Category: Reviews

04/30/16

Victory and Glory: Napoleon – First Impressions!

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever. – Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French ~

Boggit, 30 April 2016

Developed by Electric Games, and Published by Matrix/Slitherine

Victory and Glory: Napoleon is a strategic level game covering the Napoleonic Wars. It offers six start points during the Napoleonic Wars, each preceding one of the major campaigns in the wars, with the player cast in the role of Napoleon. To win the player must either make peace – or survive as an individual from becoming a prisoner or battle casualty, and make it to the scenario end turn. If you get that far, your performance throughout the game is qualitatively assessed in terms of victory or defeat.

A very pretty menu screen. Here’s hoping the rest of the game is too.
A very pretty menu screen. Here’s hoping the rest of the game is too.

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03/20/16

GrogHeads Reviews Knights of Pen and Paper 2

Lightweight RPG adventuring on your computer ~

Avery Abernethy, 20 March 2016

Knights of Pen and Paper 2 is a light and unique adaptation of a table-top Dungeons and Dragons game brought to the computer. The “players” sit across a table from a game master who describes the game. Quests take place, monsters appear and combat ensues. The game master describes the world situation and stylized enemies appear which must be slain by your party. The graphics are retro-cheesy 1990s style and the music uses every single aspect available of 8-bit sound cards memorable to those of us who played computer RPGs in the 1990s.

Combat is uber-simple. An initiative roll sets the order of action for everyone involved in the combat. Only one action can take place during a character’s turn. Character choice per combat round are either using a normal attack, using an item, casting an attack spell if you are a spell caster, using a special attack if you are a fighter type, or using a special character ability if you have one. Each character can do one of only six choices per combat round. There is no tricking, sneaking, or otherwise avoiding enemies. It is kill or be killed in this pixilated realm.

No Enlightment Here

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03/18/16

Classic Reviews: Barony

In the free-wheeling high-concept/questionable-execution years of the mid-90s, a lot of crazy role-playing ideas bubbled up.  Better Games explored a few of them, and several of them in Barony ~

Brant Guillory, 18 March 2016

CR-Barony-1Better Games has disappeared, and with them, several extremely good ideas bound up in some horrid presentation.

 

There are three books in Barony. One develops characters and introduces players to the concepts of “Free-Style Role Play,” one walks GMs through developing scenarios, and the last one is an interesting work on dragon battles. Covers are colored cardstock, with black and white art. Line drawings abound. The cover is a loose slip-sheet similar to the older D&D modules, but it is plain paper, not cardstock, and so it is flimsy and does not stand on its own.

 

Better Games had a line of games that were all considered “Free-Style Role Play” that attacked several ideas that gamers had held onto more out of habit than necessity.

 

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03/12/16

GrogHeads Reviews ONUS!

Ancients battling across your tabletop, with minimal prep! ~

Jim Owczarski, 12 March 2016

There are two types of miniatures wargamers. The first is into the assembling, painting, and basing of miniatures for the mad fun of it all.  Actually subjecting their lead, or more recently, plastic, hordes to mere rules in a game can seem secondary; just about everyone who has ever “played” Warhammer 40k leaps to mind.

The other is the sort that loves the aesthetic of so many little men, but, even if he finds the process enjoyable enough, knows that he’ll likely never have the time, space, and resources to play in one of those really big games that show up in rulebooks and convention floors.

Enter Onus! (I will hereafter forgo the exclamation point) by Spanish publisher Draco Ideas.  Originally published in 2014 in a Spanish-language edition, Onus recently emerged from a successful Kickstarter that will, among other things, produce an English-language edition.  What follows is a review of the original version.

The concept behind Onus is simple enough. Most wargames involving miniatures require players to stick their figures onto squares or rectangles to facilitate movement.  Onus skips the bit about miniatures and gives us the bases, made of playing card stock decorated with pictures of the soldiers and bids us have at.  This allows the game to come in a very small package.

Mighty armies, itty-bitty living space
Mighty armies, itty-bitty living space

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03/5/16

First Impressions!
Order of Battle Pacific: Morning Sun

Airboy dives into the continental side of WWII’s PTO ~

Avery Abernethy, 5 March 2016

Click images to enlarge

OOBMS - Campaign Start

Morning Sun is an expansion to Order of Battle: Pacific requiring the base game to play. Morning Sun adds a single long Japanese Campaign where you command a core force plus auxiliaries in an attempt to conquer China. The Sino-Japanese War was the longest campaign in World War 2 and has received relatively little attention from war game designers.

OOBMS - A Briefing Screen

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