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Thirsty Dog posted:Anyway. Hello thread. I am looking for some clarity on war games and what my options are. I play a lot of miniatures and board games of varying complexity and as part of that I've really enjoyed light stuff like Cousin's War and March of Progress. I've been meaning to pick up Sekigahara for ages, too. Cuba Libre is the standard intro recommendation, Andean Abyss is simple too as the origin of the series. Anything with detailed combat resolution goes to the trickier end of the spectrum, and Pendragon is in an enclosure of its own. But there's other stuff! Brief Border Wars isn't pretty, but light, and every turn is an optimisation puzzle. Costs <$50 in sales. Warriors of God is all about breezily rolling dice through two wars so long the kings who start them die of old age before the end. The recent War of the Triple Alliance is pretty, and presents a spectacular shitshow of a war in a reasonable rules volume. 300 Earth & Water is a short little intro to card-driven stuff. Land and Freedom is war-adjacent, almost co-op, will get you angry at your partners, and has a solo mode.
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May 20, 2023 14:22
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Beffer posted:What is the thread view on the Undaunted games? I can pick up Stalingrad for 90 roobucks which seems good value. I know it’s a deck builder not hex and counter but how does it feel as a war game? My wife will play it, smallish foot print, fun, low cranial overhead; get it
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May 20, 2023 19:13
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Thirsty Dog posted:I've been meaning to look into more wargames for either solo or duel (or even co-op if that's a thing!) and am familiar with the existence of COIN games as something that might work for me. But the level of complexity and difficulty of these games is sometimes difficult to work out. Is there anywhere - even a list or category on BGG - where popular war games are accurately summarised in terms of their complexity and play length? I don't think there's anything better than looking at some reviews and seeing if they talk about the rules, it's not like there's an objective measure for game complexity(except rulebook page count I guess). You can roughly say that there are some super complicated games(like ASL), then simpler/starter type games(SCS series for example), but the vast majority of games fall somewhere between those extremes. If it's a game that interests you, you'll learn it eventually, so I wouldn't avoid anything just because you are worried about rules. (Assuming of course that the rules are written at least minimally competently, there certainly are games that are nearly unplayable because of terrible rulebooks)
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May 20, 2023 19:28
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Yo everyone making GBS threads on ASL for being super complex just play Starter Kit 1 *cries*
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May 20, 2023 20:22
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Tekopo posted:You will get some shitters going "it's not a real wargame" out in the wider wargaming community, but Undaunted games are pretty good, extremely playable, and I would recommend them. Even if it is a good game, it does not make it a wargame.
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May 20, 2023 22:48
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It's a game. It's about war. Good enough for me.
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May 20, 2023 23:07
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It's only a real Wargame if it was manufactured in the Wehrgæme region of Alsace, otherwise it's just sparkling hexfights.
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May 20, 2023 23:13
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Honestly, when people ask how to get into wargames, I generally think about it more by their historical interest and theme, moreso than outright complexity. Hitting someone with a "starter wargame" they're not interested in isn't really much better than giving them something too complex.
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May 21, 2023 11:19
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100% agreed. Plausibly the way to go is a system that spans a ton of periods, of course. C&C, for example, or Columbia block games, though those two happen to be systems I didn't enjoy my plays of, ironically enough.
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May 21, 2023 12:04
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silvergoose posted:100% agreed. Plausibly the way to go is a system that spans a ton of periods, of course. C&C, for example, or Columbia block games, though those two happen to be systems I didn't enjoy my plays of, ironically enough. Does the men of iron Tri-Pak count? I’m really seriously considering it, and it seems to contain bundles of scenarios with a fairly common ruleset set.
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May 21, 2023 12:21
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Yo everyone making GBS threads on ASL for being super complex just play Starter Kit 1 Starter Kit 1 is still incredibly complex
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May 21, 2023 13:37
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Thirsty Dog posted:Starter Kit 1 is still incredibly complex Wh- how?! Moving, shooting, some rout stuff, bingo bango bongo
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May 21, 2023 14:59
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I poo poo on ASL for being extremely inelegant and tedious
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May 21, 2023 15:45
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Panzeh posted:Honestly, when people ask how to get into wargames, I generally think about it more by their historical interest and theme, moreso than outright complexity. Hitting someone with a "starter wargame" they're not interested in isn't really much better than giving them something too complex. This has been my experience with all games. If they're interested and you picked a "good" game, they'll make the climb, and if they're not interested, it doesn't matter how "starter" or "casual" the game is. If it's a long/complex game, you can tell them that up front and say you'll play a partial game, or start over when they think they've grasped enough to make that worth it.
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May 21, 2023 15:57
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Tevery Best posted:I poo poo on ASL for being extremely inelegant and tedious I don't think 'elegant' was even conceived of as a design goal in that era. I've never played, but my understanding is ASL delivers what it sets out to do and found an audience, which is all a designer can really hope for.
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May 21, 2023 15:59
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An audience of weirdos that still curses this thread to this day. I'm joking
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May 21, 2023 16:27
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Wh- how?!  Incredibly complex.
