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Author Topic: Cold-War-Goes-Hot gets fashionable again  (Read 12306 times)

bayonetbrant

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on: November 29, 2018, 01:20:33 PM
So what do you guys think is driving the revival in the cold-war-goes-hot-in-the-80s games?


It can't just be "the Russians are getting frisky again" can it? 
I mean, if that were the case then things like NW:Poland and Putin's War would be taking off more Under an Iron Sky or the upcoming Compass WW3 reboots.


I think it's more than just cyclical nostalgia, but I can't really figure it out.  It would be one thing if if was just that publication rights were all expiring about the same time and those games were all simultaneously coming up for reprints.  That wouldn't explain new designs like W@W'85 and Iron Sky and Brezhnev's War now rolling out alongside the reboots (yes, I know W@W is 10 years old at this point).


Thoughts?

*edited title becasue Brant can't spell Hot
« Last Edit: November 29, 2018, 02:01:39 PM by mirth »

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bob48

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Reply #1 on: November 29, 2018, 01:24:05 PM
Scares the crap outta me.

“O Lord God, let me not be disgraced in my old days.”

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bayonetbrant

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Reply #2 on: November 29, 2018, 01:39:12 PM
Scares the crap outta me.

that they're back in fashion?  or that the balloon could go up again?

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mirth

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Reply #3 on: November 29, 2018, 01:58:57 PM
I've always found the hypotheticals interesting. At what point does the quality of NATO start overtaking the quality of the Sovs? Could Soviet battlefield doctrine actually work? That sort of stuff is fun to game out.


Plus you get lots of cool toys to push around!

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bob48

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Reply #4 on: November 29, 2018, 02:22:57 PM
Scares the crap outta me.

that they're back in fashion?  or that the balloon could go up again?

Yes.

“O Lord God, let me not be disgraced in my old days.”

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'


bbmike

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Reply #5 on: November 29, 2018, 03:17:48 PM
...
It can't just be "the Russians are getting frisky again" can it? 
...

I believe that is exactly the case.

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Capn Darwin

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Reply #6 on: November 29, 2018, 05:45:09 PM
I'd like to think it was our Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm game, but my guess, there are a lot of folks who served in the 80s at the height of the Cold War and are now wargamers and want to lift the lid on that box and take a peek. W@W is also a good bet as well. 8)
« Last Edit: November 29, 2018, 08:17:26 PM by Capn Darwin »



bbmike

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Reply #7 on: November 29, 2018, 06:28:52 PM
Red Storm, huh? I'll have to look that one up. I don't think I'm familiar with it.  :whistle:

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Pinetree

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Reply #8 on: November 30, 2018, 03:17:54 AM
My guess is that it's partly the guys who served in the 80's are now hitting retirement age and want to play around with their old units; and partly those kids of the 80's who want to wargame the war they grew up with now have some disposable income. It's also a fairly modern situation  with reasonable equality of forces.



Pinetree

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Reply #9 on: November 30, 2018, 03:20:08 AM
Oh, and Nena:




ojsdad

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Reply #10 on: December 01, 2018, 01:46:49 PM
Russian delusions of granduer and nostalgia I think are two reasons. I also think its the last time we could have seen a war involving millions of troops on both sides, thousands of tanks and aircraft, but no one knows how it would have played out, unlike refighting WWII battles.

Today, it Russia and NATO got hot, it would be a lot smaller, both militaries are a shadow of their Cold War selves. It's hard to image large scale warfare with China. Korea gets some attention, but think people either don't believe it will ever happen or the Norks wont last more than a couple of weeks.

So that leaves Cold War going hot for your large scale semi modern gaming with no real world results to compare with.

Oh, and many of the weapon systems in use at the end of the Cold War are still in use today.
« Last Edit: December 01, 2018, 01:51:35 PM by ojsdad »

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bayonetbrant

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Reply #11 on: December 10, 2018, 09:33:38 AM

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Boyerwulf

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Reply #12 on: December 21, 2018, 03:11:23 PM
Excellent podcast, till it quit on me at the 24minute mark. James was right on the money with the nostalgia factor. Lets also not forget that it is a great scenario for gaming. The lesser trained Soviet hordes, against the well trained, better equipped (most of the time after 1984) units of NATO.  It's a great scenario, and games like GDWs Third World War really did an outstanding job of handling quantity vs quality, as well as the differences in command structure (the sequence of play gave NATO much better maneuver flexibility) .  Stopping the Soviets in Northern Norway using just  a few British commandos and US Marines, trouncing the Iranian or Iraqi Army(depending on who joined who) using the RDF in the Persian Gulf.  The game was very well done and it definitely deserves a reprint. 
  I'm not going to name names, but a lot of the more recent games I have seen that simulate NATO VS Warsaw Pact are just plain lazy. With weapon systems, troop quality, training, and command structure hardly even taken into account. Hell a game was released recently that had the Fulda Gap in the wrong location.   So I think that the fact that GDWs Third World War and Victory Games NATO are both being republished is partly because of the nostalgia factor, but also because of just how great a games that they actually were.



besilarius

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Reply #13 on: December 24, 2018, 08:53:05 AM
One of the Avalon Hill people back in the 70s was a fellow named Tom Shaw.
He was their do it all guy, and did a lot of marketing for them.
He was personally most interested in Sports games and didn;'t really care much about the wargames.
At that time, he thought the interest in the World War II games was partly driven by television shows like Combat, The Gallant Men, Twelve O'clock High, Silent Service, et al. 

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bayonetbrant

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Reply #14 on: January 08, 2020, 01:59:17 PM
Counter samples released for Compass Games' upcoming Doomsday game


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