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Things Had It Coming
When she isn’t pretending to be a dragon, my seven-year-old pretends to be a cat. “Mrrrowrrr,” she says when she pounces on me in bed in the morning. “Raawwwrrr,” she purrs when it’s time for her to line up for second grade. “Grrrrrr,” she rumbles at bedtime, her bones suddenly transforming to jelly. If certain “news” articles were to be believed, we’d have a litter box in the bathroom.
So, as a surprise, I picked up Cats Knocking Things Off Ledges. Designed by Sen-Foong Lim and David Killing, it’s as descriptive a game as they come. My seven-year-old treats it as a tornado simulator.
Yippee-Ki-Nope
There’s a well-known quandary in wargames where designers grapple with the accuracy of their own simulations. How closely should a game hew to its historical outcome? Should both sides be equally able to win a conflict, or should the same historical inevitability that ruled yesteryear also rule the game sitting before you on the table? Which better captures the spirit of an event, its true outcome or the uncertainty that rattled within the heads of its actors?
Unless your name is Jake Peralta, Die Hard isn’t history. Still, its cardboard adaptation, Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist: Board Game, raises similar questions.
