Tiger I and tiger II Tanks German Army and Waffen SS Eastern front 1944 by Dennis Oliver The German big 'cats...
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Tiger I and tiger II Tanks German Army and Waffen SS Eastern front 1944
Tank Warfare Tunisia 1943 by Graviteam Graviteam Tactics ; a lot of gamers have a love and hate relationship wit...
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Tank Warfare Tunisia 1943 by Graviteam
- Enhanced UI: functional interface of various panels, radial orders menu and other enhancements.
- Interface appearance and customization: three variants of appearance are included, customizable unit markers (Wehrmacht, NATO, Red Army).
- High replayability and advanced AI, which selects the best strategy based on behavior, not a predetermined script.
- Advanced management of forces in the operational phase: reinforcement strategies and management of reserves.
- Statistics keeping: performance of each unit is recorded (kills, losses, awards, etc.). After each battle, damages and condition of forces and vehicles, as well as telemetry are shown in the after battle statistics.
- Battlefield simulation: realistic vision devices, smoke screens and flares, creation of trenches, explosion craters. Remnants of previous battles remain on the battlefield until the end of operation.
- Realistic soldier behavior: each soldier has several essential parameters, such as experience level, stamina and morale, which influence their behavior and effectiveness.
- Detailed weapon modeling and realistic ballistics: bullets and projectiles follow ballistic trajectories, taking wind, temperature and other parameters into account.
- Advanced armor penetration: modeling based on ballistic histograms without simplifications of probabilistic methods, generation of secondary fragmentation fields takes into account many parameters, such as the change of the field shape in space, fragments and armor characteristics, armor thickness and damage conditions.
- Complex vehicle damage system: engine, suspension, sights, weapons and targeting mechanisms can be damaged separately, affecting the combat capabilities.
- Destructible environment: almost everything can be blown up and destroyed, from landscape surface and buildings to vehicles and enemy defensive installations.
- Advanced control of the off-map artillery, featuring various fuse settings and shell types.
- Formation and movement modes: lines and columns, movement by road and covertly, infantry following behind tanks, setting a delay, fire sectors, etc.
- Automatic smoke screen laying: units set up smoke screens when enemy is spotted.
- Dynamic change of the time of day, light sources and weather effects, influence the course of battle, visibility and area passability.
It is a bit of a mouthful to swallow at one time. Graviteam has endeavored to recreate World War II battlefields with as much reality and history as possible. They have also strived to do this with as much eye candy as you can imagine. The great thing is that even with the patch and UI hiccups, they have improved with each incarnation. In reality, they have succeeded more than most people actually dreamed they could. It is pretty impossible to put into words what Graviteam has made possible for us grognards. I have become completely entranced while watching my troops take part in night time firefights. The game is modeled down to the headlights on the various vehicles.
The game has three campaigns/operations, two large and one smaller one. Of the two, there is one for the Germans and one for the Americans. There are a number of smaller scenarios to battle through. The battle editor is actually able to be used in two ways. First, as a standard editor, and secondly as a a 'Quick battle' generator. The tutorials are also well done and all inclusive. With their use you will be armed and primed in no time.
There have been no statements as of yet about upcoming DLCs to round out the other nations that fought in North Africa such as the English and Italians. Judging by Graviteam's past history there will be plenty of them to go around.
We now have to address the pink and polka dotted elephant in the room. "Tank warfare' is a wargame. It is a historically accurate simulation of the 1943 Tunisia campaign. Yes, the battles in it do take place in real time. I think that giving it the moniker of a RTS game is highly deceiving. I have seen complaints and reviews knocking the game because it is not frenetic enough for the twitch crowd. "Tank Warfare' was built from the ground up as a simulator of World War II battle. In this it succeeds admirably. To try and compare it to 'Command and Conquer' etc. does a disservice to both. I think some people saw the term real time and just assumed it would be a normal RTS game. All I can say is welcome to my world. For the past twenty some odd years, my ears have perked up and my heart rate has picked up whenever I saw or heard the name Hannibal. My hopes would be dashed once again when I found out they were discussing a fictional serial killer and not Mr. Barca.
