Apologies for that four month break in publishing. Rest assured I was gaming during that time but well…stuff gets in the way sometimes. I will make a strong effort to resume a regular weekly schedule of What I’m Playing from here on out, and will attempt to throw in some other, additional, screen shot features during the week too. It’s what Jarhead and I like to call a ‘resumption of operations.’

By: Lloyd Sabin,

So, without further adieu, I am currently playing – Pike & Shot: Campaigns. Specifically, the Gustavus Adolphus campaign, which could also be labeled as a Thirty Years War campaign. Players can choose to play as either the Swedes or the Holy Roman Empire (read: Germans, of a kaleidoscope of different types).

There is an actual campaign map, albeit a simple-looking one, and the player is free to choose where to move armies, where to recruit armies, besiege cities/provinces, and withdraw. It’s not particularly detailed or intuitive but it gets the job done in order for the player to get to the meat of the game – the tactical battles.

I have only had one battle so far, since I just started this campaign a few days ago. I lost by just a hair’s breadth as you’ll see in the shots below, but fortunately the campaign did not end there…I was able to consolidate what was left of my Swedish military machine and fight again.

I was surprised at how mobile both the tactics and the strategy were becoming in this campaign. For more info on the era from a less common perspective, check out A Warrior Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of Sweden as a Military Power, 1611-1721 by Henrik Lunde.

It’s available for under $4.00 on Kindle, which is what I bought.

More next week! Thanks for reading.

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