Gaming

By Tom “Cap’n Chairborne” Mullane

Several months ago, I was able to bring people into my dining room to run a game of Blood and Plunder. It was a great present to get this experience on my birthday, and I’m grateful for the warmer weather, some willing friends, and a waning pandemic (pre-Delta variant – ed.) for allowing it to happen. Three brave souls made the long journey from their separate bunkers with the minis in two, but only one could reign supreme. I threw together a scenario on the fly that would allow all four of us to play a big free for all game, and was happy with the results.

Since all of them are still in the process of getting their armies bulked up and painted, I lent out a ton of minis (A fully painted Dutch Army to my friend Rod, and few odds and ends to Shane to flesh out his list of pirates and brigands.) Tucker was ready to fight with the French I’d gotten him for his birthday a few months before. I would be charging in late in the scenario with my primed (but unpainted) Spanish forces. My mission was to muck things up for all of them as much as possible. Robbing this plush Market place was a risk, but with a prize this plump, what seaborne scoundrel could resist it?

X-COM Franchise Retrospective (Part Four)

By Patrick S. Baker

Intellectual property (IP), licensing and copyright laws are complex and confusing, especially when it comes to properties that were created under contract, or created by one party for a second party, or developed by multiple entities. Further, the video game industry was like the Wild West in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with companies starting up, closing, buying and selling other companies, and also trading, assigning and purchasing IPs at a furious rate. All of which begs the question of how did the IP that was X-COM get from MicroProse in 2001 to Firaxis Games?

By Kreighton Long

It’s not too hard to find decals to add rank patches to your GIs. The Warlord Games set of US Infantry even comes with decals in the box. For those of you who are gluttons for punishment or want the bragging rights of painting tiny lines on your already tiny toy soldiers here are the steps for how I add rank patches to my 29th Infantry Division army.

By Tom “Chairborne” Mullane

As the summer days begin to grow shorter, and a brisk fall wind starts to pull me back to my job in the classroom, I have also been forced to reckon with the end of the Campaign. Many battle reports have been submitted from around the world, much plunder has been taken, and best of all, a lot of games have been played.  Which in the end is of course the point. You still have until September 10th to submit reports to BandPcampaign@gmail.com if you want to throw your lot in with the rest of us pirates and scalawags.

For those who submitted reports for Spain, (Particularly those who managed to snag objectives) I apologize for not getting back to you sooner, but I was on vacation. But now I’m back and it’s time to give away some free stuff.

By Mitch Reed

The gaming community is full of games that re-fight the American Civil War and new games are hitting the market all the time, American Civil War is just the latest game to enter the fray and I think it is worth a look for many reasons. Based out of Holland, Peter Van Dop, the man behind BelloLudi’s games has a fresh outlook on what gaming can do and how to grow the hobby which is meshed into the DNA of his games.

By Tyler Stone

In , we walked through the basics of assembling your force for games of Blood & Plunder. In this article, I’ll go over what changes when building a force for a Sea or Amphibious game. We’ll look at including and outfitting ships, as well as how some of the Structure rules affect our list choices.

Remember, ships are just structures that move, after all. Like part 1, this writeup isn’t a guide to building the most powerful warship to ever cruise the seven seas, although I will still offer the occasional Tactical Tip. Also like part 1, this article will assume use of the , so click the link if you’d like to follow along.

By Patrick S. Baker

X-COM: Interceptor

MicroProse and Mythos stopped working together, but MicroProse ended up with the X-COM license. Dave Ellis was assigned as chief game developer for MicroProse’s X-COM games. Ellis was the company’s in-house guru on the franchise, having worked in quality assurance and also, he had written strategy guides for the first two games. Inspired to expand the X-COM Universe by LucasArts’ Star Wars games, Ellis determined to create a game using a flight simulator engine and set the new sequel during one of the previous X-COM games. The idea was to let the player experience the events of an earlier game from a different viewpoint. This concept would become X-COM: Interceptor.

Throughout the development process Ellis and his team received fan input from what they referred to (perhaps not so politely) as the “Cult of X-COM” through an open online form and public e-mail. When fans learned that the game was going to be a flight simulator and not a turn-based squad-level combat game, accusations flew that MircoProse was just slapping the X-COM name on something as a marketing gimmick. MicroProse strongly denied this.

By Tyler Stone

Now that we’ve been out of lockdown for a while and things are getting back to normal, I’ve been able to start getting more games in. I have noticed many new players seem to have shown up during the quarantine. Some of you might have jumped in right as everything started to shut down. Some might have decided to get up to speed before the finalized. Whatever the case may be, this article is for you! Today, let’s talk about Force Building for

Before we start, I want to make one thing clear – I am not going to be showing you how to build “the ultimate net-list.” I played GW games and Magic: the Gathering for a long time. I’ve been there, done that, and got the sweaty tee-shirt to prove it. This article is just a “how to” for putting your own list together, but I’ll pepper in a few Tactical Tips along the way. I’ll also be using the , if you want to follow along.

By Troy Hill

One of the joys of moving to a new city, and finding a new group to game with is diving into the games they play locally. Here in North-East Indiana, the game that is second most popular in the group I game with is .

When I first encountered Saga, back in California, I was warned that I wouldn’t like it, for the same reasons I left another game behind. Too low of a point system, too many special powers and abilities. So I avoided it.

But then, after moving back to the midwest (of the USA), I found myself in a When in Rome, do as the Romans do… situation.

By Patrick S. Baker

X-COM: Terror from the Deep

With copies of the first X-COM game flying off the shelves, MicroProse, now merged with Spectrum Holobyte to form MicroProse, Inc., wanted a sequel to the game in just six months. The Gollop brothers hesitated at this proposal, declaring that all could be done in this timeframe was changing sprites and re-using the original code.

So, instead of developing the sequel the Gollops licensed the game code to MicroProse, that would produce the sequel, named X-COM: Terror from the Deep, in-house. Meanwhile, the Gollops went to work on what would become the third game in the series.

Terror was released on 1 June 1995 for DOS PCs and then ported to the PlayStation the next year. The game tells the story of the Second Alien War, some forty years after the First Alien War. Following the destruction of the Alien Brain on Mars, extraterrestrials under the Earth’s seas awaken after millions of years. These new aliens begin to terrorize ships and ports, and abducting humans. The X-COM organization is revived to fight this new alien menace from the deep.