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Joe Beese (2)

In 1979, gaming company Avalon Hill (since bought by Hasbro) released a board game based on the popular science fiction novel Dune. Regarded by many as a masterpiece of the form, it is an asymmetrical wargame designed by Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka, the people who created Cosmic Encounter. Six different factions vie for control of the desert planet Arrakis. As WickerNipple notes in his Everything node on the game, “Instead of giving subtle differences to the various factions like most games, Dune gives huge differences and advantages, that don't over-balance things only because every faction receives them.” The thing is, each player has special rules that give them very different options and abilities compared to the other sides, and yet the game remains balanced (especially when played by a full six players). The game has been long out of print due to the Frank Herbert estate refusing to re-license. Fantasy Flight Games is rumored to be working on a release of the game without the Dune license. Importantly, all the necessary files are available on the game's BoardGameGeek page to construct a copy of the game. (Homebrew game board - Rules, cards, counters and extras - Windows freeware game client and server) [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Feb 23, 2011 - 58 comments

In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jan 14, 2011 - 94 comments

Advanced Squad Leader is a tactical-level board wargame, originally marketed by Avalon Hill Games, that simulates actions of approximately company or battalion size in World War II. ... Despite the price tag and the expensive lists of prerequisites for each new module, the game system caught on and new modules continued to be produced twenty years after the original release - a feat unheard of in the board wargaming industry, especially with the decline in sales due to rising popularity of console and PC games. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Mar 22, 2010 - 75 comments

World Wars 2, sequel to the hex-wargame-inspired World Wars, has been released. [more inside]
posted by XMLicious on Aug 9, 2009 - 24 comments

1983: The Brink of Apocalypse -- In 1983 the NATO war exercise Able Archer almost started a nuclear war. Unknown to NATO, just a few months earlier a false alarm had already put the Soviet leadership on edge, and the exercise triggered preparations for a counter attack in the Soviet military. Only a few double agents on each side may have saved the world from nuclear armageddon. [more inside]
posted by empath on Jul 10, 2009 - 32 comments

Even among "monster games", it stands alone. A 7-foot mapsheet. 1,800 counters. 1,500 hours to play. It is SPI's The Campaign for North Africa.
posted by Joe Beese on May 11, 2009 - 89 comments

Playing Kreigspiel on a LAN. Guy Debord created a board game in 1977 called Kriegspiel, a war game ostensibly based on the principles of Clausewitz as articulated in On War. An online version of this game was recently created by the Radical Software Group, and released online. The rules seem slightly more complicated than chess.
posted by dkg on Feb 23, 2008 - 29 comments

A (too?) in-depth article on the IMSAI 8080 featured in the movie WarGames. [more IMSAI images and info at 1000bit, the Obsolete Computer Museum, Erik Klein's Vintage Computers, and good ole' Wikipedia]
posted by jtron on Oct 26, 2007 - 12 comments

DEFCON , based off the real alert levels (and Wargames), is a game about killing innocent civilians.
posted by pantsrobot on Oct 2, 2006 - 60 comments

"The Death of Zarqawi", a computer game which simulates the raid that sent Zarqawi to his 72 virgins. "Created within two weeks of the real-life bombing, the episode allows gamers to join the U.S.-led coalition stationed just outside the house where al-Zarqawi is meeting with other insurgent leaders and choose between two strategies of attack: calling-in the real-life air strike that killed Zarqawi, or an alternate on-foot ambush which involves storming the guarded house and attempting to capture the terrorist leader alive."
posted by Steven C. Den Beste on Jun 30, 2006 - 72 comments

The largest gathering of Navy ships in the Pacific since the Vietnam war is happening right now, off the coast of Guam. Valiant Shield 06, the first in a series of proposed biennial joint war-games, is a massive military training exercise involving three Carrier Strike groups, more than 300 air craft, and 22,000 personnel. While primarily an ASW event, all branches of the military are there practicing one thing or another. The Department of Defense has invited a number of other counties to watch the games, including China for the first time ever. Some believe the game was just designed to put a scare into North Korea (Not true, it's been in planning for a year).

But how does one run a massive war simulation? Well, you just find yourself a copy of OneSAF [FAQ] or JSAF (uh, among others [.ppt-to-html]) and you're good to go. (Previously on Metafilter: MC '02 [2])
posted by Fidel Cashflow on Jun 22, 2006 - 25 comments

90+ Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap buys 100 copies of "Vallee De La Morte", a board game recreation of the battle of Dien Bien Phu There actually are 2 competing board game recreations of the epic 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu which was (by the French):

""....an attempt to interdict the enemy's rear area, to stop the flow of supplies and reinforcements, to establish a redoubt in the enemy's rear and disrupt his lines," says Douglas Johnson, research professor at the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute. "The enemy could then be lured into a killing ground."....Hoping to draw Ho Chi Minh's guerrillas into a classic battle, the French began to build up their garrison at Dien Bien Phu..." General Giap - who led the Vietcong forces in that battle, prefers "Vallee De La Morte". Such games are played with large multicolored paper maps broken up into hexagonal grids, with cardboard pieces representing military units. The rules can be quite complex and some wargames ( such as Drang Nach Osten) have thousands of pieces and take thousands of hours to play (sometimes longer than the actual wars they simulate). More on wargaming.
posted by troutfishing on Apr 26, 2004 - 26 comments

“In a world being torn apart by international conflict, one thing is on everyone’s mind as they finish watching the nightly news: 'Man, this would make a great game.'” ...um, yikes. Playing headline based games could put you in some uncomfortable shoes indeed. I've played wargames that made me really want to not be in a real one - maybe this needn't be as vile a concept at it seems at first blush. But maybe games can't give the nuanced, serious treatment of such topics as, say, movies such as Benini's "Life is Beautiful"
posted by freebird on Nov 8, 2003 - 14 comments

War Games? J.C. Penney, eToys and KB Toys all sell this scary "Military Forward Command Post with Two 12" Military Action Figures", despite the efforts of these shocked consumers who call it an "atrocity". It does sort of look like GI Joes taking over Barbie's bombed-out Dream House... how real is too real?
posted by sparky on Oct 1, 2002 - 38 comments