Month: November 2014

11/29/14

GrogHeads Reviews Field Commander: Rommel (Deluxe)

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Published by DVG (Dan Verssen Games)

Michael Eckenfels, 29 November 2014

 

The career of Erwin Rommel was laced with brilliance and interspersed with disasters that didn’t quite come to fruition. It seemed that each time, the ingenuity and initiative of Rommel and his subordinates were just enough to bring about victory when defeat seemed inevitable. This played itself out across the Western Front in 1940, in North Africa over the following two years, and then in Normandy, but to a much lesser extent. Indeed, it seemed as time wore on, Rommel’s field fortunes ebbed and waned much the same as Germany’s as a whole.

Moving through the French countryside, conquering for the Fatherland (i.e. me).
Moving through the French countryside, conquering for the Fatherland (i.e. me).

Field Commander: Rommel is a solitaire game that puts you square into the same command halftrack (figuratively) to make the decisions he was faced with over three historical campaigns mentioned above. Faced with dwindling supplies and increasing Allied strength, your victory is never assured and hinges on your initiative and choices. Sounds like most games, doesn’t it? That’s nothing new. What is new, though, is creating a solitaire game that can use the same system for the player to manage, growing from a division-sized unit in the first scenario to an entire defensive network in the last. Continue reading →

11/28/14

GrogHeads History: WWI Tankers’ Gear

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Lloyd delves into the historical archives to dig out an interesting bit of TANKSgiving history.

Lloyd Sabin, 28 November 2014

I struggled for a while this year to come up with something for TANKSgiving. In years’ passed I have done bits on rare WWI armored vehicles, early tanks…you know, the usual awesome stuff. This year for some reason I could not come up with an appropriate topic. Until I found the below picture during some online research.

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11/27/14

A Tank Battle 1944 AAR

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Michael Eckenfels, 27 November 2014

 

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A NOTE ON THIS AAR:

I used the game Tank Battle: 1944, from Hunted Cow Studios, to write up this piece. It’s a rather intense game of simple, quick, and fluid combat, on a tactical level. Unit scale is not given, but it feels as if infantry are in their own units. The game does seem to indicate, however, that tanks are individual units, which I don’t see them as. Each unit has a maximum strength of 10 (think Panzer General), and once that’s reduced to zero, they’re eliminated. There is no ‘carrying over’ of units from one mission to the next, so there’s no experience, promotions, medals, or anything like that. One must defeat the scenario to continue to the next one.

With that said, let’s get on with it!

 

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11/26/14

GrogHeads Interviews OTS on FlashPoint Campaigns

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The guys from On Target Simulations swing by GrogHeads and chat with us about the latest developments in the FlashPoint Campaigns series.

Brant Guillory, 26 November 2014

What’s the biggest difference that players are going to see with the new FlashPoint Campaigns release?

Without a doubt it will be all the brand new maps.  We had a forum member named William who was doing a brilliant job creating new map art and so we just sort of recruited him and added him to the OTS team.  We went back and forth a few times on colours and elevation treatments and then he created new renderings of all the maps.  This seems to be the first thing people are noticing and the consensus is that they are a distinct step up.  Cap’n Darwin (creator of the original map art glyphs) and Mad Russian (who then assembled them into the maps we distributed) manned up admirably and got behind the change.  I still hear a bit of a quiver in the Captain’s voice when we Skype about it though…

Other changes include a number of tweaks and improvements to the combat model.  Artillery fire is more effective now and that is pretty noticeable.   The What’s New document runs to 12 pages with the various changes we made.

Best of all, we have a whole new campaign (Wolves) to play thanks to Mad Russian plus a new standalone “Eyes, Ears and Teeth” scenario which we believe will be a new classic.  It’s small, fun and intense like A Time to Dance.

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