Europa: 1945-2030

[avram]

So I decided to be social and go to Games Club, which this week was held at Gaylord’s apartment. Only six or seven people showed up, which was just as well, since that’s just about the right number of that apartment. We only played one game: Europa: 1945-2030, a nifty political boardgame about building the European Union. (Note: There’s a whole series of “Europa” wargames from Game Research and Design, none of which I’ve ever played. This game, from Eurogames Descartes, doesn’t seem related to those others.) The voting mechanic encourages a kind of coalition-building (with back-stabbing growing more common as the game progresses) that seemed very evocative (to this American) of European parliamentary political maneuvering. I came in second, and would probably have won if I hadn’t made what turned out to be one terribly bad decision late in the game.