By Dana Lombardy
War games are useful tools, both for by military professionals and history enthusiasts who wish to study the past. Today, they come in two types: board games and electronic and digital. The interest in applying both kinds to World War One's strategies and battles is growing as is the sophistication of the games.
For the opening article in this series, I'd like to recommend to readers two World War One game reviews, one for a board game and a second one featuring a digital war game. These will help familiarize newcomers on how each type of game works, and how some of the major aspects of World War One are now being built into them. In future articles, I'll present additional games and information on how readers can find other players and competitors, who share your interest in the Great War.
Fields of Despair: France 1914-1918 uses wooden blocks that hide the strengths of units until they engage in combat, simulating the “fog of war”. A video review can be seen HERE.
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| Fields of Despair Display Board |
The Great War: Western Front is a computer game for the PC described by this reviewer as “quite possibly, the finest effort yet” to make a strategy video game about WWI. Read the game review HERE.
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| Note the two British heavy tanks in the lower half of the battlefield display and the German A7V tank at the top |
Our Series Contributor: Dana Lombardy is a Hall of Fame war game designer who created several WWI board games and a card game. His work can found at LombardyStudios.com
I was heavily into Avalon Hill (hex and counter) board games when I was young, which is a bit remarkable as they involve a lot of fractional mathematics and I was never very good at math. Anyhow, for those not familiar with them, they were much, much more complicated than the war games even fairly serious games play today. It's actually somewhat difficult to get them today.
ReplyDeleteThe first one I was ever interested in getting was Avalon Hills 1914, which I saw in a model shop in downtown Denver (it was across from the May D&F) when I was down there with my father. A friend of mine had told me where it was, and we were in Denver for a medical appointment (I had pretty bad asthma at the time). I didn't get it on that occasion, but I really wanted it. I recall it having a cover different than the ones that are featured when I look it up now, in that I think it had a German soldier in a M1916 helmet wearing a gas mask on the box.
The same friend had a simpler game involving World War One aircraft.
Anyhow, good war games really can be a very instructive look into history. Perhaps the greatest one of all is the Avalon Hill The Russian Campaign, which is a favorite. I've played it many times and it gives a really good insight into why Barbarossa was doomed.