I believe that the pasta rule was the predecessor to the spaghetti incident.
Lol wut
I still have the game on my closet shelf but haven’t taken it down in years. I also never did play the full campaign all the way through and sure as hell won’t now. Maybe I’ll just take it down and look at it longingly.
GMT seems to be producing titles at least as frequently as Avalon Hill ever did. While I don’t really take part in the hobby any longer, and have very fond memories of the state of the hobby in the 80s, I dont think hex based war games are anywhere close to dying.
A few of my roommates were playing Campaign for North Africa in our last quarter in college. I played several days, The pasta rule was one of my favorites. Needless to say they didn’t finish the game, but the did get through at least a year or so. A fun story, I came back to the apartment and they were busily playing the game, and I said Steve don’t you have a LSAT test today, and he went oh shit. So Campaign for North Africa delayed him becoming a lawyer for a couple of year! Maybe that’s a good thing??
For decades afterword the owner of the game begged us to play the game, those sessions never last more than a day. Definitely, a game that’s better admired than played.
I don’t know what that is a picture of, but no self respecting Italian would consider that spaghetti. :)
Perhaps someday war-gaming will make a comeback
Get out!
Yeah, even a casual persusal of the wargaming section of BGG should make it clear that it arguably has never been a better time for paper wargamers (including hex-based). Easy access to printing, global distribution, crowd funding services other and robust pre-ordering systems (P500) are making it easier, not harder, to produce a wide variety and scope of products for a cheaper price and get it to a wider audience.
There’s even a new game in the Paths of Glory series that’s just come out! And the mere fact that I can say the phrase “Paths of Glory series” and it represents a real thing out in the world must mean times are lookin’ pretty good for war games.
My opinion of Berg just plummeted. Creators who disrespect and lampoon their own work – and by extension the buyers of their creation – are among the worst parasites on the planet. Knowing this I will never buy another design of his as a matter of principle.
It was 40 years ago, give the man a break. How many of his games has he disrespected? 1 out of hundreds of designs?
Are any of his games any good, though? The few I’ve played were terrible. Well, Successors is good, but that was co-designed with Simonitch, and I have a feeling it was mostly Simonitch.
I haven’t owned many of his titles, so couldn’t really say. Terrible Swift Sword won a CSR, don’t know about any others. I think I owned Men of Iron at one point, but sold it along with the rest of my collection. From lurking on consimworld he seems somewhat arrogant, and the rate at which he churns out games would definitely make one wonder. He seems to do well enough I guess to get folks like gmt publishing them, and for a long time there was a small con in Savannah at his house where people played his games.
From the man himself:
The game never received any of the compulsive testing required to iron-out inconsistencies and balance issues that are usually present in a freshly inked rulebook. Berg didn’t care. He never saw the point. “When I said ‘let’s publish this thing’ they said ‘but we’re still playtesting it! We don’t know if it’s balanced or not. It’s gonna take seven years to play!’ And I said ‘you know what, if someone tells you it’s unbalanced, tell them ‘we think it’s your fault, play it again.’”
“It did what it set out to do,” explains Berg. “It was supposed to be an intensive eurythmic manual, and I think it functioned at that level. Is this game something you should sit down and play? No, there are plenty of good Africa games, unless you really want to get down to that level.”
Unfortunately, I am awaiting delivery of one of his games just released by GMT: Arquebus
Not sure what to do with that now.
While I cannot address any moral concerns you have, I can tell you his Men of Iron series is absolutely excellent. I expect Arquebus to be just as good as the others.
The 1500 hour playtime is actually not that big of a deal compared to the player count. 10 PLAYERS?!? I could at least conceive of playing a game this long with a single, dedicated wargamer, but the idea of playing something this long with nine other people is beyond fanciful.
The closest I’ve seen is full groups playing Empire in Arms and World in Flames. I think they finished 1 or more gamed of WiF, but I don’t think they ever finished EiA.
Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be a fine game. I just feel a need to condemn cynical bastards like that. Why even design the game if that’s how he felt? I have the game – never played, just bought it at low price as an investment – but I thought the rules were all historically based, even if over the top. Doing this doesn’t make him look like the maestro he thinks he is.