When theme and mechanics converge to create a realistic, engaging and thought-provoking game I consider it something worth celebrating. Wir Sind Das Volk, in my opinion, is worth celebrating.
For the uninitiated, Wir Sind Das Volkis an asymmetrical economic simulation of the antagonistic relationship between eastern and western ideologies during the Cold War. The game is probably best classified as an economic war game, were infrastructure, international prestige, socialism and decadent living replace conventional arm as the weapons of choice.
The most superficial thematic aspect of the game is related to the card driven gameplay. Each card represents events that occurred in East and West Germany during the four decades in which the game takes place. For those of us only vaguely aware of the history of the conflict (and sadly, there is no strong flavor text on the cards), the theme really comes to life in our decisions in how to use the cards. For example, as West Germany, I can decide to invest capital in hosting the Olympic Games, which has its own costs and benefits. Conversely, I can decide to repurpose that investment into my own economy or produce goods to keep my own populace happy and destabilize my foe’s society. The pressure inherent in balancing the cost and benefit of each way to use the card feels very real. And best of all, the costs and benefits never feel absolute because the true value of an action is greatly impacted by the strategy your opponent is pursuing.
Especially early in a decade, you will find yourself with lots of good card options. Generally, your opponent will find themselves in the same situation, and you have to make the decision of choosing to deny options to your opponents or taking your own plum cards. This type of play gives a real brinksmanship feel to the card play. In some cases, you are implicitly daring your opponent into a non-optimal course of action because of the immediate benefits a card in play may give you on your next turn. What Cold War simulation would be complete without strong elements of blink-and-you-lose brinksmanship?
And all of this leads into, what I have found to be, the most thematic component of the game: the end-of-decade phase. 237
This phase is a complex system of delayed effects that determine if the game continues or ends. Each action you take has an immediate effect on the game-state, but each action also has a long term effect, which couple with other long term effects, to create this opaque soup of uncertainty. In essence, each action you take will have some long term butterfly effect that is difficult to fully predict. As gamers, I think we are somewhat conditioned to expect immediate feedback from a game to tell us if we have progressed towards our goals, but that’s often not how the real world works. The end-of-decade mechanism, at least in my eyes, creates a very real simulation of the uncertain long-term effects that stem from what we consider good decisions in the present.
I know there will be plenty of people out there that do not agree with my admiration for the design. I will admit that each end-of-decade effect, when taken by itself, feels very fiddly and abstract. But I challenge you to judge the mechanism as a whole, rather than getting bogged down in the mechanics of each step. The opacity that stems from the end-of-decade makes climbing this game’s learning curve feel like you are a young politician cutting your teeth on complicated policy. I lost my first game as the West in the first decade because I made too few provinces rich at the expense of the rest of the country. I found this loss hugely intriguing rather than a setback. Why? Because I think it rare that a game system feels like it is teaching us lessons about how the world works: about how history works. In my opinion, this is one of the few such designs that accomplishes this goal.
If this review intrigues you in the same way the game intrigues me, seek out a willing partner to explore the depths of Wir Sind Das Volk. I think you might like what you find. And you might just learn something along the way. 237