Month: June 2015

06/26/15

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #71

GARPA goes all over the map for this edition

Freeblades: Creatures of Faelon (DGS Games)
$2800 of $8500, ends 21 July 2015

The guys from DGS Games are back with some new toys for their Freeblades minis collection.  These are wilder creatures that sport all manner of fangs, scales, claws, and… well, bark.  Their last Kickstarter campaign dropped some jaws with their final sculpts, and their fantasy world is high fantasy with nice interesting twists.  Hit their campaign page and drop your coin to get these minis funded.

g71-dgs

 

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06/21/15

GrogHeads Reviews Quartermaster General

Euro wargame?  Card-driven Diplomacy?  The first fun game of logistics?  Michael reveals all.

Review by Michael Eckenfels, 20 June 2015

Click images to enlarge

Quartermaster General is a board game focused on World War II. “Oh great,” you’re probably thinking, “another World War II board game.” The issue with thinking like that, though, is that you might think that for just about any game coming out about World War II, especially one named “Quartermaster General.” It’s not exactly a name that inspires fascination or even interest. For me, the title itself might be somewhat uninspired, but this is precisely why it caught my eye.

QMG-un001

The name alone indicates there’s much more to this game than what its title is letting on to. It sounds like it’s more a game about supply and logistics, which is not something that’s covered solely in any board game I’ve ever heard of (feel free, though, to correct me in the forum’s Feedback page for this review, as I’d love to learn more about them). To me, though, the idea of a game solely revolving around logistics sounds incomprehensibly boring, compared with pushing minis or cardboard counters about a map in a struggle for supremacy!

And that’s precisely what this game says it is about, though – supply. As a player in this game, you are one (or more) of six countries involved in the planet-engulfing conflict that was World War II, and the game’s system revolves around spreading your control via Armies and Navies and trying to keep intact lines of supply to keep them operating. The six countries are divided evenly between the Axis and Allies – Germany, Italy, and Japan on one side, and the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union on the other. The game is for two to six players, with players doubling up on countries if there’s less than six.

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06/18/15

Scourge of War: Waterloo

Boggit returns from his own exile on the 200th anniversary of (arguably) the most consequential battle in Western History to conquer Scourge of War: Waterloo.

By Boggit, 18 June 2015

Developed by NorbSoftDev and Published by Slitherine

 

I was intrigued by NorbSoftDev’s Scourge of War: Waterloo. I had played some of the earlier iterations of the game engine (1st Bull Run, and 2nd Manassas), which had been good. With that in mind, and knowing that the development team had worked on several other titles in the meantime, it would be interesting to see how far they had advanced the game, and how well it captured the flavour of Napoleonic combat, as hitherto all their games were from the American Civil War.

The Menu and loading screens all use contemporary art, which adds a nice period feel.
The Menu and loading screens all use contemporary art, which adds a nice period feel.

Scourge of War: Waterloo is a pausable real-time representation of small to very large actions (including the whole battle) of Waterloo. It comes with 20 historical scenarios ranging from small brigade size actions to the ‘full Monty’ at army level. In addition there is a sandbox campaign, a sandbox mode (in which you can take any units from the order of battle (OB), and fight on eight different battlefields), and modifications, which include the OB for the entire French Grand Armée (i.e. with Marshal Grouchy at Waterloo), and a Grog mode for extra realism.

 

Here are the French scenarios, rising in complexity from clearing the woods at the Chateau of Goumont (aka Hougoumont) to the full battle (shown here).
Here are the French scenarios, rising in complexity from clearing the woods at the Chateau of Goumont (aka Hougoumont) to the full battle (shown here).

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06/17/15

Classic Simulations: Jane’s AH-64D Longbow

Andy takes a look at one of the most influential attack helicopter simulations in PC gaming history

Andy Mills, 17 June 2015

Those were the days

A boxshot of the original Jane’s AH-64D Longbow
A boxshot of the original Jane’s AH-64D Longbow

Back in 1996 the competition for air supremacy in the attack helicopter sim market was intense. Publishers like Domark, Digital Integration and EA/Jane’s Information Group were all homing in on gunship simulations for the PC. Digital Integration had already released AH-64 Apache and was in the process of finishing up HIND for release in 1997. Unfortunately, Domark’s title, Flying Nightmare’s 2, never saw the light of day, leaving EA/Jane’s AH-64D Longbow as the most significant rotary-wing sim release of 1996. Longbow did not disappoint. Built on the solid heritage of the Gunship franchise, Longbow became the benchmark by which all other helo sims would be judged for many years to come.

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06/13/15

Grogheads Reviews YAAH! magazine issue #1

Flying Pig’s new magazine is out there.  We’ve already interviewed the editor.  Now see what Vance thinks about the finished product.

Vance Strickland, 13 June 2015

Click images to enlarge

I usually don’t read magazines. Not sure why, but the format to me seems to never have enough information on any particular story contain therein. Books are great and for fast information I usually prefer the interwebs or radio or TV. Wargame magazines are different however. I love to pick one up and devour the articles about games that I might be interested in or have never even heard of.

When I heard that Mark Walker’s new company, Flying Pig Games, was putting out a new magazine as well,  I had to pick it up. mark stated early on that the magazine was not going to be a mouth piece for his game company and that it would be about more than just “war games”.

YAAH! comes with a right bold cover and in a very large ziplock bag
YAAH! comes with a right bold cover and in a very large ziplock bag

Just inside the front cover Tom Russell introduces himself as the editor. Now I had never heard of Tom before this moment, but it appears that he is an accomplished writer and creator of board games. In the EZOC, Editor’s Zone of Control, he lays out that YAAH! is striving to be a magazine about all type of conflict based game not just war games in the traditional sense. This, to me, is great because it will expose me to a variety of new games that I normally might miss because of my usual narrow focus on traditional hex and counter “War Games”.

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