Alfred Wallace: Playing Catch-Up

A few thoughts on this balmy September evening, as I drink in the knowledge that I have a new Gipf game to look forward to…

A kind of game I always like to see is one that blurs the lines between “simulations” (wargames, typically) and Euros.  I’ve had the good fortune to buy/try a few of those recently.

Duel in the Dark and Napoleon’s Triumph recently made their way to Happy Valley.  They have a lot in common.  They are, for one thing, both quite heavy.  They also have two of the most impressive visuals I’ve seen in quite some time.  They also deal with military subjects—the night bombing of Germany in one case, and Austerlitz in the other.  (No prizes for matching up subjects with titles.)

Each is also a notable example of a relatively simple and elegant game dealing seriously with a military theme.  Duel in the Dark, though, came at it as a “wargamey Euro” whereas Napoleon’s triumph is a “Euroish wargame.” And to be sure, reading through the rules, there’s definitely something to it.  For one thing, the Duel in the Dark rulebook is full of color and pictures and whatnot, whereas Napoleon’s triumph is mostly text in columns. 

The tricky bit, of course, is that our working definitions of “wargame” and “eurogame” aren’t very rigorous, although we use them all the time; any attempt to pin down what puts a game in Box A rather than Box B will have ambiguous edges.  Wittgenstein would have been amused.

Of course, when I say—as I did just a few paragraphs ago—that I like these ambiguous regions, that’s because I both want “Euros” with more of a simulation feel, and simulations with simpler and more elegant lines.  Of course, in many ways I wish the distinctions were abolished, but as I’ve not yet been declared Philosopher-King, that’s unlikely.

One game I’ve recently played along these lines is the recent Stratamax offering, Tammany Hall.

I got the game when some of my fellow grad students asked if I (aka “that guy with all the games”) had a game on Tammany Hall.  I said I didn’t have it, but I knew one existed.  They responded that they’d be interested in playing such a creature.  This is far more pressure than I usually need to get a new game, so I buckled immediately and Paypaled my ducats to Stratamax, and in due course I had it in my hot little hands.

As with all Stratamax games, the “look” is spartan.  Public-domain clip art abounds, the rulebook is stapled together, the board may have been run off on a home printer and laminated.  The game, here, is the thing. 

And the game, here, is pretty good.  I took on the Adelson clan a couple of weeks ago, trying it out before unleashing it on my fellow grad students.  You play Democratic party notables in New York City, during some vague period between about 1850 and 1900.  It has some great bells and whistles: Doling out patronage, currying favor with the immigrant communities forming in New York, smear tactics, ward bosses…the works.

It has a fair number of area-majority elements.  The map is divided up into wards, and you get points for winning elections in said wards.  You get one vote for each ward boss you put in there, and then you can spend political chips to get out the vote amongst the local immigrants.  You get a chip every time you bring in an immigrant cube, and spending a chip gets you a vote.  The jockeying for power would be straightforward, except that there are patronage positions that are given out after every mayoral election that give each player a special power.  These are the heart of the game, and figuring out who should get what slot is critical for the mayor. 

We had four players; we seemed to agree that five would probably be the “sweet spot.” There are four immigrant groups one can curry favor with; we found ourselves “identifying” with one or another early on.  With a fifth player, there’d be more competition within each community.  Also, all the patronage slots would be handed out.  In general, though, we enjoyed the game, and I look forward to playing it with my fellow 19th century scholars. 

Finally...and I mention this here so as to minimize its exposure…my clobbering in the latest Amun-Re game is complete.  I did reasonably well in the New Kingdom, with seventeen points, but—and here’s a free gameplay tip—when you score two points in the Old Kingdom and trail by ten, you’re probably not going to win.  That’s something I’ll have to remember for the next game!

© 2007 Alfred Wallace

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Played Duel in the Dark myself, and enjoyed it. I’ve become a little worried by the string of British wins, many decisive, but hopefully things will even out a bit as we completely nail down the rules. If you wanted to abolish distinctions, I’d back you up. What’s the big difference between a game like Modern Art, say, and A Victory Lost? Other than the violence? Not a lot. Arguably Modern Art does a far better job of putting you in the shoes of an art speculator than A Victory Lost does of putting you in the shoes of Manstein. You could make similar comparisons across the board (Does Duel in the Dark achieve a lot of the tensions and types of decisions in The Burning Blue in a fraction of the complexity? I’m just asking). There are very few wargames that actually manage to achieve both a playable game and anything that really could be called anywhere close to a simulation, and if you start thinking of wargames as being themed games just like euros (albeit ones that are much more tactical in general), the distinctions do seem to melt away. For me anyway. Plenty of wargames have bad theming. What’s the difference between Memoir ‘44 and Squad Leader or Storm over Arnhem, really? The latter two have much more evocative theming. None really can make a serious claim to simulation. Posted by Chris Farrell on Sep 21, 2007 at 11:58 AM | #

wargames, Wargames, war-themes games, wargamey euros.... the eternal saga to define these will never be over.  But I do have to say, I’m with you with the way you use the terms Wargamey euro and Euroish Wargame.  That is exactly how I would use them (to describe the games you mentioned), although I find them hard to define. The question we need to ask though is, do we really need to?  I don’t think so.  What really matters is whether they are fun or not. Posted by Robert Ramirez on Sep 22, 2007 at 11:03 AM | #

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