Monthly Archives: April 2014

The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 6)

Is there an end in sight to the war?  For the Zulus, there is…  mwuahahahaha

By Brant Guillory, GrogDude

Click images to enlarge

 

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One More Promotion
This closes out our military developments in this scenario.

 

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The Mandekalu Cavalry…
…can be maddeningly hard to kill sometimes

The Joy of Discovery, or A Love-Letter to a Bygone Era of Gaming

Brant waxes nostalgic.  For no good reason, we might add.

16 April 2014

One of the great tragedies that the internet has brought about in the gaming world is the loss of a sense of wonder and discovery of a brand new game that no one else has heard of. One of my first tasks whenever I would get to a new town was to find a local game shop. Back then, things were all very different. There were no chain stores, unless you counted the book stores in the mall (though to be fair, there still aren’t any in the gaming world). Every game store in every town was different. They all had their own different unique games in stock that catered to the whims of the staff.

Since there was very little uniformity from store to store , and the gaming marketplace was much more fragmented, you never knew what you would find in those local game stores. Moreover, if you found something off the wall, it was almost guaranteed that no one back in your gaming group had heard of it, because there was no internet for everyone to hop on and find out about the same games all at the same time.

In my own explorations, I ran across all sorts of interesting nuggets and obscure games that would hardly be categorized as obscure today, because someone would’ve already read about them online. It’s not that they have any wider appeal than they did before, but they almost certainly have wider distribution and knowledge of that distribution thanks to the web.

Tuesday Screenshot: From Shogun 2 – Fall of the Samurai

This Tuesday, Shogun 2 strikes fear into the eyes of the enemy.

Click to enlarge

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See the look in the eyes of those two soldiers in the center of the shot? Clearly its fear…fear of my mounted troops mowing them down like weeds, like the men on the right side of the image. Maybe they’re also thinking that they may have picked the wrong side in this war. Or maybe they’re thinking of their wives. We’ll never know because shortly after this image was taken, every member of that unit was killed. We talk a lot about not prioritizing graphics, but this screen shot shows how well emotions like fear can be expressed with a good graphics engine.

Image & Caption Lloyd Sabin

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The Review of Lock’n’Load: Heroes of Stalingrad

Our own Undercovergeek marches into Stalingrad, and comes out with this review of the action.

Lucky 13 April, 2014

I’m a terrible German officer, but that’s ok, I’m a terrible Russian officer as well.

It’s a testimony to Lock & Load’s Heroes of Stalingrad that it has been able to teach me that. As my numerous attempts at claiming or defending small patches of land surrounding Stalingrad mounted up, it occurred to me that neither Stalin or Hitler had made the right choice in putting me in charge. Either that or this game has a much more devious AI than I bargained for, or I’m just crap at throwing digital dice.

Pavlov and his team unwisely leave the safety of their house to assault a flamethrower unit

Pavlov and his team unwisely leave the safety of their house to assault a flamethrower unit

Heroes of Stalingrad first appeared on my radar after getting lost in a Matrix Games forum a long time ago. I should be honest at this point and say I have never played a Lock & Load board game, never played Advanced Squad Leader, and never actually played a WWII themed board game at all. But I have played Blood Royale with a tricorn hat on, because I thought it was the same as Napoleons.

However, I was there at Bastogne commanding the Commodore 64’s finest in Battle of the Bulge, I was there on the fields of Gettyburg in North and South, all the way through to the first Combat Mission and up to and including Market Garden, where it’s safe to say that Frost and Urquhart are also probably thinking about removing my commission. When it comes to losing my men of the digital variety, I’m confident in my CV. So when I first saw the screen shots of small, squad based battles in and around the familiar railway yards and factory buildings, and extra immersion created by having my own set of officers and heroes, I was delighted to have found my next set of pixeltruppen to throw hopelessly into the mincer of battle.

For me personally Heroes bears a great amount of responsibility. It is my great hope of board game to PC game crossover.  I see them in there, through their game’s club windows, laughing and joking, throwing their dice and clapping each other on the back with their ‘board game players’ camaraderie, telling stories of great triumphs and tragedies. Then they turn and point at the lonely, sad faced PC wargamer outside who can never know what it feels like to hold the counters, set up the board, smell the cards and feel the rattle of dice, and rub their victim’s face in the agony of a successful ambush. I want all these things dammit, and it’s maybe not fair to expect this of Heroes, but it does not falter under the weight of my expectation.

Heroes of Stalingrad focuses on small, personal skirmishes encountered during the Battle of Stalingrad. The intimate settings necessitate a good deal of finesse in ordering units and squads around that the tactical player will revel in. The map could be a simple village or an important crossroads or other close quarter environment consisting of three or four infantry sections with some leaders and support teams, sometimes backed by tanks or other AFVs Continuity is provided by the persistence of a core of soldiers. These units gain points by surviving campaign scenarios and destroying enemies, points are reinvested in various improvements such as increased range, strength, or leadership , hardening armour, extra offense opportunities and adding a weapon or special skill.

The infamous girl, your success relies on her safety

The infamous girl, your success relies on her safety

GARPA 42 – GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory


This week, GARPA dips into the pre-order troves of some wargame companies, as well as tiptoeing through Kickstarter, to find you some great upcoming games.

 

Huzzah! Four Battles of the American Civil War Vol. 1 (One Small Step)
$39.95 pre-order

Company-level actions in the ACW comes to your tabletop in a quad-game package with 4 small, but important, battles from the 1860s.  You get Grant’s first real battle, out in Missouri.  You’ll also get Burnside in North Carolina, and two other fights.  The colorful counters give you a solid period feel, and the maps a compact and get you into the fight in a hurry.  Check out the preorder page and load your muskets!

 

G42-huzzah

 

G42-KwaKawaguchi’s Gamble: Edson’s Ridge (MMP)
$33.00 pre-order

A gorgeous area-movement game of the Japanese attacks to over-run the USMC airfield on Guadalcanal, Kawaguchi’s Gamble is up on pre-order right now with MMP.  Outnumbered over 3-to-1, the Marines are holding Edson’s Ridge from Japanese attacks that include banzai charges and gas attacks.  Drop in on the pre-order page for the game and check out some playtest images and place your order.