Category: Featured Posts

07/15/16

GrogHeads Interviews Craig Stern of True Messiah

True Messiah is coming soon on Kickstarter; designer Craig Stern sits down for a chat ~

Brant Guillory, 15 July 2016

OK, so True Messiah has a totally off-the-wall-crazy backstory.  Where did it come from?  What was the original inspiration and how was it refined over time as it developed?

I thought it up in the shower one morning. (The ideas underlying the backstory had been percolating in me for a long time prior, mind you—they merely chose that moment to congeal. Maybe it was the steam?)

Anyway. You might think that this this game’s premise is meant to critique extremist religious groups like ISIS, people so certain in their beliefs that they are willing to slaughter tens of thousands of innocent people in the name of prophecies that they want to be (but have no good reason to believe are) true. You wouldn’t be wrong.

But True Messiah is really about magical thinking in all of its forms: about people privileging subjective beliefs over empirical facts, about valuing tribal loyalties over shared humanity. “What if,” I wondered, “we lived in a world in which believing something—and nothing more—really did make it so? What if ‘speaking your truth’ were literal?”

True Messiah - Logo w Box Art

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07/13/16

Screenshot Feature: Combat Mission Red Thunder

A quick visual trip through the Eastern Front ~

Boggit, 13 July 2016

This Red Thunder article is a sort of screenshot AAR. I only started taking the shots just after I realised I was playing an exceptional scenario.

It’s AD Amongst the Ruins designed by Seinfeldrules, and available from The Few Good Men. A tiny sized but intense scenario. You play a German Pioneer company at 80% strength tasked to clear an industrial area from a half strength Soviet infantry company. The surviving Soviets have kept a lot of their automatic weapons, so they’re tough, but fragile. The Soviets are very well set up with good lines of fire, and the German player who only has an infantry force with no supporting assets must use good infantry tactics to win. A highly recommended scenario, I give you some of the highlights of my game.

Amongst the Ruins. A most intense battle fromThe Few Good Men
Amongst the Ruins. A most intense battle fromThe Few Good Men

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07/2/16

GrogHeads Reviews Quartermaster General: Air Marshal Expansion

What’s in the first expansion from Griggling Games’ epic WWII game? ~

Michael Eckenfels, 30 June 2016

click images to enlarge

QMG-AM-1 Cover

In June of 2015, I reviewed a unique board game called Quartermaster General. Ian Brody designed a rather unique game, in that where most World War II games add logistics almost as a second thought to their game’s mechanics, Quartermaster General instead made logistics the centerpiece. Players would draw and husband cards to play to place armies in connecting countries, and navies in connecting ocean spaces, to conquer and deny territory to the other players. It brought a lot of chess-like qualities to a World War II-themed game, and was quite enjoyable. The game is very easy to teach; the task of knowing the timing of card play is its most challenging aspect, and really the heart of the fun of the game (as you can play cards for yourself, but you can also interrupt others’ play, too!).

(Ed note: we also talked with the designer at Origins!)

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