Rob Zacny

Three Moves Ahead 417: 2017 in Review Another year of strategy gaming has come to a close. Rob, Rowan, and T.J. are here to tell you what they liked, what they didn't, and what left them vehemently ambivalent. Rob doesn't bury the lede and jumps out with his GOTY right away and Rowan fulfills his duty of making people feel bad for liking certain things. XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, Stardew Valley?, Tooth and Tail, Hearts of Iron IV, Ultimate General: Civil War, Total War: WARHAMMER II, Steel Division: Normandy 44, Endless Space 2, Gettysburg: The Tide Turns, Crusader Kings 2, Stellaris, Battlestar Galactica Deadlock, Battle Brothers, Europa Universalis IV, Expeditions: Viking, Dawn of War III, Divinity: Original Sin 2, The Long War 2 Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 422: Command: Modern Air / Naval Operations We kick off the Winter of Wargaming with a whale of a first show: Command: Modern Air / Naval Operations. CMANO is a simulation built for the military and played by you, the military enthusiast at home. The depth of the unit database, the scope of its missions, and the granularity of its control make one of the more intimidating games in our discussion roster. Bruce, Michael, and Troy "they call me the Nimitz of the sea" Goodfellow dive into what makes CMANO fun, or maybe not fun, but sometimes confusing, though usually entertaining. Command: Modern Air / Naval Operations, Harpoon Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 421: Nantucket Call me Zacny. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my Steam Wallet, and nothing particular to interest me on shore... you know what, you get it. It's Moby Dick. This week, Rob, Matthew Flanigan (thehistoricalgamer on Youtube) and Troy "No I don't have scurvy this is just how I look" Goodfellow talk about the debut game from Picaresque Studio, Nantucket. Nantucket is a strategy / RPG hybrid that has the player managing a whaling vessel and setting out to sea to earn their fortune in the trade of whale anatomy. Our whaling crew agrees that Nantucket is a beautiful and well-crafted experience with some room for improvement, but definitely a contender for Best Whaling Simulator of Q1 2018. Nantucket Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 414: 1997 in Retrospect 1997. Garry Kasparov loses a monumental chess match against Deep Blue, changing the state of chess forever. Troy Goodfellow acts as a body double for Leonardo DiCaprio in the recently released Titanic and the Notorious B.I.G. informs us that more problems are inevitable when one experiences a sudden increase in liquid assets. Also, a whole bunch of really great strategy games came out. This is the first in a series of (nonconsecutive) retrospective episodes in which the panel goes back in time to review what were some really standout years. This week Rob, Rowan, T.J. Hafer, and Troy "Did you know I had a bit part in the Fifth Element?" Goodfellow discuss all of the best titles from 1997. We award titles for Best RTS, Best Grand Strategy Game, and Best Wargame for this most auspicious of years. Age of Empires, Total Annihilation, Dark Reign, Sid Meier's Gettysburg, Myth: The Fallen Lords, Imperialism, Warlords 3, Panzer General 2, Battlegrounds series, Final Fantasy Tactics, Dungeon Keeper Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 419: Europa Universalis IV in 2018 This week we return to an old friend, a stalwart companion, an evergreen delight that has been with us for years and years and years and years. Europa Universalis IV received several updates and expansions in 2017, and while the game has not changed radically it has matured like a fine wine that was traded from the Bordeaux trade node to Ragusa. In a 3MA first, T.J. Hafer is at the helm to host the show along with Rowan Kaiser and Gamers with Jobs' Sean Sands. Prepare yourself with a deep dive of finer details of EUIV as it exists in 2018. Europa Universalis Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 418: They Are Billions This week Rowan, Fraser, and Troy "Why are you slathering me in zombie-q sauce?" Goodfellow talk about They Are Billions by Numantiam games. Zombies are back, but there are even MORE of them in this Early Access title. They Are Billions is a real time strategy game that has you manning the ballistae and defending your steampunk-ish city against relentless waves of the shambling dead. They Are Billions Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 379: Duelyst Our Patreon patrons have spoken, and the winner of our "Let's talk about an online CCG that's NOT Hearthstone" poll was Duelyst. Rob and Julian have a very un-3MA discussion in which all parties agree that the game at hand is pretty rad. Duelyst takes the best parts of Hearthstone and adds its own mechanics and flavor to create a satisfying game that has kept Julian occupied for the better part of the year. Good job, Patreon backers. Good job. Duelyst, Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 403: Survival Strategy Survival: it's what separates people from animals. How far we've come from punching a tree until it explodes into logs that we can craft into workbenches. What began as humble topiary assault spread through time, Asia, and eventually into strategy games. This week, Rowan, Critical Distance's Zach Alexander, and Troy "Surely I can trade my encyclopedic knowledge of show tunes for food" Goodfellow get together to talk about survival strategy games. From half-RPGs to city builders, game devs like cramming a food clock into any game orifice they can find and the result are normal strategy games with the added fun of starvation and disease. Rimworld, Banished, Dwarf Fortress, Oxygen Not Included, Rogue, Nethack, Skyrim, FTL, Sunless Sea, Minecraft, Spelunky, S.O.S, Survival Kits, Jurassic Park: Trespasser, Rebuild, Atom Zombie Smasher, Impressions Games, SimCity, The Settlers, Children of the Nile, Majesty, Tropico, Aven Colony, The Sims, Baldur's Gate, Crusader Kings 2, Fallout Shelter Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 355: Stellaris It's a very special, gas giant-sized podcast as the panel discusses Paradox's newest grand strategy game, Stellaris. Stellaris takes the Paradox formula and flings it into space, replacing trade merchants with space merchants, warships with space warships, and regular coalitions with space coalitions. Not content with one, two, or even three guests, Rob welcomes Rowan Kaiser, Austin Walker, Fraser Brown, and Sean Sands to the show to get their take on the new game. Some people love it, some people have conflicted feelings, and then there's Rowan. Stellaris Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 406: Battlestar Galactica Deadlock Rob, Rowan, and Kotaku's Luke Plunkett pull up a space chair and talk about Battlestar Galactica Deadlock. In addition to the admirable lack of colons in the title, Deadlock manages to take a licensed IP and turn it into a faithful and satisfying gaming experience. If the term "broadsides in space" gets your solar sails at half mast, this may be an episode for you. Battlestar Galactica Deadlock Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 341: Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak It's a full house as Rob, Rowan, Fraser, and guest T.J. Hafer get together to talk about Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. The original Homeworld games were in space. Deserts of Kharak, believe it or not, takes place on the ground. This type of out-of-the-box thinking appears to have paid off as our four panelists have taken quite a shine to the game. Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Starcraft, Sins of a Solar Empire Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 412: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen Rob, Rowan, and David Heron take a deep dive on XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. XCOM 2 received a tepid welcome from the Three Moves Ahead panel when it first came out in early 2016, and Three Moves Ahead gave its expansion a good long time to simmer before diving in. War of the Chosen adds more of almost everything, but is that a good thing? The crew also discusses ubermod The Long War. XCOM 2, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, The Long War Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Nick Breckon joins Rob and Troy to talk about one of the greatest wargames ever made. Listen

