Category Wargames

The Lions of Lodowice: Turn 17

Why do all the screenshots in this turn report look they were taken in 1997? A couple of days ago my PC suddenly decided that it detested OpenGL. Titles that had worked flawlessly for years, no longer launched, and hours…

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…

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…

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…

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…