Les the Sarge 9-1b Posted February 17, 2003 Share Posted February 17, 2003 Last night had to visit family. Decided to indulge a bit of pure blind hope. Showed my nephew Strategic Command. Played the game rather fast and without a lot of fuss on minutae. Trashed Poland without much finesse then atacked France again without putting much thought into it. I just wanted him to enjoy me moving things around and shooting up pieces. He said the ultimately most important phrase "this game looks fun". We can only hope he retains the attitude and stays with wargaming. He is in his early teens. His dad's religious beliefs fortunately keep a wide swath of competing game titles out of the home. so wargaming might not have a lot of competition eh. Keep yer fingers crossed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hueristic Posted February 17, 2003 Share Posted February 17, 2003 Yeah i got a Nephew that's 10 and he comes over evey friday(He has no living parents). I play any games he wants and he always wants to play SC. Course it starts giving me bad habits not useing gamey moves on him Lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaMonkey Posted February 17, 2003 Share Posted February 17, 2003 Well I gave two of my nephews (FPS players) SC for Christmas. Showed them how to play and then challenged them any time anywhere. First time they beat me its $20 in their pocket, 2nd time $30, 3rd $40 and so on. Shamed them about their brainless fast fingers and still no takers, but they sure trash talk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Les the Sarge 9-1b Posted February 17, 2003 Author Share Posted February 17, 2003 Now that IS funny sea monkey heheh. I do so love "correcting" the younguns out there on their misconceptions about how much "strategy" they really know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hueristic Posted February 17, 2003 Share Posted February 17, 2003 Originally posted by SeaMonkey: First time they beat me its $20 in their pocket, 2nd time $30, 3rd $40 and so on. Man your setting yourself up with that one lol As you get older and alsiemers sets in they are gonna own the house. Lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Desert Dave Posted February 17, 2003 Share Posted February 17, 2003 Great idea Les :cool: Let's get EVERYBODY hooked on these games... that way, the resulting catharsis will eliminate bristle & bravado and BS all around the town! I recently gave a whole stack of computer games to a nephew and he is really thrilled... he innocently asked for my old board-game of War at Sea and... I just COULDN'T part with it, damn, why on earth would I still be attached to that... I told him he could borrow it but ... maybe I'd leave it to him in my Will... LOL! Heuristic... as for my house, well, it's actually haunted and I had the devil's own time just getting him to put aside youthful superstitions and... adventure on in... :eek: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
openheimer88 Posted February 17, 2003 Share Posted February 17, 2003 It's great to see new folks getting into wargameing as it's an uphill struggle to widen the circle at times. I think games like Combat mission are especially wonderful in that they break free of the ol hexgrids. Although a fun game like SC still can have Hexes and be enjoyable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl G. E. von Mannerheim Posted February 19, 2003 Share Posted February 19, 2003 How old are all of your nephews? As on now i think CvM is the Best SC'er for his age. (15 Next week) cVM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Sutro Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 As wargamers we always have been, and probably always will be, a niche market. Fortunately, direct online sales to the consumer apparantly make it economically viable for people like Battlefront to cater to our niche. In addition they provide a forum where we can discuss the games, as well as any other vaugely game related ramblings (like this) that may cross our minds. This is a great time to be a wargamer! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minotaur Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 I'll be the Devil's advocate on this one... Most wargamers, like myself, tried ol' paper wargames with it's huge, painful rulebooks... Then came wargames on computer... An improvement for us... No more '2-hours-to-prepare-the-map' or 'roll-one-dice-then-add-+1-if...' or 'Oh-God-the-cat-jump-on-Germany!!!'... Computers do all the dirty, boring work, leaving us only the fun of the grand strategy... For us, it's a big step forward because it is easier now to play our favourite passtime... But youngster who learn that computer games are 3D, 16 millons colours clickfest... Will they be able to accept a less spectacular but more challenging type of game???... The more the time pass (and the technology advances) the more I doubt it... We'll see more and more 'Shogun - Total War'-like games (not a bad game, mind you...) and less SC-like games... Oh God!!!... Please prove me I'm wrong... