, flowcharts, sometimes
mods or alternatives...

Its a fun hobby which I greatly enjoy.

Board gaming / war gaming is already pretty well successfully startup'd and
social media'd and could provide a good role model / map for other industries
to do "stuff" online. If you're in another industry and you don't have a BGG
work alike in your industry, well, you should, so some startup should hop to
it and make some dough.

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pessimizer
>there wasn't much discussion about the lively ecosystem other than some
company 30 years ago went out of business, which is like claiming computers
are dying because Atari stopped making the 800 about three decades ago. Its a
fairly healthy marketplace.

More like claiming that the sales of wargames are way down from a peak around
1980, when two million were sold. Sales of wargames are few orders of
magnitude lower than this today, and that's an interesting point to mention in
an article about a particular designer of wargames.

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nnnnni
I wonder what he thinks of Campaign for North Africa:
[http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-
for...](http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-
africa)

It's 8-10 players with a playtime of about 60000 hours. Yes, sixty _thousand_
hours. That's twice the length of the actual conflict. The amount of detail is
insane...

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vinceguidry
It's 60,000 minutes, or 1,000 hours or about 42 days. Still impressive, just
not 7 years.

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plinkplonk
I just bought "A Distant Plain" and while it is more complex and fiddly (too
many tiny counters on the board, the rules could be clearer) than say
"Twilight Struggle" the design is very nice and the game is well worth
playing.

Just in case any one is on the verge of buying :)

