For today’s interviewee, wargames aren’t just entertainment founts, they are educational aids. Historian and wargame designer, Arrigo Velicogna has used interactive guerre sims to help War Studies students at King’s College London “understand the interplay between various dynamics in a…
An analogue WW2 U-boat MMO that uses real football results instead of dice, Das Football Boot is capable of producing surprisingly plausible submarine sagas. The catch? Players need to be patient, conscientious, and willing to undertake a little bookkeeping or…
The waypoints and ambush arcs I plot on behalf of the Comment Commanders at the start of Turn 8 promise fireworks. The Panther’s final path pyramid sits in map square a4W, a spot the IS-2’s commander and gunner plan to…
I’ve written hundreds of reviews, previews, and retrospectives during my twenty-odd years as a games inspector. As many of these appeared in the British version of PC Gamer magazine and nowhere else, now and again something from my archive may…
Grogs can’t play Ezra Sidran’s bright-as-a-button black powder-era wargame yet. However, those who own Crusader Kings 3 and are willing to shell out £42 can create battlefields, armies, and scenarios for it. Undoubtedly unintentional, the CK3 stipulation may well be…
Slitherine’s latest video briefing contains both heartening and disheartening news. Although Field of Glory 2 won’t be getting any more DLCs (“We’re actually thinking that FoG2 is kinda… finished”), the Crusader Kings-style meta game the Epsomites have in the works promises to…
There’s no mistaking which tanks are the lionesses this turn and which the worried/weary/wounded wildebeest. While the two Soviet AFVs retreat eastward before pivoting to confront their foes, the three German felines purposefully close distance and look for opportunities to…
Last night I paced the Bismarck’s bridge as she swapped broadsides with The Mighty Hood. I endured Swordfish attacks, and braved mountainous seas in the Denmark Strait. I watched the plucky Prinz Eugen vanish beneath the waves achingly close to…
Ezra Sidran’s latest General Staff: Black Powder video lets us read the thoughts of the game’s silicon McClellan as he prepares to do battle outside Sharpsburg, Maryland on September 17, 1862. Impressively, none of Little Mac’s thoughts are prefabricated. They…
If there was a Hundred-style win predictor at the bottom of the above screenshot, I reckon the red German section of the bar would be at least 50% longer than the blue Soviet one. Outnumbered 3 to 2 (3 to…
A is for Abbreviated A2Z. My mammoth monthly news round-ups are on hold, but short, scattergun versions like this will appear from time to time
Ten seconds into this turn’s sixty-second action phase, the two tanks involved in last turn’s surreal square dance meet again. Although both gunners are expecting trouble and, on paper, are equally adept, it’s the triggerman ensconced in the…