Episode 428: Gary Grigsby's War in the West

[Rob Zacny]

Three Moves Ahead 428:

Gary Grigsby's War in the West
The Winter of Wargaming marches on with Gary Grigsby's War in the West. Bruce joins Rob and Troy "No, really, the Canadian military was actually very invol-" Goodfellow to talk about the the thundering behemoth that is War in the West. It's been long established that panel enjoys Gary Grigsby's earlier War in the East, but does that love carry over to War in the West? The eastern front may have certain qualities that make it the perfect candidate for strategy at this level, while the West finds itself pushing and pulling the player's attention in too many different directions. Listen in to find out what the panel thinks and why PC gaming is dead. Forever.

Gary Grigsby's War in the West, Gary Grigsby's War in the East

 

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[ilitarist]

Always nice to hear Bruce greeting you. Also his revelations about PC gaming.

Interesting discussions, thanks.

[panzeh]

I think Frank Hunter's Piercing Fortress Europa is a pretty good take on the Italian campaign- the air units are pretty abstracted as are the naval and even the rear area units- you only have to move combat units on the map, and the focus is on supply and preparation for attacks(for example, when you're attacking as the allies, you will pull units behind the lines and spend several turns increasing their combat supply, and then they will be good for a few turns of hard combat, then have to be resupplied if you want maximum efficiency).  It's a WEGO game, the interface is a bit.. minimal, but I think it's probably the best italian front game i've played on the PC.

[SamS]

This podcast actually inspired me to fire up WitW! If you have the Operation Torch expansion there are actually quite a lot of separate scenarios – although it would have been good if they did a second expansion like they did for WitE and added some more. But I guess they’re too busy on WitE2 which from what I understand is going to be porting a lot of the WitW features back over to that front.

 

 Bruce was right that a lot of the gameplay elements like building up points for an invasion are lifted directly from War in the Pacific – what I wouldn’t give for a sequel to that!

 

 On western front strategic games, a very good recent PC release is Strategic Command 3 – aka Strategic Command WWII: War in Europe. It sits quite comfortably below the Grigsby games on complexity, but gives you a good mix of battles and simple strategic and production decisions.