Archive For The “Articles” Category
Brant Guillory, 9 April 2019
Hooboy…
I mean, 25 years ago, this wouldn’t have made any ripples in the gaming world, so thanks, social media. That said, maybe this was a ripple that needed to be made.
For those of you that missed the kerfuffle, GMT Games elected to remove their upcoming Scramble for Africa game from their p500 list.
Depending on who is screaming loudest in your ear at any given moment, this is alternately (deep breath) the end of GMT, a well-reasoned decision about a difficult topic, whitewashing history, covering up and buying time for a failed design, a travesty of SJWs run amok, the dangers of GMT coloring outside the wargaming lines, walking back from something that never should’ve made it to p500, Marxist censorship, and/or rebooting the game under a different ‘skin’. Of course, which of those reasons you choose to believe is, like many other things, significantly influence by where you stand on most political issues these days.
I don’t know much about the design, other than what I’ve seen reported. I didn’t play an advance copy of it. I haven’t seen any advance materials on it. I missed the BGG forum meltdown over it, but there are others. But there’s been more than enough to dissect in the reaction to pulling the game, and I think there’s some discussion needed here.
First, let’s get this as out-of-the-way as we can:
GMT Games gets to publish whatever the hell the damn well please because it’s their company and they’ve been pretty successful over the past quarter-century making decisions for their business.
Everybody caught up so far?
Michael Eckenfels, 8 April 2019
Part 2: Pushing Into Space
COMPETITION’S TURN
When we last left off, the Competition had two Solar Lagrange Points each being studied by a team of theirs, while I’d just landed my first team on the Moon.
For the Competition team, I draw…
Michael Eckenfels, 4 April 2019
Part 1: Introduction and First Turns
Manned and unmanned exploration of the stars had been ongoing for decades before the year 2025, though private enterprises (such as SpaceX) drove governments and other private companies alike to develop and build new systems for exploring our inner solar system. With issues coming to the fore such as climate change, population growth, and scarcity of resources, this impetus to drive for the stars became a reality by the start of 2025.
Avery Abernethy, 27 March 2019
I backed Miskatonic University: The Restricted Collection on Kickstarter at the $25 level (plus shipping). My copy arrived on March 16th – later than the backers promised but not as late as many Kickstarter games. Screenshots of prototypes of the game parts were promptly posted lending creditability to claims that delays were due to production and shipping complications from China.
Although the actual rules are only 10 (very small) pages, I have not studied or played the game yet. The rule book is thicker because each of the two rule books provides the rules in two different languages. The game is ready to go for four major world languages: English, Spanish, German and French. The game cards use symbols, so from a design perspective the game is user friendly for multiple languages.
I’ve got at least two tabletop games higher on my priority list, (Mansions of Madness and Lords of Waterdeep) so a review or after-action report may be a ways down the road. But I’ve got the game so we can take a look at it.
-
- Miskatonic U Restricted Collection – outside of box
-
- Miskatonic U Restricted Collection – side of box
-
- Back cover
-
- The box opens like book
Click images to enlarge
Jim Owczarski, 7 March 2019
It seems like a lifetime ago — admittedly it was 1993, which for some reading this is a lifetime — that Richard Borg released “Siege of the Citadel”, his mass-market introduction to the world of the Mutant Chronicles. The latter was ever an attempt to knock Games Workshop’s Warhammer: 40,000 from its perch atop the world of ultra-violent future dystopia tabletop skirmish gaming.
Coming as it did on the heels of the mass market success of “HeroQuest”, however, “Siege of the Citadel” shipped laden with toys: a shovel-load of decently-sculpted plastic miniatures, bright plastic game components, and even a garish cardboard and plastic citadel over which the sides could fight. Players led teams of elite commandos, each team typed after one of the human nations which had taken over a planet in our solar system, against an army of demons. Gameplay was simple and moved very quickly. I fell so hard for the system, and was so disgusted by the changes being made to WH:40K, that I eventually bought three copies of the boardgame just to have the figures. (more…)
Avery Abernethy, 22 January 2019
Pearl Harbor represented the single worst defeat in US Navy history. The debacle of December 7, 1941 was so horrible that every wargame I’ve played covering the entire War in the Pacific has “special rules” to replicate the disaster. The Japanese attacked without declaring war catching the US forces in Hawaii completely by surprise. The US Army Air Corps was caught on the ground. Only a couple of US Navy Ships managed to raise anchor. Many anti-aircraft guns did not fire early in the battle because their ammunition was locked away and could not be loaded into the guns. The Order of Battle WW2: US Pacific Campaign is highly scripted in order to simulate the total surprise of Pearl Harbor.