Wargamer Weekly: Do You think There's a War on? By Joe Robinson

Despite a really strong start from Slitherine & Matrix with their second livestream event, the rest of the week has been kind of empty with goings-on. We’ve tried to fill the gap with a look at Tokyo’s wargaming scene, an update on the Steel Division 2 beta and another review from Bill, but this is a very lean update today.

Meanwhile in the world of wargaming…

Home of Wargamers Follow-Up

If you didn’t read our write-up of the second live stream Slitherine/Matrix Games did, we suggest you go bring yourself up to speed – a lot of cool announcements came out of that!

We emailed some follow-up questions to the PR department, which we’ve printed for you below:

Who owned the IP rights to Fantasy General before now, and how easy/difficult was it to make a deal be able to make the sequel?

The IP is fully owned by GOG.com. Slitherine and Owned by Gravity are partnering with GOG and this is a joint effort with them to bring the franchise back to the market. Every deal has its own set of issues, but I have to say that working with GOG has so far been really smooth. It’s a company that truly puts the players at the center and we share the same attitude and vision. We certainly hope Fantasy General is not going to be the only IP we bring back to life.

Owned by Gravity is a new studio, but is there a rough list of games that team members have worked on in the past? Especially Mr. Wagner? Would like to try and get a sense of their background.

Jan Wagner is the co-founder of Owned by Gravity and has been doing games for longer than Fantasy General exists. He has been working on games such as Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, the SpellForce series, Drakensang, Sacred 2, Shadowrun Chronicles and over 50 other titles. The core of the studio was formed by industry veterans, each bringing more than 10 years of experience to the company with a focus on turn-based games in all shapes and sizes. They have worked in lead capacities on Jagged Alliance Online, AErena and Shadowrun Chronicles amongst others.

Armored Brigade: For the campaign generator, are there plans to include supply considerations? I saw some kind of supply option on the campaign gen screenshot, so just wonder how logistics is going to play in this?

The campaign is structured at a purely operational level. There is no strategic level to it as that would require to drastically change the way the whole game experience is structured: Veitikka wanted to add a feature without losing the core concept that Armored Brigade is a battle game at heart and adding superstructures to it would attach an unnecessary level of complexity to it.

The supply option you spotted refers to points used to refit units and buy artillery and air support for the following battles

World in Flames Update

Matrix Games’ 2013 digital adaptation of this monster war game has just received an update which will make playing online either. Dubbed the ‘Netplay Ready Update’, this new patch enables easy online multiplayer and the ability to review games offline.

Everyone seems oddly pleased with themselves over this patch, as you can tell form the official post, and Matrix claim the computer game is now one of the best ways to play World in Flames as the designer intended. There’s a lot of support of rare and unusual rules interactions, as well as situations the original designer hadn’t anticipated. To celebrate the release, the game is available at a 60% discount until April 16th.

And that’s… kinda it? Not much seems to have been happening this week, so either we’ve missed a bunch of things, or everyone else has taken the week off. Either way, if you spot any other news worth sharing, don’t hesitate to get in touch!