Archive For The “Articles” Category
Brant Guillory, 9 July 2020
INTRODUCTION
Hector & Achilles is a card-based game of the Trojan War made by the Dutch game company Phalanx Games and distributed in the United States by Mayfair Games. The game simulates the battles between the Greeks and Trojans outside of the city of Troy. Scale, time, and most combat are abstracted into a challenging game of resource management with a tactical twist.
Although not a wargame of maneuver and battle, Hector & Achilles nevertheless offers gamers several interesting analytical challenges in a compact game. Managing army stacks, heroes, and deployment of key combatants combine into a multi-faceted battle that will challenge gamers to out-think their opponents in a battle lasting about 30 minutes.
(more…)
July 4th is approaching. Can the Rebels continue their rally?
Euro-ish Mechanics in a Retro Looking Wargame ~
RockyMountainNavy, 2 July 2020
BLUF
Retro on the outside with new-age wargame mechanics on the inside. Each game in the series is a unique card-driven conflict that uses the same 54 cards and a simple set of system rules, few optional & special rules, and special action cards with different effects. The end result is a series of games sharing many of the same mechanics but with enough differentiating chrome to make each war play in a similar fashion yet still feel very different each other. (more…)
1980: The year of Pac-Man, the “Miracle on Ice”, and…really expensive color printing?
Michael Eckenfels, 1 July 2020
The battle for Wake Island, coming quickly on the heels of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was fought over a relatively insignificant speck of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The location had been, before the war, an important refueling stop on Pan American’s long-distance routes across that vast, sun-hammered ocean. However, at the start of 1941, the U.S. built a permanent military facility there, which would be a threat to the Japanese strategy of building a fortified system of islands to hold their gains across the Pacific.