Bond...James Bond

I recently read the original novels by Ian Fleming.  With the exception of Dr. No, which I read out of order, I tackled them in the order they were written, instead of the order in which the movies were made.  While I enjoy the movies, I found the books to be immensely more informative.  Any well-written novel delves into a character’s subjective thoughts, feelings and impressions, explaining why he does what he does, instead of simply coldly demonstrating his actions on film.  Given that I’ve seen every Bond movie, and most of them in the movie theater – including the older Connery films which I saw in Paris on the Champs Elysees – I suppose it’s odd that it took me so long to read these books.

 To review every book and movie would be prohibitive here.  I’ll focus on trends I’ve noticed in the books, and give brief bits on the books in the order they were released.  Unlike the movies, which were released in a completely different order and have no continuity, the books follow each other.  In some cases, such as From Russia With Love>>Dr No, the story ends abruptly and is “epilogued” at the beginning of the next one.  The plots of the books are considerably more straightforward and far less byzantine than the movies.  Unless noted otherwise, references are to the books and not the movies.

 Bond…

…smokes.  He has a Turkish blend made special order.  Although “reefer” is mentioned occasionally (e.g. Live And Let Die) he doesn’t toke.

…carries a .25 Beretta automatic, until Dr. No, when the armourer recommends – and M orders – that he carry the .380 Walther PPK.  But sometimes he carries a .45 revolver when some extra firepower is called for.

…takes cold showers.  Some kind of manly thing.

…doesn’t necessarily drink his custom “vodka martini, shaken, not stirred.”  He loves wines, champagnes (Don Perignon and Taittinger), and various liquors.  Occasionally he’ll have a beer, though this is very rare.  He does drink his ass off fairly often and suffers hangovers.

…doesn’t like Paris.

...falls in love with women fairly easily.  This is actually not really promiscuity, as he actually develops sincere feelings for the girl. 

...frequently gets nervous and doubts his own abilities, but somehow manages to keep his wits and figure a way out.

 M.  He’s the head of the Secret Service, a former admiral in the Royal Navy.  Generally he refers to Bond as “007”, but when the matter is private or personal, he’ll refer to him as “James”.  In the more recent movies they made M into a woman, played by Judi Dench.

 Q.  Frequently played by Desmond Llewellyn, more recently by John Cleese.  I haven’t noticed Q showing up in the novels, which have very little of this business of “secret gadgets”. 

 Moneypenny.  M’s secretary.  Bond himself has secretaries, Loelia Ponsonby at first (very cool, professional relationship), later Mary Goodnight (considerably warmer relationship!), who never show up in the movies.  In the movies she’s portrayed as a spinster who lusts – unsuccessfully – after Bond.  The books explain that the various female staff members at the Secret Service are for all practical purposes “married to the Service” as intermarriage is against policy (see below).

 Cover.  CIA personnel typically claim to be “State Dept.” as a cover.  For Bond, the cover within the British world is “Ministry of Defense”, and to outsiders as “Universal Export”.

 Felix Leiter.  Bond’s American CIA counterpart, a white guy from Texas – though in these PC days, they’ve now made him black.  Leiter varies in importance from book to book.  Sometimes he’s simply “the Cavalry” saving Bond’s ass at the very last moment – e.g. Goldfinger – whereas in Live and Let Die, Diamonds Are Forever, and Thunderball, he has a more substantial role, more like a partner.

 Americans.  Bond generally has a favorable attitude towards Americans, especially Leiter.  But two groups of Americans he despises: gangsters, who he looks down on as being unprofessional and ostentatious, and greedy, nouveau riche bastards who think they can buy their way into anything; recall that SNL skit with Dana Carvey as Ross Perot, in which he pays total strangers obscene amounts of money simply to humiliate themselves, expressly to flaunt his financial omnipotence.  The Secret Service tends to get along with the CIA in the books, but occasionally he’ll run up against Americans who are arrogant bastards who consider the English to be provincial losers, and clearly he has a problem with these jerks.

 Gambling.  He loves to gamble, but not merely baccarat (which features in Casino Royale) but also roulette, poker, and even bridge.  In Moonraker, Bond is familiar with various cheating methods and is enlisted by M to help catch Drax cheating at bridge.

