Wargamer Weekly: The Re-Burdoning By Joe Robinson

A fairly by-the-numbers week, with a healthy dose of announcements and cool stuff happening in our corner of digital gaming. I've been jonsing to play something wargame-y or even just strategy game-y recently, as I haven't had much opportunity to game on my own time. Closest I've come is that me and my wife randomly decided to check out World of Warcraft. That counts, right?

We’ve had a good range of content go up this week, from my quick breakdown of Military Operations new gameplay test, to Bill’s review of an excellent Hex-and-Counter wargame from GMT Games. We also launched the first part in a new mini-series from one of our new contributors. Bruce is a big fan of CMANO and a regular player and is going to be writing up some short & sweet guides looking at various aspects of Air Command in the game.

Meanwhile, in the world of wargaming…

Armored Brigade Beta

It’s a good thing we were paying attention as this doesn’t seem to have been advertised via Matrix Games’ RSS/News feed (although it was shared via Twitter, at least). Armored Brigade’s Beta is now live, and you can sign up to participate here.

We’re actually quite excited for this Close Combat-esque WW3 game. You should check out the official page If you want to know more, they’ve given it a serious face-life since the last time we checked.

Advanced Tactics Gold

Something that did go out over the Matrix news feed though is an announcement the Advanced Tactics Gold community is both awesome and ridiculous.

After years of hard work, a dedicated group of modders have finished the final release of their GD ’38 mod, which is a PBEM scenario that spans the entire globe, clocking in at 400 hexes.

It’s available for download here and has a 50+ page manual here.

Burden Yourself

… with Burden of Command’s latest ‘tactical teaser’ video, as well as a shiny new Steam page. If you’ve forgotten what this project is Burden of Command describes itself as a ‘tactical leadership RPG’. It’s less a wargame, and more an exploration of the trials of command via tactical scenarios. It’s set during WW2 and will cover plenty of historical battles from Morocco to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. As Company Captain, you have to try and lead your men to victory while keeping their morale up and your forces intact.

Now, if I were to put my game critic hat on for a second, this trailer does rely a little bit too much non-game footage to drive a sense of drama that may not actually be there. I did find myself wanting just more raw-gameplay, as opposed to a bunch of documentary clips that don’t actually have anything to do with the game. Still, it’s a teaser, it’s purpose is to generate hype and oh hey look, I got hype.

Victory at Sea: Pacific

The developers of Victory at Sea’s much anticipated sequel dropped another bombshell on us this week. They didn’t really announce anything specific per se, but they did publish a video showing off nearly an hour’s worth of gameplay.

It does a good job of showcasing various aspects of the game, although I don’t think it really showed off much of the land-based mechanics. Granted, this is a game about the naval war, but the main purpose of the Pacific theatre was to clear the Japanese off the Pacific islands, so they could threaten the mainland itself. Some more details as to how that stuff happens would be good to know.

Is Command & Colors: Ancients Out Yet?

OH SHI- No.

And now for something completely different…

If you’re a member of the Quarter to Three forums, or generally know of/follow Bruce Geryk on his Wargame_[Spcace] blog, you may have seen he recently dug into a claim made regarding the number of physical wargames published in a year.

Admittedly, he only used BoardGamesGeek’s database as the data pool, but then the claim he was trying to debunk also used the same database, so it evens out. The full story, as well as Bruce’s workings and ultimate finds are detailed in this blog post. Tl;dr - the BoardGameGeek's 'wargame' category sucks, and there's not many wargame releases in a year (depending on your criteria).

It’s fascinating stuff, and it makes me wonder what the landscape is like for computer wargames. Probably not much better, If not worse.

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