Strategy games

[Gorth]

Just to continued a conversation from a blog post...

 

@kanisatha Thanks for the heads up. Sadly, I only have two of my old boxes of Avalon Hill games that survived more than two decades of constant relocation left, being "Flat Top" and "Wooden Ships & Iron Men". I always hoped those would some day get good computer game adaptations. The former being especially "taxing" by the sheer amount of literal paperwork involved.

For some good free PC games designed by Gary Grigsby, the current IP owner (Matrix Games) have made "Pacific War" and "War in Russia" (WWII games) available for download for free. Even if designed in the Dos era of PC's, they ran on Windows 11 last time I played them.

Took a moment to mentally separate SGS from an old favourite of mine, SSG (Strategic Studies Group), who made the first 4X game I played in the mid 80's, "Reach for The Stars". Sadly Microprose is no longer what it once was. They made some great strategy games besides flight sims, going back to the early Commodore 64 days and up to the PC era.

Edit: Being part of my gaming experience on both C64, Amiga & PC

Today I play a few older Paradox titles, like Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 3 and Hearts of Iron, as well as a few of Matrix Games titles, "Gary Grigsby's War in the East" and "Gary Grigsby's War in the West".

I will check up on the SGS games though

 

edit2: Something I didn't mention is, I still play a lot of the old C64 and Amiga games on emulators. Mostly a few SSI games on the C64 and an Amiga version of the Battlemech board game (yes, turn based on a hex pattern map, doesn't get better than that!)

[Zoraptor]

I have three old Avalon Hill games I 'inherited' from my dad- Gettysburg, France 1940 and 1776. Plus three years worth of Strategy & Tactics magazines (76-78) mostly still with the games that came with them. Guess the excellent Sid Meier's Gettysburg covers a computer version of one of them at least; and I'm sure I played another good Gettysburg game a few years ago too but cannot remember the name for the life of me.

I am grateful I'm too young for SPI's Campaign for North Africa; I'd never have been able to resist buying it for the memes. Then again, nowadays simulating Italians needing more water supplied because they love pasta (an actual factual rule of the game, for anyone wondering) could be done a bit more simply via computer.

[Gorth]

7 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

I am grateful I'm too young for SPI's Campaign for North Africa; I'd never have been able to resist buying it for the memes. Then again, nowadays simulating Italians needing more water supplied because they love pasta (an actual factual rule of the game, for anyone wondering) could be done a bit more simply via computer.

I used to have more board games, but as mentioned before, moving often and long distances makes it hard to build up a circle of like minded friends. I used to do the old Play by Mail too with "War in Russia". We had a floppy with the game. We would take turns, save the game, mailing the floppy to the opponent once a week. Spent a lot of stamps and envelopes on that (a game turn in the game was one week, so we never finished it, stopping before 6 years had passed)

We did take quite a few turns when we visited each other though, skipping the mailing part and just hot seating it...

Gary Grigsby, Sid Meier, those were "the good old days"

[kanisatha]

@Gorth, the game "Flat Top" was specifically mentioned by the SGS guy in a Steam froum post as a game he'd love to work on in the future. But he also mentions that the game "Carrier Battles", which is currently available on Steam, is a very close replication of Flat Top.

I'll post on the board games I still have later today when I get back home. Am posting this from work.

[kanisatha]

I also used to have many of the old tabletop boardgame wargames and strategy games back in the '80s and '90s, but now have just four left: Gulf Strike; NATO: The Next War in Europe; Civilization (the old AH boardgame); and, Axis & Allies. Apparently, "Gulf Strike" is the game SGS is going to be making as a video game next, after they're done with updates for "NATO's Nightmare", which is their most recent release. Used to play these games with a hardcore group of wargamers I was friends with in college. We also did a lot of TT miniatures wargaming. I used to have the rulebooks and a TON of miniatures for the Challenger 2000 system for modern land warfare. I had entire armored/mechanized/motor rifle battalions for Cold War US and Soviet armies.

Nowadays I don't get to play TT anything anymore as I don't have anyone nearby with those interests. For video games I only have "The Operational Art of War IV," but unfortunately its developer, Matrix Games, has not been good at all in providing any updates or new scenarios since its initial release, leaving it up to modders to do that work. The problem for me with most existing "TOAW 4" scenarios, as with many other video game wargames, is that some 90% are WW2, and especially Eastern Front games. And the scope of those games, where you're running literally thousands of units, just feel way too overwhelming for me. I like my wargames at the operational level (so, regiments/brigades and higher), but with only a small number of units per side. But apparently, that's exactly the opposite of what most other gamers like to play, it would seem.