Month: April 2018

04/30/18

What’s Gus Playing? Field of Glory 2 – Part 1

Ancient antagonism with the armored army ant ~

Lloyd Sabin, 30 April 2018

Field of Glory 2 is an ancient PC gamer’s fantasy made real.

Spring has sprung and so have I…I’m in love! I bought Field of Glory 2 after missing out on the first PC iteration and regretting it forever, so I was hell-bent on not missing out on this new version. And I am ecstatic that I got it, because I have to tell you, Field of Glory 2 is something else.

Simple, fun, chess-like rules, a massive amount of single epic battles, custom battles, multi-battle campaigns and multi-player, along with content that spans history (as of this writing) from around 600BC all the way to around 500 AD (when the Immortal Fire and Legions Triumphant DLCs are included – not to mention an as-of-yet undisclosed third DLC coming soon)…Field of Glory 2 is an ancient PC gamer’s fantasy made real.

There are literally dozens of different factions to play as – name one and most likely it is included here. Fancy the Seleucids (I can’t blame you) – they’re in. Thebes? In. Illyrians? Also in. More of a world-destroyer? Try out the Persians or if you are more into the fall of Rome, try the Huns. There are so many factions to choose from that most players will probably never play them all.

And Field of Glory 2 is accessible enough for newbies – but with six different difficulty modes, wargame pros will definitely enjoy it when the challenge is ramped up. I kept my difficulty on the second setting, sometimes moving it up to the third setting, which often became too difficult for me. The second tier became my sweet spot, if occasionally a little too easy. Most of the time it offered a consistent challenge. Continue reading →

04/24/18

GrogHeads Central Command Origins Events 2018

What’s coming up in Columbus this summer? ~

GrogHeads Staff, 24 April 2018

Per GAMA, event registration goes live on 2 May.

This year, we’ve got a variety of things for you to check out –

  • Kids!  The Junior General kids’ table is back!  We’ve got 3 games that we’ll be running all weekend, in shorter 1-hour sessions.  And for any kid who plays all 3 games at least once each, and completes 1 extra mission, we’ve got a special Junior General prize.  These games are for kids age 7-14, and they must have an adult come to the table with them.
  • Team / Group events!  Command Post Wargaming is back, and this year, we’ve got an old-school Kriegspiel to go with it!  We also have big team games of Sergeants! and Lock’n Load Tactical, and a play-with-the-designer for Quartermaster General.
  • Tournaments!  We’ve got tournaments for Table Battles, Manouevre, and Nations At War.
  • Origins War College!  GrogHeads will be sponsoring/leading 4 talks at the Origins War College, and we’ve included those in our events below (note that these will be in the OWC rooms, not in our gaming area).
  • Wait…  what’s that?  A Kids event that’s also a Group event?!  Yep!  We’ve got a big multi-board game of Commands & Colors Napoleonics specifically for the kids to play a mega-big game.
  • Oh yeah, and an open gaming table (see details at the bottom of the page)

Which companies are here with us?

  • Tiny Battle Publishing!  New this year, showing off their series In The Trenches
  • Hollandspiele!  Another new one this year, presenting several games: BitsKrieg for the kids, Supply Lines of the American Revolution for the adults, and Table Battles for the tournament-inclined.
  • Lock’n’Load Publishing!  Nations at War (and a tournament), LNLT, and tanks for the kids
  • Enterprise Games!  With their support for our GMT events again this year, we’ve Time of Crisis, Talon, C&C Napoleonics for the kids, and the Maneouvre tournament
  • Griggling Games!  Quartermaster General, and some expansions
  • Lost Battalion Games!  The always-awesome Sergeants! games are back, and look for their award-winning tiles, too

Over 50 events across 4 days, for all your wargaming goodness.

Plus, the Sunday morning raffle, and a bonus this year – an absolutely FREE event on Wednesday night, as we hold a Kriegspiel for anyone who wants to join us, starting at 4pm.  If there’s enough demand (and enough pizza) we might even run it twice!  This is a chance to kick off your gaming weekend in style, with a come-check-it-out-with-nothing-to-lose event from your favorite wargaming miscreants – us!

When you’re looking for our events in the Origins master event grid, they all start with “GrogHeads Presents”.  We did that to make it easier to find when sorting through a giant spreadsheet with over 6000 events, however we stripped it out of the names on our event grid here just to simplify the listings.

Don’t forget that everyone who plays in our events gets a discount with our vendor partners, and gets entered for some great Sunday-morning raffle prizes.  There’s also at least one prize for one of the players at every one of our events.

Note that the kids’ events – as noted above – have a special prize for kids who check out all of the different kids games, and do not have prizes for each individual event.

Click through for the sortable table of events

Continue reading →

04/23/18

What’s Gus Playing? Deadlight!

The mighty mite of meandering muses on melancholy moods ~

Lloyd Sabin, 23 April 2018

Sometimes games just click with us. There’s no break-in period, no giving the game “a chance,” no mucking around…we love it right away.

That was how it worked with me and Deadlight, a side-scrolling, zombie-killing, puzzle-solving adventure game built in the Unreal engine by Tequila Works. Most players clocked in game length at around 5 hours…I got very close to the end between 5 and 10 hours, and then got stuck on one part where the acrobatics involved were just too much for my slowing hands.

Up until that point, though, the game was great. I loved the story, I loved the setting (Seattle and the surrounding area circa the mid 1980s) and I loved the gunplay and survival components. Players get s small variety of weapons to use including a shotgun, pistol, and ax.

The mood created by all of these facets combined was palpable…the player really does develop a sense of hopelessness, which slowly recedes the better the player gets at the game’s mechanics, which can get a bit complicated.

Certain obstacles and levels also featured the developer’s sense of humor, especially when you come across them the first time and get slaughtered…left to think ‘how the hell am I supposed to beat that?’ It also didn’t hurt that the game is now roughly six years old and I picked it up for a dollar. Literally. So I easily got my money’s worth x 25, at least, even though I didn’t quite finish the game completely.

As you can see below, Deadlight is one of those games whose visuals speak for themselves. So this week I don’t really think captions for each shot are necessary, which will allow me to show off more shots than usual! Plus I’m feeling pretty lazy today. Enjoy the below and if you can pick up Deadlight for 1, 5, 10 or even 15 dollars, it’s definitely worth it if you enjoy platformers, zombies, survival games, moody lighting and the original Pitfall game by Activision…with an edge.

Continue reading →