The game setting on first glance may seem as empty and flat as a chess board and without any terrain features to help or hinder us budding generals. In this it is deceiving. On closer inspection you will find that the terrain is nowhere near as empty as the first glance suggests. One of the best features of a lot of the maps is the large territory that you are given to use to approach battle. There is nothing more annoying than being given an excellent wargame system and then provided with postage stamp size maps to fight it out on. This increases the playability immensely. You can try out tons of different strategies given the amount of territory the game gives you to use.
For those of you who, like me, have everything Graviteam has done, this is an instant purchase. For you others out there give it a try. You might just get hooked like we did.
Robert
Game: Tank Warfare: Tunisia 1943
Developer: Graviteam
Distributor: Strategy First
Expeditions Viking by Logic Artists By Odin and Frey, send all archers (or anyone who uses long range weapon...
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Expeditions:Viking by Logic Artists
There is one 'glitch' or strange developer decision. The game comes with 4 levels of difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Insane. For anyone like me who is getting pummeled in the beginning, check this setting. By default it starts the game at the Insane level.
Please see my preview of Expeditions: Viking and the Expeditions: Conquistador review.
http://www.awargamersneedfulthings.co.uk/2016/10/expeditions-vikings-preview.html
http://www.awargamersneedfulthings.co.uk/2017/02/expedition-conquistador-review.html
The latest DLC campaign for the ever expanding Order of Battle is, as the name suggests, entirely focused on the German navy in WW2. Th...
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Order of Battle: Kriegsmarine Review
The latest DLC campaign for the ever expanding Order of Battle is, as the name suggests, entirely focused on the German navy in WW2. This is an interseting choice for the series, which began with Pacific theater campaigns that had a few naval combat scenarios, but has mostly focused on land battles since then. This is a great advantage of the modular nature of the game, which since its original release as Order of Battle: Pacific has morphed into Order of Battle: World War II. The game serves as a platform for campaigns ranging from wargame standbys such as the Blitzkrieg, to less well trod ground like Finland and China. In the case of Kriegsmarine, we are looking at something perhaps even rarer, nine missions focused from beginning to end on German warships, seaplanes, and, of course, the infamous U-Boats
For those unfamiliar with the base game, a quick overview. Order of Battle, in my mind, plays much like a more tactical rendition of Panzer Corps/General. The mechanics are much the same, combat takes place on a hex-based grid over a series of turns. Click a unit and you will see how far it can move, hover next to an enemy unit and you will see the combat odds. Every unit has an overall "health" number that starts at ten and gets whittled down (or blasted away) over the course of a battle. Units have a dozen or so other stats that effect how it will perform in combat against other unit types. There are numerous historical units available, including different types of tanks, infantry, aircraft, and naval vessels. In Kriegsmarine the focus is of course on various types of U-Boats, destroyers, cruisers, and battleships.
One of the best features of Order of Battle is that you, the player, get to pick and choose most of the units which make up a "core" force that carries forward through the campaign. Other auxiliary units will be available to round out your roster in most scenarios, but this core force will make up the meat of your firepower. These units can gain experience over time, and even be upgraded to better versions as the war progresses. You will be tasked with deciding how to spend a limited amount of resources on purchasing new units, upgrading existing ones, or reinforcing those that inevitably take damage.
In Kriegsmarine, you will spend most of your points on naval vessels, with a smattering of aircraft to support them. Ground forces are not even available for purchase, only appearing occasionally in certain scenarios. However, there is still a lot of room for decision making. There are various models of destroyers, subs, cruisers, and battleships available. Will you put numerous sneaky subs into the sea, or load up on the big heavies? As you might imagine, a good mix of everything will serve you well. You also have a limited number of slots for aircraft in each mission. I greatly preferred to dedicate these towards reconnaissance aircraft early on, but you can take fighters or bombers if you so choose.
