Ideology
reviewed Walter Sorger
Actually, Moritz wanted to write the review about this game. Then he had to travel to
Kuala Lumpur for some weeks to receive the public price at the “Malaysian
Philharmonic Orchestra International Composers ” competition. In the meantime, his
artistic-creative capacity is booked for the next decade, so that I would like to relieve
him and to write this game review using his thoughts and words. Here they are.
The gaming community does not particularly long for new games about the topic. Up to
now, there may be nearly a hundred thousand games about a 3rd World War (and naturally
just as countless computer games). At the beginning of the wargame boom, the legendary
“Gone With The Wind” was used as a model for epic but callow combat dice
games.
With “Ideology” Z-Man Games appeared as one of the most influential
independent American game companies (“Legends of Camelot”) on the scene. It is
well known that this is one of my (Moritz) favorite games. With some trouble I succeed
from time to time to persuade our rather special group to play a “free for all”
chaos driven game. This time everyone was looking forward to this new and ambitious game
of Andrew Park, which counts less on power and military but rather on interesting
conflicts and tragic characters. An enormous game board started a new trend in the USA.
Each player symbolizes one of the most ruling ideologies of the 20th century: capitalism,
communism, fascism, imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism. Each ideology is anxious to
expand their influence (culturally, economically, and militarily) into still independent
regions. As soon as a player achieves a global influence level of 12, the game ends and
the winner is determined.
Game play consists mainly of playing different influence cards, in order to bring
regions under one’s own control or to develop regions in order to stabilize their
power base as well as to succeed in conflicts with foreign or independent regions.
How does the game play? First of all one must realize that this is a wargame in the
style of “Diplomacy” and “Risk”. Even if one knows nothing about the
world, there’s a lot of atmosphere in the game. King making, alliances and sudden
breaks of alliances are common. It is not too complicated and not dependent on too much
luck. Nevertheless, dice (i.e. action cards [ah]) help to make for a combat system
with sufficient uncertainties but not depending on pure chance. It is not a game for
die-hard tacticians, but a very entertaining and communicative group experience, which
will inspire many. Not an absolute classic, but worth an attempt.
In addition, the historical importance of “Ideology” is not to be
underestimated – it actually is the first wargame, which uses ideologies as variable
motivation elements.
Finally, a few Walter words about our session: The game is a war game. Everyone tries
to beat on everyone else, above all on the weaker ones. From production and design it is
obvious that the regulating influence of the USA is regarded stronger at all places of
the world than grown relations within the third world. I played the leader of the Islamic
ideology with its heartland Iran, and I was not able to convey why I should not get e.g.
my next neighbor Afghanistan under my ideological control at the first opportunity.
The USA under President Maurice settled in immediately and prevented any success of my
Mullahs using their economic presence. But they underestimated my readiness to take
sacrifices and my fanaticism. As Ayatollah Walter my whole striving was to release my
neighboring country on all accounts from the claws of the evil. I didn’t succeed
completely. But I could put some nice pressure on the Christian military power. They had
to send new troops into the unrest area again and again, while the English imperialism
and German fascism could expand their positions unimpaired, and in the end determine the
winner between themselves.
Next time – if there should be one – the superior USA might well consider whether they
want to seize a remote country like Afghanistan. Fanaticism and terrorism are not
eliminated by applying the same means. Martyrs are the seed of the church. Every
church.