Friday, May 20, 2022

A simple game from simpler times

I would never say simple times, since times are never simple.  Some times, however, are more simple than others.  I would say the years of my youth, before people could be fired for suggesting men cannot have babies, was on the simpler side of the chronological slide rule. 

One point in that period of my life came after my first year of college.  While my interests in history by then had swung to the more medieval, I never really lost my fascination for studying the Second World War.  At that time, this interest was renewed by those new personal computers that were all the rage.  While no doubt there were practical uses for home computers, there were also games aplenty.  One game I purchased was based on Germany's invasion of the USSR in WWII.   That helped rekindle interest in that period of history.  It didn't hurt that I also took an entire college course on the Second World War (it was there that I discovered John Keegan).  

By the end of the year and following summer, I was beginning to browse the books from that class, and look for others to build upon my WWII library.  At that time, it also happened that I learned about a game that had been released called Axis and Allies.  As the name implies, it was a board game based on WWII. 

Years earlier, I had become obsessed with the game RISK.  Sort of wargaming with training wheels.  Nonetheless, I played it every chance  I got with anyone I could browbeat into playing it.  There weren't as many back then, as there would be in my early college days.  Nonetheless, the chances to play were there.

While playing in those early teen years, I developed a desire to see RISK played more in the manner of the Second World War.  I even wrote out a set of rules, replacing the RISK game board with a Mercator Projection map I  owned.  I took it to a local gaming group that met in the basement of our First Federal building.  It was there I first saw that fad game everyone was playing called Dungeons and Dragons.

My interest wasn't in such fantasy fare, however but in peddling my idea for a board game based on WWII.  Me being me, however, I never saw it through.  So I was a bit crestfallen that year after  college when I learned someone else had done what I had thought of (years later I was comforted to learn A&A was actually based on a game published years before I was in high school). 

As I said here, in my youth and even college days, WWII was more or less passé.  A punch line or a neat war to build fanciful action movies or video games around.  Much cultural emphasis was on the sins of America and the Allies.  And Pearl Harbor and D-Day as good as always.  Other than that, until the late 1990s, not much else other than extra emphasis on this or that key anniversary made the papers.  And even those gradually morphed from memories and tributes to lamenting our sins and evils. 

Anyhoo, that summer after my freshman year of college saw all that come back to my mind.  It also made me want to get my hands on the game.  My best friend and I drove all the way to Mansfield to get our hands on it.  He wanted to get another game, but one in the same series, called Fortress America.  In keeping with his interests in the Cold War and all things defending America, it follows a sort of Red Dawn premise where a future America is invaded on three sides.  We played it once, until he became outraged at bad die rolls, grabbed the board, threw it out the back door of his house, lost the pieces, and that was that.

My copy of Axis and Allies fared better.  I'm not the best winner, but I also don't lose my cool and shoot myself in the foot either.  So I had that game with me when my boys came along and became old enough to play.  And play we did.  Over the years we accumulated many version of the A&A game (We find the Anniversary, Pacific and the Guadalcanal versions to be the best).  We've also branched out to other board games and war game.  Some on the extreme side of the complexity scale. More on that down the road.. 

Nonetheless, it's nice to return to the simple play of simpler times.  A few weeks ago, a couple of the boys were here while others were away.  It was raining - because of course it was.  My wife has been working on some projects, so one son decided to get the old original A&A up and play a round.  We did, and it was fun.  And nice.  It brought back memories, as this post demonstrates.  And it was quite enjoyable.

Alas, simplicity has its limits.  After the game, it was decided to get the anniversary version.  This time all the boys set aside time to play, and it went on for days.  My second and third son and me were the allies, being Britain, America and Russia respectfully.  My oldest and youngest - Germany/Italy and Japan respectfully - were the Axis.  Despite the apparent deficiency with having a twelve year old against three adults, the two held their own

The Anniversary Edition

For the record, the game ended when my oldest and youngest conceded after ten turns - a long game for A&A.  Both of them played quite well, and we were impressed with our youngest's tactical cleverness.  Though he did make a few blunders, including splitting the Japanese fleet early on.  Ironically that was a mistake the Japanese made in the early months of the war leading up to the disaster at Midway.  

