I’ve ordered a couple of hard-to-find out-of-print things from them and they’ve been solid both times. Very reasonable prices.
@Zilla_Blitz so I had my eye on a copy of OCS The Third Winter, which they had for about $60 less than what MMP is selling it for, but someone grabbed it about an hour before my trades were finally processed this morning.
So what I ended up with for now:
Herman’s France 1944 (Compass Edition)
St. Lo (WEG edition)
A Time for Trumpets
Into the Woods - The Battle of Shiloh
The Last Hundred Yards Vol 3. - The Solomon Islands
I finished clipping the base game for 2nd Edition Gulf Strike yesterday. I still need to punch and clip the counter sheet for the Desert Shield expansion at some point, but I might leave it for now.
The 2mm rounder was sticking occasionally, at ended up where it wouldn’t open back up. Took it apart and put it back together and seems to be fine now, even feels better now not being as stiff as it was before and more like the 2.5mm.
That’s an impressive haul, congrats. I’ve had a lot of fun constructing a collection of wargames over the past year. I’m slowing down now, as I’ve got a lot to play.
I’d be particularly curious to hear what you think about LHY Vol 3.
I’ve looked at a Time for Trumpets a number of times, but have promised that I’d hold off until I get a bunch of games in with Enemy Action: Ardennes first.
The EA: Ardennes they had disappeared while I was waiting for the store credit. :)
Given Bruno’s history with other Bulge games, and what I’ve seen online it sounds like A Time for Trumpets should be good. Huge, but good.
I will let you know of LHY. I have vol 1 on P500 right now. I’m not ready to spend on ASL, so I figure this can stand in as a tactical game until that ever changes.
Ha! That’s exactly why I got picked up Vol. 2. I read through the rules and played a couple of simple scenarios, but that was right after I started back into wargaming, and I wanted to work up to the series. It felt a bit more fiddly than I was ready for at the time.
Since then I’ve dabbled with the ASL Starter Kit, which was much less daunting than I imagined, and have picked up Combat Commander to explore as well. I haven’t started on that one yet, though.
I’ve also been looking at Combat! to scratch that old Sniper itch, but I’ve heard mixed things about the series, and it’s expensive.
Sorry for the double post, but PSA for the upcoming (online) Levy & Campaign Festival.
There are only 6 badges left as I type this, 94 out of 100 gone.
Linkie:
Levy & Campaign Festival
And now this morning I get an automated email that Third Winter is back at NobleKnight. So either the person cancelled their order, they are putting up shrinkwrapped copies one at a time, or it was a ploy to try and get me to spend more.
I just read that the Rules the Waves 2 expansion is now becoming Rule the Waves 3 and will launch on Steam this Fall.
Firstly - my apologies for the delay in this announcement; it has been a trying last few months for NWS since Christopher left us, but we have recovered and have been moving forward in good order.
With that out of the way, let us get down to what you have been waiting for - news and/or updates!
- After lots of discussion between Fredrik and myself, and including feedback from our wonderful NWS Beta Team members, we have decided that the upcoming release should be a standalone game, namely “Rule the Waves 3: Ironclads to Missile Cruisers”. We have worked on this project for ~ 2.5 years now; with the amount of changes and additions, not to mention improvements in many many areas, we realized a short while back that the work has gone well beyond a simple expansion/dlc…we somehow passed ‘feature creep’ and entered the realm of what I like to call ‘feature bloat’ at some point in the past it would appear :-) The previously released ‘Expansion Catalog’, while it showed much of what was included at its release, will likely become somewhat outdated as additional work is done for the final game release - more details of this will be coming out in our marketing campaign later on.
The exact price point for the RTW3 game has not yet been decided, but it will fall close to our (NWS) typical price range for our new games, somewhere in the 35-45 range is my best guess right now - the exact price will be set/announced later on.
We do plan to put the game on sale at a reduced price for the first week or so of the release, which will effectively give anyone who wishes to take advantage of it a good price break.
