Posted on: September 17, 2014 Posted by: James Comments: 0

CLASS WARGAMES: LUDIC SUBVERSION AGAINST SPECTACULAR CAPITALISM

CLASS WARGAMES: LUDIC SUBVERSION AGAINST SPECTACULAR CAPITALISM Why should radicals be interested in playing wargames? Surely the Left can have no interest in such militarist fantasies? Yet, Guy Debord – the leader of the Situationist International – placed such importance on his invention of The Game of War that he described it as the most significant of his accomplishments. Intrigued by this claim, a multinational group of artists, activists and…

READ MORE
Posted on: September 17, 2014 Posted by: James Comments: 0

IMPERIALISM IN SPACE

Imperialism in Space is a board game that is at once both fun and exciting to play and designed as an educational tool. By playing Imperialism in Space, people can gain a critical understanding of the political and theoretical arguments of Vladimir Lenin’s famous 1916 pamphlet Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Imperialism in Space is a 4 person game: players explore space, expand, colonising new worlds, and exploit their…

READ MORE
Posted on: September 17, 2014 Posted by: James Comments: 0

COMMANDS & COLORS: NAPOLEONICS

Richard Borg’s Commands & Colors: Napoleonics is not overly complex by design. It is based on the highly successful Commands & Colors game system, where the command cards drive the movement while creating a “fog of war.” The battle dice resolve combat quickly and efficiently. The scale of the game fluctuates, which allows players to effectively portray epic Napoleonic battles, as well as small historical actions. In some scenarios, an…

READ MORE
Posted on: September 17, 2014 Posted by: James Comments: 0

LITTLE WARS

“Little Wars is the game of kings—for players in an inferior social position. It can be played by boys of every age from twelve to one hundred and fifty—and even later if the limbs remain sufficiently supple—by girls of the better sort, and by a few rare and gifted women. This is to be a full history of Little Wars from its recorded and authenticated beginning until the present time,…

READ MORE
Posted on: September 17, 2014 Posted by: James Comments: 0

REDS VERSUS REDS

The Battle of Kazan “With the snow falling outside, we prepared our two toy soldier armies for their tabletop battle at the Winter Palace. Mark would command the Social Democratic forces of the Constituent Assembly who were defending a village which blocked the road to Kazan in the Tatarstan region of Russia. Most of his team’s troops were peasant militia of doubtful quality, but they were backed up by a…

READ MORE
Posted on: September 17, 2014 Posted by: James Comments: 0

THE GAME OF WAR

Wargames are a continuation of politics by other means. Guy Debord is celebrated as the chief strategist of the Situationist International and as the author of the searing critique of the media-saturated society of consumer capitalism: The Society of the Spectacle. What is much less well known is that after the May ’68 Revolution, Debord and his partner – Alice Becker-Ho – quit Paris and went to live in a…

READ MORE