My two sons on my team kept the pressure on until they accumulated enough money to overwhelm the other two.  And, if I may, Russia (me) refused to die and kept Germany tied up through the game.  That's unusual because an A&A trope is that if Russia lasts more than five turns it's usually in Berlin.  So that was that.  A fun time overall. 

Some good playing.  And some good memories old and new. 

19 comments:

  1. My buddy LOVES Axis & Allies. I got first exposed to it on his computer when he got a digitized version of it. We tried the A&A + zombies edition that he got for Christmas, and it has an interesting twist.

    As a board game designer and player, A&A I would describe as a game that ends up working against itself. In its commitment to "realism" it always bugged me that often pieces would overflow the game board spaces they are supposed to occupy. You almost HAVE to play the game loose and casual because it is very easy to troll out of control if someone wants to play the overzealous rules-nazi.

    Got to admit I have respect for y'all and some of those war games with the tiny chits representing units. For me, sometimes it feels like a game can reach the point where you're playing more against the rules than against the other players.

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    1. It was actually trudging through the Game of Games we bought for our third son last year that partially led to getting the old A&A out. Some day I'll post on that trudge fest. Two rule books the size of small catalogues and if all maps are used, it could take about two ping pong tables. It's taken him and me close to four months and we're still hashing out the details. After all that, A&A was a pleasant diversion. It's also got the brothers back doing on a routine basis, as sort of final hurrah as our second prepares for his wedding and upcoming move out.

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  2. "As I said here, in my youth and even college days, WWII was more or less passé." Yes, you have said it before. Maybe it was passé in Ohio at that time. So much the worse for Ohio, then. It was not passé in the Florida Panhandle.

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    1. Naturally I can't account for regional variations. I mean the overall social and cultural emphasis. Not that it was all then nothing. In the early 80s it was the 40th anniversary, and there was much emphasis on key dates and events during that time. I recall a major film called The Big Red One. That got press for my generation because young Skywalker was in it. Also there was a big miniseries in the early 80s The Winds of War. So it isn't as if nothing happened regarding WWII after 1976. It's just that by the late 70s Vietnam was overtaking WWII, which had already begun to be marginalized. Another reason was that WWII was the war of 'those old gray haired people.' In the 80s and even 90s, the Boomers where still 'young' and the cultural dichotomy between 'Old/Past/Bad' vs 'Young/Future/Good' was a dominant societal narrative, often used against the GOP (Reagan, Bush, Dole). With Clinton 2016 and Biden, of course, that narrative is dead in the water. But back then? Another reason Vietnam and that era was overtaking WWII and the 40s. Plus, the Boomers were coming into their own in our society, "it was 20 years ago today", and the 60s was becoming the defining decade of American history. Of course another reason WWII made such a comeback in the late 90s could be, beyond generational guilt, a realization by those Boomers that they, too, were getting old. And their precious 1960s era of divine superiority was becoming as old to the kids of the late 90s as WWII was to the kids of my era in the early 70s.

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  3. I wish I had lived back in the days when you could put a swastika on a game and not be labeled a Nazi. De-humanizing Hitler was a huge mistake which will haunt our culture for generations. The Left and Right both bear the blame, WWII being the ultimate political football.

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    1. Yeah, Nazi as 'That person who disagrees with me' was already taking root in my childhood, but it wouldn't become a socially mandated definition until much later. As the Holocaust rose to overtake the rest of the war, the Nazis emerged as the ultimate (and in most cases, only) real evil in the world. At the same time, charges of fascism and white supremacy were already being applied to people who questioned Affirmative Action, or tried to boycott a Madonna album or some such. That's why seeing the purge of television and movies and music and books today, driven by many who tried to link such actions with the century's biggest bad guys, is so stunning. I would put the time in which this trend began around the late 70s to early 80s. Not that it wasn't before, but it began picking up steam then. It really hit its stride in the 90s.

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    2. I read somewhere that the equivalent figure in the 1800s was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. I'm sure a few other characters like Nero, Herod, and Nebuchadnezzar were also used. Today, of course, Pharaoh has been largely humanized, both in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and even more in PRINCE OF EGYPT. It's hard to imagine that happening with Hitler, but maybe it could after he's been dead as long as Ramses had been dead by the 1950s.

      If you remember, Prince Harry was roundly criticized for wearing a Nazi costume to a party. We all know if he had dressed as Satan himself, no one would have batted an eye.

