Post by Whiterook on May 28, 2024 8:22:05 GMT -5
Whereas I’ve definitely have not focused on that particular area of gaming in the past, I’ve found myself drawn to these games more and more in the past year. To be honest with you, I can’t recall off the tip of my tongue one example of an alt history game I’d owned before this recent fascination, other than Lock ‘N Load Publishing’s, “Nuklear Winter ‘68”, the first edition of which (and its expansion game) I bought in 2012, in which the Nazi’s come out of underground bunkers to a post-apocalyptic 1968 Germany. Thinking on it, that’s the only game I believe I owned up to now.
The past few months, my last playtesting assignment for Decision Games (a magazine game edition) was an alt history game called, “Operation Lorraine-Alsace”, a 2-Player game meant to explore what would have happened in the first 8 days of fighting across eastern France, had Hitler decided to launch his Winter Counteroffensive there, instead of the Ardennes. With a potential goal of causing sufficient casualties to the US 3rd and 7th Armies to remove them as effective offensive forces four the oncoming 1945 campaign; the game also explores the possibility to cause such embarrassment to the French, so as to paralyze it politically and remove the French influence in end-war influence. This could have greatly impacted the Allies timetable in its advance into Germany. A simply fascinating take on the WWII Battle of the Bulge! That definitely caught my attention and changed my thinking on alt history games, as it wasn’t in the realm of pseudo-fantasy, as was LNLP’s Nuklear Winter ‘68, but rather, taking an actual historical battle and flipping it on it’s head to see what would have happened if the battle shifted to another combat area.
…if you think about it, in my view, the actual historical battles we fight in every historical simulation has the possibility of an outcome that is different than what actually happened; playing a Battle of the Bulge game (say, Avalon Hill’s classic of the same name, or GMT’s “A Time for Trumpets”), any one playing could result in the Germans succeeding and making it to Antwerp… is that not an outcome of alternate history? Honestly, I never thought fully to conclusion on that tangent. If that is indeed the case, that we fought an alternate history outcome on the actual (simulated) battlefield, why then wouldn’t I consider playing (and owning) a game where the Battle of the Bulge was fought in eastern France?
Just tossing the bean bag around on this topic… I don’t see myself shifting focus on future purchase strategies to alt history specific, but I am definitely looking to add some to my collection!
The past few months, my last playtesting assignment for Decision Games (a magazine game edition) was an alt history game called, “Operation Lorraine-Alsace”, a 2-Player game meant to explore what would have happened in the first 8 days of fighting across eastern France, had Hitler decided to launch his Winter Counteroffensive there, instead of the Ardennes. With a potential goal of causing sufficient casualties to the US 3rd and 7th Armies to remove them as effective offensive forces four the oncoming 1945 campaign; the game also explores the possibility to cause such embarrassment to the French, so as to paralyze it politically and remove the French influence in end-war influence. This could have greatly impacted the Allies timetable in its advance into Germany. A simply fascinating take on the WWII Battle of the Bulge! That definitely caught my attention and changed my thinking on alt history games, as it wasn’t in the realm of pseudo-fantasy, as was LNLP’s Nuklear Winter ‘68, but rather, taking an actual historical battle and flipping it on it’s head to see what would have happened if the battle shifted to another combat area.
…if you think about it, in my view, the actual historical battles we fight in every historical simulation has the possibility of an outcome that is different than what actually happened; playing a Battle of the Bulge game (say, Avalon Hill’s classic of the same name, or GMT’s “A Time for Trumpets”), any one playing could result in the Germans succeeding and making it to Antwerp… is that not an outcome of alternate history? Honestly, I never thought fully to conclusion on that tangent. If that is indeed the case, that we fought an alternate history outcome on the actual (simulated) battlefield, why then wouldn’t I consider playing (and owning) a game where the Battle of the Bulge was fought in eastern France?
Just tossing the bean bag around on this topic… I don’t see myself shifting focus on future purchase strategies to alt history specific, but I am definitely looking to add some to my collection!
