By Mitch Reed
Recently I accepted an invite from Professor Sebastian Bae to attend the “finals” for his wargaming class at Georgetown University. This marks my second time helping him out, last spring I headed up to the US Naval Academy to do the same thing with his Midshipmen. What better way to have a final exam than to play some of the games his students worked on this semester.
By David Garvin
A few days ago, I received a game in the mail. It was a copy of , a magazine game from Strategy and Tactics magazine. This was published in 1983 and was set in the late 1980s. As I was setting the game up, I noted some obsolete terms, such as “USSR” and “Leningrad”.
I simply smiled and then out of curiosity I went to my games cupboard to have a look at my collection. The majority of my games are based on the Second World War; however, a sizable number of my games simulate combat between two factions, one of which no longer exists! Although some of my games date from the Cold War itself, such as those in the series, I have some that were made well after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989! This got me thinking: what is the appeal of simulating combat from a war that never happened? In this article, I will look at the history of these games and then wax philosophical as to why they keep such great appeal.
By Patrick S. Baker
Steel Panthers World War II
From the first, Steel Panthers had an active fan-base which developed new scenarios and posted them online to share with other fans. One of these super-fans was David Heath.
After founding The Gamers Network, an online game review site, in 1998, Heath went on to play-test some games for SSI as well. He also made friends with Joel Billings, the founder of SSI, and Gary Grigsby. Wanting to do more in the gaming world and “loving Steal Panthers”. Heath had several conversations with Billings and Grigsby, finally convinced them to give him the source code for Steel Panthers to develop “a fan base edition of the Steel Panthers Series”.
By Troy Hill
The long awaited chance for Warlord Games to get a decent set of army special rules for the Italian forces is finally …. not here yet.
Don’t get me wrong. The new Campaign Italy: Soft Underbelly book is great when you hold it in the context for which it is intended. That being a historical approach to gaming the invasion of Sicily during Operation Husky and beyond.
For those Bolt Action gamers hoping for a new set of Italian Army rules that brings the Italian army into the competitive zone most other armies get in the game… yeah, that didn’t happen here either. In context, a competitive Italian Army wasn’t to be had in the invasion of Sicily nor the Italian mainland.
But, if you’re into a historical approach to your gaming, instead of just pounding away with the meta and special rules to dominate in tourneys, this is an excellent book.
by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell
In Canada, it was decided (during our lockdown this summer) to not have one Canadian Nationals event in Ottawa (since we could no longer book the Marriott we usually go to), but instead have several Regional events. Overall winner would be the person with the highest total points, tie breakers going to number of wins, and then if still tied, going to the person who attended the larger event.
The National Capital Region (NCR) event was put on by Darko Prodanovic and John Edward (Jed) and hosted by a local game store across the river in Quebec called Freres de Bataille (Translation: Battle Brothers, hereafter FdB). Our event in the NCR occurred Nov 20-21 was , Late War 105 points (No Bulge US). Regionals in Winnipeg, Maritimes, and Edmonton also occurred. After compiling the results from the regionals, the winner is…
By Patrick S. Baker
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified
Released on 20 August 2013, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is technically a prequel and spin-off of Enemy Unknown, not a direct sequel, as it was under development in 2006, before Enemy Unknown was, but the development was both lengthy and fraught with difficulties.
The game started as a collaboration between two of 2K Games development studios, one in Marin County, California and the other in Canberra, Australia. The game was conceived by the 2K Australia team as a combined mystery game and first-person shooter. Tn the game the player was tasked by a secret government agency with photographing mysterious aliens and then researching what they are and what they were doing. However, the Marin team wanted a third-person shooter that focused on teamwork with more tactical elements. 2K Australia was removed from the project because of the disagreements between the two studios. The Marin team renamed the game, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, and moved forward with their ideas.
By Howard West
Photos supplied in this article by Anthony Burger, Rich Baier and Howard West
HMGS Inc. in normal times has three historical gaming conventions a year, Cold Wars in the Winter to Early Spring, Historicon in July, and Fall-Inn in November. Historicon 2021 was moved to the Fall-Inn time slot and took place November 10th -14th, 2021 at the Valley Forge Casino Resort, King of Prussia.
This was the first convention that HMGS was able to have since Cold Wars March 2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. It is located right off the PA turnpike near the King of Prussia Mall and about 30-40 minutes from the Philadelphia Airport.
By Mitch Reed
Some of you may recall my review of an area game from Peter van Dop and the folks at BelloLudi, a Dutch game company. Peter sent me another game of his to review called BelloLudi World War Two Skirmish game 1939-1945 and it has some of the same great mechanics and playability of his previous title.
We are live at Historicon 2021 for the first half of the show, joined by the guys from . Then we wrap up the show after we made our escape.
By Patrick S. Baker
Steel Panthers II: Modern Battles
Steel Panthers II: Modern Battles (SPII:MB) was released in November 1996, just one year and two months after the release of the original Steel Panthers (now referred to as Steel Panthers I or SPI). Grigsby had two main goals while developing the new game; one was to improve the animation and the other was to let the players simulate most of the armed conflicts, both major and minor, historical or hypothetical, throughout the world, from 1950 to 1999.
SPII:MB was more than just a reskin of the first game. Grigsby retained the game engine of the original, but the database was completely overhauled with a thousand modern units from 40 different countries, and non-state actors, all modeled in great detail and having characteristics unique to each time period and nationality. For example, helicopters, both scout and attack were added to the weapons inventory and were placed under the players’ direct control.
Airplanes were still in a support mode, but were now equipped with ordinance like precision-guided weapons, napalm, and/or cluster-bombs. Ground forces were kitted out with an assortment of heat-seeking and radar-guided Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) to counter the air threat, and so on.
