【Board Game Miscellaneous】When Can The World Cast A Sword As A Plow? ——War and Peace In Table Games
2020-06-16

War is so unfamiliar to us born in a peaceful age. The strangeness is that the anti-war symbol has become a trend pattern. The fear and fear of war is only awakened in heavy war-themed movies or documentaries.

As for the game, it is more at the other extreme, and the use of its polarities allows players to experience the thrill of killing enemies in war, and rarely provokes people to think about what the war has brought us.

There are also many war-themed games in the board games. In the swords and swords and the rain of bullets, we might as well temporarily put down the passion and blood of the battle, and set our sights on the various sentient beings on the battlefield, to interpret the cruelty of the war from the perspective of war spectators or bystanders , Understand the value of peace.


To overcome fear, you can overcome everything——The Grizzled

The Grizzled is a board game published by Sweet Games of France. The player plays a group of French soldiers who were recruited to the frontline during the First World War to participate in the war. They can only rely on each other and cooperate with each other to face many of the war. Unknown fear, only to overcome fear can win the victory of this war and return home alive.

The game's Heavy is not high, and although it is the theme of war, there is no fighting element in the game. Players do not need to line up and plan their battles. What they do is not to defeat the enemy, but to experience a soldier in the war firsthand. The fears felt in the-the rain of bullets, the bad weather and the devastation of the spirit, only cooperation will have more chances of survival.

The goal of the game is to pass a series of missions. Players try to clear the test library to expose the bottom peace card. When the peace card is revealed and the player does not have a hand card, then the game is over, the player wins, and the infantry survived and can return to their hometown after the war. When the mission is over, if the monument card under the morale library is exposed, the game will fail, and the monument will become a monument to commemorate your heroic battle.

The game is very smooth, with a sense of substitution. The details are cleverly designed. The lid is painted with a mobilization order. The bottom of the box is a dove of peace with an olive branch. The box face is a group of young people in peacetime.There is a strong contrast.



It is worth mentioning that the final page of the game rule book also pays tribute to game illustrator Tigous-"Hasta Siempre". Tigous is also a cartoonist of the French caricature "charlie hebdo". Weekly magazines often publish some spicy and bold religious and political reports.

On January 7, 2015, the headquarters of "charlie hebdo" was attacked by militants, killing 12 people and wounding many others. Tigous was killed in the attack."The Grizzled" is the last work he left behind.



Hasta Siempre is taken from the famous saying "Hasta la Victoria Siempre" of the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, this sentence is not only dedicated to the sacrifice of Tigous, but also dedicated to the players of this game-always maintaining a high will to fight, facing the fear of war Only in exchange for the final peace and victory.

The spiritual core of the board game "The Grizzled" is very concentrated. With the positive and positive background settings, it will soon be Chinese. The famous model manufacturer C has also launched a luxurious English version with soldier models. Players who feel the fear of war personally may wish to collect a copy.



There is no good war in the world, and no bad peace——"This War of Mine"

If you think "The Grizzled" is a bit too boring, then the board game "This War of Mine: The Board Game" can also let you experience the fear of war. It is based on the award-winning video game "This War of Mine" Adapted, this is a dark survival game produced by Polish game developer 11 bit studio.

Unlike ordinary war games, in This War of Mine, the player controls not the soldiers, but a group of civilians who survive in the war. The design is inspired by the siege of Sarajevo. The civilians are trapped in a living condition The extremely difficult and lonely city, every decision made is life and death, and everything they encounter is what players may encounter in real life, such as "In war, not everyone wants to go to the front to kill the enemy. "

11 bit wants to use this theme to let players look at war from another angle, because history tells us that the biggest victims of any war are always civilians. The countless military war games on the market have hardly depicted the situation of these innocent civilians. So it abandons the exaggerated fights and kills, stays away from the smoke-filled battlefield, and puts its perspective on the devastated cities, as well as the people who live here and struggle to survive...

The board game version "This War of Mine" is built on the basis of the video game version. It is co-produced by the designer Michal Oracz of the board game "Neuroshima Hex" and the scriptwriter Jakub Wisniewski of "DYING LIGHT".

The number of game players is set between 1 and 6, the board game includes 430 cards and tokens, 12 selectable protagonists, more than 1,000 independent short stories, various open choices and endings , And a mobile phone auxiliary application.

Players will still lead a vote of civilians struggling to survive in the devastated city. During the day, players will take refuge in a dilapidated tenement house, and strengthen the safety of the shelter by removing rubble, searching for supplies, and repairing the house. When night falls, the player's main duty is to watch the night to defend against sudden attacks, and to search for the survival necessities in the city under the cover of night.

The goal of the game is to survive as many days as possible. Players must make various difficult choices to torture human nature during the game. You can choose to help or ignore those survivors, or you can kill them to plunder resources. The only constraint is the morality of the player.

