Wargamer Weekly: Look to your leaders By Joe Robinson

We anticipate the next week or two to be a bit quieter as the annual E3 storm makes it way through the games industry. Granted, it's rarely of any consequences to Grogs, and while some companies will continue on as normal, others like Matrix Games will probably be keeping their heads down. It's been a wonderfully varied week for wargaming news though, so let's take a look at what's been happening.

Meanwhile, in the world of wargaming…

New Game Spotted: Victory at Sea Pacific

The eagle-eyed community over at Grogheads has spotted a new Naval RTS game set during the Second World War, specifically the Pacific Theatre. There’s no news on a release date as the Steam page only says ‘2018’, but it looks intriguing:

Victory at Sea Pacific - the game of naval combat during the Second World War where a player can switch between commanding the entire Pacific theatre to zooming down to take control of individual ships and flights of planes.

It appears to be a more sandbox style game, offering the players the chance to command the grand-strategy of the Pacific theatre, as well as get down and dirty in tactical engagements.

Victory at Sea Pacific features;

Search and destroy enemy fleets across the entire Pacific Ocean

Effortlessly switch between commanding the entire Pacific theatre and controlling the fate of individual vessels and planes

Upgrade Ports and build shipyards

Harass shipping and starve ports of vital supplies

Organise large scale amphibious assaults on major ports

Control unique vessels such as the huge I-400 submarine aircraft carrier

Build highly skilled crews ready for combat

Pausable gameplay allows you to order fleets and then continue the action

Play as Axis or Allied fleets (Axis Campaign coming soon)

There’s a lot of information to read though, so we suggest you check out the official Steam page to get the full breakdown.

Strategic Command WW2 Patch 1.13

Matrix Games’ answer to Hearts of Iron has received a new update last Friday (we missed the news, sadly), which brings a lot of amendments to the campaign as well as the usual round of bug fixes.

You no longer need to worry about the weather AP exploit, and Leningrad is now easier to defend thanks to the Neva river being converted to a ‘Major River’. You can read the full patch notes here.

Grand Tactician Dev Diary

The developers behind the Grand Tactician ACW game have dropped a new diary talking about various systems that are important between the ‘Day’ segments where most of the fighting happens. Resupply, moral, logistics and communication... you can read all about it here.

Clad in Iron: Philippines Update

The late Mr. Cobb was a bit of a fan of Clad in Iron: Philippines 1898. It received a small update earlier this week that added torpedoes and a few new ship types. Graphics were also given a bit of a spruce.

You can read more details here.

New Armoured Commander II Build

We’re going to try and champion as many smaller indie wargame projects as we can, and Rev Sudasana’s Armoured Commander II is one of them. This week he released a new development build for testers to try that adds Air and Artillery support.

You can read the full change-log as well as grab a link to he build here.

And now for something completely different…

You may remember that I visited the UK Games Expo this past weekend – there were some interesting table-top war games on show, which we'll have a round-up of on Monday. On a personal note, I myself picked up something that could very interesting.

LEADERS seems to be following the Fantasy Flight Games ethos of creating a hybrid experience. It’s fairly light on components – several bags of game pieces, some reference sheets and some dice. Everything else is controlled via an App that not only teaches you how to play the game, but allows you to conduct espionage, send diplomatic messages to other players, and runs the game's varied scenarios for you.

I’ve yet to get it to the table, but I’ve been poking around here and there, so will report back with further impressions as soon as I can.

That's all for this week's round-up, enjoy your weekends and happy gaming!