Are you having a bloody Giraffe?! In a lot of ways it was like playing chess and, if you were anything like me and my father, would spend entire evenings until the small hours of the morning doing battle; some have football, others cars, for me and my dad it was Wargames. Possibly the best Hex based Wargame on the PC, ever made; bar none. Panzer General was at the forefront of PC wargaming and still holds its own today, with companies like Slitherine making reboots like Panzer Corp.
Game play was simple enough to master. You worked your way through different campaigns and aimed to get certain strategic points. It was this upgrading that was critical especially as units were carried over to the next mission as elite units had a better chance of overwhelming the enemy or defending crucial towns and cities.
You had to suppress them with artillery or bombers first then send specific units in to counter the threat. A lesser known game by Blue Byte software, depicting, as the title suggests, WW1. Remember that? Having to get off you seat so someone else could sit down and make their move… crazy right? Only down side was the AI was rather Poor and the main fun you got from it was when you, as I stated before, played someone else; never beat my dad at this game… how annoying.
Created by Talonsoft, the battleground series had a huge run going up to The main difference, and the edge it held over its competitors, was how it added a hint of 3D to your typical hex based gaming experience. Coupled with some great music, sound effects and video clips of units firing weapons and you got, arguable, one of the best series of war games around and a big threat to SSIs Panzer General franchise.
BG Waterloo came about at the time when I was reading the Sharpe novels, and my interest in the Napoleonic era was at its height; unsurprising why it was my favourite. Made by the same company as Panzer General, SSI , Age of Rifles spans numerous engagements from to and allows you to take command of some of the greatest battles in history, as well as some of the less well known ones, ie the Boxer rebellion and the Russo-Japanese war.
Made by the same company as Panzer General, SSI , Age of Rifles spans numerous engagements from to and allows you to take command of some of the greatest battles in history, as well as some of the less well known ones, ie the Boxer rebellion and the Russo-Japanese war. Game mechanics were similar to that of its predecessor but being more infantry and cavalry based, formations of which there were a lot , play a larger roll.
The main pull for me, and the reason it I played it so much, was the customisation. Something that was distinctly lacking in its competator. After completing the campaigns I spend months just building different units and engaging them in campaigns of my own design. The most basic looking of our top 5, with maps looking like the oldschool board games you use to play with your dad, or even, you dad played with his dad. Not that this detoured any hardcore wargaming fans, so much so that Talonsoft created four more and Matrix games a 5 th TOAW3 , in Due to the minimalist look you could get amazing scale in these games, with counters representing Companies, battalions, brigades and some times, in the huge games, Corp.
You could play battles from WW2 all the way up to modern times and despite its simplistic look really had a way of keeping your attention. Here are my top 5 Hex based, PC, Wargames : 1. Panzer General — Strategic Simulations Inc. Simple, Effective and with great replay-ability, especially against other players. Battleground 3 :Waterloo — Talonsoft Created by Talonsoft, the battleground series had a huge run going up to Age of rifles — Strategic Simulations Inc. The Operation art of war — Talonsoft The most basic looking of our top 5, with maps looking like the oldschool board games you use to play with your dad, or even, you dad played with his dad.
Comments comments. More Goodness. Game Play — In the image above, players would be seated on the side of their home board light moving counter-clockwise and dark clockwise. To start the game each players throws a single six-sided die. The player rolling the highest number uses both dice as their starting roll.
Ties are rolled again. From then on, each player takes alternate turns, throwing two dice and moving their checkers. Depending on the toss and strategy the player whose turn it is moves either two checkers, each the number of pips shown on one of the dice, or moves one checker twice, once for each die throw. If a player rolls doubles however, the roll is treated as if they threw four dice of the same number! A doubles roll of 4, 4 would give you sixteen total spaces to move in some combination divisible by four: 4, 4, 4, 4 , 8, 8 , 4, 12 , 4, 4, 8 or Rules of Movement in Backgammon — Movement is dictated by a couple important rules.
In the 4, 2 example above, if the player chose to move one checker the full 6 points, both the move of 4 and the move of 2 would have to end on open points. A roll of 4, 4 becomes 4, 4, 4, 4 to be played in any combination of checkers they see fit, so long as each move lands on an open point. If only one number can be played, it must.
If either, but not both can be played, the higher of the two must be played. If neither die represents a possible move, the player loses their turn. With doubles, where all four cannot be played, the player must play as many as possible. A player with a checker on the bar must enter play before making any other moves.
To enter, there must be an open point in their opponents home board equal to one of the dice in their roll. If both dice show an open point, then either may be used for the entering move. If neither die represents an open point, the player loses their turn.
If a player has more than one checker on the bar, each must be entered before any other moves are made. Once a player has entered their last checker from the bar, if there is a die left to play, it must be played as per the rules of movement. Bearing Off — Once a player moves all their checkers into their home board they may begin bearing off.
The six points on the players home board count down 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 towards the outer edge of the board. A player may bear off a checker when it resides on a point rolled. If there are no checkers on a rolled point, then a checker from a higher point may be moved as normal. If no checkers reside on a higher point the player must remove a checker from the highest occupied point. The first player to bear off all fifteen checkers wins.
Rules of Scoring and the Doubling Cube in Backgammon — Each game in a match is worth one point, with the exception of gammons, backgammons, and use of the doubling cube. A player who feels good about their chances can, at the start of their turn, prior to rolling the dice, propose to double the point value of the game and the bet in case of gambling. The other player can agree to the double, also claiming the doubling cube and the right to make the next double offer, or concede the game and lose points equal to the current bet.
Subsequent offers to double are called redoubles, and can only be made by the current holder of the doubling cube it changes hands with each acceptance. There is no limit on the number of times the bet can be doubled and redoubled during a game. In the result of a gammon, the losing player loses twice the doubling cube.
A gammoned player that still has a checker on the bar or in the home board of the winner is backgammoned, and loses three times the value of the doubling cube! Backgammon finds its roots in ancient Egypt with a game called Senet, but has travelled the world and evolved through European and Asian variants.
The game goes back thousands of years with modern backgammon finally hitting the scene in the early s. Then it tailed off a bit until the s when it surged again.
The advent of the Internet and online backgammon lead to another surge through the s and into today where millions of people the world over play online for fun and profit. Below is a brief list of just some of the popular backgammon games played around the world. There seem to be endless variants, all with distinct and unique challenges.
There is no hitting and the players move in the same direction around the board. One checker also controls a point forming a block. The same game is played in Bulgaria called Tapa. Gul Bara — Similar game to Moultezim in that one checker controls a point. However, doubles are very powerful in Gul Bara Gioul — Middle Eastern variant with setup and movement like Plakoto, a single checker on a point forms a block as in Moultezim, and doubles are very powerful as in Gul Bara.
French — Both players start with all their checkers off the board and doubles are played on both sides of the dice. I popped over to Kickstarter today to see if anything looked interesting in the world of new games. Kickstarter has gotten pretty big in game development, especially for tabletop games, so this is something I do from time to time. Anyway, I landed on Plunderous , and holy heck it has a lot of goodies!
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