Wrapped C.V Wedgwood’s Thirty Years War up this week– my god what a monstrosity. You have to take notes while reading this to keep track of the people with the same names. That said, Wedgwood does an excellent job threading a narrative through this huge mess and her core argument is that the Electors (Saxony, Bavarian, the Palatinate) could have curbed the power of the Hapsburg enough to avoid Spain, France and Sweden helping Germany/Austria destroy itself over 30 horrific years, but did the opposite. I do not recommend this book to anyone unless you are ready for something very heavy and quite sad really. A lot of you familiar with this period at all will have gotten it from Dan Carlin — he focuses on interesting but ultimately meaningless parts of the conflict which is ironic as it seems like he was searching for meaning through all this, which there is none. Part of the counter-reformation? eh.. not really. Hapsburg vs Bourbon proxy war? maybe.. but did that at all matter? War of Swedish aggression? For what? None of it made any sense other than let’s see how bad we can fuck up Germany and Austria.
With all that, I like this period as it’s the historical basis for the Warhammer Old World and all the core adventures from Mordheim to the Enemy Within are shadows of the actual real world conflict that occurred over this period, except there were very few heroes and the only result was to set Europe up for it’s next set of wars.
Interested in the period but don’t want to wade into something this beastly? Watch The Last Valley.
Gaming in this period, beyond the tie to Warhammer is pretty rich ground, but there isn’t anything that captures the conflict like say Virgin Queen or Here I Stand, which is surprising. Pike and Shotte is a solid rendition of the period in miniature rules, and even Pax Renaissance covers this period in broad, banker-focused strokes. As for this author’s thesis– there isn’t anything I could find in a board game where the true conflict between the Electors, the Emperor and the foreign meddlers was truly represented. The closest thing from the destruction and senseless conflict side would certainly be Root or something like Warrior Knights.