Ah, the Close Combat series. Over twenty years old, and still disabusing people of the notion that World War 2 was won through heroic charges through enemy fire against improbable odds. The venerable simulationist strategy series has been crushing the spirits of would-be tacticians for a very long time now, although many of the games have been out of circulation for some time.
As Tim Stone spent his week knee-deep in virtual fishing holes, pouting at carp and tickling their barbels, it falls to me to report than serious strategy and wargame folks Matrix Games have launched their traditional holiday sale. You won’t find discounts as ridiculous as other sales, but they are cutting prices perhaps a touch deeper than they usually do. Boxed copies are on sale as well as downloads, so you can slip Gary Grigsby into your loved ones’ Christmas stockings.
Some wargames attempt to reconstruct a single battle in detail, be it Agincourt, Waterloo or the Somme Offensive. Some attempt to recreate an entire conflict or theatre of warfare. Norm Koger’s Operational Art of War series covers all of 20th century warfare, utilising a flexible set of mechanics and design tools. Today, Matrix announced that The Operational Art of War III, the sixth entry in the series, is receiving its long-awaited final update. On top of that, the development team behind the game have begun work on a sequel to this most intricately flexible of wargames prepares to enter the modern era.
Grigsby, Billings, and Brors are to PC wargaming what Stock, Aitken, and Waterman are to pop music… what Freeman, Hardy, and Willis are to shoe retailing… what Rock, Paper, and Shotgun are to outdated Anglocentric intro references. They started making hexagonal militaria in the days when Tyrannosauri and Triceratopses grappled, and dragonflies the size of Dragonflies dragonflew. Their latest release, War in the West, is their biggest and most elaborate design yet. Suitably intimidated, I spent Monday and Tuesday eyeing the colossus through fieldglasses, and Wednesday and Thursday prodding it with a long stick. Read the rest of this entry »
My first thought on watching Gary Grigsby’s War in the West‘s launch trailer was “Who the devil is Gary Grigsby?” My second was a curious, vague disappointment that all the black and white archive footage wasn’t accompanied by Laurence Olivier’s dulcet tones orating sombrely about World War II. It wasn’t until some nifty hex-based picture editing appeared that I remembered I was watching a game trailer.
In a world where it’s increasingly likely that game bundles will soon be given away with Happy Meals, people are often flabbered right down to the gasts when they see the prices over on planet Matrix. The wargaming/strategy publisher doesn’t discount its back catalogue as often as some companies discount their front catalogue, so when the annual holiday sale rolls around, it’s worth paying attention to. Lots of titles are discounted by 50%, including the excellentUnity of Command and its expansions. The Gary Grigsby titles are also on sale, as are many others, listed here.
I’m expecting to be crushed beneath an avalanche of trailers at any moment as the E3 machine grumbles into action. There will be spectacle, there will be slaughter, there will be Molyneux Santa Claus. There is a trailer in this post but it has very little in common with the noise of E3, being the last of the veteran Close Combat series to utilise the ageing engine that has driven the tactical games for many years now. Gateway To Caen is out now and watching the video plucks at my nostalgia nerves as if they were a cherub’s harp.
No tease before the jump here, let’s get straight to it. Distant Worlds: Universe is my favourite space strategy game. Not my favourite space strategy game released this week and not my favourite space strategy game released this year. It’s the definitive version of the best space strategy game I’ve ever played and I want to share the excitement with everyone, starting with an old friend. The transcript below explains all.
On May 14th this year, Castello di Pavone, one of Northern Italy’s swankiest strongholds, was invaded by an army of conflict-obsessed game developers. Were the devs in question…
a) Laser-scanning the fortress for a level in the soon-to-be-announced Hidden & Dangerous 3? b) Laser-scanning the fortress for a level in the soon-to-be-announced Commandos 5? c) Laser-scanning the fortress for a level in the soon-to-be-announced Bella Cantarella*? d) Attending Home of Wargamers 2014, a Slitherine Group press conference?
*Flare Path Soft’s debut project – a poison-sprinkled serving-wench sim set during the War of the Holy League.
If you crossed your fingers and answered a, b, or c, this week’s column may prove disappointing. Read the rest of this entry »
An exciting day. Even more exciting than an ordinary Friday. Even more exciting than an extraordinary Friday that marks the beginning of a long weekend (lot of those recently in this part of the world). Today is exciting because Distant Worlds: Universe has arrived, a standalone sequel/collection containing every previous release in the series as well as various improvements, new modding tools and a brand new storyline. If that’s not enough, take note of the fact that you can also build planet destroyers. Distant Worlds is one of my favourite space strategy games, mainly because it convincingly simulates conflict and empire on such an enormous scale while allowing for minimal micromanagement thanks to smart automation. Lovely.