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve C Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Originally posted by Minotaur: I'll be the Devil's advocate on this one... But youngster who learn that computer games are 3D, 16 millons colours clickfest... Will they be able to accept a less spectacular but more challenging type of game???... And that's only if you can drag them away from the PS2. I have a PS2 and an X-box myself, so I enjoy them for their strengths - primarily shooters and driving games. And nothing like lounging on the couch, pop in the disc and the games run without crashing to the desktop, fiddling with the graphics settings to get it to run okay, sound card conflict, etc. But wargaming is for dorks as far as a lot of kids are concerned these days (well, perhaps that's always been the case ). I think I have my work cut out for me convincing my kids that SC is worthy of their attention, when they can be boosting fast cars in Vice City. :eek: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon_j_rambo Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 I miss the classic SquadLeader, Cross of Iron, GI-Anvil. 1) Face-to-face competition 2) get to set-up your own pieces 3) Medium size game took ~3 hours 4) My favorite were the German/Russia scenarios. Germans are outnumbered 3 to 1, but have the 9-2 leader, HMG, in 2nd story building...til the Russians send the swarm. Best thing about computers: 1) FOW, those concealment counters were stupid with no FOW on cardboard games. 2) Can find opponents & smak on the Forums. In the old days if your buddy moves away, no gaming for you. 3) Can save games without sliding in under the couch or table. 4) Don't lose pieces! Don't have to have "Surgeon's hands" to move the 1/3" counters. Remember playing SquadLeader, trying to set up the game searching for one-counter in the bag? Needles in a haystack. 5) I agree with Minotaur: adding up those combat resolution modifiers was a bitch. Language lawyer days reading the rulebook. Stratego 1976 Risk 1979 3R 1981 SquadLeader 1982-1990 Conquistador 1986-1987 Roman Empire 1986 Circus Maximus 1986 Axis & Allies 1988-1992 CivilWar 1990-1994 Railroad Barron 1995 SC 2002-present Axis & Allies Pacific 2002-present Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RommelDAK Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 I'd add one more thing to your plusses of board wargames, john_j: ease of rules tinkering. If you decided that almost ANY aspect of the game wasn't to your liking, it was much easier to tweak it. Some computer games offer some ability to do that, but others (most? ) are just plain tinker unfriendly! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Les the Sarge 9-1b Posted February 20, 2003 Author Share Posted February 20, 2003 Cat comments I love cat comments. A cat would only jump on one of my wargames ONCE. Then I would not own a cat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaka of Carthage Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Excellent point was made about board game rules and tinkering. Alot of your OW's (Old school Wargamers or Original Wargamers, take your pick), spent time analyzing the CRT, relative strengths of the units, terrain, victory conditions, etc. As a result, many of us took the next step and wondered why things were the way they were. And if we didn't agree, we changed it. Alot harder, if not impossible to do these days. Wargamers were nerds or closet nerds, back before they were called nerds. How many of you admitted, even to yourselfs, that you enjoyed the library more than hanging out with your friends? Cats and dogs were much easier to handle than the girlfriends or wifes. Even though there were a few rare ones that didn't mind being locked up, but if you had one of those, what the heck were you doing pushing counters or lead? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Desert Dave Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 As originally posted by RommelDAK: If you decided that almost ANY aspect of the game wasn't to your liking, it was much easier to tweak it. Yeah, this is one thing that was great fun to fool around with... adding or modifying rules to fit the kind of gaming experience you actually wanted to have. Seems like the game-makers sometimes get CLOSE to what you really want, but... not... quite. Another thing I like to do is add unit counters from other games to a board-game that has a fairly realistic map-layout, such as Axis & Allies Europe, or Pacific. I took some mechanized counters from PanzerBlitz and some naval-air counters & individual ship counters from World in Flames and some other assorted counters from Advanced Third Reich and... blended them in with the cool pieces that you get with A&A Europe (... love that AA-88 artillery and the Panther armor unit). It helps if you have saved all your old board-games as I have (... couldn't ever just pitch them out). The rules I re-wrote easily accomodate these new units and after a test-game, I find that everything fits together surprisingly well... it allows you to have the exact complexity that you prefer and you can actually play the game in less than 2 years! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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