Survey: Top Solo Historical Games!
Beyond Solitaire
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8M ago
Hello, solo gamers!  Many of us are omnigamers who enjoy a wide range of solo games, but I think solo historical and wargames don’t get as much love as they deserve. Every year, I love commenting on the People’s Choice Top 200, but also spend a lot of time complaining about how my favorite games keep falling further down the list, and further out of the public eye.  To help more games get their moment in the sun, Brant from Armchair Dragoons and I have partnered up to try something new—we are putting together a “People’s Choice Top 20” list of solo historical games, and we want you ..read more
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What is a Wargame?: A Case Study
Beyond Solitaire
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11M ago
What is a wargame? This is the perennial question from which none of us in the war/historical end of the hobby may ever escape. When I die and wake up in Hell, I will have to sit through an eternal debate with people who are absolutely sure they know what a wargame is, and who only get angrier as their definitions inevitably break down.  Why am I like this?  I want to preface this discussion with some background about me, which might help you understand where I am coming from. In my experience, definitions have never held up very well. I love talking about religion so much that I ..read more
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Game Design and Differentiation
Beyond Solitaire
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11M ago
A screenshot from a recent playtest of Night Witches. Even the most experienced players can get themselves into trouble. D: I am well into my first project as a game designer, and I would like to start writing about it more! I will never have this particular experience again, and I'd like to have some good records of what it was like and what I learned from it. David Thompson and I are currently co-designing a game called Night Witches, a light wargame about the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. This was a Soviet regiment that was active during WWII and made up entirely of female pilots who flew h ..read more
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Hadrian's Wall... or Hadrian's Rabbit Hole?
Beyond Solitaire
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1y ago
Hadrian's Wall was one of my favorite board games of 2022, even though it was actually published in 2021. Although the game is not "historical" in any true sense, playing it did make me want to do a deep dive. Since then, I've taken more of an interest than anticipated—to the point where I would really like to go and hike that wall!  Although I am certainly knowledgable about the Roman Empire and its ways, I am by no means an expert on Hadrian's Wall specifically. What I have been learning is... fascinating. I began my studies with a few questions in mind that were related to ..read more
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Art, Controversy, and Wargames
Beyond Solitaire
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1y ago
I love historical games, and I want everyone else to love them too. Fortunately, our hobby seems to be moving in that direction--I am starting to see tons of references to war games and historical games mixed in with conversation about "more mainstream" games, and this warms my heart. This rise in wargame chatter has also led to the renewal of a conversation that happens cyclically in this branch of the hobby. Are wargames controversial? Under what conditions, if any, are we ethically allowed to enjoy them?  I have mixed feelings about these discussions. On the one hand, they mean t ..read more
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Gladiators, Enslavement, and Board Games: Tentative Conclusions
Beyond Solitaire
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2y ago
Greenough's sculpture of Washington as Greek God (photo from Wikipedia) Click here for the previous post in this series. Over the last few posts, we have seen different approaches to board games about gladiators. Some board games gloss over or elide the reality that gladiators were slaves, while others embrace it, though never quite comfortably. Nearly every game focuses on fights for "glory." Do these games share any other common threads, regardless of approach? I would say yes: Games about gladiators simply do not prick our consciences in the way that games about more recent European coloni ..read more
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Gladiators, Enslavement, and Board Games - Some Casual Human Trafficking
Beyond Solitaire
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2y ago
Click here for the previous post in this series. While many board games erase any perceived ethical issues with gladiatorial combat by creating the illusion of universal excitement and consent among fighters, others simply embrace the role of lanista and matter-of-factly have players participate in the Roman slave trade. Most games in this genre at least downplay the reality of slavery by presenting lanistae as “building up a successful school” in pursuit of—what else?—fame and glory. Others focus on the possibility of gladiators earning their freedom. And a few games fully embrace the lurid ..read more
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Gladiators, Enslavement, and Board Games - Fame and Glory
Beyond Solitaire
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2y ago
Click here for the previous post in this series.  If you have ever played a game about gladiators, you have almost certainly encountered a mechanism or victory condition that involved crowd favor, fame, or glory. How did we get here, and how does it manifest in our board games?  The truth is, whether or not the combatants were willing participants, gladiator fights were exciting. Enormous crowds across centuries of Roman history watched gladiatorial combat with anticipation and delight, and presented the fights this way in their writing and material culture. This is the understand ..read more
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Gladiators, Enslavement, and Board Games — Convenient Erasure
Beyond Solitaire
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2y ago
Click here for the previous post in this series.  We're getting to the games now. There are actually several approaches to cover, but I want to confront what feels like the simplest one first: erasure. If you want to have all the fun of a gladiator game and none of the guilt, it is a lot easier to pretend that whole slavery thing was no big deal, or even that it never happened at all.  Modern board games do not typically dwell on the fact that gladiators were either slaves or people who had volunteered to accept a low social status. In fact, it is so easy to forget that ..read more
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Gladiators, Enslavement, and Board Games — Gladiator Facts
Beyond Solitaire
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2y ago
Click here for the previous part.  Before getting into some deeper game analysis, I'm using this post to lay out what we actually know about the social status of gladiators. So buckle up—it's time for some history!  Historically, gladiatorial combat originates with funerary rites, in which slaves were forced to fight to the death in honor of the recently deceased. Although some Roman authors attribute the origins of such fights to the Etruscans, the first recorded Roman gladiator fight is dated to 264 BCE and is recorded in Livy: “Decimus Junius Brutus was first gave a gladiatoria ..read more
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