Monthly Archives: August 2014
Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes, Part 2 of 2
Review by Avery Abernethy, 31 August 2014
This review is split into 2 parts. Part 1 was last weekend.
Click images to enlarge
Grogheads is proud to induct Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes into the Order of the Hex for the following:
1) Successful Integration of Role Playing Game elements into a 4x game
2) Environmental Threats (Monsters) as well as Enemy Kingdoms a challenge through end-game.
3) Excellent 4x game without overwhelming micro-management problems.
Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes incorporates many role playing game (RPG) conventions seamlessly . The RPG side of the game has a profound impact on winning or losing. RPG elements include the ability to equip individual pieces of armor, individual weapons, individual miscellaneous magic items, and cast tactical and strategic spells from a spell book. Only the faction leader and champions have access to these RPG elements. The faction leader is the player’s initial champion at the start of the game. New champions are acquired when fame garnered by completing quests, winning battles and cleaning out monster lairs hits specific levels. Once fame reaches a certain level, another champion is made available. The total number of champions available to a faction during a game is quite limited. Even in a long game played on a large map, I had only eight champions at the end.
At the start, your faction leader is often your strongest single melee combat unit. Both offensive and defensive skills of your faction leader and champions can be increased with magic items, weapons, and armor. These can be purchased at a ruinous cost in towns, or can be gained as loot from conquered monster lairs. Armor, weapons, and miscellaneous items can be traded between champions – but only if they are in the same hex or in the same town. There is no “universal vault” which enables you to drop off a magic sword in city A and have your champion in city D immediately gain the weapon. This makes movement of your limited number of champion units an additional strategic component.
Lots of Items
GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #52
It’s the last GARPA of the Summer, so here’s your holiday weekend bundle of goodness!
Clockwork Wars (Eagle Games)
$50k of $25k goal, Ends 3 September 2014
Steam-powered warfare? Check. Fantasy races? Check. Tanks? Hells, yeah! Fight for control of a modular mapboard, in a 4X-ish game of conquest that mixes and matches magic and steampunk technology. One nice touch are map tiles that can be used on an artistic side, or purely-functional “giant symbol” side not unlike the strategic hex-view in Civ5. It’s an Eagle Games production, so you know that it’ll be over-the-top gorgeous, barely fit on a ping-pong table, be a ton of fun to play, and go out of print in about 11 seconds. So truck on over to the site for the campaign, and plunk down your pledge, and maybe throw a few extra coins in for the expansions, which look equally cool and will not doubt be gone in a hot minute on the open market.
A Distant Worlds AAR – Part 3
By Brandon “Kushan” Johnson, August 27, 2014
Click images to enlarge
Thats more like it, every construction yard on both of my spaceports is full. These ships should go a long way towards helping transport resources from my new mining stations. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there is anything queued up when this batch of freighters is done.
An Interview with Hunted Cow Games
As you can imagine, the emergence of a wargames shop that’s built on the Apple Mac/iOS platform set hearts aflutter (OK, maybe just one heart, but it’s mine, so it counts!) here at GrogHeads. So welcome Hunted Cow Games and let’s get to know these fine Scotsmen
Interview by Brant Guillory, 27 August 2014
First things first – what cow are we hunting?
That most glorious, most stately and above all hirsute example of the bovine race: the Highland cow.
What happens when the cow gets caught?
Sadly, the cow has thus far eluded our grasp. However, when we do finally get our hands on it, it will end up the way most food does in Scotland – coated in batter and deep-fried.
Why a cow and not, say a Vietnamese water buffalo?
The Highland cow is the most famous beast of the Highlands of Scotland, and given that we’ve always been based here, it seemed like a good fit for us. We did actually consider flying a water buffalo over to Scotland, but the cost was ridiculous. It also seemed a little cruel.
For our readers that might not know who you are (bastards!) what’s the ‘TV commercial’ pitch for Hunted Cow Studios.
We are a team of 30 zealot gamers. Based in Elgin in the Highlands of Scotland. Most of the games are a co-operative between the guys at HexWar (who are just a few miles away) and Hunted Cow. We focus on making great games that are aimed at the wider gaming community. Most of our games are pitched at entry-level prices where we think we have managed to get to a lot more players than any other wargames company.
Tuesday Screenshot – Someone Got Lost On Their Way To The War
Sometimes you get something just… weird.
My Shoshone were allied with some militant city-states, and among the units ‘gifted’ to me were a unit of Norwegian Ski Infantry. The disconnect of Shoshone Norwegian Ski Infantry in the plain of Shoshonia was just too amusing.
