Weasel games are all about underhanded, sneaky, manipulative play in which your current ally becomes your deadliest enemy but neglects to tell you so until after sabotaging your plans. Obviously, then, people play them for fun and relaxation. But there is a serious side to weasel games as well. In a way, they serve as a sort of modern morality play. Allow me to explain. An Omnivore Speaks I have three basic problems with vegetarianism. First, human beings have teeth designed for an omnivorous diet, some are for grinding vegetables, and others are for tearing meat. Second, there are a few essential nutrients that we cannot get from strictly vegetarian fare. Third, plants are living beings too, and I don't see what's intrinsically better about killing them rather than animals. Nevertheless, slaying animals feels worse to most people, even to camivores. Recently -- at a burger joint -- I asked some friends if they would be willing to tour a slaughterhouse with me. The consensus response was, "Euwww! We don't want to see that." Lest readers think me some sort of ghoul, let me explain that my reason for wanting to tour a slaughterhouse is not to revel in the killing. Rather, I want to face the fact that animals are dying and being butchered for my consumption. It's a thought that is easy to ignore while chewing on processed, packaged meats. But I don't think we do ourselves or the animals any favors by remaining blissfully ignorant. So what does all this have to do with weasel games? Well, like vegetarians watching burgers fry, or pretty much anyone visiting a slaughterhouse, some people find weasel games distasteful. Their sensibilities are offended by the thought that in these games, players use every cutthroat, back-stabbing, sneaky trick they can think of in order to win. They suspect that by doing so, we inure ourselves to such evils, making them more tempting to us in real life. I'm of the opposite opinion. Ignoring an aspect of human nature doesn't malce it go away, and repressing it just forces it to manifest in more subtle ways. Weasel games, on the other hand, provide safe, fictional arenas in which we can explore our darker, competitive side. In doing so, we achieve a sort of catharsis. As H.G. Wells is reported to have said, "Let there be peace on Earth, and war on the tabletop." But catharsis isn't the only benefit weasel games have to offer. In them, we also get a chance to see how distasteful "weaselness" can be in real life. Nukes: Why Did It Have To Be Nukes? I grew up during the sixties. As a result, I spent my childhood with the fear of a mushroom cloud hanging over my head, so to speak. I'm still stunned that the US had the audacity to use an A-bomb on Hiroshima, and then again on Nagasaki six days later. I imagine the rest of the globe walking on egg shells, wondering when we might get angry and do it again. Obviously, the thought of nukes disturbs me. About six years ago, while attending a game convention in Los Angeles, I noticed some people playing the brand new Supremacy game. It is a game of power politics in the 20th Century, from which players wrestle for control of three primary assets: grain, minerals, and oil. In part the struggle is an economic one; as players buy and sell on the world market, prices rise and fall dramatically in response, and clever players can manipulate the market to malce themselves rich at everyone else's expense. But straight-up warfare also plays a part in the game, with troops and fleets moving about to defend or attack resource areas. And then there are the nukes. The nukes were the first thing I noticed about the game. Play was pretty well along in that Los Angeles game when I happened by, and several black plastic mushroom clouds stood upon the war-room style political map. It all looked so clean and antiseptic, so far from the blasted ruins it represented, that I shuddered. A few years later, a friend picked up a copy of the game and asked me by to play. I gave it a try. . . several times, in fact. Overall, the game is admirable, with a solid design and high-quality components. I love manipulating the market. But I can't get over the nukes. There are two moments in play that I find particularly chilling, because of what they have to say about out modern world. The first one is an artifact of how nukes are constructed. To build nukes in the game, you first have to pay for the design research. You pay a base amount of cash and resources, then begin flipping cards from the resource deck, laying in additional amounts of cash for each card, until finally a nuke card turns up. Your turn ends there, with one nuke built -- the prototype. Next turn, you can build any number of additional nukes, simply by paying a flat amount of cash and resources for each one. Typically, because I focused on playing the market, I was the first player to build nukes. Thus, whenever another player decided to research them, I was faced with a sinister decision: "Do I blast him off the face of the earth now, before he can build a retaliatory set of nukes, or do I let him join the nuclear club?" The temptation to get the first strike in was strong, and it made me wonder how the human race ever survived the sixties' cold war. I guess the fact that we did says something positive about us. The second scary moment involves games in which a number of nukes have been dropped. The rules impose a limit of thirteen, after that the global ecosystem is so screwed up that nobody wins. But if I am losing the game already, and twelve nukes have been dropped, I am tempted to play nuclear terrorist, threatening to drop the 13th if the other players didn't give me some serious concessions. Again, the real-world implications are frightening. All it takes is one nuke in the hands of someone desperate enough, and a city of ten million people or more goes up in radioactive smoke. Remember, the basic premise of Supremacy is control of world resources. This is not a game of sharing, but domination, and that is what leads to two such chilling moments. There is a lesson in there somewhere, if we are not too timid to see it. Back to Shadis #25 Table of Contents Back to Shadis List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines © Copyright 1996 by Alderac Entertainment Group This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com