02/11/16
Tag: 4X
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.
Empires of the Smoky Skies
As noted, this is one of the built-in scenarios that comes with the Gods + Kings expansion pack.
Empires of the Smoky Skies
There’s some background on the scenario.
10/30/15
GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #80
If it’s Friday, it’s GARPA! Unless, y’know, it’s not GARPA because it’s the off-Friday where we run fun Zombie-themed stuff or something else.
Brant Guillory, 30 October 2015
Scythe (Stonemaier Games)
$1.29mil of $33k and yes you read that right, ends 5 November 2015
Roll Save vs “Ooooooh”. You failed. Seriously. You gotta see this game; it’s a visual treat. It’s 2-hour(ish) playtime for 1-5 players, so it scales nicely from solo to game-group play, and has countries in an alt-history Eastern Europe fighting over technology and resources in in the 1920s. It’s proto-industrialism without the Steampunk tropes, and manages to blend almost-familiar nationalities with giant ‘mechs, 4x mechanics, and decent dose of sci-fi storylines. Oh yeah, and it looks good, too. It’s not like they need our help to succeed, but you might need our help to find their campaign page.
10/7/15
Tiny Epic Galaxies – First Look!
The Kickstarter sensation is starting to land on peoples’ tables. What’s inside? ~
Brant Guillory, 7 October 2015
We first brought up Tiny Epic Galaxies in our GARPA column, where we noted how quickly they blew through their initial funding goals in 90 minutes, and hit six-figures within their first day. Now that it’s arrived, here’s what finally shipped after all the stretch goals piled in.
08/29/15
GrogHeads Reviews Colonial Conquest
Colonial Conquest has landed on our shores. But how all-conquering is it? Jim O takes a look.
Jim Owczarski, 29 August 2015
I love the moment in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” when Napoleon, having told the protagonists how he will conquer Europe with water slides, is gainsaid by them and proceeds to smack what I’ve always taken to be a “Risk” board with his sword declaring, “triomphe Napoleon!” It’s not only wonderfully silly, but it reminds me of why “Risk” remains one of the best games ever designed — for all its faults. It’s simple, it’s nasty, and when you finally do kick your opponent out of Australia (yes, it can be done), it makes you feel like a conqueror. Lots of games since have tried to capture what it is that makes “Risk” special — there’s enough branded adaptations to fill shelves — and so Argonauts Interactive’s “Colonial Conquest” (hereafter CC) joins a crowded field. It’s far from a bad game, and it’s nicely priced, but I can’t help but feel it was shipped a bit sooner than it should have been.
Much here will be familiar and I think that works in the game’s favor. The learning curve is certainly gentle. CC is played out over a map of the world divided into national areas and sea zones. The board is more granular than “Risk” (although some familiar friends are present) which tends to lengthen play. There are some strange geographic decisions relating to which territories are adjacent to which. If I read the support forums for the game correctly, some of these were unintentional and are being fixed. Others, like that below, remain and cause no small amount of frustration for reasons I’ll get into shortly.
