This week, the Tuesday Screenshot returns with a look at the new Lock’n’Load: Heroes of Stalingrad, in haiku
Click to enlarge
Legion Wargames’ Picket Duty is a solitaire game from Steve Dixon, a designer that had a hand in creating B-29 Superfortress and its expansion, Hell Over Korea. I’ve been watching this title for some time now and was quite eager to get a copy, even though I’ve read discussions over on BoardGameGeek about how the current version 1.0 of the rules are confusing and a newer version is due out soon. Regardless, what I followed in development looked like a game with a lot of potential and great components.
You can view the game on Legion Wargames’ page here.
The box is a standard-sized wargame box, if a bit thinner than a ‘normal’ one.
Designer: John Butterfield and Publisher: Decision Games
as always, click images to enlarge
While I am quite a World War II geek, I’m not much into the airpower aspects of it. Most of my interest in that regard is with the bombing campaigns (and with it, games like B-17 Queen of the Skies); indeed, I’m more taken in with tactical and strategic ground combat and the games that focus on that arena. That said, the Battle of Britain has always fascinated me as a true ‘turning point’ campaign that had so many fulcrums and angles that it wasn’t really a foregone conclusion that the RAF would have pulled off a victory.
It was with great anticipation that, back in the late 80s, I found the first edition of RAF on my favorite hobby shop’s shelves. Solitaire games were big for me as it was hard back then to find opponents, and gaming fixes were sometimes few and far between. I was initially a little disappointed that I could only control the RAF in battle and not the Luftwaffe, but the game itself was solid, always different and therefore highly replayable, and even better, had quite a bit of tension to it.
I grabbed my copy of the second edition of RAF late this past summer and have been playing with it as often as I can in a chaotic house with a middle-schooler and a high-schooler and a wife who’s not all that big into games. No cats, fortunately.
Overview
RAF: The Battle of Britain 1940 is a simulation of the trying days of 1940 when the Luftwaffe sought to wipe the RAF from the skies of southern England, in preparation for Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of England itself. In the original first edition, you could only play the RAF, as I mentioned above; however, in this second edition, not only can you run the RAF solo, but also the Germans solo, or even play a two-player game. All the angles are covered here, and the added ability to run the German campaign solitaire seems to make for a hit-in-the-making. Of course, one must first open the box and see which way their initial impressions will run…
Out of the Box
Initial impressions were highly favorable when I opened my copy. The counters are nice and thick, with clearly-delineated information; these counters are much easier on the eyes, actually, than the old white silhouette from the older version. Unfortunately, these nice counters are almost impossible to separate cleanly and require trimming to do so, which is a major pain in the tail section. Perhaps it is simply my OCD, but I believe that counters must be clean and have sharply-defined edges – no rabbit bushy tails sticking out from the corners, thank you.
The cards are very nice as well, but I’m not sure they’re an improvement on the old version. While the older version was no-frills and was pretty much print on a card, they were legible and easy to read. The Second Edition’s cards are busy, with lots of background to decorate them. The fonts are similar, in that they’re sans serif, large, and sharp, but these new cards might be difficult to read for some people on a few of the cards.
Byron had sent some videos our way. And in classic GrogHeads “we’re-making-this-up-as-we-go” style, we forgot to include them in this weekend’s post decided to devote a new article just for them, since they’re so outstandingly awesome.
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Give us 3 words to describe Spearpoint 1943 as a game system.
Quick, Fun, Deep
OK, now give us the short paragraph – what’s special about the way Spearpoint 1943 plays, and where are wargamers likely to fit this into their staple of wargames?
Spearpoint 1943 is an expandable card game at its core (non-collectible). It’s highly portable with its small box and small footprint of play. It’s quick, deep, and keeps players interested because as you play, the game really tells a story. For players who want even more depth than just playing with cards, they can optionally expand it with the Village and Defensive Line Map Expansion that got a 2013 Origins Award Nomination for Best Historical Boardgame. The Map Expansion adds terrain boards that set up differently each game- it really changes the game and takes it even deeper- offering new challenges to Spearpoint players. It’s a very scalable system. Spearpoint fits nicely into a gamer’s library who seeks a great fast filler that’s easy to teach (even to teenage sons/daughters), yet scratches that tactical itch without drowning players in minutia. It’s also been called an excellent ‘filler’ game between larger wargames.
What was the genesis behind Spearpoint 1943 and what were some of the design challenges you experienced along the way?
Spearpoint 1943 came about at WBC one year. I was trying to demonstrate my very first design, which was much more complex (Frontline General: Italian Campaign Introduction). I didn’t have time to show such a complex game, so focused on demonstrating just one element of it- combat. From there, Spearpoint was born. After honing the game to be a standalone card game, the combat system became even better and more fun. Breaking it out of my first game made me realize that everything else I had done with that original design wasn’t quite as fun as just focusing on the combat. The original Spearpoint 1943 is my best-selling game, was my first game in distribution, and remains popular- hence the expansions and new standalone game- Spearpoint 1943 Eastern Front. Continue reading