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Historicals Reviews: 2d6 Wargaming's The Emu War
As you’re here, let’s be really clear from the outset - this isn’t a joke article. The game is real, the models are real, there are actual rules and you can play it. It costs £12.99 and I would say is probably worth it. I possibly bought the last one available.
By JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/) - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92381514As a Wargame, it’s about as fun as many rulesets I’ve played, with as much reliance on random shenanigans as many fondly remembered GW games from the 90s. As a look at history it ignores some of the more interesting things about the Emu Wars as a tool to prevent the secession of Western Australia. As a ludic experience though? It’s absolutely perfect.
Rules and Models
You get everything you need in the pack - Emus, guns, and rules. You set these up on a full, featureless 6x4 and play the game. Done. That’s all there is to it.
Emu WarI could very easily write out the full rule“book” in the same amount of time it takes to write this sentence. Mechanically, you shoot at Emus with Lewis guns until the guns jam or all the Emus are dead. Complicating this is that you shoot at a group of Emus to split them up, until they’re isolated. At that point, another hit kills them. Eventually, the game ends - in my practice games when both guns jammed and became inoperable. The game really does work, and there is fun to be had here attempting to herd the Emus around the table. Mechanically, it does everything it's supposed to and it does it well - the rules, such as they are, are tight and leave no room for ambiguity.
Emus. Credit: 2d6 WargamesThe pack brings with it a selection of 6mm figures - two Lewis guns and 60 Emus. They’re nice, as far as you can describe 6mm Emus as nice. They look like the big bird they are, and they require little cleaning and preparation. The Lewis guns are good, with an appropriate amount of detail for 6mm soldiers and are clearly not generic HMGs. They would work well in a 6mm WW1 or WW2 army if you’re looking for another use for the six small men you get here. You could do with more Emus - 2d6 make an expansion pack - for a longer game, though with any more Emus the experience will go from quite funny to interminable.
The Lewis Guns are genuinely nice.
The Joke
The joke here is, of course, the war itself. The Emu War was not just a famous conflict in 1930s Australia, but also on Wikipedia where the original version of the article shared formatting with other military conflicts. It’s funny, for a little while, to treat it like a wargame, one where the Emus will almost always win. We are seeing more and more wargames with the war taken out, miniatures based exploration, fishing, farming and herding games, and this, in all seriousness, fits into that. It’s a sensible chuckle reading through the rules, and then a bit more of a laugh when you’re playing it.
The Emus are lovely models.This is a joke game, but that doesn’t mean attention hasn’t been paid to it. The rule leaflet is full colour, and clear - though it does have at least one typo - and the models are perfect for what you’ve bought. You’ve spent your money on a joke, but at least it’s all pretty funny. The accompanying rules leaflet takes itself gloriously seriously, until it doesn’t. This is a “war of annihilation fuelled by sheer hatred”, cocking an eye at the ludicrousness of a lot of wargame marketing, then telling you to base Emus if you really want to. It got genuine laughs, which I don’t often get to say in a rules review. The apocalyptic tone, the tiny rules leaflet, the comical number of emus you get, it’s less of a “I can’t believe you bought this” meme experience and more of a well crafted joke. It’s not just a wink of the eye, but the full on laugh of the “I’ve spent all night in the pub” variety, and that is a fine thing to buy regardless of the game experience.
Production Values are pitched perfectly.
Rod Hull on War
It was when I was wondering what the monetary value of a joke was that I realised that The Emu War isn’t a game, but a strange and interesting piece of outsider art. It was my third (yes, third - when I review games I take testing them seriously!) run of Emu War. A pointless, unwinnable circus of mindless emus and breaking down Lewis Guns, where I was barely making a dent in the endlessly dividing mobs of giant birds, for the third time. This game is better than it thinks it is. It is a pean to ludonarrative harmony, to the idea that historicals can give you a sense of what a conflict was about, or what it was like to participate in, even, that wargames can say something important about war. So, for this throwaway, comedy game, to achieve that is really quite special.I’ve said it before, but wargaming isn’t about gaming wars, really. We have fun with the shooty shooty bit, the hex and chit people do some of the logistics, perhaps board gamers get a little of the diplomacy and strategy. There are systems that emulate friction, loss of command and control, little elements of the chaos of war. But - and I know the comments I’ll get here already - we don’t tend to look at the boredom, pointlessness and stupidity of war. Whatever your personal inclination towards, or away from, pacifism, we can all largely agree that putting our incredible, possibly unique in the universe, intellect and intelligence towards developing ever more complicated ways to kill other people is, at best, a giant waste of time if we could, somehow, work this shit out before the guns/spears/pointy rocks got involved.
Emu WarYes, yes, why would we want to game the unfun bits, because “gaming” is right there in the name. “Why not play good games?” is a good question - hilariously asked without irony in many cases. People do put together games of the unfun, horrifying, boring and difficult bits and they’re seen as they rightly are - gaming as art and history. Occasionally games will touch on the pointlessness of a particular conflict, doing a little bit of “what the hell are we doing out here” usually in the context of 19th to 21st century wars of colonialism. When they do, it’s rare that the rules, presentation, tone and models/game pieces all tell the same message. They do here. The history provided is blunt and clear - “a month later the operation was considered a failure”. The rules are brief and suggest that alcohol is involved so that “players may actually enjoy the game”. One of the win conditions is that a player realises the game is nonsense and retires, “leaving the other player to question their choices in life”.
Emu WarThe game therefore recreates the historical experience of the Emu War - set up some guns at a couple of fairly arbitrarily chosen places and start shooting - and the outcome - everyone gets a bit bored, a bit drunk and eventually they just give up - perfectly. It is stupid, it is pointless. Emus can escape or get shot and it’s almost entirely just a shitshow of emus running from side to side while guns jam and the birds are milling about pecking at things. It is, perhaps uniquely, the perfect recreation of a particular conflict on the board. Playing it tells us something about the Emu War, and ultimately all human endeavour, beyond how fun it is to roll dice and simulate command mechanics. It tells us this was an idea that was never going to work, but people did it anyway. When it didn’t work, they just stopped and tried something else. Some Emus died, more didn’t. Nearly 10,000 rounds of ammunition were expended to kill nearly, but not quite, 1,000 Emus.
If we put aside the fact that this is about shooting Emus, it’s quite an achievement to create something that speaks to the fundamental reality of the conflict you’re simulating. It captures the boredom and pointlessness of this - and many other conflicts - and brings it to chaotic, stupid life on the table. It’s funny for a bit, then you realise how little effect you’re having on the Emu swarm. Then you realise you’re wasting your life, that machine guns only solve problems created by machine guns, and that life should be about things that are joyful, wondrous, numinous, loving, and creative, that playing fake war is a silly, silly thing to do with what limited time we have. After that feeling fades, you put it aside and paint yet another Space Marine. That experience - that one right there, not the ten minutes of rolling dice while drinking a Fosters - is most definitely worth £12.99 and an afternoon of hobby time. Well done, 2d6 Wargaming.
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