Wargames predicting the future

Started by bayonetbrant, July 24, 2013, 02:38:33 PM

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bayonetbrant

(dredged up from the old country archives...)


in the mid-70s, SPI published a wargame in ModQuad 2 called "Yugoslavia" with a series of hypotheticals around the city of Zagreb. 

It featured the Russians, Yugos, Americans, and a cameo by a few Italians.
Basic scenarios were Russian invasion, NATO counterattack, etc.
There was an interesting 3-player game with the Yugos trying to fend off both sides.

But there was also an interesting Yugo civil war scenario with Serbs & Croats on either side, and NATO/Russians jumping in.  This was '77, so 15 years before it actually happened in Yugoslavia.

So I'm curious what other games people might've run across that had strangely predictive scenarios, where the designers foresaw conflicts that later came to pass. 

And skip the obvious Arab-Israeli wars...
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bayonetbrant

The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Staggerwing

I really really hope that you and Battlefront's original CMSF haven't just jinxed us with this thread... :o
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Jack Nastyface

Certainly Gulf Strike comes to mind...orginally released in 1983, it predates Desert Storm by about 8 years.
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bayonetbrant

any games out there predict the Trump presidency?  The Obama-Libya bombings?  Russian seizure of Crimea?

what am I missing?
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

mirth

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bayonetbrant

The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

BanzaiCat

Quote from: bayonetbrant on September 26, 2017, 08:53:48 AM
any games out there predict the Trump presidency?  The Obama-Libya bombings?  Russian seizure of Crimea?

what am I missing?

Millennium Wars: Ukraine, perhaps?

I think I still have this and the other five games from the original series stowed away somewhere.



btrain

There are lots of wargames on hypothetical conflicts, but few of them ever seem to come to pass, at least not in the way the game might have indicated.

I must at this point invoke BOMBA'S LAW of Prophylactic Peace Through Prognosticative Conflict Simulation.
It is a proven theory, basically it is:

If Ty Bomba designs a game on a war that hasn't happened yet, it will not happen.

Data points: The Fire Next Time, Moscow Burning, Oil War: Iran Strikes, Red Sky Morning, When Dragons Fight, the "Putin Strikes All Points of the Compass" series... War by TV too, I suppose, when it was originally designed.

He actually is working on something called "America Falling", where he takes the system used in that Chinese civil war game Red Dragon Falling (think he has used it in a couple of others by now)... movement allowances are 3d6 every turn, nukes galore, chrome-plated chits flying about... and adapts it to a USA that has torn itself up into antagonistic regions.
Been done before, but not by him; I mentioned Minuteman above.

Still, we must cling to BOMBA'S LAW, to ensure the continued safety and peace of the world.

Brian

bayonetbrant

Where does "Coatney's Law" fit into that paradigm? ;)
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers