Tag: Fantasy

10/31/14

Why Shadow of Mordor is a Good Choice for Halloween

Lloyd Sabin, All Hallow’s Eve, 2014

How Do I Look at the World?

I am a seasonal kind of guy. I read books that are indirectly connected to what’s going on outside my window. I listen to music to put me in a weather-appropriate mood. And I game the same way…linking what I play to my perceived notion of whatever season I’m in. I’ve written articles about this before, dating back about 10 years when I wrote a review of one of my favorite PC titles ever: Rome Total War – Barbarian Invasion (BI).

I remember starting my first campaign in that game in the fall, which felt so damned perfect it was palpable. The apocalyptic tension of the barbarian hordes slugging it out across a dynamic map of Europe and Asia blew my mind as the leaves on the trees outside my gaming room yellowed and fell to the ground. As a matter of fact it may have been BI that cemented this seasonal thinking in my brain. It may have started with books and music when I was a teenager, but PC games made it an official way of thinking, or some kind of disorder, as an adult. (Ed note: we’re voting for “disorder”).

Fast forward ten years and I’m still posting threads on what games are best to play in October, to get really juiced and jazzed for Halloween. I still listen to Type-O Negative tracks, the Cure and old U2…of course the album October by the Gaelic music gods is on constant rotation for me this time of year, despite the album being over 30 years old. But what to game?

Yes, the Uruks you encounter are pretty fierce...but there are worse things lurking.
Yes, the Uruks you encounter are pretty fierce…but there are worse things lurking.

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10/24/14

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #56

Brant Guillory, 24 October 2014

Not another GARPA!

War & Seas (Wargame Process Edition)
P500 for $49, or 39€

There’s a definite ‘ooh and ahh’ factor to this one.  It’s an age-of-sail slugfest with a build-your-own-ship twist.  You kit out your ship by the use of mix-and-match blacks that represent cannons, crew, officers, etc. and the blast away.  The combat dice are not normal d6s either; they are multi-symbol faces that apply numbers to the actions you’ve chose.  It’s a small fleet action with built-in multiplayer support, and well, did we mention it looks cool?  Go get a p500 order in now and get this thing made already!

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10/10/14

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #55

GARPA hits the speed limit!

 

Toulon, 1793 (Legion Wargames)
Preorder price $50, MSRP $70

An area-based game of Napoleon’s siege of the city, this game spans the latter half of 1793, and includes rules for multi-player, international cooperation, spies, and logistics.  The usual ‘siege’ necessities are present, to, of course – forts, attrition, and defensive positions all matter – but there’s a bit of room for the defenders to counterattack and maneuver if the attacker leaves the wrong opening, so it’s not a pure ‘tower defense’ scenario, especially since the whole game opens up with the French maneuvering into position for the siege in the first place.  The map is designed to evoke the period maps of the Napoleonic age and, well, you can see for yourself, eh?  It’s on preorder for $50 right now, so grab it before the price goes up as it goes to press.

g55-toulon_map_sm

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09/26/14

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #54

Hey now, hey now…  you didn’t really want to start saving for Christmas shopping, did you?  You really wanted to blow it all on these fine pre-orders and crowdsourced games instead!

Sea Kings (Worthington Publishing)
$4800 of $15k, ends 1 Nov 2014

Worthington makes some of the best lightweight wargames in the business, with hits like Hold the Line and Band of Brothers.  Sea Kings looks like it’s going to take that track record to the age of Vikings and give you a great little empire-builder that looks like a Euro with it’s cute wooden pieces, but whose theme actually means something and evokes a real time and place.  A combination of card play and area movement, Sea Kings is something that grogs can whip out with the non-wargaming crowd to still get a historical challenge when forced to play with a table full of folks that can’t spell “ZOC”.  Sail over to Kickstarter and conquer your fear of pledging.

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09/3/14

GenCon 2014 – Paradox Talks Runemaster

Cyrano grabbed a few minutes with Troy Goodfellow of Paradox at GenCon, and had a chat about Runemaster.

Click images to enlarge

runemaster_LOGO

Paradox Interactive isn’t just some software company: not to wargamers, and not to me. This, after all, is the band of Swedes that took a nigh-unplayable board game and turned it into one of the most successful strategic wargame franchises in PC gaming. This is the company that created the greatest medieval soap opera simulator in the history of everything and layered it on top of a robust conflict engine that lets me (and, apparently, some of the contributors to this very site) fancy themselves rulers of obscure kingdoms. And this is the company that soon (never soon enough, mind) will release one of the most anticipated World War II strategy games to come along in quite some time.

This is a company that has nurtured the wargame like its own child and kept alive the grognard fire during the harsh winter of console ascendancy.

So why, then, am I standing in the Paradox Interactive booth at GenCon talking to Troy Goodfellow about a game that involves the participation of men, elves, dwarves, and other fantasy races in the coming of Ragnarok?

And, let me say, talking to Troy Goodfellow about Ragnarok is weird in and of itself. He’s a widely-published games critic, co-founder and co-host of the “Three Moves Ahead” weekly podcast, and overall fanatic for the history of the Great Patriotic War. What, then, does he think he and the Paradox team are bringing to Runemaster, the up-coming turn-based, tactical RPG set in a world confronting the Norse eschaton?

The answer, reassuringly, is the ability to simulate people killing each other in various ways. OK, ok…Goodfellow, now an assistant producer at Paradox, and I spoke about other things…

Like the Clausewitz engine, for example. This is the system, first built for Europa Universalis III in 2007 that’s lurking under Runemaster’s hood. He said, early in his tenure with Paradox, he was invited to corporate and given a quick run through an earlier version of the game. He asked what it was running on and, when given the answer, admitted to being shocked.

Based on my own plays through the alpha of the game available at GenCon, I think most users will be shocked too. The game is in the family of Heroes of Might and Magic in that there’s an overmap where heroes are minted, armies raised, and experience gathered. It’s worth noting in passing that the game does not include city building or development. Heroes get their armies the old-fashioned way: at barracks.

Runemaster_pdxcon_screenshot_01

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