DukeofChutney

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About DukeofChutney

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  1. Episode 453: Black Hawk Down and Zulu

    Black Hawk Down is essentially sitting on the couch watching your mates play COD Modern Warfare. Whilst i agree that the film tells you almost nothing worth saying about the conflict, projects a very positive view of the soldier on the ground, and treats Somalis as more or less aliens or zombies or whatever, I do sort of like watching it in a completely mindless way. Zulu is an awesome film. Its a very classical British war film a bit like the Battle of Britain or A Bridge Too Far. Im not sure these films are too preoccupied with any message other than weren't we sort of great even though we didn't always win.
  2. Episode 441: Rob & Bruce & WWI

    Thanks Ted, I'll keep my eyes open when the new reprint ships.
  3. Episode 441: Rob & Bruce & WWI

    great podcast, thanks for this guys. I've not played much in the way of strategic WW1 (does diplomacy count? i hope not) I have been tempted by PoG but put off by its reputation as a sharks game. My main wargaming opponent isn't interested in it since he played once against a shark and suggests its a game where you have to know what you are doing and make no mistakes. Is this fair? Lamps are going out doesn't sound that great. The only WW1 games I can remember playing are Somme 1918 from Nuts which I found a bit process heavy and Raciers Clash of Giants II which also didn't rock my world but I did like the narrative tweak of rolling to see how many casualties you lost rather than your opponent. To date I've not really found a WW1 game i've liked though the topic does interest me. I appreciate that it takes a whole weekend but the format of playing three games and comparing them works really well.
  4. Episode 424: Command Ops 2

    thats a big AAR This has been a good winter of war gaming so far. I've found this game to be amazing when it really hits home but for that one good game i have a dozen false starts and damp squibs. Mostly I just struggle to absorb all the important info and then miss an objective, weapon type or reinforcement and the whole plan unravels. I have had the sleeping battalion problem a few times. It seems that the men just love their sleep even if i want to move them out of an area being decked with artillery fire.
  5. is game has grown on me a fair bit. I recommend one of the user scenarios called Duel. It pitches a mid 80s british task force against a russian in the North Atlantic. What makes it easier to play is both task forces can be handled more or less as one unit. The brit fleet will get mulched in surface combat anyhow. You also get 2 subs, and 2 airfields and mostly want to just use them. I play this game rather badly usually just mico'ing one or two units. I should probably watch some tutorials. Good episode.
  6. Episode 375: Rule the Waves

    does anyone have book recommendations for this era? Both the ships and the international relations politics. I like the idea of this game, but I donno whether I would like this game.
  7. There are two types of people in this world, those that relate to stories made real to them through films or forefathers and those who learn about the first Sino Japanese war on the friday and spend £40 on 1/2400 Chinese and Japanese 1890s battleships on the saturday. I'm not sure it's just conflicts that are highly game-able, i think some of us are just attracted to things that seem exotic and off the beaten track to us. OCS Burma is a fantastic Burma game My pick for an under represented topic would be Warring States China.
  8. Episode 370: Dean Essig

    I picked up Dark Valley in a trade last week, so good timing if there is a podcast on this game. I've played Eastfront by Craig Besinque, it will be interesting to see the difference in approach.
  9. Episode 372: Chris Park and Arcen Games

    I love AI War, and have just gone and backed this. I have only played one 'complete' game of AI War with my two net gaming buddies. It is in my view a serious contender for title of best strategy game. It's definitely the best Coop strategy game experience I have ever had. It took us about 25-30 (the sun came up on the last eve) hours to beat (two AIs one 6, one 7) and we ended up using the spire ending. Man it was tough a lot of intensive strategy debate and tactical gate raiding. I'm pretty pumped for the forth coming game, and hope the KS works out. For me the main hope is that a rich game can be had in a shorter period of time. I've bought most of Arcens games, they tend to take abit to get into. The main ones I have played recently are Bionic Dues and Starward Rogue. Starward Rogue is really great, and its the first ARCEN game I have played that i really felt looked pretty, though I am not totally surprised that its struggled. Shup em up games do seem to be a niche audience and its a surprisingly difficult game. I can only beat the first level. If i were writing the marketing material for AI2 I would basically sell it on the AI and try and blag that it is the single most sophisticated game AI ever to be pitched against petty man. This was essentially why I bought the first one, some places hyped the AI. I'm not sure whether the original AI had learning algorithms or anything but I always liked to imagine that it did because it made me feel smarter when we eventually beat it. I think the challenge for ARCEN in marketing has and probably always will be lifting up what makes their games completely different to everything else in a sea of by the numbers designs whilst assuring the player that the hand rails and visuals will be there. I am pro an after dark episode per season.
  10. Episode 368: Dark Reign: The Future of War

