Tag Archives: Industry
Tuesday Interview – Luke Hughes of Burden of Command
The main brain behind the forthcoming Burden of Command has a chat with GrogHeads ~
Brant Guillory, 11 July 2017
When I hear “Burden of Command” I start to flash back to my days as a company commander, and being buried under a pile of 15-6 investigations, dental cat-IVs, and guys who couldn’t qualify with their personal weapons. I’m assuming the newly-announced “Burden of Command” game isn’t a game of competitive administrative duties. Give us the thumbnail insight of what we can expect in the new game, and why this one is more focused on the ‘burden’ of command than other similar games on the marketplace?
Damn, I can run but now I can’t hide. A real company commander, I’d love to know when and where! (ed note: nothing exciting – it was a National Guard HHC while the rest of the battalion was mobilized)
Now you are so right, real command is a lot of administrative tedium puncture by rare moments of terror. However, maybe not such a great game. Though the game “Papers Please” might teach us differently. What you can expect in BoC is not only the command and control decisions you associate with classic wargames (directing fire and maneuver, and the 4 F’s: find, fix, flank, and finish) but the morale oriented decisions we might associate with a classic tactical board game (ASL, Combat Commander, Band of Brothers, Fields of Fire).
Finally, and more unusually, you must take responsibility for the “preserve” decisions around the men’s physical and psychological welfare on and off the battlefield. They will look to you for the right mindset to adopt in the face of war. Novelist Karl Marlantes, who dropped out of his Rhodes Scholarship to serve as a 1st Lieutenant in Vietnam wrote “What It is Like to Go to War.” He argued that, like it or not, when you go to war you enter a spiritual journey because you are in the presence of death. You have entered the “Temple of Mars” as he so eloquently put it. Whether or not you or your superiors have prepared you for that experience, and for making life or death decisions is a different question. But the burden will be yours, prepared or not.
In sum, leadership in BoC is “Direct, Motivate, and Preserve.” And the burdens are many.
Origins – Raffle Winners
Who went home with their prizes from #Origins2017? ~
Brant Guillory, 27 June 2017
Photos by Corrinne Mahaffey
One of our highlights every year is the end-of-Origins raffle. Everyone who plays in a ticketed event with us gets their names thrown in the cup for a raffle prize, to go along with the table prizes we’re giving out all convention long. Some of those guys are in there 4 or 5 times, too! Why? Simple – we’re rewarding the wargamers who sit down and play a bunch of games with us!
More accurately, the vendors who donate their kind and generous support to our events are rewarding those gamers that are sitting down to game with us.
This year we had prizes for the raffle from Enterprise Games/GMT, DVG, Dust Tactics, Academy Games, Flying Pig Games, LNLP, and more, to go with a bunch of GrogHeads t-shirts. We would’ve had more to give out from the great folks at LPS, High Flying Dice, Collins Epic, Lost Battalion, and Proving Ground, but our gamers had already snatched up those prizes earlier in the show!
This year we even experimented with live-tweeting the raffle, which went about as well as you’d expect it to, based on a last-minute decision.
So without further ado, our winners, and some scenes from the raffle itself.
Chat about it below, or in our forums, or hit our FaceBook page >>
Origins Convention Report – Lock ‘n Load Publishing
Catching up with David & the crew at #Origins2017 ~
Michelle Owczarski, 26 June 2017
We’re still working our way through our Origins 2017 reports, even though we’re over a week past the show!
With a staggering release of 30 new or updated titles, Lock ‘n Load Publishing earns this reporter’s “Most Ambitious” prize for Origins 2017.
Due to shipping issues from the printer, David Heath said he had a limited number of each title air shipped to meet expectations for his booth. Even so, response has been strong with approximately 40% of convention stock sold on the first day.
Brand-new to Lock ‘n Load Publishing is the Lock ‘n Load Tactical Solo set, a card-based tactical rules AI, called AEO, or Artificial Enemy Opponent, allowing a player to enjoy any of the Lock ‘n Load titles in solitaire mode.
Origins – Breaking News with Academy Games
We’re bringing you a fresh scoop from #Origins2017 ~
Michelle Owczarski, 16 June 2017
Breaking News – Uwe Eickhart reveals Academy Games’ Agents of Mayhem Tie-In Board Game
During an interview with GeogHeads, Uwe Eickert explained that Academy had been working for three years with video game publisher Volition on a board game based on their Saints’ Row IP. The game is meant to expand on story and characters from the videogame.
The Agents of Mayhem videogame will be an open-world game in third-person perspective available on Playstation4, Xbox One and PC, and was announced at E3 to release in August 2017, but this is the first time Academy Games has spoken about it publicly. The board game, Agents of Mayhem – Pride of Babylon, from Academy Games is slated to launch at the same time.
Eickert said that working with the Saints’ Row IP was easier than historical games because there was less research to do. “Their writers were involved,” and were enthusiastic about the additional content the board game will include.
See www.academygames.com/aom for more information on the Academy Games Agents of Mayhem board game. Additional content from the Eickert interview to come.
Chat about it below, or in our forums, or hit our FaceBook page >>
Origins – Vendor Support!
Wargamers are awesome ~
GrogHeads Staff, 12 June 2017
As we ramp up for Origins, we’re in pretty regular contact with our vendor partners about the games we’re going to use in our events and how we’re going to support them at the convention. We’ve always made it a priority to showcase their newest and coolest, and then work in others that support our special events, like the Team COIN games, or (this year) the tournaments.
For our participants, those vendor partners have always come through with some excellent prizes – we give away at least one wargaming prize at every single one of our ticketed events, often full copies of games. 
This year, we also reached out to some other companies who were not able to attend Origins, and ask if they were able to offer a couple of games in support of the Central Command for us to use as prizes for gamers, and for our end-of-convention raffle.
HOLY. COW.