 Women.  Of course he loves women, but his aversion to “settling down” is not due to any militant promiscuity on his part, so much as a realistic appraisal that marriage simply isn’t compatible with his line of work.  His wife, should he marry, would be an obvious target for hostile powers, and could be kidnapped and used against him – to marry would mean he’d have to resign (and possibly be assigned to a small village with bouncing balloons).  In fact, in Casino Royale (both the book and movie), he proposes exactly that so he can marry Vesper Lynd, though this takes a tragic turn.  Likewise, in the film Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he marries, but his wife dies soon thereafter.  Occasionally he doesn’t get the girl.  He does tend to fall in love easily, but for some reason even the women he genuinely likes and “hooks up with” end up out of the picture by the next adventure.

 Cars.  He tends to look down on American cars, even Leiter’s Studillac (Studebaker with Cadillac V8, considerably more powerful and the “hot rod” of the early 50s).  Although he does get an Aston-Martin, his own car is a Bentley Continental, and the modifications are purely performance mods, not smokescreens, oil slicks, ejector seats, spikes, rockets, or machine guns.

 Villains.  The villains in these stories are frequently eccentric egomaniacs, often German or of German descent.  Dr No was half Chinese, half German, for example.  They think big, and are frequently delighted that someone of Bond’s caliber was dispatched to foil their plans – a “worthy adversary!”  Blofeld is the arch-fiend in no less than three: Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice, but is absent from Diamonds Are Forever, unlike the movie.  Oddly, the Russians are rarely the villains, the most notable example being From Russia With Love.  In Casino Royale, SMERSH has a very intriguing role.

 Movie Actors.

Sean Connery.   The first, and in many ways the best.  I’m by no means alone in considering Connery to have essentially created the character on screen.  He brought the right mix of muscle and class.

            Dr No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971).

 George Lazenby.  Not bad, but he looks like an overgrown Ken doll.  It just didn’t work.

            On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

 Roger Moore.     The third, and after Connery, most substantial.  I always thought Moore was a bit of a pretty boy, sort of a fashion model, not as rugged or physical as Connery.  He always seemed to be in a suit and tie which made him look out of place, overdressed for the occasion. 

            Live And Let Die (1973), The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), A View To A Kill (1985)

 Timothy Dalton.  Dalton marked a return to the “beat the crap out of you” physical Bond which Connery epitomized.  I especially liked him in “License to Kill.”

            The Living Daylights (1987), License to Kill (1989)

 Pierce Brosnan. Back to style over brute force, Brosnan was clearly emulating Moore rather than Connery.  He's also bringing in his Remington Steele character somewhat.

            Goldeneye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999), Die Another Day (2002)

 Daniel Craig.      Now the pendulum swings back again – Craig is very physical and seems to get beaten up fairly often (as Bond himself was in the books).  Craig is also by far the quietest and understated Bond so far, very similar to Bruce Willis’ various characters, particularly in “Twelve Monkeys”. 

            Casino Royale (2006), A Quantum of Solace (2008).

 Austin Powers.  These are Mike Myers’ obvious parodies of the genre.  His Doctor Evil is clearly based on the Blofeld of “You Only Live Twice” (movie).  While I find them amusing, the sexual innuendo jokes get overdone after awhile.  Like “Love Guru”, Myers likes to laugh at his own jokes a bit too much.

 Novels.

Casino Royale.  Channel coast of France, not Montenegro.  Bond hopes to complicate Le Chiffre’s plans to win big at baccarat to pay back his SMERSH superiors, assisted by Mathis (Deuxieme Bureau), Felix Leiter (CIA) and Vesper Lynd, who he falls in love with - tragically.

 Live And Let Die.  Bond starts off in Harlem with Felix (who serves as a guide to contemporary black culture in the US), then to St Petersburg, Florida, and finally winds up in Jamaica, chasing Mr. Big, who is smuggling Captain Morgan’s treasure from Jamaica to the US.

