Wargamer Weekly: Silence(rs) is golden By Joe Robinson

Not much to report this week – I finally managed to give BattleTech a try. Really liking it so far, although from what I hear there’s a raging beast of optimal mech builds and financial management that I’ll need to pick up on quick. In entirely unrelated news, guess what Ian and a new writer are going to be writing about next?

I also find myself more and more drawn to expensive table-top counter wargames, like Next War: Poland. They’re really expensive over here, like £70 new, and shipping from US makes them equally as expensive because shipping can be almost as much as the game in question. Help?

Meanwhile, in the world of wargaming…

Matrix Games/Slitherine

First up, the newest Command LIVE scenario, Commonwealth Collision, was released yesterday for CMANO. We’ll get a quick review up as soon as we can on this one – these scenarios are usually pretty fun, and not all that expensive at ~$3.

In other news, Matrix have shared the campaign tree for the upcoming Order of Battle expansion, Sandstorm. The campaign for this game will have several branching points depending on how well you do in particular missions, so you won’t encounter all of the available scenarios that were made for this expansion. We’ll let the tree itself do most of the talking, but here is the official blurb:

The arrows connecting specific scenarios mean that the result in one scenario affects the other. For instance, the Crusader scenario will be different depending on whether or not you managed to capture Tobruk in the first scenario. This will allow for greater replaybility and more variety as your choices and accomplishments will actually matter.

Sandstorm will be released on May 16th. Mark your calendars.

Last but not least, the entire Scourge of War: Waterloo series is running at a 50% discount on the Matrix store from now until Sunday 20th May. This includes the collector’s edition, which is normally £69.99. We’ve got reviews for all four titles if you care to search them out (use Google, not the website search bar), but NorbSoft are masters of their craft so these are well worth a look in.

Interesting Project Alert

The guys and gals over at grogheads are great at spotting new and interesting wargaming projects, and once again they haven’t disappointed. Slizer Battle Management System is a real-time tactics experience that strips out a lot of the noise of RTS games and makes it purely about the tactics. Units are given load-outs prior to a battle, and then it comes down to decision making of the player.

The best thing about this project is that it’s completely free. We haven’t had a chance to jump in ourselves yet, so not sure if there are IAPs or ads or anything, but if you do end up giving it a go let us know what you make of it. We’ll give it a spin ourselves as soon as we can.

Lock’n’Load Tactical Version 5

A token bit of table-top news for you today. If you’re a fan of Lock’n’Load Publishing and their line of table-top wargames (or perhaps you like their popular computer wargame, Command Ops 2), you may be aware that the company is planning to publish Version 5.0 of their trademark tactical-level table-top rules.

There’s a whole series of videos on the official LnL Youtube channel looking at various aspect of the rules, such as smoke or melee rules. We’ll start you off at the beginning though with their introductory video:

And now for something completely different…

Apparently, you can get silencers for self-propelled artillery. Who knew?

Engineering oddity: Turns out there is such a thing as a silencer for artillery. German residents close to a Bundeswehr practice area must not be disturbed with excessive gun noise. Engineers to the rescue! Source: https://t.co/y6fVgfbr1W pic.twitter.com/ucSaEimYVP — Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) May 11, 2018

That’s all for this week’s round up. Enjoy your weekends and happy gaming!