Tag Archives: Strategic
What’s Gus Playing? Episode 8
The low-flying lord of longswords swings his blade around Eastern Europe ~
Lloyd Sabin, 27 November 2017
With the darkness and cold this time of year, I need some comfort food and some comfort gaming as well as beer. My ultimate comfort gaming series is Total War. It just makes me feel good. And one of the best Total War games is Medieval 2.
It just makes me feel good.
Combine one of my favorite series with one of my favorite installments of that series and it just doesn’t get much better…unless I add one of the best mods for a Total War game…Stainless Steel! I recently installed Stainless Steel v6.4 after having issues with it for years and settling for v6.3. It works like a charm now, runs extremely smooth and I haven’t had one CTD in about 15 hours of play. Not sure what finally clicked but I’ll take it.
If you have loved the Total War series even a little, you owe it to yourself to try Stainless Steel v6.4. If you enjoyed Medieval 2, run, don’t walk, and grab it right now. You’ll need a copy of the Kingdoms expansion as well. Here, have this link. It has everything you need to get started.
Arms & Ambition – Playtest Report
GrogHeads had a chance to check out a pre-release playtest of the new Arms & Ambition boardgame ~
Chris Caran, 15 November 2017
This weekend while attending the MACE convention in Charlotte, I had an opportunity to sit down with Brad Warren and play his new wargame, Arms and Ambition. The game is in development, but very polished so far – a beautiful vinyl mat, 3D printed pieces, and professionally printed cards. Only the rules and documentation are still in developmental mode.
In the game, you play one of eight noble families vying for the throne after the ruling dynasty collapses. Each family has starting territory and “family ambitions” – victory conditions specific to the player. The overall goal is to gain 100 victory points and declare yourself the new king. You have starting units and each territory you own (represented by a card) has an income value.
GrogHeads Reviews Sovereign of the Seas
Global naval conflict in the Age of Sail? Yes, please! ~
Jim Owczarski, 26 August 2017
The child of many gifts who does not rise to his potential is a cliche. Now a parent, I find that cliche, when made flesh, to be one of the most frustrating of human experiences. After all, this is a person you love with all your heart, who you know is capable of remarkable things, and yet, in this moment, for reasons you cannot discern, is just not, well, getting it done.
Thus my summary of Compass Games’ Sovereign of the Seas, an improvisation on the theme of Avalon Hill’s legendary War at Sea that has within it some legitimately fun, if light, game play, but needed more time in development; development that now, unfortunately, is being handled after release.
The Tuesday Interview – COIN on Mars!
The designer of the home-brewed COIN-on-the-Red-planet game gives us the scoop on his personal design ~
Brant Guillory, 25 July 2017
The COIN system has taken a variety of odd directions – some modern, some not – many of which we’ve covered here at GrogHeads. One place the COIN system had not yet gone was to space. Until now.
A home-made COIN-based game, set on Mars, has started to capture some attention, and there’s some buzz about it on teh interwebz. With that in mind, we tracked down the creator (wasn’t too hard, he’s on BGG!) and bugged him with some questions about his design.
First, the obvious question – this wasn’t anything official from GMT, was it? You’re not just part of a, ahem… “guerrilla” marketing campaign, are you?
Not official from GMT in any way shape or form. When I first had the idea for the game I messaged Volko and asked his permission to use the game engine. He was 100% cool with that and said if I ever wanted to publish the game, that GMT would be the place to do it.
As it stands, there is no agreement, formal or informal, with GMT to publish the game. Ideally, there will be. Otherwise this will end up being a free PnP game.
GrogHeads Central Command Origins Events 2017
What’s coming up at Origins this summer? ~
GrogHeads Staff, 8 April 2017
Per GAMA, event registration goes live on 3 May.
What’s on tap this year? Plenty!
- Tournaments! We’ve got afternoon/evening tournaments for Lock’n’Load Tactical, Quartermaster General, Spearpoint 1943, and Twilight Struggle
- Team / Group events! In addition to our Command Post Wargaming, we have a pair of Team COIN games back this year, plus big team games of Old School Tactical, Sergeants!, and Crucible of Force (Slaughter in the Snow).
- Kids! We’ve got a special wargaming program this year for the kids – yes, KIDS! We’ve got 4 games that we’ll be running all weekend, in shorter 1-hour sessions. And for any kid who plays all 4 games at least once each, we’ve got a special Junior General prize. These games are for kids age 7-14, and they must have an adult come to the table with them.
Which companies are here with us?
- Griggling Games! Quartermaster General, and some expansions
- Flying Pig Games! Mark’s got 5 (five! fünf! cinco! V!) different games over the course of the weekend with us
- Enterprise Games! With their support for our GMT events again this year, we’ve Fields of Despair, Wing Leader Supremacy, some COIN events, C&C Ancients for the kids, and the Twilight Struggle tournament
- Collins Epic Wargames! We’re running Spearpoint 1943 events (for the kids, too), but look for Polyversal, also
- Lost Battalion Games! The always-awesome Sergeants! games are back, and look for their award-winning tiles, too
- Proving Ground Games! Bringing the lead to the battle, with their minis wargaming, and a special movie-monster scenario for the kids
- Lock’n’Load Games! Nations at War, LNLT, and tanks for the kids
Over 65 events across 4 days, for all your wargaming goodness. Plus, show up Wednesday afternoon and see what the staff has on the table just for their own fun 🙂
When you’re looking for our events in the Origins master event grid, they all start with “GrogHeads Presents”. We did that to make it easier to find when sorting through a giant spreadsheet with over 6000 events, however we stripped it out of the names on our event grid here just to simplify the listings.
Don’t forget that everyone who plays in our events gets a discount with our vendor partners, and gets entered for some great Sunday-morning raffle prizes. There’s also at least one prize for one of the players at every one of our events.
Note that the kids’ events – as noted above – have a special prize for kids who check out all 4 of the different games, and do not have prizes for each individual event.
Click through for the sortable table of events
