The NEW New Boardgames Thread

[CountDeMoney]

Why so difficult?  Because people wish it wasn't as boring on the strategic level as it really was.

[Tamas]

Seedy, you know nothing.


Balance of Powers is not perfect by any means, but the effort to play vs. realism achieved ratio is the best of the current offering I think.

La Grande Guerre just blows it out of the water when it comes to simulation value (although there are ways to game its systems), but its a massive monster.

[The Brain]

Does BoP produce a nice Western front experience? So many hexes in the ME, are there enough for the more important parts of NW Europe?

[Berkut]

Paths of Glory certainly qualifies as a decent WW1 grand strategy game.

[The Brain]

Fair or unfair, but CDGs give me a rash.

[Tamas]

Paths of Glory certainly qualifies as a decent WW1 grand strategy game.

It is a great GAME but a horrible SIMULATION of the war

[CountDeMoney]

Seedy, you know nothing.

I know how difficult it is to make a "successful" strategic level WWI game considering the number of titles out there over the last 40 years, which was the question posed--although, for you Eastern Europeans I know it's a topic close to your beeting heart.

[Berkut]

Paths of Glory certainly qualifies as a decent WW1 grand strategy game.

It is a great GAME but a horrible SIMULATION of the war

You are pushing pieces of cardboard around on a map. This is not a simulation.

[frunk]

I don't think there are any good board games that are also good simulations of any large scale (continent+)  conflict.  PoG does as well as most, but it seems like a fool's errand to look for one.  There's always going to be small events that had magnified influence on what happened that are impossible to model without ending up with a mess of a rulebook.

[The Brain]

I think it's certainly possible to have a good enough (seems realistic to a layman with a special interest in the conflict) simulation.

[The Brain]

Paths of Glory certainly qualifies as a decent WW1 grand strategy game.

It is a great GAME but a horrible SIMULATION of the war

You are pushing pieces of cardboard around on a map. This is not a simulation.

I don't see how the sentences connect.

[11B4V]

Paths of Glory certainly qualifies as a decent WW1 grand strategy game.

It is a great GAME but a horrible SIMULATION of the war

Why would you want to simulate the actual war? *snooze fest* If you want the historical outcome, read a book.

[Tamas]

Thanks, it's been a while I read the Paradox boards

But ok, I bite: the point is not to follow history to a script, but to present you with similar dilemmas, and plausible alternatives the real actors had to face. LGG is great in that, BoP is very good. PoG is VERY hit and miss and that is according to its designer.

[Delirium]

If pushing cardboard pieces around on a map is not a simulation, then we need to find another name for Consimworld, among other things. There seems to be some confusion around that term, but never mind.

What I find strange is not that WW1 is hard to simulate but that there is no large scale monster game that is anywhere near as popular as the big ones for WW2? WiF? A3R? ETO/AETO? Not to mention the next level/not so monsterish EastFront/EuroFront, Europe Engulfed, Axis and Allies, Barbarossa to Berlin, etc... Well the list goes on in all different levels.

WW1 has Paths of Glory. La Grande Guerre is obscure, to say the least. Storm of Steel failed, Balance of Powers...dunno.

I don't think it is about trench warfare being boring either, clearly there was enough seesaw fighting in the east and around the Ottoman fronts to make for some interesting maneuvering.

Lack of naval engagements?

The dominance of WW2 in popular history channels?

In my view, constructing a big ass strategy game that has detail and realism, and the chances of being popular, should not be so difficult.

[CountDeMoney]

I think it just comes down to the relative inflexibility of the conflict itself; when the shooting starts, there's no realistic plausible opportunities for alternative strategic courses of action like there is for WW2.