Episode 023 - Desert Victory-Afrika Korps-Uncomfortable History-Pumpkin Spice

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I enjoyed listening to episode 23 on my Saturday car drive today. Overcast played this one and Homo Ludens episode 5 right after it. I have a few comments on the Uncomfortable History part of the podcast.

IMHO I didn't find the 3 host as strident on American Civil War issues as I expected after listening to Grant. They have strong feelings about how ACW is presented in games but I don't think they argued that slavery should be in every ACW game. They are disappointed that you can play 20 ACW games and still have no idea of the politics of the war. They also point out that WWII games of the 70s usually featured artwork of the Germans for ETO, that you had to take this as a whole and not game by game.

One focus was the use of flags in games, either as box artwork or as counters. Rather than use historical flags that are associated with a specific battle games usually use the same stars and bars battle flag of the Army of North Virginia. They this lazy. Plus this is the flag that became popular after governments of southern states started fighting against civil rights in the 1950s.

The criticized Into the Woods in particular to providing no context for the battle of Shiloh. They thought this should have been covered in the Designer's Notes. And I think they expect the issue of slavery should be covered some of the time, be it in a game mechanism or simply in designer's or historical notes. They said they don't see a mechanism for covering it in tactical games like GBotAMC. I've noticed that TKC games have said that they incorporate concentration camps in their WWII game series but those are too expensive for me to see how they covered it in their mechanics. But it makes me think we can covered larger social issues more often. Though I am quite happy with most of my games ignoring these political aspects most of the time.

But it brings up a bigger issue of all games, covered both in your and their episode. As said, if you refuse to play Germans in WWII games and think anything who plays that side is problematic, how do you play those games at all? And some people take some interesting views on this issue. Back in the 1970s I was in a war-game club a one member was an Orthodox Jew (most of use were Jewish). His one restriction was that he wouldn't play the Israelis an any Arab-Israeli war-game. If he lost as the Israeli's he didn't want to be responsible for the destruction of Israel through his own incompetence.. OTOH he felt as an Arab winner he would be magnanimous to the Israeli nation.

Overall I am impressed by the Pushing Cardboard podcast. I think it is harder to do a good podcast solo then with a 2nd person.

Thanks for the feedback, Paul. It wasn't just the Homo Ludens podcast I was refering to in my piece, it was also Stuart's blog, specifically his recent piece on Herman Luttmann's Pickett's Charge game, as well as my conversations with Stuart online.

Stuart's blog post

I really like both his blog and the podcast series, I just disagree with a couple of his conclusions. And most of his stridency was limited to the dust up on BGG where the blog post was discussed.

As someone who has never played Afrika Korps I enjoyed listening to a review of it by someone who isn't attached to it by nostalgia.

Ha! I'm attached by a smidge of nostalgia, I can't deny it. But I'm definitely not one of those grogs who has been playing it for 40 years. It's interesting to look at games that have endured.