War, what is it good for ? Board-games it turns out! By this I do not mean that war has developed the game industry, like it did for example computer science or aviation. Though if you want my opinion, and why would you not ? I am renown for being of "those ones" in the Gamerkin club. "Those ones" being those members of our most illustrious group that play war games, such as Warhammer. Wargames such as Quartermaster are played by many of our members which is one of the points I was originally trying to make, so back to our side tracking! So as I was saying in my opinion, had we, instead of killing ourselves most passionately, spent the time producing scientists and thinkers, rather than killers, could we not still be as far as we are technologically ? But then without wars... Would there be war games ?

Settlers Settlers - Jeu de colonisation sauf....

And so back to the main point: Games about war or conflict are pretty neat! For the last couple of weeks I have been playing "civilization games" both of which were won by the player that was the most warlike. The first "Patchistory" was one by a mighty empire lead by both Caesar and Napoleon and a militarist industry. I intend to have my revenge on the evil warmongering Davy, so I will have the opportunity to write fully on the game at a later date. This week I played "Imperial Settlers" or "Settlers, Naissance d'un empire". Graphically, being a huge fan of the video game series of the same name, I was charmed by the cute cartoon like style, whats more ? The art style is drawn on cards! I do like me some cards. So this card game is an empire building game, here you build it by literally building the various properties of your settlers. The reason I avoided the repetition of build last sentence was not due to my skills as a writer, but in fact because I played as the barbarians! So whilst my competitors around the table were building castles, pyramids, Ninja schools or whatever the heck our president Manu was doing, I was training raiders. And war bands. Basically my whole empire consisted of one shrine to the gods and two scouting towers. I added a couple of houses on the very last turn (the fifth) which allowed me to score the very last several points needed to win the game. But all in all. War won the day!

My dearest friend Olivier might have a well thought opinion on what it means for us players to enjoy a good war game. The sending of various numbers of people, depending on the game, to their death for the glory of our victory. I'll just say it really is a lot of fun to play anything at the Gamerkins ! Except maybe Quartermaster... Still not sure about that one...