Grognard Wargamer Thread!

Oh! I’m so proud of myself! I actually understand this reference, in ASL terms. Someone explained it to me just a few weeks ago.

Grognard Level Up++

lol, skulking. I’m not sure, but I would think it would be enabled by starter kit 1! It’s sort of a core “feature” of the Sequence of Play, alas.

ASL has other gamey features too. And for all its efforts to make things hyper-realistic, it doesn’t play all that realistically. I love Historical ASL, but historical maps tended to reveal the inaccuracies in the ASL engine.

But for all that, the game delivers a great cinematic story – and great gaming tension. I still have vivid memories of several games that came down to the last move.

Wow, Matrix Games has all the sudden released an update to their Empires in Arms game.

So I think I saw @Zilla_Blitz retweet this gmt announcement:

https://www.gmtgames.com/news.aspx?showarticle=457

Basically it says that six games may be shipping at the end of October.

Absolute War (4 lbs)
MBT, 2nd Printing (4 lbs)
Normandy '44, 3rd Printing (3 lbs)
Tank Duel Expansion 1: North Africa (5 lbs)
Tank Duel Tank Pack #1 (3 lbs)
Wing Leader Supremacy, 2nd Edition (4 lbs)

When I saw Absolute War I did a double take. This was something I had clicked P500 on and, as time went on, assumed I’d never actually see. I’m very happy to see this on the list. I have No Retreat! And I’m worried about getting another game so close in the level of abstraction but if this is even more fast playing and covers the same grand sweep I think I’ll be happy if I can parlay that into more plays.

I’m also tempted to put in an order for Normandy '44. I dont have any games in that system and I think that’s the operation I’d prefer. But I’m holding for now.

I see that GMT Games is now selling games by weight. :)

-Tom

This is very funny - people keep leaking classified documents about tanks on the War Thunder forums because the in game tanks are not accurate enough!

Is anyobody else on the board attending GMT’s Weekend at the Warehouse next week?

I’ve P500-ordered 3 pounds worth of Normandy '44. I think it was @Brooski who mentioned that it wasn’t one of his favorite games in the Simonitch series, but I thought I’d give it a try.

I was tempted to order 4 pounds, but I’m not sure what I’d do with a 1/3 of a map.

Not me, unfortunately, but in related news, SDHistCon is going to hold another online convention Nov. 12-14. Registration not open yet. I’m going to attend that, I hope.

https://twitter.com/SDHistCon/status/1443635453693857793?s=20

If you do, make sure to sign up for my amazing exposition on Ted Raicer’s overlooked gem.

Also, in unrelated news, let’s get to the question on everyone’s mind.

Say more, dear sir! What overlooked gem would this be? Minds are curious.

So, in an effort to play games with real human beings, I introduced a friend to wargaming with Shores of Tripoli, which I intentionally picked because it has a super short 9 pages of rules that can be digested in about 15-20 minutes.

But the reaction on my friend’s face (not a wargamer, nor a Eurogamer) when I said “The rules are about 8-9 pages” was priceless. Turns out that a wargamer’s “short rules” is a lot different than a regular human being’s “short rules.”

Some idiot convinced me to read the AWAW rules as well.

image

I had very much hoped to but I don’t think it’s going to work out time wise for me.

I love reading long rulesets from wargames! Sometimes reading the rules is more fun than actually playing.

I was hoping to get it together to make the trip to Armona from Santa Barbara, but I won’t be going this season. Hopefully April though, we’ll see.

Harold badgered me into doing another presentation, so I chose a demo of Ted Raicer’s Fall of the Third Reich, a game that came out in 2017 that it seems like no one talks about, but has some really cool ideas.

Link included so Tom doesn’t ban me: The Fall Of The Third Reich | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Filthy casuals

Never heard of that one. I just read through the page there and it looks like it could be very interesting. It sounds like you’re running this? It’s interesting because I got excited about Downfall:

Ted’s game seems to be very similar in scope and level of abstraction.

You know, there’s a movie about that. You should watch it. It’s called Jojo Rabbit. You could probably delight the audience with a few discreetly placed Jojo Rabbit references!

You could also recreate this scene yourself to illustrate German small arms tactics:

-Tom