The Unconventional Wargamer

Settlers of Catan, is not a historical board game.

I am scratching my head over how someone can claim M44 gives them insight into the operational level, when the game itself cannot make up its mind just the hell scale it represents, between its varying scenarios, and its highly abstracted rules.

To me, CoH has a much better tie to history, as the different weapon systems are at least somewhat accurately represented, as opposed to M44.

Some eurogames have a lot of historical flavour too. You take something like Maria for instance.

Have you tried Dominant Species?

The main difficulty I have in convincing my eurogamer friends to play wargames is in justifying the amount of rules and the length of play when compared to the perceived randomness of the game.

I see this come up a lot in conversations on BGG and find this one of the most surprising aspects of the "collision" between the wargame and eurogamer worlds. Anyone who was weaned on wargames knows that the skill factor is paramount and the randomness just alters the game path and provides realistic uncertainty. I find this misperception about the role of luck in wargames baffling every time I hear it.

I remember this one game of Eastfront when the Germans were just bound to make a breakthrough and seize Moscow. I was playing the Soviets and only had a couple of measly infantry steps to defend the key hex that would make my whole frontline collapse (I was playing very poorly I have to say). My opponent had everything: SS panzers, armour, you name it. 15 dice to roll, with a blitz HQ, scored only one hit. Then the weather turns to mud, there's not enough time to rebuild his HQs and take advantage of the breakthrough he should have achieved.

I can understand my opponent's frustration. You spend 6 hours carefully planning everything and this is how it ends.

Agreed but is it fun if you lose despite having applied the better strategy? Not that I really have to deal with that kind of frustration too often since I'm usually the worse player...

Also all the examples you mention, apart from Midway, are older conflicts, much smaller in scale than those massive tank battles between the Germans and the Soviets. I suppose the larger the scale and the more advanced the technology used, the more predictable the overall results must be.

I'm no expert in US military history but I was taught in school that the Japanese had badly underestimated US forces at Midway and that it was part of the reason they lost...