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Looking back forty-five years at a 1976 game about U.S. civil conflict – exploring social alternatives through eclectic media (Part Three)
By Mark Wegierski
web posted July 12, 2021
Minuteman offers some rather innovative mechanics to simulate unconventional warfare. One obvious omission in the game was airpower, which could have easily been incorporated by the use of air-points augmenting government attack or defense strengths. The helicopter forces for which Americans are so well-known do not explicitly appear, either. Another obvious omission, naval power, could have easily been simulated by naval bombardment points available to the government player in hexes adjacent to the sea. Naval-based airpower could also have been easily represented, by having air-points with a limited range of use from sea-hexes. The land-based Government nuclear arsenal, which Rebels would certainly try to sabotage and/or take over, if not actually use, is completely ignored. There are also no provisions for the struggle for U.S. diplomatic and commercial resources abroad that would undoubtedly take place. It was certainly a major oversimplification of the game-design to not take any of these factors into account. Perhaps, however, the whole posited scenario would collapse into complete improbability when taking into consideration the vast preponderance of military force available to the U.S. government. For example, virtually all personnel in the U.S. military, regardless in which branch or support service they serve, probably have sufficient training to fight as land-infantry if necessary, certainly well enough to defeat the average rural "patriot militiaman" or "urban guerilla". All this suggests a re-design would do well to move the game onto the tracks of social/political/economic, as opposed to