News and Updates
Point 2 Point Episode 43 — Now Available
Jason White, of the board wargaming podcast Point 2 Point, made a New Year’s resolution to produce a show every month in 2011. To achieve this he may need to do a lot of the shows without his co-host Scott. Episode 43 is his first effort of the year and he does a great job. We’ll ignore his digs on Conflict of Heroes and chalk it up to stress! They are currently having trouble with their main site so Jason is posting on the ConsimWorld blogs.
Jason flies solo for this new episode of P2P. He talks about a number of games including: Hellenes, Hearts and Minds, Command and Colors Ancients, Combat Commander Pacific, and Asia Engulfed, among others. He also gives his current top ten list and his hot ten list. He introduces some new segments, including a pre-order of the month. This month he focuses on GMT’s first design in the Fighting Formations series, a game focused on the Grossdeutschland Division. After the credits, you are welcome to stay tuned for an “Extra Point,” a non-gaming segment that will appear from time to time after the credits.
Combat Mission Battle for Normandy — Coming Soon!
Battlefront.com announced they are working on a WW2 version of their updated Combat Mission engine, Combat Mission Battle for Normandy. The original Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord was our favorite tactical computer wargame of all time and has been on our Top Picks since the start. It is a WW2 tactical level combat game with squad/team units and individual vehicles and guns. When it first released it was the first hardcore wargame to use 3D graphics. The new Battle for Normandy brings WW2 gaming up to the level of their modern combat CM versions. This includes enhanced options, better AI, improved graphics, and much more. It also means pausable real-time action. We have never liked the real-time play option because even though you can pause to give orders you still can’t be in two places at once so you sometimes miss out on the action. The current modern titles still have the original YouGo/IGo play as an option so hopefully that will remain in Battle for Normandy.
Building upon the legacy started 10 years ago with the release of the ground smashing Combat Mission Beyond Overlord, CM:BN incorporates years of experience and customer suggestions to produce what we think is the most genuine and enjoyable simulation of tactical ground warfare of World War Two. CM:BN is based on the extremely powerful proprietary CMx2 engine – the foundation for which was laid with the Combat Mission Shock Force series of Modern tactical warfare games. The CMx2 game engine is now in its 4th year of improvements and expansions, not the least of which are the host of brand new features necessary to simulate WW2 warfare in a temperate climate.
They have a great after action report posted from the viewpoints of both the American and German players.
If you are new to the series and want to check it out Battlefront.com also sells an update to their CM:Afrika Korps game that allows it to run on modern Vista/Windows 7 machines, and it is still a great game even after all these years and well worth getting if you have an interest in the topic.
Flames of War Invades Normandy
Battlefront released a new D-Day: Battle for France two-book set for Flames of War. The set includes the Allied Turning Tide book and the Axis Earth and Steel book (both also available separately). Together the two volumes replace all of the previous D-Day related force books. This leaves D-Day to Operation Cobra forces now covered by just these two books.
Both books are typical gorgeous Flames of War hardbacks in full-color. The limited availability slip case is also of high quality, thick hardback stock with a nice finish. Both books are over 200 pages each and feature tweaked army lists, new point costs, all new lists, and painting guides. You can now field a Churchill company, a captured French armor unit of the Beutepanzerkompanie, and much, much more. For a great overview of D-Day and the changes over the previous books listen to the WWPD: News from the Front, Episode 6. Forward to 0:48:15 to get right to the review.
The various beach landing, bunker, and fortification rules are now in Das Book.
If all of that wasn’t enough, Battlefront announced a number of Normandy-related boxed sets as well as some new ready-to-play bunkers.
Top Picks — Updated
We updated our Top Picks. We made a number of changes to replace what had become dead games. We also added a podcast section for the first time.
Gaming related podcasts have become a great way to stay in touch with the hobby and provide an especially good resource for miniature gamers to have some hobby related content to listen to while modeling. We have always listed podcasts in our links section but we thought we’d highlight the best of the best.
Our first two inaugural choices were easy picks. Both are outstanding podcasts that provide excellent coverage of their selected topics and solid entertainment value. We hope you give them a listen.
The Best Games Not Yet Published – 2011
Another new year and new games and miniatures to lust after! Once again we present our annual look at the games and miniatures we are most anxiously awaiting in 2011. Our 2010 prognostications did well. As always, there is no guarantee any of these titles will be published in 2011, nor that they will be any good if they are, but we are always optimistic.
Read the rest of this entry »
Spartan Games Interview
The D6 Generation has a great follow-up to their excellent Dystopian Wars review. They have an engaging interview with Neil Fawcett, owner of Spartan Games. Unfortunately, Neil has a cold and his audio is not very good for the interview but it is well worth the effort to listen. The D6G gang get Neil to spill the beans on a wide range of topics including the production process for the creation of the fantastic Spartan Games’ miniatures as well as news on upcoming products. Neil mentions, among other things:
- That there will be 40 new ship miniatures for Firestorm Armada in 2011 along with a host of new alliance races.
- They have 168 miniatures already designed for their upcoming Invasion ground combat game — but gave no release date.
- He said that they have a full 2011 release plan already in place for Dystopian Wars and if you like what you’ve seen so far you’ll be ecstatic about what they will have later in the year.
- Spartan will also release new tank combat rules for DW as a free download.
- Lastly, he even mentions they have scaled down some Firestorm Armada minis to about 50% their normal size for testing with a large fleet level combat game.
Forward to 1:30 into the show to get right to the interview.
