Thirty Years of Misery: 1618–1648 (VUCA) — Round 2 Gameplay & Walkthrough

Round 1 got the pieces moving; Round 2 is where a wargame usually tells you what it really is. This is the second gameplay round of Thirty Years of Misery: 1618–1648, Brian Asklev’s design from VUCA Simulations, picking up the Thirty Years’ War with the opening moves already behind us.

Building on Round 1

With setup and the first round out of the way, this session moves faster and digs further into how the system develops over time. I keep talking through my reasoning as I play solo, because the interesting part of a game like this is rarely a single die roll — it’s the accumulating pressure of decisions across rounds. If you watched Round 1, this is the payoff; if you’re jumping in here, I recap enough to keep it followable.

How it’s holding up

A shorter session than Round 1, this one is about momentum — seeing whether the design keeps its grip once the novelty of setup wears off. I stay honest about what’s working and what feels fiddly, because that’s the only useful thing a walkthrough can offer over a glossy overview. By the end of Round 2 you should have a real sense of whether Thirty Years of Misery is a game you want to spend an evening with.