Running since late 2006 under a Creative Commons license, Erfworld has now reached the end of book 1 in 150 pages of layered, fantasy roleplaying game ruled, pop-culture fuelled writing and consistently good, disarmingly cute artwork. [more inside]
posted by Molesome on May 26, 2009 - 45 comments

Almost-Friday-Flash-Fun: Hex Empire. A simple but engaging hexagon based strategy game. (via)
posted by Caduceus on Mar 19, 2009 - 42 comments

The Space Game -- Friday U.S. Federal Holiday Flash Fun. This Flash game combines the resource gathering and management of a standard strategy game with the tower-defendiness of a tower defense game. Build a network of mining stations and solar collectors, and protect them from pirate raiders with repair stations and missile and laser turrets.
posted by CrunchyFrog on Feb 16, 2009 - 22 comments

Nano War: Infectious Flash Fun. Colonize blobs, send swarms, and win superior numbers. Free multi-player and level editor. Dangerously addictive. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk on Dec 5, 2008 - 24 comments

Enjoy Risk? Then you may like Strategy Game Network [requires registration.] Strategy Game Network has similar gameplay and in addition to the classic map, there are many alternative maps. With 24 hour turn limits it isn't a huge time sink, just play a few minutes a day.
posted by schyler523 on Nov 14, 2008 - 18 comments

Oiligarchy is a resource management game reminiscent of their earlier McDonald's Game. Build your empire and keep the shareholders (all old, bald, white men) happy. Social activism wrapped inside an (admittedly simplified) game! via [more inside]
posted by Eideteker on Nov 14, 2008 - 27 comments

The A-11 Offense (All Eleven Players Potentially Eligible) is a new, scrimmage-kick formation based, offensive system in football... The Football Math.
posted by bigmusic on Sep 26, 2008 - 33 comments

John McCain was trained as a fighter pilot. Fighter pilot training is greatly influenced by John Boyd, who developed the OODA loop theory, which some say General Petraeus has adapted to the ground in Iraq, the real reason "the surge" appears successful. The OODA loop has been applied to business, computer security and now it appears that McCain is applying it to politics with some success. [more inside]
posted by jrishel on Sep 11, 2008 - 97 comments

Fortunes are rarely won by playing it safe. On the contrary, the biggest fortunes have been won by those willing to step outside the box and change the way the game is played. Following are twenty-five business innovators of the past, present, and future whose stories are different in many respects, but all point to the same truth: Ingenuity, improvisation, and daring are more important than following the rules (even though you might find yourself on the wrong side of the law once in a while). Via Fortune. [more inside]
posted by infini on Aug 2, 2008 - 31 comments

The Last Stand 2 is a Flash game in which you play the survivor of a zombie apocalypse. During the day you search for supplies and other survivors; during the night you must fend off the zombies. Make it to Union City in 40 days. (via)
posted by whir on May 2, 2008 - 43 comments

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, "International Chess" was the only widely known chess variant in the West. It had its problems. People tried to solve them. Of course, they could just play xiangqi instead. There's also janggi, Makruk, and the granddaddy of them all, chaturanga. Perhaps the most refined game in the family, however, is Japanese Chess--shogi. [more inside]
posted by sonic meat machine on Feb 15, 2008 - 9 comments

The Cabinet Office in the UK has published "Future Strategic Challenges for Britain" [full pdf, summary pdf, website], a 180-page document which summarises current futures thinking in the UK Government, with a horizon of about 20 years. It includes predictions on big issues such as democratic participation, foreign affairs, climate change, family life and public services.
posted by athenian on Feb 8, 2008 - 6 comments

Warbears Mission 3 is finally ready, just in time for Flash Friday*. Previously. [more inside]
posted by kisch mokusch on Nov 15, 2007 - 15 comments

...The U.S. has probably not yet fully woken up to the appalling fact that, after a long period in which the first motto of its military was "no more Vietnams," it faces another Vietnam. There are many important differences, but the basic result is similar: The mightiest military in the world fails to achieve its strategic goals and is, in the end, politically defeated by an economically and technologically inferior adversary. Even if there are no scenes of helicopters evacuating Americans from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, there will surely be some totemic photographic image of national humiliation as the U.S. struggles to extract its troops. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have done terrible damage to the U.S. reputation for being humane; this defeat will convince more people around the world that it is not even that powerful. And Bin Laden, still alive, will claim another victory over the death-fearing weaklings of the West.

