Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
But say we have the same situation, except in addition to the victory
point that's available for auction there are two other items, one of which
you want (perhaps it's the other half of an item you have that will give
you five victory points when completed). The more dimension there is to
an item that's being bid on, the more information players have to predict
their opponents' behavior.
War Games
Examples:
Squad Leader
,
Ambush!
,
Diplomacy
,
Axis & Allies
,
Risk
,
Memoir '44
In a way, I didn't want to include war games in a separate genre because
war
is really just a theme, not a mechanism (if anything, the mechanisms
of war games could probably be included in my previous section on area-
control games). However, I can't simply ignore the tremendous popular-
ity of this genre, and so for the same reason I included platformers in
Chapter 4,
here it is!
War games are usually (but not always) heavy, long, and complex
simulations. They often simulate real-life historical conflicts, with in-
game mechanisms that attempt to simulate the way actual military
troops, vehicles, and weaponry of the given time period actually worked.
For this reason, they are some of the (if not
the
)
most difficult kinds of
games to get into. In fact, if you don't know someone who's already into
war games, the chances of your getting into them is very slim. With that
said, war games are highly strategic and tactical games with a tremen-
dous number of interesting decisions to make. They are challenging, yet
flexible, and despite their dry presentations they really do allow for cre-
ative play. War games usually take place on a board with a hexagonal
grid, have various campaigns and scenarios to play out, and incorpo-
rate dice rolling into their combat situations.
Advanced Squad Leader
(a more recent version of
Squad Leader
) is probably the world's most
popular war game of its kind.
That's a description of the war gamer's war game. There's also a light-
er breed of war game, the most popular of which is probably
Risk
.
Every-
body knows
Risk
, and love it or hate it (most serious board gamers are in
the latter camp due to the extreme levels of luck involved in the game),
it's likely the world's most well-known war game. You also have some
slightly more elegant, more board game-like (less simulation-like) takes
on the genre with the
Commands & Colors
system and similar systems.
Commands & Colors
is well-known for its use in the popular war games
Memoir '44
and
Commands & Colors: Ancients
.
