Category: Reviews

08/10/13

Democracy 3 Preview

Developer: Positech Games

Publisher: Positech Games

Author: Son_of_Montfort

Game UI

Have you ever watched the news or CSPAN and thought, “I can do better than those guys?” Well, with Congress’s approval rating at a low of 15%, chances are that you have. Cliff Harris and his UK-based company Positech Games (known by Grogs for Gratuitous Space Battles and Gratuitous Tank Battles) want you to put your bragging to the test in their upcoming governance simulation, Democracy 3. I got a chance to look at a near-Beta version of the third incarnation of Positech’s game of political intrigue and national management and I am happy to report that it is a news junkie and amateur pundit’s dream.

Effect Web

Democracy 3 follows the model of its predecessor fairly closely and, at first glance, the changes appear to be subtle. Like many of Positech’s newer releases, Democracy 3 now sports full HD resolution and a fairly simple but functional UI. The simplicity of the UI used by the Democracy series allows players to get a plethora of information with very little effort, hovering over key policies and modifiers or hot linking from faction to faction. This is extremely important, given that running a Democracy, not to mention winning elections (perhaps the most important goal of the game), requires a well-informed player. Just like the previous title, Democracy 3 has players make decisions in running the country in two main ways – implementing new policies from a fairly detailed list or altering already implemented policies through a simple slider. In order to implement or change a policy, the player must have and expend a certain amount of political capital that accumulates each turn, influenced largely by the player’s choice of ministers in his or her cabinet.

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08/7/13

Go To Games: 7 Wonders

Brant Guillory, 7 August 2013

For a lot of people, their “go-to” game is the game they boot up on the computer when they have time to kill in the evenings, or over a weekend when they’ve got the game on TV and want to safely ignore commercials.  And while I have a few casual “go-to” games in the digital world, I would be remiss if I failed to extoll the virtues of my tabletop “go-to” game for multi-player gatherings: 7 Wonders.

 

For most wargamers, 7 Wonders barely registered on their radar.  A fast-playing European production, 7 Wonders has an abstract combat mechanic, and one that can be safely ignored and still result in a resounding victory.  With so little battlefield relevance, it’s not wonder that many grogs steered clear of 7 Wonders when it was released.  Their loss.  Seriously.

7WONDERS_3D

The core schtick of 7 Wonders is a play-a-card city-building mechanic where players use resources to build parts of their cities, including attempting to build one of the Wonders of the Ancient World.  The original game came with players’ boards for the widely-acknowledged 7 Wonders of the Ancient World, but subsequent expansions (including a brand-new pack of boards) give players almost 20 options around which to build their cities, including the Colosseum, The Great Wall, and Stonehenge.

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08/4/13

Book Review: Grey Tide in the East

Author: Andrew J. Heller

Publisher: Strict Publishing International

Reviewing Author: Avery Abernethy

Grey Tide in the East is a short (164 page) World War One alternative history book.  The movement towards war is unchanged from history up until the day before the German right flank is scheduled to cross the Belgian border in hopes of outflanking the French army and capturing Paris.  Kaiser Wilhelm abruptly changes his mind about the war plans due to the almost certainty that the United Kingdom would enter the war if Germany violated Belgian neutrality.  Instead, the majority of the Imperial German Army is packed into trains and sent to East Russia to fight the invading Russian army.

Even casual readers of the history of World War One understand that the mobilization timetables of the major armies were almost unstoppable once they were put into action.   Those largely unfamiliar with the conflict could read Tuchman’s The Guns of August or Keegan’s The First World War to get an understanding of the importance of pre-war plans and mobilization schedules.  The logistical operation to mobilize and move huge Corps on a fixed rail net was massive.  In Grey Tide in the East the Kaiser orders Moltke to change the entire pre-war strategy at the almost the last possible moment.

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08/3/13

Civilization V – Brave New World Expansion

Developer: Firaxis Games

Publisher: 2K Games

Author: Son_of_Montfort

CasimirHistorians, when defining the term “civilization,” emphasize the fact that all civilizations include gatherings of people, have some form of social, political, military, and religious hierarchy, and enjoy cultural developments in art, music, and literature. When playing Sid Meier’s Civilization V, it was quite easy to simulate the urban focus attributed to the great civilizations and the player could easily grab the reigns of social, political, and military authority. It was not until the Gods and Kings expansion that players could form their own religious authorities, conferring the benefits of belief to their citizens and attempting to spread that belief through zealous use of missionaries and prophets.

Still, Civ V gave short shrift to one major aspect of civilization, culture. Yes, players gained social policies through culture growth and could eventually build a theoretical “utopia project” to achieve a cultural victory, but this did not accurately represent how cultures really influenced one another by trade, proximity, aligned ideology, and how some civilizations cultivated a rich and popular society full of music, art, and writing. What I really mean is, until Brave New World, Civ V did not offer the option for players to use The Beatles to conquer the world.
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07/31/13

Red Menace

Developer: R. Brent Ward

Pubhlisher: White Dog Games

Author: Scott R. Krol

Can nuclear war in the ‘50s translate into an exciting solo experience?

There was a time when kids looked to the skies in fear, expecting an incoming onslaught of Soviet missiles and bombers to wipe out the world in a blaze of nuclear fire at any moment.  Today the biggest fear most kids have is not having enough Twitter followers.  Times have definitely changed since the height of the Cold War, but now everyone can relive those glorious days of duck and cover with White Dog Games’ latest title, Red Menace.  So put on a ‘I Like Ike!’ button, groove to Buddy Holly, and let’s fight the fight that never happened.

Red Menace is a solitaire board game set in the year 1959 of nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, with collateral damage being spread to Canada, Greenland, Great Britain, and possibly Cuba.  The player takes on the role of supreme commander of the joint forces of the USAF, RCAF, and RAF as they try to intercept waves of Soviet bombers, controlled partly by the game,  before they drop their megadeath.   At the same time the player sends out US and British bombers to turn Soviet cities into glowing piles of slag.  Yep, family fun gaming at its most jolly!

Red-Menace-Boardgame-Review-RED_003

What you get in the boxed version.  Pretty cool components for a small company.  Print and play and folio editions are also available.

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