5593

Fair enough Pat. Just guessing here, mate. But all designers will sound arrogant, especially when a pointed criticism is made of their games. Deeming negative feedback irrelevant is a knee jerk reaction and I suspect we have all been there some time.

I playtested twice High Frontier back in 2010-11 and was part of a couple exchanges via email. He sounded to me respectful, genuinely interested in our feedback and funny. I found his games to have high instructional value, but if you are not invested in the background - by being an engineer, scientist or enthusiast - it is likely you can find those designs in bad need of streamlining.

YMMV when you come across the same person on random Internet forums or as years go by.

5594

Based on my very limited exposure to his comments on BGG or whatnot, he seems all that. I was speaking more towards his ideas and Historical interpretation/views of History via his designs when I said “tad arrogant”.

My “meh” spoke to the need for streamlining as you so eloquently put it. :)

5595

Very interesting article.

5596

My experience with Eklund games is that the rulebooks are often about twice as long as they need to be because he wants to have an enormous amount of political footnotes in the rules. I’m absolutely down for people to make games with an angle, even if I don’t really agree with the angle, but it should come out in the design itself, not in footnotes in the rulebook.

With wargame reviews in general, I feel that the reviews often come with a very limited amount of time in the game. It’s a problem in the board game world as well, where big detailed reviews will come off of a single play, which just aren’t that interesting to me. A first impression is a take on a game, a review should be borne of multiple plays.

5597

Panzer Battles of North Africa 1941 has been released: https://www.wargamedesignstudio.com/2018/11/21/battles-of-north-africa-1941-released/

Price is $39.95 at John Tiller Software: https://john-tiller-software.myshopify.com/products/battles-of-north-africa-1941

So, what do you get for your money?

  • 115 playable scenarios and a further 24 reference scenarios covering the maps and units in each operation
  • 3 variable scenarios (with some linked sub-scenarios)
  • Lots of maps – 8 master and 55 sub maps and the capability to create further sub-maps. The very large North Africa map is over 1.23m hexes. You can download all the planning maps for free from the Battles of North Africa 1941 page at the JTS site.
  • 8 orders of battle. The smallest (Corinth Canal) only has 131 units (a unit is usually a platoon equivalent). The largest (Compass) has 5,412 with duplicates. Crusader is probably close to Compass for unique units at 4,210 units.
  • A heap of documentation, that is free, even if you don’t buy the game. This includes our Player, Design & Scenario notes (159 pages), Mike Avanzini’s Visual Order of Battle covering several of the units that we have modeled (85 pages) as well as the Getting Started guide (70 pages). Additionally, the previously mentioned planning maps are an optional download (527 MB). The other manuals (User and Program) have also been reviewed and adjusted where necessary.
5598

I’m interested in this discussion because the reason I wrote that article I linked earlier is exactly because I think there isn’t enough writing about grog games that do just this. I want more of that writing out there so I thought I should try and start writing it myself (not that that piece is very good at fulfilling that goal mind you! But that was at least the aim, which I hope the next article that is in the works expands upon).

5599

Panzer Battles of North Africa 1941 preview at Armchair Dragoons: https://www.armchairdragoons.com/feature/battles-of-north-africa-1941-preview-wds-jts/

5600

True enough, though my comments were certainly not directed at any particular publication, and were mostly about my musings on enthusiast journalism in general. I have no stance on your publication per se.

I would say though that critiquing skills are kind of essential for a reviewer of anything. Being knowledgeable about the topic is also necessary, though depending on what you are critiquing not essential (you can critique, say, the cinematography of a film, the subject of which you have no interest in or knowledge about, for instance). The combination of knowledge and critiquing skills is not that rare though, I’d argue. It’s only rare in the realm of poorly compensated Internet writers, because those with those skills often go where they can actually make money. The Internet writing ecology today is toxic and hostile to creative content producers. The Internet is a place everyone expects everything for free, so there is a glut of content out there and like everything else in the world, 95% of it is horseshit.

5601

Ok, Tiller’s stuff doesn’t really get me excited, but good on him for providing the above free.

Edit: well, the design doc for his latest is currently 404’d.

5602

Worked for me just now.

5603

Yeah, it works in Chrome, but not Safari. I don’t even.

5604

JTS:

5605

Matrix have put out their yearly pdf of Christmas sales - but their link is screwed up at the moment so you can’t actually download it.

