Wargamer Weekly: Rule the (Ancient) Waves By Joe Robinson

It’s been another quiet(ish) week in the world of wargaming, with the usual suspects making the usual noises. Here’s a summary of what caught our eye:

Matrix Games/Slitherine

Quite a few cool things to make you aware of this, first and foremost the announcement of a brand new naval wargame! Mare Nostrvm takes players to the Mediterranean in ancient/roman times, and is from the same studio that brought you Qvadriga.

It’ll be a WEGO naval combat wargame, where players and AI (or other players) issue their orders at the same time. It will boast a respectable skirmish generator, as well as 24 historical(ish) scenarios from nine different wars – think Greco-Persian Wars up to the Roman Civil Wars. You can go here for more information.

Next-up, you may have noticed that Strategic Command WW2: War in Europe, has made its way onto steam. This grand-strategy wargame focused on the European theatre got a good word from us when it released last November, and putting it on Steam could open it up to new players. Don’t forget to check out our competition where we’re giving away five steam codes for the game to celebrate D-Day.

The company is also running a D-Day special, which will end on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Panzer Corps 2017 Championship is now officially underway. Looking at the first-round match-ups, looks like 64 players ended up throwing their hats into the ring, and half of those will be gone by June 17th.

In other tournament news, the developers behind the Heroes of Normandie's digital version have finally finished integrating the Slitherine Tournament System, and they’re ready to run the first ever competition for the game. The First Blood tournament starts on Monday, and will last for 30 days. Sign up here.

Finally, and while this isn’t a wargame, management/strategy game, Carrier Deck has been given a release date. This intriguing game where you’re managing the flight deck of an aircraft carrier will be arriving on June 15th, and you should head over to Strategy Gamer for future coverage.

Games Workshop

Last Friday the eternal throne published a short news item talking about how well they’ve done during the 16/17 financial year. The growth that was discussed during March has continued through to May, and all in all they’re quite pleased with themselves.

We expect the Group’s sales for the year to 28 May 2017 to be approximately £158 million and the Group’s profit before tax to be above market expectations at not less than £38 million. Sales and profits have benefitted from the continuing favourable impact of the weaker pound.

The full results for the last fiscal year will be published on 25th July, 2017.

Hearts of Iron IV One-Year Anniversary

Hearts of Iron IV celebrated its one-year anniversary recently, coinciding with the 73rd anniversary of D-Day. They cite 250,000 average monthly users following their announcement earlier in the year of over 500K copies sold.

In a similar move to Stellaris, Paradox is giving away a free DLC for all players; The ‘Anniversary Pack’ will come with extra portraits for nations across the globe, unique division icons, and new voice-overs for Polish troops.

As a reminder, the latest expansion Death or Dishonor will be dropping on June 15th, so watch out for our review.

Finally, for all you Star Wars: Armada players out there, Fantasy Flight games published an article looking in-depth at the new Hammerhead-Corvette wave pack they will be releasing. Bell of Lost Souls has a great analysis on how these ships will impact the game here.

That’s all for this week’s update – happy wargaming, and let us know what you get up to!

This article discusses games developed and/or published by members of the Slitherine Group. For more information, please see the About Us page.