The board game version of "This War of Mine" has greatly expanded the world of the original game, emphasizing the depth of the plot, but its biggest highlight is the human instinct and the interaction between people driven by group decision-making.

And it's an instant game, you don't need to read the rule book to play. Mobile-assisted applications will provide a series of content such as the original soundtrack of the game, real-time story updates, scenario scripts, puzzles and puzzles, hand-painted original paintings, etc., and become an indispensable part of the game, breaking through and subverting the traditional form of board games.

In order to strive for perfection, 11-bit also invited illustrators who have worked for classic series such as "Magic", "Game of Thrones" and "Star Wars" to draw a cover for the "This War of Mine" board game and work hard Create a realistic atmosphere in video games.

The game continued to launch an expanded "Stories in the Ruin City", introducing new characters and cards and scenes, and at the same time the story gradually deepened, facing the atrocities of war, proved that terrible despair can bring great courage.

"DAYS OF THE SIEGE" has added war orphan modules, new rules and more than 750 new scripts. The story also slowly tortures a deeper level of human nature. When the long siege becomes the norm, people only focus on daily life. Survive, and forget the existence and significance of war.

"This war of mine" with its shocking story experience and delicate human emotions resonates, it is difficult not to let players be moved. It allows us to see that the original game can be so profound, torture the conscience, beat the soul, and stir up a true feeling of suffering.

Only when you have experienced the war as a civilian will you find the true meaning of "Never be a peace dog, not a chaotic person"-there is no good war in the world, and there is no bad peace.


Casting a sword into a sickle, and gaining victory-"Scythe"

Unlike the above war-themed board games, the title of "Scythe" although it seems very straightforward to reveal that this is a "war", but in fact, the "scythe" in the game accounts for a much larger proportion than "war" .

This is a steampunk style game. The background of the game is set in the overhead 1920 Eastern European continent. The smoke of World War has not yet dissipated. The military city "factory" that once made huge mechas for various countries suddenly shut down. The five major forces sent heavily armed mechas to go Scramble for the rich resources of the "factory" and its surroundings.

The reason why the game is named "Scythe" is because the sickle is both a farming tool and a weapon. This also reflects the two major elements of the game: production resources and war. A typical sickle war begins when the opponent builds the infrastructure, then explores the entire world outward, and finally annexes the enemy in the battle to win.


The game experience of "Scythe" is also highly consistent with its artistic style. Because in the game, war is not the only way to win, the war machine usually only acts as a deterrent, and farming and material production are the important ways to win.

The illustration in the game actually implies this theme. In the mecha battle, it is farming that brings peace to people. Although it is an overhead world, the creation of game illustrations was inspired by the Supo War and the Second World War. Polish artist Jakub Rozalski combined traditional Polish army themes, daily rural life, and Polish oil painting styles from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Combined with modernist design, giant battle robots, and science fiction themes, it shows a great era of nostalgia and innovation, which combines farming and fighting, corroded gears and hearts.


Jakub's unique artistic style is inseparable from his personal growth experience. Poland has been bullied by Russia for a long time in history, but it won a glorious victory in the Soviet-Polish War in 1920, and this war prevented the export of the Russian Revolution to the Western world, and fundamentally changed the destiny and process of Europe. But Poland, which later achieved independence, was still repeatedly oppressed between Russia and Germany. It was troublesome, tough and unyielding.




The game paintings are full of contradictions and sharp contrasts. The huge post-modern war mechs in the background of the wheat field are like the power and disaster encountered in Polish history; the simple and busy farmers in the golden wheat field are like brave and ordinary. The people of Poland are not afraid of power or war, and they stick to the belief of peace in their homeland. That is also the fear of war and the yearning for peaceful life in the minds of designers.

Interestingly, the father of a little Canadian girl later created a children's version of "My Little Scythe" for the daughter and her friends to play this slightly heavy-mouthed board game It basically inherited most of the original features, but turned the resources into gems and apples that children like, and turned the war into throwing apple pie at each other-maybe this is the real "cast sword for sickle".

summary
When we are commanding a virtual army in a war game, operating virtual weapons, fighting all enemies opposite to our camp, and immersed in the thrill of killing, what we see from another angle is that because of war and survival, Humans will also become terrible monsters.

The above board games can help us see the true face of war from multiple angles——war is a means for the weak to defend their rights, and it is also a weapon for the strong to destroy others. There is no winner after the gunshot. The so-called winners are nothing more than gains.




<< 【Board Game Miscellaneous】The Stories That Classic IP And Board Games Have To Tell

>> 【Board Game Miscellaneous】Board games are too brain-burning? All are the result of Heavy !

 
recentsale_title
0