Wargamer's Corner

Prozac wrote:

just read the aar's spelk. good stuff. where's the rest? :)

I'm working on it! Will have it out, soon-ish Thanks for reading the AAR.

Tom vs. Bruce Kickstarter. Looking for $10,000 to put together 10 articles over the next year. If they get more, well, there might be audio or video involved.

garion333 wrote:

Tom vs. Bruce Kickstarter. Looking for $10,000 to put together 10 articles over the next year. If they get more, well, there might be audio or video involved.

Someone pledged $1000 to read ten articles by these guys. That's a fan.

Funkenpants wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Tom vs. Bruce Kickstarter. Looking for $10,000 to put together 10 articles over the next year. If they get more, well, there might be audio or video involved.

Someone pledged $1000 to read ten articles by these guys. That's a fan.

Yeah, I'm all for Tom and Bruce--I loved that series of articles--but $10,000 is a lot of dough for ten articles. I wish them luck, though.I wonder if there is an archive available online of their old sessions.

Is 500 a really insane amount to pay a pseudo celebrity writer for an article+overhead?

Natus wrote:
Funkenpants wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Tom vs. Bruce Kickstarter. Looking for $10,000 to put together 10 articles over the next year. If they get more, well, there might be audio or video involved.

Someone pledged $1000 to read ten articles by these guys. That's a fan.

Yeah, I'm all for Tom and Bruce--I loved that series of articles--but $10,000 is a lot of dough for ten articles. I wish them luck, though.I wonder if there is an archive available online of their old sessions.

1up use to have the old articles. Not sure how far back it went. Maybe only the GFWL articles. Now that 1up's been sold and whatnot I'm not sure if they're still available.

http://www.1up.com/features/tom-bruc...

Well, that was easy to find.

duckilama wrote:

Is 500 a really insane amount to pay a pseudo celebrity writer for an article+overhead?

Nope.

Didn't see this mentioned, but we get another expansion for HoI3:

Paradox Helps You Relive “Their Finest Hour” Later This Year. Victory at all costs. Yes, it is true. It’s time to dust off the field marshal's baton and take command of any nation in World War II; the largest conflict in history.
Because one of Paradox Interactives and Paradox Development Studios' most expansive games will get even bigger this fall. Hearts of Iron III, the deepest and most expansive simulation of World War 2-era politics, science and warfare, will see a new expansion that offers players a greater connection to the period's history and new ways to jump straight into the action.

“Their Finest Hour” is the third expansion for Hearts of Iron III, and comes three years after the original game's release – further evidence of Paradox's commitment to building and growing their games well after the launch period, adding features and ideas requested by their active and involved international online community.

You can expect the expansion Hearts of Iron III: Their Finest Hour to land with a bang later in 2012.

Announced features for Hearts of iron III: Their Finest Hour include:

- Expanded espionage system with new and reworked missions, including new covert operations that can be performed on the map.

- New 'battle plans' mode where you can load historical plans, or draw your own and share with your allies in real-time in multiplayer games.

- New unique elite units for each major nation's army - Gurkhas, Rangers, Imperial Guards etc.

- Deeper naval invasions system including the development of specialized landing and assault crafts to improve the effectiveness of your assault.

- More detailed control over strategic warfare and a generalized lend-lease system to support your distant allies with your industrial might.

- Leaders are now able to gain traits, and assigning them to duty is more important than ever with the new combat tactics system for battles.

- A new custom game mode for both single and multiplayer. You start with a clean slate and can instantly produce units, research technologies and affect political alignment before the game begins. This allows you to model interesting 'what-if' scenarios and speeds up the early years for those who would like to jump straight into the action with no slow build-up.

- Two new detailed battle scenarios, the Russo-Finnish Winter War and the Spanish Civil War

Read more
Forum: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...!

It's hard to imagine them adding any more to that game. IMO it's already the most complex grand strategy game in their catalog.

While I greedily gobbled up Paradox expansions and DLC during the recent sale, that isn't what I'd call a particularly sexy feature list.

Cardboard question:

I asked this in the board gaming thread, but it didn't get any response, possibly because it sounded oblique or rhetorical, or they only want to talk about Cards Against Humanity—so I'll try harder here.

