Yeah, it’d be novel if that didn’t occur.
Yeah, it’s not exactly short rules to translate either hence I really appreciated his effort in making this game session to work and glad it did!
Speaking of more Japanese classics, my friend told me Epoch’s Russo-Japanese War was also being reprinted and recommended me to get it because it’s the most highly acclaimed title among the Japanese classic series and still remain as favourite among Japanese wargamers. New reprint also comes with the war’s strategy research booklet and it’s available here:
https://a-gameshop.com/SHOP/JWC2_1.html
My friend is volunteering to translate the rules into English again and I’m really tempted here. I mean, how many good Russo-Japanese conflict got made?
Ooops, just found out there’s an English version already by non other than MMP:
Brooski
5032
Fun game The Tide at Sunrise. Dont be fooled by the time period and the siege element, in the game you have a lot of maneuverability on both sides.
(Baconsoda makes me want to make up a new grognard war game)
Brooski
5035
That has a fancy TacOps vibe to it. Which isn’t a bad thing per se, but TacOps is… geez over 20 years old.
I had downloaded and totally forgot to give the freeware version a try. That looks super intriguing.
Fulda Gap again.
[{Copy Paste Bulge Comments}
I still have a 3.0 version of TacOps on 3.5" floppy here. I loved that game on the Mac though I am not sure I ever really got it working on Windows. Major Holdridge, I think, was the guy doing it? Marine Corps dude. The game was rally cool.
Armored Brigade seems like it could be really good, or just a hot mess. I can’t get a real sense from the trailer, and I guess I should view some of the more detailed vids, but it will probably be one of those games I have to buy anyway, I love NATO/WP games, always have, and having lived and worked over there during the Cold War they’ve always resonated with me.
I don’t have any problem with another Fulda Gap (and the game does North German plain, too) game. Unlike Bulge, which as a historical event has been pretty much done to death, each game set in the Fulda Gap area seems a lot different because the event is hypothetical or counterfactual. The only thing constant is the terrain, really, and perhaps some of the OBs, depending. Besides, if you’re doing a war in Central Europe in the 1980s, where else do you go for the meat of the matter?
I’m as tired of the “80s war that never happened” as I am the Bulge. :) Not so much “The Gap” in particular.
I have far more interest in the wars that did happen from 1970-2000.
I hear ya. I’m more the other way, though. I find that gaming real wars always leads to irreconcilable differences between the game-as-simulation and the game-as-game camps, and have grown tired of the incessant nit-picking about this unit being here instead of there, or this weapon doing this instead of that. With hypotheticals, there is a much wider range of error that is permissible, I think, and you more easily focus on simulation (not having a real-world outcome to act as the 800 pound gorilla in the room) or as a game (not having that same gorilla interfering with balance).
Not that I’m adverse to late 20th century as subject matter… I think many of the conflicts in the time frame you posit have yet to receive really solid treatments. But those conflicts also are some of the hardest to simulate in ways that are both fun as games and accurate as simulations, as they’re all pretty much asymmetrical warfare to some degree. (Not that any war is every truly symmetrical, but still there is a ton of difference between the Soviets vs. Mujahadin and Axis vs. Allies). The one nearly symmetrical war, though symmetrical on different axes, was the Iran/Iraq war, and that’s one I’d like to see done for sure, but doing it so that it would be more or less accurate and enjoyable as an exercise seems difficult for sure.
I’d also like to see the Conventional Jungle war that the world forgot:
Angola was a big deal back in the day, though I’m pretty sure most folks couldn’t find it on a map now. It could be interesting as a game, I guess, but for stuff like this, my only interest really is in using a game as a visualization tool for history. A scenario like this could well make for a great computer game (with limited intel and asymmetrical forces) but the chances of anyone doing one with any degree of polish are nil.
I am most definitely looking forward to it.
The game is very moddable, @Navaronegun. From what I remember about the free version you can pretty much work out any scenario on that timeframe so dear to you :) it is shipping with 1960s TOEs for NATO and WP, and figuring out how to add Chinese LMGs or change Western European vegetation for South East Asian tropical should not be hard.
This is not TacOps. The free version felt more like Steel Panthers over a RTwp representation of time. The AI to assist the player at fighting the battle without having to set waypoints and SOPs to the whole force.
This; this shall make me give it a whirl.
However…
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Players: 1
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AI: Yes
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PBEM: No
I shall NOT give it a whirl. Gotta remember…no Matrix unless it’s via Slitherine (because Slitherine forces these devs to do PBEM++).
Brooski
5047
From the Slitherine website:
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Theatre: Western Europe
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Unit Scale: Squad, Individual (People, Planes, Tanks, etc.), Task Force
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Players: 1
-
AI: Yes
-
PBEM: No
And I am disappointed in Slitherine. Unless it is a typo.
