GMT's New P500s

Started by Nefaro, November 19, 2016, 07:59:30 AM

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Nefaro

Oooo!


Squealing over the new Operational Air War game in the Downtown/Bloody April series, Red Storm.   :dreamer:


http://www.gmtgames.com/p-614-red-storm.aspx







I've been a bit fascinated with the air defenses, and planning for/against them, in the '60s-'70s settings of this game system.  This one should ramp the electronic battle to eleven, with the more capable SAMs and defense networks of a late '80s Europe scenario.  Of course, SEAD will be more capable too. 

WANT.   O0



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Nefaro

Other newer notables I'm eyeing:




Storming the Heights





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Wing Leader Blitz

A new campaign system for the first Wing Leader?  Hrmm...



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Command & Colors: Medieval


Been on P500 for a little while.  May have to add it to my list at some point.

GJK

Have you played a Miranda designed game before?  I'm thinking through my collection and realizing that I don't think that I actually have.  I've heard both ways on the complexity and design decisions that he's made in the past.  Be curious if this would be your first one of his designs or if you have some familiarity there already.
Clip your freaking corners!
----------------------
Blood Bowl on VASSAL - Ask me about it! http://garykrockover.com/BB/
----------------------
"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

-Dean Vernon Wormer

Nefaro

Quote from: GJK on November 19, 2016, 08:11:30 AM
Have you played a Miranda designed game before?  I'm thinking through my collection and realizing that I don't think that I actually have.  I've heard both ways on the complexity and design decisions that he's made in the past.  Be curious if this would be your first one of his designs or if you have some familiarity there already.


I had one of his S&T magazine games, ages ago (Byzantium iirc).  Never got around to it before it went AWOL.

My wargaming has been almost non-existent in the past couple decades.  So I've not been exposed to many designers, including him.  I don't consume many different hex & counter wargames nowadays.  A little goes a long way.  The ground warfare-themed titles I get are usually limited to pre-20th century battles, so this piqued my interest.

GJK

That Alma game looks interesting and Leeds always does a great job on the graphics so I'd be interested in what you thought of the game once you've had a chance to play it.
Clip your freaking corners!
----------------------
Blood Bowl on VASSAL - Ask me about it! http://garykrockover.com/BB/
----------------------
"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

-Dean Vernon Wormer

Nefaro

#5
Quote from: GJK on November 19, 2016, 08:26:50 AM
That Alma game looks interesting and Leeds always does a great job on the graphics so I'd be interested in what you thought of the game once you've had a chance to play it.


I'm still fenced about signing up for many of the P500s.  Being GMT they probably won't be produced for another two years, so plenty of time to mull it over.

Although I did sign up for the air war one already.  I'm a sucker for the more unusual stuff like that.

Barthheart

#6
Yeah Red Storm caught my eye as well... but I'm worried that it will be the beautiful, yet unplayable except on VASSAL and not solo, game that Bloody April is.  :-\

And then there's this:



QuoteSpaceCorp: 2025-2300 AD is a fast-playing board game in which one to four players explore and develop outer space over three eras. Each player controls an Earth-based enterprise seeking profit by driving the expansion of humanity into the Solar System and beyond. In SpaceCorp you can ...

Assemble a spaceport at a LeGrange Point.
Launch an exploration mission to Mars.
Mine the asteroids.
Earn profit from exotic resources discovered on the Jovian moons.
Discover microbial life in the subsurface oceans of Charon.
Decode exo-DNA to develop radiation resistant human pioneers.
Undertake a mission to Alpha Centauri in a generation ship.
Break through technological barriers to achieve faster than light travel.
Establish a colony in the Tau Ceti star system.


Each of the three eras is played on a different board:

The first era, Mariners, covers exploration and development out to Mars.
In Planeteers, players settle the outer solar system.
In Starfarers, players send missions to nearby star systems and establish interstellar colonies.

https://www.gmtgames.com/p-613-spacecorp.aspx

Nefaro

#7
The GMT newsletter mentioned something about Red Storm being made a bit more solitaire friendly than previous ones.  Although I'm sure it'll never be full-on solitaire capable.

Since the Wing Leader series is distantly related mechanics-wise, I think it could potentially get closer to being as solo friendly as those.  It's mostly about the pre-planning of Air missions & defenses, though, so one side would need some kind of procedural process for a big leap in solo friendliness.




I was also really curious about Spacecorp.  But 1) the graphical look wasn't very impressive, and 2) I already paid for the extremely late High Frontier KS Reprint, which should be showing up in the next year.  Hopefully it doesn't reach two years late, anyway.  There's way too much thematic overlap from Spacecorp, and HF will be brain-draining enough.




Barthheart

Ha! Saw High Frontier being played at Game On! con a few years back.... no way I'm learning that!  :hide:

Barthheart

Quote from: Nefaro on November 19, 2016, 08:38:52 AM
The GMT newsletter mentioned something about Red Storm being made a bit more solitaire friendly than previous ones.  Although I'm sure it'll never be full-on solitaire capable.

Since the Wing Leader series is distantly related mechanics-wise, I think it could potentially get closer to being as solo friendly as those.  It's mostly about the pre-planning of Air missions & defenses, though, so one side would need some kind of procedural process for a big leap in solo friendliness. ...

Yeah, but it's not just the solo unfriendliness, I can solo just about anything. It's the shear quantity of status markers that are required to play Bloody April that make it hard to play in it's physical form. Wing Leader has no where near that problem.

Nefaro

Quote from: Barthheart on November 19, 2016, 08:46:43 AM
Quote from: Nefaro on November 19, 2016, 08:38:52 AM
The GMT newsletter mentioned something about Red Storm being made a bit more solitaire friendly than previous ones.  Although I'm sure it'll never be full-on solitaire capable.

Since the Wing Leader series is distantly related mechanics-wise, I think it could potentially get closer to being as solo friendly as those.  It's mostly about the pre-planning of Air missions & defenses, though, so one side would need some kind of procedural process for a big leap in solo friendliness. ...

Yeah, but it's not just the solo unfriendliness, I can solo just about anything. It's the shear quantity of status markers that are required to play Bloody April that make it hard to play in it's physical form. Wing Leader has no where near that problem.


Doesn't Wing Leader keep each flight's status markers on a separate sheet, though?   May be a job for Homemade Materials Man™

The map clutter, with too many status markers all over, or covering too much counter info, is a problem with a few different systems.  I was bitching about such clutter in the GBoH series awhile back, too.   :-\   


Barthheart

Quote from: Nefaro on November 19, 2016, 08:52:18 AM
Quote from: Barthheart on November 19, 2016, 08:46:43 AM
Quote from: Nefaro on November 19, 2016, 08:38:52 AM
The GMT newsletter mentioned something about Red Storm being made a bit more solitaire friendly than previous ones.  Although I'm sure it'll never be full-on solitaire capable.

Since the Wing Leader series is distantly related mechanics-wise, I think it could potentially get closer to being as solo friendly as those.  It's mostly about the pre-planning of Air missions & defenses, though, so one side would need some kind of procedural process for a big leap in solo friendliness. ...

Yeah, but it's not just the solo unfriendliness, I can solo just about anything. It's the shear quantity of status markers that are required to play Bloody April that make it hard to play in it's physical form. Wing Leader has no where near that problem.


Doesn't Wing Leader keep each flight's status markers on a separate sheet, though?   May be a job for Homemade Materials Man™

The map clutter, with too many status markers all over, or covering too much counter info, is a problem with a few different systems.  I was bitching about such clutter in the GBoH series awhile back, too.   :-\

True about WL.... maybe I need to look at if it's feasible for Bloody April..... or if someone already has....

Toonces

The downtown system is so adaptable to other periods.  Heck, I even started working on a European war version!

If I was lee, I'd just sit at home cranking out new versions of downtown while sipping Mai tais on the beach.
"If you had a chance, right now, to go back in time and stop Hitler, wouldn't you do it?  I mean, I personally wouldn't stop him because I think he's awesome." - Eric Cartman

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bayonetbrant

Quote from: Toonces on November 19, 2016, 09:21:51 AMIf I was lee, I'd just sit at home cranking out new versions of downtown while sipping Mai tais on the beach.

actually, he's a professional video game designer
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Nefaro

Quote from: Barthheart on November 19, 2016, 08:54:36 AM
Quote from: Nefaro on November 19, 2016, 08:52:18 AM
Quote from: Barthheart on November 19, 2016, 08:46:43 AM
Quote from: Nefaro on November 19, 2016, 08:38:52 AM
The GMT newsletter mentioned something about Red Storm being made a bit more solitaire friendly than previous ones.  Although I'm sure it'll never be full-on solitaire capable.

Since the Wing Leader series is distantly related mechanics-wise, I think it could potentially get closer to being as solo friendly as those.  It's mostly about the pre-planning of Air missions & defenses, though, so one side would need some kind of procedural process for a big leap in solo friendliness. ...

Yeah, but it's not just the solo unfriendliness, I can solo just about anything. It's the shear quantity of status markers that are required to play Bloody April that make it hard to play in it's physical form. Wing Leader has no where near that problem.


Doesn't Wing Leader keep each flight's status markers on a separate sheet, though?   May be a job for Homemade Materials Man™

The map clutter, with too many status markers all over, or covering too much counter info, is a problem with a few different systems.  I was bitching about such clutter in the GBoH series awhile back, too.   :-\

True about WL.... maybe I need to look at if it's feasible for Bloody April..... or if someone already has....


Thought I saw someone mention they used similar status sheets for the markers with it.  Probably a BGG post. 

At least that's a straightforward way of handling it.  There aren't a huge amount of flights per side, so it's quite possible.  I'm still at a loss about having swaths of Cohesion hit markers on, or under, a bunch of units in GBoH though.  Still wish it was easy to get info from both the counter & hits without having to un-stack counters.  Not such an easy fix with something like that.