Gaming

“There seems too wide agreement that the best version of Civ ever, was Civ II – Test of Time.”

Or

“They screwed around with Civilization and made it worse.”

By Patrick S. Baker

By 1997, famed game designer Sid Meier had left MicroProse and founded Firaxis with other former MicroProse employees. At about that same time, MicroProse was acquired by Spectrum Holobyte, and then the merged company was purchased by gaming giant, Hasbro Interactive.

In February 1999, Meier’s new company released Sid Meier’s Alpha Centuri. This game did not carry the Civilization name yet was no doubt a sequel to Civilization II (Civ II). Also, in April 1999, a rival game company, Activision, released the game, Civilization: Call to Power. This release sparked a legal dispute between MicroProse/Hasbro and Activision over the use of the name Civilization for computer games. Part of the settlement was that Activision could continue to make Call to Power games, but not use the Civilization title.

Join Glenn and Tom as they interview Firelock guru Mike Tunez. Mike helps judge the winner of last year’s New Year’s resolutions, and spills the beans on Firelock’s upcoming plans. This is a supersized episode, because Mike had a lot of beans to spill. Enjoy!

By Troy Hill

The game Saga, from Studio Tomahawk, seems to be on a growth curve, and our little corner of Indiana – the NorthEast corner – is no exception. Our game group recently hosted a tournament for the “Age of Melee” at Power9 Games in Fort Wayne Indiana. With twenty players scheduled, eighteen actually managed to make it in that day. A great record for our local group.

Players from as far away as Columbus Ohio, Indianapolis, and Crown Point Indiana made the trek to bring their warbands, throw some dice, and curse the gods of the tabletop when we didn’t do as well as we’d hoped. Despite volunteering to be “ringer” I got to field my Milites Christie and compete, despite two last-minute drops.

By Howard West

The original Team Yankee Analytics was published on January 22nd, 2021 Team Yankee Analytics V2 was published on August 13, 2021, and Team Yankee Analytics V3 was published on July 2022.

The base premise behind these articles was to answer the question: can a person who plays a miniatures war game use some basic data collection to keep track of their performance in tournament play, over a specific period to improve tournament results based on previous tournament games?

Our collection of delayed recordings continues their release with this episode of Tales of the Sail recorded in December. Talesmen Glenn and Tom host Maarten De Kruif, one of our Dutch listeners, to speak about Blood and Plunder over in the Olde World. Maarten speaks about his community, his first hosted tournament, and the proper pronunciation for “Kapers”. Join us for this episode originally recorded in December for a chat about gaming on the other side of the Atlantic.

By Tom Gall

Does a tabletop miniatures game set in a fantasy setting interest you? When looking at a new game system to get into we all have a lot of questions, let’s look at Conquest The Last Argument of Kings or TLAoKs.

Simply, Conquest TLAoK by Para-Bellum Games is a rank-and-file miniatures war-game set in the world of Ëa. It’s a “newish” miniatures game that has started to sweep through the gamer ranks at D6 Games in Rochester Minnesota and more broadly here in the US. The game was originally released back in 2018, and, given the dark times of Covid, perhaps slowed in its potential growth due to those events. Regardless, as the system gains momentum, those dark days have given the rules time to be tuned, updated, and expanded.

Next question, does a rule set that is available online as a PDF for free interest you? The rules are a living document with a history of updates over time that have been improving gameplay. They were just updated to version 2.0 and while that might imply a huge set of changes, it was a smaller set of adjustments.

By Tom Gall

If you have a resin 3D printer and have been watching the variety of Kickstarters going by with STLs to choose from there seems to be an explosion of offerings for tabletop wargamers.

I’ve been very skeptical of printing my own 10mm/15mm infantry figures. Sculpts and print quality are my primary concern, as things get smaller, would the results be reasonable? What happens when small resin figures are on the tabletop, with dice, dropping, etc, will there be shattered sadness?

Before we get to my own experiences, I want to highlight the work of Henry Turner who has a Kickstarter up for NATO troops set in 1983. Within the Kickstarter, he has both US and British infantry in a variety of poses that are meant for a variety of scales. At £30 or $50US for both sets it’s a good deal and you’ll see why in a moment.

After a long Hiatus and many many technical problems, podcasts are back to being published here on NDNG. Tales of the Sail returned with guest Jason Klotz of Timber and Sail to talk Oak and Iron for this episode originally recorded in November. To get ourselves back on a regular schedule, expect weekly podcast postings from Tales of the Sail. Next week we meet with a special guest Maarten De Kruif from Holland, and the week after that we hear about Firelock’s upcoming plans with a tell all from Mike Tunez recording live from Miami. It’s going to be a busy few weeks, so stay tuned.

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

Here we are, at last, with a new version of ‘Hail Caesar‘ by Warlord Games. I hesitate to say ‘Hail Caesar 2‘ or call this book a sequel since even though this is an update to the original book, the main rules remain pretty much the same.

The original Hail Caesar book came out in 2014, and while it’s certainly time for a refresh, you can easily still play Hail Caesar with either book, though the newer one opens up Sieges and Late Medieval, clarifies diagrams, and includes generic scenarios.  Let’s dive right in.

By Mark Greenwald

Crossing the Line is part of a series of games developed by Vuca Simulations in Germany. I came across it a few years back and put it on my Christmas wish list. But a second edition with a mounted map was just published this year. So I picked it up for myself.

It arrived last week and as soon as I could find table space, I set it up to do some solo learning.

Vuca Simulations is probably a company most have never heard of, but they are putting out some really nice games with nice reviews.  This series includes two other games right now, Across the Bug River – Volodymyr-Volynski 1941 and Operation Theseus – Gazala 1942. It is an operational-sized hex and counter wargame with a nice twist on the standard IGOUGO turn sequence.