Month: July 2018

07/30/18

What’s Gus Playing – Tyranny

After surrendering to Total War: Warhammer 2, Gus tries on a new mistress to his gaming passions ~

Lloyd Sabin, 30 July 2018

Winding down my summer of high fantasy gaming and still smarting from a major defeat in battle in Total War: Warhammer 2, I switched over to Tyranny by Obsidian for a few hours. It was only a few hours because Tyranny is quite dense with lore, and, already fatigued from Warhammer, I put Tyranny aside for another day to give it the time it deserves to shine.

If you’re willing to take the plunge with Tyranny, be ready to read a lot. Some gamers don’t dig this, some love it.

That said, the first 3-4 hours are excellent and different than most traditional isometric RPG games on PC…think Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Pillars of Eternity with some new ideas introduced, like world-shaping. It will become more clear with the screen shots below.

If you’re willing to take the plunge with Tyranny, be ready to read a lot. Some gamers don’t dig this, some love it. I was somewhere in between, but chalked it up to timing. If I had started off my summer fantasy gaming binge I would have been much more in to it. That’s why I temporarily put it aside. I will be back, for sure, when I am in the mood for some deep, dark fantasy that allows me to be as bad as I wanna be. Continue reading →

07/27/18
Cruel Morning SPLASH

A(nother) Review of Cruel Morning: Shiloh 1862

Another look at Tiny Battle’s ACW game ~

Jim Werbaneth, 27 July 2018

Cruel Morning Cover Color
Cruel Morning Cover

The Battle of Shiloh was a harbinger of the bloodbath to come in the Civil War.  It also marked a turning point in the leadership of both sides.  Albert Sidney Johnston, one of the most highly-regarded Confederate generals at the start of the conflict, was mortally wounded, rendering him a “what if” in a theater characterized by rebel generals who were mediocre at best; how could the war have progressed had Johnston remained alive and in charge, in place of Braxton Bragg, Leonidas Polk, John Bell Hood or Joseph Johnston? On the Union side, Ulysses S. Grant prepared poorly, and was caught off guard by the Confederate onslaught. However, he recovered, and his Army of the Tennessee did not just survive, but with the aid of Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio, went on the offensive on the second day of battle. Despite heavy criticism of the early stages of the battle, a temporary sidelining afterward, Grant and his career survived, and he went on to become the premier, even definitive, military leader of the Civil War.

Cruel Morning is a brigade-scale treatment of Shiloh, on a time scale of daily turns.  The footprint is small, with an eleven by seventeen-inch unmounted map.  From its small size and relatively low unit count, one would expect it to be a fast-playing, easily-accessible game.  However, the final project ends up as something different.

click images to enlarge

Continue reading →

07/23/18
Gus TW WH2 4 SPLASH

What’s Gus Playing: Total War: Warhammer 2 Tomb Kings – Part 3

Danger dwarf’s doldrums drag diffidently  ~

Lloyd Sabin, 16 July 2018

We have now entered the summer doldrums. How do I know this? Because I have become bored and restless with my current gaming. Roughly about 150 turns in to my Total War: Warhammer 2 campaign, and I began to lose interest. Why? Perhaps the units and setting are just a bit too fantastical to me. Or maybe it’s because I suck at the tactical battles. Or there is the chance that I have been playing fantasy games for the last 3-4 weeks and I just need something new. Most likely it is a combination of all these factors and more that have turned my Tomb Kings campaign in to a long slog, with an end in sight, but far away.

Well after a short siege of their fortress city called The Awakening, their garrison and one full stack of bloodsuckers came at me, and totally bitch-slapped me

The Tomb Kings are not recommended for new players, by the game itself, in the faction selection screen. I am not a new Total War player but I am new to Warhammer, so I suppose there are a lot of intricacies to the Tomb Kings that I need to brush up on. I liked what I saw during this campaign – but there was a ton of lore…a little overwhelming and a bit unforgiving. So this carried over in to the tactical battles. I never felt 100% confident in what I was doing and always felt I did not know the full capabilities of my lords or my troops. Not the fault of the game, but my own fault for not studying up enough.

At this point I had two of the five Books of Nagash I needed. I gathered three full-stack Tomb King armies and declared war on the Vampire Counts, and went straight for the jugular in an attempt to grab the third book. Well after a short siege of their fortress city called The Awakening, their garrison and one full stack of bloodsuckers came at me, and totally bitch-slapped me. I lost every thing and was reeling back to my own dark, sandy domains. It was that embarrassingly complete loss that had me put aside the game for now, because it probably set me back another 150 turns until I could gather strength again and attempt to snatch another three Books of Nagash. So for now I put aside the fantasy war grind. Continue reading →