Embrace the News: Ukrainian Crisis
This is the second in our series of wargames and whiskies that embrace the nonstop news cycle. If you missed the first, check it out here.
Every wargame takes two things: courage and conviction, and this whiskey has both. Photo © 2026 WargamesandWhisky.com
If you’re just getting into wargames with stacks of chits representing forces and machinery, Ukrainian Crisis is a great gateway into today’s headlines.
We take you now to a still-unfolding chapter of geopolitics, complete with headlines full of regional and global ramifications: the latest war in Ukraine, which began in 2022 and still rages four years later.
This is the rare type of wargame that plays in an hour and half and fits on a coffee table. Photo © 2026 WargamesandWhisky.com
Yet, the war didn’t actually begin in 2022, did it? To really understand the current war, we must go back to the 2014 Russian ‘intervention’ that resulted in the Russian Federation’s annexation of Crimea- it creates a critical backdrop to understanding the full invasion that began eight years later. And for that, we recommend Brian Train’s Ukrainian Crisis. (Note: no affiliate link this time; Hollandspiele is a small , wholly unique publisher that we think you should know about.)
In Ukrainian Crisis, the war unfolds across Ukraine with its political borders blurred with those of its ethnic groups, some of which may be more sympathetic to the Russian presence…and some of which need a nudge by patriotic volunteers to take up arms. Players must navigate three interwoven fronts: the traditional counters-on-a-map Military domain, as well as the Diplomatic and Information domains. To win, it’s not enough to just seize your objective on the ground; you must manipulate the international narrative to bring global opinion on your side. The decision space here is downright claustrophobic, with both Ukraine and Russia having the same distribution of ‘Effort’ allocations - essentially chits ranging from Minimum to Maximum Effort that indicate how many actions a player can take this turn. Commit too early and your late-game efforts may be anemic at just the wrong moment. Kinetic action is taken primarily with groups of irregular forces, clearly partisan but deniable on the world stage. Regular military units can be mobilized and sent into combat with devastating results, but the same world opinion that turns a blind eye to the violence of irregulars frowns gravely upon the images of destruction caused by a full land war in Europe between uniformed militaries.
Turns themselves are not even standard in Ukrainian Crisis, instead requiring players to plunge into an immediate prisoner’s dilemma and choose whether this round will be a Strategic Turn of posturing and narrative manipulation, or if it will be a Combat Turn where caution is thrown out the window and both regular and irregular forces storm the frontlines in an effort to seize territory and bleed your opponent of their global prestige. Careful: if both players choose Strategic you can get on with your plans, but if only one player chooses Combat then the war is on in earnest.
Although it is set 12 years ago, Ukrainian Crisis carries a level of heaviness to it, because we know where this story is going even if we don’t yet see the end. That same weight, however, is an incredible opportunity to use game play - to use fun - as a way to engage with an event half a world away that has enormous implications for our very near-future.
So what kind of whiskey do you pair with an ongoing crisis? After a good deal of pondering, we decided on Courage and Conviction: Cuvée Cask, a standout American Single Malt from the Virginia Distillery Co. Unlike many Virginian whiskeys, this is made of 100% malted barley and aged for three years before it’s finished in high end French red wine barrels that undergo the shave, toast, re-char process (STR). This is what I like to call a full-bodied whiskey, bursting with red fruit flavor and dark chocolate notes. Though we generally take our whiskey neat, a single drop of water makes the flavor blossom. With its sweeter profile, it’s a perfect foil to the bitter and often unforgiving combat of Ukrainian Crisis.
