Here there be monsters: Empire in Arms and the dream of mega-wargaming

[admin]

So, you’ve spotted a brilliant deal; on Steam, online or right in front of you and just snapped it up. We’ve all been there, there’s no use denying it.

http://www.wargamer.com/articles/empire ... ter-games/

[inktek]

I remember buying Drang Nach Osten, my first monster wargame (and only), back in High School around 1980. We setup for the first turn (which took about a week), cat got on map overnight, enought said. I have learned to appreciate digital wargaming! Must admit I do still like non-monster board wargames.

[dalec]

I have the PC version on my shelf, this is a nice prod for me to get this installed and see how it plays compared to the board game version. Thanks, Great article.

[MGH]

Our local gang of young (at the that time) wargamers had a place where we could keep it set up and we actually played the whole campaign with a player for each of the powers. We tried for one evening session per week and it took us all winter. But we finished it and it was a lot of fun.

I played Turkey and usually lost every war I was involved in but just once I happened to win a major battle against the Austrian Empire and given the Ottoman advantage of cavalry for pursuit mopped up his biggest army with my guys. My shining moment of glory. BTW Napoleon won!

[tdavie]

Streets of Stalingrad. Bought it and set it up at a friend's apartment (hah). We would always start out with beer on a Friday night after work, buy pizza or something and be 'determined' to play the game. We had 4-6 people who would have helped move counters and be order follower.

The beer (and sanity) always took over and we never played the game; always ended up going out to a movie, social or sporting event of some kind.

The game sat there on the ping pong table, taking up a large portion of a studio apartment for quote a while (half a year). One day I ended up at my friend's place and the game was taken down. No one complained, so it was back to 20 board Squad Leader gameres.

Tom

(I miss boardgaming - sorta. Not the necessity of playing the game, but the social aspects. Computers make my life easier (and fun). Having multiple monster wargames setup and fready to go in digital format is just where it's at. The table became as big as the monitor you could afford, and these days its laptops hooked uo via HDMI to a tv)

Tom

[Rockpaw]

Back when I lived in Seattle, I played Empire in Arms with the Metro Seattle Gamers. I don't remember that we actually finished a game, but we tried. We also would set up World in Flames for a few days every Dragonflight convention. Got through 1939 usually... Now that I'm retired and out of the city, I gave my games to a fellow who's still playing but I do enjoy the memories. Ah, and lest I forget, a team of about 5 of us once played World in Flames through to the end in 1945! Took two years of real time - still less than the actual war.