Wargamer Weekly: At the Gates By Joe Robinson

We’re back with another look at the week’s comings and goings in computer wargames. Another slow week means we’re mainly catching up with the latest dev diaries, although hopefully you’ve enjoyed the content, we’ve been putting out this week.

We’ve been on a bit of a CMSF2 kick, with the first version of our new ‘living’ strategy guide, along with a reading list around the ongoing ‘real’ war in Syria (as opposed to Shock Force’s fictional conflict). Bill also found an answer to the question “Just because you can mod something, should you?”. The answer is “probably not”.

While you’re here, let me highly recommend the virtues of Pandemic: Fall of Rome. It’s about as close to a ‘war’ game that the series will ever get, given how you lead imperial legions about the map to fight barbarians (instead of fighting disease), although in terms of abstraction of the topic we're nearing Twilight Struggle levels of interpretation.

Still if you’re looking for something thematic and aren’t overly concerned with realism or depth, it’s an excellent game and my favourite non-legacy version of Pandemic to date.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away...

Matrix Games

The new Command LIVE DLC now has a release date – January 31st (next Thursday). We’ll work on bringing you a review ASAP.

Panzer Corps 2 also received another Dev Diary, and this one looks at some of the revisions coming to naval warfare. Submarines and Carriers all have their own special rules, while Naval Landings and ‘special’ ship damage is also explained. Each ship also has it’s own unique ‘Support Fire’ rule as well, which is like this:

Destroyers provide support fire against enemy submarines.

Ships with AA ability provide support fire against enemy bombers.

Capital ships provide support fire to smaller ships and naval transports against enemy capital ships.

Ships provide support fire to adjacent ground units against enemy ground units. This means that ships become very important in their role to support naval landings, especially destroyers because larger ships cannot enter shallow water.

Armoured Commander II

You know, I was just thinking the other day what the latest was with WW2 rouge like war game Armoured Commander II. Speak the devil’s name and he shall appear…Rev then posted a new development diary.

Seems he’s been having issues with the scenario map, so he’s had to go back to a design similar to AC1. There’s a windows release available for testing, if anyone is interested.

Steel Division II

Last but not least is the weekly look at Steel Division 2. This week’s dev diary is also pretty fascinating, as it shows off specifics with regards to how combat and fighting battles work in Army General. They’ve cleverly adapted the three-phase system of the first game to act a more realistic representation of the situation on the ground.

In the solo-campaign, units no longer have an arbitrary phase assignment – the Phase they arrive will be determined by their distance from the location where the battle is actually taking place (provided they have enough move points to get there). We suggest reading the full diary for more information.

That’s all for this week – enjoy your weekends!