Monthly Archives: February 2015
The Omnibus List of Civ V Africa AAR Episodes
Here’s the full list of all of Brant’s episodes – in order! – for your perusal and/or enjoyment
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 1)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 2)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 3)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 4)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 5)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 6)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 7)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 8)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 9)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 10)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 11)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 12)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 13)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 14)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 15)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 16)
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 17)
And the feedback thread in our forums >>
The Scramble for Africa – A Civ 5 AAR (Part 17)
How do you like your Africa, sir? Poached? or Scrambled?
By Brant Guillory, GrogDude
Click images to enlarge
Last month we suddenly got some shade thrown our way by our erstwhile “allies” with whom we’d been all buddy-buddy for the entire game. This time? Let’s see…
Scoring
It looks like I’m way ahead, and in a base game, I’d be totally cool with that. But I have no idea if there is any end-of-game scoring in this scenario, or how it would apply.
Moving Through
I need to get some guys home through French territory. No way we can just swap open-borders treaties right now with everyone getting an attitude with me lately, so I’m going to have to bribe him.
GrogHeads Interviews Harold Buchanan (GMTs Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection)
Brant Guillory, 11 February 2015
Harold Buchanan gives us the low-down on the next COIN game from GMT, and turns the tables on our interviewer!
We had a chance to chat with Harold Buchanan, Designer of GMTs Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection. This one takes the COIN system to the American Revolution. This is Harold’s first game, but he is well supported by series creator Volko Ruhnke and series developer Mike Bertucelli. Örjan Ariander is designing the ‘bots’ that control the factions not represented by a player in the game. Harold is also an expert on the period and has a degree in Finance and Game Theory from MIT. He resides in San Diego, California where he lives with his wife of 22 years and has 3 kids in college, so he needs all the help we can give him with pre-orders.
Playtesting!
GrogHeads: Do we really need another American Revolution Game?
Harold Buchanan: Are you kidding me? Absolutely! I love 1776 and played it a lot in my youth. I love the Area Status Chart and how British pieces in a Region reduce reinforcements to the Patriots! A game ahead of its time in incorporating regional politics. Then came We the People/Washington’s War with its breakthrough card driven mechanics. I enjoyed it as an elegantly playable innovation and really enjoyed timing the game end through the use of the “War Ends” cards. Plenty of room exists for new and different approaches in it.
Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection looks at the same war as so many other games have but from a different angle: it identifies the four factions critical to the conflict and plays off how they interacted politically, economically and militarily. The game is driven by a detailed set of historical events cards on the topic. Grab three friends and give the conflict a look from a new perspective. It may change the way you think about the American War of Independence.
Given the Patriots won the Super Bowl I am considering adding another card to the mix—the Pete Carroll event card. If you are the Seahawks and you are winning the game during a Winter Quarters Round you must first roll a die: 1-5 you do something stupid and the Patriots win and 6 you actually get to win.
More playtesting.
Tuesday Screenshot – Battle of Empires 1914-1918
The Great War writ large
Craig Handler, 24 February 2015
click to enlarge
GrogHeads Interviews Joel Billings of 2By3 Games
Boggit, 7 February 2015
Joel Billings of 2By3 Games talks to Boggit about War in the West and game design in general
As always, click images to enlarge
GrogHeads: Joel, thank you for agreeing to talk to Grogheads about your recent work. War in the West is your latest release and shows some interesting innovations in the development of 2By3 games.
Tell us about yourself. How did you get into wargame design?
Joel Billings: I started SSI in 1979 when I had just graduated from college. I was a long time player of historical wargames and had tinkered with various game rules and created miniature campaigns. I started SSI because I thought computers were a natural evolution for wargames which would allow for better fog of war and an AI opponent.
War in the West ships with 10 scenarios, including 3 full campaigns, and two introductory scenarios.
GH: Your recent products of War in the East and War in the West are massive in scope and detail, which might be potentially off-putting to all but the most hardcore gamers. Tell us about the design decisions in making such apparently challenging games.
JB: The first decision was whether to go with an IGOUGO system or a plot and execution system. Gary had used the later in his previous Eastern Front games. We decided to go with the IGOUGO because we thought it would attract more players as it could be made to be a very addictive game where you want to keep making one more move, one more combat. This is especially true in 1941 Russia. Of course we wanted the extreme detail that people expect from Gary, and that comes from the database.
