1970s SPI Wargame Infomercial

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Comment count is 12

Robin Kestrel

- 2016-02-07

Glorious!

memedumpster

- 2016-02-07

I totally get it. Risk (real Risk, not Internet bullshit video gamey animated magic the gathering style sorcery rules to make it easier Risk) is the best board game ever. If it doesn't take over ten hours you don't take conquest seriously.

fedex

- 2016-02-07

those little cardboard chits @ 2:20 bring back a lot of memories

Nominal

- 2016-02-07

No, sorry. Brothers and chicks do (did) not play these. These things are geeky even by gamer nerd standards. I've been to around half a dozen board game conventions and I can't recall ever having seen a single black person.

And these are WAY geekier than stuff like Settlers of Catan or Agricola. I can handle some crazy complicated games (fucking Twilight Imperium), but I started foaming at the mouth trying to read the first 10 pages of the rules to Ambush! Grognardom is strictly a white guy thing.

What really turned me off to these games is how they all just felt like more complicated and pointless games of Chess. More complicated because JESUS the rules about supply lines and shit, but more pointless because there were less options to maneuver and it usually came down to lucky die rolls determining whose pawn captured whose in the giant stalemate along the river.

(el oh el at the inexpensive hobby line. If only they fast forwarded to dawn of miniatures)

garcet71283 - 2016-02-07

My dad has a literal trunk full of these things.

I remember finding the little chits in draws, floors of closets etc. as a kid.

Those chits got fucking everywhere.

Nominal - 2016-02-07

No chit

Now that I think about it, they weren't so much Chess as they were a very boring version of Blood Bowl. Imagine a giant game of Blood Bowl where every unit is reduced to 2 stats (movement and strength) and there is no ball. Just a giant endless scrimmage line where occasionally you could move a guy to gain a 2on1 advantage but ultimately it was up to the die to determine who would eventually win the grind.

baleen

- 2016-02-07

My dad was a hex game subscriber too, in the 70s.
Discovering his secret trove inspired me in lots of strange ways. He had a very shameful sort of "Oh... That ridiculous stuff. Too good for that now" kind of attitude towards the games, which made me feel like I was finding his bag of weed.

I remember trying to read the dense histories and make sense of the chits. They were all so beyond me, so I would make kid versions of them with hand made chits. Mostly, it was inspired by a still-great monster basher called Titan, which was one of those first hobby board game crossovers of the hex game underworld. I hope all that stuff is still tucked in the attic somewhere.

cognitivedissonance

- 2016-02-07

H.G. Wells first invented the rules for war gaming, although his rules were merely an excuse to fire toy cannons. He also wrote an incredibly complicated set of instructions on how to make toy funiculars for said war gaming, because for some reason he thought funiculars would be a big deal in the future.

baleen - 2016-02-08

Yes, I know that one, "Little Wars."
It had many famous players, including Peter Cushing.

Nominal - 2016-02-08

The reason there was a subscription model was because these games all had terrible replay value. They all had rigid setups and there was one "optimal" strategy to follow. Deviating from that strategy would lose you the game to someone who didn't. Once both players discovered that, it came down to the dice, turning the game into the most drawn out and convoluted coin flip ever.

Scrotum H. Vainglorious

- 2016-02-07

These people are dead now.

glasseye

- 2016-02-08

Well yeah, they were all smokers.

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