Later. Let's Play Global Thermonuclear War

Games
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The Command: Modern Navel Operations game mentioned nuclear war with strategic assets as a selling point; That got me started down a rabbit hole and now I have First Strike on its way to my house. It seems like a pretty detailed and fairly thoughtful simulation of ‘toe to toe nuklear combat with the rooskies’ minus Slim Pickens. There have been a few games making it to the PC which are interesting. DEFCON probably being the most recently well known. But I would like to know if there are any out there taking a more hard sim kind of look at the subject. Any ideas?

Tom M

On a side note in my research I think I came across Bruce’s start menu.

2

Aside from those you listed, the only one I know of is Bravo Romeo Delta. Can’t remember if I ever tracked it down or not.

3

Nuke!, the game that proves that golf tees standing on their ends look a little bit like missiles!

But, on a more serious note, I suspect the reason nobody has done hard sims of nuclear war is because it wouldn’t be interesting or fun. What aspects of it do you think would be fun to game?

4

You’ve seen Balance of Power, right? It’s sort of a “the only way to win is not to play” kind of nukler standoff game.

5

I got scared for a second… thought maybe you meant to put this in P&R and we were all about to die.

6

duplicate post. feel free to ignore.

7

Available at an abandonware site near you.

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Nuclear War and Bravo Romeo are great recommendations. Nuclear War for its beer and pretzel approach nicely converted from the card game. I never figured out if Bravo Romeo was a sim or just pretended to be one. I never got my head around it and I thought I would track it down again but considering its age I thought I’d let it go.

I think these are ‘fun’ to game partially because its a worse case scenario where the stakes are mind bogglingly high. Humanity’s annihilation in a mushroom cloud of hubris, I can see how that would be distasteful but I take a pragmatic view and don’t have any problem playing missile command. It’s also interesting to see what the designers do with victory conditions when pretty much every resolution is some degree of horrific.

Tom M

Addendum: I thought of another reason to play Nukewar sims. If we don’t the Russians will and we can’t have a simulation gap can we?

9

It’s not at all what you’re looking for, but there’s actually a pretty decent official Wargames game that came out for iOS a year or so ago.

10

I played that Nuclear war game a lot on my Amiga. Was there ever any real strategy? It always seemed to a game ruled by random chance.

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When I was a kid, I had Yaquinto’s Ultimatum. It was a pretty good representation of the face-off between the US and the USSR. You researched and built specific weapon systems, played out global affairs, and eventually someone would get bored and push the button, at that point the game turned into a hex-based strategic wargame.

And I honestly think that Crawford cribbed some of the ideas from that game and put them into Balance of Power.

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It’s too bad Crawford left all the good stuff ;)

When I bought First Strike Ultimatum was floating around my cart. It’s the kind of game that I would be looking for. I wish more of this would get ported over but in this tripple A time they wouldn’t have compelling sales projections.

I did fire up DEFCON and played some poor guy that was brand new. Not feeling too good about the victory I had but it did remind me of what a nice little experince DEFCON is. Not the hard sim experince I really want but the way it abstracts is very well designed.

I found Bravo Romeo Delta and wow I need to find a guide or manual that convinces me there is a sim there and it isn’t putting on a random display that seems like one.

Tom M

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I went out and found it as well, but I also found this video “review” that I watched a few minutes of. It seems to give something of an overview as to how the game is played, and I intend to go back and watch the whole thing at some point.

14

Well, is it there yet? I’m eager for your report already. How about now? Now? When is it coming already?

-Tom
15

I played that game on my C64 back in the 80’s. I got all the nations to get rid of their nuke’s and all I got was fired because I pissed everyone one off because I made them get rid of their nuke’s.

Also I thought Home of the Underdogs folded its tent years ago.

16

About First Strike:

Ok so unfortunately no physical copy has arrived and of course that means no actual play has occured. The advantage of this golden age of gaming is that I have rifled through the virtual box so to speak by reading the rules and supplemental tables from boardgamegeek and consimworld. Not having played through it and experincing how a turn really flows is missing. I do have a fair ammount of experince with games in general and I’ll provide some commentary but they’ll only be best guesses at this point. That is my big caveat before I go on to give my impressions.

The author gives the game an eight out of ten for complexity. I’m not exactly sure how to parse that but I’d say it’s got about as much going on as maybe Twilight Struggle or similar designer game. This is a wargame but Case Blue or Advanced Squad Leader it is not. First Strike hit’s a pretty good level of abstraction versus simulation. You get to appreciate the differences between a SS-18, Minuteman II or III, B-52 ‘Buffs’ and various other ICBMs,IRBMs, subs and bombers.

The complexity comes mostly from the messy rulebook. I don’t know if I just can’t learn things like I used to, probably, but it seems to be missing some clarity and the organization is a little spotty. The game is DTP or after I looked it up Desk Top Published so I am assumeing it doesn’t have the benefit of editing and quality assurance that oh say GMT or Fantasy Flight would be able to provide. Fair enough. The rules do seem to make sense and while I had a little trouble with some concepts the general nature of actions and capabilities seemed intuitive. Now this ‘seems intuitive’ to someone who played a lot of Microprose sims and is familar with wargames and some military hardware in general so take that how you’d like.

