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My assumption is that war games like this are generally complex and would be difficult for the non-boardgame player to just jump into. Arm I wrong about this?

My assumption is that war games like this are generally complex and would be difficult for the non-boardgame player to just jump into. Arm I wrong about this? Is there a satisfying option in the genre that could be played by - say - a clever 12 year old?

protomyth 6y ago
I think Harpoon can be done by a clever 12 year old. Its not Squad Leader after all. Its more a carefully walk through the steps type thing.
mcguire 6y ago
Harpoon (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/300724/harpoon-v-modern-tactical-naval-combat-1955-2020 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/300724/harpoon-v-modern-...) isn't necessarily the most complex of the games, but it's not the least complex either. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1008/nautical/linkeditems/boardgamecategory?pageid=1&categoryfilter=1069 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1008/nautical/li... is a list of the modern naval games on BGG. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything that I recognize as a good game (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2073/sixth-fleet-modern-naval-combat-mediterranean https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2073/sixth-fleet-modern-... is popular, with the recent resurgence of late-Cold War games) and is not excessively complex. If you go back to WWII, there are more options (and many more games). I'll just make one suggestion: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3670/battlewagon https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3670/battlewagon (A print-n-play edition is available from WargameVault.) (It's moistened Star Fleet Battles, if you know that game.) Note: if you're talking about wargames in general, the sky's kinda the limit. How about another suggestion: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6544/battle-moscow https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6544/battle-moscow, which is old, but intended to be an introductory game, is freely available (https://grognard.com/bfm/game.html https://grognard.com/bfm/game.html), and has a really spiffy online verion (https://oberlabs.com/b4m/ https://oberlabs.com/b4m/).
- ghaff 6y ago
  This is one of my favorite threads about a board wargame ever: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/371289/1914-jim-dunnigans-guided-tour-hell https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/371289/1914-jim-dunnigans-g... "This game should have been produced 55 years earlier and the General Staffs of the major combatants forced to play it at least 12 times before actually going to war. They may have been too old to begin a war at that point."
megameter 6y ago
I still have a copy of Totaler Krieg! My brother and I tried to play it once, in the 90's. We did not finish setup before dinner, and decided to give up and relinquish the table. It's classified as being in the middle of the spectrum of difficulty. Despite that failure, I don't regret the experience. It produced a tangible connection between the computer wargames I had been playing and the history behind those. It's a different kind of way to think about play, and it helps to imagine you're back in 1970 and computers are a thing only really available for Serious Projects, and working through a simulation with maps and minatures and calculation tables is the next best thing. Spending most of the day setting up the board made sense. A 12-year-old could do it, but Fortnite is more immediately gratifying. Part of what killed wargaming as a major tabletop genre is that computers are better at being simulators of the "noisy" elements of warfare. On some level, you know that ranking a unit with "attack" and "defense" ratings is going to be bullshit. If you make up more numbers and add more tables and put more rules in the game - which is what the complex end of wargames did - that doesn't make it better, but if you take an approach where physical reality is referred to as often as possible(which you can do in real-time on a computer), you can make a claim to accuracy emerging from that. What tabletop has done since then is to get better at being a more immediate experience and to convey things in broad strokes of abstraction, instead of setting up dozens of units and running calculations of troop morale and weather.

protomyth 6y ago

I think Harpoon can be done by a clever 12 year old. Its not Squad Leader after all. Its more a carefully walk through the steps type thing.

mcguire 6y ago

Harpoon (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/300724/harpoon-v-modern-tactical-naval-combat-1955-2020 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/300724/harpoon-v-modern-...) isn't necessarily the most complex of the games, but it's not the least complex either. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1008/nautical/linkeditems/boardgamecategory?pageid=1&categoryfilter=1069 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1008/nautical/li... is a list of the modern naval games on BGG. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything that I recognize as a good game (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2073/sixth-fleet-modern-naval-combat-mediterranean https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2073/sixth-fleet-modern-... is popular, with the recent resurgence of late-Cold War games) and is not excessively complex. If you go back to WWII, there are more options (and many more games). I'll just make one suggestion: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3670/battlewagon https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3670/battlewagon (A print-n-play edition is available from WargameVault.) (It's moistened Star Fleet Battles, if you know that game.) Note: if you're talking about wargames in general, the sky's kinda the limit. How about another suggestion: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6544/battle-moscow https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6544/battle-moscow, which is old, but intended to be an introductory game, is freely available (https://grognard.com/bfm/game.html https://grognard.com/bfm/game.html), and has a really spiffy online verion (https://oberlabs.com/b4m/ https://oberlabs.com/b4m/).

ghaff 6y ago
This is one of my favorite threads about a board wargame ever: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/371289/1914-jim-dunnigans-guided-tour-hell https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/371289/1914-jim-dunnigans-g... "This game should have been produced 55 years earlier and the General Staffs of the major combatants forced to play it at least 12 times before actually going to war. They may have been too old to begin a war at that point."

megameter 6y ago

I still have a copy of Totaler Krieg! My brother and I tried to play it once, in the 90's. We did not finish setup before dinner, and decided to give up and relinquish the table. It's classified as being in the middle of the spectrum of difficulty. Despite that failure, I don't regret the experience. It produced a tangible connection between the computer wargames I had been playing and the history behind those. It's a different kind of way to think about play, and it helps to imagine you're back in 1970 and computers are a thing only really available for Serious Projects, and working through a simulation with maps and minatures and calculation tables is the next best thing. Spending most of the day setting up the board made sense. A 12-year-old could do it, but Fortnite is more immediately gratifying. Part of what killed wargaming as a major tabletop genre is that computers are better at being simulators of the "noisy" elements of warfare. On some level, you know that ranking a unit with "attack" and "defense" ratings is going to be bullshit. If you make up more numbers and add more tables and put more rules in the game - which is what the complex end of wargames did - that doesn't make it better, but if you take an approach where physical reality is referred to as often as possible(which you can do in real-time on a computer), you can make a claim to accuracy emerging from that. What tabletop has done since then is to get better at being a more immediate experience and to convey things in broad strokes of abstraction, instead of setting up dozens of units and running calculations of troop morale and weather.