War! Huh! Wha is it good for?
Well, firstly, it’s great for CONQUERING PORTUGAL! Lets see if we can. Read more…
What will 1942 bring the Republic of Spain? Nothing good I am sure of it. In hindsight, thinking about 1941, it may have been a mistake to pursue medium armor tech. Light armor could do the job, and to take out heavier tanks, teching-up the anti-tank guns and ant-tank tanks would probably be a far cheaper way to go. As a small power it isn’t good for me to spread the tech research too thin, but what’s done is done, so let’s get on with it! Read more…
New Years celebrations in 1940 are muted. Fireworks, deemed entirely inappropriate, are replaced instead with the waving of small flags and the singing of patriotic songs expressing solidarity with the workers of the world. Read more…
It occurs to me that now would be a good time to contemplate the civil war campaign and to draw out some lessons learned. After much scratching of my chin I’ve come to the following conclusions:
What do you think? Thoughts welcome! Meanwhile, on with the adventure.
February opens with the civil war raging, but by mid-February we had taken the Nationalist capital (their new capital is La Coruna in the North West) and effectively divided the Nationalist forces in two, with hopefully the Eastern group – where the former capital is, cut off from all supply.
A Nationalist counter-attack is held off with superior air power.
The start of the civil war sees the Nationalists control most of north Spain, but the Republicans control most of the fleet and all the units deployed to Madrid. The Canary Islands are largely ours, as are our small African holdings, but the Mallorca Island group has gone Nationalist.
We have a big job ahead of us. We must reorganize the military command structure, assign generals and devise a plan!
Now that I’m 200 pages through various manuals, strategy guides, supplemental strategy guides, quick start guides and forum posts I’ve decided it’s time to write a Hearts of Iron 3 AAR. In this AAR I will be playing Spain from 1936 and taking them through the civil war and out the other side to join the glorious communist bloc! The Global Socialist Revolution has begun! Viva la Socialismo!
I won’t be playing through this AAR with the aim of taking over the whole world – I find that sort of game story a bit tedious. Instead, I’ll be semi-roleplaying and trying to advance Spain, survive WW2 and join the Communist Bloc. That being said, I’m not going to be rushing into joining Comintern as soon as I’m able as that will result in a royal ass kicking from the Germans and Italians. Instead, I’ll play as opportunistically as possible. Read more…
Spelk over on SugarFreeGamer.com has written a nice wee AAR on a Battles from the Bulge tutorial. It’s a nice short introduction to the game and worth a read.
The long-awaited sequel to Conquest of the Aegean, the hard-core real-time wargame, is out. Battles from the Bulge can be bought from the Matrix store for.. what.. this is a typo, right? … ok so it’s not. Right. Well. If you wish to buy BFTB you can go and buy it for EIGHTY US DOLLARS. Yes, $80. Note, this doesn’t even get you a printed manual!
I really wish I knew what those guys at Matrix Games smoked. They like to wring their hands about how wargames are so niche and hard they are to make and how much loving work goes into them and oh we’re such precious little snowflakes. But this just doesn’t wash with me. If Steam can put up weird little niche games and then cut their price to the bone while seeing sales lift 31000% (yes, that’s right, go google it) and great profits to their devs, then why can’t Matrix get creative with their niche?
I’ve blogged about this before and nothing has changed and nothing is likely to. I guess I’ll give up on any plan to play BFTB this year. Hell, based on Matrix’s strategy of keeping prices high until simply removing the product from stock I doubt I’ll ever play it.
I just wish wargames developers would start courting Impulse (or vice versa). Those guys know how to sell games.
CSL has started a Hearts of Iron 3 Spanish Republic AAR over on QuarterToThree.com. The AAR looks great so far, although I have reservations about HoI3 itself at this stage. I’ll write one too if I ever pick it up, but that won’t be for a few patches and possibly an expansion at this rate!
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