02/5/16

The Zombie Apocalypse, Part 8: Keeping Your Sierra Together

Will you know it when you see it? ~

Jonathan Glazer, 22 January 2016

We envision ourselves in crisis acting in certain ways. Some of us emblazon ourselves with logos on our chests and capes, despite the impracticality of capes being settled by The Incredibles. Others have a more realistic understanding of how we act under fire and identify which rock we will use for shelter when the poop hits the radial cooling device. In reality, the intellectual part of our brains cannot comprehend how our emotional side will react once the hounds of hell are unleashed.

When we perceive a fight or flight situation to be upon us, our adrenal glands situated on top of our kidneys squirt adrenaline into the blood stream. This causes a cascade of hormonal and other physical changes designed to enhance our ability to either beat the living feces out of someone or grow wings and fly away from them.   Our heart rate, respiration, circulation patterns, muscle response and thought patterns all work in harmony to bring out the inner caveman (or woman) in all of us.

z-apoc-1Unless you are actually in the moment, you will have no way of knowing what our Incredible Hulk looks, sounds or smells like. Once you have been in a number of those situations, you begin to recognize the consistent patterns that are a part of this process. Seasoned combat veterans know what happens when the lead flies. Over time, they gain control over the chaos. Guys who have been in the field too long have been known to fall asleep during firefights. This is because adrenaline is like heroin in that we build up a tolerance to it. When you spend a lot of time in crisis mode drinking the hormone like Gatorade, it eventually has less of an impact. The result is Robert Duvall as Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now not even noticing mortar shells exploding nearby and ordering his men to surf amidst a hot combat operation.

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02/3/16

Civ5 AAR: Empires of the Smoky Skies, Part I

Going back to the Civ5 well again ~

By Brant Guillory, GrogDude

Click images to enlarge

For this scenario, I’m headed off to an ahistorical scenario. The Empires of the Smoky Skies is the ‘steampunk’ scenario with the Civilization 5 Gods + Kings expansion. There are five nations, all suitably decked out in their best Victorian-industrial chic. The military units are also tweaked to bring in airships and landships, although destroyers and battleships are not renamed.

civv

Empires of the Smoky Skies
As noted, this is one of the built-in scenarios that comes with the Gods + Kings expansion pack.

civv

Empires of the Smoky Skies
There’s some background on the scenario.

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02/1/16

Tracer Rounds – Another “Resurgence” of Military Wargaming?

The military wants to ‘get back’ to wargaming.  Are they serious this time? ~

There’s been a recent trend in the media covering some developments in the military that I hope or at least slightly heartening. I’ve started to see multiple articles here and there on well-respected online sites about the reinvigoration of wargaming in the military. tracer-wgI’ve written before about the way the professionals use wargaming and how it differs from hobby games and what is commercially realistic. That said, there is certainly some crossover between the two given that so many professionals are also hot scammers, or have been taught by them. (As an editor note, voice recognition just picked up “hobby gamers” as “hot scammers”; maybe Google knows something we don’t?)

There have been articles from the Marines, the Navy, think tanks, and high ranking DoD officials about ways in which the military can start using wargaming again. Part of this is being driven by budget constraints.  My hope is that at least part of this trend is being driven by explorations of uncertainty in our future conflicts.  This type of exploratory wargaming drove US naval innovations in aviation in the inter-war years, and has also been credited with the development of German blitzkrieg tactics around the same time.  So the track record exists of using wargaming as a forward-looking tool for examining doctrine and concepts.  It’s already known as a tool for training, even if a misunderstood one on a regular basis.  Again, I’ve talked about the uses of wargaming in a previous column, so I won’t rehash too much here, just go read the earlier article.

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01/30/16

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.
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.

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