5606

I was rereading this thread a bit trying to figure out how I was wrong so often. But I don’t get this “I am woke” thing… what does that mean PM? Guess I need to look that up. I have a feeling now before I start it is not good…

Hmm quick research was not enlightening. I am not sure what that means with regard to those posts above.

Well anyways I will look harder. Sry for causing trouble. I don’t agree with anyone really that argued against the possibility of a Japanese Victory in 1941-43. But I have to cook for almost 25 people now for thanksgiving. I was just curious what that guy meant with that woke stuff.

5607

Phil Eklund’s games are erratic and bizarre and always have been. American Megafauna and Lords of the Spanish Main are complicated and full of lunatic randomness - no one else would design a six-hour game where a disaster coming out of nowhere just kills everyone four hours in. But they work, and they generate really interesting experiences, and they tell stories about the world that are kind of like the stories that actually happened. (Or not, I once played a game of Pax Porfiriana in which the FBI nationalized my ostrich farm.)

It’s unfortunate that he got his degree in history from the Confirmation Bias program at Dunning-Kruger University, but what are ya gonna do?

5608

If anyone fancies reading about something a bit different, this is what I was doing weekend just gone. Apologies for the length - there was a lot to write up.

5609

Happy Thanksgiving Grogs. May all your opponent’s divisions shatter.

5610

Have a great day all you turkeys. Oops, I mean have a great turkey day!

5611

Back in the “good old days” when I and others on here were writing for CGW, CGS+/CGM, and other mags, once you got to a certain level of credibility you were FLOODED with free games (and hardware.) I would get Fedex boxes every week from the major and minor publishers, and not just of games I would be reviewing. You got on the “send lists” and the stuff just showed up. (My kids loved it.) So if you were at a regular freelancer/contributing editor level, the fear of not getting free stuff was never a motivator.

There was also never pressure from the editors to write positive reviews to keep the publishers/advertisers happy, at least for me at CGW and CGS+/CGM. Not at all.

The toughest part for me was, at that level, you go to know the people developing the games. Sometimes very well. I did it, but it was painful to know that someone was leading a team working 18 hours a day down the stretch, sleeping in the office, and then have to write a really negative review. FWIW, quite often these were a result of the publisher forcing them to release the game before it was ready. Whole 'nuther thread.

OTOH, my observation is that once the web sites started popping up everywhere, a couple of things happened. The PR folks at the major publishing houses had to get MUCH pickier about Send Lists because everyone was emailing them saying “I’m an editor at www.koolestgamezever,com please send me free games.” The other issue was you DID have a lot of new writers that really, really wanted to get free games and make buddies with the PR people at EA, etc. and they did NOT want to offend.

FWIW, there were only two times I got major grief for a negative review, from a major publisher. One was Electronic Arts when I wrote a critical review of NHL 96 for CGM. They said everyone else is giving it 5 stars! How can you give it 2.5 (or whatever I did.) I asked them, what in the review do you have a factual issue with? I’ll address anything you believe is incorrect or unfair. “But everyone else have it 5 stars!” Oh, it still didn’t keep them from sending me product and I still have a good professional relationship with the PR rep (for many years.) We both understood we were both professionals doing our job.

The other was a tank simulation from - I forget who, but they were a B+ level publisher. I had an appointment with them at E3 about a week after my review in CGW had come out in which I gave the sim a deservedly really negative review (e.g. AI commanded tanks would drive into the one tree in a field and then just sit there pushing against the tree forever, some of the in game menues were unfinished, weapon and armor ratings were crazy bad resulting in ridiculous battlefield results, etc.) The PR guy at my scheduled meeting with them at E3 said “You don’t get to talk to our talent any more after that review!” He was in progress of chewing on me and I was about to walk away when the President of the company walked up, saw who I was and who I wrote for (we’d talked in the past) and heard what was going on, told the PR guy, somewhat quietly, “Shut up” and then asked me about the review, I said lets get the game up and running on one of the PCs here, we did, I showed him what I was talking about, he pulled a couple of his people over and we had a big discussion on their QC and testing, etc. Later that week as I walked past their booth he pulled me over and said he fired the PR guy who was chewing me out; he said if a PR person can’t interface any better than that he should be in a different business.

All that reminiscing aside, yeah, if reviews at a site basically tell me what I could learn from the wargames website, I won’t spend time at that site again. There needs to be some in depth discussion and not just feature description to be worth a read.

5612

Sweet fancy Moses, this thread is just stuffed (Happy Thanksgiving!) with ex CGers.

Thanks for the inside baseball, @JeffL.