07/18/14

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #49

GARPA lands with three not-yet-funded projects that all look tres cool, and one that did make the cut that looks overwhelmingly cool.

Battle of the Electric Vikings (Black Slither Games)
$2400 of $4700, ends 6 August 2014

Rock out with your c…  well, you know the rest.  Black Slither Games gives everyone a chance to be their own heavy metal poet by piecing together your own song titles, lyrics, and albums from a bag of word tiles with the most metal of meaningful choices.  Who cares if you win?  It only matters if you ROCK!  And that you pledge over at the Kickstarter page.  That’s important, too.

G49-Viking

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07/17/14

A Distant Worlds AAR – Part 1

By Brandon “Kushan” Johnson, July 17, 2014

Welcome all. I’ve been playing Distant Worlds (DW) since it was first released in 2010. Since then, it’s become my favorite 4x game of any genre. No other game, except the Paradox games, come close to the breadth of options and replayability of DW, in my humble opinion of course.

 Click images to enlarge

DW Part 01 - 01

 

I’m going to be changing up my normal DW playstyle this time around. I normally fully control everything, and I’ve restarted a dozen different times trying to find a level of automation I can deal with. I’ve created a custom theme (mod) for this playthrough. I started with Haree78’s DW Extended Mod and merged in several other mods I thought would add a bit more variety.

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07/16/14

Classic Reviews: Dust

Great chips-and-soda game that is familiar in gameplay, but with just enough added complexity to keep players engaged throughout the game. Combat is nuanced but still fast-flowing, and players have to make serious strategic choices at every turn.

Review by Brant Guillory, about 7 years ago 🙂

This review originally appeared in Scrye Magazine

Number of players: 2-6
Designed for ages: 12 and up
Learning Curve: Low to Medium
Playing time: 1-3 hours
Pros: Visually grand; familiar mechanics; lots of choices for players
Cons: Backstory irrelevant to gameplay; some game effects not clearly explained

Dust, Fantasy Flight’s new “big box” game, is based on the comics of the same name, in which history was altered by the discovery of alien technology on a polar expedition early in WWII. You now know more than you need to know about the backstory of the game in order to play it. But don’t let that get you down, because Dust is a great game, regardless of the story behind it.

Players are trying to gain victory points by controlling power sources, conquering their opponents, and dominating certain numbers on the map. They do so by marshalling their armies, and balancing the manufacture of forces with the usage of them. Continue reading →

07/13/14

GrogHeads Reviews World at War: Blood & Bridges

World at War: Blood and Bridges, Published by Lock ‘n Load Publishing

Review by Michael Eckenfels, 13 July 2014

 

INTRODUCTION

The fascination with the hypothetical balloon going up in Europe in the 80s doesn’t cease to amaze me. I think this is mainly because I am a child of the 80s and during that time, as I was getting into wargaming, a conventional NATO vs. Warsaw Pact ground war was a very real possibility. Gaming it out to bloody completion was compelling and riveting for me. And now, about a quarter century after the Berlin Wall fell and communism (more or less) has left Europe and Russia, it’s still something of a hot gaming topic. Whether you play it out on your PC or on your dining room table, there’s commie tanks looking to grind outnumbered Westerners under their treads, somewhere. photo 2 Blood and Bridges is a Lock ‘n Load game that captures a slice of the West vs. East “war” in the 1980s. It is not a grand strategic game, but rather a tactical one, that focuses on platoon-level combat. If you’re looking to decide the fate of the entirety of Western Europe, you’re going to be disappointed. However, this game delivers, in a way, something better: a focal point battle (or series of battles) fought over the Rhine River Valley in the western part of West Germany. The premise is: the Soviets have taken something of a beating from NATO ground forces, but have doggedly ground their way forward, and are making a final, massive thrust towards this all-important geographic feature. In their way is the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), making a steadfast final stand of sorts – a very British thing to do! Continue reading →