Tag Archives: Aerial Combat
B-17 Flying Fortress Leader – First Look!
It’s a box that could break your toe if you drop it wrong, but what’s inside? ~
Michael Eckenfels, 22 April 2017
Mosby’s Raiders. Thunderbolt/Apache Leader. Patton’s Best. Cruel Necessity. These are but a few of my favorite solitaire games of all time, games I would be happy to return to the table any time, and each of which have prominent locations on one of my bookshelves. (Thunderbolt/Apache Leader happens to include both the DVG and GMT version, by the way.) Topping my list, though, is B-17: Queen of the Skies, a game by Avalon Hill from ancient times that I would easily play again and again without hesitation.
I was very interested when, quite a while ago, Dan at DVG made mention of a new tile they were working on – B-17 Flying Fortress Leader. My mind – and no doubt yours as well – instantly jumped to Queen of the Skies. Was it a remake? Was it a sequel? Was it an improvement? Most importantly, would it be good? I figured my time with this particular game would be a long time coming, so while I kept up with the thread in the GrogHeads forums to see where it was, I was very surprised when a copy landed on my doorstep today. Thanks to Dan and his team for sending this over for GrogHeads to get its paws on it and manhandle it appropriately.
This is the box – and holy crap is it hefty. I think I saw a post on Facebook in the Solitaire Wargames page that said it was 5.5 pounds; it feels more like 10, actually! Which means, mounted boards, tons of counters and cards, and just overall lotsa stuff packed into a large box.
GrogHeads Central Command Origins Events 2017
What’s coming up at Origins this summer? ~
GrogHeads Staff, 8 April 2017
Per GAMA, event registration goes live on 3 May.
What’s on tap this year? Plenty!
- Tournaments! We’ve got afternoon/evening tournaments for Lock’n’Load Tactical, Quartermaster General, Spearpoint 1943, and Twilight Struggle
- Team / Group events! In addition to our Command Post Wargaming, we have a pair of Team COIN games back this year, plus big team games of Old School Tactical, Sergeants!, and Crucible of Force (Slaughter in the Snow).
- Kids! We’ve got a special wargaming program this year for the kids – yes, KIDS! We’ve got 4 games that we’ll be running all weekend, in shorter 1-hour sessions. And for any kid who plays all 4 games at least once each, we’ve got a special Junior General prize. These games are for kids age 7-14, and they must have an adult come to the table with them.
Which companies are here with us?
- Griggling Games! Quartermaster General, and some expansions
- Flying Pig Games! Mark’s got 5 (five! fünf! cinco! V!) different games over the course of the weekend with us
- Enterprise Games! With their support for our GMT events again this year, we’ve Fields of Despair, Wing Leader Supremacy, some COIN events, C&C Ancients for the kids, and the Twilight Struggle tournament
- Collins Epic Wargames! We’re running Spearpoint 1943 events (for the kids, too), but look for Polyversal, also
- Lost Battalion Games! The always-awesome Sergeants! games are back, and look for their award-winning tiles, too
- Proving Ground Games! Bringing the lead to the battle, with their minis wargaming, and a special movie-monster scenario for the kids
- Lock’n’Load Games! Nations at War, LNLT, and tanks for the kids
Over 65 events across 4 days, for all your wargaming goodness. Plus, show up Wednesday afternoon and see what the staff has on the table just for their own fun 🙂
When you’re looking for our events in the Origins master event grid, they all start with “GrogHeads Presents”. We did that to make it easier to find when sorting through a giant spreadsheet with over 6000 events, however we stripped it out of the names on our event grid here just to simplify the listings.
Don’t forget that everyone who plays in our events gets a discount with our vendor partners, and gets entered for some great Sunday-morning raffle prizes. There’s also at least one prize for one of the players at every one of our events.
Note that the kids’ events – as noted above – have a special prize for kids who check out all 4 of the different games, and do not have prizes for each individual event.
Click through for the sortable table of events
IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad – Tante Ju!
With the recent release of the Ju 52/3m g4e for IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad, 1C Game Studios and 777 Studios have given digital pilots the chance to fly an iconic, yet rarely simulated German workhorse from the Second World War. Now, pilots can fly Falschirmjagers over drop zones, carry critical cargo to and from the front lines, and participate in a handful of other mission types that are a pleasant break from the usual intercept, patrol and close air support missions that all of the other aircraft presently in game were designed to tackle. Recently, our beloved forum denizen, Jarhead0331, joined the Luftwaffe and somehow managed to live to tell us about his first flight in a Ju 52 over the Eastern Front.
Take a look at the following series of screenshots and find out if Jarhead was able to keep his plane in one piece.
Craig H. Handler, 30 December 2016
B-29 Superfortress: Bombers Over Japan, 1944-1945
– First Look!
The shrink comes off the box~
Michael Eckenfels, 04 May 2016
ed note: Michael sent this to us a looooooong while ago, and we misplaced it. Totally not his fault.
Obviously, the box, but what’s cool is it is new and still in shrink-wrap. That’s cool, considering the game is a few years old at this point.
Tracer Rounds: Attack of the Killer Poetry
What do you do with a backlog of reviews? ~
Brant, 04 April 2016
We get all kinds of games sent to us, along with the ones we pick up one our own. Some good, some bad, some gorgeous, some not so much. We try – we really do try – to get to all of them for review purposes, but it doesn’t always happen. There’s a reason I’ve got a weekly blurb here called “What I’m doing this week when I should be playing games”. Moreover, when I play a game for review, I want to play it multiple times to ensure that the review I’m writing is accurate based on how the game is balanced, and how it plays over time – especially if replayability is one of the key factors we want to discuss.
Among the reasons I’ve made it a point to start republishing a bunch of the ‘classic reviews’ are that I don’t want my reviews to be dependent on someone else’s site continuing to exist, as well as wanting folks to be able to find opinions on older games that they may want to take for a spin. Additionally, many of those older reviews (some of which I’m going to get to soon) were longer borderline-investigative-journalism pieces that really dug into the games through repeated plays. That was a lot easier when I was in grad school. Working 3 different teaching jobs, plus being the editorial director here, makes all that a lot tougher.
So, this episode of Tracer Rounds is designed to catch up on those reviews – with a twist.