There are several reason contributing to the fact that wargames have remained a niche hobby while comic books and Dungeons & Dragons have stealthily infiltrated the mainstream. Look at the image in this link. Perhaps your reaction is to spit axle grease into your hands, rub them together and wrestle with the hexes and stats immediately. Or maybe you think the whole thing looks like a particularly unpleasant piece of history/mathematics homework. The fact that publisher Matrix lists Germany At War as “Complexity – Basic” is one of the key reasons that wargames are in a niche. They think that basic training involves holding your breath underwater for two hours while completing an extremely difficult Sudoku. It doesn’t help that they’re pricey and rarely have demos, but Germany At war now has a trial version. So jump in and measure the complexity.
I first heard about Pandora: First Contact when an RPS commenter linked to it as being ‘maybe a bit like Alpha Centauri’. Except that’s not true, because I’ve since remembered that I first heard about the planet-settling turn-based 4X game when frequent RPS contributor and friend-o-person Dan Griliopoulos updated his LinkedIn profile to mention he wrote for the game. Now the game is out.
To prove that this relationship doesn’t impact on my ability to be a hard-hitting journalist, I put tough questions to Dan about the game, and I’ve included his responses along with the launch trailer below. Read the rest of this entry »
Like Autumn, the forest alchemist, I’ve spent this week splashing hillsides with gold and crimson. In woods, fields and towns the length of West Germany I’ve been tirelessly turning earthy greens into vibrant reds and yellows. Hundreds of hurrying APCs, hastily dug-in MBTs, and hovering helo gunships have flared like frost-startled beech trees as I’ve fought to resist Red Storm’s irresistible red storm. It’s years since I witnessed such wholesale destruction in a tactical wargame, and years since I was so impressed by the rules and mechanisms underpinning hexagonal aggro.
ACRONYM GLOSSARY (Please memorise before proceeding)
ASW – Anti Submarine Warfare. AEW – Airborne Early Warning. SEAD – Suppression of Enemy Air Defences. DICASS – Directional Command Active Sonobuoy System. SSN – Nuclear-powered submarine. ITWPWT – Innocent Trawler in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time. CMANO – Command: Modern Air Naval Operations. CHR – Compendious Harpoon Replacement. ESS – Essentially Ship-Shape. DSDDB – Despite Shoal of Disappointing Deficiencies and Bugs. ADPP – And Divisive Price Point. RRDAII – Refreshingly Responsive Devs Already Implementing Improvements. Read the rest of this entry »
Toady in Flare Path: brief thoughts on the latest Matrix Games/Slitherine pricing controversy, Ilya Shevchenko reflects on the DCS WWII Kickstarter campaign, the Foxer is renamed the Fuchser in honour of Steel Beasts 3.0, and ‘today’ and ‘misspelled’ are mispelled. Read the rest of this entry »
Wargame publishing leviathan Slitherine held their 2013 press conference last Friday. Fredericksburg, Virginia was the venue and I was there! In spirit. Physically I was in a small room in Staines, Surrey eating fig rolls and reading Nevil Shute’s ‘Pastoral‘ but I’m determined not to let a minor detail like that get in the way of pithy reportage. With the help of half a bottle of Auntie June’s extra-strong sloe gin, enough press releases to wallpaper a Pickett-Hamilton fort, and considerable experience of events of this type, I’m sure I can provide a fairly accurate account of what went on.
Every day is D-Day -1 for the busy Seabees at Slitherine Software. An Epsom-based outfit that started life constructing singular sword-and-sandal TBSs, is now, thanks to a slew of acquisitions and a dazzlingly dynamic approach to talent spotting/signing, the dominant force in PC wargame publishing. During the coming year, company chieftain Iain McNeil will be overseeing more than fifty releases. Realising I knew little about the firm’s founder, philosophy, or plans, I dragged Iain away from a red-hot field radio and a sand table crowded with 15mm Hoplites, Panzer Grenadiers, astronauts and Space Marines for a chat.Read the rest of this entry »
In the summer of 2001 I bought a copy of This Blessed Plot at a village fête for 20p, never suspecting that the hefty tome was destined to sit unfinished on my bookshelf for the next twelve years. My failure to get any further than chapter 3 – ‘Russell Bretherton’ – I’ve always blamed on Hugo Young, Russell Bretherton, or Tim Stone (Perhaps I’m not as interested in Britain’s troubled relationship with Europe as I thought I was). A recent forum comment from the boss of the World’s busiest computer wargame publisher suggests another possible cause. Perhaps the book was simply too cheap.
