# What Military Strategy games have you played?



## Freebird (Mar 24, 2008)

What are some of the various strategy games that people have tried?

I must confess that I'm really "old school", I got into wargames back in the 80's when computers were not nearly advanced enough to run complex games. {Anybody else waste most of a week's allowance on Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaxian, Defender?  )

So I'm mostly talking board games here, but I know there are cross-over video games now too....


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## Hunter368 (Mar 24, 2008)

Damn I have or had sooooooo many. Let me think and get a list.


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## Freebird (Mar 24, 2008)

Hunter368 said:


> Damn I have or had sooooooo many. Let me think and get a list.



I know that I am probably missing a bunch...

*Did anyone else try SPI "AirWar"?* It was a little complex, as you had to track all the flight paths for missiles as well as the aircraft too. 

I know the Trekkies used to play "Star Fleet Battles" but it seemed Waaaay too complex, the rulebook was like a novel and each turn took ages....


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## Thorlifter (Mar 24, 2008)

Milton Bradley used to make other games like Axis and Allies. I cant remember the names of them, but I have them tucked away under my bed. One was Broadsides and Boarding Parties. I think one was Shogun. I don't remember the others.

But these and Risk were all I played.


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## Njaco (Mar 24, 2008)

Freebird, you beat me to it! I was just going to ask if anyone has played "Dogfight" by MB. As a kid I loved the game, WWI with little Dr Is and Camels to move around the board. Still have the game. I've been playing "Risk" with my kids lately.


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## magnocain (Mar 24, 2008)

The board game Attack!.
It is a 1940's era world domination game. In my opinion it is better than RISK.


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## DBII (Mar 24, 2008)

Back in the late 60's it was Dogfight and Battel Cry. I picked up Tacts II at a garage sale and was hooked on wars games. I could not wait until the PC was able to play war games. Microprose had a series of war games that I still have today. I would still be playing them if I did not lose my Commodor 64 in a house fire. I loss the machine but still have the software. My last assignment in the military was conducting computer simulations on main frames for the Active Duty Army, National Guard and Air Force. D** I miss that job. War games against live hundreds of live people. I had up to 1200 units to command. It did not matter if I was a Soviet Front or a British squad, it was always exciting.

DBII

DAN


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## cristian.hidalgo (Mar 24, 2008)

wow that is cool min is rise of nations and battel ship gunners 1and2 and other ww2 typ games


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## plan_D (Mar 24, 2008)

Hearts of Iron II (command any nation from '36 - '47), Company of Heroes (excellent World War II RTS), Blitzkrieg 2 (World War II RTS), All the Total War games (Shogun, Medieval II, Medieval Kingdoms, Rome, Barbarian Invasion).

As for board games, I used to play Risk a helluva lot!


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## comiso90 (Mar 25, 2008)

allied general!

I still play it!


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## MacArther (Mar 25, 2008)

CHESS!!! YEAH!!!


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## Vassili Zaitzev (Mar 25, 2008)

MacArther said:


> CHESS!!! YEAH!!!



yeah, I'm a chess fan as well, although I do play battleship from time to time.


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## Marcel (Mar 25, 2008)

A friend of mine has Axis and allies miniature collection game. it's really great, with miniature tanks and a/c.


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## HoHun (Mar 25, 2008)

Hi Comiso,

>allied general!

A friend once asked me for my opinion of Panzer General when the game was freshly out. My answer was "Captivating but not fascinating" - it manages to grab and hold your attention very well, but it offers only very slow development with hundreds of micromanagement tasks and the time panic at the end of a scenario as the main difficulty.

I don't know if you're familiar with the original "Empire" - it was sort of a "Civilization" without the civilization bits! In fact, Sid Meier's brilliance in creating Civilization was to replace the quantitative (and exponential) growth of units that bogged you down in unit-pushing tasks by qualitative growth, giving you fewer, more expensive, more powerful and (most importantly from a gameplay point of view) more manageable units instead.

"Empire" - much like the more complex "Panzer General", but also much like the far simpler "Tetris" - was able to generate a so-called Flow Effect ... something I'm sure most computer gamers will recognize even if they haven't heard it called by that name:

Flow (psychology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The list of nine components in the Wikipedia article is the bit to read ... for some reason, "flow" has been considered something entirely positive, but if you have experienced it, perhaps even with otherwise second-rate games, you'll probably recognize that it's neither good or bad in itself, just a mode the human brain can get into.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)


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## Freebird (Mar 26, 2008)

HoHun said:


> .
> 
> I don't know if you're familiar with the original "Empire" - it was sort of a "Civilization" without the civilization bits! In fact, Sid Meier's brilliance in creating Civilization was to replace the quantitative (and exponential) growth of units that bogged you down in unit-pushing tasks by qualitative growth, giving you fewer, more expensive, more powerful and (most importantly from a gameplay point of view) more manageable units instead.
> 
> ...



