It is 8:43AM and my attack has failed before it even has begun. It’s like something out of a war novel. Not a Tom Clancy technothriller, but one of those dark, brooding ones where everyone above the rank of sergeant is incompetent and the fighting is always futile. One after another, four out of the five KV heavy tanks that I’d pegged to suppress the German defences on the strongest position on the whole map had been immobilised. Stuck behind a hill, they could do nothing but spend the rest of the action stuck there uselessly. One crew bailed out – fifteen minutes later, they decided to get back in. The glories of modern war.

It is in those moments (of utter incompetence on the part of certain members of higher command) that Graviteam's latest DLC offering Black Snow is at its strongest. The uncertainty of attempting to push a bunch of not terribly excited minions through a frozen hellhole that is crisscrossed in trenches, barbed wire, mines and (not least) 88s is a feeling rarely found in games that traditionally rush to the more marketable aspects of war.

In this vein, Graviteam continues their habit of finding the most unknown corners of the gargantuan conflict that is the Eastern Front. This particular push is so unknown that it does not even appear on the list of offensives that makes up the Russian archival website Pamyat Naroda (although that may well have something to do with the attack having been in real life an abysmal failure). It is commendable that between endless recreations of Kursk and Stalingrad (and, needless to say, Normandy), such a forgotten piece of the war is given the Graviteam treatment.

What a treatment it is too. One would be slightly concerned upon putting down one’s hard earned cash to find that Black Snow only includes two scenarios, one for either side, as compared to the more usual selection of four. The pain would be more acutely felt given the premium price (20 USD in Down Under) that one will be paying for this. Nonetheless the value is there. Black Snow is by far the longest and perhaps the largest of any of Graviteam’s offerings. Whilst other campaigns might have perhaps a company of infantry a side (with generous support to be sure), here, right from the beginning as the Soviets try to break through the heavily fortified front, it is entirely possible for more than a thousand soldiers to be drawn into the mess. And if you’re anything like me as a commander (utterly incompetent), then you’re going to need all the men you can get.

Black Snow is perhaps the most punishing of the campaigns available for Mius Front. Certainly, with every assault faltering in the face of terrain carpeted in mines (make sure to bring your map reading skills to this one – see above), trenches and barbed wire, the resulting chaos can become more than a little bit frustrating. Mius Front’s UI and learning curve, while improved from its predecessor Operation Star, remains about as transparent as charcoal. Thus, for a beginner and even a player such as myself who has at least the basic concepts down, Black Snow can rapidly turn into an exercise in frustration, with the tools that you need to break an attack or crack the enemy’s defence aggravatingly difficult. The nature of the terrain does it no favours either. Sightlines are blocked by apparently endless forest. The rolling steppe of Mius Front seems a world away.

The unit AI also runs into occasional problems when dealing with this brave new forest world. Extracting itself from barbed wire seems to be a particular issue, with half a platoon often stuck in a merry-go-round in and out of the entanglements with the rest of up ahead wondering why their comrades haven’t arrived. Armoured vehicles also seem to have issues with dealing with entrenched enemies – with endless machine gun fire apparently being of little interest to them as they occasionally fire a round and lackadaisically open up upon something they’ve spotted. With the expectation that these vehicles would be ideal for covering infantry going forward, they feel more like white elephants as their supporting infantry is mown down. This is a shame, especially when considering that when the unit AI actually gets into its groove, there is something so genuine about the way it lays smoke, keeps to the low ground and (hopefully) pushes forward.

It is in those moments that Black Snow really gets into its stride. When it does work, the results feel genuine. A lot of games claim to allow the player to write (or rewrite) history. This is ultimately a personal matter as to what does and does not feel more genuine, but Mius Front and Black Snow succeed for me as few other games do. It can be frustrating, particularly for a new player (I’d strongly recommend not learning the game with this DLC), but I cannot think of a depiction of the Eastern Front that is closer to what I read in the history than the miserable hulking meatgrinder that is Black Snow.

Reminder: This is a DLC, you will need to already own Graviteam Tactics: Mius Front to access the content of this release.

We haven’t heard directly from HexWar in a while, and recent attempts to contact them haven’t worked. We assume they’re ok, but sometimes you see things like this and wonder… is this a cry for help? Or have they engaged in some #YOLO? One for the historians perhaps.

In the meantime, there’s still the fact that this ridiculous bundle exists on Fanatical. It’s called the ‘Dollar Command Bundle’, and for the exact sum of $1 (or 89p, here in the UK), you can get a steam key for twelve(!) HexWar titles.

That’s allegedly £112.88’s worth of games, all for the cost of… well… I’m not sure what actually costs 89p these days. Inflation is the worst.

Let’s breakdown what you get:

• IWO: Bloodbath in the Bonins (Review)
• Lighting: D-Day
• Congo Merc (Review)
• Hold the Line: The American Revolution (Review)
• Battles of the Ancient World
• Peninsular War Battles (Review)
• 1812: The Invasion of Canada (Review)
• Infection: Humanity’s Last Gasp
• Assault on Arnhem (Review)
• 1775: Rebellion (Review)
• Nuts! The Battle of the Bulge
• Russian Front

Granted, being HexWar, a lot of these titles are a bit of a mixed bag. Some of their boardgame adaptations are better than others, and their hex-based turn-based games tend to follow a formula they rarely deviate from. HexWar are, more often than not, a middle-of-the-road publisher who are consistently average in their releases.

Still, hard to argue with the value of $1.

As the 100^th anniversary of World War I arrives, so does our series of compendium articles listing what would-be Foch’s and Hindenburg’s can requisition on the conflict for wargaming. This edition looks at that most tactical of wargaming genres: tabletop miniatures, both rules and figures.

World War I miniature wargaming has always been a niche period in a niche hobby, never as popular as, say, Napoleonics or the American Civil War. And within that niche, while biplanes and dreadnaughts of all types have been popular, ground combat tends to be geared towards the Western Europe 1917-18. The 1914 Guns of August period is not well known, as it is rarely portrayed in film, while 1915 through 1916 is a "die in place" (DIP) bloodbath. This leaves 1917-18, and this means the first tanks arrive on the scene to make tabletop victory not only possible but a bit more camouflage colorful as well. As for the Balkans, the Russians, Gallipoli and Caporetto... wait, you mean the Turks and Italians fought in World War I? When did this happen?

Perhaps this explains the shortage of mainstream, commercially-published miniatures rules on the subject. Yet when it comes to figures, the selection is vast, far more than can ever be discussed here, thanks in part to the cottage nature of the industry supporting the hobby. With that in mind, here is what I see at conventions and discussed online.

Rules

Flames of War, the Great War– The rules cover only 1918 in a full color, glossy hardbound book 72 pages long. Cost is $ 20.00, for what is really an expansion on a booklet included in Wargames Illustrated 324. Play is obviously similar to the original publication, and as with other Flames of War products, there is also an extensive product line supporting the rules. Models include infantry, artillery, tanks and a very nice assortment of battlefield terrain such as barbed wire and craters. Pricing is similar to the game’s World War II cousins and scale is 1:100.

Through the Mud and the Blood– Published by Two Fat Lardies (and no, haven’t got a clue) this game is designed to recreate things like ambushes and trench raids at the low tactical level. Thus, the scale is 1:1, or one figure equals one actual soldier. Cost is £10.00 for digital download or £16.00 for paper, and there are two expansion modules, Stout Hearts & Iron Troopers along with From Empire to Revolution.

1914, World War I– A relatively new entry by Great Escape Games and covering only the Guns of August portion of the war, this is an extremely simple game where each unit is a battalion. All needed combat charts are on both sides of one sheet of paper. Also unique to the game is its own line of supporting miniatures in the seldom seen 12 mm scale. The game itself costs £15.00, 17 infantry for £5.00 and 25 horse for £10.00.

Before the Leaves Fall– A digital-only expansion module for Age of Eagles (Napoleonic Fire & Fury or AOE), this brigade level game covers only the 1914 Guns of August period of the war. Units are regiments or brigades and scale is 30 minutes per turn, 120 yards per inch with infantry stands representing 360 troops. Part of the Age of Valor series, the module sells for $ 4.00 US direct, but the AOE base rules is an additional cost. [Disclosure: the author of this article is also the designer of Before the Leaves Fall.]

Admiralty Trilogy, Fear God and Dread Nought– The Admiralty Trilogy Group is now republishing the third and final part of Larry Bond’s naval trifecta. Previously produced as a World War I naval boardgame you could play with miniatures by Clash of Arms, the new, revised version will be published direct by The Wargames Vault as a true set of 1 to 1 naval miniature wargaming rules. Being playtested now, the game is due for release soon and should cost around $14 US for the digital version and $18.51 for the print version. A $4.00 Data Annex must also be purchased to play the game, which is quite detailed, down to the center turret firing between the conning tower and captain’s potted palms level.

General Quarters, Fleet Action Imminent– Another highly detailed, traditional 1 to 1 scale naval miniature game, Fleet Action Imminent is the Great War version of General Quarters III, now published by Old Dominion Game Works. By detailed one means (quote from the product Website), "national armament characteristics, a 'no odds' gunnery system, specific damage, separate secondary and tertiary batteries, variable number of hull boxes to better reflect differences in hull size." The game comes in either a .pdf or three-ring binder format, but there seems no difference in the price of $31.95. Tokens are also available, as is a World War I Navies Supplement for $9.95 and North Sea Campaign for the same price.

Wings of Glory WWI (aka Wings of War)– Now published by Ares Games in Europe, the rules and starter set includes the 40-page rules book, 144 cards, four plane consoles, two rulers and 163 tokens. The item is also on sale right now from Miniature Market in the Colonies for $20.99 US, reduced from $29.90. The game is played one on one scale with branded, pre-painted aircraft (and painted quite well I might add) mounted on a plane specific, clear flight stand and comes with stats and cards appropriate for the aircraft in question. Cost per starts at $14.90 US, but is now on sale for $10.90, with the Zeppelin Staaken R VI running nearly $56.00 on sale.

Aerodrome 1.1– A favorite at conventions, this game is very easy to play and uses wooden control panels to control maneuvers with telescoping poles that mount the aircraft models above a color hex map for altitude. The rules cost but $ 15.00 US and can use any plastic, well painted World War I models (as in Revell, etc), or any of the planes in the Wings of Glory product line. Scale is one to one.

Figures

Miniature Figurines Ltd (Minifigs)– 15 mm, a little on the small side, but likely the most extensive and complete range of 15 mm figures out there, to include, infantry, cavalry, artillery, machineguns and command, both early (German in Pickelhaube) and late war (German in Stahlhelm). There are in all 159 sets available covering the French, British, Germans, Austrians, Russians (finally!), Turks, Anzacs, Indians, Sikhs, Yeomanry (in Sun Helmets no less), limbers and a separate line of 11 tanks. Traditional smooth sculpting style, a package of 8 infantry figures is £3.75 as are 4 mounted figures.

Blue Moon Manufacturing– 15/18 mm figures covering the later stages of the war, with lines for the Americans, British, French and Germans. Figures are animated and feature a rough, deeply etched sculpting style. Using the French as an example, there are 11 products including infantry (50 figures for $26.00 US), mortars (two plus crew for $9.00), field artillery (one plus crew for $11.00) and tanks (one for $11.00).

GHQ Micronaughts World War I– 1/2400 scale, very fine detail, covering the navies of all the great powers to include the United States, Britain, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France and Italy. Each pack contains one unpainted ship and depending upon size, will cost between $10.95 to $16.95 US. Larger navies also have packs of four destroyers and the like for $10.95.

