Monthly Archives: January 2016
The Battle for Brettevillette ~ An AAR
After Action Report for JTS’s Panzer Battles: Normandy ~
Boggit, 30 January 2016
John Tiller Software has released yet another Panzer Battles game – the first being Kursk: The Southern Front last year. From my perspective I find it a fascinating period, and the game not only looks extremely pretty, but has the usual wealth of historical research and elegant gameplay that players can expect as standard from John Tiller Software. The computer opponent is certainly much better than I’ve seen in some older John Tiller titles, and it is a very rewarding game for a single player. That said I suspect – as with other John Tiller titles – that the optimal opponent is another human. Play by email is fully supported, and from experience I will add that it’s an easy system to use multiplayer.
The Normandy campaign can in some ways get understated given the scale of what was happening at the time on the Eastern Front with Operation Bagration, but don’t lose sight of the fact that during this campaign more German troops became casualties, or surrendered than at the better known Battle of Stalingrad. The Normandy campaign led to the near total collapse of German forces on the Western front for nearly a month, during which France and much of Belgium were liberated. To give you a flavour of what is being offered, here are some screenshots and an AAR from the Brettevillette scenario, a historical action set during 28th June 1944 (mid-way through the Normandy campaign). Enjoy.
Panzer Battles: Normandy has 65 standalone scenarios. 59 are unique and 6 are AI ‘variants’ focused for the single player against the computer. The spread of scenarios cover the whole campaign starting with the initial airborne attacks on 6th June 1944, and end with the decisive Falaise battle on 20th August. Two campaigns and five variable scenarios provide a further 28 variants of scenarios.
GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #86
An episode of GARPA full of un-funded projects. Don’t let that stop you 🙂 ~
Polyversal (Collins Epic Wargames)
$13k of $80k, ends 27 March 2016
We’ve been following Polyversal for a few years now. Yes, years. Here’s the photographic proof at Origins! (Heck, here’s another from 2013…) It’s 6mm sci-fi warfare, so you can play out a large battle over a medium-sized table. There’s a unique visual representation of the command structures based on hexagonal-shaped unit cards whose layout provides a quick look at the unit relationships. There’s even an online unit assessment tool that lets you bring your own minis to the game, so all those WH40K epic-scale minis that have been languishing in your garage can now come back to life. Teleport over to their campaign page, NOW!
Gaming Nostalgia – D&D Minis from TSR
#TBT at GrogHeads!
When TSR finally got around to releasing their own minis, they showed up everywhere from ToysR’Us to the military exchanges overseas.
click images to enlarge
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GrogHeads Reviews Heroes of Steel
Dungeon Crawling Underground! But how does it play? ~
By Avery Abernethy
Heroes of Steel is a turn based, combat RPG set in an underground world. Your four characters follow the traditional meme of a medieval world. This is a small party, turn based, combat sim. There is a story to string the combat along, but you have no choices in character personality or alignment. You are good. Your enemies are evil. You need to kill all of the evil.
To strike down the evil hordes you have a party composed of a fighter, a cleric, a thief and a wizard. There is one variant for each character type. For example, your cleric can be based more on healing or more on combat. The thief can be a bow equipped sniper who opens chests and detects traps. Or your thief can be more focused on a stealthy hand-to-hand combat while also opening locked chests and detecting traps.
Tracer Rounds – Writing Sucks
This is hard because…
Why is this so hard? Seriously – why is it so hard to coordinate the ideas, thoughts, and inspirations I’ve got in my head, and why can it be so hard to herd the cats of our staff into something resembling a similar direction? Hell, I’d settle for them heading within 180° of each other, just to keep from having to pivot to find them all!
This is hard because, well… it’s hard. And the first rule of Tautology club is the first rule of Tautology club. As a writing column I give my students once noted, “every time you sit down to write you get another chance to demonstrate how perceptive you aren’t.” Even with a bank of perfect ideas (and my bank is imperfect, I assure you) it still takes a lot of effort to block out everything else and just write. I don’t know how guys like Matt Forbeck and Jonathan Pembroke do it. It astounds me how productive they can be given everything that pulls at them. There are few people in the world I admire more than the professional writer, even if a good many of the ones I know actually have day jobs, or pensions. And given that I’m (a) older than Pembroke, and (b) he’s pulling in a pension, I’m pretty sure he’s got a sweeter deal than I do. The bastard.1
Part of the problem, of course, comes from the need to set aside dedicated time to work. In just the opening paragraphs of this column, for instance, I’ve restarted a video for my daughter twice, helped plunge a shower (long story) and fixed 2 lunches, not to mention the sideways glares I get from the family for “goofing off” when there’s more to be done around the house (like the Christmas tree I mentioned last week that’s still not down). Finding an hour is easy when you’re stuck at the car dealership getting the brakes worked on. Finding an hour when everyone’s home and iced in from school is not.
