12/3/14

Eurofront II – First Look!

So what’s inside Columbia’s big ol’ Eurofront II box, anyway?

Cyrano, 3 December 2014

As much as I’ve defended the rituals of electronic gaming elsewhere on this site, I know in my soul that I will always love the monster board game. I shall always love, for I am now too old to change, the pages of rules, piles of pieces, and the maps, the lovely, lovely maps over which I can pore like Berthier, imagining myself to have responsibility for the fates of armies of men.

Columbia Games’ Grant Dagleish took advantage of this when we talked at Origins about the company’s Eurofront II. He lured me with talk of battles lasting days, if not weeks, and of near-sighted men waging the whole of World War II from beyond the Urals to the mountains Pyrenee. I wound up angry-buying the Ogre Designer’s Edition at Origins, but, by the time GenCon rolled around — and Grant made the company’s usual generous convention discount offer, it was all too late. I offer, then, this unboxing to the splendid excess of this monster.

The first thing to note is that Eurofront II is actually a bridge between the updated West Front II and East Front II, adding much to both and allowing the whole of the war to be played out simultaneously. Here they stand together:

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09/17/14

Fire In The Lake – First Look!

By: Michael Eckenfels, 17 September 2014

I’ve never played any of the COIN (COunter INsurgency) games by GMT (so far, there’s A Distant Plain, Andean Abyss, and Cuba Libre). To be honest, only A Distant Plain sounded interesting to me personally, though I’d heard good things about all three. When Fire in the Lake came around as a possible review title, I jumped on the chance. The Vietnam War is of interest to me and I wanted to learn some more about their COIN system, so I jumped at the chance.

I did watch the tutorial video that the designers (Volko Ruhnke and Mark Herman) produced for YouTube – you can check it out here. I highly suggest it if you’re interested in the game and want to get a feel for its flow; it’s what sold me on my choice to check this out for review. (The camera work is, well…let’s just say there’s an immediate apology from Mark on his camera work. But that’s easily overlooked.)

A review will be coming by the end of October to a beloved wargaming website near you (cough, cough). In the meantime, I thought I’d provide some teasing bits through an unboxing ceremony that, for me, has become a standard thing now with every game I buy, it seems.

The box in all its shrink-wrapped glory. This thing is thick and heavy. I love the good feel of a heavy wargame box in the morning (though it’s late in the evening when I take these pics). It feels like…well, you know. I really like the cover artwork and the subdued darkness that makes you feel like you’re staring into a quagmire. Huge props to the artist on this venture!

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08/10/14

Risk: Battlefield Rogue – First Look!

Yes, Risk. It’s a skirmish game, not a conquer-the-world game. Truth be told, it’s a videogame on your tabletop, which is what you’d expect from a cross-branded game that is using the Risk name to sell a tabletop adaptation of the Battlefield series.

The thick box belies the contents. If there were expansions coming, the size of the box would be appropriate.

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07/2/14

Unconditional Surrender – First Look!

So back when GMT had their sale-most-excellent at the beginning of the summer, Vance picked up their strategic WWII ETO game Unconditional Surrender, and has shared the photos of their unboxing.