06/27/14

Origins 2014 – The Photos

Wrapping up the key Origins coverage of Origins 2014, here are several photo collections, covering gameplay, the exhibit hall, the minis room, and the GrogHeads Central Command.

There are some some interviews with people from Origins coming up later, but the coverage of the show itself pretty much wraps up here. We hope you’ve enjoyed our look at a great game convention and that you can join us next year at the GrogHeads Wargaming Central Command at Origins 3-7 June, in Columbus OH.

Click photos to enlarge. Photos by either Corinne Mahaffey or Brant Guillory

GrogHeads’ Central Command

with the Staff Wargaming team (man, we gotta get a better name for them!) and the organized wargaming events for Circle of Fire, Orange Crush, Sergeants! Miniatures Game, Julius Caesar, Spearpoint 1943, and Test of Mettle.

[tribulant_slideshow gallery_id=”4″]

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06/22/14

Origins 2014 – Reports From The Grogs

There’s always something cool to see at Origins. Here’s what stuck out for our team…

click to enlarge images

Barthheart: Well, this was my first ever Origins and my first con of this size. WOW! 5 days whizzed by… but maybe because I had such a great time with the GrogHeads and GM’ing games of Sergeant’s Miniature Game. I managed 5 games in total and all the people who came to play were great sports and had fun… not hard when SMG is a fun game to play. Husband and wife teams, father and son teams, old, young just great people out to have a fun time. The people from Lost Battalion Games, makers of SMG, were very helpful in starting our games, gave us some fantastic prizes to hand out and also gave me some very nice swag for GM’ing their game.

I also helped some of the vendors setup. We were helping Decision Games setup and it was hard to not start shopping right then. I wandered by their booth later on and they remember who I was and asked if I was interested in play testing a new tactical space game they were working on. We played for about 2 hours. Fun game, nice people. They took my name and email and are going to set me up with a printed play test copy when they get them.

I managed to not break my wallet and only bought RAF and some extra soldier minis for SMG. Decision Games released their new monster Atlantic Wall for the con….. REALLY nice looking game with a huge map, 11+ sheets of counters… only $240 at the con…. so tempted but it would have never gotten played only taken out and fondled every few years.

Overall, great fun with great people. It was nice to be able to put faces to the screen names at GrogHeads.

Hope I get invited and can attend next year.

The GrogLoot that some of our folks came home with ~

Dog not included. And yes, ninja dice came home with a few of us.

The Pokemon cards were for #1 son. Not pictured: the My Little Pony for the daughter.

Not sure where the greeting cards were from, but there’s a lot of game there.

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06/20/14

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #47

This week’s GARPA might be short on titles (only 3), but it’s long on success – they’ve all made the cut and will be adorning tabletops near you this year.

Scotland Rising (Worthington Publishing)
$5000 of $2500, ends 20 July 2014

C’mon, now – you’ve seen Braveheart, right? Scottish Wars of Independence ringing a bell? And as a wargamer and history buff, you must know that we’re coming up on the 700^th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, right? Well, not only that, but there’s a Scottish independence vote coming up in a few months, too. So what better time than to take a trip back through history and check out Worthington’s upcoming game on the Battle of Bannockburn. And if they hit their stretch goals, you’ll get the battles of Stirling Bridge and Falkirk, too, which should satisfy anyone’s desire for 14^th-century hack-and-slash combat in the Scottish border country. But they only hit all those stretch goals if you go plunk down your coins on the Kickstarter page, right?

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06/6/14

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #46

A new D-Day game, and (finally!) the digital version of one of boardgaming’s most popular conflict games of all time. Smells like…. GARPA!

Twilight Struggle, digital edition (GMT Games)
$115k of $50k goal (though that’ll be surpassed by the time you read this), ends 3 July 2014

For several years, it could be wryly joked that the “Struggle” in Twilight Struggle was for the difficulties in getting the digital version deployed. No more. It’s not uncommon to see a Kickstarter campaign blow well past the full funding mark, into ridiculous levels of stretch goals. It’s rare to see a Kickstarter campaign fully funded within hours. Yes, hours. Twilight Struggle was at $30000 around 400pm on June 5^th, having only launched earlier that day, and within the next 90 minutes they almost doubled that total, to exceed their $50k goal. They’ve doubled that goal within the first 24 hours. Why are we not talking about the game itself? Do we really need to? It’s to top-ranked “wargame” at BoardGameGeek (though admittedly, discussions of whether or not it’s a “wargame” waste plenty of hours online). A forum/team game has been running here at GrogHeads for a while now, and countless schoolteachers around the US use it to introduce their students to the Cold War. Seriously, you don’t need convincing. You just need to go figure out your pledge level and get it over with already.

Day of Days (MMP)
181 of 650 orders needed

It wouldn’t be D-Day without us digging up an Overlord game, right? MMP has a new SCS game for D-Day that’s designed to cover not just the landings themselves, but the breakouts that followed. There are even scenarios designed to skip the amphibious assault, and start with Allied forces on the beach. This game is new enough that there’s no draft cover art, playtest photos, or anything else that’s leaked out. We were able to scrape up a very rough image of the maps (yes, plural) to show the scope and scale of the game, which will include scenarios that focus just on the British landings, or the US landings. It’s an MMP game, so it’s going to be a solid and well-tested game on a known platform (SCS) and all those great touches that come with MMP tackling the subject in depth. Go get a pre-order in!