I’ve watched 4 episodes of Filthy Strategy Gamer’s series and V & G ACW looks like it has that ‘one more turn’ going on. Don’t know what difficulty he is using but the Union seems quite passive. He did set up the game so that the CSA has the border states siding with the rebels.
Think I’m going to get this and will report back.
EDIT: I bought it and I’ll report my impressions for all 5 of you watching this thread ;-)
FWIW, Filthy Strategy Gamer beat the game before the end of 1862 on what appeared to be his first go as the CSW. He lost badly his first try as the Good Guys/Union.
It is a bit wonky. Bad DAAAAM this is a fun game. Its like bite size tactical but with some nice depth. Fit a need I didnt know I had <15min coffee break/compile time tactical battles with depth. Nice.
Weren’t these games available a long time ago? Just not on Steam? I dimly recall buying this from some other place, maybe Matrix? Dunno, but damn they look familiar.
There was a game based on the board game called Heroes of Stalingrad published by Matrix. It used the board game assets, so they look really familiar. Don’t know how that one fared.
There is also Conflict of Heroes Awakening the Bear that seemed pretty similar, but I have read so many critcism of that one I was turn off before even buying it.
I have both, yeah. It was Heroes of Stalingrad that I was thinking of. It seems…remarkably similar to the new game? What’s the difference, other than breaking up the engine from the scenario packs?
Heroes of Stalingrad had this weird story progression you went through to unlock scenarios I think? Not sure if it was the original board game but I dont recall it. Anyways it leads with a scenario where you the noble German officer rescues Russian civilians, which felt like an insult to history really.
Anyways the new version seems to be just straightforward scenarios which I prefer.
Ah, ok. I never played the Matrix one much; that was a time when I sometimes bought games but didn’t get around to playing them much.
I am never surprised at stuff like the scenario described above. The trope of the “good German stuck among the Nazis” is deeply ingrained in pop culture. I suspect it grew partly out of the post-war need to rapidly rehabilitate the Germans as NATO allies rather than hated adversaries, and partly out of the opinion some portion of the population clearly holds to the effect that German “excesses” can be excused because commies. I was perusing YouTube today and scanning what percolated to the top of the home page and saw some documentary-ish thing about the French expat SS division Charlemagne and its fight in Berlin during the Soviet assault on the city. The comments…well, let’s just say that there was a lot of SS apologetics going around.
Shouldn’t be much of a surprise, Pierre Bousquet, the co-funder of the ever popular Front National with Jean-Marie Lepen, was a Waffen-SS Korporal in that division. How that individual managed to be around unscathered after the war is yet another befuddling story.
I bought the base game and a couple of modules, the first Normandy one and the 'Nam one, a year or so ago. I’m sorely tempted to buy all the rest now, but that’s a hefty chunk of change. While each module is affordable, together they add up! That battle generator/campaign thing though sounds wicked cool–and custom-built to make you want to buy more modules…