I'm looking at Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel for stepping up my wargaming from Memoir '44. Let's be clear, I'm not moving on from M44 ( ), but I want a second game that can fill a different role: a longer, more traditional hex-and-counter wargame with more granularity in units and play (e.g. facing, suppression, etc).

From what I've been reading, CoH seems to fit that bill perfectly, splitting a nice difference between wargame and Eurogame to boot. Then Storms of Steel in particular because planes.

Of course, there are also opinions that Tide of Iron is the better step up, or Combat Commander is the better game. Any Goodjers have any input one way or the other?

FWIW, a list of squad(-ish)-level tactical WWII games I've looked at, in ascending order of complexity, could be:

1. Memoir '44
2. Tide of Iron
3. Conflict of Heroes
4. Combat Commander (No tanks? No thanks.)
5. Lock 'n' Load
...
X. ASL

I'd put CoH at about halfway up the scale.

wordsmythe wrote:

I'd put CoH at about halfway up the scale.

Do you mean more complex, or less? Bear in mind, from that list I've only played M44, so I'm just going off what I've read others say about these games.

I tend to like heavy games, and I find CoH a nice, lighter option. I dislike M'44. (Personal preference)

Noooo.... Magna Mundi has been cancelled.

Well, good to see Paradox talking about bugs. Somewhat hypocritical, but promising nonetheless.

SpyNavy wrote:

This thread dropped down to page 5 - completely unacceptable. So here we go -

Matrix Games, Slitherine (www.slitherine.com) and Western Civilization Software (www.west-civ.com) along with Uwe Eickert (www.academy-games.com) are excited to announce the release of the tactical turn-based World War II game Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear!, which has had its roots in the award-winning current boardgame series. No effort has been spared to bring the outstanding Conflict of Heroes gameplay to the PC, Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! aims to capture the tactical wargamer’s heart!

So these are friends of mine (Western Civilization Software) back in Michigan. What do you wargamers think of the game? Also, they had some fun making a tool so that you can point your webcam at your dice roll, and it will count as your in-game dice roll. Anyone try this feature? Very curious...

From Rock, Paper, Shotguns latest The Flare Path article.

The ill-conceived Iron Front collages from a couple of weeks back elicited so many superb naming suggestions that it seems a shame to pick just one per vehicle. Gold runner-up FP Flair Points go to… Nikelspank, nimzy, Chris D, Simas Nick, Skabooga, Caleb367, & Dances to Podcasts

Fairly arbitrary Iron Fronted ones to …

IMAGE(http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab221/Strangeblades/Wargamers%20Corner/Capture-1.png)

IMAGE(http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab221/Strangeblades/Wargamers%20Corner/Capture2-1.png)

IMAGE(http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab221/Strangeblades/Wargamers%20Corner/Capture3.png)

IMAGE(http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab221/Strangeblades/Wargamers%20Corner/Capture4.png)

IMAGE(http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab221/Strangeblades/Wargamers%20Corner/Capture5.png)

E) Pheasant Plucker (“Meh. That’s just a Tiger II with the usual 88mm K43 L71 gun (88 minutes means Klucks 43 Lays 71)”), Man Raised by Puffins (“The famous ‘Henschel’s Hen Rack’ modification for the King Tiger (tanks thus modified were designated Sd.Kfz. 182-H “Huhntiger”). Crack units of five ‘Krieghuhn’ were trained to lay on command from the specialist Hen Commander, located in a new sponson/seed hopper on the left side of the turret (not pictured), providing the tank with an unparalleled level of protection against enemy infantry looking to off-load a cheeky sticky bomb at very close ranges.”) and Commander_Zeus (“well this is the famous Luftwaffe FallschirmHühner team. A favourite of Göring, they would parachute above the arena, landing in height order along the gun barrel of the latest Panzer (Tiger II in this case), to wild applause and honorary Knight’s Crosses.”)

Roo, I have to get more time in on it. I tried the initial scenario, but no one shot back at me. Maybe that's training, but I was kind of surprised. I do hear very good things about it from Wargamer.

Has anyone tried Fray, yet? Looks like a turn-based squad shooter in a future dystopia. Is it any good?

Michael wrote:

Noooo.... Magna Mundi has been cancelled. :(

Wow, that is really sad. I know MM doesn't have too many fans around here, but it is by far my preferred way to play EU3 now. Ubik has always had some, well, issues with communication and pride, so I'm not entirely surprised it is coming to this. Hopefully they'll be able to some product released at some point.

