Wargamer Weekly: Scourge of Wallets By Joe Robinson

We’ve had two rather large wargames receive coverage this week – Gary Grigsby’s War in the West made its debut on Steam, while Battlegoat released a new entry in their Supreme Ruler series focusing on The Great War.

There’s something equally alluring and terrifying about a game that seems to offer the world and more. Granted, WitW focuses on one single front of WW2, but the level of detail within that context make it one of the most detailed near-simulations of that part of the conflict around. On the other end of the spectrum, Supreme Ruler is a Grand-Strategy game that tries to offer a Paradox-level of control over nearly every aspect of ruling a country. I suspect one is a far better at its job than the other, although both got favourable reviews from our writers.

Other than these two titans of wargaming, not much else has happened, although enough to make you worry for your wallet if you were trying to stick to a budget this month.

Matrix Games/Slitherine

A couple of different updates from Mount Doom this week. First up, Afghanistan ’11 has finally gotten its convoy update. Convoys are created from inside a base, and can have up to six vehicles.

Other new features include the ‘Mother of All Bombs’, and several quality of life improvements relating to handovers, PP generation and helicopter survivability. You can read the full change-log here. The game is also 34% off on the Matrix Store.

In other news, Scourge of War: Waterloo & its expansions have all been bundled together and released in a special Collector’s Edition. This bundle includes the base game Scourge of War: Waterloo, as well as the Quatre Bras, Ligny & Wavre DLC expansions.

From our end, we’ve got early impressions of the base game from former EIC Nik Gaukroger, as well as full reviews of Ligny & Wavre from our very Bill “Hollywood history” Gray. We don’t appear to have written anything on Quatre Bras, so we may look to plug this gap in a future update.

If you’re interested in buying into the Collector’s Edition, some advice on purchasing:

Collector’s Edition: On the Matrix Store, the Collector’s Edition is currently £44.99 while it is £41.96 on Steam.

On the Matrix Store, the Collector’s Edition is currently £44.99 while it is £41.96 on Steam. Individual Games: The base game is -50% off on both Steam & the Matrix Store; however this equates to it being £14.99 on the former, and £20.99 on the later.

None of the expansions are discounted on Steam, which prices them at £14.99 each. At face value, they’re not discounted on Matrix Store either (with the list price being £16.99) however there are cross-sales available. As long as you buy one expansion at full price, any other expansions you buy will be discounted to £11.99.

If you’ve yet to actually buy into Scourge of War: Waterloo, then the collector’s edition represents the best value as even with cross sales, Buying all the parts individually equates to £62 vs. the CE’s £44.99. If you’re missing one expansion, it’s cheaper to get it on steam, but cheaper on the Matrix store if you need two (or all) of the expansions due to the cross-sale discount.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that when you buy from the Matrix store, as well as the direct download version you also get a Steam code you can redeem anyway. Certain coupons will also stack their discounts on top of these reductions as well.

ArmA III

We don’t cover a lot of FPS stuff here, but games like ArmA 3 always represent an exception because of their commitment to realism. They are, in many ways, the FPS equivalent of something like the recently released War in the West.

Bohemia Interactive are continuing their support for ArmA III with the announcement of a new DLC expansion titled the Laws of War. It introduces a new faction and mini campaign focused around the International Development & Aid Project, which is a NGO specialising in responding to humanitarian disasters.

Complete with new Drones, Tools, Uniforms & even a van, Laws of War is going to be providing a very different ArmA experience, with a portion of all proceeds being donated to the Red Cross.

Steel Division: Normandy ‘44

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about Steel Division. Last time we checked they’d announced plans for a second major update… seems we weren’t paying too much attention as now we’re already onto the third! Titled “When the river runs deep”, this expansion focuses on some meta changes, along with unit upgrades and enhanced modding support.

You can read the full changelog here.

Invasion of Canada 1812

Something that came in late last Friday, HexWar have announced a new release in the form of 1812: The Invasion of Canada. An adaptation of the board game of the same name (and sequel to 1775: Rebellion), this new title is described by the developer as:

In 1812 – The Invasion of Canada, players take on one of the roles of the major factions that took part in the War of 1812. On the British side these are represented by the British Regulars (Redcoats), Canadian Militia and Native Americans; and the American Regular Army and American Militia comprise the American players. Players for each side will cooperate with each other in order to plan and conduct their campaigns. Each side will attempt to capture Objective Areas on the map. When a truce is called, the side that controls the most enemy Objective Areas wins.

It is available on PC, Mac, iPads & Android devices.

That’s all for this week’s overview – have a good weekend, and let us know what you get up to!

This article discusses games developed and/or published by members of the Slitherine Group. For more information, please see the About Us page.