{"id":338,"date":"2006-04-17T14:04:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-17T18:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=338"},"modified":"2006-08-18T12:29:40","modified_gmt":"2006-08-18T16:29:40","slug":"making-the-pie-bigger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/04\/17\/making-the-pie-bigger\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the pie bigger"},"content":{"rendered":"

My recent review of Birth of America<\/a> has been linked over at the unfortunately named Tacticular Cancer<\/a>, a sister site to the better known RPGCodex. Since they frequently link to my rants and raves, I’ve added them to my site list on the side bar. It’s a fairly decent linking site at this point, though I hope they can soon add some original content. Some of the people there seem to know what they are talking about.<\/p>\n

The forum post on my review<\/a> has raised an interesting question about getting people interested in wargaming. I made a throwaway comment in my BoA review in which I doubted its efficacy as a starter wargame. A guy named Naked Lunch argued against that and has asked the very reasonable question “What would I recommend?”<\/p>\n

And that’s kind of the kicker, isn’t it? There was a time when there were lots of beer and pretzel wargames<\/a> that served as training grounds for would-be Rommels and wannabe Lees; games that were easy to understand and provided some immediate satisfaction. Stuff like Panzer General. That war-ish niche has been filled by the RTS in many respects. It looks like war, and even feels like war, but for people who prefer Korsun Pocket they don’t quite scratch that itch.<\/p>\n

It’s not news to anybody that wargaming is less than it once was, percentage wise. There are niche developers like HPS and the occasional publisher like Matrix Games or Shrapnel that are willing to put some money behind things like Flashpoint Germany or the Armored Task Force series.<\/p>\n

And it’s not like there aren’t some great wargames out there. Birth of America is almost great. The SSG wargames are gems that don’t get enough publicity. If Second Manassas holds up to the high standard set by its predecessor, we could have an excellent introductory serious wargame company not to far from me.<\/p>\n

So how does a genre move beyond its base? I point RTS people to Battle for Middle Earth II. I point wannabe strategy gamers to the Total War series. But wargamers? Could I be wrong about Birth of America?<\/p>\n

Please enlighten me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My recent review of Birth of America has been linked over at the unfortunately named Tacticular Cancer, a sister site to the better known RPGCodex. Since they frequently link to my rants and raves, I’ve added them to my site list on the side bar. It’s a fairly decent linking site at this point, though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-5s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}