 Moonraker.  After determining that Hugo Drax does indeed cheat at bridge, Bond infiltrates his operation in southeast England (no sign of Rio de Janeiro!) to find out what’s really behind the rocket program of this eccentric and arrogant billionaire.

 Diamonds Are Forever. Bond chases down American mobsters (no sign of Blofeld) at Saratoga Springs, NY, and Las Vegas, assisted by the delicious yet cynical Tiffany Case and the ever-helpful Felix Leiter – and pursued by two gay hitmen, Mr Wint and Mr. Kidd.

 From Russia With Love. SMERSH, upset at having been humiliated by the US and UK, decides to strike back by luring the West’s top spy, James Bond, to Istanbul with the bait of Tatiana Romanova and a code machine.  Knowing this is probably a trap, but going anyway, Bond indeed hooks up with the Russian girl – only to be tracked down by SMERSH’s top assassin, a Brit (played in the movie by Robert Shaw).  This is one of the novels most faithfully done by the movie.  The book ends abruptly...

 Dr. No. ...and is wrapped up here.  Very much a sequel to Live And Let Die (why was it made long before?) this takes place in Jamaica yet again.  Bond determines that the evil Dr. No (no mention of SPECTRE) is up to more than simply harvesting guano [large explanation of all that!] on his dozy island, Crab Key.  Accompanied by Quarrel (who we met in Live And Let Die) – with Felix Leiter MIA here – and Honeychile Rider (wearing far less, yet far more innocent than Ursula Andress portrayed her to be) he gets to the bottom of it all, and takes care of business.

 Goldfinger. Yet another film which was remarkably faithful to the book.  Bond meets – and thwarts – Auric Goldfinger in Miami, then beats him at golf in England.  He then trails him to Switzerland, where he discovers Goldfinger’s secret, is captured, and forced to assist Goldfinger in his plot to rob Fort Knox of all its gold.  There is also a major partnership with the top American gangs, including one gang of women led by Pussy Galore.   Felix Leiter comes to the rescue at the last minute, and Goldfinger is defeated.

 For Your Eyes Only, A View To A Kill, A Quantum of Solace, Risico, and The Hildebrand Rarity.  All short stories.  None of the three whose names were used for movies have anything to do with the movies.  A Quantum of Solace is by far the best, an excellent story.  Bond is involved in each of them, none of which would have been long enough to truly support an entire movie.

 Thunderball. We’re introduced to SPECTRE (Special Executive Committee for Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), a freelance private terror organization selling its services to the highest bidder, and its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  SPECTRE manages to hijack an RAF jet carrying two nuclear bombs, courtesy of his #2, Emile Largo.  Most of the story takes place in Nassau, Bahamas.  Felix Leiter yet again has a major role.

 The Spy Who Loved Me.  Written in the first person from the point of view of a girl, Vivienne Michel, from Canada who ends up in a motel near Glens Falls, New York, and is terrorized by two mob gunmen...until Bond shows up and rescues her.

 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The plot left from Thunderball is picked up again.  Blofeld is now in Switzerland, up to no good, and it’s up to Bond to infiltrate the operation, escape, and come back with the Corsican mob to defeat the resurrected SPECTRE.  Oh, and he gets married at the end.

 You Only Live Twice. Distraught over the tragedy from the last story, Bond is a complete washout.  M, on advice of Sir James, the shrink to the Secret Service, sends him to Japan to persuade Tiger Tanaka, the Jap head of intelligence, to turn over what they know.  Tiger treats Bond to a crash course in Japanese culture – including geishas, sake, ninjitsu, and other idiosyncrasies - then sends Bond on an impossible mission: to take down a mysterious gaijin (foreigner) who has set up an evil Castle of Death.  The gaijin turns out to be... BLOFELD!

 The Man With The Golden Gun.  Ok, this has the most remarkable transition from one book to the next – it has to be read to be believed, though highly entertaining if bizarre and implausible.  Bond redeems himself by chasing after the world’s top assassin, Francisco Scaramanga, aka “the Man With The Golden Gun”.  This ends the series.

Faith No More - Easy Live on the Tonight Show

(with Jay Leno). Much better than the video, which features a parade of drag queens. It looks like Jim Martin has EMG pickups in his Flying V.

