Monthly Archives: June 2014
GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #47
This week’s GARPA might be short on titles (only 3), but it’s long on success – they’ve all made the cut and will be adorning tabletops near you this year.
Scotland Rising (Worthington Publishing)
$5000 of $2500, ends 20 July 2014
C’mon, now – you’ve seen Braveheart, right? Scottish Wars of Independence ringing a bell? And as a wargamer and history buff, you must know that we’re coming up on the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, right? Well, not only that, but there’s a Scottish independence vote coming up in a few months, too. So what better time than to take a trip back through history and check out Worthington’s upcoming game on the Battle of Bannockburn. And if they hit their stretch goals, you’ll get the battles of Stirling Bridge and Falkirk, too, which should satisfy anyone’s desire for 14th-century hack-and-slash combat in the Scottish border country. But they only hit all those stretch goals if you go plunk down your coins on the Kickstarter page, right?
Origins 2014 – AARsday: Staff Wargaming
Wargaming at Origins, by Jim Zabek
Origins is different from many other gaming conventions, (I’m thinking of you, GenCon) in one particular way: wargames. Origins offers lectures on current military events and offers gaming sessions with wargames. One of the coolest was hosted by Grogheads this year (and I say that with all modesty), where Dr. James Sterrett ran a game that was based on the simulations (ed note: they’re games, he’s just not allowed to call them that!) he runs for the Command and General Staff College for the Army.
The game typically has six players and takes at least two, and possibly three or four referees to help facilitate it. Players are given assignments in the military, and if we were searching for a geekier gaming equivalent, I suppose you could say this is a kind of live-action role-playing sans elf ears and boffer weapons.
Typical roles are the Commanding Officer, Operations Officer, Intelligence Officer, and Fire Support Officer. Other roles can be added or removed based upon the number of participants, their experience, and the objective of the game. In our case we had an additional Task Force commander and a commander for air support.
Our game used On Target’s Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm as our game engine. The time was the late-1980s and we were US NATO forces tasked with punching a hole through a force of Soviets.
To begin with our team was given orders, a map, and some guidance on how the military structures its plans. Each player was given a specific task to help contribute to that objective. The plan of attack was broken into phases. Decision points on how to act on contingency plans or to continue forward with the existing plan were developed, along with event triggers to recognize when to act upon those plans.
The map we were on. US forces started to the west, Soviets to the east
I took the role of the S2, or intelligence officer, and quickly confirmed the stereotypical role of “military intelligence” being an oxymoron. As the rest of the team was working up plans to punch through a Soviet force and disrupt a large Warsaw Pact logistics center, I was busy attempting to guess what the Soviets would try to do. With limited time constraints I only was able to create two plans: offensive and defensive, and to determine a few event triggers which, if we saw the Soviets execute, I would be able to declare which course of action they were taking. One of the key learnings I was able to take away from the game was that if I made a fundamental error in the basic nature of my guesstimate, all future errors in analysis I made of the situation would be magnified accordingly. In other words, if I was wrong from the start, my errors would only get worse.
Origins 2014 – Costumes
(Hey, it’s sort of a Tuesday screenshot)
Costumes abound at Origins, and here’s, well, maybe not most of them, but a lot of them. Some are more “costume” than others, but they’re all here.
Which ones are your favorites?
Origins 2014 – Your GrogCrew
We’re missing 2 key cogs from our team in the photo who both had to leave early to hit the road home.
photos by Corinne Mahaffey
Origins 2014 – Saturday
Jim Zabek continues his quest for the bottomless bag of gold with which to attempt to fill a bottomless bag of games. As long as it’s not Jim that’s bottomless…
Click images to enlarge
What’s that sound? That’s the sound of my wallet screaming as I attempt to coax a few more dollars out of it and buy another game. Yes, today was painful. But the end is nigh – I can feel it.
The morning kicked off like any other, I wandered into the exhibitor hall just a few minutes early. Stopping by Crystal Caste I had to ogle the dice they had there. Several years ago I bought a set of RPG dice from them made of lapis. They were great dice. Unfortunately I lost them in my last move and have missed them ever since. Today is the day to rectify the situation, and if we escape from a chronological reporting of events for a moment, I ended up purchasing a replacement set in the afternoon. Not cheap, but oh-so-worth it.
As long as we’re breaking from chronology, my last purchase of the day turned out to be a game I didn’t think was on retail shelves yet: Galaxy Defenders. If that name sounds familiar, it should – readers may recall from as far back as yesterday I was getting a demo from Ares Games about it and their retail shipment was still stuck in customs (one of several companies at Origins having problems with customs apparently).
I only saw one copy of the game on the shelf and I pounced. I would have bought it from Ares if they’d had a copy. Now I get one anyway.