Three Moves Ahead 410: Franchise Hockey Manager 4 and Motorsport Manager It's time for a racing and hockey double-header as Rob, Michael, and Troy "My favorite movie is 1992's The Cutting Edge" Goodfellow talk about sports management sims. The beginning of a new NHL season is a darn good reason to examine Out of the Park Development's Franchise Hockey Manager 4. The crew also discusses Motorsport Manager, a sports sim game that may be the entry point needed for a non-sim gamer. If you like to boss other people around and not actually DO the thing that the game is about, then sports management sims might be for you! Franchise Hockey Manager 4, Eastside Hockey, Motorsport Manager, Out of the Park Baseball, Football Manager Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 408: Tooth and Tail Tooth and Tail has turned out to be a game of note for several reasons. First, it deftly executes the short-form RTS genre while providing luscious artwork and pleasing visuals. Next, it provides a challenging and thought-provoking story that explores narratives in socioeconomics and societal structures. Finally, it appears to be a game that everyone on the show appears to enjoy. Rob, Rowan, Fraser, and game developer / Waypoint contribute Bruno Dias talk about animals eating each other because in the end, we're all just meat. Tooth and Tail Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 407: Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun Tarou was awake and alert despite the chill and the early hour. Normally, drawing last watch was one of the worst tasks imaginable: a tortuous eight hours of mind-numbing circuits and bitter cold. Tonight was more tolerable, however, for Tarou knew that it was his last night as a guard for the malicious warlord. No more would he risk his life by showing small kindnesses to the prisoners, no more would he have to lay awake at night and wonder how many had died by his master's hand. He would leave and start his life again. His plans were set to meet a hay cart near the edge of the compound at dawn, and he would be free from this hellish existence forever. He would - wait - was that the call of a white-cheeked starling? Normally they had all migrated south by this point of the season. Perhaps the starling was a good omen for the beginning of his new life. Tarou whistled a jaunty tune back as he turned the corner. Rob, Fraser, Rowan, and guest Nick Capozzoli talk about how this and many other stories end in Shadow Tactics, a strategy game about being quiet and killing things. Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 405: Lords of Waterdeep This week's Three Moves Ahead stretches the boundaries of the podcast medium to bring you LIVE audio via recording. Rob, Rowan, Fraser, and Troy "always a bardsmaid, never a bard" Goodfellow share their thoughts on the Steam port of Lords of Waterdeep while playing a game together. Lords of Waterdeep started as a popular worker placement board game and eventually made its way to mobile platforms. It recently arrived on the PC via Steam and quickly found a place in Fraser's heart. It's not a good place, but it's firmly embedded there. Like a valve blockage. EXPLICIT CONTENT WARNING: many curse words are uttered, even more than usual. Lords of Waterdeep Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 402: Battle Brothers This week Rob, Rowan, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer, and Troy "I told you, these leeches are medicinal" Goodfellow discuss Overhype Studios' Battle Brothers. It's been a while since the panel has been smitten with a game, but Battle Brothers seems to win everyone over with its smart tactical turn based combat. Taking a break from elaborate spells, this low-fantasy setting has your archers are melee combatants slugging it out in the mud and snow against brigands orcs. Battle Brothers Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