Civilization, now that is a great game!

Did you play Harpoon very much? GDW's were my favorites, some very good releases


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## HoHun (Mar 26, 2008)

Hi Freebird,

>Did you play Harpoon very much? GDW's were my favorites, some very good releases

I have to say that I played the boardgame version only two or three times as there seemed to be an enormous administrative overhead in preparing all the platform data sheets. I remember winning one Falkland War scenario as the British player by sinking the Argentine fleet by virtue of a couple of miles more anti-ship missile range. My missiles actually did not do much damage, but each hit spilled a bit of rocket fuel that lead to critical fires. The Argentine player was rather frustrated because he even lost the Admiral Belgrano to just a few hits, and I was frustrated because an entire afternoon of filling out data sheets had only yielded about three game turns of enjoyment.

The computer game version was easier to handle and had a great graphical interface (for the time). I seem to remember it had originally been developed on an Atari ST, which had a rather advanced user interface, which was copied for the DOS version of Harpoon. I played this more frequently! 

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)


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## A4K (Mar 26, 2008)

Is 'Harpoon' what we call 'battleships' ? IF so I've played that alot of times. Played 'Axis and Allies' a couple of times too - great game.
Chess, checkers, etc too of course, aswell as 'Medal of Honour' on PS2.


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## HoHun (Mar 26, 2008)

Hi A4K,

>Played 'Axis and Allies' a couple of times too - great game.

Roger that, really a smooth design with excellent depth considering the easy gameplay mechanisms.

I still vividly remember my first "Axis Allies" experience! We had an Axis team and an Allies team, with every player commanding one nation - I was the Soviet player. I had a look at the game mechanisms and decided that the Soviets should have a mix of infantry for defense and tanks for counter-attacks.

When I bought these units, there was an outcry in the room - no-one had ever played it that way, and it was common wisdom that the only way the Soviets could survive the German onslaught was to raise masses of infantry, dig in and wait for the Western Allies to weaken Germany's capacity to wage war. I insisted and came close to being thrown out 

The nice thing is that my initial thought proved to be right - the Soviet counterattacks forced the German player to add a share of defensive infantry units into his force mix, and his advance was delayed considerably and finally stopped, with Soviet tanks finally rolling west even before the second front was opened.

None of the veterans had seen that happen before  I didn't play again with that particular group, but a friend who was a regular in that group later told me that Russia buying a share of tanks had become a standard move with those guys.

To be honest, I suspect that the subconscious reason for my lucky decision simply was the expectation that counter-attacking and losing would be more fun than digging in and watching the Western Allies win the game! 

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)


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## Njaco (Mar 26, 2008)

A4K, if you have PS2 you have to get "Call Of Duty" or "Brothers in Arms" - much, much, MUCH better than "MoH".


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## comiso90 (Mar 26, 2008)

HoHun said:


> Hi Comiso,
> 
> >allied general!
> 
> ...



Hola Ho-hun,

Games like Panzer General and Allied General suit my computer habits. Turn-based simulations are conducive to multi-tasking. I RARELY sit at the computer and dedicate time to a game. Most of the time, I'm watching TV, playing on-line poker, surfing the web and answering e-mails. 

Is Civilization turn based?


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## Freebird (Mar 26, 2008)

A4K said:


> Is 'Harpoon' what we call 'battleships' ? IF so I've played that alot of times. Played 'Axis and Allies' a couple of times too - great game.
> Chess, checkers, etc too of course, aswell as 'Medal of Honour' on PS2.



No I think you are thinking of something else. This is a complex game, including all of the worlds Navy's in the late 1980's {but mainly Soviet US} with very realistic situations of hypothetical Naval battles in the N. Atlantic, Persian Gulf, etc. 

There are also subs, aircraft missiles represented.

{from Wikipedia}

''Harpoon'' is a realistic air and naval simulation game based upon Larry Bond's miniatures game of the same name. A Player can play one side: Blue or Red, in simulated naval combat situation, both local conflicts, as well as in Cold War confrontation between the Superpowers. Missions differ from small missile boat engagements to large oceanic battles with tens of vessels and hundreds of aircraft. The game also includes large database containing many types of real world ships, submarines and planes.

