Thanks Eddy, good point. There’s a similar interesting tension in Ankh-Morpork, where one of the secret victory conditions is that the deck is exhausted. Most of the game involves stopping people from winning *if* they have x victory condition (e.g. ‘quick, she has x territories and that is a possible victory conditions if she has y victory card, take a teritory away from her’). But if that continues all game effectively, then the person with the exhaust the deck victory *will* win.

That’s very interesting, Alan. It reinforces the idea that ‘winning’ is a value-based thing, defined by the person using the term. Maybe we get pulled away from that position when lots of people agree exactly what winning is in a specific context, e.g. when the rules of a game say so, or when there’s a clear and unambiguous score, but the more realistic the game, the more — maybe? — we get snapped back to the reality that you define your own ‘wins’.

In a historical game, you can compare the game outcome with history in some cases, though in many of our world war 2 games, the historical outcome remained unclear. I have had games where a German player was convinced they had won because of the losses inflicted on the Soviets. But, the Germans had lost their position, so most would assess that as a Soviet win. In this context, it’s often the imprecise nature of victory that provides the most insight.