Wargamer Weekly: Connecting War Games By Joe Robinson

It’s been an oddly busy week, which means we’ve got a lot to catch you up on. We’ve been at the Connections UK conference this week, which Is aimed at Defence professionals who want to use wargaming to improve how they analyse, models and ‘game’ conflict via simulation exercises. We’ll have some write-ups for you next week hopefully, but it was a fascinating experience.

On the site, we had reviews of Afghanistan ‘11’s expansion (more below) as well as our review of JTS’s Seven Years War. We also published Part 3 in our series of short CMANO guides, a new contributor article on VASSAL, and we’ve finally figured out what the best Vietnam War games are.

Meanwhile, in the world of wargaming…

Matrix Games & Slitherine

Matrix Games have been a bit more active this week. First of all, they were showing off CMANO’s ‘Professional Edition’ to the global defence industry at Connections UK this week. Beyond that though, they’ve had plenty of more commercial endeavours…

Firstly, they announced a new Command LIVE scenario called Kuril Sunrise. This is a ‘what if’ scenario revolving around the disputed Kuril Islands, which are claimed by the Japanese but have been held by Russia since the end of WW2.

They also announced the release date for Field of Glory 2’s next DLC, Rise of Persia. You’ll be able to get your hands on this come September 27th.

If you’re a fan of the AGEOD games, this recent revelation might interest you. Turns out stalwart and AGEOD founder Phillipe Thibaut left the developer back in April this year. Pocus is still at the helm of the dev team, and of course Slitherine themselves are there as they own the developer. The new game on the new engine has been all but officially announced, so hopefully we’ll see something on that in September.

We wish Phillipe all the best in his new endeavours, although to be honest we welcome the change. AGEOD have been making the same game non-stop since they started, with the same creaky engine. If Phillipe’s departure was the price to pay for a new age of modern AGEOD games, then so be it.

Last, but certainly not least, Afghanistan ‘11’s Royal Marines expansion has been released, and our review is already up on the site if you want to take a look.

Panzer Strategy

Speaking of new releases, Panzer Corps challenger Panzer Strategy has left Early Access, and is now fully released as of September 1st. We didn’t get a chance to look into it much during the beta period because of access issues, but we’re hoping to make up for it with a full review ASAP. No one’s actually been assigned yet, but they should be soon.

In the meantime, we recommend going to the Steam page to see what people who’ve already bought it think.

Unity of Command 2

It’s been a while since we’ve had a UoC 2 update to talk about, but here it is! This new development diary shows off two gorgeous new screenshots and summarises how things are coming along across visual feedback, Headquarters & Supply.

Holdfast: Nations at War

The Napoleonic-era shooter-simulation Holdfast has just received a new sizeable update, adding new game modes, maps and stability fixes. You can read the full change-log here.

Steel Division II

The sequel to last year’s Steel Division: Normandy ’44 now has it’s own Steam page, so you can start wish listing it if that’s something you want to do (it’s becoming a useful metric for game companies at the moment). It simply states ‘2019’ as the release date, and it’s all of the officially released videos and assets on there for you to gawk at.

Is Command and Colors: Ancients Out Yet?

Still no, but the steam page has been updated once again from “Coming Soon” to “September 2018”… which is now! So we’re back with our weekly check in.

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