This game system was also used by Tom Clancy to help in writing his book "Hunt for Red October"

{Harpoon computer game}

Harpoon's interface emphasises technical accuracy over graphical polish, with simple 2D polygons reminiscent of a warship's radar display. There has been considerable debate in the game's user community about the decision of the developers to utilize 3D graphics in later versions of the program. ''Harpoon Classic'' and ''Harpoon III ANW'' are offered to AGSI civilian customers. Military customers are offered ''Harpoon III Pro'', which is tailored for customer specifications. Development of both versions is ongoing, with v3.8 essentially complete and in the final stages of beta. V4.0 is expected to undergo a graphical overhaul. Further development of the civilian variant will include a totally new user interface and improved graphics capability.


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## A4K (Mar 27, 2008)

Yep, sounds like two different games. There's nothing complex about Battleships, and I played it as a kid. You can play the Milton Bradley normal and computer versions, or just on paper as we do here.

Thanks too Njaco and Henning. I dont have PS2 myelf, just borrowed one from a mate for a while. I think I must have driven the neighbours nuts with my swearing trying to play that game!


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## HoHun (Mar 28, 2008)

Hi Comiso,

>Games like Panzer General and Allied General suit my computer habits. Turn-based simulations are conducive to multi-tasking. 

Ah, I see! 

>Is Civilization turn based?

Yes. It was something like "Empire", then add simple economy and qualitative growth and you get "Civilization", or a hex grid, a unit experience system and a point system for buying units, and you get "Battle Isle" or (later) "Panzer General". It's all the same evolutionary branch of game development - for once, I'd actually believe in "intelligent design" 

EMPIRE, Wargame of the Century (tm) A Brief History of Empire

Civilization (computer game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Battle Isle (series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)


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## B-17engineer (Mar 29, 2008)

I've played axis vs. allies


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## joy17782 (Mar 29, 2008)

i played risk and axis and allied and panzer leader back in the 80s , now i play computer games alot cfs 3 and star wars , and such , i also got a ps2 and have played all the ww2 games , they keep me out of trouble , untill i spill my beer on the couch , you realize how hard it is too play cfs 3 drunk ,


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## Njaco (Mar 29, 2008)

and holding a controller and a beer bong!


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## ScOoTeR1992 (Mar 29, 2008)

nah the only strat game i play is company of heroes
Company of Heroes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Freebird (Apr 20, 2008)

HoHun said:


> Hi A4K,
> 
> >Played 'Axis and Allies' a couple of times too - great game.
> 
> ...



a real brilliant idea for A&A, they must have sold millions....


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## parsifal (Apr 20, 2008)

Lets see

1) War In the Pacific (1977 SPI), seven maps about 3000 counters, about 200 hours playing time. Weekly game turns, has a semi tactical air combat system. biased in favour of the japanese. A newer version is now in print, apparaently they have minimaps of every island in the Pacific, and you can fight the island battles tactically. Some people have way too much free time

2) War In Europe (SPI 1974) same as above but much simplified. It rarely plays as history

3) Britannia (I think Avalon Hill) A neat game on the events in Britain, AD 450 through to 1100. Can be played in about 4 hours. A real beer pretzel game, but a lot of fun

4) Power grid (some german company, its my friends game). One of the modern genre games comming out of Europe at the moment. You build power grids across europe, using various technologies. has no dice, can be played in about six hours, Has no dice, but is mostly strategy. 

5) Next War (SPI 1980) Covers combat in Germany in the '80s. Most of my friends hate this game, because of its weird a**ed combat results tables, but I like it. 

6) Campaign For North Africa (SPI 1980) Its basically North Africa at Bn level. Combat system is easy, logistics a nightmare. dont even think about trying to play the whole campaign. It has the best maps of North Africa i have ever seen, more accurate in my opinion than even "proper maps". 

7) Computer Games WWII: Carriers At War, Uncommon Valour, Talonsofts East Front and Westfront, Crown Of Glory (Napoleonic), Blue the Grey (Civil War), Civilzation II, III and IV (when i can get it to work), for just a bit of fun, I enjoy Panzer General

To be honest, I dont play games all that much anymore. I much prefer the design aspect. Current project of the design group i work with is working on is a playable monster (ie 150-200 hours), covering the entire war. Scale is about corps level, but smaller formations are available (you cannot do a pacific game in a serious manner at Corps level, whereas for Europe you can get away with army sized formations). Air warfare is managed by on map "groups, of around 200 a/c per group, managed by off map air points, about ten aircraft per point. Ships are single hulls down to cruiser, then multi hull per counter after that. Merchant shipping is about 10-20 ships per counter. We have tested the entire war twice now, and played numerous bits of the war, When the playtesters try to play historically, the results are +/- 5%, and we can get to surrender +/- 3-4 weeks historical. Am happy with the accuracy then, but it takes too long to play, and some things are a bit dicky still (nobody in their right mind as the axis will fight the BoB, no sane japanese Player ever gets Midwayed, no Soviet player hangs around at the front after barbarossa). We are working on the problems, and am confident that our game will be the most accurate operational level simulation to date, covering the entire war. 


