Pike & Shot: Multiplayer

Further to my recent post, my son Will and I have played many on-line games of Pike and Shot. The Slitherine on-line interface is very well implemented and it makes for an easy gaming experience. We have not had a single error or computer glitch. We have averaged a game a day with both of just taking our turns whenever we are available.

The computer AI is very tough and makes a formidable opponent. But I'm enjoying real human-human play. We both make mistakes or misjudge situations and it is very interesting to see your human opponent react.

Still enjoying this game very much and looking forward to future expansions. The English Civil War scenarios are the most popular so far.

Pike and Shot

I have been playing Slitherine's latest computer wargame release for the PC "Pike and Shot" around the clock. I was so excited I wrote this up for the new Forum discussing the game:

This is the first computer game that has ever really replicated the joy of playing with miniatures and a great set of rules. The period feel of the graphics, making a Spanish tercio or pike block really look like antique engraved images, was a very good idea. 

Screen-shot from Pike and Shot

I played Edgehill like the early commanders and troops on that fateful day fought the actual battle: rather amateurishly. But after a few games I figured out how to deploy a Swedish Brigade and what to do about those annoying hedgerows. The AI is very good and very unforgiving. I found I had to go back to school and review the tutorials before I was prepared to win! And what joy when I did. 

The extra study paid off when I won at Marston Moor. I knew enough of the history of  the battle to know that The Parliamentary cavalry could undo me on my right wing. I was not going to make Prince Rupert's mistakes. My plan of holding the center and sweeping the left wing quickly really paid off. I needed those Reserves to deal with the ultimate collapse of the right wing.

I tried the Multiplayer and Online game functions, they are elegantly implemented as in some other Slitherine games. This will be easy to set up with my wargaming friends and family.

Designer Richard Bodley Scott had done an excellent job of research, game design and implementation. I'm not up to scenario design but I'm looking forward to the game community coming through as usual with some great scenarios and mods. I hope Richard will take some of his great concepts and apply them to slightly earlier periods, say Tudors back through Wars of the Roses. and perhaps forward just a little to the early Lace Wars. With a little more graphics work the game could be perfect, but I'm very happy not to have to watch anarchic sprites do their thing. Wargames figures sit still on their Litko bases until moved by the gentle hand of fate, or the Armchair General. The animation here, moving, firing, battle effects, is just right to replicate the wargame and history.

My son Douglas is studying game design at WPI and is a great artist. I realised how the design concepts can have such a profound effect on the final result. I told him how prints from the period show, in a stylized way, the warfare of the time and how Richard has incorporated the units in a pleasant colour rendition of the relevant countryside. What a simple idea but brilliant concept for the game. The author of Anglia Rediviva might approve.

Strategic plan for the Battle of Naseby, June 14, 1645; from Anglia Rediviva (1647).

Credit: © The British Library/Heritage-Images

HistWar: Napoleon and HistWar Grognard Scenarios

Digging a little deeper, I have found that the new version of HistWar runs the legacy scenarios from Grognard. I experimented with my favorite scenario: Borodino. The unit OOB's, scenario file and maps can be copied to the same folders in Napoleon. By some JMM magic, the system then runs the battle with the new GUI and graphics. The result is astonishing.

A French Caisson brews up

Dawn at the Moscowa

The Following slides are of Latour-Maubourg's IV Cavalry Corps with my favourite Saxon Heavy Cavalry Brigade.

4th Light Cavalry Division: 3rd, 11th and 16th Polish Uhlans

7th Heavy Cavalry Division, von Thielmann's Brigade: Polish 14th Cuirassiers, Saxon Garde du Corps, Saxon von Zastrow Cuirassiers

7th Heavy Cavalry Division, Lepel's Brigade: 1st/2nd Westphalian Cuirassiers

HistWar: Napoleon

I have owned a copy of HistWar: Les Grognards for a few years. The Publisher & Developer, JM Mathé, of HistWar Games, has continued to improve upon the interface and game-play. Just before Christmas, he released the much-anticipated HistWar: Napoleon. 

An overview of the game can be found here:

http://www.histwar.com/game/game-overview-hwn.html

I have had a chance to play with it for a few days now. Here is a brief review.