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    3. It makes you wonder. For instance, from the late 70s until just a year or so ago, MLK was practically our Jesus substitute. The man of impeccable peace and love. Since BLM, I've read articles about how MLK was really about making judgments about people based on skin color, and was warming up to the use of the old ultra-violence for getting things done. Plus some now dismiss him as just some huckster who was sleeping around and assaulting women in hotel rooms. And that's sites to the left where he was praised and adored. That's quite a change. So who can guess what Hitler will be - or anyone for that matter. In this day and age, the only thing we can be sure of is being sure of nothing from this generation.

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    4. Yes, well, the real man obviously had his flaws, as do all mere men born in original sin. There is probably an element of truth in the "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character", and an element of truth in the other, as well. Certainly I have heard my whole life of his infidelities and how he was known to cheat on his wife. I'll split the middle and say he was a great American, not a candidate for sainthood, but we can still hope for his soul.

      But the bigger point is not so much about "this generation". In every generation, people (including historians) tend to see history through the lens of their own current events. The "judgment of history" is nonsense; there is only the judgment of historians, who are scarcely better able to judge than any other person in their generation.

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    5. I doubt it'll take more than a couple centuries (if even that) for Hitler to be on the same level bas how we now view Ghengis Kahn. Many historians believe his kill-count was greater than Hitler, yet he's now basically a meme.

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  4. So, what edition would you recommend to start with? My husband says he's played it before and enjoyed it, but we don't own it and I thought it might be a fun Father's Day gift for him to play with the boys. The Anniversary Edition is apparently discontinued and going for several hundred dollars on Ebay and such! :O

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    1. They're checking around. It looks like there might have been some updates on the originals, some tweaking of old rules and bringing things up to date after decades of playtesting. So I'll see and if they figure it out, I'll let you know.

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    2. Hm, perhaps the Europe 1940 one? I think there's a smaller and cheaper "starter" version, but it doesn't look like it would be quite the same and has mixed reviews. If it goes over well, we can get the Pacific one later. It's all a little confusing. ;)

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    3. The boys think the European one was better than the Pacific, though the Pacific side of the Mega-Anniversary edition from a few years ago is better. Overall, they say the Anniversary edition from about a decade and a half ago is the best overall, but it's tough to find. They also say the WWI is both great and bothersome at the same time. A big problem being they skimped on the actual game materials. They said had that not happened, the game itself is one of the best in capturing the 'feel' of the particular period (you literally go turn after turn and get almost nowhere). Likewise, they said the Guadalcanal release was probably the best of that series.

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    4. Just ordered the 1940 Europe Second Edition, so we'll see how that goes. Gotta keep up with the Griffeys in the game department - just kidding. ;) I'd like to encourage more board games, but they do like their video games, which is fine in moderation. We played a co-operative board game the other night, Forbidden Island, which is a bit of a nail-biter - trying to get the treasure and get off the island before it sinks under water.

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    5. Heh. Video games are fine, and I'll sometimes sit down and play through a few of the old PS2s. Our tech obsessed youngest found me a working Atari system complete with several games from the day. I play those with him, and they're not altogether unenjoyable. Forbidden Island is one we have, though I've not played it. Because it is a nail biter, I leave that for them. The latest big game is one based on Lovecraft. I think it's called Eldritch Horror. Lovecraft isn't necessarily my thing, but the game is fun. My third oldest and I have been working on a gargantuan WWII game. We've been trudging through the rules for four months and still haven't figure it out. But I think the 1940 A&A Europe is right up there with their faves.

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  5. All the ones I have from so many years ago. The original was literally that, from the original release in the 80s. Though we did find a later copy. The best, in our opinion, is the Anniversary Edition that came about a decade or so ago. But that was a limited edition and you can't find that - on Ebay it costs a ton. I'll see if my boys have an idea. They keep up with things like that more than I do.

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    1. As long as it's not the "Axis of Evil and International Allies" edition.

      But keep an eye out for this: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/38011/axis-and-allies-civil-war-game/3. It looks cool.

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    2. I know fans have for years pushed them to make a Napoleonic version of the game. I hadn't heard of the Civil War version, but it might be interesting. Their WWI was a game that was great in many ways, but problematic in others. Probably the worst problem was just playing it on the cheap. Sometimes it's clear they just didn't want to spend the money..

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