Tag Archives: Miniatures Gaming
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!
GenCon 2014 – A Report From The Floor
Cyrano ventures south (from him!) to Indianapolis, to file this report from GenCon
Somewhere, amidst all the other detritus I’ve gathered, I have this angry pin. It was made the year after Those Who Make Gen Con (TM) chose to take historical miniatures gaming and place it in a dark basement (I neither jest nor exaggerate) of the Milwaukee Auditorium. It reads simply: “I found the miniatures games at Gen Con”.
Gen Con left my hometown for the center of Indiana over a decade ago, and historical gaming of all kinds has fared little better since. Cards and clicks may have been replaced by cards, anime, and cosplay, but it still takes a dedicated grog to find something appropriate to his or her tastes.
Role-playing, of course, can be found in abundance
And Gen Con this year took real patience. It’s fairly well known that the hotel block reserved by convention organizers was significantly increased this year but still sold out in less than an hour. The on-line “wishlist” event registration system resulted in large queues and, at least anecdotally, gamers not getting into their first, second, or third choices. The exhibit hall was expanded yet again and yet, according to the folks to whom I spoke, sold out in near record time. I’ve long made it my habit to hit the convention hard Wednesday through Friday in the hope of avoiding the worst of the crush of humanity that arrives on Saturday. This year the crowds came on Wednesday night and never seemed to let up.
In all this, though, there were those flying the wargaming colors and I write this to honor them.
Risk: Battlefield Rogue – First Look!
Yes, Risk. It’s a skirmish game, not a conquer-the-world game. Truth be told, it’s a videogame on your tabletop, which is what you’d expect from a cross-branded game that is using the Risk name to sell a tabletop adaptation of the Battlefield series.
The thick box belies the contents. If there were expansions coming, the size of the box would be appropriate.
AARsday! Sergeants Miniatures Game at Origins 2014
Game Master extraordinaire Vance Strickland gives us a quick dash thru one of the games he supervised at the GrogHeads Wargaming Central Command at Origins.
Vance Strickland, 10 July 2014
Click images to enlarge
The last organized game of Sergeants Miniatures Game (SMG) of the con was to be a team game. We had three people show up, along with one guy’s wife who he convinced to be his team mate. She was obviously a gamer but said she was not a wargamer.
So with four people, two playing the US paratroopers and two playing the German light infantry, Rob Belli from Lost Battalion Games set about explaining the rules. While this was going on the husband kept asking me about the tactics of the game, how certain terrain worked, what was the best way to use a firebase and a maneuver group etc… which was all good, but this wasn’t Advanced Squad Leader. SMG is a light skirmish-level game that’s meant to be fun and fairly quick to play. His wife was listening intently to Rob’s explanations as were the two German players.
In my head I gave each of the players name tags. Cpt. Ernest and Plucky Wife were the US players. The German players were a gentleman in his early 60’s and young man in his 20’s. Both German players were wargamers and recognized SMG for what it was. The German players became Junior German and Senior German to me.
Each team player was given a section consisting of five troops, including a mix of rifle and sub-machine gun armed men, an NCO leader, and a machine gunner. The NCO leader gives you more action cards to draw each turn, which gives you more options for what you can do in a turn. It’s best to protect these guys but you can’t leave them too far behind because they are also the ones that can rally your pinned troopers.
Rob Belli explains the rules to the teams
GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #48
So the 4th of the July, we’re bringing 4 excellent GARPA possibilities. No, we won’t bring you 19 on the 19th.
BOAR, MBT Expansion (GMT Games)
203 Orders to date – not there yet
GMT’s modern-day tank shootout MBT has the usual suspects: the US 7th Army and the GSFG. But there’s plenty of tank-blasting goodness up on the Lüneberger Heide where the British Army of the Rhine was facing down an equally vast array of Soviet forces. The MBT games are scaled at the squad and individual vehicle level, ensuring tight focus on tactical shootouts where a bayonet charge is always possible. MBT is on p500 itself, but while you’re over there, get an order in for BAOR, too, and refight the whole shebang back in the late ‘80s.
