Wargamer Weekly: Tears to Many Mothers By Joe Robinson

Things are busying up here at Wargamer HQ – James is trying to work through Mare Nostrvm, Black Gold Blitz AND a new upcoming JTS game, while I’ve got expansions coming out of my nose from Sanctus Reach, Polaris Sector and even EUIV (although that last one will be on our sister site, Strategy Gamer).

I imagine you guys are starting to feel the strain on your free-time as well – just know that we feel your pain, and endeavour to get you our thoughts on the new games that are coming out as soon as possible.

In the meantime, let’s check in on what’s happened in the world of wargaming this week…

Matrix Games/Slitherine

Two bits of news for the upcoming wargame, The Operational Art of War IV. Firstly, Matrix have published a rather impressive list of scenarios that will be launching with the game. Further to that, you won’t have long to wait to try them out. The wargames company plans to release the game next Thursday on November 16th.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, the Sons of Cadia expansion for Warhammer 40,000 Sanctus Reach has been officially released. Our review will come as soon as we can get it done.

Speaking of release, the latest CMANO ‘LIVE’ DLC, Black Gold Blitz, is also out… at a scarily relevant time as well!

And finally, the 2013 wargame from the Australian Design Group – World in Flames – has released a new update. Patch 02.07.00.00 doesn’t do anything about the actual flames that seem to be raging un-opposed across the world, but it does make a lot of improvements to the game.

Over 300 corrections were made to the code, as well as several areas of movement, combat and turn processing.

ArmA 3 DLC

Bohemia Interactive has announced what the next DLC update for their hyper-realistic military shooter, ArmA III, is going to be about.

The Tac—Ops Mission Pack is aimed more at experienced veterans, and comprises three very challenging scenarios that will:

…provide a true combat experience in an unrestricted war zone. Here, players will need to lead their brothers in arms through situations that require careful preparation, tactical movement and positioning, and skilful shooting – as well as the ability to adapt and improvise at a moment’s notice.

The DLC hopes to provide a more ‘authentic’ battlefield experience, and will come with tools to help you learn and adapt from your mistakes. You can read more about it here, and the expansion itself will drop November 30th.

Paradox Interactive

Two updates to highlight from Paradox this week – the first is the latest development diary for Hearts of Iron 4 that looks at the new Decisions, Events & Missions system.

This system will try and take some of the cool things away from the focus tree to allow for more flexibility and sensible development of your nation, as well as giving more flavour to the war itself in terms of launching historical missions. We highly suggest you give it a read.

Stellaris also had a war-themed dev diary this week, looking at the new systems for claims, war goals, casus belli & war exhaustion. It all looks promising so far – there’s a lot of debate on whether this is generally the right direction for Stellaris.

Personally, I don’t think this is a bad choice, although we’re definitely moving towards an ‘EUIV In Space’ set-up that restricts the amount of creativity you can put into an interstellar environment, but it’s better than nothing.

That’s all for this week’s round-up – enjoy your weekends! This article discusses games developed and published by members of the Slitherine Group, which we share affiliation with. For more information, please see the About Us page.