Hexwar.com Revives War Boardgames Online

Some time ago, I found the wonderful hexwar.com, where the old military board games I used to play are computerized. SPI and Decision Games are represented. This site is so good that for me it became an addiction.

In the old days the games presented some problems. We would unfold the map, put the little cardboard pieces on the hexagons, and play France 1940 or the East is Red or any one of dozens of games. It took a lot of time. If you had a cat, you were in for some frustration when it jumped onto the card table and messed up your invasion. Another danger was tossing the dice too close to the map. If you hit it, the pieces would fly all over the place. Calculating the odds took time, and there were sometimes arguments about how far a piece could move, which piece could attack what, retreats, etc. It was, really, a lot of fun but a lot of work.

I used to wish, in the early days of computers, that someone would computerize it all, and now they have.

Hexwar.com gives you a color map, lets you click on pieces to move, highlights the map to show how far the piece can move, lets you designate whom the piece will attack, calculates the odds, and throws the dice. It then retreats the other piece automatically, or makes it disappear if the attack is completely successful.

You play real, human opponents. You select someone from the list, and send them a challenge. If they accept, one person takes the first turn, moves their pieces, makes attacks, sees the results, and clicks to send the turn over to the other player. The other player could be at home waiting to respond, or the game could sit in his inbox for a time. He gets to watch the opponent's turn, see the results, and make his own moves. And so it goes. It could take an hour; it could take days. You play when you can.

I used to challenge about ten people at once. At least five would respond pretty quickly, so I always seemed to have a turn to play. And that was my problem. I am a game addict anyway, and this was so much fun that I spent copious amounts of time playing.

I guess that a game site can get no better compliment.

The games currently available are: Napoleon at War, which includes Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Battle of Nations, and Napoleon at Waterloo; Twilight's Last Gleaming, which includes Thames and Chippewa; Napoleon's Last Battles, which includes The Waterloo Campaign, Ligny, Quatre Bras, La Belle Alliance and Wavre; Blue and Gray, which includes Bull Run 1 and 2, Shiloh, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Marye's Heights, Road to Richmond, Cemetery Hill, Chickamauga, Chattanooga and Wilderness; World War II Divisional, which includes Moscow Campaign, The Battle for Stalingrad and Kursk; North Africa, which includes Crusader, Cauldron and Supercharge; Island War, which includes Saipan and Bloody Ridge; Westwall, which includes Bastonge and Arnhem; and Across Suez.

Other games are in development.

You can play one of the Napoleonic games for free as an enticement, and the monthly fee to join is very modest.

Give it a try. Find that old friend you used to play with. Now you can do it again, even if he lives across the country.