Faith No More - Epic (Rock in Rio 2 - 1991)

Their top single, performed live at Rock in Rio 2 (Maracana?). I couldn't find the video. Is it just my Friday morning net connection, or is this choppy? Anyhow, enjoy as best you can.

Black Sabbath - War Pigs (Live in Paris 1970)

I had to include this - which also feature the alternate lyrics. Tony, at this early stage, doesn't have the full bushy mustache or the elaborate leather, and Ozzy, of course, is MUCH younger. I'm impressed by Bill Ward's energy - perhaps he spent it all in those short years.

"War Pigs" Faith No More Live at Brixton Academy

A fairly faithful cover of Black Sabbath. You can see Mike Patton's stage antics and hear his offbeat delivery. Quality - at their peak.

Faith No More

November 26, 1989.  I just had just dropped off my friend Jean (John) at BWI Airport following the Thanksgiving 4 day weekend, and joined my brother Matt, my friend Phil, his sister Kathy, and my friend Ken, to see Faith No More at the (old) 9:30 Club, at 930 F Street in downtown DC.  I wish I could remember the setlist, but it was mostly from The Real Thing.  I got Mike Bordin and Jim Martin to sign the CD insert of that album.  Overall a kick ass concert, by the band at their peak.   Later, in July 1992 we saw FNM open for Metallica & Guns’N’Roses at RFK, on the Angel Dust tour, but this show was much better.

 The Real Thing.  They had two albums with Chuck Mosely, the prior vocalist, We Care A Lot and Introduce Yourself; another album, Angel Dust, with Jim Martin and Mike Patton; a live album Live at Brixton Academy, which features two extra songs “The Grade” and “Cowboy Song” (NOT the Thin Lizzy song); an extended single cover of “Easy” by Lionel Richie; and two albums (King For a Day…Fool For A Lifetime, and Album of the Year) later without Martin.  But this is by far their best album.  To be honest, I didn’t like the earlier albums, and didn’t care to listen to the post-Martin work, of which I might have heard one album.

            Probably the best known track on this is “Epic”, a rap-metal mix which got phenomenal airplay and a weird video.  “War Pigs” is the Black Sabbath cover, which they did play live.  My favorites were the title track, “Zombie Eaters”, and “The Morning After”.  “Woodpecker From Mars” was an instrumental, “Edge of the World” was a twisted attempt to portray a child molester; “Surprise!  You’re Dead” is a thrash number; and “Falling to Pieces” and “Out of Nowhere” are fairly commercial examples of their material. 

            I hesitate to put a label on their music.  There’s clearly a big dose of funk, similar to Red Hot Chili Peppers, but the keyboards are definitely noticeable as an instrument in their own right, not merely as some sort of additional melody factor along with the guitar. All well and fine to talk about the rap element, but “Epic” was the only song like that, so even if it was their biggest single, it hardly defines their sound, except to classify it as original and eclectic.  The most important thing, in fact the REAL THING, was that this album and band were undeniably DIFFERENT and ORIGINAL.  There was no one else like this in 1989.

 The classic lineup:

Mike Patton (vocals).  He took over from Chuck Mosely.  Mosely was of the Robert Smith of The Cure “just got back from the dentist, still on novocaine” school of singing.  Patton actually sings in some sort of snarky way like Roger Waters.  I’d say he has a unique voice, and I like it.  However, I’ve heard Mr. Bungle and was not impressed, nor did I like the FNM material since Martin left.  He strikes me as having a lot of talent and inspiration, but it’s only impressive when he has someone else channeling it in some way or acting as a foil – similar to the way Lennon & McCartney’s solo material suffered from the lack of any input from the other former writing partner.  Left to his own devices he comes up short.  I’m also not keen on his deliberate attempts to feign bisexuality.

 Jim Martin (guitar).  Aka “Big Sick Ugly” Martin, he has strange red glasses, a wacked out beard, and long hair.  He dropped off the radar after Angel Dust.  He did appear in “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey”.  His trademark guitar is a black Gibson Flying V with a mirror pickguard.  He also used to play with Cliff Burton of Metallica.

