Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Phear my l33t tactical skillz ... oops, can I take that back?
Looking at what I most enjoy when it comes to playing games, I'd consider myself as much, if not moreso, a strategy gamer than a roleplaying gamer. There's little I find more exciting in games than sitting around a table with four or five friends and then going head-to-head in a strategical simulation.
My favourite strategy board game during my teenage years was called Supremacy: The Game of the Superpowers, which launched in the late 1980s and won a number of awards from the likes of Omni Magazine. At its core, the game was a cold war simulation that allowed things to escalate to whatever level the players felt like taking it ... and how much money the players were willing to invest in expansions. When I first encountered the game in my Grade 9 year, the guy who introduced me to it had blown about $200 on the expansions available at that time -- and I believe only about half of what eventually became available had actually been released.
Unfortunately, for it to be really good, Supremacy requires five or six players. Anything less than that and there's just not enough interaction. The game loses a lot of what makes it good.
I used to get friends together in high school to play the game, and we'd take all day and then some to play out a full six-player game. Halfway through, a couple of people would be either bored and give up or been eliminated, but those of us who hung on to the end would end up ruling entire portions of the world before attempting to crush our enemies. It could get quite tense. However, when Tim played, the end-game usually came down to the two of us. I'd own half the world and he's own the other. Rather than buckle down for another full day of play, we'd usually just sign a peace treaty and be done with it. To this day, I don't think I've ever seen a Supremacy game through to completion (i.e. only one person left standing).
I've probably made myself sound like a pretty good strategist. However, that's far from the truth. Tim, Steve and the others we used to play with weren't really top strategists, nor was I. When against guys who live for this stuff, all of us would fall to their strategies and tactics.
My favourite strategy board game during my teenage years was called Supremacy: The Game of the Superpowers, which launched in the late 1980s and won a number of awards from the likes of Omni Magazine. At its core, the game was a cold war simulation that allowed things to escalate to whatever level the players felt like taking it ... and how much money the players were willing to invest in expansions. When I first encountered the game in my Grade 9 year, the guy who introduced me to it had blown about $200 on the expansions available at that time -- and I believe only about half of what eventually became available had actually been released.
Unfortunately, for it to be really good, Supremacy requires five or six players. Anything less than that and there's just not enough interaction. The game loses a lot of what makes it good.
I used to get friends together in high school to play the game, and we'd take all day and then some to play out a full six-player game. Halfway through, a couple of people would be either bored and give up or been eliminated, but those of us who hung on to the end would end up ruling entire portions of the world before attempting to crush our enemies. It could get quite tense. However, when Tim played, the end-game usually came down to the two of us. I'd own half the world and he's own the other. Rather than buckle down for another full day of play, we'd usually just sign a peace treaty and be done with it. To this day, I don't think I've ever seen a Supremacy game through to completion (i.e. only one person left standing).
I've probably made myself sound like a pretty good strategist. However, that's far from the truth. Tim, Steve and the others we used to play with weren't really top strategists, nor was I. When against guys who live for this stuff, all of us would fall to their strategies and tactics.
// posted by Chris @ 8:18 AM 
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