Took me longer than anticipated - but The Drift AAR - Part 5 is now up!
http://sugarfreegamer.com/?p=24498

spelk wrote:

Took me longer than anticipated - but The Drift AAR - Part 5 is now up!
http://sugarfreegamer.com/?p=24498

more, more. Can they hold?

In a herculean effort by myself, I have written the final part to The Drift 1879 AAR - Part 6!
http://sugarfreegamer.com/?p=38414

You're a star! will read now.

EDIT: Nice. I like your surviving number contrasted to the actual dead. You are a Bloody commander, and there's been a high butcher's bill this day.

Roo wrote:

So these are friends of mine (Western Civilization Software) back in Michigan. What do you wargamers think of the game? Also, they had some fun making a tool so that you can point your webcam at your dice roll, and it will count as your in-game dice roll. Anyone try this feature? Very curious...

Roo, I finally got over my weird reaction to the first tutorial (takes forever and no one shoots at you... disconcerting if you have any gaming experience at all, because that is not mentioned in the scenario), and I really enjoy the game now. Once you get the mechanics down - same as the board game - the fact that the computer handles all the details makes the game move along quickly so you get right into the action. So far, the AI is good, and I'm having a good time comp-stomping.

I particularly like the ability to use actual tactics. With the system, overwatch, flanking, pinning are all clearly useful and mechanically easy to implement. I like having that ability to put my LMG into a position where it can fire a good distance, and then move other units up under it's protection. The feel is like a cross between M44 and ASL, as noted above; it plays as quickly as M44, but the details under the covers are more like ASL.

With so many good games out now that I barely scratched, and 3 MMOs to pick from, even a tiny strangeness can send me reeling into the arms of World of Tanks or CKII (sheer bliss, frankly). So don't read too much into the time it took me to dive into Conflict of Heroes; it's a solid game and I hope they will sell enough to do the follow-ons.

Very nice series, Spelk. Surprised you didn't mention "The Washing of the Spears"... Read that yet?

Robear wrote:

Very nice series, Spelk. Surprised you didn't mention "The Washing of the Spears"... Read that yet?

No, I've not read that book yet.. I'm sure I will. It's a stock title for AZW folks. I think that book has a number of inconsistencies with what is the considered history now, but it is definitely on my list.

Still pushing through Ian Knight's Zulu Rising at the moment. He tells the tale from the wider perspective, and it makes very interesting reading. I missed his talk in Brecon, Wales a few weekends ago, sadly. He gave it from the pulpit of the Cathedral there, where the ACTUAL colours of the 24th Regiment now reside!

http://www.ianknightzulu.com/anglo-z...

This could be cool - a new Paradox game:

Paradox wrote:

East vs. West - A Hearts of Iron Game!
We are very proud to reveal our mystery project, “Project Reagan”, by announcing the upcoming game: East vs. West - A Hearts of Iron Game!

The game will be a Grand Strategy/Wargame set during the Cold War era - 1946-1991. The game is being developed by BL-Logic in close cooperation with Paradox Development Studio.

We want to recreate the political and military tension between the Eastern Bloc and the West, since we at Paradox Development Studio have long felt that a Cold War era game is missing from our lineup. So when BL-Logic – the creators of Arsenal of Democracy – presented their game concept based on the Clausewitz engine, we felt that it was a perfect match.

As the 1950’s approach, the arms race intensifies and the world fears World War III as the US and USSR fight for global dominance. Guide your country through this dangerous historical era with all means direct and conventional, nuclear or indirect, via diplomacy, espionage and economy.

Yes, we are teasing you and not revealing much
The game is very early in development and we will tell you much more when we enter alpha later this fall! So be on the look out!

Cold War era has been missing from their games. The whole nuclear thing makes gaming difficult, but I'm glad they're giving it a go now.

Oh, good. I've been waiting for them to push past WWII. The whole proxy war dynamic should be interesting.

Sounds neat. I've been hoping for a modern era Paradox game that's more open-ended than HoI. I'm curious what kind of systems they'll focus on in this one. I'm guessing since they're calling it a HoI game that it'll have the same sort of feel, perhaps with a more fleshed out diplomacy aspect.