On getting back into strategy games

Games
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It started with Axis and Allies.

Actually it started with Axis and Allies back in 1984, but I digress. A&A was one of those foundational games of my youth. We were freed from the tyranny of cardboard counters, and could push actual army men around a map. Axis and Allies is the boardgame I played the most in high school.

When computer games hit, I loved Close Combat – the closest I could find to Squad Leader. Later, it was the Civ games and Alpha Centauri that took up most of my gaming time. Then, MMOs hit and for the last 20 years I have pretty much just played MMOs. I retired from hard core raiding a long time ago, but they were still the biggest gaming time sink.

Axis and Allies came out with a Steam version about a year ago, but it bounced off me a little. The UI – especially around transports – was iffy. My strategy gaming fix, though, was covered with the various board games my Friday night group played.

The pandemic hit, the gaming group moved online, and playing WoW at the end of an expansions is like the gaming version of empty calories. I wanted more agency in my gaming, and more to show for a night’s effort in gaming than cursing at the RNG gods, or a slight increase in some meaningless faction.

I took another look at A&A Online.

They fixed the transport issue, and some other improvements and I started getting back into it. Because of my MMO addiction, my Steam stats were about 700 hours of LotRO, and the 45 hours of Sword Coast Legends – which I played with my friends as kind of an MMO. A&A now solidly sits at the number two spot. I got into ranked multiplayer – which I suck at – but I have fun.

It was time to get to a different level.

So, last week Paradox had a big sale on EU4 and DLC and I spent a decent amount of money on it. I love it, it reminded me of picking up a Civ game mid-stream. I also got HoI4 a few months ago but haven’t tried it. I also reinstalled Civ5 and 6 to give those a go.

It’s a nice change from running around an MMO.

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I am more than happy to help feed this addiction positive life change. Also may I recommend Unity of Command? It is, along with EU4, one of my favorite games of the last decade.

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I too love A&A and grew up with it. None of my friends would play me. But in my old age, Civ is about as complex as I can get. I just don’t have the patience to learn deep strategy games. Tutorials are the worst, they just put me to sleep. I want to play Total War: Shogun 2 but the damn thing has like a dozen tutorials. JFC.

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The beamdog A&A is very, very good.

For tutorials, I usually use something like Quinn18’s videos. Sure, there are a lot of them but after plowing through them I usually have a good enough start.

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I never got into ASL. Basic was advanced enough for me.

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Heh. Don’t get me wrong. I never got to play ASL. But I loved reading the manual. Tanks with individual turrets that had their own phase. Gliders. I read the fuck out of that manual, whilst stroking the counter cards, with love. And imagining having friends that weren’t morons and could play it with me.

Ahh, the old days.

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I played Chess with my grandfather and only ever beat him twice. We would play on the porch in the summertime.

My grandfather would often take some time to think about his turn. I remember one day when it was my grandfather’s turn to move it had been two hours. I asked him, Grandpa! Are you going to go? He says whoops I thought it was your turn and then he went just like that. I will never forget that day.

I never beat him at checkers. Not once in my whole life. He gave me a book to get better at it and I did I could beat a lot of people but never my grandfather.

I guess Chess and Checkers was the beginning of my gaming life.

Stratego was a game I just loved and I would try to get anyone I could to play it with me. Loved that game.

Axis and Allies was a game dream come true! The pieces and World War 2 - it was like the game was invented just for me.

I mainly bought a computer because I wanted to play Wizardry.

Then games like Civ, Moo, X-Com became something that was beyond my expectations.

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My Sicilian grandfather taught me checkers. He had a set with a plastic mat and large hollow plastic checkers. Every Wednesday he had a few buddies over. My uncle Frank who owned a pawn shop. And carried a Colt .45 pistol in a shoulder holster. Another guy who never took off his hat, but he was a made guy, so nobody complained.

They would drink red wine and smoke cigars.

They used terms like eyeglasses and knuckles to describe a set up of checkers.

I could never beat him, even when he tried to let me. I guess I wasn’t a checker person.

Eventually the cheap plastic ‘board’ got worn out. I mean holes in it. So my father brought home a piece of thick black vinyl. I used several bottles of red Testor paint to create the board. He used that until the day he passed away. I was so proud.

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My grandfather used to be a runner for the local gang when he was older. On one of his stops he would play checkers with an ex colonel. The man made the mistake of telling my old Italian grandfather - hey old man you will never beat me.

My grandfather went and bought the book on checker strategy (that he later gave to me). From that day on the ex-colonel could never beat him. Ha! I know what you mean when you say you were proud.

One of my greatest accomplishments was beating him at Chess. The look on his face when I said checkmate was great. He was so surprised and I believe proud that I actually beat him. Like I said I only ever beat him twice but the result of playing him so much is that I could beat most adults when I was ten years old.

When I was a little older my grandpa taught me to play Pinochle. All his goombahs would play each week. They were a crusty old bunch. Well, one day they needed a fourth player and my grandfather assured them that I had good card sense. We played and I did very well and from there on out I was the only kid they would ever let play with them because I had passed muster. It was a huge thing to be acknowledged by that group of Pinochle players!

The one game that I always wanted to learn was Bridge. I took a few lessons at a Bridge club in Manhattan but then lost that job in the city and was never able to get back to it. It is still something I would like to learn.

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Speaking of Axis & Allies, I think I read recently that Mateix is working on a patch for Hary Grigsby’s Axis & Allies style game (World at War I think, on my phone right now), updating it to use the slitherine pbem++ system for multiplayer.

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My after school gaming was bridge or D&D.

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How did you learn to play Bridge?

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One of my high school friends was a bridge player via his parents.

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A co-worker is really into ASL. We keep meaning to hook up with Vassal for him to explain it to me.

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If you guys ever want a VASSAL tutorial just let me know. Heck, we could stream it.

Just played some ftf ASL a few days ago. The Best Game.

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That would be fun, and amusing. I haven’t even played basic Squad Leader in like 30 years.

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Yes, I played that so much when I was a teenager also. Still have the original game on my shelf.

I was able to meet Larry Harris several years ago (creator of Axis and Allies). There was a strategy gaming type convention at a military museum in Pennsylvania and my family and I happened to visit it. I was talking to one of the coordinators of the event and he mentioned that Larry Harris was there. So I went and talked with him a bit. He was interested to know when I started playing A&A and I shared some of my A&A experiences.

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Me too. Every now and then I think of getting more of the chips to stack units. I forget the size I need, and even then it’s just going to sit on the shelf.

It would be awesome to meet Larry. As an aside, I’ve played Top Secret (new version) with Merle Rasmussen and that was a blast.

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I played Bridge daily in college (often instead of going to class). I’d love to take it up again. Prior to the pandemic I heard there was a group of expats who played weekly at one of the local restaurants, but their schedule conflicted with mine. I have no idea if they’ve started up again.

In later years I got heavily into Backgammon. There was a bar in SF that held tourneys every Saturday, and with the help of books like “Backgammon For Blood”, I was able to finish pretty high up most weeks.