02/27/16

2015 Readers’ Choice Award Winners

The nominations came in all year long.  The voting lasted a whole month.  And now the results are here, and your voices have spoken! ~

Gold Medals!
Congrats to our winners!
Overall Digital Game of the Year ~ Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa
Overall Tabletop Game of the Year ~ Churchill
Digital Wargame of the Year ~ Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa
Digital RPG of the Year ~ The Witcher III: Wild Hunt
Digital Civ/City/Rail-Builder of the Year ~ Cities: Skyline
Digital Sports Game of the Year ~ Project Cars
Digital Action/FPS Game of the Year ~ XCOM Enemy Within
Digital Expansion/DLC of the Year ~ Attila TW: Age of Charlemagne
Tabletop Wargame Game of the Year ~ Churchill
Tabletop Strategy Game of the Year ~ Star Wars: Imperial Assault
Tabletop Adventure Game of the Year ~ Dead Of Winter
Tabletop Euro/Family Game of the Year ~ Pandemic Legacy
Tabletop Expansion of the Year ~ Spearpoint 1943: Eastern Front
Tabletop Reprint/Rerelease of the Year ~ Empire of the Sun

At GrogHeads, our readers have the final say on the best games of the year, as we unveil the 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards…

First off, this year saw a variety of well-loved games released, and others updated with some excellent expansions.  And yet, even with an entire year to nominate games, we still had folks bemoaning “why wasn’t _____ on the list?”  The answer is the same every time: no one nominated it!  It’s your award, and you dear reader, get to pick your own choices.

Several categories were hotly contested, including at least one where we had a tie.  A few were runaways.  All of them were selected by you!

The GrogHeads Readers’ Choice Overall 2015 Digital Game of the Year was Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa, followed by Combat Mission:Black Sea, and XCOM Enemy Within in third.

GrogHeads Readers’ Choice Overall 2015 Tabletop Game of the Year was Churchill, which beat out Enemy Action: Ardennes.  Triumph & Tragedy squeaked into third, mere votes ahead of Star Wars: Imperial Assault.

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02/26/16

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #88

Here’s GARPA, our fortnightly bundle of pre-ordering goodness! ~

Pendragon: The Fall of Roman Britain (GMT Games)
p500 $65, MSRP $95

It got funded in a few days, so it is going to press. The latest entry into the COIN series keeps giving us counterinsurgency warfare from off the beaten path – no Malaysia or Sri Lanka here. This entry brings in a greater level of economics, and boffo-keen (though ahistorical) castle meeples. Scots and Saxons are among the factions that vie for power and veterans of the COIN system already know how to play. Liberty or Death sold out in a hurry, and that’s after all the p500 orders were delivered. Get this now, or miss out and be the laughingstock of the forums when you look for sympathy.

g88-pendragon

 

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02/12/16

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #87

And on the Frith Day, he gave us GARPA! ~

 

7th Sea, Second Ed (John Wick)
$481k of $30k, ends 13 March 2016

Another project that blew through its funding goal so fast that it almost feels like they’re just making up stretch goals as they go. 7th Sea was a beloved RPG that was popular in the early 00’s, in large part because the world of Theah was such a fantabulous setting. The creator now has the rights to his game back, and is updating all the material for re-publication, and by the looks of it, there’s a few thousand people that can’t wait to get back on the train. Sail over to their Kickstarter page and marvel at the depths of their stretch goals and drop your doubloons on your own pledge.

g87-sea

 

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01/27/16

GrogHeads Reviews Heroes of Steel

Dungeon Crawling Underground!  But how does it play? ~

By Avery Abernethy

 

Heroes of Steel is a turn based, combat RPG set in an underground world. Your four characters follow the traditional meme of a medieval world. This is a small party, turn based, combat sim. There is a story to string the combat along, but you have no choices in character personality or alignment. You are good. Your enemies are evil. You need to kill all of the evil.

To strike down the evil hordes you have a party composed of a fighter, a cleric, a thief and a wizard. There is one variant for each character type. For example, your cleric can be based more on healing or more on combat. The thief can be a bow equipped sniper who opens chests and detects traps. Or your thief can be more focused on a stealthy hand-to-hand combat while also opening locked chests and detecting traps.

HofSteel-Your fighter

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