In the world of war games, Volko Ruhnke has become a hero • Hacker News Board

Re: In the world of war games, Volko Ruhnke has become a hero

#21

Post by Tloewald » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 2:34 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #14

kriro wrote: post #5

Labyrinth is indeed brilliant. The best wargames recreate history and suck you in. Twilight Struggle is another excellent example. But that's also the highest level of complexity I'll tolerate. Friends of mine enjoy the super detailed a rule for everything games but I think those are better left for the digital realm...just too fiddly for my taste. I'm an avid gamer (>150 games in my collection) but I only own three…

I found the COIN games (or at least Andean Abyss and Cuba Libre) to be both easier and less Risk-esque than Twilight Struggle. They're not complicated like hex-and-counter wargames, and instead of having a million rules exceptions to maintain historicity, all of the history is in the cards, leaving the board and player options to be more clean, orthogonal and euro-esque.

The design certainly sounds elegant and intriguing. I'm going to have to buy one. I used to be an avid wargamer, but my tolerance for convoluted rules has been sapped (ASL was the end for me).

Re: In the world of war games, Volko Ruhnke has become a hero

#22

Post by oblat3 » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 6:01 AM UTC

What is interesting about volko is that he was the the deputy head for terrorism in the middle east for the CIA during the bush era. The CIA claimed it was a time when they were pushed unwillingly into providing bad analysis and shonky evidence to support the neocons worldview. So when in 2010 volko designs a game where muslim states that are not pro american are necessarily pro-terrorist, a key part of the justification for the attack on Iraq - its pretty clear that there were resonably senior CIA analysts who were hard core neocons and remain so.

Re: In the world of war games, Volko Ruhnke has become a hero

#23

Post by david_parrott » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 2:14 PM UTC

roberthahn wrote: post #9

kriro wrote: post #5

Labyrinth is indeed brilliant. The best wargames recreate history and suck you in. Twilight Struggle is another excellent example. But that's also the highest level of complexity I'll tolerate. Friends of mine enjoy the super detailed a rule for everything games but I think those are better left for the digital realm...just too fiddly for my taste. I'm an avid gamer (>150 games in my collection) but I only own three…

I'm not a war gamer (Steam is my favourite game these days) but I've played Maria and it is brilliant. I wish it could play within 90 minutes though. Those of you who played Twilight Struggle might also know of a similar game called "1960: The Making of the President". First time I played that I was Kennedy and beat my opponent (Nixon). By one seat. Absolutely exciting!

Sadly 1960 is out of print and pain to try and get a copy of.