Obviously, since this is an OSR blog, I
feel like I should open with D&D/AD&D. I saw the ads for the
Holmes Basic Set in "Boy's Life", the Cub Scout magazine
and I was hooked, it took me something like a year to find a store
that sold that D&D boxed set, sometime in early 1980. My next D&D
purchase was the AD&D Monster Manual, then the Cook/Marsh Expert
Set, followed by a Christmas present of both the AD&D Players
Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide, this set the tone for some
confused rulings over the years as a DM, since I was playing a hybrid
of Holmes, the X half of B/X and AD&D, but over the years I
started to fall more in line with AD&D orthodoxy, with a few
exceptions. Then, in 1985, I pre-ordered Oriental Adventures and it
has been almost an obsession ever since.
Chess- Chess had to make the cut here
because it is one of the first thinking man's board games that I ever
learned. I learned how to play when I was in second grade, just
because it was one of the quite games on the shelf in my classroom we
got to play during recess time when it was raining or the weather was
otherwise too bad to go outside and play. I really didn't learn the
game until high school though when I played regularly with my
principal, who was a ranked player, and occasionally I'd even win. My
real claim to fame though is that I once played chess against a guy
who had played against Bobby Fischer, I met him through my buddy
Darryl's dad. Totally got my ass handed to me, it was worth the
experience.
Risk- Ah, Risk, the game of world
conquest. You taught me that the Ukraine was gigantic and the names
of other exotic places. You were wrong about the Ukraine, but I guess
a game produced during the cold war wasn't going to give Russia it's
due, right? This game taught me two things, basic strategy and the
importance of luck. Play with good strategy, take a few chances, and
hope your luck holds; I was Risk champion of my dorm. On the other
hand I have been beaten by people that had NEVER played the game
before, so there you have it.
Axis & Allies (The Game Master
edition from the 1980s)- Axis & Allies wasn't the first in this
series that I played, that honor goes to Conquest of the Empire;
which we also played quite a bit; but Axis & Allies we played
more and better. Axis & Allies was the better game right out of
the box, even it's recommended optional rules made sense. By the time
Axis & Allies hit the scene, I was already a veteran wargamer,
but this managed to take a lot of wargame elements and make them
accessible to the masses, like a gateway wargame.
Dawn Patrol- This should come as no
surprise, since I am currently engaged in a new Dawn Patrol campaign,
but it was my first and is still my favorite aerial combat game. I
bought it because TSR put it out, and I was a young TSR fanboy at the
time, it's taken me this long to get good at it.
Star Fleet Battles- I never really
understood why this game got a bad reputation as highly complex to
the point where you needed a PhD in Mathematics to play it. I am not
a math guy, and I have played a lot of SFB, if filling out the energy
allocation sheet is too hard for you I advise going back to remedial
4th grade math. I bought the Commanders edition boxed set the year I
turned 14, since my birthday is in July I don't remember if it was
before or after I turned 14. I taught myself and my friends how to
play, we made a few mistakes along the way in learning, but we had it
down after a few games; it says right on the box "1,2 or more
players Ages 12 and older". Sure it got a little more complex
with each additional boxed set (or module, which I never bought), but
it was building on knowledge that you had already mastered.
Up Front- The Squad Leader card game,
picking on Avalon Hill title to add to the list was really hard to
do, then I remembered the one we always played when we had extra time
on our hands, it's quick to set up and play, even when you build you
own squads with the point buy system, and it is one of the only games
that I have that'll bring Lance and Darryl into the same room,
although maybe not anymore, we used to have tournaments. Up Front is
one of the few games I don't mind losing just because I had bad luck.
Theoretically Multi-Man Publishing has the rights to it now, as part
of the Squad Leader line, and they were considering making it a CCG,
which would make me want them all to suffer horrible curses, but I
would like to see a new edition. I have Up Front and it's official
expansions Banzai and Desert War, but the cards have seen a lot of
wear over the years.
Koei's Genghis Khan- Yeah, I know, it's
a little odd to add a NES game to the list, and this title is really
representational of all the Koei titles that were turn based
war/administrative games from Nobunaga's Ambition through L'Empereur
and including Romance of the Three Kingdoms; but my alter-ego here
being the Great Khan, obviously I was going to pick Genghis Khan. I
actually still own a NES and a copy of that game, I never play it,
the battery inside it is shot so it doesn't save and I can't see
leaving it on for the days that would take to complete the game.
Darryl and I used to play the hell out of this game together too, in
multi-player mode, usually one of us would pick England and the other
Japan, since the four playable countries were Mongolia, Byzantium,
England and Japan, we wanted as much space as possible between us
before we had to start fighting each other.
Talisman- The 2nd edition before it got
completely crapped up by the people at Games Workshop and used as yet
another way to promote their Warhammer franchise, although this was
sneaking into this edition too. This was a go-to game for us if we
wanted to play something fantasy, fun and easy to teach/learn. I had,
I am pretty sure, every expansion for this game that was released in
the US except Timescape, we drew the line there. I always wanted to
play in a D&D campaign set in this world, minus the out of place
and silly characters. The board evoked a place that was both real and
medieval, yet mythic at the same time. The only real drawback to this
game was that it could get tedious after having died several times
and starting over. I have played the new Fantasy Flight Games
version, and while it is much, much nicer than the last Games
Workshop edition, the 2nd edition still holds my loyalty, the FFG
version is like a more polished, prettier version of my old 2nd
edition, but it loses something in the transformation.
Warrior Knights- Have you ever razed a
city to win a game? My old gaming group got in touch with the
designer to ask him a few questions about the rules and our
interpretations and we discovered we were doing the entire political
phase wrong, apparently we were supposed to spend all of our votes on
a single action. We didn't. We played a much more corrupt and
Machiavellian version of the game than had been considered by the
designer. We bought and sold votes, forged alliances to screw over
whoever was in the lead, and fought over who would hold the wool
concession. Games Workshop did a great job with this one, I hear that
Fantasy Flight Games has put out a new edition, but, in the words of
Lance, who has played it "It sucks. They screwed the pooch on
this one". He tried it several times, just to try and get
accustomed to the rules changes and that was his ultimate opinion;
then he taught his Tuesday Night Gaming Group how we played the old
GW version and they had a blast with it.
This was fun, maybe I'll do a part 2 that includes the games I cut from this list.
