Burden of Command foreplay

Pinch me. Almost nine years after I first got wind of it, Burden of Command is finally trickling onto my PC. As I’m not permitted to share opinions until the day of release (April 8th) and feel a game this long-awaited and this groundbreaking deserves a bit of prep on my part, I don’t plan to start playing the moment that button up there changes colour. Before diving in I’d like to play a few of the hex wargames that BoC most closely resembles, and read and watch my way into a frame of mind appropriate for computer wargaming’s first…

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V2Z

V is for Vintage vroom. If anything is likely to lure me back to open wheel sim racing, it’s the work of Assetto Corsa enrichers, Historic Sim Studios. Using their payware and gratis race cars and circuits, it’s possible to recreate the wild youth of the sport that eventually became F1.

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Q2U

Q is for Quick tea card. Card no. 17 in ‘Locomotives’, a 25-card set issued by Barbers Teas of Birmingham in 1956, features Cock o’ the North, the first of Nigel Gresley’s striking but flawed P2s. Like the other five members of her class, she was rebuilt as an A2/2 a decade after entering service. Although no P2 made it into preservation, thanks to the Doncaster P2 Locomotive Trust and the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, one day there may be two of these powerful 2-8-2s running on British rails.

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Friday Foxer #219

Every Friday, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers.

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L2P

L is for Lamentable landscapes. Clumsily created and employed, AI art can ruin otherwise sound computer games. For proof of this, look no further than Frontline: Assault Corps, a £12 hex wargame in which southern Italy looks awfully like the Eastern Front, visuals and underlying terrain types barely correlate, and isometric battlefields are dotted with bizarre architecture and baffling objects.

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