OT: Poll on Grand Strategy Pacific War Theater Wargames

[fulcrum28]

Poll on Grand Strategy Pacific War Theater Wargames

It seems that the Empire of the Sun (GMT) is leading the poll. [;)]

[Yaab]

Wow, this poll is the best evidence of me having mutated into some kind of a supergrognard.

[rustysi]

It asks for favorite board and includes WitP-AE, which it acknowledges as a PC game. Pretty inconsistent I'd say. Besides I've not been exposed to all game choices so taking the survey is kinda useless. How can I judge a game I haven't seen or played. Reason I usually avoid surveys. Without proper controls and questions they're meaningless. But whatever...

[BBfanboy]

Yeah, I did the survey too but the question about reasons for not finishing the games did not include an answer about the difficulty of keeping cardboard counters on the proper place on the board when you have little kids in the house or need to free up the dining room table of something else, like dining.
The quiz seemed to mix computer war games and board war games into the same pot and they are much different in what makes them fun or difficult.

[CaptBeefheart]

Lack of space is why I stopped doing board games decades ago. Luckily, SSI, SSG and Micropose popped up at about that time.

Cheers,
CC

[rsallen64]

I used to set up my boardgames on a big sheet of plywood in the basement. Then, my sister got a cat. The cat seemed to enjoy sleeping on top of the pieces or at the very least scattering them around. I eventually bought that cat repellant spray you use on your garden to keep cats out of your plants and sprayed it all over the stairs, thinking this would work, only to watch the damn cat descend, choking and sneezing, all the way to the bottom. [:'(] That's when I gave up the boardgames. I was glad when I bought my first computer several years later, in 1992.

[wdolson]

We've been training young cats lately. Among the training tools I've gotten some motion activated sprayers and some shock mats. I also have some screechers that are activated by vibration.

One of the cats wants to get along so she doesn't tend to get in trouble. The others name is Squirrel and she lives up to her name. While I was writing this she got up on the back of a chair and was playing with the pull chains on a floor lamp.

Bill

[mind_messing]

Heh, I get the feeling the WITPAE demographic has skewed the results of that poll...

[Yaab]

ORIGINAL: Commander Cody

Lack of space is why I stopped doing board games decades ago. Luckily, SSI, SSG and Micropose popped up at about that time.

Cheers,
CC

And now when you have WITP:AE, you stop playing the game due to lack of time.

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: wdolson


We've been training young cats lately. Among the training tools I've gotten some motion activated sprayers and some shock mats. I also have some screechers that are activated by vibration.

One of the cats wants to get along so she doesn't tend to get in trouble. The others name is Squirrel and she lives up to her name. While I was writing this she got up on the back of a chair and was playing with the pull chains on a floor lamp.

Bill

Bill--How does the work out when Squirrel is out and about? I bet not well...

[bradfordkay]

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

Heh, I get the feeling the WITPAE demographic has skewed the results of that poll...

Thing is, WITP-AE is the perfect Pacific Theater boardgame. It works very much like all the great boardgames we played in the pre-computer game era. Who remembers SPI's USN? A massive depiction of the Pacific Theater whose maps required a whole room for setup... AE gives us all that without the hours upon hours of setup time and no worry about Typhoon Fluffy wiping out months of work.

AE's place in that poll makes complete sense to me.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

Heh, I get the feeling the WITPAE demographic has skewed the results of that poll...

Thing is, WITP-AE is the perfect Pacific Theater boardgame. It works very much like all the great boardgames we played in the pre-computer game era. Who remembers SPI's USN? A massive depiction of the Pacific Theater whose maps required a whole room for setup... AE gives us all that without the hours upon hours of setup time and no worry about Typhoon Fluffy wiping out months of work.

AE's place in that poll makes complete sense to me.

+1
I had USN and never got the time/space/freedom from chaos to play it. [:(]

[DConn]

You may be confusing USN with War in the Pacific. The former was an S&T magazine game (which was actually pretty good); the latter a many-map monster covering the whole war in weekly turns (at least if I remember correctly). A friend and I played the first year+ of the war in WITP may moons ago, using a revised air search system and some house rules; I remember it fondly. When we stopped, we wrote down all the unit positions in case we ever got a chance to continue; that was about 35 years ago!

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Conn

You may be confusing USN with War in the Pacific. The former was an S&T magazine game (which was actually pretty good); the latter a many-map monster covering the whole war in weekly turns (at least if I remember correctly). A friend and I played the first year+ of the war in WITP may moons ago, using a revised air search system and some house rules; I remember it fondly. When we stopped, we wrote down all the unit positions in case we ever got a chance to continue; that was about 35 years ago!

Magazine game? NOT! Here is a link:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8727/usn

[DConn]

Sorry to disagree; but the picture in the post you linked is the cover of the S&T magazine that the game came with!

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: Conn

Sorry to disagree; but the picture in the post you linked is the cover of the S&T magazine that the game came with!

Sorry BBFanboy. I have all the original S&T magazines and it is indeed #29. USN may have been sold later as a boxed game.
The rules were horribly vague. An good example of SPI trying to cram too much into a magazine game.

USN should be thought of as Jim Dunnigan's 1st try at the Pacific War, much like Gary Grigsby's east front games before WitE.

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: wdolson


We've been training young cats lately. Among the training tools I've gotten some motion activated sprayers and some shock mats. I also have some screechers that are activated by vibration.

One of the cats wants to get along so she doesn't tend to get in trouble. The others name is Squirrel and she lives up to her name. While I was writing this she got up on the back of a chair and was playing with the pull chains on a floor lamp.

Bill

Let me know how it works out. I'm almost ready for a new generation of felines.

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: Yaab

Wow, this poll is the best evidence of me having mutated into some kind of a supergrognard.

Have you been to http://grognard.com/ ?

[bradfordkay]

I am guessing that Conn is probably right about the title. It has been nearly 40 years since I helped a friend set it up over a weekend (he owned the game - I, a poor college student, could not afford that one). The Wiki entry on SPI mentions War in the Pacific as one of their monster games along with Terrible Swift Sword and their north Afrikan game.

[Canoerebel]

I have the board game WitP, pretty much in mint condition. I never played it, though I did open it, read some of the rules, punch out a couple of units - all in anticipation of playing solo eventually - but then computers arrived on the scene (for me in 1997). I have several dozen good Avalon Hill board games

I also have Terrible Swift Sword. I did set that one up four or five times, over the years, for solo play. In the summer of 1985, I took an internship with Georgia Kraft Timber Company. I rented a little mill house in Union Point, Georgia. I had no air conditioning, no television, no telephone. I read books, listed to Atlanta Braves games on the radio, and played TSS on a table in the kitchen under a naked bulb light. On weekends, when I stayed in Union Point, I would drive into the country to collect butterflies or bird watch. It was a Spartan, basic lifestyle...but it was worth it. I had a lovely Georgia Peach girlfriend 25 miles up the country highway.