Iraq hasn't even begun (more within)
posted by y2karl on Jul 22, 2007 - 148 comments

"You're a goddamn cheat Chris!"* were a string of words shouted at most of my childhood family reunions. For decades the males of my extend family have vented their most masculine, primordial, and often intoxicated angst around this small board. Today we find ourselves dispersed - DC, Florida, Rwanda, Los Angeles, etc - unable to throw temper tantrums over the loss Irkutsk. That is, until we discovered: THE CONQUER CLUB

_{* I have no relation to these people}
posted by Dr.James.Orin.Incandenza on Mar 1, 2007 - 37 comments

Machine beaths Man. Deep Fritz (.pdf) has beaten world chess champion Vladimir Kramnikin in Bonn.
posted by four panels on Dec 5, 2006 - 68 comments

Kissinger declares Iraq can't be won. Rep. Hangel, incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means, proposes to reinstate the draft.
posted by bukharin on Nov 19, 2006 - 93 comments

Warbears might be the perfect game. Once you are suitably addicted, feel free to be impatient here.
posted by timory on Sep 2, 2006 - 16 comments

Iran's influence in Iraq has superseded that of the US, and it is increasingly rivalling the US as the main actor at the crossroads between the Middle East and Asia... As a result, the US-driven agenda for confronting Iran is severely compromised by the confident ease with which Iran sits in its region... The report also looks into the ideology of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and unpicks Iran’s complicated power structure. It claims that despite his popularity, Ahmadinejad neither holds an insurmountable position within Iran nor commands universal support for his outspoken foreign policy positions... On hostility with the US, the report argues that while the US may have the upper hand in ‘hard’ power projection, Iran has proved far more effective through its use of ‘soft' power. The report also holds a cautious view of the Iran-Israel relationship. It outlines four future scenarios for the relationship between the two states, one of which is the creation of a ‘cold-war’ style nuclear stand-off should Iran achieve nuclear capability.

Iran, its Neighbours and the Regional Crises
(full report in pdf)
See also Iran now the key power in Iraq, says UK think-tank
See also Iran 'boosted by war on terror'
posted by y2karl on Aug 23, 2006 - 21 comments

Laws for an Outlaw Culture. Robert Greene is an unlikely guru for the Hip Hip Nation - a geeky white freelance writer & filmmaker. But his 48 Laws of Power have been embraced by the movers & shakers in the Hip Hop scene as their path to personal power. He's also written another book you may have heard of, The Art of Seduction. And he's just started his own blog.
posted by scalefree on Jul 12, 2006 - 27 comments

Stealing al-Qa`ida's Playbook (PDF)
If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete. - Sun Tzu

In 2005 Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies & West Point's Combating Terrorism Center worked together to translate what appears to be one of the most important works defining al Qaeda's strategic goals & methods, Management of Savagery (PDF) by al Qaeda strategist Abu Bakr Naji. Then they analyzed it along with three other al Qaeda works: Knights Under The Banner of The Prophet by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Between Two Methods by Abu Qatada and Observations Concerning the Jihadi Experience in Syria by Abu Mus’ab al-Suri. The result is Stealing al-Qa`ida's Playbook (PDF) (also Google cached HTML). If you want to understand more of al Qaeda than the simplistic cant that "they're evil", these two books are the place to start.
posted by scalefree on Jun 27, 2006 - 26 comments

Some facts about Latinos and immigration, and chances are good they haven't been mentioned at all during coverage of the "immigration crisis" . (and take a stroll down memory lane to past GOP platform statements on the issue)
posted by amberglow on Mar 30, 2006 - 110 comments

Hnefatafl is an anglo-norse boardgame whose many variants are mentioned in the sagas (wearing a helmet during play is entirely optional) . Chess superseded it during the rennaisance, but Scholarly work has allowed the rules to be deduced in modern times, mainly on the basis of a 1732 diary account written by Linnaeus (he of the botanical naming system).

