Lestrades_Game

Command:Modern Air Naval Ops is a very complicated mil-sim game that I periodically dip into but never quite invest in. I believe there is a commercial version sold to militaries. As the name suggests its only ships, subs and planes, no land units. I tend to find the more complex scenarios over whelming, so I try and stick to smaller engagements where I control a handful of ships and perhaps a helo or two. In this way I don't have to worry about wing composition or getting fighter jet load outs correct. Instead I can play a simpler game where I tell my units where to go and whether they are weapons free or restricted and what active sensors are on or off.    Quite a few of the scenarios in game are about fishing rights. It seems if you are a small scale naval engagement scenario designer its war for fish every day and a tuesday.  It is 2023 and I have to protect a small fleet of Indian fishing boats from the South African military for 24 hours. I've got two F39 Betw...

This game was originally developed as a training tool for French infantry officers and this shows through. The game is unforgiving of mistakes and seems to revolve around teaching you the by the book methods for assaulting strong points or clearing streets.  In Grozny I had to clear out about 12 Chechen rebel squads/sniper teams. The game gave me three platoons of infantry, two Shilkas, two T80s, some snipers, combat engineers and some off map rocket artillery and hello strikes. This is enough tools to do the job, but you are expected to know how to use each tool properly. For my part, the huge defensive bonus provided by the strong points proved costly to overcome.   Russians activated, moving on Chechen strong point In practice I did not know how to use these tools, or at least not for the first half of the game, later I did sort of start to figure things out, but only after the loss of one T80, the best part of a platoon and all my spetznaz and sniper teams. ...

If there is a series for hex and counter hipsters at the moment it is Next War games by Mitch Land and Gene Billingsley. Kev Sharp's been blogging it 1 , 3MA have been talking about it 2 , these drunken reprobates have been playing it 3 , two of my friends have picked up Next War India Pakistan 4 , one of whom as his first hex and counter game. When I first saw the GMT Next War series with Next War Korea a few years back, I passed on it because it was pricey and I thought future wars were boring. I thought these things because I was a fool. I'm not entirely sure why the series has become popular, as speculative future wars seems like a hard sell but the continued releases (now three soon four) and the quality of the product seem to have carried it into the wargamer consciousness if not the popular. Initial Taiwanese deployment around Taichung, not as well defended as it first looked. Next War Taiwan depicts an invasion of Taiwan by mainland China sometime in the near fut...

I might be a Balkowski fan boi. There are things he does in his designs that just seem to work for me. I like good tables printed on the map, that are loaded with possibility, I like irregular turn sequences that don't use chit pulls, and I like the way he front loads his games with tense challenging decisions. He creates those smokey room nail brighter moments.  In 6th fleet this is done with your airforce. At the start of each three turn day you have to decide how many planes to allocate to strategic air missions and to which air zones they will be sent. Both players do this in secret. It is a mental game of chicken, as you need those fighters for CAP (combat air patrol) over your carriers and airbases but you also want to clear the Black Sea so your recon planes don't get downed by MIGs, but your opponent only has limited interceptors too, what will he or she do? It's a game about guessing and gambling and then watching the dice roll as a T16 bombers at...