Pigeon post

Marauding peregrine falcons and sparrowhawks are taking an alarming number of THC carrier pigeons at the moment. The last seven days have been especially grim. Since last Friday we have lost Intrepid, Inkspot, Introvert, Insufferable, Insurgent, and Interlagos. As Insurgent was equipped with the new Mk VII flare dispenser, hopes that the tide could be turned with improved countermeasures have taken a bit of a knock. ‘Top cover’ for every sortie is back on the table as a potential solution.

Of the birds that did get home safe and sound this week, four carried wargaming-related gen…

Invader brought news of Avant-Garde, a promising free prototype available on itch.io since Sunday. The taster might lack sounds, cavalry, and “historical data”, but the avant-garde (sorry, it’s been a long week) blend of hexed hectarage and turnless action, kept me clicking until this screen appeared.

Incurious landed with a leg canister stuffed with Task Force Admiral news. Encouraged by the press demo’s enthusiastic reception, Drydock Dreams Games are currently focusing on…

• Studying ways of making aircraft on carrier flight decks physics-dependent. Potentially this could lead to landing prangs, and parked aircraft ending up in the drink after explosions or violent manoeuvring.
•  Creating a system able to procedurally generate an internal structure for ships, so that damaged vessels sink, list and capsize more naturalistically.
• Ensuring surface opponents navigate, engage, and disenagage, cannily.
• And revising their GUI in the light of feedback.

Once all this has been tackled, DDG may address one of my minor complaints – the fact that, right now, dogfights and interception never dot the sky with parachutes.

Delayed by dense fog and, no doubt, quite a few discarded French fries, Insatiable eventually turned up bearing the following news from hexmeisters Wargame Design Studio.

• A fourth Musket and Pike title – Thirty Years War – is in development.
• The upcoming Panzer Battles: Moscow may end up as two separate games – Typhoon and Counterattack – due to the scale and complexity of the warfare around the Soviet capital in late ’41 and early ’42.
• Eagles Strike will be the next Squad Battles title to benefit from a thorough graphical and data update.
• The engine that powers the company’s ‘grandest’ wargames is undergoing enhancement. Coming improvements such as HQ activations and a streamlined reinforcement system (effectively rudimentary unit production) will pave the way for new releases in this franchise.

Roman’s favourite, Indigestion, lost a couple of her starboard primaries in a tangle with a peregrine over Winchester, yet managed to limp home. If she hadn’t made it, you wouldn’t now be inspecting this screenshot…

…and wondering whether familiarity with and affection for Strategic Command and Commander: Europe at War makes a person more or less likely to enjoy the free Armchair Commander.