12/21/13

GrogHeads Strike Back! The Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm Contest

Welcome to the GrogHeads Strike Back!

GrogHeads has partnered with On Target Simulations and Matrix Games to bring a fantastic year-end shootout, with a chance to win some excellent prizes from Matrix Games and the GrogHeads prize vault.

Here’s how it works:

1. You have to play a game. We know, right?! Let us say that again: You have to play a game. See, you’re loving this contest already.

1a. Specifically, you have to play this game: Flashpoint Campaigns: The GrogHeads Strike Back

1c. This is a custom-modified self-contained game and scenario for Flashpoint Campaigns. This scenario is not available as a part of the standard install, so even if you already have the game (and OTS loves you if you do!) then you still need to download and install this package to play.

2. When you complete the game, you save your final score report, and upload it to the GrogHeads forum in the designated thread.

2a. Entries that are emailed, faxed, posted, sent by courier, carrier pigeon, or paper airplane won’t count. You have to upload the entry in our forums, in the proper thread for your entry to be a part of the contest.

2b. The highest score (percent) will be the grand prize winner. In the event of a tie, the first tiebreaker is VP locations held, then enemy units killed (see image for scoring order).

ContestScores — You need to capture and post the Staff Summary Report from the end of your game. If your screen doesn’t look like this, you posted the wrong screen.

3. But wait! Some chucklehead scored 98% of day 2 of the contest! It’s hopeless! How can I ever win? Fear not, fellow Grogs! Every entry into the contest gets one virtual ticket thrown into the digital raffle hat for a consolation prize. That’s right, every separate score screen you upload after playing the game gets you another chance to win. So you might never score out of the 30s – who cares!? Score in the 30s eighteen different times, and you get 18 different chances to win in the consolation drawings.

3a. You can also earn an entry to the consolation drawing by “liking” the contest post on Facebook, and another by “sharing” the contest post on Facebook. 2 clicks for 2 entries! w00t!

4. You keep talking about “prizes”. Yes, yes we do. Because we’re just building the suspense.

4a. How are we doing?

4b. Still in suspense?

4c. Can’t wait to find out what you’re playing for?

5. All entries must be posted in the forums, with a forums time-stamp no later than Midnight Eastern (US) Standard Time, Sunday 5 January 2014. That’s midnight when Saturday rolls into Sunday. Entries posted or received after that time will not be counted for the grand prize, or consolation drawings.

4d. How’s that ‘suspense’ thing working out for us?

6. Legalese: At the bottom of this article is the full set of legal terms and conditions. You participation in this contest is your acceptance of those conditions. Remember that our in-house counsel is an excellent shot and owns a LOT of firearms.

4e. You’re just waiting to find out what you can win, right?

7. Forum membership is required for submitting your entries. You must be a registered member of the GrogHeads forums to enter. But hey, registration is free! What a deal!

7a. The official contest entry thread is here

7b. The official contest discussion thread is here

7c. Don’t mix them up. If you post an entry in the discussion thread, it won’t count. If you post a discussion question in the entry thread, you will be mercilessly mocked.

4f. Prizes? Oh yeah! Prizes! Here’s what you’re playing for:

GRAND PRIZE: $65 credit at the Matrix Games store – enough to cover a boxed copy of Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, or any number of excellent titles from the largest publisher of digital strategy games.

CONSOLATION PRIZES: Four total. Two winners will get $20 credit to the Matrix Games store. Two other winners will get random prize grab-bags pulled from the GrogHeads prize vault, with a retail value of at least $20. Consolation prize winners do not get to pick which prize we send you. They come out in the order they come out.

Winners will be notified by message through the forums, and the winners will be announced publicly on 6 January 2014.

Continue reading →

12/20/13

GARPA 34 – GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory

Authors: Brant Guillory & Jim Zabek

As Santa’s elves are banging out the last of their projects to be delivered next week there have been a number of game developers who’ve been making similar plans but with the help of crowd-sourced funding. Those of us in the US have even enjoyed a reprieve in the weather, with temperatures around LongBladia managing to briefly climb above freezing. The levels of snow we’ve received could be characterized as harassing fire – enough to cover the lawn and roads but not enough to make the kids happy with a day of school closure. Not to fear, temps are expected to come crashing down soon, but you know what that means: spring can’t be far behind.

Tabletop Games

Castles – A Strategic Card Game by AAIIEEE! GAMES

$7,339 pledged of $2,500 goal ending January 2^nd

If Castles looks familiar to you, it did to me, too, and for good reason.

Way back in November AAIIEEE GAMES (their capitalization, not mine. Really.) launched Castles as a “Strategic Card Game For Two Players” and set their funding goal at $6000. It failed to come anywhere near that goal, gaining a modest 2,787. Undeterred, the developers have reworked their math and decided that they could make do with backers supplying a more modest goal of $2500 and removing the word “strategic” from their game’s name.

They must be evil geniuses because this time the public got solidly behind them, easily meeting the $2500 goal and – surprisingly – have more than four times the number of original backers have coughed up $7300 worth of support, an amount that would have surely satisfied their first attempt at funding.

