I’d argue there is an EVE quality to the Rule the Waves ship building and tweaking… iwhistling
That AAR needed a proper ending!
I went scourging book stores monday, looking amongst other things for stuff on the Russian-Japanese war, but came home with zilch on that matter.
I don’t quite recall how it ended on my end, but it was either a boring, “I sank three merchants and won” thing, or bugs ate the campaign and prevented me from advancing further.
After I posted the link, I read through it myself, and thought, “I used to be a better writer.”
Try “The Tsar’s Last Armada.”
I’m not getting my hopes up about this.
It doesn’t bode well that the official forum over in Slitherine has 3 topics and when you Google it you are referred to an awful looking early 2000s game licensing 300…
What! No hexes?!
Sacrebleu!
I saw this on Matrix and thought it might be interesting… if it has some novel insights and mechanics. Should I relinquish that hope?
Depends if you guys liked Drive on Moscow, Battle of the Bulge or Gettysburg: The Tide Turns - it’s the same developers. Shenendoah.
They tend to do slightly more abstract war/strategy games.
We were told from good authority they aren’t the same developers, just an IP (a perspective which the atrocious Drive on Moscow and Battle of the Bulge PC ports seem to confirm).
I’ll be curious about March to Glory — if, unlike the aforementionned games, it doesn’t turn out to be a computer burning engine from hell!
Sorry yes, you are correct - it’s the same team who finished up Gettysburg: The Tide Turns and who did the DoM and BotB PC Ports who are using the Shenendoah name (although I think there may be one or two people from the original team? I can’t remember).
The original Drive on Moscow and Battle of the Bulge games were done by the original Shenendoah team, of course.
From what I can tell, MMP’s issues are likely more about MMP being managed by grumpy grogs who are still mentally in 1952 than it is Curt Schilling’s money. But that’s just a guess based on watching them (and their statements on various forums) over years.
Now that I’ve done an MMP drive-by shooting, a separate question that some here might be able to answer: do the Steam or iOS implementations of Through the Ages have a random matchmaking system based on some sort of skill/rating (like ELO or something)?
I used to play on the free website version, but got tired of having my one star rating games that I set up immediately filled by people who had played 400 games in the prior three months.
Already exists! Both Hollandspiele and White Dog Games use Blue Panther for their game production on a print-on-demand basis. The product is quite nice. Try one ;)
To be fair to MMP, how many copies of For King and Country are they reasonably expecting to sell? Very few on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. Meanwhile, you have all that inventory eating into your operating costs. I don’t know a heck of a lot about their sales/profits, but I’ll bet they don’t have a ton of cash flow, and committing to a print run of one of these modules is a big deal. I agree that it seems logical to keep Starter Kits in stock since that’s one way of introducing people to your product line, and I agree that Youse & Co. might be described as grumpy grogs (in an affectionate way), they probably have run some numbers and decided they aren’t selling enough copies to keep more on hand. The physical boardgame publishing business is tough. ASL is niche beyond that. How big is their market, really, once you get people like me who buy one of every module because they just can’t help themselves.
Yeah, but it is practically impossible for someone new to get into ASL, so I guess at this point why bother at all. They are paying god knows how much money for that license. I spent many years trying to get an ASL set about a decade ago and eventually gave up.
Schilling once tried to buy it outright.
I get that feeling about myself after reading certain things. It’s unpleasant.
Possibly a grandfather deal of somekind. I doubt ASL has much value as a brand to Hasbro.
My advice is either just buy an old copy of Squad Leader or if you want to use those fancy ASL historical modules just pick up Retro, which lets you play ASL games in a fraction of the time.
http://minden_games.homestead.com/Retro4.html
Caution: You already need to understand basic ASL to use Retro and it is polarizing. Some folks I have recommended it to hate it, others love it. Your mileage may vary :)
The original SL was ground-breaking, elegant, and a near-perfect blend of detail and abstraction. ASL was, for all of its many qualities, mostly just more of everything, and more is not always better. I actually enjoyed playing SL, and even Cross of Iron, but as it grew more complex and morphed into what became ASL, it became something I sort of admired from a distance, rather than sought out people to play with.