Gamertell

In the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis two good things came out of living in a time teetering on the brink of destruction. One good thing was the détente, easing of tension between the USA and the USSR. The other good thing was the release of the satirical card game Nuclear War.

This game, much like the film Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Love the Bomb), actually had the guts to taunt the destructive idiocy of mankind and its war-like nature. This is because it is the first game with a scenario where everyone can lose.

The card game and its expansions are available for purchase pretty much any game shop that sells card games. The base game costs $29.99 and it’s roughly the same cost for the expansions. The 40th anniversary copy is a bit of a collector’s item so it’s harder to find and will run you about $60.00.

The objective of the game is to survive. Propaganda steals population from other players but can only be used in times of peace before a nuclear attack is made. Once a player has lost the entirety of their population to propaganda, secrets, top secrets or having too much atomic love thrown their way they are out of the game. However, unless eliminated by propaganda, a player isn’t truly dead until their final retaliation has gone off. This is essentially pushing the little red button that authorizes the raining of death on your opponents.

Depending on how games go, final retaliation can set of chain reactions of final retaliation.

The games features secrets, top secrets, spies, saboteurs, defense systems, bombs and their delivery systems as well as propaganda. There are also different countries modeled on real-life countries and regions, which aren’t entirely necessary to play a game but the abilities of the countries do add a healthy dose of mayhem to gameplay.

Some countries have abilities that temporarily tie up other nations preventing them from doing much. Here are a few examples of the faux countries and their abilities.

• Bananaland (essentially Cuba) - The country’s ability is to willfully give its population to other nations as escaping refugees and this makes the recipient of the newfound population lose a turn.
• Little Bittyland (Switzerland) - They have the ability to declare peace once war has broken out.
• Bagmad (a bit harder to nail down because it’s a terrorist state) - Being a terrorist state, it is able to send 10 and 20-megaton warheads down the track of death to other players without starting a war or using a delivery system.
• Great Bigland (Great Britain) is a country that is master of the seas. They are able to spy on any other player’s submarines to see whom they are going to be targeting, all at the cost of a propaganda card.

The game is a great piece of satire that is worthwhile simply for the historical scope that it takes. In 1989, Nuclear War was adapted into a PC game but copies of that are hard to find. It is a fitting and comic tribute to those who put up with or died because of the futility of war. Head out and get the game.

Site [Nuclear War] Site [Doug Malewicki]

(Image borrowed from Flying Buffalo.)