Crowd-sourced games can be strange in that way. In any case, if you’re looking for strategic card game for two players, with mild elements of fantasy and some attractive artwork, Castles may be the game for you.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aaiieee/castles-a-card-game-for-two-players

MegaMat Gaming Mat by Frontline Gaming and TABLEWAR

$73,374 pledged of $15,000 goal ending December 22^nd

Miniatures gamers are constantly on the prowl for a better mousetrap. Anything which gives their gaming experience an edge is carefully considered for addition to what is likely to already be a well-stocked inventory of gaming accessories. The limits of discretionary income are often the greatest impediment to buying wholesale swathes of accessories for our tables and it is well that we should have limits lest we have no room to store our accumulated treasures.

So it is that I am well aware how tempting it will be to many readers when I place these gaming mats here for your consideration. The creators of the MegaMat have already reached a successful level of funding. Their offering is simple: 4’ x 4’ or 4’ x 6’ gaming mats that provide a color base on which to game. So far it appears as though three backgrounds are available: grassy plains and blast zone were the first two mats promised if the minimum fundraising goal was met, with additional plans for more mats to be unlocked as fundraising levels were achieved. Planned stretch goal maps will include urban combat, alpine, and barren wasteland.

The mats have been created by professional game artists and the printed resolution is promised to be at 300 dpi (current test images are said to have been at 150, which already looks quite good).

The material the maps are printed on is similar to that of a mousepad, which provides a flexible material for ease of storage that is also crease resistant, and has a rubber back to help secure it to whatever surface it is placed upon. The mats are also coated with a water-resistant material to help resist stains and keep it clean. If any of these mats needs to be on your gaming table you’d better hurry as the fundraising window is closing rapidly.

Continue reading →

12/19/13

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm AAR Part 4

Author: Jim Zabek

At the end of Part 3 I had successfully managed to hold off the initial advance of the Soviets and I was considering advancing the hard core of my defense, a company of Abrams tanks, to catch either the Soviet HQ undefended or a southern thrust on its flank. Let’s see how that plan survives contact with the AI…

Turn 8 – 28 minutes elapsed

Now I get busy with orders. First I call in some mines to be dropped in front of the tanks in the north that are heading south. If I’m lucky the tanks will walk into the hex before I drop the mines – a favorite tactic.

Next I order a barrage on the suspected recce/HQ unit in the woods near my own recce unit. They didn’t seem inclined to move much so I’m hoping to catch them even if I can’t see them. Then I order my mechanized units in the south to start moving around. All are ordered east, in a push to recapture lost VPs. The 1000 point VP east of Rodgau is a favorite hide of a Soviet HQ unit. In the past they’ve protected that guy with some serious artillery which directly supports it, so when those units start moving (it’ll probably be a turn or two) I’ll want to hit it with artillery as soon as I’m able.

Mechanized units in the south start to move east.

The last piece of the puzzle is the MLRS. I have several targets to choose from. Finally I decide to use saturation fire on the units to the northeast of Dudenhofen. It’s just a hunch but they look like they’re moving and my sense is I can do some serious harm right here and now.

I hit start to watch the action unfold.

The recce units’ luck runs out. Several Soviet artillery barrages catch them and blast them something good. It hurts.

Soviet Artillery rain on my engineers to the north but fortunately it does no lasting harm.

Then my MLRS arrives and multiple blasts across multiple hexes confirms that I made a good decision.

The MLRS delivers another round of pain.

Continue reading →

12/18/13

Review of Eight Minute Empire

Brant takes a look at Eight Minute Empire, a game that plays waaaaaay faster than it takes for him to write the review

Brant Guillory, 18 December 2013

How does a game with 2 types of blocks, a map that could hide in a magazine, and no combat pack a legitimate realm-building adventure into a 10-minute game?

Elegantly.

8-minute-1 — The small box includes 5 colors of tokens, punchout coins, a deck of cards, a very short instruction page, and a mounted, two-sided map. The box is pretty solid, too. You could really hurt someone if you hurl it at them.

Eight Minute Empire from Red Raven Games probably takes about ten to twelve minutes to play, but you lose the cute alliteration of the name in doing so. Still, taking over the map twice in a lunch break at the office, and still having time to talk smack about it, is nothing to sniff at.

First question – “Does it really only take eight minutes to play?” Yes, if you’ve got a two-player game of guys who know what they’re doing. But let’s just suppose you double the length of the advertised game. Are you really going to be unimpressed with a game that let’s you conquer the map in less time than it’ll take you to read this review?

Second question – “Whaddaya mean there’s no combat? How do I conquer the world?” The guy with the most armies (cubes) in the space controls it. Ties go to nobody. It’s not rocket surgery.

Third question – “Is it just beating each other up?” Nope. There are potential cities to found, a treasury to manage, and trade goods to collect.

So here’s how it works. Continue reading →

12/16/13

Spearpoint 1943 with Designer Byron Collins – BONUS

Byron had sent some videos our way. And in classic GrogHeads “we’re-making-this-up-as-we-go” style, ~~we forgot to include them in this weekend’s post~~ decided to devote a new article just for them, since they’re so outstandingly awesome.

Discuss this article in our forums >>