A very specific subject matter!
I have the original, but I have never really played it. I printed out the manual on a color printer, only to of course have much of it rendered obsolete by the inevitable barrage of errata/patches. While the lure of these sorts of things has diminished for me, looking at the screen shots does stir a bit of a nostalgic desire to try again. But I know, deep down, that I’ll install it, fiddle with it a bit, and then never look at it again. I just can’t get into the subject matter or the mechanics of this sort of thing like I used to.
Thanks!
I am working on getting back into wargaming. Fortunately, I coworker is also into them so I have someone to play with.
I haven’t played an Avalon Hill-style game since the 90s. I played Operational Art of War for a bit, but even in computer terms it’s been a while since I’ve played a Wargame. Strategy games, yes. War-games, no.
I am not even sure what of my Steam games out: Company of Heroes, Unity of Command, Warzone Red Dragon… maybe? I’m on a Mac, so I don’t have the Panzer Corps games. Hoi4 I don’t consider a Wargame, but could scratch Avalon Hill 3rd Reich itch.
My history knowledge is iffy also. Reading about Brotherhood and Unity, I had kinda forgotten about that war. My knowledge of the German invasion of the Soviet Union can be summed up with “I can relate. Driving in the snow kinda sucks.” I did read David Kranz’s Operation Barbarossa book last week, though.
Unity of Command is pretty good. Rock hard, but not because of the rules, which are quite elegantly abstracted (something the sequel lost a bit, IMO) but because the AI is pretty good at playing it.
By the way, the Kriegspiel of Operation Sealion I’ve been playing came to an end last night after nine turns. A close British victory, thanks to some slightly unrealistic scenario setting making it competitive (no RAF, RN pinned for five days or so to allow the Germans to cross), but an umpired free Kriegspiel format makes asymmetric fog of war possible and gave us a really interesting experience.
As the Brits, left behind LDV elements gave us really accurate intel once the Germans had landed, while their command of the air meant they had much more impressionistic and literally snapshot impressions. It meant, for example, we could scare them by conjuring up a completely phantom armoured Corps to cover a completely vacant 50 mile gap they could have outflanked and rolled up our lines with in a few days, and despite a few very narrow escapes, we were always able to just about get reserves in the right place at the right time to replace units their panzer divisions carved up
Great fun too playing with two teams of five or so players on each side - having a whole week to formulate orders meant the WhatsApp group was buzzing with ideas and chat as you hashed out the plans for the next turn.
Curious if War in the East 2 ends up being a bit more focused. I respect WiTE but I just dont enjoy it and all the busy work it makes me do. Hopefully the new version is a bit more focused on decisions rather than micro management.
Hahahahahaha
ok it was a little naïve of me :)
If anything WitE2 ha more micro. Supplies are now calculated done to individual tons. Every hex has a separate road level value to consider. Other theatres all have separate boxes to manage. The air war can at least be put on ai control. But the game definitely expects you want to get into the minutiae of the war.
Wow! Well thats cool. I respect fellow gamers and WiTE fans will love that! But yeah its not for my wargaming tastes right now. I will follow the AAR’s of other folks though! :)
Everyone probably knows this already and I’m just late to the party, if so just ignore me.
Tim Stone may have left RPS, but he’s not gone. He’s set up shop at what he’s calling Tally-Ho Corner at the following link: https://tallyhocorner.com
So, I’ve come to discover The Flare Path lives (the only reason for some number of years I ever stopped by RPS). Which is nice.
Again, to everyone who already knew this, carry on.
I guess I haven’t been paying attention to RPS for a while. I didn’t realize flare path was gone.
I’d noticed it was gone, it was one among many things that changed or disappeared at RPS leading most to abandon the place. I was just happy to see he resurrected it, at least for the time being. Hopefully he can make a go of it.
I went to check out Tim Stone’s new digs, clicked into the A-to-Z (I always loved those at RPS), found out about “Gunner HEAT PC” (it’s a silly name) and then 20 minutes later was doing this:
That is an exceedingly bad day at the office for this T55 crew.
I downloaded the new demo. Uh, the above image aside, is there enough content here to start having fun pretty quickly? I’m not sure what I want out of a tank sim, exactly, but I’m someone that once considered shelling out for Steel Beasts before I realized I’d never invest enough time into it.
I drove around the proving ground for about 10 minutes and then just started blasting through the missions.
The AI isn’t messing around when it gets you in sights and if you just drive about like you’re in a golf buggy you will get killed from a half mile by a shadow you didn’t realise was a tank, but outside of that what’s there seems to be a bit limited.
In the main mission I played a few times - which was called something like “MBT Battle” - the two teams drive toward each other and the meeting engagement was exciting, but if one flank kills the enemy on that side they just keep driving toward enemy spawn instead of turning in to clear up the other flank.
An amount of the fun is pressing “End” and going into AAR mode to look through images like the one above to see who shot who and how.
From flipping through some of the models it looks like soft-skin vehicles, APCs and even infantry are in the game already - there was a dude with an AT missile launcher I didn’t see until I ran him over, for example.
So it has a lot of cooking left to do, but there’s already fun to be had.
That’ll teach 'em to TOW the line!