01/3/14

GARPA 35 – GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory

Authors: Brant Guillory and Jim Zabek

If this winter has taught us one thing here in LongBladia, it is that it can always get colder and snowier. The highs next week are forecast to be subzero Fahrenheit. Simply put, it would be wise to stay indoors, peruse some crowd-funded gaming projects, and sip hot cocoa. If you must go outside, make sure you run by your local game store and thank them for getting out in the cold to open their doors and sell you games. It’s the least you can do.

But, what we can do here at GrogHeads is share some of the recon we’ve conducted on upcoming projects. So grab your mouse and hot cocoa and get ready for some temptation!

Tabletop Games

Wise Bayonets by Acies Games

Available for Purchase

GARPA-35-Wise-Bayonets50.1When a Napoleonic wargame is published in the Italian peninsula about a battle that took place on their soil, it’s worth a gander. Acies Games has published a number of games that range from ancient Rome to control for the island of Sardinia and beyond. To call these battles “obscure” is to deny our wargaming roots; we love this stuff! The chance to learn about the nuances of forgotten conflicts, to possibly change the course of history…this is the meat and potatoes of wargaming. And gamers seeking to refight the battle of Trebbia now have the opportunity to do so. No, it’s not crowd-funded, but it’s definitely worth checking out: http://www.aciesedizioni.it/trebbia-eng.htm

 

Fief – France 1429 by Academy Games

$47,524 pledged of $20,000 goal, ending February 11th

GARPA-35-Fief.75

 

Academy Games is no stranger to porting foreign language games into English, polishing them, andreleasing them to the English-speaking wargaming wilds. Fief – France 1429 is an existing French language game of medieval “dynastic ambition.” Players take control of one of four families, with which they use to attempt to gain control of various villages on the map. Players must both cooperate and compete with each other through marriages and alliances. Events such as papal annulments, good and bad harvests all pop up to help keep things interesting. And having already met its successful threshold for fundraising, players can expect unlocks of stretch goals to continually improve this game. Check it out on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/617871702/fief-france-1429

Gathering Storm by GMT Games

P500 not yet filled

GARPA-35-GatheringStorm-2.75What’s that you say? A World at War wasn’t big enough or long enough for your gaming tastes? Fear not, for Gathering Storm is here to fill the void. With Gathering Storm players can start the ramp-up to the Second World War as early as 1935. This prequel allows gamers to fiddle with the “what-ifs” leading up to the war, which can range from Doenitz successfully getting a significant investment in his submarine fleet to the French extending the Maginot Line, to the conflict breaking out in other parts of the world first, such as a French pre-emptive attack, or Germany going after Russia first. Crazy? Crazy like only a wargamer can be. This is the stuff we live for, and if you’re man enough to play A World at War you’re definitely going to want to get in on Gathering Storm’s action. Check it out here: http://www.gmtgames.com/p-467-gathering-storm.aspx

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01/2/14

Prosciutto – Hamming it up with the di Parmas… Part XVIII

After a loooooooooooooong hiatus (we trimmed a few “O”s for space), UCG is back with another installment of the Crusader Kings II AAR that won’t end.  Thus outlasting Brant’s Civ V AAR and claiming the AAR longevity title.  For now.

In Part 17 Oberto fulfilled his ambition to become Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, started a plot against his old enemy, and realised his ambitions were stunted by his lowly social rank. In this part he decides to make his life more complicated, attempts to grow his plot and spies an opportunity down South.

CKII-Pic170

Oberto sits down with his advisors (which isn’t as easy as you think, the Emperor keeps sending him on diplomatic missions right across the HRE) to discuss his claims and opportunities for expansion. Despite being the Count of Genoa and Nice he still doesn’t have a claim on the Duchy of Genoa , that belongs to his rival Matilda.

CKII-Pic171

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12/28/13

The Year in Review: Our Take

So what did our team see as the most significant developments of the past year?

GrogHeads Management, 28 December 2013

Lloyd Sabin

Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol opened up some great turn-based, aviation-centered gaming to a huge audience. With one game covering World War I and one covering World War II’s Pacific War, with a cost as low as 80 cents on some days, it’s cross-platform compatibility is bringing high quality tactical aviation gaming to a much wider audience than ever before. Let’s hope that Sid Meier continues down this path and brings historical and military themes to gamers with future releases in the same vein.

