Old Gamers Never Die: I Played Through a 'Regiments' Skirmish as a Red Force Commander - and I Feel Weird About It!

Sometimes it's interesting to play a wargame from the "enemy" side's perspective. Graphics and game design elements from Regiments are ©2022 Bird's Eye Games and MicroProse

 One of the hardest things for me to do as a gamer is to take on the role of an “adversary power” in computer games.

Whether the game is single-player (my preferred mode) or multiplayer, and no matter if the setting is historic – such as in Game Labs’ Ultimate General Civil War, MicroProse’s Crusade in Europe, or Killerfish Games’ War on the Sea – or fictional – as in MicroProse’s Regiments or LucasArts’ Star Wars: Rebellion – I tend to avoid playing as the faction generally accepted to be the “bad guys.”

In many of the games I own, including the single-player Regiments and Killerfish Games submarine simulation Cold Waters, I can – if I so desire – take on the role of an “enemy” power’s commander. In Cold Waters, for instance, the game allows you to command submarines from the U.S., Soviet, and Chinese navies. And in Regiments, you can lead units from either NATO (represented in-game by the United States, Great Britain, West Germany, and Belgium) or East German and Soviet armies of the Warsaw Pact.

I have an affinity for this type of game, but I have usually do not take the side that my country, the United States of America, has either fought against historically (Germany, Italy, or Japan, mostly) or may someday fight (Russia or the People’s Republic of China.).

©2018 Fury Software/Slitherine Games

Mind you, I’m not saying that I’ve never played as the “bad guys.” I’ve tried playing Axis & Allies, Strategic Command WWII: World at War, and even a few scenarios from the 1985 game Crusade in Europe as the Axis/Germans, and I believe I even won one or two battles in the latter back when I played Crusade more frequently in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And in World at War I attempted a playthrough of the entire war as Germany just to see if I could defeat the Soviet Union just once. (Spoiler alert: I did not, even though I concede that I didn’t even attempt to complete the war once the AI-controlled Allies forced me into a draw on the Eastern Front and began nibbling away at me in the Battle of the Atlantic and in North Africa.

Playing Regiments as a Soviet commander. ©2022 Bird's Eye Games and MicroProse

I mention all of this because yesterday, for the second time since I bought Regiments last summer and started playing the game, I fought an entire skirmish (the Mobile Defense variant) as a Soviet commander.

My unit was the 40^th Motor Rifle Regiment, and even though my casualties – especially with tanks and helicopters – were heavier than when I “command” NATO units in the same type of skirmish, I did quite well. I evacuated several Objective Zones (OZs) as well as I do with, say, the 1^st Brigade of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division, earned the required 750 victory points to win the battle, and even shot down several Allied helicopters and close air support attack jets.

And yet, even though I was pleased to know that I can win as a Warsaw Pact commander and get a kick out of it, I still feel strange about it.

©2022 Bird's Eye Games and MicroProse