1. Much improved graphics and interface. The 3D screens are very nice indeed with lush vegetation and amazing skies. The buildings need some work still. The figures themselves, which can be set to a scale of an amazing 1:2 are very nice at a distance, the formations looking like they should and the moving units looking quite good. However, the closer you get, the less 3-D the figures become. They are not the animated sprites of Napoleon: Total War, and especially not the mod NTW3.4. The Creative Assembly programmers have done a more sophisticated job of animating the individual figures in NTW. However, JM has done a remarkable job with a much more limited budget and resources and the result, in this iteration, is a very nice viewing experience. Hopefully the animation will continue to improve.

2. What HistWar: Napoleon does very well, as did Les Grognards, is to model command-and-control in far more detail. It is necessary to plan well to do well in this game and you are given all the tools to do so.

3. The rules require some effort to understand and master. The English translation of this French product is very acceptable, with occasional misspellings. The concepts however are quite complex and it took me several days of study of both the on-line manual and the tutorial scenarios to begin to understand everything.

4. The effort is certainly worth while. As various elements clicked in my head, I began to understand what a deep and sophisticated game JMM has created. I have heard it described as a battle simulator. It is certainly no arcade game.

5. The original Napoleon Total War was certainly arcade-like. It was improved beyond  recognition by the modders at the Lordz Modding Collective:

http://www.thelordz.org

I consider NTW a very fine game now, particularly the Historical Battles (HB) created by the Lordz.

6. What we now have are two very good Napoleonic games/simulations, each with a different flavour, but both very worthwhile. It will take more effort to get into HistWar but I warmly recommend it all the same.

And now, some screen shots from one of the Tutorials I just studied:

HistWar Games has taken an interesting approach to the further development of Napoleon. They have announced a series of planned developments of the game engine and the release of many new battles over the next year. I hope they are able to achieve this. It does mean that initially the gamer will need to be content with Austerlitz, a huge game, Elchingen, the game I'm currently using as a learning tool, and just a few others. It will be a while before the publishers release Borodino and Waterloo.

However, I should point out that many of the user-created scenarios (i.e. not official publisher-version) for Grognards will run perfectly well in Napoleon. I did find that the new game does not seem to have the British uniform/doctrine files loaded so I was unable to run Waterloo. All these old scenarios that didi run looked wonderful with the new graphics. 

The new HistWar GUI is much superior to the "classique". I suggest you start using it right away. And be sure the mouse icon is positioned over the counters, words, etc you are trying to highlight  before clicking the mouse button in such a way as to turn red, which happens when the item is properly captured. On my computer this required it to be just offset a little from the centre of the icon or word being highlighted. Once I figured that out, my learning curve steepened rapidly.

I wish JMM and his colleagues much success and a big Thank You for a Herculean effort.

WW1 Flight: Two Different Experiences

First, I purchased on STEAM a new release of a four years mature flight simulator that looks only at WW1 but in considerable depth. What an experience!

After many mishaps, I'm beginning to get the hang of "Rise of Flight: Channel Battles Edition", a couple of safe take-off and landings anyway. I tried my hand flying a big Felixstowe flying boat, and landed it safely on a river in France, totally amazing experience. This is flying, not a flight sim. The Training Missions are vital. 

In a totally different vein, somewhere between a miniatures and a board game, my first set of Wings of Glory arrived today, a Dual Pack featuring an Albatross D.Va and a Spad XIII. Very nice, smaller than I expected and the same with the cards, but an excellent use of space. I'm impressed. I'll try a few solo rounds tonight.

Unusual to have two ways of experiencing WW1 flight, both look very good in their own, very different ways. I missed both of these in their earlier releases but I've found them now.

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns

I have made my first Kickstarter investment. After enjoying Eric Lee Smith's Battle of the Bulge for iPad, I decided to pledge at the "Lieutenant Colonel" level in the Kickstarter campaign to fund his new iPad game, Gettysburg: the Tide Turns. This pledge will also provide a copy of the board game being produced concurrently by Clash of Arms. 

I took the plunge to see how the whole Kickstarter experience feels. So far, so good. Expected delivery of the iPad game is March 2014. If you are interested in the ACW, you might want to look at the Kickstarter site for this game.