Craig Handler

In a digital landscape littered with high-priced, fund building early access titles, ARMA III was released in an alpha state, but at an affordable price and in extremely polished shape.  Thus proving that games with significant future development to go can be enjoyable early on in the production cycle.

While not necessarily revolutionary, Bohemia Interactive’s newest title in the series is beyond question evolutionary in every sense of the word, building upon everything that had been accomplished earlier in the series.  ARMA III incorporates all that was good in ARMA I and ARMA II, and improves upon it, largely by incorporating feedback from its large fan base and community of supporters.  The mechanics behind ARMA III finally feel “right”.  Movement is fluid and the player is afforded an unprecedented level of flexibility and freedom of movement in a first-person shooter.

Some have criticized ARMA III for its near-future setting, but it still manages to feel authentic, particularly when compared to the crowded market of modern combat gaming which includes titles such as Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty: Ghosts.  ARMA III still has some way to go before its is finished, but all the tools are there to make it into the greatest combat oriented first-person shooter of all time.  It is beyond doubt one of the most exciting releases of 2013 and with Bohemia Interactive’s proven record of post-release add-on and DLC support, together with an already established cadre of creative mod makers, we will be talking about and playing this one for years to come.

Jim Zabek

2013 saw the return of classical wargaming on the PC. One game brought two major assets to the wargaming community which have ensured that the industry is not only alive and well, but thriving.

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm crashed through the Fulda Gap to bring us hexagons and cardboard silhouette shaped units. None of these were particularly innovative, but was new was the solid production quality (varied sounds and eye-soothing graphics – though a few minor bugs still need to be worked out) combined with an incredibly addictive game style to make a wargame that is simply great. This addictive (and elusive) formula ensures that Red Storm is likely to be remembered for a long time as one of the best games of the year, and maybe the best in several years.

The second asset Red Storm brought to the table first requres a disclosure from me: I was involved with the developers in discussing how to implement an OODA loop. However, at the time I didn’t think my conversation was particularly significant. However, it seems to have inspired the developers to do that hard work of designing and implementing an asymmetric turn-based game system that does a fine job of modeling the deterioration of the command structure during wartime. This aspect, which I insist I had only a minor role in, turns out to be a real, significant development.

Between the addictive gameplay and asymmetrical turn-based gaming, On Target Simulations has delivered a simulation that effortlessly implements the elusive C3I aspect that many wargames either lack, or implement with some effort. Even if you’re not a fan of modern era wargames, you should give Red Storm’s demo a try. It’s an amazing game, and definitely the most significant development in the industry this year.

Brant Guillory

While hardcore grogs will (deservedly) turn their noses up as their cartoonish nature, the always-on interconnectedness of net-enabled phones and tablets have spawned a new generation of military-themed games and gamers. The massive rise of mobile-interface MMOGs have put ‘wargames’ into the pockets of millions of people, with Great Little War Game, World War, Little Commander, Modern War – World Domination, and the European War series all boasting hundreds of thousands of users. While these are not historically-accurate wargames in any sense, they are nonetheless putting tactical combat challenges in the hands of a huge number of players who enjoy battling with their friends. How many of these gamers might ‘graduate’ from the MMO-frenzy of unrealistic online play into a more historically-nuanced and accurately-modeled world of grognard-quality wargames? Not only is it hard to tell, it’s going to be hard to do if the grog world continues to turn their noses up at these cartoon shoot-em-ups instead of engaging them and looking for players that would be interested in moving to the tabletop, or to the world of deep grog-level games like those from Battlefront, Paradox, and Matrix.

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12/23/13

Games for the Holidays

GrogHeads Writing Staff, 23 December 2014

We asked our writing crew to recount their favorite holiday game gift memories.  See if you can guess who they are, and discuss your favorite holiday game gift hauls here >>

My first PC was a clone 486 DX-33 in a full tower, steel ATX case. I loved that 35 pound beast – it was my first PC gaming platform. After I played the obligatory Wolfenstein 3D, I wanted to try something different, like a flight sim. As luck would have it, Christmas was right around the corner and Santa was prepared to rock my world. On Christmas morning, I opened my gifts, which included a game called Comanche Maximum Overkill by Novalogic. By today’s standards, the game was very pixelated and had a laughable flight model, but I must have played that game from start to finish at least four times.  The joy of pounding T-72’s and SAM sites with Hellfire missiles and Hydra rockets while the snow gently fell outside my computer room window was perfection. Comanche made great use of my 4 MBs of RAM and kick-ass, 1MB Trident video card. As the years began to roll by, I started playing study sims with better graphics and more realistic flight models, but it all started with that Christmas back in 1992 and a copy of Comanche Maximum Overkill.

