Wargame of the Year 2007 election

On Dec 31, 2:01 pm, Paulo Vicente <Paulo.Alexandre.Vice....TakeThisOut@gmail.com>
wrote:
> On 31 Dez, 15:07, Oleg Mastruko <o....TakeThisOut@bug.hr> wrote:
>
>
>
> > In Europe we have this funny-trashy-kitschy thing called
> > Eurovision Song Contest (usually some time in May).
>
> For all our non-European friends out there...
> If you're feeling curious about what Oleg is talking about, you can
> have a glimpse off the wackiness and the "singing" on youtube.
> It's something quite unique, the Yankees have a "American Idol"
> contest, but that's a lot more "tame" and sane, I believe.
>
> Here's the winner for 2007 (Serbia) and the runner-up (Ukraine):
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy-Ms4ytzkYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch...eX_rNEP
>
> And the UK's entry:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dlv2USQ9qw


I was in Greece two summers ago and watched the entire Eurovision
contest with my friends who live there. It was that night that I
decided I would never again give a damn when Europeans criticize
American culture.

And Erik Rutins is absolutely right, you need to begin this voting a
month after the year ends, not on New Year's Eve. In the case of
several games released in December people have only just now finished
reading the manual, or haven't even received their copies yet; and
many more people are holding off on buying until that first patch or
that first review comes out. Voting now also means that release
versions of some games are being compared with games that have been
patched multiple times. I find the current practice unfair to any
games released so late in the year, and would hope that if the start-
date for voting will continue to be this early, at least voting will
last for the full month.

Happy New Year, everyone!
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On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:38:23 -0500, Giftzwerg
<giftzwerg999 RemoveThis @NOSPAMZ.hotmail.com> wrote:

>It's six of one, half a dozen of the other. Sure, one gamer might give
>short-shrift to a December release because it's too new to be properly
>appreciated ... but the very next gamer might confer additional favor on
>a December title precisely because it's so new and fresh in his mind.

In Europe we have this funny-trashy-kitschy thing called
Eurovision Song Contest (usually some time in May). All countries with
TV houses that are members of the Eurovision (which means all Euro
countries, even the smallest ones like Malta) nominate one song, they
meet somewhere, have an evening of trashy songs, then juries in all
countries send in their votes and the winner is nominated at the end
of the evening. It's funny because it's stupid and senseless and
people from strange places dress glamorously and get on the stage and
sing in funny languages. Kinda like Oscars only with less crying
bitches, no irritating fat ugly dudes like Michael Moore or that Lord
of the Rings guy.

This is not a scientific analysis, but I did notice that the
last, 16th song to be performed, wins very very oftenly. It also
happens on our local Croat preliminary (an evening of *really* trashy
songs to decide which one will be sent to Eurovision contest as Croat
nominee). The last song to be performed has a HUGE advantage.

(Why is the 16th song the last to be performed and there are
50-some countries in Europe? Well because there are preliminarly
regional qualification contests, so only 16 songs-countries filter to
the finals.)
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On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 01:04:32 -0800 (PST), "eddysterckx@hotmail.com"
<eddysterckx.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Hi,

1. Ageod American Civil War

Took the review copy to do the review for my magazine didn't
expect much.... but WOW, this is one marvellous wargame. Wargame of
the year IMO, and so far above the last year's competition it's
ridicolous. However I hear that Napoleon game by the same developer
built on the same engine is FAR less enjoiyable because it's "too
pre-set" and has no campaign where players would be able to "do their
thing" (as opposed to playing the pre-set battles with forces that
cannot be changed much).

2. Silent Hunter 4

A wasted vote, I know, as most people here don't consider SH4 to
be a "wargame" so my vote here will be quite alone I guess. However, a
man's gotta do what man's gotta do.

3. Close Combat Modern Tactics

The best thing I can say about this game is that it's "decent"
and far better than atrocious release that was CC CoI. In some better
years it would not get into top 10, but having it in the top 3 kinda
shows that 2007 simply was not a good year for "classical" wargaming.
 >> Stay informed about: Wargame of the Year 2007 election 

> > I bought it off the European site. First off, remember The Games
> > Industry Law of UK Pricing - "take the USA price, and substitute a
> > pound sign for the dollar one." Secondly, the price I mentioned

I'm very glad you enjoyed CAW, but we don't do this practice at all so
I have to jump in and contest this comment. We convert the price
roughly on a quarterly basis so that you're paying the equivalent to
the dollar price, not the dollar price with a pound sign tacked on.

> > included UK VAT at 17.5%. Thirdly, I opted for physical shipment so
> > the price of that and the attendant postage and packing also need to
> > be taken into account.

Your VAT + Physical + Shipping can certainly add up though, but as you
noted our UK warehose allows the import duties and such to be avoided
at least.

A quick look at the current prices shows the following for CAW 29.99
Pounds for the Physical version in the UK store vs. US $59.99 for the
Physical version in the US store, so you can see that we don't just
change the currency symbol.

Regards,

- