So back when GMT had their sale-most-excellent at the beginning of the summer, Vance picked up their strategic WWII ETO game Unconditional Surrender, and has shared the photos of their unboxing.
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 5th, 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!
Next War: Taiwan, GMT Games
p500 made the cut – shipping date not set yet
With a $30 discount for preordering, GMT’s latest entry in the Next War line of games aims for the near-future Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It includes rules for some basic naval conflict, given the amphibious nature of the likely assault. The standard game is the ground war shootout, and the advanced rules layer on some robust tracking of airpower. It’s battalion- and brigade-level wargaming that’s not for newbies to the tabletop, but is a well-tested system for modern conflicts that has many fans in the grognard community. Go give it a look and get your order in.
GrogHeads has covered A Distant Plain with an interview with the designers, and the photos of the unboxing. All well and good, of course, but how does it play?
There are several reasons why A Distant Plain can be tough to review. That said, they are all the same reasons that make it a compelling game. How many multiplayer wargames have you played where the players are not simply extensions of a team, but rather working at cross purposes as often as not? How many wargames have you played with an elastic time scale? How many wargames eschew anything resembling unit factors or quantified values? And now take all those tweaks and roll them into a single game, and drop into an ongoing conflict whose outcomes are not yet truly determined.
The Story
There are four players: The Coalition, The Government, The Taliban, and the Warlords. Of these, the Taliban are the only one for whom you can draw a reasonably straight line directly from the real life organization in Afghanistan directly to a game role. The Government essentially represents the Karzai administration, but there are game effects that seem to clearly outstrip the existing government’s capabilities. The Coalition is a mix of ISAF, the US, some NGO capabilities, and other external actors attempting to influence actions in Afghanistan. Finally, the greatest amalgam – the Warlords – are the ultimate ‘floater’ faction representing a collection of decidedly non-aligned ‘real’ actors who nevertheless represent a unified set of goals within the mechanics of the game.
The varying scenarios allow you start the war in 2002, 2005, or 2009, but all tend to end around 2013 or so. Obviously, the 2009 scenario is the quickest of them, but any of them will take most of an afternoon, if not more.
Opening the Box
We’ve covered the unboxing before, but to save you jumping to the link, here’s what you get: a solid, 8-panel, mounted, folding map with a ton of useful marginal tracks, boxes, and record-keeping tools; a single sheet of mounted, die-cut counters that are virtually all administrative in nature; a bag of Euro-game-ish markers for the players, representing bases and forces; some dice and pawns; a bunch of plastic bags; the deck of cards used to drive the game along; and a ton of very clear, useful, and well-designed player cards that clearly lay out what players can do on any given turn. Continue reading
This is a pretty hefty box. It’s a standard footprint, but several inches thick.
And there’s a reason for it – this box is loaded: player aids, 2 books, a countersheet, a bag of other markers, and a deck of cards.