Category Archives: News
A Look at the Playthrough Gaming Convention
We sortied out to the local game convention for a load of photos, and more ~
Brant Guillory, 26 February 2017
Raleigh, NC has a pretty thriving game community – 2 local colleges have digital game design programs, there are at least 4 pretty active game clubs, and all three major game stores are packed most nights for any combination of D&D Encounters, minis warfare, Friday Night .\\agic, or general board gaming. The Triangle Simulation Society runs 2 minis-focused conventions each year, but this year the Playthrough Gaming Convention took over one of the exhibit halls at the Raleigh Convention for a weekend of digital, tabletop, and live-action gaming, as well as seminars, tournaments, and a costume contest.
Looking over the gaming hall. Booths in the front, video games on the right, and tabletops in the back.
Facebook Loses Oculus VR Lawsuit
VR Gaming might stall as a result ~
Cliff George, 20 February 2017
Facebook has established themselves as one of the leading social media giants of the 21st century. Mark Zuckerberg and his team have made it a top priority to purchase other companies and make acquisitions in ways they see benefiting the overall success of their company. This business mentality has led them to make some historic purchases – such as Instagram and Whatsapp that were bought for $1 billion and $19 billion, respectively. However, one of Facebook’s more recent acquisitions involving Oculus VR got them into a sticky lawsuit.
Mark Zuckerberg made a clear indication of Facebook’s future direction with the purchase of Oculus VR in 2014 for $2 billion. The technology company is known for their creation of Oculus Rift, a high-tech Virtual Reality simulator. What Facebook saw as a worthwhile investment has turned out to be nothing more than a thorn in their side.
2016 Readers’ Choice Award Winners
The nominations came in throughout 2016. After our annual January voting, we bring your the Readers’ Choice Award Winners for game-year 2016 ~
Congrats to our winners!
OVERALL TABLETOP GAME – Star Wars: Rebellion
OVERALL DIGITAL GAME – Twilight Struggle, digital edition
Digital Wargame – Twilight Struggle, digital edition
Digital RTS – Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak
Digital RPG – Uncharted 4
Digital FPS – Battlefield 1
Digital Family / Sports Game – FIFA 17
Digital 4X Game- Civilization 6
Digital Expansion / DLC – Order of Battle: US Marines
Tabletop Wargame – Wing Leader: Supremacy
Tabletop Strategy Game – Star Wars: Rebellion
Tabletop RPG – Star Wars: Force Awakens
Tabletop Euro / Family Game – Terraforming Mars
Tabletop Reprint – Silver Bayonet 25th Ed
AAR of the Year – War in the Pacific AE – KyzBP & UCG
At GrogHeads, we give our readers the final say on the best games of the year, and here are the 2016 Readers’ Choice Awards…
We try to be as responsive as we can to our readers, and include every nomination, checking only for only one criteria: released in the correct year. We open the threads at the start of the year (2017 threads are already open!) and leave them up even into the first week of the next year. Somehow, even with an entire year to nominate games, we still get hate-mail from around the web asking “why wasn’t _____ on the list?” The answer is the same every time: no one nominated it! It’s your award, and you dear reader, get to pick your own choices.
This year’s winners? Here they go. And remember, all of them were selected by you!
GrogHeads Readers’ Choice Overall 2016 Tabletop Game of the Year was Star Wars: Rebellion, a game we discussed at length on the GrogCast last fall. Falling Sky, the latest in the COIN series, finished second. Ventonuovo’s visually stunning Moscow ’41 took third.
The GrogHeads Readers’ Choice Overall 2016 Digital Game of the Year was the adaptation of the excellent Twilight Struggle tabletop game. Second place was claimed by Strategic Command: WWII in Europe, and third overall was XCom 2.
In response to reader inquiries, we also added a new feature this year to recognize excellent After-Action Reports from games. Although we did not limit the category to those AARs that appeared on our site, it’s interesting to note that all three of the top finishers were in our forums, rather than on our front page, indicating that we clearly have to some talented writers in our forums. The overall winner of the inaugural AAR of the Year for 2016 was War in the Pacific AE, authored by KyzBP & Undercovergeek in the GrogHeads forums.
Wow. Just… Wow.
So what happened 5 years ago today? ~
Brant Guillory, 26 January 2017
Five years ago, we opened our forums here at GrogHeads. Our front page followed shortly thereafter, and we’ve been talking games all along.
We wanted GrogHeads to be an independent voice in the strategy gaming world. We also wanted to make sure we covered strategy gaming across the entire spectrum of gaming – tabletop, digital, team, distributed, multiplayer, whatevs! – and follow the interests of our members.
Do we get it right every time? Nope.
Does that stop us from trying? Double nope.
By the end of February, we had over 100 members in our forums. Within 2 years, we were running a wargaming program at Origins. Along the way, we’ve podcasted, reviewed, pontificated, sarcasmed, photo’ed, gamed, AAR’ed, voted, and discussed all manner of strategy games, and more.
We’re on our 4th iteration of our Readers’ Choice awards, planning our 4th GrogHeads Central Command at Origins, and in March we’ll run our 5th college hoops Bracket Challenge (hey, don’t laugh – it’s a big hit every year). We’re a few dozen months, a few hundred reviews and a few thousand pictures into covering all sorts of games.
So how are you getting involved? Are you talking games in our forums? Sharing an AAR with the gang? Coming to Origins to join us for a weekend-plus of great gaming? Subscribing to the podcast? Following us on Twitter? Hanging with us on FaceBook? All of the above?
Whatever it is, we hope you have a great time doing it, just like we do.
So from all of us here at GrogHeads, to all of you strategy gamers everywhere, wherever you are and whatever you’re playing – thank you, from the bottom of our dice cup.
Here’s to a many more years to come.
Chat about it below, or in our forums, or hit our FaceBook page >>
Reminder! 2016 Readers’ Choice Award Voting
Don’t forget to have your say about your favorite 2016 games! ~
GrogHeads Staff, 23 January 2017
It’s time to get your votes in for the Readers’ Choice Awards for game-year 2016.
The only required items are the overall digital / tabletop games, at the end of each of those categories.
This year we’ve made a few changes:
- We’ve consolidated the overall number of categories within the tabletop/digital divisions, to try to keep them as consistent as possible year-to-year
- We’ve added an “AAR of the Year” category, at the request of the readers and members of our forums
- We received no nominations for miniatures rules/expansions, so we’re not doing away with them as a category, but we can’t give you what you don’t nominate!
Chat about it below, or in our forums, or hit our FaceBook page >>