God I would love to see this article or a translation of it. Because this seems like an important point about modern strategy gaming. I mean, EUIV has a lot of mechanics that add up to ethnic cleansing (and a lot of incentives and disincentives for using them) and I do wonder the extent to which these games offer rationales for really awful stuff and normalize it for modern audiences. This isn't confined to games, of course. Most histories of modern China treat Mao's Great Leap Forward as a painful and ugly series of trade-offs: famine, mass death, but also the rise of heavy industry and modernization for large swathes of the country. Whereas the Cultural Revolution is often treated as the moment where Mao crosses over into actual evil, because there's no real rhyme or reason to it. But the idea is that if we can just find a reasonable outcome behind a monstrous policy, then we must somehow treat it as a considered trade-off. Easier to do from the point of the living, and not the people who died on collectives or in gulags.

I didn't forget that aspect of the discussion, I think we talked about that specific issue on the podcast and why that reasoning struck me as insufficient. If I build a house and spend all my money and material on the kitchen and garage, and then don't have anything left over for a decent bedrom, that I don't get to say, "Yeah, but I had to build a really fancy kitchen! It was resource intensive!" That was still a choice. It's the same thing in games: what you decide is acceptable to ignore in order to support other priorities is still an active choice, not something that "just happens". It's worth discussing. Also, that dynamic character art is cute but let's not overstate how impressive it really is. We're talking about the equivalent of a few decals. Nice decals, but not something that makes me sit back in wonder at the resources and care lavished on them. As for the question about what people choose to support or not... that's not for me to say. All of this is personal. Battle Brothers does some things I'm not comfortable with, but I don't find so off-putting that I cannot play the game. I totally think it's fair for another person to look at it and decide it's not for them, for those reasons. I love the Witcher series, but I'm not going to take issue with anyone choosing to pass on it because they feel excluded. People get to decide what offends them or what just turns them off, and make decisions based on that. They also get to discuss that stuff when it comes to critical reactions to the game.