Eureka Miniatures– 15 mm figures covering the more esoteric theaters of the war, to include Palestine, Gallipoli, the Italian Front and the Balkans. The figures have a deep, rough sculpting style. Countries covered include Britain, Australia, Ottoman Empire, Italy, Austria, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria. The line includes infantry, cavalry, command and artillery crew, but no guns are listed. Cost is $0.59 US for each infantry figure and $1.18 US per cavalry horse and rider. There is a shorter 28 mm product line.

Minuteman Miniatures 3D Printing– 15 mm Great War line includes not less than 40 different tank models to include such oddities as Beutepanzer (Allied tanks in German service) and lots of variants, six for the French St Chamond alone. Tanks are resin made to order, so 28 mm vehicles theoretically can be ordered in high (vice standard) resolutions. Vehicles are devoid of layer lines. Contact vendor for latest pricing.

North Star Great War Miniatures– 28 mm, there are 123 different sets in this product list. The designer uses a semi-smooth sculpting style, and the range is quite extensive, including typical, infantry, artillery and horse, but also rarely seen figures such as the Belgian Army, snipers and casualties. Cost seems to be an almost universal £7.50 for two mounted or six infantry figures, and many come with separate limbs for different poses. Brigade Games in the US carries this line alongside their own, similar brand.

Endlich

Obviously, not every rule set or figure line could be covered, so apologies if your favorite was not mentioned. Indeed, there are lots of privately-published sets and it's noteworthy that the slick-looking World War I games at recent HMGS conventions were played with an inhouse variant of Regimental Fire & Fury, an American Civil War ruleset. Nevertheless, it is nice to know that despite the relatively small number of pewter pushers who game this period of history, your quartermaster has you very well supplied.

The stars have aligned again and called for an accounting of Korean War games. Really, it’s two rather terrestrial factors at work here: The Koreas have been in the news again lately thanks to a dizzying 180 degree turn in foreign policy by President Donald Trump's administration, and The Wargamer has recently run two very good guides covering the best First World War and World War II games available. It makes sense to cover the Korean War next, and now.

Unfortunately, the shortage of Korean War-themed games that I complained about here last year persists. Unlike World War II, the Korean War simply hasn’t been a popular setting for games or film. The reasons for this are open to speculation; my own view is that it’s much tougher to map the sides of the conflict onto simplified notions of 'good guys' and 'bad guys,' and that the west runs into difficult moral territory when we start talking about how the fighting came to a provisional close. Korea was a difficult, brutal, and depressing war, and the lack of a clear-cut resolution makes it unattractive as a source of American myth-creation.

All that to say this: I’ve decided to cheat heavily in creating this list. The selection of actual Korean War games is small enough that it’s hard enough to even create a list of them that are playable on modern machines, much less a list of 'the best' of those. Therefore, I’m expanding my scope to include a few categories that wouldn’t otherwise be considered. These are:

• Games about the Cold War, as long as these actually include the Korean War somehow, and
• Korean War mods and user-created scenarios for relatively well-known strategy and wargames.

After some very helpful feedback from Wargamer readers, I've updated this piece with a few additional titles that I missed the first time around. John Tiller's Squad Battles: The Korean War, The Steel Panthers 2 mod winSPMBT, and Norm Koger's Korea 50-51 scenario for The Operational Art of War are now represented in the list.

Preliminary throat-clearing out of the way, it’s time to strap in. We’re in for a bumpy ride.

Full games

Theatre of War 3: Korea

Publisher: 1C Company
Released: March 24, 2011
Tags: Strategy, Cold War, RTS
Purchase:Steam

Right away, I’ll have to qualify my recommendation here. While 1C Company has made some very nearly excellent real-time strategy wargames - particularly the Assault Squad series - Theatre of War 3 can’t honestly be counted among the best of them. AI ranges from fiddly to terrible, the “dynamic” campaigns aren’t actually very interesting, and it’s riddled with the jankiness that even newer 1C titles haven’t been able to rid themselves of completely.

That said, Theatre of War 3 provides one of the vanishingly few dedicated, out-of-the-box Korean War strategy experiences available, and it added some key innovations to the 1C formula. The campaigns were non-linear and changed based on your performance and decisions, and it adopted a more squad-focused control scheme, saving you from having to manage each individual soldier as in the first Men of War. Theatre of War 3 also adds some of the important new hardware of the time, like transport helicopters, new artillery pieces, and jets. I’ve been particularly impressed with the terrain, which features steep Korean mountain ranges and rural architecture that set it apart from 1C’s WWII games.

You’ll have to be pretty forgiving with this one, particularly if you’ve gotten used to the new-fangled conveniences of Assault Squad 2, but as Korean War games go, this is one of the most focused and modern, sadly enough.

MiG Alley

Publisher: Empire Interactive
Released: November 30, 1999
Tags: Flight sim, Korean War
Purchase: Used CD-ROM, via Amazon

The late ‘90s saw several ambitious flight sims take on the Korean War: Virgin Group’s Sabre Ace: Conflict Over Korea and Rowan Software’s response, MiG Alley two years later. It was the latter game that really shone, though, with a healthy selection of aircraft, a very good flight model for its time, and not one but five dynamic campaigns. While the first four had you flying pre-planned scenarios, the fifth campaign depicts the 1951 Spring Offensive, and gives you operational control of more than a hundred aircraft involved.

In terms of roster, MiG Alley was pretty generous: you had the F-84 Thunder jet, several variants of the F-86 Sabre, the P-51 Mustang, F-80 Shooting Star, and a couple MiG-15 variants as well. They all felt distinct in the air, too, thanks to the game’s attention to detail on the individual aircraft flight models.

MiG Alley came out back when it was normal to pack 100+ page instruction manuals with flight simulators, and Rowan went the extra mile by further including not only a keyboard overlay and a booklet solely dedicated to explaining the difference between the F-86 and the MiG-15, but also a paper reproduction of an actual 1952 RAF briefing sheet.

Unfortunately, despite glowing critical reviews, MiG Alley sold abysmally. Empire Interactive shut down Rowan Software in 2001, but the source code was released so that the player community could keep updating the game. The license for the source didn’t include textures or terrain details, but you can find the rest of it over on GitHub.

John Tiller's Squad Battles - The Korean War

Publisher: John Tiller Software
Released: No date provided
Tags: Turn-based strategy, classic wargame
Purchase:Direct

Given his prodigious output and accompanying stature in the wargaming space, John Tiller’s games represent a glaring gap in my gaming history. Tiller has covered the Napoleonics to modern conflicts like the 1985 Fulda Gap and everything in between, so it should come as no surprise that he’s found time for an entry devoted to the Korean War.

Squad Battles: The Korean War uses an older version of Tiller’s 40-meter hex system for turn-based battles focused on individual fireteams of five soldiers, and it includes three separate campaigns that span a total of 70 scenarios designed by “Wild” Bill Wilder. These cover the full shooting war period from 1950 to the 1953 ceasefire, and it includes units from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, and Turkey along with the United States, South Korea, and North Korea.

Tiller’s games are in the classic wargame style and have very little in the way of modern frills. But they’re surprisingly accessible and simple to pick up and play, while still affording enough room for a healthy level of tactical depth. The campaigns follow individual officers and their units as they’re carried along in the see-saw fighting back and forth across the 38^th Parallel, and while the presentation is a bit Spartan, Tiller Software provides additional color with historical flavor text and a wide variety of accurate missions.

Tiller returned to the Korean peninsula for a hypothetical modern conflict with Korea '85.

Steel Panthers II: Modern Battles

Publisher: Mindscape Inc.
Released: 1996
Tags: Turn-based, top down, historic
Purchase: The free and enhanced version, winSPMBT is availalbe from ShrapnelGames

I regret the fact that I missed out on the Steel Panthers games back when they were fresh - my interest in tanks around that time was largely eaten up by a ridiculous little sci-fi game called Command & Conquer. But even though I skipped over SSI’s hex-based armor classics at the time, their influence can still be felt today. Matrix Games bought the rights to Steel Panthers and released Steel Panthers: World at War in 2000, and the Strategic Simulations DNA runs through modern titles like Order of Battle.

Steel Panthers II: Modern Battles covers 20th century conflict from 1950-2000, and it includes several Korean War scenarios. The Battle of Chongju is represented, there are two scenarios for the Battle of Chosin, and one each for Pork Chop Hill and Bunker Hill.

For games that are now old enough to order their own cocktails, the Steel Panther games hold up surprisingly well, provided you’re willing to put up with the process of getting them running on DOSBox or a similar emulator. 

Since this article was first published, I've been made aware of winSPMBT, a complete overhaul of a massive modding project for Steel Panthers II called Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank. Originally a standalone DOS application, winSPMBT updates the game for Windows environments (including supporting resolutions higher than 640x480), adds several new scenarios and a new campaign, and even reworks several game mechanics. Best part? It's free to download, and you don't need any additional software to run it.

Steel Panthers: 

MacArthur's War: Battles for Korea

Publisher: Strategic Studies Group
Released: 1988
Tags: Top down, turn based, historic
Purchase: Play for free at Archive.org

This one is notable for its wildly ambitious scope way back in 1988 - imagine, thirty years ago, the hardware we had available and the moxie it would have taken to try to make a fully-functioning tabletop wargame work on that. MacArthur’s War: Battles for Korea pretty much pulls it off, recreating the cardboard counters and colorful maps of tabletop wargaming for Commodore 64.

I didn’t play this at the time, since I was eight years old and was still trying to figure out how to play the dreadful Ghostbusters game that appeared on the Atari 2600. But fortunately, MacArthur’s War has been saved and made available by the Internet Archive, and you can play it right in your web browser, free of charge.

I’ll confess I haven’t had much luck with it - I haven’t been able to turn up the original documentation, and the tinyscreen resolutions and dinky RAM chips of the era made abbreviations vital. That means it’s pretty tough to decipher what your commands are, or how things like turn order and combat resolution work.

But just looking at the thing as a wargamer three full decades later, it’s impossible not to be impressed by MacArthur’s War, mysterious as it is. Units are grouped into historic regiments, you have accurate military symbols for infantry and armor divisions, and several historic scenarios to choose from. It’s tremendously advanced for its time, and I’m keen to keep poking at it until I can figure out how it works.

Twilight Struggle

Publisher: Asmodee Digital
Released: April 13, 2016
Tags: Board game, strategy, simulation, Cold War
Purchase:Steam, Mobile, or the tabletop version via Amazon

The Korean War was a bloody, horrible three-year conflict, but it wound up being just one of the many proxy wars that erupted at friction points between the two global superpowers who found themselves locked in the Cold War for most of the second half of the twentieth century. Twilight Struggle is a game about the nightmarishly complex web of relationships and the razor-thin balance that existed between the U.S.-led West and the U.S.S.R., and while very little of it deals with the Korean War as a conflict, it’s a fantastic game that provides some valuable context.

The best way to play Twilight Struggle is with a friend, on a tabletop, but with the tabletop retailing for more than $100, the more affordable Steam version (or the even more affordable tablet version) might be a good way to see if it’s up your alley. The digital version also serves as a perfect way to learn the game, and you’ll be able to drop straight into the traditional experience once you’ve played a couple games on the computer.

There’s little I could add to what Matt Thrower has already written on Twilight Struggle, so I’ll point you to his glowing review here at The Wargamer, and to his discussion about the game with Shut Up & Sit Down’s Quentin Smith. As Twilight Struggle is Matt’s favorite game, he’s welcome to do the heavy lifting on explaining how it works and why it’s good. But one element of Twilight Struggle that Matt highlights in both pieces is the game’s card draught system, which I think is relevant here. Both players draw cards and conceal them from each other, making Twilight Struggle a game about asymmetric information. That’s something that traditional wargames don’t often do very well, but it’s arguably the most important driving element of the Cold War and abstracting it to a simple mechanic like a hand of cards is very clever indeed.

User-created mods and scenarios

In the interest of time and space, I’ll go quickly through a few Korean War mods and scenarios available. Several total conversion projects focused on the Korean War have launched, but most of these have petered out before releasing a final version. But there are enough bits and pieces out there to get started. It all depends on what you want to accomplish.

If you own The Operational Art of War IV (review), you’ve got the Korea as the setting for its starter scenario. It takes some doing, but scenarios built for previous TOAW titles, as well as Alternate Wars, can be converted to work in the latest software. Matrix forums user CaptainKoloth found an Alternate Wars Operation Chromite scenario, recreating the landing at Incheon, and updated it for TOAW4, which you can find here. It’s included in a massive pack of 415 old scenarios converted for use in TOAW3 available from The Operational Art of War Legacy Project, courtesy of Matrix forum user Ryan Crierie.

You can also pick up a Korean War scenario by the creator of The Operational Art of War himself, Norm Koger. He published his Korea 50-51 scenario in 2002, and it's a 52-turn (one full year) battle between 239 Communist units and 174 United Nations forces. Koger built several interesting triggers into the scenario - for instance, if the UN drops airborne troops into either Soviet or Chinese territory, those countries will opt to intervene in Korea. "Korean winters are harsh," he adds in the description. "Be prepared." I can personally attest to the accuracy of this statement.

For John Tiller’s Campaign Series, forums veteran Mike “Warhorse” Amos has a Korean War mod that he’s been updating for years, now in version 2.02. You can find the download link in this post.

There are several Korean War mods for the Men of War series,but they’re all a bit half-baked in one way or another. You can try Korean War 1950-1953 for the original Men of War, or Korea 1953 v.0.9 for Assault Squad 2. Korea war (the Forgotten war) [sic] for Assault Squad has gotten a little attention on YouTube, but there’s very little to it and the project hasn’t been updated since 2012.

ArmA 3 players are in pretty good shape here. There’s the Korean War mod by JackAttackJRMV. Right now, it’s just adding U.S. Marines and North Korean Army factions and vehicles to the game, but he has a host of additional features on the 'planned' list, including ROK forces, PRC forces, a new map, plus the MiG-15 and F-86 fighters. Jack recommends installing the Korean War Factions mod by jarrad96, which adds period-accurate uniforms and gear. Both these mods require subscribing to several others in the Steam Workshop, but Steam will give you a handy list of links to go through whenever you’re missing any required components. Of course, if you’re just browsing and don’t feel like installing several gigabytes worth of mods, you can use the Get to da Choppa mod (requires Apex) and pop on the theme from M*A*S*H while you fly around Altis in a Bell 47.

And that about wraps things up for our list of Korean War games. Researching this piece, I found that other writers have been complaining about the lack of games - of any genre - dealing with the Korean War for the full 30 years represented here, and the situation is unlikely to change any time soon.

If you have a favorite Korean War game, mod, or scenario that we've missed, please be sure to let us know in the comments.

It’s been six months of steady work for the folks at Wargame Design Studio, who have been creating updates for several John Tiller Software game systems. They’ve just published a new blog post that details the work they’ve done – and have yet to do – on their massive North African campaign overhaul project for JTS' Panzer Battles.

The team has expanded the scenario list to 76, up from the 45 they had playable in March this year. Operation Crusader has five new scenarios for a total of 18, and Tobruk is up to eight complete scenarios after the addition of two new ones. They’ve added 16 new scenarios to the theatre-wide Operation Compass operation, which covers four separate battles, each with its own special rules.

Wargame Design Studio has done some interesting things with the sieges of Bardia and Tobruk, by giving the Italian player 70 defensive positions in Bardia and one victory point for each one they hold per turn. The attacking Australians must move quickly to sweep these fortifications up after their initial breach of the defensive perimeter or quickly lose the game. This should in theory push the Allied side into behaving quite the way it did in the historical battles, and it’ll make for two tense, high-pressure sieges.

You can check out the full post on the official blog, which has quite a few more in-game screens that show off the scenarios’ impressive scale (just look at the jump map, above, for a taste). There’s no official date set for release, but the team is hoping to have it ready to launch by the end of the year. They're also working on a major update for JTS'Civil War Battles series.

Even if you don’t play board games there is a fair chance you might be aware of Volko Runhke and his COIN (Counter Insurgency) game series. The nature of his games has captured public imagination with major news outlets running a series of articles on Volko’s CIA career and his unconventional designs. What this means for gamers is that there is finally an opportunity to play as Pablo Escobar or Castro, have a valid reason to cry "Charlie don’t surf" repeatedly, and demonstrate how much better you would have done than Bush in Afghanistan.

COIN can be described as multi-factional guerrilla wargames with a simple area control system that is driven by actions and objectives that are often unique for each faction. Bolted on to this is a card-driven historical event system; the result is simplistic, asymmetrical progression with a historical narrative. With four players the military environment has a political layer of oversight that drives player interaction, sub-optimal decisions, and tense tactical trade-offs. Even your so-called friends can pose a direct threat to your efforts through corruption, cultural patronage, or shady business practices.

COIN games first appeared in 2012 when Volko Runhke published Andean Abyss (2012). However, it wasn’t an overnight concept. Development started with Volko’s Wilderness War (2001), which tries to marry up 18th century formulaic conventional war with traditional tribal warfare: in North America. For me it didn’t work, but it was interesting in that you have to balance out siege warfare whilst dealing with guerrilla frontier raids.

This was followed by Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001-? (2010), which captures the global conflict for influence and stability between Islamic radicals and the US. It is Labyrinth that first demonstrated some of the core mechanics that would go on to form the basis of the COIN structure that we would first see in Andean Abyss, a Colombian Civil War game.

With COIN you will never be on top of the situation. As soon as you have stabilized things in one area there is an emerging crisis in another. Big gains are possible but holding on to them can feel like clutching at sand. The card-driven scoring system only compounds this problem; you can plan long-term strategic goals but they count for nothing if you don’t have anything to show short term when the scoring card is revealed. With so much of the success of war being driven by short-term political motives, this captures the realities of modern war by occasionally shoving them in your face and rewarding your long-term pacification strategy with a low points score.

COIN isn’t for everyone; there are no hexes, no equipment elements or labelled units. With its brightly coloured pieces, COIN can be easily mistaken for a Euro resource management game rather than a wargame. This Euro feel does mean that COIN games are accessible to the non-grognards. The simplicity of the actions mean that you can feasibly get your non-wargaming friends to enjoy what is effectively a wargame simulation. Although if you are looking for a very high-level political game, you might be frustrated that population support doesn’t translate into a capability difference; perhaps in a future iteration this will be addressed.

Because of its focus on national-level counter insurgency, COIN won’t teach you about real-world COIN tactics or ISTAR (surveillance) assets. If you want a 'political friction free military' game then you aren’t going to enjoy the complications of the inter-factional tensions and the cultural, economic, and political aspects that pervade in COIN's vision of warfare. If you are like me and enjoy having political interference and oversight to ruin your well-laid military plans, then COIN games really hit that sweet spot.

If you are a solo player, or just have a smaller group, then the COIN system is great because it has strong AI bot mechanics. It’s really just a series of flow charts, but the structure of the mechanics and event cards allows for a plausible and challenging narrative to develop. This AI bot system allows a four player game to work well even when played solo. To top it off, the AI isn’t half bad; "I think the AI can hear us" became a common catchphrase for us.

So if you are now sold on this concept or want to explore more what are your best options?

Andean Abyss allowed players to fight a civil war in Colombia with a series of unpleasant factions in a deeply unpleasant war. If making roadblocks, kidnapping, death squads, extortion and manufacturing cocaine is your thing then this is the game for you. This game was the first in the series and is a bit rougher than the games that followed it, but the theme works very well.

This was followed by Cuba Libre (2013), in which you don’t just get to play as Castro trying to bring revolution, you can also play as corrupt casino bosses trying to prop up the winning side. If you are looking for an entry-level COIN game then this is your best option. Cuba Libre has a much smaller map than most of the series and an accessible theme, which means you don’t need to worry about blowing the minds of some of your less wargame-y friends.

Colonial Twilight: The French-Algerian War, 1954-62 (2017) is a handy two player game if you struggle to round up 4 players on a regular basis. Whilst you lose some of the political dynamic of a four player game the game loses none of the excellent COIN gameplay and operational frustration and can be played easily in a long evening.

A Distant Plain (2013) and Fire in the Lake (2014) are much more meaty affairs. A Distant Plain covers the ongoing Afghan war with a range of scenarios that allow you to explore the different stages of the war and the evolving capabilities of Western Forces. Alternatively, you can play the role of a corrupt warlord just trying to earn an honest living growing heroin.

Fire in the Lake (pictured at top) captures the whole of the Vietnam war and the very asymmetric capabilities of the various forces. Playing as North Vietnam and building up a huge regular force to roll into the DMZ was a great fun until we met conventional American forces and my force got absolutely smashed trying to overrun a major firebase. Falling back on expanding the Ho Chi Min Trail, I at least had a great backing sound track to listen to whilst I watched the Viet Cong win the war at my expense.

Moving the system to pre-modern times was a challenge as it was marketed as a system designed to portray modern insurgency. Yet it seems that the Euro-style system works no matter the time period or operational realities of the day, as their more recent releases show.

First was Falling Sky: The Gallic Revolt Against Caesar (2016), which captured ancient warfare between the Gauls and the Romans. This was a major transition from the earlier games in the series as it introduced conventional armies facing one another. This game has a very powerful Roman army lined up against tribal forces - Asterix this is not.

This was followed by Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection (2016) which covered the American War of Independence. This is a breakthrough game that captures the multi-faceted political complexities of this conflict rather than portraying it as a rather two-sided Hollywood war.

This year saw the release of Pendragon: The Fall of Roman Britain (2018), which looks at the arrival of tribal sea invaders knocking down the last vestiges of the old British-Roman elite. Accessible and with an interesting theme, this makes the likes of the ahistorical 878 Vikings feel rather dull by comparison.

Looking forward, we have the first primarily political game in Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India, 1917-1947 and another civil war, All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland, 1917-1918. 

Future games in the pipeline are rumoured to include: Shattered Star (1990s Somalia), A Terrible Beauty (1920s Ireland), People Power (1980s Philippines), and Thunder Out of China (1930s China), but it could be a couple more years before we see those hit the store shelves. Most of the games mentioned in this article are currently out of print but GMT is about to start a big print run of most of them in 2018.

You better start saving.

George Friedman has been in the international conflict game for quite a while – in 1996, he founded Stratfor, a company dedicated to forecasting geopolitical conflict points and providing risk analysis for organizations ranging from media outlets to government agencies. He’s teamed up with Warsaw Security Forum founder and economics scholar Zbigniew Pisarski and Potomac Foundation senior fellow Jacek Bartosiak to found a new wargames studio, which they’ve called Play of Battle.

The studio’s first goal is to create a modern warfare-focused grand strategy game, which they say will be be “cloud based” and meant for the consumer market. It’s not the first time Friedman, the author of The Next 100 Years, has tried his hand at wargame design.

“I helped design a wargame where the United States and Poland were enemies,” he says in the introductory video posted at the studio’s brand new official site. “Now, I’m getting a chance to design a wargame where the United States and Poland are friends.”

There’s not a lot to go on as far as Play of Battle’s first mass market project is concerned. All three founders have extensive backgrounds in geopolitical analysis and international relations scholarship – Bartosiak did his PhD studies focused on the AirSea Battle Concept, and Pisarski (studio CEO) was nominated in 2010 to Poland’s National Security Strategic Review Commission.

Friedman has discussed his lifelong fondness for Avalon Hill’s D-Day in the past though, so it’s reasonable to expect a classic wargame heritage in the contemporary warfare game they eventually produce. For now though, they’re looking to expand their team and find investors.

You may remember way back in January 2017 we spoke about how HexWar were planning on doing more digital adaptations of GMT’s Command & Colors series, namely Command & Colors: Ancients& Command & Colors: Napoleonics.

At the time, they’d just released Command & Colors: The Great War, a fairly decent adaptation of the physical game. Despite being a very middle-of-the-road wargames developer, some of HexWar's best work seems to stem from their adaptation of physical games.

It’s been well over a year since that announcement, and we’ve only just now received word of one of the two games which were due out last year – Command & Colours: Ancients. I say “word”– an official store page is now live on HexWar’s site, and they posted a small news item on July 4^th.

According to the original announcement (we’ve lost the link, but it’d have been GMT Game’s January 2017 update), Ancients was due out Summer last year, with Napoleonics dropping at the end of 2017. DLC for the two titles would then release through-out 2018 although considering we're now in July 2018, that timetable clearly left the building long ago.

Current release window for Ancients is “coming soon” which is not amazingly helpful but at least it’s something. The announced feature set includes:

• 15 Scenarios from important engagements of ancient history
• Over 50 unique combat and command cards to simulate tactical and strategic choices
• Make strategic choices faithful to the era with chariots, archers, foot soldiers and mounted units
• Play as Syracusan, Carthaginian or Roman
• Three levels of AI difficulty

At the moment, your best bet on news regarding the digital games is probably GMT themselves – their June update talks about HexWar’s Ancients project, as well as another mystery announcement on the horizon.

Naval warfare has a rich history dating back to ancient times, spanning countless conflicts that have relied on access to the world’s oceans. Fleets and flotillas have been crucial for the logistical transportation of materials, goods, treasures and troops. In combat, naval vessels have the capability to strike a decisive battle against the opponent or interdict against their supply lines. Undoubtedly, this is an important branch of a nation’s military, but how does this element of warfare translate to videogames?

Feeling a bit sea sick? How about checking our some great Korean War games instead?

Those who are looking for naval warfare can find games that are worth an investment, whether more arcade-style combat, or developing the strategy for an entire battlefleet. The following titles are absolute plays for the admiral-minded types looking to expand their naval-themed experiences.

Primarily, the games presented are of two sorts: the wargame-likes – where it is more about an arcade or pure battle experience, and the simulations – where understanding of mechanics and planning accordingly can take a whole afternoon if need be.

Rule the Waves (Review)

Developer/Publisher: Divide By Zero Software Inc./ Strategic Simulations, Inc.
Tags: Naval, Real Time, Pacific Theatre, Atlantic Theatre, Strategy, WW1, Build
Purchase: Direct

No naval wargame has come close to the possibilities available in Rule the Waves. Of course many of us know about it from its presence on our best WW1 Naval Wargames list and it is for good reason. Rule the Waves is equal parts grand-strategy as it is naval management and engagements. With the turn to the 20th century, you act as a developer for the nation in the great naval arms race ever. Design pre-dreadnoughts and dreadnoughts as an assortment of great naval powers, and either stick to history or decide for your nation in your own creative way.

Although graphics are simplistic, the sheer amount of content and strategic depth of this ship of the line hasn’t been surpassed yet. For those who are less about the chivalry of ships lining up and more about the naval arms race and its consequences, Rule the Waves is an absolute gem of a naval wargame and a must own by anyone who prefers the smell of sea salt over soil. The only way this game will be knocked off this list is when the sequel comes out, hopefully this year.

Cold Waters (Review)

Developer/Publisher: Killerfish Games
Tags: Naval, Real Time, Various Theatres, Strategy, Simulation, Submarine
Purchase: Steam

Killerfish Games manages to hold two titles on this list, and with good reason. Cold Waters manages to walk a perfect line between arcade and simulation with this submarine-based naval game. Establishing itself in a modern setting, the player sets out in nuclear submarine and strike against surface targets and warships while evading modern ASW countermeasures. Great mission and unit variety, outstanding visuals and intuitive UI enables Cold Waters to stand tall among the greatest naval wargames out there.

Content for Cold Waters is still being released, with the latest addition being a South China Sea campaign. Those looking for a more immersive sub sim, please note that this isn’t Silent Hunter– you may be disappointed if that’s what you’re looking for here.

Atlantic Fleet (Review)

Developer/Publisher: KillerFish Games
Tags: Naval, Turn Based, Atlantic Theatre, Strategy, WW2, Arcade
Purchase: Steam, iOS

Initially released on iOS as a sequel to Pacific Fleet in 2015, Atlantic Fleet excels as an arcade-style turn-based naval strategy game. Slug it out in single battles, scenarios or an Atlantic campaign as the Kriegsmarine or the Royal Navy. Both factions offer a wide variety of naval vessels, from famous ships such as the Hood and Bismarck, all the way to “paper” battleships such as the Lion-class and H-44! The use of land based or carrier aircraft for strikes against ships is also present and can give an edge over the enemy.

The turn-based combat is perfect for the surface ship engagements, but submarine and aircraft carriers are a bit sub-par. The price of admission is just right for the amount of content in the game.

Victory at Sea

Developer/Publisher: Evil Twin Artworks
Tags: Naval, Real-Time, Various Theatres, Strategy, Arcade, Moddable, WW2
Purchase:Steam

Victory at Sea is an excellent game for those who want a fast-paced experience of WW2 naval warfare across multiple theatres of operation. Simplified combat controls and real time management allows for the action to be quick and engaging. Nation variety spans the traditional naval powers of British, American, Japanese and German fleets to the lesser represented Dutch, Italian and French forces for custom battles.

There is a lot of content for Victory at Sea due to free updates from the developers, coupled with a cheap purchase price. Along with modding tools that expand unit rosters (such as can be found here) and ship variety this is a great title for people looking to expand their naval libraries. What’s even better is the developers are taking experiences learned from this release and developing Victory at Sea 2.

Jutland – Pro Edition (Review)

Developer/Publisher: Storm Eagle Studios
Tags: Naval, Real Time, Atlantic Theatre, Tactical, Simulation, WW1
Purchase: StormPowered

Storm Eagle Studios, now known as StormPowered, delivers an breathtakingly detailed surface fleet experience. Focused around the Battle of Jutland and its iconic dreadnought verse dreadnought fleet engagements, Jutland manages to take a unique focus and run with it. Manage your fleet of either the Royal Navy or Imperial German Navy. See the fantastic detail of each ship up close, or plan using an overhead map of the North Sea.

This is a difficult game and requires the user to be patient and tactful with their planning. Even if you have naval supremacy in terms of numbers, the outcome of the battle can be very one sided if you are unable to manage your fleet. Still, this is one of the best naval battle simulations around. While compatible with older operating systems up to Windows 7, some might have difficulty on newer OS’s. The steep price means this is definitely ‘buyer beware’.

It also comes with an editor and mods are available to enhance the experience with new content on SubSim.com.

Silent Hunter 3

Developer/Publisher: Ubisoft
Tags: Naval, Real Time, Various Theatres, Strategy, Simulation, Submarine, WW2, Moddable
Purchase: Steam, Direct

As a U-boat captain of the Kriegsmarine, you will find yourself prowling for unsuspecting targets, ambushing convoys, or fighting against aircraft as you’re surfaced. Interacting with the ships interior is also a major component of managing your submarine. Of the Silent Hunter series, Silent Hunter 3 easily remains the undisputed champion.

What pushes Silent Hunter 3 beyond it’s sequels is the incorporation of the GWX3 GOLD mod. This mod gives the game an even more immersive experience, with quality of life changes, environment improvements and added variety still unmatched by the later titles. If you can sacrifice the visual fidelity that the later versions have, you’ll find afternoons and evenings lost as you develop into a successful U-boat Commander. Alarm! Fluten!

Ironclads 2 Collection (Review)

Developer/Publisher: Totem Games
Tags: Naval, Real Time, Turn base, Various Theatres, Strategy, Simulation, 19th Century
Purchase:Steam

Where previous Totem Games releases can be considered misfires, the Ironclads 2 series of games bundled as a collection on Steam are a great addition for any Armchajr-Admiral out there. This collection of games has you fighting forgotten engagements in the late 19th century. While the strategic element is turn based, engagements are in real time. But don’t be fooled; managing ships can get complicated when you split columns or try and envelope an opponent’s fleet.

Opponent AI, ship models and unique settings allow these naval engagements to really come alive and provide wonderfully varied experiences. However impatient players or newcomers might be frustrated by the lack of tutorials (other than just a manual) and hardcore sim fans might be disappointed by the basic mechanics for tactical engagements. However, for the price of four games, and the unique setting each brings, these titles definitely deserve the attention they get.

Command: Modern Air / Naval Operations WOTY (Review)

Developer/Publisher: WarfareSims / Matrix Games
Tags: Naval, Real Time, Various Theatres, Strategy, Simulation, Grand Strategy
Purchase: Steam, Direct

You would be hard pressed to find something as intricate and detailed as Command: Modern Air/ Naval Operations is, apart from maybe the Harpoon series. Aspects to manage are satellites, aircraft wings, and navy fleets while the database includes WW2 era ships all the way into modern future weapons. This gives an excellent overview of what you are going to be working with through what spans almost a century of air and naval warfare. The base game has over 40 scenarios, and further DLC and expansions have been released in the years since.

While older titles rely on a flat image, or map, CMANO is globe based, delivering even greater immersion for the armchair commander. The amount of management and systems available is staggering. Realism is a cornerstone of CMANO and while other naval sims and wargames are more approachable due to their low price or lesser complex systems, CMANO revels in its ability to be a serious simulation. For those who are willing the opportunities are near limitless.

Enigma: Rising Tide

Developer/Publisher: Tesseraction Games/Dreamcatcher Interactive
Tags: Naval, Real Time, Atlantic Theatre, Strategy, First Person, Arcade
Purchase: Free

Enigma: Rising Tide is a very strange but excellent naval wargame. What makes it so strange is the alternative history the game is based upon; the Germans won the first world war, and everything stems from that. Now that you’ve digested that twist, it is easy to see what makes Enigma: Rising Tide such a compelling game to play. Focusing on small unit actions, such as operating a corvette, submarine or a destroyer.

The game pits the player on the bridge of these vessels and manages to operate a fine balance of arcade action and command options. Where it lacks in patience and finesse, the pace of the missions and the satisfaction of a ship sinking is still gratifying in this title. Enigma: Rising Tide is for those who are wanting to take a break from the hard-fought battles of stratagem and are looking add a few more hulls to the bottom of the sea in at what sometimes can be a neck breaking pace.

Navyfield

Developer/Publisher: SDEnterNet / Naiad Games
Tags: Naval, Real Time, Pacific Theatre, Atlantic Theatre, Arcade, WW2, Multiplayer
Purchase: Free, Free (Steam)

Navyfield is a curious naval game. Recommending it is like telling somebody to go see Woodstock today. As an MMO, it’s time in the sun has passed by a few years, but at it’s peak it was a phenomenal game. Although Navyfield has been overshadowed by modern releases, the game is still strong to this day. Pitting up to 32 players and an assortment of ships together, Navyfield has a surprising amount of variety and modes, backed by quick and addictive battle sessions.

Typically, fleets are a combined assortment, battleships, carriers, cruisers, destroyers and even frigates are some of the options available (unless the hosted room decides otherwise). The beauty starts with as you see the players naturally forming to picket the larger ships or the carriers and the ships with greater agility either lay torpedoes or scout for incoming spreads. Players that aren’t apart of the pack and are unexperienced can find themselves isolated and destroyed. Anti-Aircraft is also an important element, as although machine gun fire from your ships are automatic, it requires a keen eye to manage those flak bursts to take out incoming aircraft which can sway the battle in mere seconds. Matches are quick and full of action in an easy to look at isometric view.

Navyfield was and still is grindy, making the drive to those bigger ships a pain if you’re unwilling to cough up some compensation. Levelling up your crew and unlocking newer arsenals are still very much a mechanic here. However, a side benefit of this is understanding the types of ships and the benefit of different play styles. Rushing to be the King George V-class may not necessarily be as enjoyable as wiping out many unsuspecting players with a perfect torpedo spread from a Japanese light cruiser. Every faction has a distinct feel and doctrine.

Although there is a Navyfield 2, it tries too hard to compete with World of Warships, rather than capture the magic in a bottle that the first game had and suffers for it.  Both newer titles feel more about smaller engagements and which captain has the widest bow (a matter of speaking). Navyfield managed to capture fleet combat exceptionally well in a multiplayer setting the first time around and is still supported and played by players today.

Fighting Steel: World War II Surface Combat 1939-1942

Developer/Publisher: Divide By Zero Software Inc./ Strategic Simulations, Inc.
Tags: Naval, Real Time, Pacific Theatre, Atlantic Theatre, Strategy, WW2
Purchase: Free (Abandonware)

Fighting Steel is a lesser known title for those looking into the war chest of naval wargames; as a game, it primarily focuses on fleet action. Pitting capital ships against others in often historical context or user created scenarios, in real time ships square off to lob shells until somebody capsizes or breaks off under the cover of smoke screen. What Fighting Steel does well is the variety through a large variety of ships and how they perform in battle, and it’s attempt of authenticity, through its scenarios and mechanics. Although the graphics are simple and dated, they are crisp and serviceable. It’s easy to distinguish targets by their silhouettes for the experienced admiral.

For Jutland players, the games are very similar, only standing out on a few overlay mechanics and time period of course.   A rocky release might have damaged the hull of Fighting Steel a bit, but since 1999, the game has improved to be a compelling and immersive through patches from the dedicated. Work such as Fighting Steel Project which delivers an improved combat simulation and fixes a lot messy bugs along the way has Fighting Steel still on the fleet roster for those looking to see if their admiralty skills are still sharp.  

Hall of Fame

We regularly update these lists with new or looked-over games, and to keep things manageable we'll rotate out some entries to make way for others. Past members of this list include:

Battlestations: Pacific
Fleet Command
Dangerous Waters

What would your list of top naval war games look like? Let us know in the comments!

I’ve just about finished with catching up from everything I missed out on while I was on vacation. Due to the higher volume of news posts that went up this week’s it’s meant there’s not a lot left to fill out a Wargamer Weekly.

There’s some dev diaries here and there (especially for Hearts of Iron 4) that we haven’t written up this week. The content schedule should be back to normal next week.

Meanwhile, in the world of wargaming…

Commandos Makes a Return

Not quite a wargame, but the Commandos series is a classic of WW2 stealth/strategy gaming. This week it emerged that Kalypso Media, known for games like Tropico and Sudden Strike 4, have acquired all of the intellectual property of Pyro Studios.

This may not mean much to begin with, until you recall that Pyro were the dev team behind Commandos, as well as Imperial Glory and Praetorians. Kalypso have already confirmed that not only will they be making new games within with franchises they’ve acquired, they will also be adapting existing games for modern platforms. Whether or not Pyro themselves will be involved is unclear – as the new owners of the IP, Kalypso can do what they want with whoever they want with these games now.

Armored Brigade Beta

Not much news from Slitherine and Matrix Games this week as they were busy with the release of their 40K/4X game Gladius – Relics of War. Our sister site Strategy Gamer has a review if you’re interested.

What may be of interest though is the fact that Armored Brigade has now entered Beta. We were quite impressed with it when we played it last year, and you can go here if you also want to give it a try.

That’s all for this week. Enjoy your weekends and happy gaming!

Victory at Sea: Pacific is the sequel to Evil Twin Artworks very excellent Victory at Sea, a more RTS-style war/strategy game that leans more on the arcade side of the spectrum. Pacific focuses solely on the Pacific theatre, and we’ve been trying to keep tabs on the game’s development as we wait.

Victory at Sea features in our list of the best naval warfare games.

It’s to our shame then that we somehow utterly failed to notice an update they put on July 10^th looking at the planes the will be featuring in VaS:P:

With the increase in scale in Victory At Sea Pacific we needed to let the player have greater control over planes. In the original Victory At Sea you could tell a carrier to attack a port or fleet and the planes would fly off, do their thing and return.

In the new Pacific game, the added threat of enemy fleets sneaking past you meant that players not only needed to tell planes where to hunt but also to target specific objectives. With this came the need to introduce more specialist plane types as well. Based on feedback from the community we are also looking at players being able to swap out payloads.

With a specialist plane role, comes specialist planes, and ETA have published a list of all of the plane types that will be available at launch. There’s also talk of swappable payloads:

• Aichi D3A Val
• Aichi E13A Jake
• Boeing B-29 Superfortress
• Curtiss SB2C Helldiver
• Curtiss SC Seahawk
• Douglas SBD Dauntless
• Douglas TBD Devastator
• Fairey Barracuda (Dive-bomber)
• Fairey Barracuda (Torpedo-bomber)
• Fairey Fulmar
• Fairey Swordfish (Bomber)
• Fairey Swordfish (Torpedo-bomber)
• Grumman F4F Wildcat
• Grumman F6F Hellcat
• Grumman TBF Avenger
• Hawker Hurricane
• Kawanishi H8K Emily (ASW)
• Kawanishi H8K Emily (Bomber)
• Kawanishi H8K Emily (Torpedo-bomber)
• Mitsubishi A5M4 Claude
• Mitsubishi A6M Zero (Fighter)
• Mitsubishi A6M Zero (Kamikaze)
• Mitsubishi F1M Pete
• Mitsubishi G4M Betty (Bomber)
• Mitsubishi G4M Betty (Ohka)
• Mitsubishi G4M Betty (Torpedo-bomber)
• Nakajima B5N Kate
• Nakajima B6N Jill
• PBY-5 Catalina (ASW)
• PBY-5 Catalina (Bomber)
• PBY-5 Catalina (Torpedo-bomber)
• Short Sunderland
• Supermarine Walrus (ASW)
• Supermarine Walrus (Bomber)
• Supermarine Walrus (Observation)
• Vought F-4U Corsair
• Vought Kingfisher
• Yokosuka D4Y Judy
• Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka

We’ll try and keep a closer eye on things going forward, but we’re very much looking forward to getting our hands on this game.

Lock’n’Load Publishing are best known for their physical table-top wargames these days, although they do have some credence in the digital space. CEO David Heath is ex-Matrix Games, after all. Command Ops 2 is probably their best computer wargame right now.

Recently on Facebook the company has been teasing their new digital endeavours – Lock’N Load Tactical Digital and Nations at War Digital.

The first seems to be a digital adaptation of their table-top LnL Tactical System, which has also just been updated to its fifth iteration. The new digital product seems to be aimed at people wanting to practice LnL Tactical, so it’s unlikely this will be a game in its own right, and more of a companion product to the table-top game.

The plan is to release the core engine & starter kit for free, accompanied by four scenarios, for Windows and Mac OS. It will have AI, so will be suitable for solo play, and there’s no plans for any other platforms at the moment.

Other than some screenshots, that’s all the details we have right now – we’ll keep you posted if anything else comes to light. There were no new details posted up about Nations at War Digital, however there are new screenshots you can look at either on their Facebook page, or ours, as we'll be uploading them there. More information on both projects will be available at WBC.

While it’s rare that we highlight individual dev diaries in their own news post (we could have saved this for Wargamer Weekly, for example), the fact that this one is for Panzer Corps 2 represents an obvious and exciting exception.

While you're here, check out our list of the best WW2 strategy games around. 

Not only that, but it’s the game's first Dev Diary, which means two things:

1. We’re going to start getting regular updates on PC2, which is only going to be good.
2. The fact that they’re starting these diaries now could mean we’ll see Panzer Corps 2 release this year. It’s rare that a Matrix/Slitherine game that’s getting regular dev diaries doesn’t release in the same year they started, although there are always exceptions (and this could prove to be one of them).

Regardless – new information! Yay! Let’s breakdown what we’ve learned.

Gameplay Features

Some of this may already be known, as we covered a lot in our Panzer Corps 2Everything We Know guide, but we’ll cover it again anyway and update accordingly. Matrix are key to stay true to the original design philosophy of Panzer Corps, in the sense that it was a spiritual successor to Panzer General:

Many aspects of the game, including the list of unit classes and unit stats, remain unchanged, and Panzer Corps veterans will feel themselves instantly at home with the new game. At the same time, we are giving the player a number of new tactical options, which will make the playing experience even more interesting and engaging.

Overrun & Encirclement: these two features were already known about, but they’ve gone into a little more elaboration in the dev dairy. Overrun better reflects the role of tanks in WW2 by allowing these units to destroy severely damaged units (threshold unknown) without spending their movement or attack action.

For ‘encirclement’, while PC2 won’t have a full-on supply system like Order of Battle, the dev team are keen to bring in the tactical implications of units being out of supply. A unit that’s surrounded by enemy units so that it can’t move onto any passable terrain hexes will be considered ‘out of supply’ and will start to suffer combat penalties over time.

Splitting Units: this was also a known feature. At the cost of an additional unit slot, any unit can be split into two equal halves that can act as independent units. Useful for things like recon and encirclement.

Captured Units: this is a feature that wasn’t talked about before with regards to Panzer Corps 2, but it’s a feature that was in some of PC1’s campaigns. It’s now being made into a core mechanic:

When you force enemy unit to surrender, its equipment is captured and added to a pool. Later you can use this pool to create new units or replenish existing ones for free.

Unique hero abilities: Unlike Panzer Corps, where heroes only gave stat boosts to units, in Panzer Corps 2 they will have many unique tactical abilities, and some of these abilities will be synergistic with your units.

Air and Naval Warfare

We only got vague details during our initial brief and there’s little extra detail in the dev diary, however the team have gone into more depth to talk about the design intent for Panzer Corps 2 at least. Their main aim is to make Air and Naval Warfare as interesting as ground warfare so that Air-only or Naval-only scenarios can be a legitimate design choice, and their looking to similar dedicated wargames for inspiration:

The most important change in the air war is that all aircraft act from airfields now and return to their base automatically at the beginning of their turn. Also, just as in real life, the effectiveness of aircraft drops as the distance to their base increases. This means that all air rules and mechanics from Panzer Corps (like mass attack, interceptors etc.) remain in place, but at the same time the airfields, their location on the map, timely capture and proper defence become key elements in air warfare.

As for naval war, naval terrain is “by definition” less interesting than ground terrain, with endless sea hexes going in all directions. To compensate for this, ships themselves will be more complex entities, with various factors (like orientation and position of turrets) affecting combat effectiveness, and a damage model (inspired by Pacific General) going beyond the simple “strength number” under the ship. Carrier and submarine classes will be much better fleshed out to represent their unique roles in naval war. A more advanced naval model will allow this series to branch out into any theatre of war in the future, including the “naval-heavy” Pacific, something which Panzer Corps never did.

That’s all we have for now – are you excited yet? We’ll try and keep you up to date as and when more information comes to light.

Panzer Corps 2 is the upcoming sequel to Matrix Games & Slitherine’s acclaimed turn-based WW2 wargame Panzer Corps. Currently the most popular successor to the legacy of Panzer General, Panzer Corps’ take on operational-level wargaming lets players command vast armies and fight massive battles in a way that’s manageable, yet still complex and engaging.

Panzer Corps 2 is being developed by Flashback Games and will feature a new 3D engine and other features that will bring the iconic wargame into the modern era. We’ve collected everything we know about the project so far – features, release date information, specs, multiplayer, and more!

Panzer Corps 2 Release Date

Slitherine and Matrix Games always hold information regarding release dates pretty close to the chest. If we’re lucky, we might get a rough window but at the moment they've only committed to a 2018 release. Ultimately, we won’t find out the exact date until they're ready.

Panzer Corps 2 Beta

The Panzer Corps 2 beta hasn’t started yet, and there's no official information as when it will be rolled out. We will update this section with further details as and when they are announced.

Panzer Corps 2 Game Features

General

• There will be over 450 individual units and unit types in the game at launch.
• Will feature a new 3D design (made with Unreal Engine 4), with units appearing ‘larger than life’ in a manner similar to Field of Glory 2, although the terrain features are more noticeable and pronounced.
• The game is still hex-based, but with the new engine and visual design the hexes are going to be a bit more subtle on the map.
• The maps are now dynamically/procedurally generated using their new content generator.
• There will be a day/night cycle, as well as dynamic weather that will change how the map looks. 
• The tech progression will be returning, and further to that they will add into the game the ability to 'prototype' upcoming new units. How these units perform and what you do with them could affect the final mass-production version.

Land Combat

• Overrun - better reflects the role of tanks in WW2 by allowing these units to destroy severely damaged units (threshold unknown) without spending their movement or attack action.
• Encirclement - PC2 won’t have a full-on supply system like Order of Battle, but the dev team are keen to bring in the tactical implications of units being out of supply. A unit that’s surrounded by enemy units so that it can’t move onto any passable terrain hexes will be considered ‘out of supply’ and will start to suffer combat penalties over time.
• Unit Splitting - Units can now split into two, weaker versions of the same unit and recombine. This can be useful for encirclement & recon.
• Unique Hero Abilities - In Panzer Corps 2 Heroes will have many unique tactical abilities, and some of these abilities will be synergistic with your units. These can include things like extra attack power, enhanced defence or even command abilities.

Air & Naval Warfare

• The air-war rules from Panzer Corps 1 will largely remain in place, but in Panzer Corps 2 all air-units now operate from an airfield that has a physical location on the map.
• Air units return to their designate air-base at the beginning of the turn, and their effectiveness drops the further form the air base they are.
• You can attack and destroy the airfields to cause air units to run out of fuel and/or ammo, and Airfield hexes may be able to be repaired under certain circumstances.
• Because naval 'terrain' is largely boring, naval units will become more complex. Facing and the orientation/position of turrets will be important factors.
• There will be a more complex damage model inspired by Pacific General.
• Carrier and submarine classes will be much better fleshed out to represent their unique roles in naval war.
• The dev team hope that the improved Air/Naval mechanics will allow for some air or naval-only missions and that the naval mechanics will work for any theatre, including the pacific.

Source: Dev Diary #1

Panzer Corps 2 Multiplayer

You will be able to play with up to 7 other people (so 8-players total) on the same map in both PvP AND PvE modes.

Multiplayer will be live, not via Matrix’s staple PBEM system that most of their other games use. The ‘how’ of this has yet to be determined, but there are examples of other titles that haven't used PBEM include; Empires Apart, which uses Steam’s back-end for multiplayer, and Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock, which used a third-party middle-ware company for online matches.

Panzer Corps 2 DLC Model

The specifics haven’t been talked about yet, but Matrix are able to share the basics:

• They will be taking inspiration from the Paradox model.
• They don’t want to simply replicate the ‘Grand Campaign’ model from Panzer Corps as that’s been done already and they doubt consumers would respond favourably to it.
• Doing historical battles is also a potential issue due to the dynamic maps - unless they created them by hand, the battlespace wouldn't resemble the historical geography of an area.
• They are already including the majority of units that fought in WW2, so doing ‘unit packs’ doesn’t make much sense either.

Panzer Corps 2 Announcement Trailer

Panzer Corps 2 Price & Pre-Order Incentives

We have no information regarding price, game bundles or pre-order incentives at this time, but the game is likely to be sold on the Matrix/Slitherine store, as well as maybe Steam and/or GOG.com.

That’s everything we know about Panzer Corps 2 so far! Have you spotted any new information or want us to find out something specific? Let us know in the comments!

Well, for this year anyway. From July 12^th, 2018 thru the 15^th some 2500 faithful gathered for the premier convention of the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society (HMGS), Historicon 2018. This year the theme was “Wars of Conquest and Those That Lead Them,” while the venue the ‘comfortable as a pair of slippers’ Lancaster Host Resort, Lancaster, PA. The Host was once the permanent home of the con, and now under new management is undergoing a massive renovation in hopes of becoming a Wyndham franchise by this October. Thus, it’s a little tough to judge how good the facilities actually are, except to say that there was indeed an impact. Right now, its time for all the guest rooms to be redone, and this meant less were available. Thus, the Host contracted with local Wyndham hotels to make up the difference and tardy Wyndham folks like me found ourselves praying for pup tents. Likewise, the renovations resulted in only one speciality food stand outside the hotel café, as room was needed for gaming.

Events

And there was lots of gaming, although I can’t specify exactly how much. I do know that Thursday night gaming seemed heavier than before, and if the Distelfink Ballroom was any indication, Friday was the big day and night for events. Simply consider that this year’s program weighed in at a whopping 104 pages of which 57 were devoted to game listings. With about nine events listed per page, just do the math and you have around... well, beaucoup und Zwanzig to be sure. Typically, some were stupendous in mirth and presentation, some at the opposite end of the spectrum and some gracing that unique American category which saw spectacular, museum quality figures laid out on terrain unfit for Candy Land. Hobby University CIC Heather Blush, if you’re reading this, you may want to get some truancy police to grab these latter churls for next con. The University, BTW, hosted 65 events such as German Camo and Painting & Prepping, all with the typical sang-froid for which Heather and crew have come to be known.

The events above do not include any of the contests nestled under the HMGS tournament system, now occupying about 80% of the Lampeter Room, the balance reserved for overall convention registration and automated QR code badge pickup. I counted 15 tournaments, of which most were devoted to Ancients. World War II and Modern armor was well represented by both Bolt Action and two Flames of War slates, while Poland’s uber popular By Fire and Sword rules also had a presence. It was also nice to see some newcomers and two that caught my eye were the Mortem et Gloriam Ancients contests and Blood and Plunder where budding Captain Jack Sparrows could swash as much buckle as desired. Getting into tournaments normally costs about $5.00 US and pays for everything, awards included, pretty much a trifling given how inexpensive overall registration cost has been historically.

Finally, the convention hosted its traditional War College lecture series, but this year the company of doughty presenters was just a little bit different and a little bit special. There was of course the usual set of military history lectures, to include fascinating fare from Marine Corps historian Paul Westermeyer who covered Belisarius and the Vandalic War, as well as Dr Greg Dryanski who spoke on one of my favorite subjects, the 1919 – 21 Russo-Polish War. All excellent.

However, the big coup involved the 9 of 15 presentations made by four of the principals of the legendary cardboard counter wargame company, Simulations Publications Incorporated, or SPI. Initially on tap were SPI founder and president Jim Dunnigan (a last-minute cancel), Al Nofi, David C Isby (remember Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army?) and finance guru Howard Barasch. I attended the latter’s sit-down and although a retrospective (he declined to talk about SPI’s demise or the future of the hobby), found the information presented to be both fascinating and often humorous. Did you know at its peak SPI had 35 full time employees? Did you know that its best-selling games were all science fiction followed by modern, speculative conflict such as NATO or The Next War? And of these, did you know the all time best seller was Starforce Alpha Centauri at 50,000 units sold? I can see a future article out of this somewhere and given how full we pewter pushers packed the place, I doubt a lack of interest.

Toys

For me and others, Historicon is Christmas in July, and boy I hit the jackpot this year, both in Wally’s Basement and in the Expo Center where all our formal dealers set up shop to entice away your hard-earned shekels. In the latter case I counted 59 dealers scheduled, and while there were a lot of old friends making their return, one of the changes I did notice was the lack of small, cottage, no frills, 'mom and pop' dealers. Instead new entries into the fray seemed dominated by entrepreneur types who, although doing this part time, were keenly acute as to marketing and presentation. The stations were small, but very smart and professional looking, to include product packaging. And this time around, the upstairs balcony was full as well, so it seems more dealers were present.

Regardless, I got a lotta loot, but at some good discounts. I found three boardgames I wanted at 20% off, to include one covering the Russo-Polish War noted above, another World War I and another the siege of Metz during the Franco-Prussian War. And while I also absconded with some ready-made forestry from BTC Terrain Man and some of those 12 mm 1914 figures I reviewed recently, the big haul came from Old Glory’s 10 mm Grand Scale line. I’m prepping the Hungarian Revolution 1848 right now and finding specialty figures in 15 mm is a forlorn hope. However, given the variety of uniforms, the smaller size and just because I’ve gotten laz . . . more efficient . . . these days, I figured I’d give similar looking 10 mm Napoleonics a go. Besides I pay $50.00 US a year to be a member of the OG Army, and that got me 40% off a YUGE order. How big? Well, if you’re looking for 10 mm Austrian Napoleonics over the next year or two, hopefully you don’t have my address. Just sayin’.

The only issue with the Expo Center is the walk and steep hills to get to a renovated building that moved its entrance to the far side. Yes, HMGS provided some golf cart transport for those who purchased their weight in merchandise (and trust me, that could be a LOT of weight), but for fitness nuts like me (translation - I didn’t find out about this until the end of the convention) it was not an option. What proved an option was the Wally’s Basement flea market inside the main Host building, up a flight of stairs into the Lancaster Showroom. This is another relatively new move, with a venue built sorta like an amphitheatre with tiered levels for seating or tables. Compared to sharing the Lampeter, this produced wide aisles that were easy to negotiate and accommodated lots of buyers without overcrowding. I celebrated with yet another large stash of highly discounted World War I minis by Peter Pig, and also two more boardgames, operational fare on World War I and the 30 Years War. Getting stuff at Wally’s is often hit or miss, but this year was an unequivocal bulls eye. Only my bank account suffered, but I’ve learned to appreciate some kinds of pain.

And Their Boys

Due to some recent health issues I didn’t host any games this year. But a lot of other folks did, and many of those who went above and beyond caught the eye of the HMGS Awards Director, MS Christin Sciulli. While plenty of PELAs – Pour Encourager les Autres– were handed out, sadly so were a lot of memorial awards, so called because they honored some of HMGS and the hobby’s brightest stars recently deceased. Nevertheless, there were some fine choices, such as Colonel (Retired) Tom Garnett who won the Duke Seifried Gamemaster of the Year trophy due his spectacular Carnage & Glory Napoleonic contests.

Likewise, designers and GMs par excellence Howard Whitehouse, Richard Borg and Richard Clarke were formally inducted into the HMGS Legion of Honor. The Legion also awards what many consider to be the top recognition in the hobby, the Scruby Award. This year twins Alan and Michael Perry were dual recipients. The Perry’s are not only renowned for excellent sculpting sold under their own Perry Miniatures label, but also for promoting plastic vice lead figures in the hobby. Well done gents.

Finis

Next year of course, Historicon, “the mother of all wargaming conventions” according to the Wall Street Journal, will be at a new permanent home not in a galaxy far, far away. Instead the new digs will be only a few leagues away at the Lancaster County Convention Center smack in the middle of downtown Lancaster. I’ve reported on this move previously, and based on personal experience, you will not find a more modern, up to date and spacious place anywhere in Central Pennsylvania. HMGS President Paul Trani provided attendees free transportation to the center for a tour, and everyone I spoke with seemed impressed. Yes, parking might be a problem, but on the flip side traffic will not include Amish buggies pulled by horses with stubbornness issues.

To my mind the real question will be whether the new location can match what had to be one of the most low-key, laid back Historicons in recent memory, a real tribute to Joby Miller and his convention staff. HMGSers are many things, but subtle is not one of them. Yet complaints and controversies seemed few despite typical renovation inconveniences, and that’s a good omen. Match that and next year Historicon, as well as HMGS, will do just fine.

NB. Click here for access to another 250 + images of the convention taken by the author.

It’s been a relatively quiet week again this week, although things have been ‘happening’. Some exciting news towards the start of the week between Lock’N Load Publishing rekindling their digital firepit and Panzer Corps 2 finally getting some news.

I’ve yet to find the time to play a wargame, physical or digital, in recent weeks which is a shame, but I’m confident the time will come. I’ve been playing a fair bit of Warframe, mind, just to unwind.

Meanwhile, in the world of wargaming…

Armored Brigade

Apart from the Panzer Corps 2 dev diary drop earlier in the week, there’s only been one wargame-orientated news item this week, and it comes in the form of another dev diary. Now that the beta for the ‘what if/WW3’ operational wargame is well underway; the dev updates are starting to roll out.

This first one talks about the game’s dynamic AI, which has been designed to handle numerous scenarios and situations. Given the level of technology In the game, the concept of a ‘frontline’ is irrelevant – if you can see it, you can kill it.

In Armored Brigade, there's an undefined number of maps, units, environmental conditions, and so on. The system must build a readable representation, process the input and then produce output that creates a credible impression of intelligence that behaves in a realistic, unpredictable and challenging manner. That's quite a challenge indeed. A "chess AI", where you have a finite number of possible states, is out of the question. 

Even if warfare of this era can be considered symmetric, the highly lethal long range weapon systems and the great variety of units in the game can make the battles very erratic. 

Panzer Strategy

One of the two prominent Panzer Corps challengers to emerge this year has announced a release date. Panzer Strategy, which uses a fully 3D game engine and visual style, will be releasing on September 1^st– the day Germany invaded Poland in 1939 which marked the start of WW2 in Europe.

To celebrate the dev team have released a trailer for the game’s fourth scenario, the Invasion of France. We’ve yet to cover this game in-depth – we’ll definitely make sure a reviews ready for launch, but we might dive in before that to see where things stand.

X-Combat Actions: The Days of the Dead

Digitalgameworks are an indie wargaming studio that quietly make competent, albeit limited digital wargames on a range of topics of periods, like the 1879 Zulu War. Their latest release strays some-what off the beaten track, however…

Days of the Dead is the first in the new ‘X-Combat’ series and covers an old faithful – zombies. It’s a tactical, turn-based skirmish game, and boasts the following features:

• Single player (CIA Side)
• Variable and Quality, Terrain, Fire Support, and Morale
• Scenario Based Missions with Campaign Mode
• Random Command Activation
• Full 3D graphics, Sound and Special Effects, and More...

What’s interesting though is that last point – the full 3D graphics. DGW’s visual prowess has been getting better and better as they release games. Their last release, ZuluDawn! Was quite pretty, held back only by the limited nature of the scenario it covered. Days of the Dead looks to be a step above that, however.

If they can apply this tech to more traditional wargaming theatres and scenarios, then I’d be interested in seeing how those games perform.

Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts

The developer behind Ultimate General: Civil War& UG: Gettysburg is working on a naval themed RTS focusing on the iconic WW1 warships.

All we have is what Grogheads user Destraex has managed to dig up and collate – there’s not an official website or anything as far as we’ve seen, although there are some threads on the official game-labs forums that I think were used as sources.

And finally…

There’s been a minor update for Clad in Irons: Philippines’ TBS mode:

Inspired by a player named Tempest, we updated the interface on the battle map in strategy mode. Now all slots for ships, infantry or buildings of one side have only one color. In addition, it is now easier to understand which harbor the player controls, and which ones are his computer opponent.

That’s all for this week – enjoy your weekends!

Two quite unrelated events led to this article. The first was the announcement a while back of a sequel to Rule the Waves. Carrier warfare, and another twenty-five supported years, is the big news. As per usual, the game’s fanbase have proven the most effective at maintaining the hype. The sequel’s forum has already been populated by several threads that are veritable treasure troves of information for a naval enthusiast (as opposed to 'expert') such as me. With RTW2 coming over the horizon, it was time to return to the original.

Rule the Waves is one of our favourite naval warfare games. You should check out the others.

The second event was a flurry of discussion on sites where strategy fans gather, on the use and misuse of RNG in games. An altogether unwieldy term: 'RNG' (literally 'Random Number Generator') is the catch all acronym for any time a game rolls a dice. It has a variety of pseudonyms. These range from the prosaic: 'luck' all the way up to: 'cheese', 'unfair plays''RNGesus' and 'imbalance'.

The prevailing opinion seems to be the RNG is something that must be removed from games as much as possible. It isn’t fair for pure skill not to decide the victor, nor is it fair for many hours of gameplay to go down the toilet just because RNG rolled a snake eyes for you. These are good points. Yet in playing Rule the Waves I cannot help but find the sheer randomness of it all one of its strongest features.

The scene: Italy in the first decade of the 20^th Century. A victorious war with Russia left me confident of Italy’s strength in its home ground of the Mediterranean. But the Dreadnought age has arrived. No longer will the battleships I have at present suffice, especially with France becoming uncomfortably uppity.

Britain, for the moment, isn’t too annoyed with my in-game persona of an admiral who will threaten war with literally anyone if there’s a budget increase in it for him. General Buck Turgidson would look positively dovish in comparison. So I get this shiny new dreadnought, with lots of big guns, built overseas. I can take advantage of all the technology British industry offers as well as their far larger ship yards. For the always cash strapped Italian navy this is a dream come true.

Then the France thing blew up. One wrong word, one thoughtless denunciation too many and now we’re at war. As soon as it is declared, I find that my shiny new battleship, only a few months away from being ready for service, has been impounded by Britain. Bugger.

Well might it be said that RNG had given me the proverbial middle finger and ruined my game. I’d been behind for a long time already. The previous war had prevented me from building the biggest and bestest. Now the second war had ruined me before a shot had even been fired. But here’s the thing, at the time of writing I am now winning the war against France. And I can now savour a quite memorable (and rather amusing) moment that was unexpected and unplanned for. There was no timer ticking down to inform me how long it would be before it happened, no warning. It just happened, and I had to get on with it. And I think that’s what gives the crude, excel level graphics of Rule the Waves some of the charm it desperately needs to keep the player invested. Rule the Waves is unashamed of the randomness of its world and does not pull its punches.

It helps, of course, that the randomness works both ways. It seems that in every other game (looking at you Paradox) the numbers are against you. Everything that nine times out of ten will work – doesn’t. Not so in Rule the Waves. For every battleship you lose to conniving politicians in Westminster, you will, more than likely, receive a fat wad of cash from an adoring (and misguided) public for the construction of a shiny new battleship or a new technology (research being random as well) will become available. The early 1900s being a period of constant economic improvements, you can always be assured of more money coming in – although whether a dirty filthy socialist government, the terror of all militaries, will steal all that wealth away from you (to feed the poor no less!) is another matter.

Of course, Rule the Waves would be a pitiful excuse for a point and click adventure game without the battles. The magic of the game is here, where all the time (and trade-offs) you’ve put into building your fleet are put to the test against an enemy fleet. It should be a simple numbers game. Bigger guns, better fire control, more armour, all these should be what decides the outcome of the fighting. But stacking numbers onto your side isn’t fun – certainly not in my book.

And here RNG comes to the rescue. As it happens, real war isn’t fair, and the expectations of commanders are often quite divorced from reality. The fighting at Jutland is a classic example of this. Naval warfare in many games often devolves into a game of numbers – typically whomever has more ships or better counters wins in a flat empty battlespace. RTW sidesteps this by randomly generating every battle. You have no chance to decide upon what sort of fleet you will have, where the action will take place within that particular sea zone, and of course what your enemy will be, beyond some clues in the description.

So it was that, as the United States Navy, I found myself in a war with Britain. Playing the US is a very different challenge to Italy. You have vast and ever-increasing resources, yet at the same time have to cover both East and West coasts, along with scattered colonial possessions. With so much area to cross, I have been forced to lessen the strength of my ships in exchange for increasing their endurance. The first war against Germany (!) taught me that well – as I lost many ships from damage that resulted in their internment. Chastened by this lessen, and with the dreadnought age well and truly upon the world – I prepared for the coming fight. Early engagements were small affairs. With the majority of my forces concentrated along the East coast to ward of any adventures the British might undertake via Canada, I had to let Britannia run riot in the Caribbean.

Nonetheless Britain did not have it all their own way. Early encounters between light forces were nearly always in my favour. US fire control had over the past decade surged ahead of its competitors. As a result, whilst my ships may have been less numerous and sometimes less well armed, their ability to land shots on target meant that they could gain the upper hand if the old oppressor was unwary.

The highlight of this war however was the epic fleet battle fought off the coast of Maine. Being unable to read an order of battle, I fumed for a while, believing that only some of my new dreadnoughts (as yet unblooded) had turned up to fight. As it turned out, I’d simply been ordering the wrong formation. Hopefully the history books make no mention of how the admiral’s squadron sailed in completely the opposite direction to the rest of his fleet, until some low-ranking minion of no importance pointed it out to the old man.

With the formation eventually back in one piece, the ships headed toward where the enemy battlecruisers had been spotted. The US Navy lacked battlecruisers. Whilst it is tempting to blame 20-20 hindsight and say that in real life battlecruisers spent most of their time exploding, I must admit that I was simply busy getting a reasonable number of dreadnoughts into the battle line.

Now one would think that somewhere beyond these battlecruisers would lurk the enemy fleet. Obviously, the enemy was plotting to drag my plucky armoured cruisers (who had to take up the slack of having no battlecruisers available) into their fleet’s waiting guns. This was what I expected. And I was completely wrong.

Whilst I was pushing my main fleet south as fast as it would go to save my errant scouts, my screen to the north spotted a new ship. One ship became several, then many. It seemed like the entire Royal Navy had arrived. Most of it had.

All my expectations were wrong. The cruisers down south would have to fend for themselves, there were bigger fish to fry here. My big guns, ably sighted by advanced US fire control, set to work.

The above situation would never have been possible without the randomness that runs deep through the Rule the Waves. Sometimes it messes up. Battles too close to land result in ships sliding down coastlines in a wholly immersion breaking fashion. Sometimes the battles are uneven. But sometimes we have battles like the one just described, where the tension in facing a superior enemy is palpable, and the battle’s progress is always uncertain. RNG gets a bad rap, but Rule the Waves stands as an example how it can be done well, creating a living world where everything is uncertain and every session different. Whilst I eagerly await its sequel, I think the present offering will still be satisfying me for some time to come.

