WarGames – Panda Mallet

February 3, 2019February 3, 2019

More Games in my Collection

The bigger, mostly newer games I have.

Star fleet battles. Big, complex, huge number of ships and options. I haven’t had anyone around who knows the game in decades and it is a really hard game to get people started on with the rather massive basic rules set.

My original star fleet battles set. Simpler rules from simpler days. The game has become so much larger since then. Better balanced and with far more options. I haven’t cut the counter sheets for the newer edition as I have plenty of these older counters to use should the opportunity arise.

Federation commander is a simplified version of star fleet battles. I picked it up with hopes that it might be a simpler option. May be at some point.

Federation and Empire (and the earlier Federation Space) are both strategic level old series Star Trek combat. A complex game and one that I’ve never yet had a chance to play against a real opponent. Seems like another game that badly wants computer support to really play. It would be pretty amazing to get a real play through of this though.

And StarFire is the truly huge scale strategic game with massive scope but also massive complexity. On balance I’ve found this game fascinating to read through and containing well though out technologies and mechanics, but without computer support I can’t really imagine finding the time to play it.

Traveller isn’t primarily a wargame, but it is full of ideas for space game trading and space combat. Add in Striker with tactical ground combat and the possibilities for inspiration are pretty extensive. Lots to play with here.

I’d also love to run a traveller game sometime. Perhaps far in the future in retirement…

February 3, 2019February 3, 2019

The core of my wargame collection

Here’s the core of my wargame collection. These are all rather old and I still regret not having bought more back when they were readily available (but the back then I had much less money to spend).

I also had two of the core GDW Europa series games, Fire in the East and Scorched earth covering the eastern front through the entire second world war. I tried setting them up to play with a friend and circumstances resulted in the counters and some other related parts being left with the friend when we lost touch. I still might try to replace these at some point, but that is likely to be pretty expensive.

I also have a batch of metagaming micro-games that are interesting.

I expect that my copy of Chitin-I is also around somewhere but it isn’t with my core collection. I’d be interested in getting my hands on a copy of battlesuit if circumstances permit.

I have an extensive starfleet battles collection including a full set of federation and empire. I’ve played a lot of SFB in the past but never yet found an opportunity to try out F&E.

I have various editions of starfire around though while the game is fascinating to read, I’m not at all convinced that it is playable without a major amount of computer assist.

I expect to be trying to build some simple wargame-like games using unity over the next year or so. I expect to take inspiration from the games in my collection, but as these are still under copyright I’ll not be directly cloning content.

I expect to post some more information here as I get to coding and I’ll try to post some more detailed comments on the individual games as I get to them and time permits. I’m also making a concerted effort to ensure that all relevant parts are reunited with their game boxes.