I don't think I'd agree that 3MA necessarily attracts reactionary sentiment, nor that its audience leans that way. I do think strategy games get treated as an apolitical space (in part because the subject matter is often SO charged) that it can catch people off guard when the discussion raises contemporary political topics. Thumbs has a bigger community that's always been in dialogue with the critical conversations across gaming, but in strategy land a lot of those conversations have passed us by. So it might feel like we're breaking an unspoken rule when we tackle this stuff but the truth is just there aren't a ton of games that really engage with modern political debate. Two things I think are changing that: one is the context has changed of late. The politics of 1930s Europe and Asia seemed more like a settled and closed discussion when we started doing this show, but obviously there are a lot of overtones to those subjects nowadays. Second, our own standards and expectations are shifting. I'm not sure Battle Brothers inclusiveness would have felt as obvious to me a few years ago, but now I regularly have those conversations about how games shape the idea of "the default" or "normal:. Also, I'm playing this alongside Darkest Dungeon where similarly simple character art is made to encompass a wide variety of skin tones. When a game omits that inclusivity, and then kind of tips its hand about other iffy positions and perspectives, it's way harder to ignore now. We both want it done better, and there are a lot of games that do. But that's a change and an evolution in how we approach that space, and that's going to seem discordant at times. But I don't think it says too much about 3MA.

In retrospect I think I'd probably recommend the game less forcefully, because my reservations are only getting more pointed. Where women appear in story text, it's often as sex objects. Then when Battle Brothers opens its mouth about marginalized groups, it's often to say something dumb and mean-spirited. It's a great tactics game and does so many things right, but where it's coming from is alternately oblivious or just stupidly cruel in the lazy way that Grimdark for Dumbasses often comes across. Also, any game making a specific comment about refugees in the last couple years is absolutely making a statement about current events. Contrast this with The Witcher series. For all that representational critiques, the Witcher and especially the Witcher 3 is generally very aware of how awful the things it depicts really are. It depicts a war-torn land full of refugees, but never smirks about refugees' plight or what it says about them. It depicts gendered and racial violence, but largely also makes clear that the game's eyes are open to what that violence reflects (though not in all cases, and there are definitely places where the Witcher drops the ball). Also a podcast is not a review, it's a discussion that examines a subject from several different angles. This was one of them. Hopefully this clarifies.

Three Moves Ahead 401: Kingdoms and Castles Troy returns from vacation just as Fraser prepares to sail the wine-dark Aegean. But they pause long enough to talk about Kingdoms and Castles with Rob, a fun little medieval tower-defnse-city-builder that everyone wishes were just a little bit... deeper. But can Kingdoms and Castles' appeal be separated from its simplicity and shallowness? Kingdoms and Castles, Anno Games, Stronghold, Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 400: Dream Daddy Civil War Forgive us. The title was Rowan's fault. Rob and Rowan have been playing Ultimate General: Civil War and Gettysburg: The Tide Turns, and those games have got them thinking about what they really, truly want from a Civil War wargame. Rowan talks about how he wants to feel like a commander in the field, dealing with the same uncertainty and dynamics that Civil War generals faced. Rob agrees, but also wants a game that feels roughly true to the historical record, yet also wants the capacity to be surprised. In other words, we want it all. Rowan also proposes that Sid Meier's Gettysburg, at this point, casts too long a shadow and its influence is stifling other approaches to tactical wargame design. Gettysburg: The Tide Turns, Ultimate General: Civil War, John Tiller's Battleground Civil War, Take Command, Scourge of War, Sid Meier's Gettysburg Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Three Moves Ahead 398: Taking the L Rowan, Sean, and Rob discuss what goes into a "satisfying" setback as opposed to something that sends one running to the quickload button. Rowan possibly solves game design. Crusader Kings, Steel Division, Patrician, EUIV, Darkest Dungeon Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes