Professional history digitizers Wargame Design Studio have donated two copies of their latest pike and shot-era wargame to the Corner. To win one you’ll need to don your lateral thinking cap and study six images with pikey links.
As you’ll know if you’ve played this entertaining demo, the WDS Musket and Pike titles (of which Thirty Years War is the latest) are very acceptable alternatives to Byzantine Games’ Pike & Shot games. In fact if historicism and fine control are more important to you than approachability and unscripted chaos, then the WDS releases are probably the better choice.
While the slightly dated visuals and button-rich GUI suggest inscrutability and ponderousness, TYW is actually pretty friendly and fleet. Hundred metre hexes, individual leaders, and individually tracked casualties guarantee intimacy, and almost-phaseless ten minute turns, automatic opportunity fire, and optional delegation and en-masse movement, help keep things moving.
In most of the eighty included scenarios foe behaviour is influenced by a rather effective combination of TacAI, victory location position, and light scripting. In all of the games I played over the weekend, the CPU proved a tough and wily adversary. On several occasions my cavalry tactics proved inferior to his, and I lost cannons and supply wagons to opportunistic gallopers. It wasn’t long before TYW’s golden rule – “Always try to ‘disorder’ a target with artillery or musket fire, before attempting melee” had been drummed into my brain.
So how do you win a downloadable copy of Thirty Years War? Well, first off you need to study this foxer-style puzzle:
It features six ‘things’ that contain or contained at least one pike. Send me (tim at tallyhocorner dot com) the identities of at least three of the pictured things by 0800 hours UTC, July 27, and your name will go into the hat for Sunday’s draw. Send me the identities of all six things and your name will go into the hat twice.
Only one entry per person, please. Best of luck.
I’ve got three straight away but don’t want the game so I’ll avoid the risk of winning ahead of someone that’ll enjoy it.
On the 28th I’d appreciate insight into picture F, that looks worth some investigation!
(Not beforehand, to retain the integrity of the competition)
Did anyone win? I know I got 5/6 but I had to guess “F” (it seemed a reasonable enough guess) as it was taking up too much of my F-ing time haha!
Hi Tim, I’d love to know the answers for these too, I think I got three, but had no idea of the others, and like Clive would love to know the answers!