A wolf pack prepares to strike. |
Another way you can shape your force is by choosing specializations, which are permanent perks that you can invest in between missions. The points you have to invest here are very limited, and even if you get extra ones from completing secondary objectives, you won't have enough to get everything. This is a relatively new feature for the series, which was added in the Blitzkrieg campaign and now plays into the other campaigns as well. It adds a nice extra wrinkle to your strategy, letting you improve certain types of units or reinforcing your preferred tactics. In Kriegsmarine, you have a significant choice to make, do you dump almost all of your points into a single line that will unlock a few big and powerful warships, or do you spread those points around on lots of smaller improvements to your existing fleet.
So, I've talked about the units that will make up your fleet and how you can customize it, but what sort of missions will you take on with them? The campaign spans nine scenarios, which each task you with a handful of mandatory and optional objectives. Completing the primary objectives is usually pretty straightforward and not that difficult on the default difficulty. However, the secondary objectives give you plenty of interesting challenges to chase after. Each success will earn you some type of reward, be it officers to assign to you ships for stat bonuses, additional specialization points, a free unit, or some kind of advantage in future scenarios. In many scenarios you will be hard pressed to complete all of these extra objectives in one go, but for those seeking some replayability, the challenge is there.
Every scenario tasks you with a different sort of goal and circumstance. Direct naval combat is of course the order of the day, but your priorities are ever shifting and sometimes shaped by the geography. In several missions you will be hunting down merchant ships, but the situation will vary. For example, in one mission you are limited to only submarines, while in another you must avoid a powerful Royal Navy fleet while tracking down a few transports at a time. Some early missions have you assisting with amphibious invasions, but the actual fighting on the ground is limited. After these early historically grounded scenarios, and in order for the campaign to cover the entire war while being fun for the player, it quickly goes off the rails in historical terms. The German fleet in Kriegsmarine will not spend the war bottled up. It will win a string of victories and go on the offensive, taking out Allied warships by the dozen. I'll let you play the game and see for yourself, since these later levels tend to be the more elaborate missions. The highest praise I can give to the campaign itself is that I played through the whole thing in a matter of days, without ever losing interest or being bored. It definitely gave me that "just one more turn" feeling more than a few times.
There are several changes in mechanics from previous Order of Battle campaigns that were made to create a fuller experience here. Mastering these mechanics is key to keeping your fleet in good shape through the many large scale battles. The tutorial pop-ups explain them well for the most part, but I glossed over some while getting started and had to learn those the hard way. The balance between keeping your ships moving, to avoid being hit, while keeping the range to the enemy fixed, for better accuracy, turns the battles into a sort of a dance of death. The further a ship moves on its turn, the harder it will be to hit on the enemy's turn. Leaving any ship sitting still while enemies are about is nigh on suicidal, and even when you think you are safe, a torpedo armed aircraft or submarine might pop in to deal serious damage. The more cramped conditions of a few battles will have you pulling back your ships just to get some room to maneuver. Other new mechanics include submarines with limited battery time under water before they must recharge, battleships having the ability to fire the "big guns" only on every other turn, and seaplanes, which are more flexible than other aircraft in this environment.
Most missions are on the open sea, but some are more cramped. |
The only negatives I had with this campaign was the balancing of a few unit types. The single battleship I carried through my campaign never felt all that powerful, even after being upgraded and gaining experience. It seemed to be far more vulnerable to torpedoes and drew enemy fire like a magnet. Its special ability was only at times worth using, as it would sometimes do less damage than a regular attack. At the other end of the spectrum, I kept wishing the U-Boats were a bit more deadly, and thought maybe having a bonus to stealthy attacks would give them more bite. As it stands, they are there to pester the enemy at best, being slow, fragile when caught, and having only a mild capacity to deal damage. Even when used in a wolf pack, they could rarely take down an enemy ship before needing to run and hide from sonar equipped destroyers. Also, the U-Boats only get one scenario that really puts them in the spotlight.
