Norm Koger’s The Operational Art of War III

Back when dinosaurs walked the earth, you could find wargames on store shelves. And not fancy wargames with 3D terrain and realistic soldiers. These were hex-based wargames using NATO symbology, and they came complete with supply rules, disordered movement, and hundreds of little squares to move around.
The Operational Art of War was one of the last major wargames you could find in stores. And there were lots of versions. The original covered the World War II era; its sequel focused on postwar combat. Then we got some specialized sets, like one on the Kosovo War. All were eventually bundled together in the Century of Warfare pack. So calling this refit and revision The Operational Art of War 3 is a little confusing, as is the decision to give it a new game price tag.
This is mostly an attempt to fix major bugs in the Century of War [-fare?] version. Making sure that anti-air weapons are useful, for example, or ensuring that units actually reconstitute when and where they’re supposed to. But this is more than a $40 patch, since it includes dozens of new scenarios incorporating popular mods based on 19th-century warfare, as well as an effort to adapt Norm Koger’s equipment-based combat engine to larger and larger maps. Many of the new scenarios present interesting challenges for the desktop general, with the bigger ones testing the limits of your situational awareness.
The core game itself has aged well and remains a very versatile engine, modeling conflicts as diverse as jungle warfare in Vietnam and (with some tweaking) the Battle of Waterloo. There are still a lot of bugs to be worked out, especially considering this is a bug-crushing exercise. Many of the biggest scenarios are very unstable, verging on unplayable.
Operational Art of War 3 ends up as a nice gesture. Re-releasing a wargame classic is a great idea, but the extras here aren’t quite compelling enough to make up for the jarring technical issues.

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #190