Demo Disc
A minute’s silence in memory of the demo disc, if you please. Coup de grâced by broadband, the wafer of wonders* that once clung limpet-like to the front cover of almost every games mag is no more. Denied these monthly…
Category Wargames
The Lions of Lodowice: Turn 16
At the close of turn 15 both teams receive startling news. German forces have blown the bridge at Sandomierz meaning ‘Ivan the Terrible’, the Red Army’s self-propelled 800mm siege mortar, must now cross the Vistula at Lodowice if it wishes…
Dev diaries: the successors to manuals?
Over the past couple of decades numerous words have been written about the disappearance of the lavish printed game manual, but until this Open October submission from Cornerite Tom Goodfellow (aka Wilson) landed on my desk, the idea that we…
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…
The Lions of Lodowice: Turn 15
If this play-by-comment Combat Mission experiment was a frame of snooker, I reckon the referee would be warning the players that a re-rack was imminent if they continued in their current cagey fashion. Reduced to a single ‘tank’ apiece, and…
Bastogne Breakout lightly lambasted
On the stormy night in 1992 when I made my fateful deal with that hoofed chappy at a crossroads north of Waterlooville, one of the contract clauses I failed to read was this: “The signee hereby agrees to review all…
Boat Crew’s campaign engine is surprisingly sophisticated
Back in the no-risk Noughties, dynamic campaigns stopped traffic and popped monocles in Simulatia and Grognardia. Years passed without a single new example appearing. The “They’re too time-consuming/expensive to make” myth was trotted out so often, some began to treat…
The Lions of Lodowice: Turn 14
In Poland a person with a great sense of humour is sometimes said to “laugh like a Lodowician”. The Silesian city shows its mirthful/mischievous side halfway through Turn 14 when a Studebaker truck barrelling along Copernicus Street decides to explode…
Rise of the White Sun is something else
I’ve never played a wargame quite like Maestro Cinetik’s latest TBS before. Yes, there have been moments this week when, moving armies from Chinese district to Chinese district, I’ve been reminded of AGEod titles such as Birth of America and…
The Velicogna Verdict: Interceptor Ace
Professional conflict sim ponderer Arrigo Velicogna has very kindly agreed to assess some cardboard solitaire wargames for Tally-Ho Corner. In his first column the ex King’s College London lecturer takes a look at a diversion in which the player’s goal…
The Lions of Lodowice: Turn 13
September 17 is ‘Ladislav Day’ in Lodowice. When there isn’t a war on, citizens gather on North Bridge to commemorate a Catholic priest drowned by Protestant rioters in 1621. After tossing little decorated crucifixes into the Vistula at precisely midday…
A2Z
A is for Alphabetised wargame, sim, and site news. Now and again, assuming I can persuade Austerity’s Blackburn Cirrus Bombardier engine to perform the miracle of internal combustion, I spend a day or two scouring Simulatia and Grognardia for stories…