The Operational Wargame Series: The best game not in stores now

I have a friend who is very into these types of games, having dedicated about 1200 sq ft of their home to them. The commercial ones are usually centered on specific historic battles, and often follow a sort of "script" where things happen at specific turns e.g. the introduction of new units or weather conditions, that sort of thing.

They seemed interesting, and I came away with two main observations:

1 - A game can take a very very long time. Turns might even take days or weeks on particularly elaborate ones. Thus there is a major time commitment during which you must leave the game out and setup for an extended period of time.

2 - My first thought when encountering these was "why aren't they just using a computer?". But I quickly learned that the ability to spread out a map, that might be many square meters, and see everything happening on it at once, without having to slide a monitor's viewport around (or zoom in and out) has a number of massive advantages -- and (at the time I was looking at this) there's really no display technology today that can replicate this.

I feel like both of these observations have changed significantly with the advent of cheap, high-resolution, networked AR/VR headsets. I don't think I'd want to wear one entirely for the length of time a game might take, but we're much closer now to having truly digital versions of this that eliminate many of the downsides.

The military has a long history of using war games for training, going all the way back to Kriegspiel [1]. At least one history book [2], has been written about the topic. However it is rare that these military training games make it outside of their domain and become available to the general public. A rare exception may be the games designed by Volko Ruhnke [3], who designed games for training the CIA (though these may not be war games per se, but rather games about complex geopolitical situations). Mr. Rhunke's experience led him to become a highly successful commercial game designer.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel

[2]. The Art of Wargaming: A Guide for Professionals and Hobbyists by Peter P. Perla (Author), R. Dawn Sollars (Illustrator)

[3]. https://spyscape.com/article/meet-the-cia-spy-who-creates-wa...

It may not be immediately obvious, but these are not "games" in the hobbyist sense of the word (though I suppose hobbyists may get interested, though access to this one in particular seems to be restricted to the military) but "simulations" for teaching and training.

They are not supposed to be "fun". They are supposed to be analysis tools. Their goal is different to a wargame for hobbyists, where "playability" is usually a greater factor than the simulation of real war concerns.

That's why it's OK that in a single day you can get one or two turns done. It's not a game, people who attend these exercises are doing work-related stuff.

That's why it's also "not in stores".

> "The turns do not take very long at all and teams of players can get in 2-3 turns in a normal work day."

Game does sound very cool, but lol, author has different game-playing expectations than I do.

For anyone looking to dip their toes into Wargaming, I encourage you to look at GMT Game's output. They have a ton of games like this of varying levels of complexity. The best way to get started is to try to find a game around a theme you're interested in. These games are all (largely) in stores:

https://www.gmtgames.com/

Even simultaneous turn based strategy games take hours. I cannot imagine the time commitment for non-computer managed strategy games. I also don’t understand the point unless it’s mostly about face to face interaction.

Might not qualify, but a few years back, my team started playing diplomacy online. I had never played a game involving so much back channel negotiation, double crossing, and strategy. It had a funny effect on water cooler conversations because folks that I had a great relationship with would approach me with a noticeable air of disappointment as a result of some of my less than honorable decision making. I highly recommend this game to anyone with a group of friends looking for a turn based war game spanning many days.

Can't open the page as of now, suspiciously look like just got attacked (they use wp). For anyone interested here the archive https://web.archive.org/web/20240630013513/https://nodicenog...

Think we killed it :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A7JZ4MjIMM 2h video about the game in great details by its creator Tim Barrick (July 2021)

I was the author of the article... AMA

That looks like civilization but as a board game.