Category: Featured Posts

05/31/17

A Look at the Nexus Game Fair

If you’re a large plains-roaming land mammal, or a driving cat, and you just can’t make Origins, there’s always the local convention  ~

Jim Owczarski, 31 May 2017

Milwaukee has missed GenCon since the day it changed lodgings in 2003.  I know.  I’m from here.  The mass of local gamers that were left behind have created other events and some have seen remarkable success, but none have approached the grand madness that is the mother of all American gaming conventions.

Still, I love the convention experience and was looking forward to checking out the Nexus Game Fair when it rolled into town late last week.  Most importantly, I was wondering if there would be anything at all for a grognard to do.  What follows are a few thoughts and a fair number of photographs documenting the experience of Friday and Saturday.

Hosted primarily at the downtown Hyatt, evident on the Milwaukee skyline by the spaceship-like restaurant perched at the top, Nexus seems to have kept its ambitions modest.  Attendance ran to the hundreds rather than thousands and there was rarely a press of crowds despite the smallish space.  It was, however, a professionally-organized operation with a well-designed program and a strong staff of workers managing registration.

Two beautiful days and I’m going indoors to play with little soldier men. (That’s the new Bucks’ arena going up.)

Continue reading →

05/27/17

Legendary Encounters: Firefly – First Look!

The beloved TV franchise comes to your tabletop ~

Michael Eckenfels, 27 May 2017

A month or so back, I had the chance to get a copy of a Legendary Encounters game. At first, I was going to get the Aliens-themed one, though the Big Trouble in Little China version looked cool too, as did the Marvel version. Well, any of those three and the 1,674 (ish) other Legendary Encounters games. I almost told them I would look at the Aliens-themed one, but then I ran across Firefly, and it was a no-brainer for me.

The box itself is just like any of the other LE-type games. At least, I think it is. I played the Aliens version once before and can say it’s definitely the same size, as is the Big Trouble in Little China one too (saw the box, never played it).

Continue reading →

05/13/17

A Look Back at System 7 Napoleonics & Dragon Magazine

A stroll down memory lane to the days when wargaming and RPGs more comfortably co-existed ~

Jim Owczarski, 13 May 2017

I would have thought that after all these years the editors around this joint would have taken a liking to me.  I mean, come on, I’ve written reviews, previews, interviews, and even a travel journal or two, and have yet to get them sued for libel.  This is no small matter in our litigious day and age.

So why, then, does one of them torment me with this:

Continue reading →

05/9/17

The Tuesday Interview – Brian Train (The Game Theorist!)

Brian Train stops back at GrogHeads for an asymmetric interview  ~

Brant Guillory, 9 May 2017

 

Let’s start this off with a whopper: all-time best game you’ve ever played? Why that one?

Hmm. I really don’t know what would be the all-time best one. One I never seem to get tired of is Minuteman, the Second American Revolution by James Dunnigan. I played it again and again back in the day, and one of the first variants I ever designed was for that game. The premise back then seemed farfetched but 40 years later, I am not so sure. But I liked the processes of building up an insurgent movement, or the counter to it, through covert and semi covert actions, and the eventual payoff of an actual revolution. The various scenarios were interesting too, including two occupation/resistance ones and a four-way second civil war that could develop any number of ways.

I think I got more out of that design than any other SPI game I played, but a close second would be South Africa; another game people say they love to hate but I spent a lot of hours tinkering with it.

Continue reading →

05/5/17

News! Armageddon War hits Kickstarter

Check out the latest from Flying Pig Games ~

GrogHeads Newsdesk, 05 May 2017

Flying Pig Games have launched their most recent Kickstarter campaign

Armageddon War: Platoon Level Combat in the End War, is live on Kickstarter. The latest offering from serial successful-Kickstarter campaigner, Flying Pig Games, Armageddon War is set in a dark, not-too distant future.
Following disease, famine, and economic collapse among the world’s first-line powers, conventional war erupts in the Mid-East for what arable land remains. Old allies join the carnage, and the war grows, pitting age-old adversaries and their new friends against each other. Armageddon War depicts the chaos in the midst of this war.
Continue reading →