This week, the Tuesday Screenshot returns with a look at the new Lock’n’Load: Heroes of Stalingrad, in haiku
Click to enlarge
So guys, let’s start at the beginning – what was the impetus behind Command, and why did you want to build your own game instead of continuing to build on existing proven platforms?
Command is a culmination of all our hobby experiences. Our interest was born reading & watching the great techno-thrillers of our youth (Forsyth, Clancy, Ludlum, Coyle, Brown etc.), absorbing all the political & military history and facets of the Cold War (which at that day seemed far from over) and playing some really great amazing games of the era (F-19, RSR, M1TP, SPI’s CentFront series, the Fleet series, Gunship, Steel Panthers, Fleet Defender, Tornado, Harpoon and loads more). Our involvement with Harpoon and AGSI helped cultivate it as we met each other through the Harpoon community and really started learning about modern warfare, talking with professionals and thinking about simulations. We started out as avid modders for Harpoon 2 and then 3 and had great success helping to grow the Harpoon community and helping AGSI develop their game (including doing the grunt work for their first pro deal). All of this played a part in our own development and helped us build a strong and skilled team that had a vision of the game they wanted to build and the energy and motivation to do it. So we reached a point where we really wanted to do our own thing and as is now self evident we went ahead and did just that.
When you have to describe Command to someone who doesn’t know wargaming, what’s the “elevator pitch” for the game? How do you hook a potential player with just 1-2 sentences?
If the guy is getting off at the next floor and I have only 5 seconds:
“Command is the ultimate modern air and naval wargamer’s sandbox.”
If we’re both heading for the loft and he’s stuck with me for just a bit more:
“Breakfast – you trade machine gun fire & rocket salvos with pirates & smugglers in the littoral.
Lunch – you plan and execute an Alpha Strike from a carrier.
Dinner – you launch a strategic nuclear attack over the North Pole.
Midnight snack – you spin your own historical or what-if anywhere on the globe, with practically any war machine in existence post-WW2.
All with high realism & accuracy. All in one game. Command.”
GBACW: Twin Peaks (GMT Games)
p500 – not there yet! Pre-order price $41
Building off of one of wargaming’s most enduing game systems (TSS first rolled out in 1976), Twin Peaks govers the battles of Cedar Mountain and South Mountain, in the fall of 1862. It’s two games in one, and both part of the series that all ACW gamers already know and love. There’s a high level of complexity in the system, but that’s the tradeoff you make for the high degrees of realism and fidelity you get. It’s the seventh GMT game in this series, so you know what you’re getting into for art and design. Jump into the GBACW series with this while it’s on pre-order; hit GMT’s site to make your pledge.
Storm over Dien Bien Phu (MMP)
p500 – 156 of 520 needed, preorder price $33
The last gasp of the French in Southeast Asia, the decisive 1954 battle set set the stage for dramatic shifts in warfighting for the next half-century. MMP’s game gives players the familiar “Storm Over ____” system to jump into their game quickly, and augments gameplay with a deck of cards. The world was shifting from a WWII warfighting mindset ot something much more recognizably “modern” and you can game it out on your table if you pop over to MMP and place a pre-order for the game.
Part 2: Terraformin’
Fortunately there are no alien life forms in the Tohvun system. While this is a sad little system with tiny little planets (two Barren, one Desert, one Jungle, and one Arctic), the Jungle planet has a food bonus for its fertile soil, and the Desert planet has some great angles or something to it so it catches lots of rays for solar energy absorption. Or something. It’s pretty scientific, you probably wouldn’t even understand.
Those brave colonists immediately began to terraform the planets in the Tohvun system. Meanwhile, I took a look at how things were here in the Sol system. That’s where Earth is, don’cha know.
We’ve managed to terraform Mars, but not Venus, Mercury, or Pluto. Right now we have room for about another 80 population, but if we terraformed those three planets we’d have a shot at really growing our britches off.
Legion Wargames’ Picket Duty is a solitaire game from Steve Dixon, a designer that had a hand in creating B-29 Superfortress and its expansion, Hell Over Korea. I’ve been watching this title for some time now and was quite eager to get a copy, even though I’ve read discussions over on BoardGameGeek about how the current version 1.0 of the rules are confusing and a newer version is due out soon. Regardless, what I followed in development looked like a game with a lot of potential and great components.
You can view the game on Legion Wargames’ page here.
The box is a standard-sized wargame box, if a bit thinner than a ‘normal’ one.