Games + History = Life. Here are the three that gave me most life this year! You can read the other Farewell 2023 articles here: Farewell 2023 – New-to-Me Games Farewell 2023 – Historical Fiction Farewell 2023 – Non-Historical...
Games + History = Life.
Here are the three that gave me most life this year!
You can read the other Farewell 2023 articles here:
Farewell 2023 – New-to-Me Games
Farewell 2023 – Historical Fiction
Farewell 2023 – Non-Historical Games
Farewell 2023 – Historical Non-Fiction
©Fort Circle Games.
Votes for Women (Tory Brown, Fort Circle Games)
As I’ve written in the New-to-Me Games post a few days ago, Votes for Women is a good game. More than that, it’s also good history, for a variety of reasons:
History wants to bring out new facets of our past, and the struggle for women’s suffrage has barely ever been subject of board games. History resists the temptation of the easy answer to a complicated question. While Votes for Women is clear that equal suffrage is a worthy cause, it does not portray the suffragists as spotless heroines – their internal divisions and their (partial) willingness to make compromises at the expense of others are just as much part of the game as their courageous stand in the face of injustice. History is based on primary sources, and the game comes with facsimiles of a generous 13 of them. You can read for yourself what the suffragists, their opponents, and the interested observers of the time thought of women’s suffrage.
Yellow and purple suffragist cubes aplenty in the Plains and West – yet the South and Mid-Atlantic has a worrying number of orange opposition.
©Kuhlmann Geschichtsspiele.
1848 (Gerhard H. Kuhlmann, Kuhlmann Geschichtsspiele)
Another game on an important, yet undergamed historical conflict! 1848 is by no means a simulation (at least if you play the game by the basic rules like me – there are “advanced” and “expert” rules provided online). Its main mechanism is akin to trick-taking – whichever political faction has the most points at the end of a round wins that round, and the player who provided most of these points scores all of them. Yes, all of them. If the Liberals win with 13 points and you provided 8, you will also take the 5 which other players chipped in. And in the end, only the player who has most points within the faction which scored most points will win. That leads to a lot of tricky card play: I may be able to win this round with my strong Republican cards, but is that not only going to benefit Alice who is ahead in Republican points overall? Do I challenge her for Republican leadership, or do I try to get rid of the Republican cards in rounds which are won by other factions? If I do challenge her, how do I know if she’s not even stronger in Republican cards this round and all my points will be won by her? And if I don’t, which faction should I back now – Liberals, Democrats, or even the Reactionaries?
A fierce struggle between Liberals and Democrats this round!
That’s a lot of fun in a small package, and so it’s no surprise that 1848 has been one of my most-played games this year.
If you’ve been following my blog this year, you might be able to guess which was my favorite historical game of 2023…
©Capstone Games/Skellig Games/Spielworxx.
Weimar (Matthias Cramer, Capstone Games/Skellig Games/Spielworxx)
You might know already that it has been my gaming obsession since I first got to play it in April). I, however, am not the only one with whom Weimar has hit a nerve. The wider board gaming world has taken notice (my tweets about Weimar have always attracted a lot more engagement than usual), and in Germany, it has gone far beyond that. This nerdy niche game has been covered by several major news outlets – because it takes its history seriously, and because it gives its players an outlet to muse about the great what-ifs of recent history. What if Social Democrats and Communists had cooperated after the overthrow of the German monarchy? What if Germany had not tried to find a rapprochement with its enemies from World War I? What if the Republic had weathered the economic shock of 1929 better? And, of course: What if the Republic had survived the Nazi challenge? – I don’t think the game gives perfect answers to that (to be clear, that’s probably beyond the scope of a game anyway). But it does make you think better about the answers you would give, and most of all, it helps you pose the right questions.
A nascent republic… with all its hopes and fears yet to be realized.
Which historical games did you enjoy this year? Let me know in the comments!