The Wargamer

Cave Quid Dicis Quando Et Cui (Beware of what you say when and to whom) 

In 1975 my school chums hatched a scheme to claim extracurricular credits on our college applications by founding a wargame club. The biggest hurdle was our potential sponsor was a “flower power” English teacher who shuddered at the mere mention of conflict, however abstract. The trick was to get her back to grading papers before she discovered our atavistic impulses. Accordingly, we played Diplomacy until our club’s probation period expired. This choice was partially due to Henry Kissinger’s seal of approval being cannily displayed on Avalon Hill’s game box —he’d just ‘won’ the Noble Peace Prize—but mostly because it was a terrifically entertaining way to bring fresh recruits into our burgeoning hobby. By such an appropriate subterfuge, worthy of diplomats from Machiavelli to Metternich, was Westhill High School’s “Historical Recreations” club chartered. O.K., Rebecca De Mornay’s character in Risky Business wasn’t about to bestow any favors, but we could at least smirk our way through admissions interviews. [Well done! - Ed.]

Diplomacy: The Art of Combining Persuasion with Evasion

Flash forward three decades. In a bid to attract the emerging generation of strategy gamers, Paradox Interactive is reissuing a computer version of Hasbro/Avalon Hill’s Diplomacy. For those who’ve not had the pleasure of being “stabbed in the back,” or labor under the misapprehension that Steve Jackson’s Munchkin card game pioneered the concept, Diplomacy was designed by Alan Calhamer in 1954 and has pretty much been in constant play around the world since.

Diplomacy is a seven-sided game of negotiation wherein each player controls a major European power prior to the outbreak of the Great War. Imagine playing on a Risk!-like board, but using checker-like rules…meaning sans dice. Like the best eurogames, the mechanics are elegantly simple; play balance is reasonably equal. Armies and navies are the only unit types. Geography willing, these can move into an adjoining area, support or convoy a friendly unit trying to do the same, or fend off an enemy attempting to take a territory away. Experts may dwell on country or map specific nuances, but it’s actually the art of negotiation that separates a run of the mill “tallyho!” type from a true Talleyrand.