Tag: TANKSgiving

11/25/17

GrogHeads Reviews Ogre (6th Edition)

Steve Jackson Games relaunches Ogre and we take a look at what’s inside ~

Michael Eckenfels, 25 November 2017

Despite my longevity with board gaming, and my particular fondness for Steve Jackson Games’ products (see our slew of Car Wars nostalgia articles I wrote), I never played Ogre. Ever.

I’ve been a student of military history since I was eight years old – about the time the first Ogre game came out, but that was because of a visit to Pearl Harbor and not because of the game. I’d seen Ogre in my various favorite game stores over the years, but I just never had enough interest in it to ever buy it. I could see the appeal of a futuristic David vs. Goliath conflict, but it didn’t appeal to me. I much preferred large armies duking it out over epic-sized maps to small-scale tactical combat. Even a gigantic tank rumbling without a care over desperate small units trying to stop it didn’t appeal much.

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11/21/17

Tuesday “Interview”: The Grogs’ Favorite Tank Games

We asked the Grogs to give us their favorite tank-heavy game ~

The GrogHeads Team, 21 November 2017

Cyrano

This one’s not even close:  Combat Mission in its various iterations.

These are games played with a merciless physics engine that feel every bit as gritty and grand now as they did nearly two decades ago.

I remember getting hooked on the WEGO gameplay and the ability the 3D environment gave you to peek over the shoulders of your digi-troopers and guess at what war must have been like for them.  Multi-player randomized battles to the wee hours of the morning were pretty great too.  What made both x1 and x2 really special, though, was the incredible variety of, yep, AFVs.  I’m not an WWII rivet-counter — I save my O.C.D. for Napoleonic games — but the fellows who designed Combat Mission are and it shows every time you pan around their products; not to mention the remarkable array of modifications available on-line.   There are no CRTs or bog charts here.  These are games played with a merciless physics engine that feel every bit as gritty and grand now as they did nearly two decades ago.  They’ve let me play with some of the most famous tanks of the war and some I never even knew existed.

Others have come for her throne, but CMx1 and x2 are still queen of the battlefield for me when it comes to tank warfare.

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11/20/17

TANKSgiving – Tanks and Armored Cars 1919-1939

Another gallery from a visit to Bovington  ~

Avery Abernethy, 20 November 2017

The tanks used in World War 1 were monstrous beasts that stood well over the ground. Most carried machine guns or at best very light cannons. After 1918 the industrial powers realized that anti-tank guns (and even anti-tank rifles) could easily knock out a WW1 era tank because of its thin armor, weak engine, slow speed and very high gun profile.

Much of the interwar period saw the development of Armored Cars and light tanks. Armored cars were much faster than the WW1 era tanks (especially on roads) and carried either similar or heavier guns than WW1 tanks. Thus the armored cars were faster, lower to the ground, less expensive to build, easier to maintain, and had more firepower than a WW1 tank.

Many armored cars were developed immediately after World War 1 through the early 1930s. As they developed, they became lower to the ground.

The development split into three directions.

In one direction the gun was removed and it became a scout car.  An example is the Dingo Mark 3.

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