On a different note, the guys from The D6 Generation also announced they will be producing ‘less for more’ soon. This is a great idea they have to produce additional paid content downloads in between their normal shows. The new downloads will be shorter segments at a cost of just .99 cents. These guys do a great job and deserve some financial support so hopefully folks will grab these even just as a token of appreciation to the guys for all of their hard work. The main show will remain free.
Conflict of Heroes — Mobile Reference
Academy Games announced a mobile friendly reference site. It is a ‘web app’ designed for use on mobile devices that contains all of the major reference info needed to play the various Conflict of Heroes games. Very nice.
While it is just a mobile formatted web page, there is a way to get it to install as an ‘app’ on the iPad and other mobile devices so that it works while offline.
[Updated: 14FEB11]
Firestorm Armada — Kurak Alliance
Spartan Games released a preview of the Kurak, a new race for Firestorm Armada, who are located in and around the planetary systems of Fathoms Reach. It is unknown if this will be a complete seventh race or more of an alliance fleet for use with other fleets. The two ships previewed look really nice. The Ganak Class BB is certainly Tau inspired from the Battlefleet Gothic days. We really like the Sulan Cruiser. Spartan also announced they will be releasing 40 new ships for FA in 2011 along with some expansion books. Looks like it will be a good year for sci-fi ship combat fans.
Dystopian Wars — Review
Imagine a world similar to our own, but subtly different. Now imagine the year is 1870 and the Industrial Revolution occurred decades earlier than in our own world. Technology is far advanced, and in many cases, unrecognizable, which has led to the development of fantastic naval vessels, hulking land ships and terror from the skies in the form of airships and war balloons.
The Dystopian Wars game is set in a Victorian Steampunk world and we have designed the rules to ensure a fun game with a large selection of high quality models in a couple of hours. The rules support Naval, Aerial and Land models from the outset, so that you can set up battles and scenarios in any combat setting.
Well the D6 Generation boys have outdid themselves once again. They have done a mammoth review of Dystopian Wars, the new miniatures game from Spartan Games. Craig outdoes himself with a wonderful dramatic Dystopian Wars introduction. The review is in fact so big they had to split it into two segments (1st at 1:12 and 2nd at 2:32). This is by far their best review yet. They go into exacting detail on the game’s background, the rules, the miniatures as well as the actual game play. It is also one of their best reviews in terms of overall listening entertainment and general flow.
You can download very well done ship/vehicle stat cards from the Spartan Forums.
Also don’t miss the D6G’s excellent interview with Spartan Games’ owner Neil Fawcett.
We have bought a number of games that we never would have based on input from the D6 Generation and Dystopian Wars will probably be yet another. While the miniatures are of the same high quality and detail as Spartan’s Firestorm Armada miniatures, they do not particularly appeal to us, but the rules sound so good we will probably pick some minis up anyway or may proxy in FA ships or even WW2 ship minis.
Also see the Spartan Games Interview. Also see Dystopian Wars — Getting Started Week.
On a related note, I picked up Boneshaker after hearing Craig praise it a few times. I have never read any Steampunk titles before and only a few zombie titles. Boneshaker is rather light on both but is a very well written and interesting adventure story with an evocative world and some strong female characters. If you want a good read give it a shot.
[Updated: 18NOV11]
Black Library — Digital Editions
The Black Library has started producing digital editions of many of their publications. This includes not only audio books, as they have done on CD for a few years now, but also fulltext eBooks and unabridged audio. The audio books are now available in downloadable .mp3 format and the books are available as .ePub and .mobi (you get both). Surprisingly all of the formats are provided without copy protection and are licensed so you can load them on multiple personal devices.
All of the publications are in industry standard formats. The .mp3 format is of course playable on just about any audio device at this point including any computer. There are a number of reader options for .ePub and .mobi as well. .mobi is more popular on small form factor devices such as the iPhone or Android phone. .ePub is probably the preferred format for eReaders and computers but with text-only novels either format works just fine. On Apple’s iPad there are numerous .ePub reader apps including Apple’s own iBooks app. For the computer, Adobe’s Adobe Digital Editions is probably one of the better reader applications. The new Barnes&Noble NookColor — a great device for $250 by the way — also reads the .ePub format. There is also a Nook app for the iPad (the Windows Nook app is not so great). The books look great on all of the devices we tried. [Note: The NookColor seems to have a slight bug where random text gets rendered it a slightly larger font. B&N we hopefully fix this with an update.]
Unfortunately, the Black Library eCommerce site only has prices in UK pounds. Most books are ~£6.50 — that works out to about $10.00 at current conversion rates. On Amazon.com you can get most Black Library publications for around $8.99 but if you add in shipping and/or sales tax you are at least breaking even. On the plus side most of the books are ~£6.50 where some cost more on Amazon. The full audio books are probably where the conversion pricing hurts the most. For example, the unabridged audio version of Prospero Burns is £20.00 (~$31) but it is 16 hours of audio.
We grabbed a handful of titles including some audio books. We were very impressed with the audio books. We got Fireborn and Heart of Rage both of which are somewhat older publications having been released on CD previously. Both are audio dramas and include dramatic story telling with sound effects and music. They are only about an hour long but are very well done. We liked Fireborn better but that is probably personal taste.
Overall this is an interesting development for fans of Warhammer 40,000 and epublications. The ability to carry multiple titles and read them on multiple devices is a nice convenience. The audio books are a nice diversion and make for some interesting listening while modeling. Hopefully Black Library will continue to publish in electronic formats.
The View from the Turret 
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