Thursday, October 29, 2015

The Triumph and the Tragedy

Bruce brought a new game back from Fallcon called the Triumph and the Tragedy. This is a political game (although there are military aspects to it) that allows you to play out the period 1933-1945 in Europe. 


Much of the game is about securing political influence (which was what I concentrated too much effort on) of neutral states in order to increase access to population and resources. These (along with industrial capacity) limit your ability each turn to develop new technology, increase your industrial capacity and buy political and military action cards.


Of course you can also say screw diplomacy and, as Bruce did above, just invade neutrals like Bulgaria! Overall, the mechanics are very simple the but the choices are very, very hard.


In our game, Germany did well diplomatically, but got out built militarily by the Soviets who then rolled west.


This forced me to strip the western approaches and the damned French and British jumped right on and that was all she wrote (in about 1942). I would play things differently next time. And there will definitely be a next time. One of the quirky outcomes of our game was British-Soviet standoff over Berlin (queue Patton). Great three-player game with interesting two-player adaptation.


Up next: More Star Wars!

3 comments:

tim said...

Sounds fun! Totally adding that to my wishlist!

Bob Barnetson said...

It was really good and can play either 2 or 3 player. More of apolitical/strategy game than a wargame. Very interesting choices.

tim said...

Which is the exact sort of thing I've been looking for to play with the kids! 3-player historical games that usually involve some war but also have a strong political and/or economic element to it.