Wargamer Weekly: Broken Shield By Joe Robinson

I don’t know about you, but I've had a great week. It’s not been busy in terms of announcements - what’s below is pretty much all that’s floated up our way, but we’ve had some great features going up. From Terminal Conflict, to Wars Across the World and Kards, we’ve had a wide view on wargaming this week and it’s been quite refreshing.

Meanwhile, in the world of wargames...

Invasion Machine might actually stick to a release date

So I’ve been trying to write about Invasion Machine for a while. It’s a real-time RTS that has a Men of War feel, based on the current situation in the Middle East but set in a fictionalised area. You represent American/UN forces in charge of a region in a war-torn country, and are tasked with keeping the peace, helping in restoration but also engaging in counter-insurgency warfare.

It’s currently rocking around in Alpha, and has been threatening to release in Early Access for several months now. The developer has kept pushing back the date though so he can focus on polishing the experience. Now it seems he’s finally willing to hard-commit to a date, as a recent press blast has set the Early Access release to February 26th, 2020.

It was very, very rough when I was playing around with it, so I’m looking forward to seeing what improvements have been made since.

Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg vs. Panzer Strategy

Starni Games have been trying their hardest to crack into the Panzer General space, but so far we’ve not been impressed with what they’ve come out with. Panzer Strategy can be forgiven because it was the first game they made, but then we didn’t really like Strategic Mind: The Pacific either because it turns out this style of game doesn’t really suit the Pacific theatre all that well. Also the game wasn’t great.

Their next title, Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg, kind of looks like it’s just Panzer Strategy again, but with a different branding. We can’t be the only ones that think this, because Starni has put out an entire blog post outlining the differences between the two.

It’s not as informative as they might think it is, although having it laid out so specifically is handy. Still, the entire post seems to boil down to “it’ll be better, honest!”. We’ll see, I guess.

Command: Modern Operation’s first ‘LIVE’ DLC

It’s been ages since we’ve had a ‘LIVE’ DLC for Command. We imagine it’s because the team were busy making, announcing and then releasing Command: Modern Operations is a very short space of time.

Broken Shield 300 will be the first micro-scenario to come since the new version of Command launched, and mainly attempts to model the Israeli air force’s response to increased escalation in Syria. You can play as either Israel or Syria, but the latter’s POV will be more limited. You can read the full details here.

No release date yet, but these things often follow quite close to the announcement.

Upcoming War Game Updates

There’s been a fair few updates across a range of projects we’ve got our eye on this week, so here’s a quick summary:

Tabletop News

As previously stated, I want to get more involved in the world of table-top and board wargaming as well, so the weekly column is likely going to become a vessel for little tid-bits in lieu of dedicated features for the time being.

Star Wars: Legion is FFG’s latest attempt at creating a proper miniatures war game line they can run with. They tried once with their own IP, and all it seemed to do was lose them the 40K license, so now they’re trying again with the Star Wars license. It actually looks quite interesting, and if you’re wondering how some of the basic mechanics work, this Legion 101 guide goes through the basics of building an army and setting up a game.

Speaking of 40K, there are a couple of interesting announcements from the wargames giant this week, via the good folks at Bell of Lost Souls:

Aeronautica Imperialis is getting a new core set, this time featuring the Astra Militarum and the Tau, complete with brand new units and a new campaign book.

The Adeptus Titanicus game is getting a boxed set as well from the Horus Heresy era.

That's all we have time for this week. Enjoy your weekends, and happy wargaming!