Release date: The game will be released in OCTOBER of this (2022) year. THIS IS A SOLID RELEASE WINDOW. This release window gives us some additional time to ‘finetune’ the game, and a chance to add even more new features and useful changes as well in the meantime!
STEAM: Yes, we plan on a Steam release at the same time as the game is released to the store!!! The initial sale price (that I mentioned above) should also apply on Steam as well as on the store.
I guess it makes sense given its scope.
Shutupandtakemymoney.gif
First bit of my Noble Knight order arrived. The first impression for The Last Hundred Yards Vol 3, is wow those are big counters. I think the small counters are 5/8" and there are 3/4" as well. I’m about halfway through punching and clipping that. About half way through punching and clipping the copy of West End Games St. Lo as well. It had some registration issues and the die cutting wasn’t great so I took a break after the first sheet of that. I’ve managed to punch & clip Vietnam, Gulf Strike, NATO, and Red Storm in the past couple of weeks. France 1944 was already punched, and has pre-rounded counters so all I needed to do what check that all the counters were there. Third World War, A Time for Trumpets, and Into the Woods are still waiting.
I’m hoping to finish going through the Gulf Strike rules this week, and then I will either have to play in vassal, or find some space to get it set up.
Edit: I also saw the first bit of stuff I traded up on their site, and thinking maybe I should have tried to sell it myself. They are selling a 4 pack of Formula De tracks for $400 ($350 in the current sale).
Wow, you’ve been busy! I think it’s about time I try to play that Last Hundred Yards (Vol. 2) that I have.
And yeah, Noble Knight is not shy in pricing out-of-print stuff.
Necro’ing the Gunner Heat PC sub-chat, I recently started chucking a few quid on for the Patreon which gets me access to the vertical slice they’re developing, and they’re on track for hitting that old Microprose sweet spot between grognard level detail and actually being enjoyable to play; not sure where it will end up, but the basic systems in place feel are a really robust basis. It’s easy enough to pick up the basic principles (everything is deadly, so shoot and scoot) quickly but has surprising amounts of detail in things like the T-72 lasing reticle and the target reticle being offset and obvious differences in the quality of the M60 and M1 thermal sights.
Definitely one to watch - clearly a labour of love and not a thinly downgraded military trainer like Steel Beasts.
I finally have Enemy Action: Ardennes on the table! I’m playing the two-player game first, starting with the one-day intro scenario, which I now have set up. Once I’m comfy with the two-player mechanics, I’ll try the German solo game. So far I’m very impressed with the clean ruleset. The counters are gorgeous, if a bit thin. I’ll start playing in earnest tomorrow.
That one is on my very short list as well. I’d be curious to hear your impressions, as always.
I have EA: Kharkov on the way, and I am so pumped for that. I’ll probably play that before I get back to Ardennes again. I can only hope Khrakov works as well as EA:A does.
They are both on my list to add to the collection. Could probably do a whole shelf of just Butterfield solo games.
He is quickly becoming one of my favorite designers. I got a chance to watch him demo the upcoming Downfall game that he is working on for GMT, and listening the guy talk about design and building a game was a treat.
An in-depth look at EA Kharkov: Enemy Action: Kharkov from Compass Games Preview - YouTube
Back in the day I would have jumped at this without a second thought. It does look great, but it also looks overwhelming to me at this point in my career. (sigh)
Finished clipping Into the Woods. I also picked up a couple Shiloh books since I didn’t have anything specific on it. Shiloh - Conquer or Perish by Timothy Smith, and Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 by Cunningham. It looks like there are even a couple scenarios with nice, small maps so I might be able to set up and play those before getting my tables in the garage.
Vol. 2 of The Last Hundred Yards also arrived yesterday. LHY will probably be the first thing I set up and play as I can probably fit a map right here on my desk. Gulf Strike will have to be in vassal for the time being.