And now, thanks to the magic of the internet, you can play online.
posted by apodo on Mar 28, 2006 - 17 comments

National Strategery for Victory in Iraq. Some might recommend having a strategy for victory before the war starts, but President Bush unveiled our National Stategy for Victory in Iraq (deconstructed here) today at another recitation of his "major speech" on Iraq at a captive audience at a military installation. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha on Nov 30, 2005 - 85 comments

Arimaa is the first game designed specifically to be hard for computers to play, while easy for people. With its billions of combinations and push-me-pull-you gameplay conditional value strategy, it's too much for brute force computing. And yet, it's simple enough for a child to play (or at least to explain). Play it now against people from all over the world (and lackwit computors).
posted by klangklangston on Aug 22, 2005 - 103 comments

In case the Downing Street Papers weren't enough: US State Dept. documents from the National Security Archive, obtained thru a Freedom of Information Act: State Department experts warned CENTCOM before Iraq war about lack of plans for post-war Iraq security, Planning for post-Saddam regime change began as early as October 2001, and ...They provide detail on each of the working groups and give the starting date for planning as October 2001. Entire sections of a Powerpoint presentation the State Department prepared on November 1, 2002 -- including those covering "What We Have Learned So Far" and "Implications for the Real Future of Iraq" -- have been censored as still-classified information. ... (PDFS)
posted by amberglow on Aug 17, 2005 - 41 comments

Neo-Nazis and Minutemen --What's going on, of course, is that the Minutemen provide an ideal opportunity for white racists to "mainstream" their agenda, using the relatively benign "average citizens" that Lou Dobbs exclusively observes in their ranks as just so much cover. "Illegal immigration" has become a hot-button wedge campaign issue for the GOP in 06, and the latest incarnation of their "Southern Strategy" (now called "wrong", but still very much in evidence)
posted by amberglow on Aug 9, 2005 - 118 comments

It turns out the Osborne Effect has nothing to do with Osborne, after all. Conventional wisdom has it that Apple's announcement of long-term plans to move to Intel will dramatically hurt the company in what is termed the "Osborne Effect", after the 1980s British computer company that seemingly went bankrupt due to announcing new products so soon that no one would buy anything.
posted by Rothko on Jun 22, 2005 - 19 comments

A distinction between “old” and “new” wars is vital. “Old wars” are wars between states where the aim is the military capture of territory and the decisive encounter is battle between armed forces. “New wars”, in contrast, take place in the context of failing states. They are wars fought by networks of state and non-state actors, where battles are rare and violence is directed mainly against civilians, and which are characterised by a new type of political economy that combines extremist politics and criminality... I argue in this article that the United States viewed its invasion of Iraq as an updated version of “old war” that made use of new technology. The US failure to understand the reality on the ground in Iraq and the tendency to impose its own view of what war should be like is immensely dangerous and carries the risk of being self-perpetuating. It does not have to be this way.
Iraq: the wrong war - Mary Kaldor writes of what was happening in pre-invasion Iraq, what happened thereafter and what the alternatives were. Well, there is always Exit strategy: Civil war. And on that, note this: Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk--a city from which, I am afraid, we will hear more and more as time goes by.
posted by y2karl on Jun 15, 2005 - 20 comments

A new Harper's article by Jeff Sharlet , author of the also-must-read Jesus Plus Nothing. To win a war, you must have an elaborate strategy...
posted by deusdiabolus on May 27, 2005 - 24 comments

It is more likely than not that most of America’s enemies in the near future will continue to be at least as awkwardly and inconveniently asymmetrical as they have been over the past 15 years. However, it would be grossly imprudent to assume that they will all be led by politicians as incompetent at grand strategy as Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic. There is probably a General Aideed lurking out there, not to mention a General Giap. A no-less-troubling thought is recognition of the certainty that America’s strategic future will witness enemies initially of the second-rate, and eventually of the first... One may choose to recall the old aphorism that “unless you have fought the Germans, you don’t really know war.” That thought, though one hopes not its precise national example, holds for the future.

How Has War Changed Since the End of the Cold War?  The answer seems to be not that much at all: The truth of the matter is that war is not changing its character, let alone miraculously accomplishing the impossible and changing its nature.
posted by y2karl on Mar 15, 2005 - 8 comments

Thinking Machine 4 explores the invisible, elusive nature of thought. Play chess against a transparent intelligence, its evolving thought process visible on the board before you.

From Martin Wattenberg (with Marek Walczak); they have been noted here before.
posted by e.e. coli on Oct 27, 2004 - 11 comments

Most gamblers will laugh at the idea that there exists a scientific method to (legally) beat a casino roulette.

Well, it turns out that they are wrong. (Here is a PDF file with more details, in Spanish)

Mileage may vary
posted by magullo on Jun 24, 2004 - 30 comments

Disappearing the Dead: 'casualty agnosticism', and the Idea of a `New Warfare' A new report ( See Boston Globe story ) by the Project on Defense Alternatives details how, in promoting it's "New [sanitized] Warfare" concept, the Pentagon has refused to release it's estimates of civilian casualties and sought to "sink the whole issue of war casualties in an impenetrable murk of skepticism" (also with the aid of Psyops campaigns). This has, the report claims : 1) made the postwar stabilization in Afghanistan and Iraq far more difficult and 2) damaged the U.S.' international reputation. [ via Cursor ]
posted by troutfishing on Feb 20, 2004 - 37 comments

"Shock and Awe" is the concept behind the Pentagon's planned, "Hiroshima like" attack on Baghdad. "Carpet bombing" was the concept's name in the old days, and was responsible for 125,000 civilian deaths in Dresden. Precision carpet bombing - condonable strategy?
posted by RichLyon on Jan 27, 2003 - 100 comments

Is Preemption a Nuclear Schlieffen Plan? The greatest and most difficult task facing a statesman in international affairs is reconciling the natural tension between the constructive nature of a nation's grand strategy with the destructive character of its military strategy. The emerging doctrine of preemption should be examined in the context of this challenge. With this in mind, the author continues with a "Dr. Strangelove" type warning. Are our leaders "doing themselves in" (and us with them) in the current 'war' on terrorism?
posted by tgrundke on Aug 21, 2002 - 12 comments

The clash of battling war plans. "Imagine Operation Overlord for D-Day splashed all over the front page of the New York Times. Unthinkable, you say. Then imagine the German high command's plans to repulse the Allied invasion announced by Adolf Hitler himself in a meeting with his closest advisers and then leaked to a London newspaper. Equally unthinkable. But this is how the invasion of Iraq by the United States and Saddam's plans to counterattack have been played out in the New York Times and a Kuwaiti newspaper â?? all before a single shot has been fired." First there was the parade of leaks from the U.S., even an influential insider making predictions on TV. Then there was the apparent counterleak of Saddam's war plan. What is going on? Is the Iraqi leak credible? And if so, what price are American civilians going to pay?
posted by homunculus on Jul 24, 2002 - 18 comments

Hexxagon , yeah, so its not friday flash, but it's sure a good way to waste a few hours on a tuesday afternoon or a wednesday morning. great game with some real strategy involved.
posted by sixtwenty3dc on May 28, 2002 - 11 comments

Taliban Withdrawal Was Strategy, Not Rout
posted by Oxydude on Nov 14, 2001 - 30 comments

US is just playing around, says Northern Alliance. [in news.telegraph.co.uk via Drudge]
posted by rushmc on Oct 18, 2001 - 18 comments

Another weblog goin' down. There are almost too many of these to mention these days, but I hope I can be excused for thinking this one is special: Tomalak's Realm is shutting its doors on Friday after two and half years and almost ten thousand links. A genuinely useful site, with lots of attention to detail. Thanks to Lawrence for all the work.
posted by rodii on Jun 4, 2001 - 20 comments