Our favorite war board games

[royalpain88]

As a life long gamer, I have many favorites but the one that put me down the road of war gaming in all of its forms is an old Avalon Hill game called Panzer Blitz. My dad could never play it but it took me and my brother little time to play the game and most of the scenarios.

It has come to a point where we are now searching for add ons that Avalon Hill did made as well as getting into miniature war gaming and a great PS2 turn by turn game called Dai Senryaku 7 Exceed. So, what are your favorite war board games?

[dieseltaylor]

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4288/panzer

Now tha was fun

[Michael Emrys]

SPI made a game in 1977 called Cobra that I find myself thinking fondly of. It had a nice balance between historical accuracy and just old-fashioned sheer fun. There are a great many other games by various companies, most of them I admired but did not play a lot. But one by GDW did take up a fair amount of my time and rewarded me handsomely for it. It was called Desert War IIRC and was part of their Europa series of games.

Michael

[Kanonier Reichmann]

For me it was the old Jedko classic (latter re-released under the Avalon Hill banner) of The Russian Campaign. Quite innovative at the time with its second impulse movement for mototrised and Panzer units. Also, although not your classic board wargame it is still a brilliant design of tactical warfare, Avalon Hill's Up Front!

Currently, I very much enjoy the Combat Commander series as well which, I'm pretty sure, borrowed some ideas from Up Front!. It's also hard to go past the WWI strategic game of Paths of Glory with its use of cards to inject a lot of unpredictability into the game.

Regards

KR

[Stalins Organ]

PanzerBlitz was the first boardgame I ever owned some time in the early 70's - I don't recall how I purchased it - probably from the UK using UKL2 postal orders that were virtually the only foreign currency that was obtainable here at the time.

I've had a few memorable games that I recall over the years - I used to play S&T's magazine games a lot, and 2 that stand out are WW1 - which was one of the small games they published with limited map size & counter mix, and "Frederick the Great" (I think) - which was a full sized one - both received many, many replays

Other games that I recall are the "Drag Nach Osten" series - the same friend had it and "Unentschieden" (?) set up in his parents' spare room for a year or 2! And "Russian Civil War" - with players controlling troops of all factions, purges and counter purges, assassinations and the like, all in a game that only ran 5 turns!

and of course a lot of time was spent playing Squad Leader and it's expansions, but I was never really a fan.

More recently "Fall of the Iron Dream" is the only board game I've looked at in the last 10-15 years.

for me they are now just too unwieldy and poor value compared to the electronic versions.

[Michael Emrys]

...The Russian Campaign. Quite innovative at the time with its second impulse movement for mototrised and Panzer units.

Perhaps not quite so innovative as you imagine. SPI had invented the exploitation phase for its Kursk game several years earlier and used it in just about all their operational/strategic games from then on. GDW had also been using it for years in their Europa series of games. The Russian Campaign was actually kind of a late comer in the field, though very popular.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Other games that I recall are the "Drag Nach Osten" series - the same friend had it and "Unentschieden" (?) set up in his parents' spare room for a year or 2!

I don't doubt it. I once figured that assuming one could play every weekend, it would take as long to play through the game as the original war did!

Michael

[Agua]

Yup, Pz Blitz was first wargame I ever owned. My dear late Dad even took the time to play it with me once in a while.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Panzer Leader. I had to con people into playing it with me. I think I only finished two games.

When I bought CMBN and saw the silhouetted unit counters in the UI it really brought back the nostalgia. It's why I can't use Juju's UI mod