For Christmas 1984 I received a Nintendo NES. You’d think a 14-year-old kid would be beside himself for such a present, and I was, but my biggest ‘score’ wasn’t that game system. Instead, it was my copy of Axis & Allies that my mother bought for me. I broke it out right then and there on the floor and proceeded to play it by myself, while listening to the KISS cassette tape (another Christmas gift for that year) – Animalize. Don’t judge, it was 1984, man. Anyway, that was my first ‘cool bits’ game that didn’t have hexagons or cardboard counters to push around. A part of me, the anal grog part, might have railed against such a travesty (the side of me that loved Third Reich was not happy at that moment), but you can’t beat a classic game like A&A. Well…actually, you CAN beat that, because that very same Christmas, my grandmother bought me a late Christmas gift…a copy of Axis & Allies. By then I’d learned to not like stacks of chips and preferred masses of units stuffed into provinces…and two copies satisfied my OCD need to do just that! When my mother told me we needed to return that second copy, I insisted that there was little chance of that happening!

I was 12 and the only thing on my list that year was the Axis and Allies boardgame; the classic version as they had yet to come out with the theatre specific versions.  I had been brielfy exposed to the game at a friend’s house earlier in the year and since then that was all I had talked about.  I clearly remember people asking me what A&A was, and I would reply, “its like Risk but on steriods and in WWII!”  Needless to say, tucked in amongst the gifts surrounding the Christmas tree that year was a giant box with my name on it.  For two weeks it sat there under that tree calling to me, mocking me, tempting me.  Finally Christmas morning arrived and true to form my dad, with a chuckle in his voice, informed me that the big box was the last present to be opened after everyone had opened all the others.  I couldn’t tell you what anyone else got that year much less what other presents I recieved, all I knew was that A&A would finally be mine.  Sure enough the time came and I ripped into the giant present with reckless abandoned.  There it was, nice and shiny in the shrink wrap, my first “wargame.”  As you can imagine I did not move from that spot the rest of the day, save for dinner.  I read straight through the rule book, set the board up and then since no one would play with me, began my first solo wargaming experience until I was forced to go to bed that evening.  While admittedly I have recieved bigger and better wargame related gifts since then this memory has to be one of my favorites.

Christmas of 1982 was a games-overload Christmas for me.  We were in the midst of moving from Ft Ord, CA to the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, VA, so there was a limit to how much “stuff” my parents wanted to haul around for us kids for Christmas gifts.  While we were living in California, I had discovered RPGs with some classmates, and I already had a handful of different D&D books, but my Christmas wish list was full of them.  There were also a handful of wargames on there, but that was mostly to fill up the list in the hopes that no one would buy me more socks that year.  We spent Christmas with grandparents in Louisiana on our trip across the country, and between the two different places, that year I unwrapped the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide, the AD&D Dieties and Demigods book, and a few of the old candy-stripe modules (I got several, but U1 is the only one I specifically remember from that Christmas).  Oh yeah, and there were wargames, too!  I got the old generic “Battle!” from Yaquinto, and Avalon HIll’s “War and Peace”.  Not a bad haul for a 5th-grader!  Several years later I scored module B10, the Dragonlance Campaign hardcover, a Battletech boxed set, and Star Frontiers Knight Hawks all in one Christmas, but by then the bar had been set pretty high with the “Haul of ’82”.

As I look back over an ever-increasing number of Christmases I’ve celebrated and reflect upon the games I’ve received as gifts I can’t point to a single “greatest” game that I’ve received. Instead, my favorite part is the a process, but let’s call it something less dry – the spirit of giving. Many years ago my best friend and I agreed to exchange games for Christmas. Not tools. Not sports paraphernalia. Games. I’m not particularly knowledgeable about fine art, but some time back I ran across a story where an interviewer asked Picasso what his favorite painting was. His reply: “The next one.” So it is with me. I’ve gotten some great gifts over the years (and given some great ones, too). But for me the best gift is knowing that we have a tradition where we know that next year, we’ll get at least one game from someone who knows games and can even play them.

Tell us what you think in the forums >>