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May 22, 2023 13:22
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May 22, 2023 13:45
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Thirsty Dog posted:
Why are you posting Starter Kit 4?
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May 22, 2023 13:46
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Do we think ChatGPT could make playing ASL easier? I could imagine being able to ask an AI in natural language questions about rules and getting accurate answers back would make it easier. Essentially getting an answer right away instead of waiting for a grognard on con sim world or BGG to answer your rules question. I suppose the same would hold true for other complicated games, ASL just seems like the poster child as such.
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May 22, 2023 13:52
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ChatGPT as it currently stands will give you as many wrong answers as right answers. It doesn't intrinsically know if a rule is wrong or right.
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May 22, 2023 13:53
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A Strange Aeon posted:Do we think ChatGPT could make playing ASL easier? I could imagine being able to ask an AI in natural language questions about rules and getting accurate answers back would make it easier. God I hate ChatGPT and everyone on the discord tries to use it for making scenarios or playing and it sucks and is dumb and bad and everyone's all "look at me being clever tee-hee, I made a robot play my game" instead of just writing code
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May 22, 2023 13:54
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If you managed to get gpt-4 to play ASL, you could then get another to play against it and never have to bother with ASL again!
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May 22, 2023 14:16
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Tevery Best posted:If you managed to get gpt-4 to play ASL, you could then get another to play against it and never have to bother with ASL again! 
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May 22, 2023 14:17
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Tekopo posted:ChatGPT as it currently stands will give you as many wrong answers as right answers. It doesn't intrinsically know if a rule is wrong or right. So the real ASL rules pedant experience
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May 22, 2023 14:23
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Why are you posting Starter Kit 4? Oh, my bad - didn't realise I'd gotten the wrong link. Is SK1 significantly less complex than that?
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May 22, 2023 15:35
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Tevery Best posted:I poo poo on ASL for being extremely inelegant and tedious It's a game about WWII infantry combat that can not figure out how a WWII German squad worked.
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May 22, 2023 17:11
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Looks like MMP has added some new preorders this month: there's OCS Crimea which is another OCS east front one mapper with a ton of scenarios, and BCS Valley of Tears which covers the entire Yom Kippur war at BCS scale with three maps for Suez and one for Golan. I think I read somewhere that MMP has a faster preorder-to-printing process for The Gamers series games since they always make their preorders, so hopefully these will be printed sometimes this year. I'm just going to keep buying every BCS game that gets released since I love the series so far.
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May 22, 2023 21:58
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Thirsty Dog posted:Oh, my bad - didn't realise I'd gotten the wrong link. Is SK1 significantly less complex than that? Yes
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May 22, 2023 22:04
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SK4 has a 32-page rulebook, SK1 has a 12-page rulebook.
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May 22, 2023 22:52
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Right, but that could easily be just more mechanics rather than increasing complexity. Like if SK1 doesn't have stuff likequote:Height Advantage and Hill LOS Example Which appears to be just standard infantry and LOS stuff that I figured would be the same in SK1, then I'm definitely keen to take a look!
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May 22, 2023 22:57
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Obfuscation posted:Looks like MMP has added some new preorders this month: there's OCS Crimea which is another OCS east front one mapper with a ton of scenarios, and BCS Valley of Tears which covers the entire Yom Kippur war at BCS scale with three maps for Suez and one for Golan. I'll probably get Crimea, but I already own too many BCS games I haven't played yet to get VoT. He says as he greedily eyes Race for Bastogne despite only ever having played 1 scenario from Greatest Day.
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May 22, 2023 23:04
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But why play ASL when CCE gives you the same experience with a fun deck? It’s neat when both you and your opponent know you haven’t pulled the boxcars card.
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May 23, 2023 03:06
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Dr. Lunchables posted:But why play ASL when CCE gives you the same experience with a fun deck? It’s neat when both you and your opponent know you haven’t pulled the boxcars card. My opponent drew the snake eyes, then gave me the grenade, and drew the other snake eyes once. It meant my flamethrower torched his important stack and basically decided the match. Felt good for me and I'm sure it was very memorable for him!
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May 23, 2023 12:07
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What’s is Unconditional Surrender like for solo play?
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May 25, 2023 17:19
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Southern Heel posted:What’s is Unconditional Surrender like for solo play? very good! no hidden info to work around and a good range of scenarios to get through. it works great solo.
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May 25, 2023 19:06
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Sleekly posted:very good! no hidden info to work around and a good range of scenarios to get through. it works great solo. That’s great to hear that’s basically what I’m after I think in a war game. This might be a bit out there, but is there something in an earlier period which matches the style of this game? If I had to pick a period, World War II is probably the one which I’m least interested in!!!
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May 25, 2023 20:07
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the same guy was working on a WW1 game i think but not sure where its at.
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May 25, 2023 23:21
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Salvatore Vasta. It's called Armistice! World War 1 in Europe -- it's using the same system -- but I don't know where it is in the GMT dev pipeline.
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May 26, 2023 02:25
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I just remember that because the title is clever
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May 26, 2023 02:53
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