    The last 30 minutes of this podcast have broken my idyllic view of Rob. I expected ceaseless study of the strategy genre, constant immersion in the computer wargame and now i find that he is a mere mortal even taking several year breaks from video games. This is a great episode, +1 for more autobiographical discussions from the panel on their time in this hobby. Fortunately Troy appears to have maintained his status.
  11. Episode 370: Dean Essig

    I am due to run a double blind wargame / mega game (it'l have around 25 players + control) on the Chosin Reservoir campaign next month in Leeds UK. Wargame mega games are a much harder sell. Megagames are fairly popular in the UK atm, we have ran 6 this year, the two 'war' games, Chosin and Jena have both only pulled in 20-30 players, our diplomacy/risk style games (which is what most megagames are) will usually bring in up to 50 or even 80 players if their theme is reasonably popular. Other than selling it, there are a few issues with complex wargame mechanics and megagames. If you are playing a double blind game, you have to get orders off the players, play them out behind the curtain, and then return the orders, and do all this really inside 15 minutes. You might have longer turns and stretch to 20 minutes or you might try 10 minutes. 15 minutes is not long to resolve a huge stack of orders sheets and feedback intel to the players, especially if your mechanics are complex. The other way to go is open map and allow the number of players all pulling in different directions to generate the friction of war. This can work, but then the players have to understand the rules, which means they have to read them. The general experience of megagame designers is that many players do not read the rules and hope they can figure it out on the day. This is fine if the game system is simple. I'd recommend picking up one of Dean's games. Even if you are not a military history buff, the OCS series are arguably one of the best pure 'games' series ever made. Its pretty complex by most peoples standards but they allow for more lateral thinking than almost any other games I have played (I have played a lot of games). Thanks for the book list Dean/Bruce. I might have to look at the TCS system, are any of them two mappers? I am table space limited. Also interesting to hear that Dean got into it via cartography. I do a lot of mapping for my job and as such do the mapping for my friends that design Megagames. If you don't want to lay out on illustrator Inkscape its pretty solid. Haven't worked out how to number my hex grid in it though.
  12. Episode 366: Modern Warfare

    Great episode, always a pleasure to here from Mitch. Picked up Taiwan whilst listening. I hope the any Falklands game uses Sharky Ward as its primary and authoritative source .
  13. Episode 360: Hearts of Iron IV

    given that no one out side of paradox seems to really understand how the core game mechanics work (fighting) i think this merited some discussion.
  14. Episode 360: Hearts of Iron IV

    I've seen China beat Japan, though i'd argue that with out interference they should beat china most of the time. I think because the AI struggles with amphibious invasions so Japan is usually going to send most of its resources to china rather than taking the dutch east indies. I agree that the AI isn't quite smart enough to get around the Maginot line most of the time. The AI seems to be the same generic ai for each faction with the game pinning its hopes on the national focus tree to drive the action. The issue with this is that china and Germany will try to fight the war the same way but with just different army setups.
  15. Episode 360: Hearts of Iron IV

    I've probably had more fun with this Paradox game than more or less any other Paradox game I have played though I agree with almost all of the criticisms made in this pod (especially Bruce's). The supply system doesn't appear to really work to me. I've seen Barbarossa launched in December and get to Moscow in record time and chinese nationalists march in to central Siberia in mid winter too. In my most recent game as Russia Britain invaded Germany across the alps and cut a line straight up the middle to Denmark. You end up with a very detailed complex but bad simulation and I wonder if they just abstracted out the moving units around and had you assign resources commanders and select doctrines for campaigns or fronts and then let the AI work it out. I do love the political and economic engine though. I find up until the war really interesting. I've been playing multi player a lot (with 4 or 5) and this has yielded some great moments. The best part of the game for mewas wimping out as the UK at the Munich agreement. We had to pause the game for about 5 minutes whilst i stared at the screen and thought this out. In the end i decided I had sent too many divisions to find Japan in China with my French allies.