Wargamer Weekly: The Curious Case of the Missing Game By Joe Robinson

A short intro from yours truly today, as there’s been plenty of things happening this week that we can catch you up on, even though we’ve already had a fairly interesting week already. I mean Steel Division II! Who’d have thought it? And Bill actually liking a Total War game!? Madness!

Meanwhile, in the world of wargaming…

Armored Brigade’s second dev diary

The top-down WW3 real-time tactical wargame Armored Brigade has received another dev diary. This time game designer Juha Kellokoski takes us through how players can manage defensive battles plans, talking us through the various stages, and options available the player.

There’s a bit too much information to summarise here, but it’s a very interesting blow-by-blow account of a sample skirmish game that show cases all of the tactical options available to a defensive player, as well as reinforcing what the concerns are. If you remember from the last dev diary, the prevailing point is that “if you can see it, you can kill it”, so you have to plan carefully. Read the full diary for more.

Lock’n Load Digital Teaser

Lock’n Load Publishing have been talking a lot more about their upcoming digital products these past couple of weeks. Yesterday, they put out a new trailer showing some demo footage of Lock’n Load Tactical Digital, the computerised version of their table-top LnL Tactical ruleset.

It’s not even 3 minutes long, but already things seem to be shaping up nicely.

Grand Tactician Celebrates Bull Run

Grand Tactician is an upcoming real-time American Civil War game that will put a lot of emphasis on supply and logistics. In celebration of the recent anniversary of the 1st Battle of Bull Run, they’ve released a gameplay video from the Alpha version.

Command & Colors: Ancients goes AWOL

As we hear news of more GMT digital games coming on the horizon, another GMT digital project goes AWOL. HexWar’s adaptation of Command & Colors: Ancients was supposed to be releasing today, however at some point the release date on the steam page changed to simply ‘August 2018’. We’ll keep you posted.

Victory at Sea: Ice Cream Edition

Evil Twin Artworks continue to mercilessly tease as with their new naval RTS/Wargame, Victory at Sea: Pacific. Instead of sending us a shiny steam code that we can use to actually play they game, they’ve instead sent another teaser on some of the ships that will be part of the roster.

Victory at Sea: Pacific is set to boast over 120 ships and aircraft that will be available for use through-out the campaign, including some stranger vessels that turned up during the course of the Pacific campaign.

These include the Japanese I-400 Submarine, the largest vehicle of its class fielded during WW2: It was so large, it was capable of launching airplanes. They decided to stop short of the US Nay’s Ice Cream barge though, which is a shame.

Wargame Design Studio’s second half-yearly update

Nearly a month after the first half of their half-yearly report, Wargame Design Studios as released the second half of the half-yearly report. It’s a bit of a mammoth update – you might want to sit down before you start – and it focuses purely on how their work on Panzer Campaigns France ’40 is coming along. I’d tell you, but I’m not entirely sure myself… it’s a really dense update, you know?

Weekend Wargaming

Going to experiment with another featurette for the column… the “something different” section was cool, but I don’t always find something unique to share so this latest offering will be more consistent, at least.

This weekend I plan to play a bit more Xenonauts, having backed the sequel on Kickstarter recently, and then I’ll be having a weekend of table-top wargaming in the form of War of the Ring.

What will be playing this weekend? Let us know in the comments!