Rule the Waves II does not currently have a release window, but you can keep up-to-date on the official forum.

GMT Games make some really good board wargames. From their devoloping series of counter-insurgency themed board games, to more traditional hex-and-counter and grand-strategy offerings, they've spent the last 28 years becoming a house name in table-top wargaming.

Despite being a table-top focused company, they’re no stranger to having their games ported to digital platforms: their Commands & Colors series is coming out this week thanks to HexWar games, and developer Playdek created a rather excellent adaptation of the Cold War-themed boardgame Twilight Struggle.

Last night, GMT announced a new long-term partnership with Playdek to bring even more of their titles to digital.

Playdek will be starting with Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001-?, which portrays the U.S. efforts to counter extremists’ use of terrorist tactics, as well as the wider ideological struggle – guerrilla warfare, regime change and more. It will be coming to Steam first later this year, with mobile versions due in 2019.

Also mentioned is Imperial Struggle, the 18^th century-themed spiritual successor to Twilight Struggle. It hasn’t even released in physical form yet at it’s still going through GMT’s P500 process, but the digital adaption is due to appear in 2019 as well. Finally, the Playdek will be adapting GMT’s increasingly popular COIN series of war games.

No word yet on which one’s we'll be getting - my vote is on Pendragon - but the first one should also be turning up sometime next year.

“We have been very fortunate to work with the best licensors and designers in this business,” said Playdek CEO Joel Goodman in the official press release:

“Focusing on the great strategy and war game digital space makes a lot of sense for both companies. This player community is one of the most dedicated and supportive in any gaming genre. Our relationship with GMT is everything we could want in a partnership.”

It must be noted that this isn’t the first time GMT and Playdek have announced a new 'partnership' (other than Twilight Struggle). In 2012 they were supposed to bringing Command & Colors: Ancients to digital, but as we’ve established that’s now being handled by HexWar. Hopefully this new deal will fare a bit better.

Eugen Systems have just announced a sequel to their real-time tactical WW2 war game, Steel Division: Normandy ’44.

Steel Division II, as it is currently known, is set on the Eastern Front and primarily covers Operation Bagration, which was fought between 22^nd of June and 19^th of August 1944 when the Red Army launched an offensive into Belorussia (present day Belarus).

Historically, the operation was a resounding success for the Soviet Union and gave them a foothold In eastern Poland and within striking distance of Warsaw.

Steel Division II will feature solo, co-op and competitive multiplayer modes. The solo mode especially will be getting what Eugen are calling a ‘Strategic Dynamic Campaign’, which is a brand new  game mode that puts you in charge of an entire army on strategic maps of up to 150x100 kilometres. It will be turn-based and offer a 1:1 scale.

There will be 25 individual tactical maps, over 600 units, and game modes such as Conquest, Destruction Attack/Defence as well as their iconic 10v10 modes. There will also be a new deck system for battlegroup customisation.

Curiously, it seems Eugen are for the moment going solo on this game; there’s mp Paradox Interactive branding to be seen anywhere. As much as we loved the first title, there were plenty of rumours that it didn’t sell well and/or had a very low player-base.

Eugen’s previous RTS/wargame franchise – Wargame– was ultimately let down by a fractured player-base spread across too many releases. I hope Steel Division doesn’t fall down the same hole.

Sign up for the newsletter at Steel Division 2's official homepage, and read more from the official announcement here.

When you think of the Creative Assembly’s Total War series of computer warGAMES, the first thing you think of is the incredible eye candy, both in graphics and animation. Let’s face it, this firm is CGI – R-Us (too soon, Bill-ED) However, serious wargamers also think ‘Hollywood History’, a not so nice comment about how the product line plays fast and loose with military reality. It’s sorta like a documentary on the Alamo versus the John Wayne movie of the same name. History be damned, there’s no contest as to which was more fun to watch.

However, with their latest offering the Total War folks have taken some large, though perhaps purely unintentional, strides towards redressing that disparity. The game in question is the recently released Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia (or TOB), covering 10 warring factions that vie for control of that wet, often dreary isle from 878 AD. This is Alfred the Great territory, and the entire so called “Saga” concept is to produce a Total War game covering a smaller, shorter, flashpoint in history in order to enhance detail, realism and player involvement. The effort isn’t perfect, but its on the correct path.

Shield Walls and other Battlefield Sundries

When fighting on a TOB battlefield, the thing to remember is the armies involved are not professional, full time forces. They are mostly made up of farmers, black smiths, etc formed into a national militia called the Fyrd, with the Great Fyrd encompassing every freeman between the ages of 15 and 60. Conversely, the Select Fyrd was raised by the petty nobility (Thanes) on the basis of one man serving for every five 'hides' of land. The former performed local defense duties except in emergencies, while the latter could be called for 60 days service at a time, often outside the boundaries of the kingdom, and garrisoned fortified Burghs. Normally, only half the Select Fyrd served at a time to insure agricultural production did not suffer. Rounding out the army was the king’s Hird or Huscarls, royal household troops often recruited from Scandinavian mercenaries, constituting the only professional soldiery in the land.

The army was almost entirely infantry, and although scholars have argued for years, what little cavalry there was seemed to have been mounted infantry. Archers were also very rare, or at least singularly ineffective. Thus, the most common tactic was defending or attacking infantry locking together as a shield wall, with Stephen Pollington in his book The English Warrior, From Earliest Times until 1066, describing the process thus:

• Preliminaries - The lines are drawn up and leaders make pre-battle inspirational speeches.
• Advance to close quarters - a battle cry would be raised and one or both shield walls would advance.
• Exchange missiles - both sides shoot arrows and throw javelins, axes and rocks to break the enemy's resolve.
• Shield to shield - one or other side closes the short gap and attacks, using spears and swords, protecting themselves and pushing with shields to try to break the enemy line. If neither line broke, both sides would draw back to rest. More missiles would be exchanged, and then the two lines would close again. This would continue until one line broke through the other, perhaps aided by the death of a leader or capture of a banner.
• Rout and pursuit - One side would begin to give way. A final stand might be made by some, as at Maldon, but most would flee. The victors would pursue, killing all they could catch.

Armies were small (the Great Viking Army may well have been but 1000 men strong) but battles bloody. Indeed, at Stamford Bridge it was recorded that only 24 ships out of 300 were needed to return the defeated Viking survivors home.

This was the tactical environment and TOB does a very commendable job of recreating the flavor and detail thereof. Yes, the tactical game still works the same way, but there are some significant differences. First and to me most significant, the armies opposing each other, regardless of which of the 10 factions owns them, are practically identical in terms of weaponry, tactics and organization. This means little to no cavalry or archers, but lots of very close order infantry and lots of shields. Shields and decreased spacing for warriors play a big part in this game because you can recreate the vaunted shield wall, and this turns infantry formations into miniature forts that move, totally impervious to projectiles zipping around except for the rare critical hit (think King ‘arrow in the eye’ Harold at Hastings). Likewise, cavalry in the game actually stops dead and rears up when confronting one of these things, then walks into contact, totally negating any charge bonus. And BTW, charge distances themselves have decreased, showing the difficulty of keeping formations tight over long hauls when using irregular troops.

When contact is made, cohesion degrades into a bar room brawl where one side or the other dies in place, almost to the last man with very few survivors. This is typical Total War, but finally history matches what has long been a game institution. What few cavalry charges occur also work differently. Although infantry now operates on a much reduced frontage to produce the shield wall effect, cavalry spacing seems much looser and its not uncommon to see opposing horse pass through each other when their formations collide. Overall, about the only nit I can pick is that the formations still seem a little too nimble to me.

Well, OK, outside the visuals, but even here the effort is acceptable. Yes, animation and detail are magnificent, and the 3D models themselves glorious in their lack of uniformity. There are different clothes and shield patterns within a unit, and different colors to boot. The armies really look like irregular, sub-Roman, near barbarian forces, except for . . . Well, TOB has opted to use a common color for each warring faction, such as a dusty blue in various shades or variations. Some warriors have blue cloaks, some a different shade of blue grey tunic underneath their chainmail, but regardless, there is blue somewhere. Matrix Games Pike & Shot Campaigns used this technique, but simply did it better to the point it wasn’t even apparent. TOB is close, but not quite there yet.

Finally, and just as a point of information, this Total War offering does not include historical battles, which does make some sense. Not only were engagements small, but record keeping was not any of these kingdom’s forte (actually writing was not any of these kingdom’s forte). Instead single players must use either campaign generated battles or design your own custom battles using prepared army lists.

In the Name of the King

However, it is the strategy or campaign segment of which really makes this game shine. Like most Total War games, the entire effort is to manage resources and maneuver armies so as to generate tactical battles, so all those drop dead gorgeous Varangians can kill stuff. TOB works the same way, but like the battlefield portion, there are some significant differences and way too many nuances for me to discuss here. Overall, however, the strategy portion of this game seems far more player demanding, yet with far more options to make the game your own. Gone are agents and advisors found in other games, and instead the player as king must deal with most affairs of his kingdom himself, as well as family matters. And trust me, preparing your successor is a must in this game and as a small kingdom, you don’t have a Roman size civil service to help. But then again, you can develop specific personality traits (expert foraging, for example) for both your king and his minions by completing objectives or providing incentives (libraries, for example, or giving a Thane a priest to guarantee loyalty) to encourage greater efficiency. What traits you develop are up to you, so you can mix and match according to taste. The same goes for your technology tree, which is more varied but specific, all with the purpose of allowing the player a choice. If you want to develop one type of infantry vice other types of arms, you can now directly do so without having to pass through another series of mostly unrelated upgrades.

Sustaining an army has also gone through some significant changes, and in my view really reflects the overall character of the period as well as some of the more interesting details of Alfred’s reign. Instead of building barracks everywhere to recruit troops, additional military forces are drawn from a kingdom wide pool that randomly changes its composition. The units appear immediately pretty much anywhere, but at a very reduced strength, reflecting the time and trouble it takes to gather the Fyrd for campaign. Over time, especially if in garrison, the unit will gain the strength and efficiency to make it combat ready.

Related to this is the logistics non-system. Resources to feed and maintain your military does appear in garrisoned settlements but is mostly the responsibility of small villages and mines, none of which have a military presence. Keeping these villages secure while acquiring more is critical. Losing them, or God forbid, the main settlement, means your ability to produce food and materials goes down and your army starves. This system does a really good job of highlighting Alfred’s system of garrisoned Burhs, each no more than one day’s march apart, used to confront and stop localized raiding. Otherwise it is thus possible to stop an enemy army dead in its tracks by snagging so many villages it can’t feed itself. Yes, think like Alfred and remember he wasn’t named 'the Great' for nothing.

Finally, all of this feeds into a War Fervor rating which measures your population’s willingness to support your policies, or not, or even revolt. It’s a balancing act and not having enough domestic support to invade your neighbor is entirely possible.

Royal Decree

I never thought I’d say this, but I really like this game even though its not my favorite period of history. It is, however, my favorite Total War game so far and a good part why is because it is the most historically realistic. And this trait comes not in the arena of flashy battlefield play, though spectacular and much improved to be sure. It comes in one of the best and most historically flavored strategy or campaign systems I’ve seen. Knowing the background of the period, the campaign system seems to capture exactly what it must have been like to manage a kingdom and survive in the disintegration caused by Rom’s departure. It’s a chaotic world that demands strong leaders who are not afraid to get their hands personally dirty as regards every aspect of the land they rule, and that is the way the game must be played.

Just remember I’m a miniatures guy, and forsaking cleaving heads for worrying about farms or recruiting really goes against my grain. And I for one, am happy it does.