Weekly Round-Up - Black Friday, Time Commanders & More By Joe Robinson

We’ve moved this week’s News round-up/update to today because apparently Friday is special occasion, for some reason. More on that below, but let’s recap recent events in the world of wargaming:

Matrix Games/Slitherine

Not much happening this week, but Matrix have also thrown their hat into the ring with a sale of their own. Starting a few days ago on the 23rd and running through to January 8th (Remember when Matrix said they’d never do sales? Those were the days), a whole host of games will be anything between 34% and 75% off.

I could list out some games but honestly there’s so many of them. Think of a game that Matrix/Slitherine has published, ever and it’s probably on discount. They’ve created 9-page PDF with everything on it, if you fancy some light reading.

In other news, Gary Grigsby’s War in the East has been updated to version 1.09.00. This is a pretty gargantuan update which you can download here.

The full changelog can be read here (it’s mammoth), but here are some highlights:

New Features

Scenarios and games saved under this version will not load under older versions of the game.

Bug fixes

Fixed a bug where it was possible to gain access to enemy units and alter some of their parameters.

Fixed a bug where units could receive more replacements than asked for if there was a surplus of resources (all were used and dispatched to units).

Fixed a bug where units could retain more matched equipment than desired. They will now immediately return enough not to exceed 125% of TOE needs (this limit scales with MAX TOE down to 100% for MAX TOE set to 80% or less).

Fixed a bug where formation inventory was not displayed correctly if the list of units in the first tab was sorted.

Fixed a bug where self-propelled weapons, armored cars and self-propelled artillery were displayed in the infantry tab of formation inventory, even though they were included in the AFV totals.

Fixed a bug where an empty unit details window was displayed after closing Commander’s Report in some circumstances (only when using regular exit button).

Time Commanders Returns

It’d be interesting to know if any of our American/International readers ever caught this gem of a show, but the BBC has finally decided after all these years to bring back Time Commanders.

Sure, it’s only going to BBC4 and for some reason MasterChef’s Gregg Wallace is hosting, but this time they’re pitting teams of people against each other, so it should be good. As far as we know, this is still being powered by the engine used by Creative Assembly in their games, and there will be an initial run of three 1hour-long episodes, starting at 9pm December 12th. Episode one pits a team of wrestlers as Hannibal against a team of boardgame enthusiasts who are playing the part of Scipio.

Welcome back, Commander.

Star Wars: Armada Expansion Preview

My own personal game-time with Star Wars: Armada has been lacking lately, but I’ve been keeping a close eye on the new and upcoming releases. We covered the Corellian Conflict Campaign Expansion when it was first announced, and last week FFG posted a preview of the new objective sets that will be coming with this.

I’m excited for this – if anything is going to trigger this coming back to the table, it’s a persistent campaign like experience. We’ll keep you posted.

Black Friday

It’s that day. The day that gets assigned a colour so for reason that means price becomes immaterial and we can all get cool stuff for very, very cheap. Wargaming, despite being a hobby for serious individuals, is not immune to the charms of this Blackest of Fridays, so we thought we’d share some of the highlights:

Privateer Press – These guys are having a holiday sale across most of their lines, mainly In the form of special Holiday Bundles.

The Wargaming Company – these guys are actually having their sale on Monday, otherwise known as ‘Cyber Monday’, which is a more common thing here in the UK (and not a totally made up day like Black Friday).

Tiny Battle Publishing – For today only (as far as we can tell) these guys are doing a 25% discount on everything in their store using coupon code “blackfriday”

HexWar – have literally discounted ALL the games.

Mantic Games – Another one that’s running today only, Mantic are having their own Black Friday event that started 10am GMT. They’re having hourly deals that will last until Midnight.

2K – Bit of a random one, but a chance to get games like XCOM2 and Civilization VI on the cheap is nothing to be sniffed at. Their doing weekend-long deals on their own store, as well as across several retail partners.

… And More! – Table Gaming News has their own impressive round-up of the sales and deals happening during this period, which you can read over on their website.

That’s all for today’s round-up. Hope our American readers had a good Thanksgiving, and everyone enjoy your weekends! This article covers games that are developed and/or published by members of the Slitherine Group. Please see the About Us section for more information.