Long before 88mm/Slitherine slapped ‘Road to Moscow’ on the cover of a forgettable Panzer General-like in 2014, the moniker was associated with two profoundly memorable wargames. One of these is available today through a number of abandonware sites, the other exists only as a scatter of online references and a handful of tantalising screenshots.
I’ve written hundreds of reviews and previews 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, and involve titles largely forgotten today, now and again something from my archive may appear as one of THC’s daily posts. Below the jump you’ll find my take on XIII Century, a solid medieval RTT from 2008 that is currently just 64p on Steam*.
Control one of the Soviet AFVs in THC’s 2023 play-by-comment Combat mission game? Use the comment section of this password-protected post to discuss tactics with your comrades, and communicate orders to me, the GM.
Control one of the German AFVs in THC’s 2023 play-by-comment Combat mission game? Use the comment section of this password-protected post to discuss tactics with your comrades, and communicate orders to me, the GM.
In this year’s play-by-comment Combat Mission game, the volunteer order issuers aren’t fighting a synthetic foe, they’re fighting each other. It’s January 1945. After a night of confused combat in a foggy/frozen Silesian city, four Soviet and four German AFV crews wake to find the fog gone and the frontline indiscernible. The next thirty minutes of armoured cat and mouse will decide which side goes down in history as The Lions of Lodowice.
Graviteam, Black Hand Studios, Freedom Games, Matrix Games, 1C… you can count the devs that have attempted to produce Combat Mission-comparable 3D tactical wargames on the fingers of one hand. Counting the devs that have actually succeeded arguably requires just one finger. A second digit will be needed if Ali Hamza, the bullish newcomer behind Battle Tactics 2025, delivers.
I don’t recall Lock ‘n Load Tactical Digital’s vitals ever being as attractively priced as they are right now. Besides tutorials, the core game may only include two WW2 and two Vietnam War scenarios, but as those scenarios cost, in effect, ten pence each, and can be radically rebalanced, generously extended, and played from either side, I reckon the phrase ‘unmissable bargain’ is warranted.
Using the following clues (the map above is purely decorative) in combination with Street View, MapFrappe and other tools, work out my location.