Kick it old school! 5 games from back in the day, why I liked them and how they would replay today.
1) Avalon Hill wargames – played around 1987-1991Started on this path with Waterloo, but AH published a lot of titles that used the same basic mechanic, I owned Afrika Korps and D-Day as well. I was something of a military history buff in high school so these games played on that. I also liked these games because they were a new experience. However, I would not even be tempted to try these games today. The mechanic is to calculate ratios between stacks of chits, and the magic number was 3-1. Higher odds were generally better, but 3-1 was the cut off for something bad happens to your opponent but not you. The game played as a series of math problems, which, to be honest, is like a lot of these other board games. However, the pacing was also really really slow, and the differences between titles was trivial, mostly just terrain features.
Another AH title, this one a fantasy setting. This game featured a patchwork board with 10 different terrain types and corresponding battle maps. This game had a lot going for it and I know what attracted me to it. It had an economy of sorts. You recruited monsters based on what was in your hidden stacks. It had strategic decisions, do you split off a lot of guys hoping for rapid recruitment or do you play it safer and keep concentrated? However, the game ended up playing like Risk when everyone picks a continent and just slowly builds up. The pacing was horrible, in multi-player you sat a long, long time before taking your turn. I would consider playing Titan again, but the table would have to have a house rule that you can only pass up one attack a turn to speed things up. And the winner is whoever ahead at 90 minutes not the last one standing. And we would have to….
3) Civilization – played around 1991-1995
We had a lot of fun with this game. It was one of the first ones we tried that played multiple players reasonably well. You had economy, resource management, technology developments, player to player interactions, strategic and tactical decisions. And although it was hard to eliminate a person from the game entirely, it was also pretty common to have someone along for the ride without a prayer of winning. The tribes weren’t well balanced either, Thrace was awesome and Crete was just awful. Plan on at least 6 hours of game time too. I don’t think I would play Civ again, there’s too many similar games that play better and take a lot less time.
4) Eurorails – played around 1992-1998
Another classic that we had played an awful lot. An economic game AND you got to play with crayons. Quite a lot of luck involved with what cards are turned, and ferry’s are the devil, but a really good game. There are pacing issues because building track takes a lot of thought, and also you have to figure out where the hell the bauxite is. Not only would I play this game again, I have suggested we play it a couple times in the last year. As long as you play the short version it still is a really good experience.
5) Settlers of Catan – played around 1995-2001
I don’t think I have the words to describe how revolutionary I found this game at the time. Wait, the board changes from game to game? How am I to find the optimum spot and sit there?!?!?!?!? It was simple, it was elegant, and it was fun. The only down fall is that the original game only played 4, so often someone sat on the sidelines and played Twisted Metal 2 on the PS2 while the Settlers game was going on. My gaming group really has explored all the nuances of this game, so it probably won’t be played often, but I believe I saw this busted out not 6 weeks ago.
So to my 3 readers, what games did you play back in the day, and would you play them again?
Third Reich, and I would, I miss playing these old wargames.
ReplyDeleteBattletech, I tried to go back to this one at GenCon two years ago, and you can't go back. Not sure why it held such passion for me.
Star Trek Tactical Combat, not the crazy Star Fleet game, the good one. Not overly complex like full blown Star Fleet Battles, and I would play it again in a heartbeat to break out my old D-2 Stingtongue models.
Warhammer 40,000 - Rogue Trader, one of the worst sets of rules in so many ways (including a horribly shoddy binding that allowed it to fall apart almost immediately). I'd play tabletop 40k today, but I definitely wouldn't go back to Rogue Trader. I sort of miss painting models, but I imagine that would change after I'd primered whatever I thought I would assuage my longing for it.
Magic: The Gathering, and how I miss it. I can't see spending the money, and who would I play? But really it's just the money that is the issue for me. I so enjoyed building decks and trying them out, and all the positive feedback from being perceived as someone who excelled at this game. Something about deck construction and innovating within this game using the limited resources of the card pools available really, really clicked for me in terms of satisfaction.
Stratego! When I was a kid, I loved Stratego. Or rather, I loved the idea of Stratego because I almost never played it. It took so long to set up and play, and rarely was it just me and one other person. And I didn't actually have the game myself. I asked for it for Christmas, but I guess SANTA couldn't read my chicken scratch. Razim frazim. Now I regularly play this game with my son. We play with just half the pieces, so set up time is significantly reduced (and more amusing to me). Half the pieces also means he and I don't have to play with the SAME pieces, that is I can handicap myself to a point where I can then play to win. We have lots of fun with this.
ReplyDeleteSettlers certainly showed me what a board game COULD be. Prior to this, the best game I think I had played was probably Eurorails. It took a while to breakdown Settlers, maybe because we weren't used to analyzing board games back then (and btw, Settlers comes down to this: brick early, stone late).
Axis and Allies, for war games, this was miles ahead of what I'd seen before (Risk anyone?). It got pretty predictable though, the initial moves were pretty standard, and the winner tended to be the side that rolled best on the R&D table. Heavy Bombers for the win.
Also Talisman, which i discussed on thanksgiving :) I didn't know what a game could be. It's like there was Monopoly or Chess, and nothing in between.
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