Hex and Chit Historical Wargames/ gmt games

[Alphasnail]

I want to make a place for the discussion of historical wargames, particularly, hex and chit style games or just the many varied historical games out on the market. More specifically I'd like to sperg out on gmt games, like the Last Hundred Yards, Fields of Fire, or even the card driven games like Washington's War, and Labarynth: the Global War on Terror.

 

[oldTireWater]

I think you're about 35 years too late. Pour one out for Avalon Hill.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Robert E. Lee: Civil War General and its sequel were excellent turn-based PC hex wargames.

 

[William Murderface]

I loved wargaming in college. I still have a bunch of them in storage. My favorite was actually ETO/PTO by SPI where you could play the entire war from the Incident at the Marco Polo Bridge in 1937 all the way to the end and combine both the European and Pacific theaters. In Europe, each counter was equivalent to a corps, but a division in the Pacific theater. The rules even say it'll take an entire summer to play out the war and they weren't far off.

Another favorite was The Longest Day by Avalon Hill. You could fight just D-Day all the way up to the entire Normandy Campaign with the smallest units being at the company level.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Another favorite was The Longest Day by Avalon Hill. You could fight just D-Day all the way up to the entire Normandy Campaign with the smallest units being at the company level.

They had this one going in the common room at my dorm, a game must have lasted like three months.

 

[Twinkletard]

I played ASL for a while but it's too complex.

Best wargame i've ever played is OGRE/GEV, but that's not historical

 

[Sweeter and Savoury]

I played ASL for a while but it's too complex.

Talk about a understatement

SFB players look at ASL and go holy shit that's a lot of rules baby.

Personally I love both Bolt Action and Team Yankee for my modern warsims.

If we're talking old school little cardboard squares I'd say Panzer Grenadier for WW2 and Victory Complete by Avaon for WW1

 

[Mikoyan]

SFB players look at ASL and go holy shit that's a lot of rules baby.

I had to describe SFB to someone recently (in part to get across the absolutely insane IP loophole it exists in), and it took me... a surprising amount of time to get across just how complex it is.

"Each turn is divided up into up to 32 micro-turns with their own fire and movement phase and..."

 

[Sweeter and Savoury]

I had to describe SFB to someone recently (in part to get across the absolutely insane IP loophole it exists in), and it took me... a surprising amount of time to get across just how complex it is.

"Each turn is divided up into up to 32 micro-turns with their own fire and movement phase and..."

Some supreme autistic did like a 30 page write up on SFB for 1D4chan back in the day and most of it survived the move to 1d6 chan after Root went woke and nuke 1d4.

Its where I send people who want to know more. It's just easier then trying to talk them through 40 years of game development.

Star Fleet Battles 1d6chan

 

[Lurking no more]

I've never gotten to play it (or any other hex based wargames) due to having no one to play it with, but I do have a copy of the Civil War™ by Victory Games, which takes 22 hours to play and covers the whole Civil War. It was probably stupid to buy a game I'll never play, but it only cost me $10, I get to look at a neat map, and I have to admire something that's bold enough to trademark 'The Civil War'.

 

[oldTireWater]

I've never gotten to play it (or any other hex based wargames) due to having no one to play it with, but I do have a copy of the Civil War™ by Victory Games, which takes 22 hours to play and covers the whole Civil War. It was probably stupid to buy a game I'll never play, but it only cost me $10, I get to look at a neat map, and I have to admire something that's bold enough to trademark 'The Civil War'.

I spent my childhood buying games I never played. The 80's may have been a golden age of game design, but they were the dark ages of game playing. There was a real price to be paid if people found out you were into that nerd shit. I'm still embarrassed to admit it, and hide all my old stuff away like it was porn.

 

[Jerry1337]

I recently bought Civ 6 with some dlcs.
I love it!

 

[A Cardboard Box]

I'm a big fan of GMT and Compass. My favorites from GMT are by far the COIN series. A Distant Plain and Fire in the Lake are my personal favorites.

As for other autism games, I also regularly play Triumph and Tragedy and Conquest and Consequence with my boardgame group.

 

[William Murderface]

I've never gotten to play it (or any other hex based wargames) due to having no one to play it with, but I do have a copy of the Civil War™ by Victory Games, which takes 22 hours to play and covers the whole Civil War. It was probably stupid to buy a game I'll never play, but it only cost me $10, I get to look at a neat map, and I have to admire something that's bold enough to trademark 'The Civil War'.

I loved that game, especially the mechanic where general's command ratings will go down if they are promoted to a level above their abilities, like Hood when he was promoted from a division and corps command to commander of the Army of Tennessee, a position he was completely inept in.

 

[William Murderface]

I've never gotten to play it (or any other hex based wargames) due to having no one to play it with, but I do have a copy of the Civil War™ by Victory Games, which takes 22 hours to play and covers the whole Civil War. It was probably stupid to buy a game I'll never play, but it only cost me $10, I get to look at a neat map, and I have to admire something that's bold enough to trademark 'The Civil War'.

Oh wow, this is cool and right up this alley. There's a program called Vassal that is a hex and chit game emulator. DL the program, find the game you want from a long list (obviously it doesn't cover everything, but there are still over 3,000 available) and enjoy. There are apparently online, offline, local client, and solitaire modes.

https://vassalengine.org/wiki/Main_Page

 

[Woody Milliband]

Absolutely love me some historical wargames! Currently playing a lot of Great battles of Alexander, and I'm in the process of learning Unconditional Surrender. Also have Here I stand lined up with the gaming group in a little over a week.

Anyhow, did anyone see one of the massive sperg-outs that legendary designer Ted Raicer (known for games such as the recently released I, Napoleon, Paths of glory, The dark valley/summer/desert and a bunch others) recently had on Twitter?



As far as I can tell he's purged most of his Twitter in the last couple of days, but I managed to get a screen shot in time. He's been apocalypse-posting about the Republican Party for a while, but this is the first time I've seen him so direct.


Kinda funny seeing someone that knowledgeable about history be so radical.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Recently I've played a few scenarios of Next War: Korea it's a really great game but me being quite new to these types of games it's a bit complicated. What would be a better pick for a beginner like me?

Also, it's great to see there's a community for these games on KF!

 

[Woody Milliband]

Recently I've played a few scenarios of Next War: Korea it's a really great game but me being quite new to these types of games it's a bit complicated. What would be a better pick for a beginner like me?

Also, it's great to see there's a community for these games on KF!

Nice! I've been looking at picking up Next War: Poland myself. Really seems like an intriguing system, if perhaps a bit overwhelming.

As for newbie-games, it depends what you're after. If you're after medium-complexity, low counter-density historical games, I would recommend the ZOC-bond/40-X-series by Mark Simonitch. Salerno '43 is an amazing little game that plays in 3 - 5 hours. I've also had a ton of fun with North Africa '41, but Salerno is definitely the more beginner-friendly. Other entries in the series, like Ardennes '44, France '40 and Stalingrad '42 are also supposed to be really good, and use the same system, with mostly the same rules. The Men of Iron-series is also a good starting point, focusing more on Medieval battles. (Norman Conquests being the most recent title in the series.)

If you're interested in solo-play, I really love the games by Mike Lambo. They're very simple games with a basic AI that play in anything from 20 minutes to 2 hours per scenario, with between 8 and 18 scenarios. The games come as books or PDFs where you're expected to cut out the counters yourself. The creator also has a Youtube-channel where he has playthroughs (with rule explanations) of every single game he has made. Here is a playthrough of my favorite game of his so far, Battles of the English Civil War: