It's tough to find time for this on the weekends, but I suppose that is the point nevertheless. Don't find time, make it.
Anyway, I've been thinking about the Cold War. It came up in a Facebook conversation a while back, and then on Friday I ended up picking up a few appropriate board or card games at the Games Plus Auction. To be precise, I got Junta, a game about seizing power in a banana republic, Cold War, one about the politics of the Cold War where you're using spies and diplomacy to try and sway other nations, and 1965's Nuclear War card game.
It's this last one that we played last night, and the one that got me thinking more about how certain our doom seemed only twenty three years ago and how few people choose to think about it now.
Or that, release of tensions or not, we still have the capability to blow ourselves clear off the planet.
Nuclear War itself is not a very satisfying game. It's too abstract to be a good simulation, and too random (cards v dice again) to be at all strategic There are the occasional funny moments (goddamn UN!) but mostly it's about picking your cards and getting lucky. It's also a game that encourages you to dogpile a single target, so there's a certain amount of diplomacy involved in trying to get your opponents to curbstomp someone else. But mostly, it's about the cards.
(I also found a Chick Tract in the Nuclear War box. I couldn't find a link to the one I've got, but here's one to the famous anti-Dungeons and Dragons one. Clearly, I've been playing in the wrong gaming groups!)
I do wish I hadn't gotten priced out of World at War: Eisenbach Gap, because I'd love to try and fight World War III someday. Of course, my primary old school wargame opponents live in other states these days and with two cats, a four year old, and a toddler there's no way to leave games up at my brother's place...and he can't game anywhere else. So owning a good WW3 game would only be an exercise in frustration since I'd never be able to play it, but still, it would have been nice.
I suppose I'll have to dig up Red Storm Rising and catch up with Alekseyev and friends again to get my Cold War fix instead.
It's a pity that the big multiplayer games never made the transition to online play. The format should, in theory, be ideally suited for just this kind of problem.
ReplyDelete