Maggie's Farm

re A new war game: Europe 1939-1945.

I used to like Avalon Hill games back in the 70s, particularly Stalingrad, Afrika Korps and Waterloo. These games took perhaps 4 hours to play and were not encumbered by a labyrinth of rules. They were less realistic but easy to play.

Adding rules to make the games more realistic inevitably leads to longer playing time and a smaller pool of players as the game becomes more difficult to learn and tedious to play. For some, it is worth it.

The problem with those types of games is finding opponents, the set up time, and having a place to leave the game set up if one can't complete it at one sitting.

In recent years I have played a computer game called Hearts of Iron. It is a WWII resource management/grand strategy game. It takes a long time to play, but one has the advantage of clicking the 'save' button when play time is over but the games is not. One can also play the 'AI' instead of having to find a real opponent.

My two cents worth.