I was about to suggest a Darice organizer with 32 compartments, as I love them and have many – but they’re also out of stock at Amazon! And yes, the GMT trays are hard to come by too. I don’t love them, but I do have a dozen or so lying around, so I guess I’ll be using them for Pacific War.
I used to use Plano boxes, but I’m not sure which one is good for wargames these days. Anyone know?
Saw a review of these new trays from Aegis Storage on Ardwulf’s Lair youtube channel:
“Flying Buffalo, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time!”
Right? Apparently they are still around, shipping Nuclear War, and Tunnels & Trolls. The owner passed away, and they were bought by some company called Webbed Sphere.
I have many fond memories of playing Nuclear War and Nuclear Proliferation with friends.
Hear ye! Hear ye! Registration for the June 4, 24-hour Levy & Campaign Fest (online/Discord/$5) is now open:
I’m learning Nevsky now and have Almoravid on order.
With at least 10 games in the production pipeline, the Levy & Campaign system has the potential to be the next big wargaming system, much akin to COIN.
Another cool thing is that both Nevsky and Almoravid have a lot of new VASSAL bells and whistles built into their modules.
The collection begins. I got about $40 off what they were charging for a copy of Third World War for a dinged corner that was so minor I wouldn’t noticed if they’d just sent it like that anyways. Happy with the service from miniature market for Vietnam, and CLS Games Atlanta that sold TWW on bgg.
@Navaronegun 70 orders to go. Looking forward to seeing A Hot Dry Season when it ships.
Ooh, show us shots of the insides when you can!
Nice start there, @vyshka! The Third World War sure looks interesting. If you do an AAR somewhere, let us know.
Back on the subject of counter trays: Darice is out of business, but another company seems to have the license to produce the awesome 32-compartment Darice storage bin. I love it because it has smooth, rounded bottoms, which makes it easy to extract chits. Also, it has fixed compartments, not modular ones, which for me is a plus – I store only wargame counters in these things, and modular compartments tend to be less secure. And it has a lid that folds and closes securely, unlike GMT counter trays, which sooner or later always pop open and spray their contents all over the table.
The main downsides are that this thing is larger than a GMT tray, and it’s quite pricy.
Tick-tock. Thanks, man.
So on impulse I picked up Arracourt, a Batallion Combat Series game from MMP. I’ve never played this system before, and because I like OCS a lot, I figured Dean Essig might have some interesting design at the batallion level.
I’m still reading the rules, but so far they don’t disappoint, and they come complete with groovy names. You assess whether your formations overlap too much by eyeballing each HQ’s Blob. You activate formation by formation, alternating with your enemy, rather like the Tactical Combat Series. You set OBJectives as in Fields of Fire. Combat Trains represent hundreds of trucks and cars and carts hauling supplies and casualties back and forth. Ghost Trains happen when combat trains get Jumped (by enemies). There’s a Crossing Streams negative DRM if two HQ’s share combat train paths, representing traffic jams.
Combat comes in five different flavors: Regular Attacks, Shock Attacks (overruns), Engagements (think ASL Gun Duels), Fire Attacks (AFVs vs soft targets), Barrages (arty, air). Fatigue is a thing. Support units can work like Support does in War in the East – you assign an 88mm to your HQ, say, and bits of that unit fan out to each non-armored unit in the formation.
I’ve got a Pacific War scenario on the table now, but Arracourt is up next!
For those interested in Cataclysm, they recently posted new rules and aids here:
The reprint for the new NATO game is now shipping. My copy arrived this afternoon.
Just an FYI. Matrix has a sale running, 30% off their entire catalog.
The recent talk of the SSG games in the Ardennes thread has me tempted to grab the Kharkov game and the Across the Dnepr expansion. Maybe Battlefront as well. Probably should just wait for my anniversary coupon in August.
I’m not sure how you feel about the John Tiller/WDS games, but there is a fantastic title in the Panzer Campaign series called Kharkov '43. This title especially was worth the cost for me just for the included Developer notes, scenario descriptions, and the giant OOB. The AI does well in small scenarios. It used to be my goto game when I just wanted to move some counters around. I really like the Panzer Campaign ruleset though, your mileage may vary.
Edit: You can actually view the dev notes in that link if you’d like. It’s under ‘updates and downloadable files’.
Slitherine has an even bigger sale on Fanatical!
https://www.fanatical.com/en/publishers/slitherine-ltd
Battlesector is 30% off at Matrix, but 45% off at Fanatical.
I could hook you up with a discount code probably if you like, but I myself just reinstalled Battlefront and Battles in Italy and boy do those games look rough on modern monitors. And no tool-tips also really makes the games tough to get into without a full read of the manual.
Wow, some good deals on there. Some games for 80% off!
Perhaps someone can help me, I’m trying to remember the names of a couple of titles of games that came out in the 2000s. They were WW2 strategy games that used counters but they were realtime (pausable). One covered the Holland campaign (it might have been operation market garden) and the other was the campaign in Greece. Can anyone recall what these games were called?