Have attached a few examples of the counters for the new game. We think the title will probably "Might Power"


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## Milos Sijacki (Apr 20, 2008)

Hearts of Iron 2: Doomsday

This is my favorite one, but I also like many others, like: Total War genres, Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War, C&C Generals, Starcraft and many others.


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## Freebird (Apr 20, 2008)

parsifal said:


> Lets see
> 
> 1) War In the Pacific (1977 SPI), seven maps about 3000 counters, about 200 hours playing time. Weekly game turns, has a semi tactical air combat system. biased in favour of the japanese. A newer version is now in print, apparaently they have minimaps of every island in the Pacific, and you can fight the island battles tactically. Some people have way too much free time
> 
> 2) War In Europe (SPI 1974) same as above but much simplified. It rarely plays as history



I'm surprisesd you haven't mentioned any GDW stuff? You must have played "Europa" or was it not available down under? It was perhaps the most realistic WWII game as I've heard from experts {and IMO}

They were real monsters though, the Russian front "Fire in the East" {June 41' - Mar 42'} and the follow on "Scorched Earth" {Spring 42' - end of war} were each about 2,500+ counters, division/regimental level on a 16 mile hex grid. The counters went down to batallion level for specialized units {flammpanzers, RR engineers, RR artillery, flak, police units, partisans, NKVD etc} The maps were 36" x 48" and if you set up all of Europe from Berlin - Rome - Athens - Baku - Moscow -Narvik it would fill a 4' x 8' table. {without North Africa} The air units were basically squadron level, 25 - 30 aircraft per counter. It had 2 week turns, infantry moved once, mech/mot had a second move phase. One combat phase per player/turn, but you could "overrun" weak enemy while moving. {Bane of the Soviets} 



parsifal said:


> To be honest, I dont play games all that much anymore. I much prefer the design aspect. Current project of the design group i work with is working on is a playable monster (ie 150-200 hours), covering the entire war. Scale is about corps level, but smaller formations are available *(you cannot do a pacific game in a serious manner at Corps level, whereas for Europe you can get away with army sized formations).*



Quite true. I am a bit crazy for design myself, The guys bug me that I never found a game I didn't want to revise re-design. I'm kinda working on a "deluxe" Axis Allies game, trying to fix some of the obviously silly rules, while still leaving it playable in a single sitting. {Stuff like the Germans landing 1 infantry in undefended Washington D.C. to grab all of the U.S. production capacity, or Australia represented by only 1 space for the Japanese to grab} 



> Have attached a few examples of the counters for the new game. We think the title will probably "Might Power"



Looks interesting


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## parsifal (Apr 20, 2008)

Hi freebird

I have a lot of the Europa series (a mix of the 1st and second editions series). Its an older game system, very much in the 70s and 80s mould, but I do like it. I have most, except "2nd front" was just too slow to get it, and now its too expensive (in Australia, you will pay around $500 US for a copy) I aint pauing that much for any game. the most I have ever shelved out for something was $100 and that was too much.

I have played Fire In the east, and the follow on (but 1st edition, it was called Unedschneiden, sorry about the spelling). The system is somewhat unstable, but the best we could ever do with it was to go to weekly GTs in Summer. There are just too many biases against the germans otherwise. If you have a weaker Soviet Player, try going to weekly for the winter turns as well.

The problem with the Europa series is that the company and the franchise for Europa were sold, with the new company making the previous systems obsolete. Didnt seem to care about customer loyalty and such. 

My friend has a series of mods for WIF I can ask him for them if you like when he gets back from holidays. i should make something a bit clearer than I did in my bio. The design group that I hang around with were the designers and playtesters of WIF. I was not a memeber at that time, but offered bits of advice over the years. The people I am friends with are no longer part of ADG (owners of WIF), because there was a disagreement some years ago. WIF in its current form has some major play balance issues, and with all the add ons that it now has, has about 4500 counters. thats a lot of cardboard, for a game system of that genre

A good game I forgot to mention is A House divided. you can play it in a single sitting, and its quite a good little simulation of the ACW

