There are a few words in our English language that have the ability to assist us with time travel. Traveling back not in physical form but back in our memory vault to a time and place that has long passed and that we have forgotten all of the gory details about. This word is nostalgia and in my opinion the word can bring both a positive and negative response. Nostalgia is simply a bittersweet emotional longing for a past period, person, thing or place in someone’s life. We all have it from time to time and it is a good thing. In fact, I often think back to the “good old guys” of growing up on the farm, high school and my college days. These seemed to be the best times of my life and I have carried those memories and the feelings they engender with me over the years to take me away from my current cares and strife. Nostalgia offers benefits such as a mood boost, fostering deeper social and emotional connection with family and friends and improving our outlook and optimism about our current situation and the world. But, there are also negative side effects as well such as triggering sadness or a longing, causing unhealthy rumination and more often than not idealizing the past and glazing over the hard parts and holding onto only the good. In the end, nostalgia is good but it can distract us from the reality of things and even cause angst or sorrow over the fact that the past won’t return to us. In this edition of The Love/Hate Relationship, I want to share what I love and hate about nostalgia and particularly wargame nostalgia.

Love

There is a lot to love about wargame nostalgia. While my childhood experience with wargames is very different from many of you, I still have very fond memories of my hours upon hours playing Axis & Allies with my brothers. We would always go to the ends of the Earth to finish a game and no one ever wanted to surrender. There was always a chance…that you would roll nothing but 6’s and hit with every attack and they would miss with every one of theirs. I still have those discussions with my brothers from time to time and I think that this is one of my favorite parts about this shared nostalgia. We all can be teleported back to a moment in time and remember where we were, how we were feeling and what the world was like at the time…based on a shared memory of something that we liked. This boosts our mood, as we typically remember only the good parts of the experience, and also deepens and strengthens bonds with family and friends. This is a real mood stabilizer and improver and I very much love that about nostalgia.

I also realize that sometimes when we think back, and have good feelings about a game we played, that it was really the memories created from the play experience and the people that we played with and not necessarily the game. The game could have been good, maybe even great but when revisited it just feels different somehow. And that difference is the people you played it with and the memories you created….with them. Nostalgia. That doesn’t mean the feelings are not valid and that the thing associated with them wasn’t good just that there is more there than just the thing we experienced.

I also very much love how wargame nostalgia can help you build your own taste pallet for games and help you to identify what it is that you liked. Is this a subjective remembrance of the game? Probably, as the play experience is always subjective and is influenced by the people and personalities you are playing it with. But it still can form you and your views on wargaming. What works, what doesn’t and what you liked and disliked.

Finally, I love that nostalgia can be a positive tool to use as you search for and attempt to indoctrinate your friends and prospective players. If you speak favorably about the game or system, and liked it or at least remember that you liked it, the other participants will pick up on your energy and vibe about the game and start the experience out with a positive first impression. After all, you seemed to like it in the past and have convinced them to give it a try. How bad can it be? I think that this is one of the more positive aspects of wargame nostalgia. The transference of feelings and emotions. I think that even Alexander and I can be influenced by each other after a play experience. As we think about and discuss the game, whether we liked it or not and what that was, we can begin to see things from another perspective that we either missed or just didn’t initially pick up, and then it can cause us to see things similarly. After all, what are wargamers if not pushers of a doctrine or system and continually on the hunt from some unsuspecting idiot to throw it at….

Hate

Now that you see what I love about wargame nostalgia, let’s take a look at what I hate. Hate is such a strong word for me but there are many things that are very displeasing about wargame nostalgia. First off, nostalgia leads to a continual comparison of our memories in the past and the reality of today. Nostalgia causes us to ruminate and to get stuck in our own personal echo chamber about certain games or systems. We then dwell too much on the “good old days” and that fondly thought or time and experience and this can lead to unrealistic expectations of a new game. In fact, it can be so strong that we may never give another game in that same line a chance. This can lead to what I call wargame bitterness or a way of thinking that lumps all devotees or followers of other systems into a negative light. This can lead to us not wanting to engage with them because they “think [insert game name] is a bad game” and can lead to us personally self isolate and not being able to make new friends and acquaintances to share games with. In extreme cases, it can lead to feelings of despair and depression about the current state of the hobby and even with your current gaming choices.

