Tzolkin is utter shite

Hatchling wrote:

Shellhead wrote: Somebody should design a 2-player game featuring a labor strike.

This is seriously a great idea. Labour strikes have lots of moving parts. I imagine a bidding/bargaining mechanism in there. Picket line support and control could have interesting siege tactics. Other variables: Scabs and linebreakers, media and public opinion, morale of strikers, resolve of the employer, support from other labour groups, and the sudden death that occurs if the employer gets the government to legislate the strikers back to work. There's tons to work with.

I think this would also make an awesome CDG in the the TS/1989 vein.

Thatcher vs Coal Miners, tha'd make a good game, despite the heavily niche theme it'd sell well with eurogamers no doubt.

Stonecutter wrote:

Hatchling wrote:

Shellhead wrote: Somebody should design a 2-player game featuring a labor strike.

This is seriously a great idea. Labour strikes have lots of moving parts. I imagine a bidding/bargaining mechanism in there. Picket line support and control could have interesting siege tactics. Other variables: Scabs and linebreakers, media and public opinion, morale of strikers, resolve of the employer, support from other labour groups, and the sudden death that occurs if the employer gets the government to legislate the strikers back to work. There's tons to work with.

I think this would also make an awesome CDG in the the TS/1989 vein.

Well, Ted Whatshisnuts (Torgerson?) already did something kind of close to this with the semi-predecessor to 1989, which focused on the '60s civil rights movement. I actually printed up a set on Artscow, gave it a shot, and found it to be a pretty good game. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about UK or other non-US labor struggles, but retheming it to US labor struggles wouldn't be tough from a political events/cards side at all. The map, on the other hand, might be something else entirely. You might need to fabricate a national labor movement as I'm not sure that the US labor wars of the 1930s offer quite enough meat to make it work thanks to being sandwiched between the Depression and the war. I think games like TS require a map with a fair number of spaces to make sure there's enough interaction. If the UK had a properly national labor struggle (or a mostly consecutive run of smaller/regional dustups over a long enough period of years that one could generate a sufficient number of events to fill out a deck), the Unhappy King Charles map might be the place to start.

Shellie might have been taking the piss out of the idea, but it's given me reason to go to a long-neglected corner of my academic shelves and flip through my 20th century labor histories. So, thanks for that! (My grandfather was a UTU/Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Firemen (BLE&F) officer for something like 40 years. He regularly photographed the UTU national convention for both the national and various locals, and actually had one of his photographs end up on the cover of Time during the big railroad strike in the 1960s. He .)

No, I'm serious. The world already has far too many worker placement games, so how about a game about a labor strike instead? I was in a labor union for one summer, but I was young at the time and didn't get into any of the politics involved.

Shellhead wrote: No, I'm serious. The world already has far too many worker placement games, so how about a game about a labor strike instead? I was in a labor union for one summer, but I was young at the time and didn't get into any of the politics involved.

It could be a worker displacement game.

Bull Nakano wrote:

Shellhead wrote: No, I'm serious. The world already has far too many worker placement games, so how about a game about a labor strike instead? I was in a labor union for one summer, but I was young at the time and didn't get into any of the politics involved.

It could be a worker displacement game.

No, that would be a game where players compete to increase stock value of their corporation by terminating employees. The stock value of all companies will continue to decline due to layoffs, but whoever can cut the most staff while maintaining profitability will win. Terminated (displaced) employees don't go on strike because their failure to show up to work won't impair operations.

Shellhead wrote:

Bull Nakano wrote:

Shellhead wrote: No, I'm serious. The world already has far too many worker placement games, so how about a game about a labor strike instead? I was in a labor union for one summer, but I was young at the time and didn't get into any of the politics involved.

It could be a worker displacement game.

No, that would be a game where players compete to increase stock value of their corporation by terminating employees. The stock value of all companies will continue to decline due to layoffs, but whoever can cut the most staff while maintaining profitability will win. Terminated (displaced) employees don't go on strike because their failure to show up to work won't impair operations.

I won't quit my day job then.

I played Tzolk'in a couple of months ago and couldn't stop thinking about playing it again. I bought it and played it again recently. The second game was not as good as the first. Catching another player off guard on a feeding day by spinning the wheel twice is glorious. Was it as good as A Game of Thrones that followed? No.

I have about five worker placements in my collection. I don't have a problem with the genre as long as the games don't drag. It's extremely fast to setup while still having enough moving parts (ba-da-bing). I want to play it again real soon.