My late game fleet, ready to set sail. |
Overall, this campaign was much more enjoyable than I initially expected it to be. The naval focused scenarios from the Pacific campaigns in the original Order of Battle were not my favorite part of the game, so I thought it was a pretty bold move for The Artistocrats to make an entire campaign exclusively on naval warfare. That said, I was won over by the improved combat mechanics, the interesting setting, and the solid scenario design. If you don't want to take my word for it, you can actually play the first scenario for free in the Order of Battle: WW2 base game, which includes the original tutorial campaign and the first mission from every DLC campaign. Clocking in at only $10, Kriegsmarine is a fun excursion to a rarely portrayed theater of World War II and will give you some good bang for your buck.
- Joe Beard
Order of Battle: Kriegsmarine is available directly from Matrix Games here or on Steam.
Developer: The Artistocrats
Publisher: Matrix Games/Slitherine
The Iran-Iraq War Volumes I and II by E.R. Hooton, Tom Cooper, and Farzin Nadimi There hasn't been many books on...
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The Iran-Iraq War Volumes I and II by E.R. Hooton, Tom Cooper, and Farzin Nadimi
There hasn't been many books on this war. The fact that it was one of the largest wars of the 20th century seems to have been forgotten. The large forces involved, and the very large casualty list, shows it to be a war that deserves more space on shelves. We in the west view it as a small war fought over small pieces of boundary territory between Iran and Iraq, not the titanic struggle it really was. When Saddam Hussein launched this war, the political situation was much different than when he invaded Kuwait in 1991. A decisive Iraqi defeat of Iran would have caused a huge change in the balance of power in the Middle East. When the war was launched, most in the west did not have the mental image of Saddam Hussein the way he was subsequently viewed. In fact, as the book shows, he was able to buy a large amount of military weapons from the west. As far as the U.S. was concerned, Iran was enemy number one.
The first volume starts with the stats and background behind the war itself. It was fought between 1980-1988, and is the longest uninterrupted conventional conflict of the 20th century. The western studies of the casualties put the amounts much higher than the Iranian official ones, and there is no official Iraqi list. It is very possible that the combined figure was close to 3,000,000 casualties, with more than 500,000 dead. Most of the war resembled WWI fought with modern weaponry.
The first volume encompasses September 1980 to May 1982 and the battle for Khuzestan. The book goes on to show the bad blood between Iran and Iraq long before the war. The Shah of Iran spent a lot of his country's wealth in the 1970s buying western arms. Between 1974-1975 there was a war inside Iraq between the Kurds and the government forces. The Shah supported the Kurds in their insurrection. The border of the two countries was always a source of contention. It was set after the end of WWI by the Allies. After the Shah was deposed in 1979, and the subsequent chaos in Iran, Saddam envisioned a quick and easy war against a prostrate Iran. The stage was set with Iran having a large amount of western weaponry, but no way to get replacement parts. The Iraqi armory was equipped with a hodgepodge of Soviet and western equipment.
The authors go onto show that Khuzestan was the home of most of the Iranian refineries, and therefore its wealth. Saddam quickly found out after the invasion that he had grabbed a tiger by the tail, and dared not let go. His dreams of easy victory evaporated over the desert sands. Next, we see the Iranians attempt to not only stop the invasion and reconquer their land, but also to crush Iraq and depose Saddam. As the book notes, U.S. intelligence stated "Iraq was fighting a limited war, while Iran was fighting a total one". The religious differences between Shia and Sunni only helped to pour fuel on the flames. Per the book: "The Iranian tactics bewildered even the best Iraqi officers" who were used to battle being a set piece affair. The swarming tactics of the Iranians left the Iraqis unable to cope.
The Iranians were better able to deal with their casualties than the Iraqis. Iran as a political entity had existed for a few hundred years. The stitched together Iraqi nation was built at the end of WWI by the Allies. We are still seeing the folly of some of their decisions today.
Volume 2 starts with a recap of the first two years of the war. The initial Iraqi invasion of Iran followed by the Iranian offensives is touched upon. The book then goes into the infighting at the government level in Iran, and whether to stop at the original border or to risk more international censure and actually invade Iraq. The decision was made to invade and attempt to topple Saddam. Iran was also hoping for a Shia revolt in Iraq, that never took place. This volume then continues to describe the seesaw battles that took place from June 1982-December 1986.
