During 2004-2006, I probably thought about Battlestar Galactica at least once an hour every single day. Grown-up sci-fi where everyone was at least a bit bad, the space battles felt tangible as well as spectacular and the enemy was as unknowable as they were implacable. And then… well, let’s instead pretend what happened didn’t happen, BSG stayed the BSG we all loved, and some time in the middle of all that we got Battlestar Galactica Deadlock [official site], a ‘simultaneous turn-based’ strategy game that’s all about space battles and space battles alone, and most importantly, missiles do that cool, slow, curvy thing as they fly.
Let’s pretend it happened in 2005 rather than 2017, and this is but a fond look back at a time when everything BSG touched turned to gold. Read the rest of this entry »
Greying temples? Check. Mortgage? Check. Fond of Werther’s Originals and New Tricks? Check.
Gosh, according to recently issued Home Office guidelines I’m now qualified to grumble about things like soft prison sentences, the inexorable decline in the quality of pop music, and scandalous gaps in the National Curriculum. If I wanted to I could begin a review of the latest Athena-engined wargame by wagging a finger at a state education system that allows subjects of Good Queen Bess II to leave school knowing next to nothing about one of the most traumatic episodes in British history. Read the rest of this entry »
Mare Nostrum, the galley warfare wargame currently in production at Turnopia, shouldn’t have any trouble eclipsing the competition. To my knowledge, in the forty or so years since home computing and tactical gaming first cuddled up, ancient naval aggro has inspired only one title and that title is probably best forgotten. Read the rest of this entry »
April showers filling my gutters, May blossom spangling my hedge, June bugs headbutting my window… Mother Nature seems to have muddled her months this year. I’m not one for idle gossip as you well know but Mr Valentine at the sweet shop reckons she’s back on the gin. Apparently she reeked of the stuff when she came in for her sherbet lemons on Monday. Just to be on the safe side I recommend everyone stays in this weekend and plays personal computer games about war and aeroplanes. That’s what me and the six FOFPs* below are planning to do.
Strategy publishers Slitherine have sent word that they’re working on a Battlestar Galactica game. It goes by the name Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock [official site] and is under development at Black Lab Games, creators of 3D tactical fleet battler Star Hammer. Galactica looks to be similarly based around ship-to-ship combat, focusing on the defense of the Twelve Colonies during the first Cylon war. Expect fleet building as well as tactical combat, and characters old and new. It’s coming this summer and you’ll find more details and a trailer below.
Let’s see if I can get through this without using the W word. Afghanistan 11 is a w****** (history-steeped military strategy game with influential terrain and plausible, reality-derived unit relationships) but it would be a tragedy if w******* (habitual users of history-steeped military strategy games with influential terrain and plausible, reality-derived unit relationships) were the only people who ever stumbled into its quicksand. The W word, especially when used in close proximity to hexy screenshots, tends to imply threadbare themes and moribund mechanics. It doesn’t generally suggest a game with the irresistible momentum of Civ, or the colourful intricacy of Tropico. A game like the quietly brilliant Afghanistan 11. Read the rest of this entry »
The Panzer Corps [official site] are showing their age. You can see it in the rust that is accumulating around their joints and hear it in the strained rumble of their engines. Even the hexes look a little worn around the edges these days. It’s no surprise really – the old stalwart has seen a lot of action. Five years in the field. Five years of branching campaigns and the kind of wargaming that even a genre novice can hope to learn. Well, it’s time for reinforcements to arrive so the old Corps can take some time for rest and recuperation, or perhaps be put out to pasture for good.
Slitherine send news that Panzer Corps 2 is in development and it’ll be all shiny and 3D thanks to Unreal Engine 4.
The never-ending conflict between Warhammer 40K’s Orks and the greatest warriors of the Imperium of Man, the Space Marines, is an ouroboros that’s already trapped us all inside it. An infinite war, spawning an infinite number of smaller digital wars on our PCs, making sure we can never, ever escape.
Warhammer 40K: Sanctus Reach [official site] is the latest snapshot of the war, a turn-based strategy affair that, of course, pits Space Marine against Ork over a planet that nobody in their right mind would want to live on anyway. Here’s wot I think. Read the rest of this entry »
Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach [official site], the turn-based wargame of grimdark futurewar and wacky fun orky waaagh!, launched last night. It’s not quite an adaptation of the tabletop ruleset but I do hear it feels like a streamlined version, which is nice. For all the Warhammer 40k games we have growing on trees, showering the waaaaghpavement with waaaaghfruit and waaaaghleaves that make careless waaaaghchildren slip and break their pretty little waaaaghfaces, they rarely get too near tabletop territory. Read the rest of this entry »
Dawn of War 3 may be 2017’s big exciting Warhammer 40,000 real-time strategy game but I’d forgotten that more ponderous 40k is coming too. Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach [official site] arrives before Dawn of War, later this month, and its strategerisating is turn-based. Sanctus Reach will see the Space Marine space viking Space Wolves scrapping with those lovable Ork space hooligans. Yes, yes I know we’ve got bland 40k games up the wazoo but Sanctus Reach publishers Slitherine do at least know a thing or two about turn-based stratagerating. Here, check out the new trailer which reminded me of this game’s existence: Read the rest of this entry »
‘Tis the season to be jolly vigilant. With the six-week Matrix/Slitherine Christmas sale underway and Steam in the midst of a five-day autumnal tariff squeeze, several excruciatingly expensive wargames are currently just expensive, quite a few expensive wargames are now affordable, and a handful of cheap wargames are doing passable impersonations of gift horses. Prowling the various bargain basements like an extra-grumpy Philip Serrell, these are the deals that have caught my eye… Read the rest of this entry »
Crisis! Geoff, the retired sailmaker who usually stitches together FP news stories, phoned in sick this morning (housemaid’s knee). We’ve experimented with alternative fastenings – velcro, staples, bulldog clips, ant-head sutures… – but none of them are strong and flexible enough to join this week’s selection of topical sim and strategy snippets. Unless Irma’s ongoing porridge experiments prove successful, I fear today’s column will have to take the form of an index finger inconveniencing gallery. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m glad Strategic Command 3’s camera is a tad myopic. Not being able to see the Panzers parked in Parliament Square… the SS Sturmgrenadiers marching down The Mall… Mosley and Hitler shaking hands on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, means I can push north towards unconquered Scotland with a spring in my goose-step. Read the rest of this entry »
Listen up, youse grots! Fings are gonna get orky round ‘ere and if you fink dat- ‘scuse me. HRRRK. HNNGGRRK. Ahem. Sorry. Little bit snotty in the throat. What I was trying to say is that Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon – Da Orks [official site] is now out. It’s a standalone follow-up to 40k: Armageddon, a seriously hexy turn-based strategy game recreating a great war from our grimdark future. While that focused on Spoice Murines and their steadfast defence of the planet Armageddon, Da Orks shows the other side – a load of orks larking about and having a nice big WAAAGH!
Warhammer strategy games are thick on the ground, and my current favourites cover both the Fantasy and 40k settings. In Fantasyland we have Total Warhammer and in the grimdark future, there’s Armageddon, the hexy wargame from publishers Slitherine. Dawn of War III brings RTS to the 41st millennium again soon, but Slitherine have just announced that they’ll be returning to the eternal war as well. Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach [Steam page], running on the company’s new 3d Archon engine, looks like it might be the closest thing to a digital version of the tabletop game we’ve seen yet.
Empires Apart [official site] is an upcoming RTS that “wants to be Age of Empires at heart”, say Slitherine, who have just announced that they’ll be publishing DESTINYbit’s game when it’s ready for release in the second half of 2017. I hadn’t heard of the title until today, so I’ve been digging through old development video blogs like a digital archaeologist. You can see the three videos produced to date below, as well as an announcement trailer.
Flare Path Air Services isn’t like other airlines. Both of the aircraft in our fleet remember where they were when JFK was shot demobbed. Daisy, our DC-3, is as happy hauling live poultry and frozen prawns as lairy tourists and prayerful pilgrims. The WC aboard Old Red, our Piper Cub, consists of a funnel and a beer bottle. And currently we’re the only airline in the world brave/visionary enough to have built a fireworks factory on its home airfield. Read the rest of this entry »
“This samurai-stuffed Pike & Shot spin-off is currently my favourite wargame of 2016,” our resident warmaster Tim Stone declared when he looked at Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun [official site] last week. Unless young Master Stone has flitted to a new warflower like a warhummingbird since then, you can now get into the same groove as our lad. That will bring you one step closer to your goal of becoming his bestie. Of becoming HIM. By which I mean Sengoku Jidai launched today.
Q’s tail is a trip hazard. V and J often fall over in high winds. B lacks dignity*. Rain tends to collect in M and U… Many letters of the alphabet have inherent flaws but here at The Flare Path we treat all 26 with equal respect when we’re compiling one of our breathtakingly superficial alphabetical sim and wargaming news round-ups.
Panzer Corps [official site], the heir to the Panzer General series of WWII strategy games, is free to play this weekend through Steam. The free weekend has already begun (unlike the actual weekend, I grumble into my third coffee of the morning) and “during that time there will be a 75% discount on the base game and a 50% discount on all the DLCs” say publishers Slitherine. That’s £3.74 for the base game and £30.49 for the gargantuan collection. A splendid opportunity to take these monstrous vehicles for a test drive.
