Grognard Wargamer Thread!

:-) I had that game when I was young, but never played it. But like many wargames I owned, I’d re-read the rules and scenarios and examine the map up and down. A PC game like AAoC would be awesome.

I never owned it, but it was one of the many games I dreamed of owning as a kid when I’d page through the Avalon Hill catalog that would come with their games. I probably spent as much time looking at those as I did playing the games.

I think we are kindred souls!

I do remember buying it at an auction or when a game store closed (IE I did not pay full price!)

I have both the Kursk southern shoulder and the Normandy games (the only ones in the series so far). I like the system and presentation better than I do the original Panzer Campaigns; the smaller scale makes for more dynamic and interested battles, and there is more meaning to the technical and tactical details than at the higher level.

There is a demo of the Panzer Battles system available from the Wargame Design Studio site, which has some interesting battles not included on the games that have been released.

Yeah, I need to download his demo for the series. The scale sounds like it would be an update to his campaign series games from Talonsoft.

Has Tiller done anything to update the system since 2001-2002?

My issue with his work is that it is always based around AI. And the AI in that system sucks.
There is no testing , selection or balance for MP. Which can be fun in his engine.

I also own Air Assault on Crete (another Von Borries!), and I even played it once just a few years ago. On a table, against another person! It was pretty good actually.

I have played the Normandy one. I liked it a lot. That PanzerBlitz platoon scale is a nice one. Like the old Campaign Series.

The scale is sort of like the Campaign Series, but not exactly. If you compare it, say, to the Campaign Series: Middle East re-do, from Matrix/Slitherine, I feel the latter is much more purely tactical. At least, that’s the feel I get. The Panzer Battles games are sort of an in-between scale, but I like it. I do agree it has a bit more in common with tactical games than it does with the older Panzer Campaigns system.

As for AI, subjectively the AI in the Panzer Battles games feels better, but I am not the one to comment on that, as I suck.

So I went to John Tiller Software and it looks like the same old John Tiller Software engine from 2001-2002. You guys got my hopes up, and now they are dashed. I should have guessed when it wasn’t even on Steam.

The compatible with Windows XP is the giveaway. Does it even fit on a 1080 screen?

I used to design & code scenarios for HPS in the early to mid-2000s and it was as old as the hills even then.

Yegods, unless you want to HOI the Grog PC Wargame scene is dismal.

Has anyone played this? I enjoyed it. It would be a lot of fun multiplayer. Its a decent area impulse system. I’ve played it and The October War on iOS and enjoyed both. The only downside is the need to create a MP account at Battle Factory’s old website. I did, and my spam didn’t increase noticeably.

Seriously, what aspect of Tiller’s games do you want to be changed? The basic UI action is not undesirable, given the kinds of information and interactivity wargamers typically want. The graphics of PzB are improved quite a bit from older titles, although still not flashy. AI can always be improved but… in a detailed wargame what exactly is your grail? The longer and more extensive the game, the more difficult to develop the AI. The cost/benefit of this area often fails to justify vastly more elaborate AI code because most players prefer human opponents to any degree of AI. Still, I think in the PzB games the AI is more passable; maybe a shorter game length enhances that.

Tiller’s games are like McDonalds these days. Not gourmet but you know what you’re getting.

Well, firstly, does it actually display with no issues on a 1080i screen? Because that is what made me swear off Grigsby, WiTE included, now forever, after getting a refund. If you want my 50-80 bucks for a game, it had better work on a Windows 10 machine seamlessly, and not be some ancient DoS shell of a thing…but anyway…

Tiller…Well, The UI isn’t good, but fundamentally, it’s built to be a simplistic puzzle against the AI, when the puzzle is solved it loses playability. It isn’t optimized for Multiplayer play, which for me allows for an escape from the AI issue, but since all the scenarios are balanced against an over-tough unintelligent AI (always defending, hence over-tough and unintelligent), they are always unbalanced in multiplayer.

Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted changed. I looked, hopefully, and thought “Oh…it’s the same old thing I got tired of 15 years ago” and drove on. I was just hopeful that I’d see a good, new PC Grog Wargame offering, I guess.

I’m hoping to get a game of GMT’s Cataclysm in live over vassal this week. I’ll let people know how it goes.

Very curious. Please let us know.

I’m kinda digging some of the strategic possibilities- keeping the Washington Naval Treaty in play to enable a Italian and German naval buildup without UK and USA building more ships, or a Japanese strategy of diplomacy in China, probably supporting the Nationalists and using diplomacy to get Chinese spaces.

Yeah, when I saw it my reaction was “it could be a simpler, cool combo of Days of Decision and /insert monster ww2 game here/ or it could be glorified Risk”. To be clear, I really, really, really want it to be the former.

The Tiller system games play fine at modern resolutions, at least they do on my 24" widescreen monitor. It has been a long running fight though to finally ditch Windows 98/XP which I think has finally been 86’d for new stuff.

The UI is way too busy, with a “more buttons is always better” philosophy rather than much in the way of figuring out more elegant solutions, but you have to keep in mind that really one guy did the game engine stuff and everything else is scenario designers and in effect modders; most new games in a Tiller series don’t add much to the core engine. The Panzer Battles stuff is quite a bit more elaborate though, while still having a lot of DNA in common.

My biggest issue with these games is that they play out in a remote and rather sterile fashion, and the scale of the Panzer Campaigns games at least is such that everything feels like it is moving in slo-mo. So many units on so much real estate with each day chopped up into so many turns, it feels like nothing actually happens. There is no feel of sweeping maneuvers, or even much dynamic action at all. And the combat system is about as interesting and visceral as white bread and school-lunch milk from a carton.

That being said, Tiller himself is a great guy (I’ve been to conferences with him, did some paid work for him, had dinner with him once), and it’s pretty amazing what he’s been able to do. He’s a very sharp guy with a strong math background, but wargames are not AFAIK his primary business (he does government contract stuff mostly IIRC).

They were, he sold some stuff to the USAF and an Soviet Afghan War project to the Army that was dumped (it was thought to be too simplistic and sterile, interestingly, I wasn’t directly involved, that’s what the trainers on the Army end told me at the time).

Your reactions are pretty copacetic with mine, I saw that it was Blackie/Saunders and figured there was a little improvement on graphics (from the screenshots) but that it was the same old system.

AFAIK, the Panzer Battles games are based on the same system, but actually dropped down to a scale and focus that makes better use of the foundations. I do think the demo is very much worth trying.