The books themselves are large, and eighty pages long. They are full of pictures of the war, and also have a good amount of large colored side views of the of the different planes, armor, and other vehicles. These are excellent for model makers. The military and political history of the war is fascinating, and the books' writing only serves to make it that much better. These volumes are another score for Helion&Company. Volumes 3 and 4 are scheduled to be released in September of 2017.
Robert
Book: The Iran-Iraq war Volumes 1-2
Authors: E.R. Hooton, Tom Cooper, Farzin Nadimi
Publisher: Helion&Company
Distributor: Casemate Publishers
In The Name of Lykourgos by Miltiadis Michalopoulos I do have a confession of sorts to make, for some reason the hist...
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In the Name of Lykourgos by Miltiadis Michalopoulos
I do have a confession of sorts to make, for some reason the history of Sparta just never grabbed me like some other parts of Greek history. Oh, I knew the perfunctory facts about Spartan life, but besides its role in the Persian, Peloponnesian and Theban wars, I never really read more of its history than that. I remember reading about Agis and Kleomenes (the book uses a K instead of the usual Cleomenes), but they weren't the parts of Plutarch that I read over and over again. By the eras of the Diadochi and the first Epigoni, Sparta had ceased to be a major player in Greece. So in the histories of that period it is hardly mentioned. After its humbling by Antipater, it seems to just disappear.
'In the name of Lykourgos' (Lykourgos is in essence the Spartan Solon), is an award winning book that brings to life the years 243-146 B.C. The book starts with the history of Sparta from its beginning to its preeminent place in Greece, and then its fall engendered by Thebes and Epamonidas.
The real meat of the book begins with the ascent of Agis to one of the thrones in Sparta (there were two), and his attempt to bring Sparta back to its glory. The author shows here the differences between Agis's idea of what Sparta was in its glory years compared to the actuality. His short life and even shorter campaign to reverse time is eye opening for several reasons. The book also goes into the different ideas and reasons behind Agis's thoughts and those of his followers, who may have had other reasons to back him other than just admiring his plan. Like the Gracchi and other reformers, Agis and his companions were more than willing to cut corners or even completely go against the political system in place to force through his policies. The ideas in their heads and whether they were being pragmatic or were just misled about how the 'good old days' were, only they can tell us. With Agis's death it looked like the reform movement was killed in its cradle; that is until Kleomenes gains the throne. Strangely, Kleomenes father, in his role as co-king, was one of the most bitter enemies toward Agis and his reforming plans. So it is somewhat ironic that when Kleomenes comes to the throne he becomes the institutor of almost all of Agis's planned reforms. This is another historical tale of the lone warrior fighting against the changing times. The days of the city state controlling Greece's future were over. Still, Kleomenes came within an ace of bringing Sparta back to being a player on the world stage.
Greece was now a pawn to be played with by the Macedonian kings, and the two leagues of cities: Aetolian and Achaean. Even this age was short lived with the shadow of Rome looming from the west. The author continues with the story of Sparta down to the Roman conquest of Greece.
This is an excellent book to learn not only everything about the Spartan government and way of life in its glory years, but also its tumultuous history as it fades from sight.
Robert
Book: In the Name of Lykourgos
Author: Miltiadis Michalopoulos
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Distributor: Casemate Publishers
Wavre a Scourge of Waterloo DLC by Slitherine / Matrix and NorbSoftDev This battle fought on the same day as Wa...
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Wavre a Scourge of Waterloo DLC Review
I'm working on a review for the newest expansion to Order of Battle featuring the Kriegsmarine. Here's me playing the second sce...
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Order of Battle: Kriegsmarine - Gameplay Video
I'm working on a review for the newest expansion to Order of Battle featuring the Kriegsmarine. Here's me playing the second scenario of the campaign, the invasion of Norway. Hope you enjoy! I know my microphone could have been a bit louder. Please give some feedback if you like this kind of thing or would like to see different kinds of videos.
- Joe Beard
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