Let's Talk: Wargame or Not

[LongBlade]

How about Twilight Struggle? For me it's like Diplomacy in that combat is not the main winning ingredient so not a wargame.

Ah the Cold War.  A historical/actual war without direct armed confrontation between superpowers. :)
So gaming the Cold War like Twilight Struggle or Balance of Power is not a wargame?  Maybe not in my books.  It's a geopolitical simulation.
But the multitudes of games playing out hypothetical a WW3 scenario are wargames.

While I'd tend to agree with you, wargames are about war. War is a specific kind of conflict. War and conflict aren't always the same.

[MetalDog]

To GJK's point, knowing why things happened is more satisifying and immersive to you than the uncertainty modeled by the outcome of your orders given in a computer game.  And the computer games outcome better simulates the vagaries of war and the implementation of your orders.  Then couldn't you transfer your sense of satisfaction at seeing your orders played out to the computer game?  Or is it just a board v. PC thing?

[Bison]

I think it's a matter of whether you like to push counters or pixels more tbh.

[GDS_Starfury]

ahhh...

but!

I like my counters to be pixels.
somewhat saves on the attack of the pet mucking things about.

[GJK]

I appreciate the tactile gratification of actually groping a set of physical counters personally myself.

I also appreciate being able to see the whole map at once and being able to take in the entire situation without scrolling.

I very much also appreciate being able to calculate the odds, with modifiers and seeing a table that shows me what my range of results is going to be as I'm anxiously juggling the di(c)e in my hand.

Some of the most enjoyable moments has been the look on my opponent's face when the die finally settles and we both look at that chart to see what the outcome is.  It has also been some of the most heart-breaking of moments.

I like "assembling" my board wargames.  Laminating charts, clipping counters (yes, an OCD masochist when it comes to my wargames), putting the map under plexi-glass.  I even convert all of the rulebooks to e-books and have my laptop handy when playing so that I can easily reference rules. 

A downside to boardgaming is that you have to read the rules in order to know how to play the game; unless you have a very eager opponent that wants to teach you how to play but even still, you really need to at least glance through the rulebook.  On the upside, you are very connected to the game because you have to do everything manually.  A 6-8 hour day playing an ASL scenario always leaves me with a headache from all the thinking that I had to do.  Yet the gaming experience will be talked about for years to come.

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What I appreciate about a computer wargame is common to us all: I can easily start (and even sometimes finish) a game. 

I can play it any time that I want, against an "opponent" of sorts. 

I can get bored, pause the game, go to the Grogheads forum to see what new posts are there, refresh my drink and then resume the game without worrying about an impatient opponent or even leaving my chair - as long as the mini-fridge is right here.

I don't have to worry about my Nazi cat jumping on the table and showing me his attack orders.

I wish that more PC wargames showed me the odds column.   I say more- I can only think of one that did that and it was Decision Games' War in Europe II PC conversion of the boardgame.  It shows you the odds column and then displays a Vegas slot machine like graphic going up and down the odds column until it finally settles on the result.  Alas, it has no AI opponent and 1000's of pixel counters to move around.  Gets too boring too quickly. Pbem is ok though.

This is funny:  so I'm getting ready to set up an old favorite boardgame of mine that I haven't played in YEARS, Carrier.  I remembered that Enrico did a video replay series on the game.  So I start to watch it throughout the day yesterday.  This "episode" is so classic I had to show my son.  This is a boardgamer that is about to explode over the complexity and silliness of looking up rules and charts just to finish a single phase of a long game:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/video/26664/carrier/coral-sea-3b

What's funny is that by episode 8, he's pretty much got the rules down and is really having an enjoyable experience.  Will probably never play the game again, but I'll bet he never forgets the experience.   :)

[Staggerwing]

It convinced me.  Chess is a wargame.

What about Stratego?

[Bison]

It convinced me.  Chess is a wargame.

What about Stratego?

Hmm...I don't know about Stratego.  It's more like a game of chance.  Sure I remember it being fun, but I'm not sure I'd call it a wargame game.

[LongBlade]

I appreciate the tactile gratification of actually groping a set of physical counters personally myself.

Pushing pewter is even more gratifying. There's nothing like feeling the weight of a Tiger as you move it across the terrain. One of the buddies I used to game with actually had a sight off of a German tank. We'd pass it along to verify LOS and it was a lot of fun.

[Grimnirsson]

A downside to boardgaming is that you have to read the rules in order to know how to play the game;

That's a plus in my book and I call it transparency . I love learning rules because I can get into the game this way with a solid idea of what it is about, what I can do or can't do and so on. But this also means I'm not belonging to those 'relaxed' gamers who play a game based on what they think a rule could mean or use just a house rule if something is missing or not working properly. I have very high expectations when it comes to rules and 'black holes' are something I consider sloppy work on the designers and/or playtesters side and that can really piss me off. If it is a game we play for a review (as is currently on the table and has got exactly this problem), that will make the score drop quickly...

so I'm getting ready to set up an old favorite boardgame of mine that I haven't played in YEARS, Carrier.

Ah...Carrier...that one is sitting on my shelf for a number of years now and I never had it set up for play. Problem is when your wife is as eager for wargames as you are and you always play something together there's less need and time for a solitaire game. Yes, I know that's complaining on a high level :P

[Bison]

So let me get this straight.  Grimnirsson is complaining he doesn't get to play with himself more...huh.

[GJK]

I too love reading rules and learning new games and I'm like you Andreas, I'm a rules-lawyer type.  I LOVE procedural games and I think that's why I enjoy ASL and enjoy Carrier and the like.  Very structured.  Some (a lot?) of people hate that though. 