Right now we are locked in with playtesting of the new M&P simulation I was telling you about. Currently we have ETO (European Theatre Of Operations) and a PTO playtest running concurrently. It is July 1941 in Europe, and April 1942 in the Pacific. normally i dont get involved with the tests, but we were short handed, so now I am basically emperor hirohito in charge of the Japs. Allies bugged out of SE Asia, thought I wouldnt follow them, but I anticipated that they would, so I followed them to their hiding places. Have captured Fiji, American Samoa, Port Moresby and Midway. US is building up strongly in Noumea. We have had a major carrier battle, Enterprise is heavily damaged, I have a BB a cruiser and 2 DDs in a bad way (out for about 9 months...he mistook my surface fleet for carriers). We called it the battle Of Fiji, because it happened in that area. Allies are busily building up in Australia, Pearl and India. The test parameters are historical production priorities, but freestyle strategy. hard to know how it is going, its too early to say


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## HoHun (Apr 20, 2008)

Hi Parsifal,

>nobody in their right mind as the axis will fight the BoB, no sane japanese Player ever gets Midwayed, no Soviet player hangs around at the front after barbarossa

Interesting considerations ... not a modern conflict, but the Osprey book on the Battle of Hastings mentions that it can be difficult to re-play the battle with miniature rules as the Saxon player won't break ranks as he's too well aware of what happened historically. The book suggests to use roughly equivalent pieces from a different era to get around this mental predisposition 

Have you ever seen Avalon Hill's "Up Front", by the way? Card game approach to Squad Leader, no map required, tries to do away with the illusion that all decisions in war are rational and follow logically from the situation at hand. I liked it quite well, though I didn't get to play it much.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)


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## parsifal (Apr 20, 2008)

Hi HoHun

I have not played Up Front, but i have seen it. The card game option is explored in a number of new games...Memoir 44 is one, but there are others. its a neat way of dealing with this sort of problem.

Being the traditionalist that I am, i have not opted for that in the new game. But there seem to be quid pro quos. As indicated in my last post, in the Pacific, the allies retrated very quickly from SE Asia, mostly with their air and naval resources. So they have more fleet units, more pilots, and more planes than they should. But the quid Pro Quo is that now they are being forced to fight in areas actually more vital to them...Midway, Fiji etc, and I have lost only 100 a/c to combat losses, because there has not been only light skirmishing in my conquest of SE Asia. This is the number one challenge to good design in my opinion, how do you anticipate and allow for the perfect historical hindsight that most players will have, without destroying playability, and without upsetting historical plausability. There is no single correct answer, in my opinion


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## Freebird (Apr 23, 2008)

parsifal said:


> This is the number one challenge to good design in my opinion, how do you anticipate and allow for the perfect historical hindsight that most players will have, without destroying playability, and without upsetting historical plausability. There is no single correct answer, in my opinion



That is indeed a problem. Because the game {like Europa} is *technically historically* balanced, it does not play that way for the reasons you have mentioned. I wonder if the solution would not be to have the player as the "theatre commander" {ie Macarthur or Wavell in the Pacific} but subject to certain political directives, for example the Allies must leave a certain number of units in Dutch E. Indies etc. This would also be close to historical, because many of the "political" directives did not make good military sense {like the British intervention in Greece}


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## parsifal (Apr 23, 2008)

Its a nice idea, and we have tackled the problem more or less in a similar vain. Because i wanted the game to be primarily a military simulation, the chromey add-ons necessarily needed to be fairly simple. But we tackled this political imperative by giving each of the major powers political points. Nations gain or lose points by gaining or losing territory, and other things. If you lose too much territory too quickly, you can be forced to the negotiating table (and lose the game).

It is impossible to force the US or Britiain to the surrender table in this way, but concessions can be extracted from them, if the axis achieves certain things in a certain time. For example, success in Europe can bring about the entry of Yugoslavia, Spain, even Turkey, as axis clients. Access to certain resources held by neutral states can be blocked if the political situation is right. Obviously a lot of this crystal ball stuff is contentious, and we have spent a lot of time analysing and verifying the thrust of a given hypothetical political event. 

This system has its uses, but its not complete, nor is it perfect. We are using it, but we are still getting some anomalous results, which we are trying to address, without being too prescriptive in the rules suite.


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## ummonk (May 26, 2008)

Nobody has tried chess?


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## trackend (May 27, 2008)

I used to play battle chess Umonk. I also used to play Dreadnought on my Commodore 64 it was a shame it never got transfered and improved as the machines advanced. It included fall of shot, fleet construction.damage control,apart from the general tactics maps.
The graphics were S*** but the game play was brilliant. and of course being a 64 it took about 30mins to load the game off of the cassette deck.

Now I stick to Diablo I guess my oldest character (THE PIMPLE)( a barbarian) must be about 8 years old by now.


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