Gaming

By David Garvin

From the 10th of June 1940 until the 13th of May 1943, Axis and Allied armies struggled against one another across North Africa until the Axis surrendered 275,000 prisoners of war. Many of us know of many of the battles and famed figures of the war. Kasserine. El Alamain. Tobruk. Rommel. Montgomery.

They all evoke images of the hot, dusty sand and the sweeping tank battles across the desert. There are many games that depict battles in North Africa, but few do it at the tactical level. After how, how does one maneuver over a barren landscape bereft of cover? Well, the folks at Avalon Hill came up with a way to do this with their Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) series.

So that’s what I’m going to discuss: how tactical desert warfare is gamed using ASL and some of the implications of fighting in the desert. Finally, I will discuss how Multi-Man Publications have brought the desert back to ASL after 34 years.

By Tom Gall

January 2nd 2022 The Wargaming Company announced series 3 of Et Sans Résultat (ESR) their Napoleonic results for playing grand / epic scale Napoleonic conflicts. That’s not all,  on December 29th The Wargaming Company announced their own line of 10mm figures was coming. a few of the initial images that David Ensteness from The Wargaming Company had shared.

These two developments make 2022 a pretty exciting year for grand-scale Napoleonics. I have a fondness for the Napoleonic era, there are some good rulesets out there from Empire to Sharp Practice but none scratch the itch for large-scale battles like ESR. For me, ESR is my go-to system for these large battles. Besides the rules, The Wargaming Company has a great lineup of campaign guides that includes very impressive uniform guides for painting your armies.

Check out this interview with Jason Petho the designer of the PC game Campaign Series Vietnam. Jason talks about the development and all of the new goodies in the latest title in this iconic series.

By Tom Burgess

When we first saw the Flames of War Version 4 Formations charts, we all wondered what the “Wildcard” box was meant for. Many of us speculated that perhaps that might have some future tie-in with “Mid-War Monsters” or some future rare/special units. Battlefront has been mum on the purpose “Wildcard” for over four years. With the release of the North Africa Mid-War Forces compilation, we know that this was an avenue to bring Mid-War Monsters back into the game.

But that’s not the only way the new North Africa Compilation will let you add for Mid-War Monsters. Battlefront also added new formations to utilize these beasts in their full glory. I think many of us expected to see Mid-War monsters to come back into the game at some point with Version 4, but I don’t think any of us expected to see new formations explicitly for these special units.

By Troy Hill

After two years of miss or hit, mostly miss gaming, we’ve finally had our first Bolt Action tourney in North-East Indiana. Power Nine Gaming in Fort Wayne Indiana hosted our Rumble in the Fort, Bolt Action tourney. I was the humble Tourney Organizer (TO), and we hoped to have five tables. Going into the week, it looked like we might make that.

But, cold-like symptoms, such as sore throats, kept two players home. We ended up with seven players, and I jumped into the roster as the “ringer.”

By Patrick S. Baker

 Part Four, 

War of the Chosen

War of the Chosen was a Downloadable Content (DLC) expansion pack for XCOM 2 released August 2017 for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Chosen follows the same narrative as XCOM 2, but introduces a number of new elements to the game.

Chosen introduced three new enemy aliens called The Chosen, which were elite alien-human hybrid warriors: the Assassin, the Hunter and the Warlock. The Chosen had the mission to defeat XCOM and recapture the Commander.

The Chosen gained new abilities over time, and eventually work up to launching a direct attack on the Avenger. The Chosen would sporadically reappear during missions even after being defeated. They were only permanently killed when their base was destroyed.

By David Garvin

Snipers are an important part of modern war, having gained great importance in the Second World War. , trained to provide highly detailed intelligence on the enemy and engage him only if the opportunity presents itself.

However, in World War Two they were largely employed as marksmen, trained to shoot a man-sized target out to about 300 yards, often with only using iron sights. In practically every tactical-level war game that I have played, snipers have often been ignored. It is a tricky problem as to how to mimic the effect of a single rifle-armed soldier taking that one shot that alters the fate of a battle.

Not all games ignore them, however, and in this article, I will show how that aforementioned problem was dealt with by the developers of . In so doing, I will explore back through the original Squad Leader system and how it first tackled the problem. Finally, I will give an anecdote about how it affected me, the human player, in one memorable match I played many years ago.

By Patrick S. Baker

The Personal Computer version of Harpoon was released for the DOS operating system in 1989 by Three-Sixty Pacific and it took the gaming world by (Red) Storm (Rising).  The naval simulation received raved reviews and I, like many other military officers and others interested in modern naval warfare, rushed out to buy the game. I even invested in an upgraded computer to play it.

At that point, I had no idea that the marvelous game I spent literally days playing was based on a tabletop and miniatures game. But everything comes from something else and Harpoon was no exception. Indeed, the game did not spring Athena-like from Larry Bond’s head.

According to , the then twenty-four-year-old Naval Lieutenant Junior Grade Larry Bond, encountered the US Navy’s official computer wargame, NAVal TActical Game (NAVTAG) in 1976.  NAVTAG was the digitized successor to the manual pen and paper SEA control Tactical Analysis Game (SEATAG). NAVTAG only came in a classified version and took three computers to play, limiting its utility.

By Tom Gall

The new hotness up on the frozen north for is the West German Marder 2. Tournament after tournament, forces built around this unit have placed really well. A unit alone doesn’t make a winning list, dice must still be rolled and the player needs to practice good tactics, yet the Marder 2 lists have performed very well.

By Tom Gall

The Wargaming Company, publishers of the Napoleonic Ruleset announced on December 19th they have been working to create their own line of figures for ESR.

This is especially exciting as of all the Napoleonic rulesets, ESR is thoughtful in their packaging. When you buy a particular formation for ESR, you’ve always received the exact number of figures that you needed to field that particular formation. Truth be told, I’ve often found an extra figure your two in the pack.

For me, as I’ve been working to paint and base my ESR army this is extremely helpful. I don’t need to be stressing over having to buy yet another package of something to meet some correct minimum so I can play.