I have not experienced these feelings but as a relative newcomer to wargaming have definitely felt judged. Case in point, our experience with Advanced Squad Leader. Not a system that I had ever played until a few years ago and that first experience was with a seasoned ASL gamer who had played it since he was in 7th grade. He loves the system, even though he has some problems with certain rules, and he compares every tactical level wargame against his experience. That is fair but it doesn’t represent the feelings of others. I for one, love Combat Commander! And there are a few main reasons that this game holds such high regard, and in my humble opinion, is the best tactical level game ever created. One is that it is a card-driven strategy game. The cards are what you rely on to take actions, and if you do not wisely manage those cards, you may not have the card you need, such as a fire or advance in your hand when you need it! Some would complain that this is randomness and doesn’t belong in a strategy game but I disagree. I have never been in the service nor had to participate in a battle, but I can only imagine that there is chaos. This chaos changes all of the best laid battle plans and there are certain factors that contribute to that chaos, such as running out of ammo, your guns jamming, being pinned down by a sniper or having your units morale drop leaving them hugging the ground and keeping their heads down, that make battle difficult. The cards represent this part of the chaos and is a genius addition to the game. I also enjoy the way the designer chose to address rolling using the dice printed at the bottom of each order card. This is a very solid way of handling this necessary random determination of combat.

The other favorite part for me with Combat Commander is the narrative that is told as the battles unfold! As I have played Combat Commander, I imagine that I can feel what the squads felt in combat. I have felt as if I was Sergeant Kaminsky trying to inspire his men to move up on a well defended building to engage the enemy and knock them out of that fortification. I have experienced the disappointment of Sergeant Ganz as his troops were forced to retreat to try to repel the Russians who were threatening the German troops in the buildings. I have felt the disgust in my unit’s performance when a very powerful infantry gun or heavy artillery continues to miss its targets. The narrative is the best part and allows my mind to participate in the battle, even though I am not there. It is a similar feeling to a well written book that forces you to take the role of characters and experience their feelings as you read the pages. If a game can do all that, it is definitely good!

And with ASL, I get some of that but just feel too all knowing and too much in control. My friend just thinks it is more realistic and true to the rigors of combat. He also personally hates the cards in CC and cannot stand that he cannot do what he wants because he doesn’t have the right card in his hand. And I get it. But, to me, this is an example of the real problem with wargame nostalgia. The comparisons. Every system out there has its strengths and flaws. There is no perfect system and we just need to accept that our old games, and those positive memories that have formed our opinion of that game, are not the be-all-end-all of wargaming and others can have a different opinion as well as their own struggles with nostalgia.

Finally, I do hate that wargame nostalgia tends to view the past through rose-tinted glasses, filtering out the bad or things we didn’t like or agree with to highlight only the good. This is also human nature and something that we all do and I am not sure we have the capacity to not partake in this reminiscing. But, it is not a good side effect of nostalgia and I wish that we could get away from that. In fact, we have seen a resurgence of what I would call “nostalgia grabs” over the past couple of years from publishers who take an old game, and one that people hold onto the nostalgic memories of playing when they were kids, and then slap “designer signature edition”, “deluxe edition” or “new and improved mechanics” labels on them and then place them on Kickstarter for unsuspecting crazed nostalgia-filled wargamers who know better but bite anyways. A few of these examples recently were the Divine Right Kickstarter in 2023 from Pungo Games (Worthington Publishing) and the more recent Ace of Aces Powerhouse Series Deluxe Edition Kickstarter in 2024 from Mr. B Games. Don’t get me wrong, there is something to both of these games and people really have great memories of them. But, I have played both, and with Divine Right, I am not sure there is a real game there. It is a hollow exercise in fantasy wargaming that just doesn’t work very well and has no real soul. There are symbols on the board that are not used and almost are trying to lure us into buying any future expansion like a Great Northern Pike chases after a shiny lure even though he is not really hungry!

Ace of Aces is fine for what it is, a flip book game with some great concepts and very much upgraded components, but in this present day of modern wargame design it just doesn’t hold a candle to other games that I would rather play. Now both of these games did very well on Kickstarter. Divine Right made $114,609 with 936 backers and Ace of Aces Powerhouse Series Deluxe Edition made $189,374 with 3,247 backers. That is a lot of nostalgia buying! But, Divine Right did a 2nd crowdfunding campaign for the Divine Right X: The Omega Expansion and it did even better with $144,896 in funding from 1,099 backers. Mr. B Games is readying their next Kickstarter Ace of Aces: Handy Rotary & Flying Machines Deluxe Editions that launches this month.

In summary, wargame nostalgia is a real, tangible thing that has a mind of it’s own and causes us to do things that we probably normally wouldn’t do. From buying overpriced reissues of our favorite games to putting other games and systems down with great passion and omniscient thinking about what is right and wrong, good and bad, worthy and not worthy! But, it is not all bad and I think that nostalgia is good in moderation and with some real introspection to get past the initial overreaction and mis-remembrance we have when thinking about and discussing our favorite pet games from yesteryear. Don’t leap before you look….you might end up with a nice shiny turd in a box! What are your thoughts on wargame nostalgia? What do you love and hate about the concept? Is there a real place for this feeling in our hobby?

-Grant