 Billy Gould (bass).  Nothing special, though he does remind me of Brian Wheat from Tesla.  He does do a passable slap-funk bass thing similar to Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Aside from that he blends into the woodwork as bassists so often do.

 Roddy Bottum (keyboards).  I really like his keyboard sound.  Some keyboardists seem to be more like glorified pianists – particularly Billy Joel, Elton John, etc.  Even many “keyboardists” like Jon Lord don’t really go off very far off the beaten track.  He ranks up there with Rick Wright among my favorite keyboardists.

 Mike Bordin (drums).  So far as I can tell, Bordin was born with dreadlocks.  He actually played with Black Sabbath on the first reunion tour in 1997 before Bill Ward came back.  He’s also played in Ozzy’s solo band, from Down to Earth up to Black Rain, though he’s now back with Faith No More.

 As of now, FNM have reunited, but with Jon Hudson on guitar.  Martin apparently is not interested in returning to the band.  I’ll check them out to see if it’s as good as before, but I’m not holding my breath.

Dark Knight

After a few false starts I finally ended up seeing this film, on the heels Heath Ledger’s posthumous Oscar for his role as the Joker.  Since my review of “Batman Begins” started off my list of blogs, it’s fitting that I should follow it up with a review of this film as well.  Bottom line?  I didn’t like it.

 First off, the makeup wearing off the Joker’s face later in the movie indicated that he didn’t have any biological issues.  Contrast this with the original comic, in which The Joker was originally a villain named Red Hood, who wore a specially designed red mask over his head, similar to Mysterio.  He fell in a tank of chemicals, which turned his skin white, his lips blood red, and his hair green – and completely warped his mind.  Like The Invisible Man, there was a link between his physiological changes and his psychological ones.  But here?  Just makeup and fancy clothes.  Come on.

 Second, I didn’t like his attitude.  Too much cutesy dialogue.  Jack Nicholson was more impressive in the role way back when.  “This town needs an enema.”  I’ll concede, though, that this fairly subjective on my part.  Nicholson was content to make the Joker into a flamboyant, though evil, clown.  While the Mafia goons refer to Ledger’s Joker as “the clown”, his portrayal was considerably darker, almost twisting him into a pervert.  Moreover his clothes were a bit too much… GQ.  Is this a villain or a fashion mannequin?  Come on. 

 Third, I hated this odd business whereby somehow the Joker seems to be able to rig the entire damn city (looks like Chicago to me) with explosives, including two whole ferries and an entire network of hospitals.  “Excuse me, can I borrow both ferries?  I need to install a full array of gas drums in the bottoms and rig them up.”  I suppose that’s his super power: magically capable of installing vast amounts of explosives wherever he wants, no questions asked (particularly implausible post 9/11).  And this business of “hostages dressed as villains with guns duct taped in their hands” had been done before, but I can’t recall the film.  Nor did I care for this ongoing deal where the Joker forced people into impossible choices: save Rachel or Dent, and the ferry passengers – ordinary people on one, convicts on the other – likewise have to choose to blow up the other ferry before they themselves are blown up.  The real immoral person here was the Joker.  F**k these stupid games.

 

 Fourth, Batman as the Ultimate Asshole.  Sure, we need Batman to be the fall guy so that Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) can die as a hero, not as Two-Face – and the city’s faith in its top prosecutor maintained (good for morale, I guess).   So Batman, who is essentially good (as is Bruce Wayne) allows himself to be crucified as a villain to satisfy a more important public goal which is still in Batman’s ultimate nature to support: public order and the overall well-being of the people of Gotham. 

 Sounds much like… “The Watchmen”.  The similarities are there: The Comedian = the Joker?  The Owl (nocturnal flying animal – rich guy with lots of gadgets) = Batman?  Ozymandias = Bruce Wayne?  Most importantly, for this issue: Dr Manhattan has to be the fall guy for Ozymandias to keep the US & USSR from blowing each other up. 

 “The Watchmen” was very faithfully derived from the graphic novel of the same name, originally published from 1986-87 and written by Alan Moore, best known for “V For Vendetta”.  “Dark Knight” is loosely based on the Batman comics “The Long Halloween”, from 1996-97.  The latter does not have this business about Harvey Dent’s identity being saved, and Batman’s reputation unfairly tarnished, to spare the city, so it’s the movie version which rips off “The Watchmen”, not the original comic.  The comic’s main focus wasn’t even on the Joker, who was a minor character, but on the Holiday killer, whose identity was hinted at but never conclusively established.

 Finally, BOTH movies owe royalties to Clint Eastwood: Bale’s inexplicable grumble as Batman (where’s the poncho and cigar stub?) and Rorshach’s similar growl.

 My “Batman Begins” blog had some scathing criticism for the last two Batman movies before “Batman Begins”.  In a sense, though, they were more in tune with the philosophy of the Batman TV series from the late 60s, with Adam West as Batman; the first two (with Joker, Penguin & Catwoman) were more aligned with “Batman Begins”.  So we have two competing schools of Batman: the Camp School, and the Dark School.  Obviously both can be done well – or poorly.  The Camp School runs the risk of being stupid, while the Dark School ends up as simply pretentious.  Which do I prefer?  I don’t know, but I know I don’t like bad movies.  In terms of this dark, urban distopia theme, I prefer the “Robocop” movies.  So I guess my preference has to be for the camp element; unfortunately no one seems to be able to reconcile the two.  Now THAT would be remarkable.

Diplomacy vs. Squad Leader

Here I expect to leave 90% of my female readers behind, venturing forth into this uniquely masculine domain – home of little paper counters, dice, and innumerable charts and graphs.  In particular, I’ll focus on the top two war games, Diplomacy and Squad Leader.

 Diplomacy (made by Avalon Hill) is remarkable in that it uses no dice whatsoever.  It takes place in Europe 1900, the map as it was before World War I.  The players are England, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and France.  Ideally you want seven players, one per country, but in practice we’d have to double up on a few: Germany-Turkey, Russia-Italy, and Austria-France, with England by itself, for 4 players. 

 The map is littered with supply centers which support either an army unit or a naval unit each, and the game proceeds in turns: spring and fall, with new armies/navies arising after the fall term.  Each player writes down orders, subject to negotiation with the other players, and reveals the orders in turn.  Attacks are resolved by simple arithmetic: equal numbers opposing each other result in a stalemate, whereas any advantage in numbers, however slight, prevails. Typically a single country can rarely muster enough forces on its own to force an outcome (except overrunning neutral, undefended countries at the very beginning of the game), so some cooperation between players is necessary, thus…Diplomacy.  And since you cannot bind your comrade to the orders he claims he will write, you may be unpleasantly surprised to find what they turn out to be.  Intrigue, duplicity and back-stabbing are all part of the fun!

 Another part of the fun is that the traditional alliances of Germany-Italy-Austria vs. England-France-Russia are not required, so you can have the French walk into London, the British take Paris, or the Germans march into Vienna.  In our experience, the Austrians usually ended up being wiped out, as they’re surrounded by Germany, Turkey, Italy, and France, whereas the English almost always did well, as they could usually put enough naval units around the island to prevent anyone convoying troops there.  If England was invaded it reflected extremely poorly on the English player. 

 These games lasted hours, well into morning, usually ended more by sheer impatience then any decisive victory by any player.  I do recall that my friends Sean and Phil usually teamed up together to form an artificially tight bond which produced stalemates, as they could never be persuaded to turn against each other.  Personal feelings were yet another ingredient – just as the Kaiser’s resentment of his royal cousins may have colored his animosity towards England and Russia.  Overall, though, a very satisfying game.

 My high school history teacher thought it would be a good idea for us to play the game as a class – and we had well more than 7 classmembers.  I was teamed up with Kirby, for Turkey, and we took Moscow and Sevastopol, and were on track to take St. Petersburg – allied with the Germans, who had taken Warsaw - before the game ended.  The French team took England, pushing the English into exile in Norway, of all places.  Most of the teams were female, though, and the girls really didn’t care much for the game at all.

 A Far East variant (Colonial Diplomacy) was produced, for which the powers were Russia, England, Japan, Turkey, Holland, France, and China.  By this time, though, all our gaming buddies had gone off their separate ways, so we never played this one.

 Squad Leader (also made by Avalon Hill) was much different. This was a squad-level wargame of WWII.  Small square paper counters represented squads, NCOs, officers, machine guns, flamethrowers, satchel charges, smoke, tanks, jeeps, armored cars, etc.  You could call in artillery support from off the board or even air strikes – Stukas, Sturmoviks or Mustangs.  The boards featured hexes and various different terrains: roads, buildings, plains, forests, even orchards and cemetaries.  The game was horribly complex and took ages to learn.  The rules had sections, subsections, exceptions, etc. and read like the Code of Federal Regulations.  It was set up with scenarios which progressed, each one introducing another new rule or element, to gradually familiarize the players, but even the first two, The Guards Counterattack and The Tractor Works, taking place in downtown Stalingrad, were still damn complex.  Each turn had several different phases – prep fire, advancing fire, defensive fire, movement, advance, rout, and rally phases; combat had various different charts of modifiers before the dice could be rolled.  Units broke – or could be rallied by officers, who could rally themselves. Despite playing the game for hours on end, we never finished all the original scenarios, much less progressed to the expansion sets Cross of Iron (which introduced SS units on dramatically cool black counters), Crescendo of Doom (adding in British, French, and Axis and Allied minor nations), and GI Anvil of Victory, which fleshed out the Americans and substantially changed whole chapters of the rules.  Later on, Avalon Hill revamped the system, producing Advanced (!!!) Squad Leader, in the process adding in the Japanese, Chinese and Pacific warfare.  By this point the rules were in a binder so that additions or errata could be added or subtracted page by page, like many of the CCH regulations manuals in the law library. That was a non-starter for us.  This was literally a game where you spent far more time trying to learn to rules and how to play it, than actually playing the damn game itself.

 If there was advantage of Squad Leader over Diplomacy, it was that Squad Leader was played with two players (German vs. either Russian or American), whereas Diplomacy was unplayable with only two players and best suited for seven.  But we could rarely round up as many as seven players.  Seven players in Squad Leader would have been hopeless.

 It was a given that I would almost always play the Germans, but since we never got to Cross of Iron, I never got to use SS units.  The dice, though, really made a difference.  Keep rolling snake eyes (two ones) and your enemies were mowed down, though it helped to have at least some clue about tactics.

 Risk.  Honorable mention for this game, which was even simpler than Diplomacy.  We used to play this one before we learned about Diplomacy.  But I found the chance element too high: some kid rolling sixes over and over again could wipe out your carefully developed invasion army.  I can recall making a huge non-winning argument that Ukraine was part of Asia, not Europe. 

 Illuminati.  Yet another honorable mention – and perhaps a precursor to those trading card games (they actually had an Illuminati trading card game, New World Order, which we never played).  This was the game of secret societies: the Bavarian Illuminati, the Gnomes of Zurich, The Discordian Society, the UFOs, The Bermuda Triangle, and the Servants of Cthulhu, each with their different goals (the UFOs’ goal was a secret duplicate of one of the other players’).  Then vast numbers of different groups (to name just a few): CIA, FBI, the Mafia, California (with a picture of a hot tub), cycle gangs, girlie magazines, convenience stores, GOP, Democrats, Libertarians, KGB, KKK, Triliberal Commission, the Oil Companies, South American Nazis, Swiss Banks, Semiconscious Liberation Army, Trekkies, the Reformed Church of Satan, Orbital Mind Control Lasers (a good target for the Bermuda Triangle), the Society for Creative Anarchism, joggers, and so on – extremely tongue-in-cheek. Each player develops a network of groups, tries to take over other player’s groups, or tries to destroy them (the particular forte of the Servants of Cthulhu).  The groups have different attributes: straight/weird, conservative/liberal, violent/peaceful, plus “fanatic”, which is the opposite of everything, including other fanatics.   Dice (2 six-sided) dice were involved, plus lots of fake money, humor, and as much back-stabbing and plotting as Diplomacy.