10 Weirdest Wargames?

Started by DicedT, April 10, 2012, 04:32:32 PM

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James Sterrett

There's always the Boardgamegeek list:  http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/57115/weird-wargames/page/1   
, which mention Panzer Pranks, complete with tank sex and pregnancy; I've never played it:  http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3468/panzer-pranks

..  and also http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/10948/item/181476#item181476

Depending on your definition of "wargame", and more or less increasing the stretch as I go:

StarForce Alpha Centauri (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2524/starforce-alpha-centauri-interstellar-conflict-in)  -- Simultaneous movement by teleportation across a very large volume with somewhat limited intelligence (you don't get the enemy's Z-axis coordinate on the main map).  Movement, attack, and defense come from the same energy bank in tactical combat.   
    It's also a good game.  :)
    StarSoldier and Outreach, the ground tactical and the strategic companions, may also merit a look in this category.

Weak on the wacky, but unusual in overall mechanics, Aces of Aces has you dogfighting by changing which page you and your opponent are on in books.  Using bookmarks, you can have team dogfights.   The rules are extremely simple; it would be hard to fail to teach it to somebody who was willing to learn.  (I will have to try it with my 5 year old son.)  http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/798/ace-of-aces-handy-rotary-series

I'm not sure if The Hell Game (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2611/the-hellgame) - "based on the latest research by Dante Aligheri" counts as wacky - it's a half straight-faced, half tongue-in-cheek game covering the princes of hell warring to be Lucifer's top lieutenant.  Not a bad game once you get your head around how all the mechanics fit together strategically.   Likewise, Arkham Horror (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/15987/arkham-horror) plays its subject matter straight enough I'm not sure it counts as wacky.

Knightmare Chess adds rule-changing card play to a game of chess; changes include blocking a square for the rest of the game, allowing you to kill another of your own pieces, forbidding the capture of pieces until a king is in check, and cancelling you opponent's prior move - the opponent must make a different move instead.  And that's a pretty random selection from the 80 cards.  Don't know how fun it is, nobody else seems willing to try playing it with me.  :)  http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/227/knightmare-chess

Panther Games' boardgame Shanghai Trader is sort of like Monoply with sex, drugs, and guns in 1930s Shanghai - including a race to get out of the city with your money before it falls.  The friends I played it with, one time, around 20 years ago, still remember the game.  http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/796/shanghai-trader

Red November has the players as Soviet gnomes trying to save their submarine from a tidal wave of disasters, while the gnomes use grog to improve their performance of tasks, but may pass out from drinking it. It's fun, quick, and not necessarily a wargame - though the original design was apparently titled "Save the Kursk", inspired by the Russian sub of that name.  The designers decided that was in poor taste and rethemed for "zany".  http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36946/red-november

Cthulhu 500 is a cardgame that "mixes the madness of HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and the insanity of motorsports".  There's definitely the option for combat; some of the vehicles go faster when damaged..!  Light and fun, decidedly oddball.  http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12627/cthulhu-500

Erosion: Players use geologic processes to raise their own mountain range and erode the other players' mountains into the river, which carries the detritus to the delta (and accumulating rock in your delta is another opportunity to score points.)  The geology is solid enough, and the basic game easyenough to learn and fun enough, that my 5-year-old learned some of the basics of uplift and erosion and could apply them during a field trip. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/54372/erosion

Red Dragon Inn: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/24310/the-red-dragon-inn
   After the adventure, the adventurers gather at the inn, attempting to get each other's money through contests such as drinking, gambling, fighting - and rather less overt means.  The only card I specifically recall is "No, Pooky - That's my *friend*!", which has the wizard's familiar attack one of the other players.

The Nacho Incident is not a wargame, but it's fun.  Players are attempting to smuggle illegal Mexican food into Canada.  http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19048/the-nacho-incident

The zaniest, though, has got to be:

Who Stole Ed's Pants?  http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2567/who-stole-eds-pants
   In this game, which plays rather like Clue on LSD, the players are attempting to frame each other for the theft of Ed's pants.  The players are busy creating, altering, or overturning various pieces of evidence about each other, the crime, their alibis, or the reliability of each other's supporting witnesses.  The result is surreal.  If you have a crew playing for laughs, it's fun; doesn't work very well as a serious competitive game due to the incredible chaos involved.

bayonetbrant

Quote from: James Sterrett on May 03, 2012, 10:20:46 PMRed Dragon Inn: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/24310/the-red-dragon-inn
   After the adventure, the adventurers gather at the inn, attempting to get each other's money through contests such as drinking, gambling, fighting - and rather less overt means.  The only card I specifically recall is "No, Pooky - That's my *friend*!", which has the wizard's familiar attack one of the other players.

Pooky happens to look a LOT like a certain psychopathic rabbit from another fantasy story we all know well.

There have been 2 sequels to this also, all of which are compatible with each other.  All of which are completely zany...
We've had a LOT of fun playing these over the years.

But not a wargame
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

Tpek

I seem to vaguely recall some Napoleonic wargame with weird sci-fi thrown in.
As in mind control satellites, and a "Gratuitous Sex and Violence" table to roll results on :P

James Sterrett

On reflection, I'm not convinced that computer games get any less weird than boardgames.  Both can get really wacky in the concept brief; the boardgames stay more abstract, and thus have the advantage and disadvantage of being unable - and not expected - to deliver very concretely on the reality of the wacky.  Computer games are slightly more capable and much more expected to deliver.  (As cases-in-point, consider Stalin vs Martians, http://stalinvsmartians.com/en/  or Gettysburg: Armored Warfare  http://www.armoredwarfare.com/ or Toy Soldiers http://store.steampowered.com/app/98300 - and that's before we drift into more experimental games that do things such as force you to sense the world using only using pulses of sound... or completely defy Euclidian geometry... or gun down an infinite wave of enemies whose slow march down the screen and random firing patterns steadily speed up?)




ken ellis


ken ellis

not sure its a wargame but I wanna get one of these ...er....two of  these!

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6749/busen-memo

meadbelly

How about . . .





www.brikwars.com/rules/2005/cover.htm