I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Finland. The Finns were one of the few who repaid their World War 1 debts to the United States. I’ve had three enjoyable trips to Helsinki in the last thirty-five years. The Finns have good beer and you can take a “beer trolley” tour of Helsinki. “Hello” in Finland is “Hey” – the same way Auburn fans say hello to each other.
Gordon, Kimberley, Mark, and Alex thank you for agreeing to talk to Grogheads about Sanctus Reach.
Tell us something about yourselves. Slitherine mentioned to me is that you are all from Elgin in Scotland, and all have previous video game industry experience – but this is your first big project together.
That’s the gist of it. We came to Elgin from all over the country for work where we met and became friends. We’ve all worked on all sorts of different projects over the years and collectively have 20 years of experience, but this is by far the biggest and most challenging project any of us have undertaken.
The Political Machine 2016 is a light simulation of the 2016 Campaign for President of the United States by Stardock. The Political Machine debuted in 2004 and an updated version has been released for every subsequent US Presidential Election. The review is based on the 2016 simulation and I’ve not played the previous versions.
The game starts by selecting your avatar for the Presidency. You can select one of nineteen Democratic candidates, one of twenty-six Republican candidates, or build your own candidate. This is a two candidate race with no third party candidates. The leftist third party options are included with the Democrats (think Jill Stein) and the libertarian candidates are included with the Republican options (think Gary Johnson).
I have been waiting for this one for a long time.
It’s almost unreal to me that Battle Cry, the first of Richard Borg’s “Commands and Colors” series, was released in 2000. I like the American Civil War well enough, but, from the beginning, I hoped that the simple, elegant system evident in the game could be elaborated into the best of all periods, Napoleonics.
In the years since, I’ve bought and happily played Memoir ’44 (2004), Commands and Colors: Ancients (2006), Battlelore (also 2006), not to mention the remarkable array of expansions, special editions, and the like for all these systems. I gave Zvezda’s Samurai Battles a miss if only because it’s the only era covered that doesn’t appeal to me.
And then it came out. In 2010, GMT Games gave the waiting world Commands and Colors: Napoleonics. Sure, it was wooden blocks not lovely figures. Yes, it was the British, Spanish, and Portuguese versus the French. And, yes, for reasons known only to the grim gods of game production, the Prussians were excluded from the included Waterloo scenario. But it was Napoleonics and that, at first, was enough.
This was no longer the simplified rule set found in Battle Cry. There was the forming of square; different grades of horse, foot, and guns; and even elegant rules to differentiate leaders and national troop characteristics. In the latter case, French troops, and their famous columns, fight better in melee, while the British lines do real damage with ranged fire, &c.
After much fun was had, though, it was ultimately not enough. True Napoleonic wargamers are obsessed with scope, spectacle, and sweep. It is this that leads us to do really, really dumb things like this: Historicon 2010 Part V Wagram (Shako II) and Outro
For the record this is my shaky-cam — I’ve become better — but this game had run 14 hours before I had to leave with it far from finished. Continue reading
Click images to enlarge
The first phase of the battle was the tough part. Getting my troops in good organization and supply was hard. Capturing the first airfield and Mt. Suribachi was a tough fight. Part two is different.