While I’m on the messy topics I’l talk about the map. It is a projection of the Northern Hemisphere with the north pole in the middle Russia on one side and the United States on the other. As near as I can tell just about everything down to the equator. The choice seems appropriete given the scale of the conflict but it does seem to get crowded in Europe. There’s a hex overlay for the most part but within europe and some other areas the hex’s get fudged into areas. You’ll have large portions around the map mostly vacant but right there in Europe depending on how thick you make your counters, yep DTP means you get to figure out how to do that, you will have quite a few stacks.

Ok messy rules, crowded map, lets check the game off our list. Well maybe not, the rules do seem to make some kind of sense and it’s begging me to play it and see how it turns out. The options avalible are weighty and the victory conditions present an interesting goal to work toward. How do I ‘win’ a nuclear war? Winning is no good for a nation if it doesn’t survive to collect it’s medal. This is where I’m dying to play and see how it plays out. Will the players stay focused on the strategic targets and the collection of VP? Will one notice they are horribly behind and decide thier best option is to perform a massive ‘counter valance’ strike and absolutely destroy civilian targets as they’re going down. “If I can’t win…” and so on. How do you string along you opponent so you survive and still win? Of course you can just go with the name of the game and on turn one pray you get initiative and level the opposing forces hoping to destroy enough to minimize the retailatory capability. Interesting ideas then you consider that people were actually trying to apply that in a real world situation.

One of the most interesting mechanics in the game is the SIOP and I wish more could have been done with it. SIOP stands for Single Integrated Operating Plan and ammounts to the nuclear playbook. Every weapon in the game is assigned to a SIOP you choose and along with it it’s target package. For instance you can select a SIOP that focused on Counter Force and you would have bombers and missiles targeting enemy airfields, silos and ports. Or, you’re behind and in the biggest FU to the world you choose that Counter Valance SIOP and turn cities into rubble. Selecting a SIOP is done as one of your valuable actions which alternate I go you go. You cannot attack a target not on your current SIOP and you cannot attack with a weapon platform not on your current SIOP. You are allowed to hide the SIOP by writing it down and once the attack is initiated then the SIOP revealed to ensure that it was a 'legal move. The SIOP mechanic starts to lose its significance when you learn that SIOPs can have other SIOPs mentioned as executable within them. It then becomes a matter of selecting these more or less all encompassing SIOPs and you can pretty much attack as you like. Now where I think this can get intersting is in the process of ‘signalling’. You can elect to openly declare your SIOP and if your opponent sees that you are willingly limiting yourself to a theater or to strategic targets that may do something for player to player negotiations. I would love to see how that plays out.

Where I’m at right now is totally ready to play this game. The messy rulebook and DTP production values are slight obstacles that I hope won’t impair the actual play too much but I think there’s potential here. Go out and buy it. Well I can’t tell you all to do that. But, if you’re curious do read the rules and look at what’s avalible.

Tom M

17

Sweet pre-review. That SIOP stuff sounds aces. Is it integrated into the gameplay very well? In other words, is there much of an “interface” for managing that? You make it almost sound like each player is jotting down stuff on sheets of paper.

Also, is the game there yet?

-Tom
18

Continuing discussion for First Strike:

Here is a sample SIOP from ConsimWorld

[table=“width: 500”]
[tr]
[td]OPTION ID

RSIOP 1[/td]
[td]OBJECTIVE

Counter Force Strike
Destruction of primary military assets + communications in US (Including decapitation)
(Option to execute RSIOP’s 4, 5, and/or 6)[/td]
[td]FORCES ASSIGNED

SS18’s 1-6
SS19 7 –10, 13
SS17 17,
SSBN 55, 57-58, 60
Backfire B 49, 50
[/td]
[td]TARGET COMPLEXES

Any US ICBM’s, airbases, ports in 1119, 1823, CP/I assets (Washington, Norad, SAC, NATO HQ, - Note too; level 1 to Cities causes CP loss -see 7.5
(hitting cities is optional)[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

What this means is that a wide variety of missile units; 6 type SS18 4 type SS19, 1 type SS17 as well as 4 Sub-Launched Ballistic Missiles and 2 Bomber units; are available to Attack US ICBM fields, airbases, 2 ports and all Command and Control assets. These specific units are only available to attack those targets. That is why SS18 1 through 6 are on this package. Other SS18s are on other SIOPs. Per turn you can only operate under one SIOP and it cost an action to change it.

Now the wrinkle comes in when you see “Option to execute…” listing other SIOPs. When you look at the player sheet you see that this particular SIOP when you fold in those optional ones gives you close to free reign. That’s why I say the SIOP mechanic is interesting but kind of a missed opportunity. I think they’ll ultimately really only be useful if at all as a way for the player to restrict themselves, by maybe choosing a theater specific SIOP that doesn’t reference others, as a way of negotiating limiting strikes.

I am not really good at explaining this so there can easily be questions. I’d happily answer and clarify what I may have missed.

Tom Mc

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Edit: never mind I see you have already been there. :)

If you go over to consimworld you can find Bruce and some aars of at least the game based on 1962 and probably this one as well.

20

It turned out that there was no first strike. No American missiles were approaching and the computer detection system was malfunctioning. It was subsequently determined that the false alarm had been created by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites’ Molniya orbits.