I think that PC Wargaming produces "relaxed" players.  For good or not, it's easy to figure out almost any PC wargame.  They have tutorials (great stuff) or if you click around enough you can figure out how to do things.  I guess if you're really, really into the game, you actually read any manual that comes with it so that you can learn what the program is actually doing.  You can't take that shortcut in a boardgame. 

Miniatures is something that my son is wanting to get into.  We have Wings of War/Glory and he loves the models.  We've been to our FLGS and have eyed some ACW mini's and Flames of War.  I keep seeing $$$$ flying out of my wallet and hours upon hours painting.  The painting would be very enjoyable but being anal about my gaming, I wouldn't take shortcuts so yeah...lots of hours just painting the things.  We have the table space so yes, I'm seeing miniature gaming in my near distant future as well.

[LongBlade]

We've been to our FLGS and have eyed some ACW mini's and Flames of War.  I keep seeing $$$$ flying out of my wallet and hours upon hours painting.  The painting would be very enjoyable but being anal about my gaming, I wouldn't take shortcuts so yeah...lots of hours just painting the things.  We have the table space so yes, I'm seeing miniature gaming in my near distant future as well.

Yes, minis gaming can be expensive. And time consuming.

There are shortcuts.

If you're not interested (yet) in investing copious amounts of time and money, GHQ has Microarmor (http://www.ghqmodels.com/pages/military/index.asp) which allows you to get a whole lot of minis for not much money. I've seen guys play flames of war with them on an area about the size of a chessboard. The major complaint I hear about using a small scale like that on a 4' x 8' table is that it's easy to lose sight of the tiny little figs. Especially if you're painting them with good camo. They also have a line of ACW minis on their website. I don't think I've seen them personally, though.

That can get you into the game fairly cheaply. Once you decide you like it then you can look at something like Flames of War. Also, there are alternative to Flames' minis. The cheaper minis' quality isn't as good as Flames, but many gamers find the tradeoff for quality made up by the price. Flames' tournaments are gradually requiring the use of their proprietary minis, but there's no reason you can't get into a friendly game with them. Most guys I know have a mix of the cheap and expensive minis. And Flames is like Warhammer: it's a "good enough" game system to be fun and if a store has a historical minis community someone will be playing Flames. Realism can take a back seat sometimes - I have qualms with the realism. But the trade off is that you can push a lot of pewter and blow up a lot of stuff in the course of a three or four hour game.

[MengJiao]

And for lack of degrading this conversation to a boardgame vs computer wargame expose, I'll add that to me I agree that computers do a better job at simulating a combat situation (generally) because of the obvious; they can process so much more information and handle so much more than a player sitting at a boardgame could or would want to do.  That said, that is where I have a disconnect with most PC wargames - the computer IS doing so much for me behind the scenes that I honestly can't say what the hell just happened during the turn with any degree of certainty.  Certainly not as precise as if I had done the whole turn manually on a board.  Take for example the fine game "The Operational Art of War".  If you load up a scenario and begin play, you have a great sense of control of what you're doing; moving pieces along, assigning this unit to do that, etc.  But when the computer does it's thing and it runs through it - suddenly the turn is over and it's the start of your next turn and all you see is that now suddenly you're farther away from the objective here, but closer there and so the question is "what did my opponent (AI) just do to me?".  Now that is probably much more realistic - as the big commander, I don't have all the specifics on what casualties every unit of mine took and exactly how far back they had to retreat but in a gaming sense, I feel disconnected from the game because all of that is taken out of my hands.  So maybe for me at least, a PC wargame does the better job of simulating a historical battle or war, but a board wargame gives me a better sense of actually battling that battle or fighting that war.  That doesn't make the board wargame any better, but it gives me a more enjoyable gaming experience overall.  Does that make sense?

Not really.  For me, ultimately computer games will eventually be much better than boardgames because the computer games can simulate very complex stuff and show you the effects.  Which is what you'd see if you were say actually commanding an army: you'd see your staff, maybe some not-very accurate maps, talk to division commanders, see some artillery fire and get some reports.  In a sense you would never exactly know exactly what was going on.  A computer game can reproduce this floating out-of-control relation to information pretty easily.

At the moment I prefer board games because they work better in terms of analysis.  I'm not sure what is wrong with most computer games but they seem to be simulating old boardgames rather than actual battles.

[Oche]

VERY interesting subject fellog grogheads.

I'm an Hex head as well as many here, but reading this thread i now find myself asking if the following games can be labeled as wargames (please forgive me if i have missed seeing anyone mentioning any of these):

- Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis series;

- Superpower 1 & 2;

- Star Wars Rebellion.

[Grimnirsson]

For good or not, it's easy to figure out almost any PC wargame.

Perhaps a difference is that 'black holes' in the rules have different effects in traditional wargames (card, board, minis) and PC wargames. If you are the rules-lawyer type of player and you encounter something weird, a missing rule that should be there to explain something, a mechanic that is clearly broken etc. then you come to a cold stop. We don't bother with house rules (one exception: Marvel Heroes Boardgame), we play with the RAW and if they suck the game is rated accordingly because in a wargame the game is the rule book. But you could or can come up with an agreement or a house rule to make it work for you. In a PC wargame a black hole is actually called a bug in the worst case or at least an imbalance and if it's a serious one the cold stop is there too but you can't come up with an easy solution (unless you are a talented modder, because the rules are coded into the game itself, into it's UI etc.) but have to wait for the game to be patched.