Author: Brant Guillory

03/26/18

What’s Gus Playing? Endless Space 2, part 1

The eloquent elf of exploration expresses endless exultation ~

Lloyd Sabin, 26 March 2018

Although I have only played a couple of hours of it, The Great Meshing™ happened with Endless Space 2.

Some games just mesh with us. The art style, the UI, the characters, the writing…all of it just coalesces in to a greater whole that digs its claws in to us and we love everything about it. I can always count on the Assassin’s Creed games, the Total War series, Warner Brothers games like Mad Max and Shadow of War and the Witcher series, among others, to really blow my mind, even after numerous iterations. When this Great Meshing™ happens unexpectedly with a new title, it can blow your mind.

Although I have only played a couple of hours of it, The Great Meshing™ happened with Endless Space 2. Admittedly, for most of the time I played it, I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, learning the game’s systems, reading up on it’s factions, and generally attempting to keep my head above water. I had chosen the Vodyani to play as, which may not have been the best choice…when I return to Endless Space 2 – and I am certainly going to – I should probably chose a more straight forward faction to try.

Continue reading →

03/24/18

GrogHeads Interviews Glenn Drover of Forbidden Games

FoG Glenn Drover is launching a new venture, and stops by to tell us all about it ~

Jim Owczarski, 24 March 2018

Glenn Drover has been in the game business for quite a few years now.  Despite an abiding love of historic gaming — notably in offerings like Napoleon in Europe and Victory and Glory: Napoleon — his biggest successes have been lighter fare including time spent at digital developer PopCap.  Earlier this week, he and fellow PopCap alum announced a new venture — Forbidden Games.  It seemed like a logical time to do a little catching up.

So, for the six people reading this who don’t know you, what were the last three games — digital, tabletop or otherwise — you were involved with?

The last three games that I worked on that were published were:

  • Victory & Glory: Napoleon, a lighter grand strategy game of the Napoleonic Wars for the PC, published by Matrix  (Note: I finally finished the board game version, which will be shipping in April, published by Forbidden)
  • Galactic Rebellion, a sequel (of sorts) to Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery, published by Eagle Games
  • WarQuest, a fantasy strategy game (with amazing miniatures) inspired by Divine Right, published by Mr. B Games

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03/22/18

Gaming Nostalgia – Cast Your Own Figures!

#TBT at GrogHeads!

The problem was never casting your own figures.  That was actually kind of fun.  The first problem was that there were only so many drummers you needed.  The second problem was that you had to find a source of lead to use in them, or else figure out which other figures you were going to melt down and recycle.

click images to enlarge

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03/21/18

Sword & Sorcery: Immortal Souls – First Look!

Another new box-full-o’-minis in an oversize tabletop dungeon crawl ~

Michael Eckenfels, 21 March 2017

There’s about sixteen billion board games now dealing with dungeon crawls and sporting cool minis, or enough to choke a bag of holding – whichever reference you get first.

I’ve since realized I was expecting an RPG experience

I hadn’t heard of Sword & Sorcery before (go figure). According to BGG’s page, this game “is an epic -fantasy cooperative board game in which 1-5 players fight together against the forces of evil, which are controlled by the game itself.”

This last bit was enough to intrigue me. I’d had a momentary flirtation with the D&D games; specifically with Castle Ravenloft, which I played, and Temple of Elemental Evil, which I have yet to play. These D&D games struck me as too simplistic, but I’ve since realized I was expecting an RPG experience, and was disappointed because of it. I need to revisit those games with a different outlook on what to expect.

This one, though, seemed pretty cool for a variety of reasons. Not only the “1-5 player” aspect of it, which is admittedly a huge selling point for me (I like running multiple players in cooperative games), but also because this game has a lot of Galaxy Defenders (another game) in it. And it should, because Gremlin Productions created both of these games.

There’s also the 8.3 rating on BGG, which is impressive in and of itself, as well as the 95 (!) videos covering it, as well as over twelve hundred threads in the BGG page for it. Not bad for a game that was just released in 2017.

For a final reason, the minis are cool as hell, as you will see momentarily. Continue reading →

03/20/18

GrogHeads Reviews Platoon Commander – Poland Strikes

The wars of the future are on your tabletop now ~

Robert Ellis, 20 March 2018

Designed by Mark H.Walker
Published by Tiny Battles Publishing.

About the game

Poland Strikes is one of four games in the ‘Platoon Commander’ series and depicts an hypothetical war between Poland and Hungary taking place within a wider European conflict.

The game uses the latest v1.5 series rules and features an 11×17-in map, 88 x 5/8” counters, a nicely laid out and very colourful player aid card, plus 18 ‘action cards’

I assume that these latest rules are backwards compatible with the other games in the series.

Each hex represent approx 150 meters, and each game turn 15-60 minutes.

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