05/8/15

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #69

The siren song of pre-orders, begging for your wallet to open up and dispense your hard-earned shekels within.

Fog & Friction (Pondfoot Games)
£2k of £14k, ends 31 May 2015

Another WWII card game? Why not?! Fog & Friction gets you into the battles of the Western front with a nifty two-battlefields-at-the-same-time mechanic that forces you to balance your efforts to keep your opponent guessing where the damage is coming from next. The artwork is period-evocative, and because the designers are based in the UK, the Commonwealth are not given second-shrift by the over-abundance of Yanks running around the game like they saved the world by themselves. Flip over to their campaign page and shoot off a few bucks. Half of our forum crew are already backing them, so you’ll have plenty of folks to play and discuss with.

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05/1/15

Quartermaster General – First Look!

Michael Eckenfels, 1 May 2015

After seeing a few discussions about Quartermaster General online – both positive and negative commentary included – I reached out to Ian Brody at Griggling Games to get a review copy for GrogHeads. I was looking forward to receiving this since it seems to simulate World War 2 in a very different manner than most games.

Here’s the box. I admit, in my eagerness, I removed the plastic shrink-wrap. I feel terrible that I didn’t capture a picture of it with the shrink-wrap. Why? Only because that’s what I’ve always done with all my unboxing articles so far.

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04/22/15

The First Four Steps: Designer’s Notes For The New Line Of OSS Folio Games

Brian Train, 22 April 2015

Game Theorist and Designer Brian Train joins us for a look inside the design of his new folio games with One Small Step games.

Ed Note: We’ve already reviewed Shining Path here at GrogHeads.

At the beginning of 2015, One Small Step Games began to publish a series of new “folio games,” small format wargames on a variety of subjects at a reasonable price. At least eight will be released during this year: four by me, two Civil War titles by Richard Dengel (Lone Jack, Middle Creek) that use the Rebel Yell! tactical system, and two strategic World War Two games by Gary Graber (Battle of the Atlantic, Fall of Berlin).

The four titles by me are all modern-era, from 1956 Budapest to 2010 Afghanistan. Most of the game designs (I’ve published (30+ and counting) are post World War Two: for me, this is an area full of ungamed topics, grimy and nasty irregular wars which inform and shape the world we live in today. I was always interested in guerilla war/ irregular war/ low-intensity conflict, whatever it was being called at the time. I’ve been designing for about 25 years, and near the beginning of my career I was one of a very few people “ploughing in the COINfield”, as it were (I’m happy to say I have more company now).

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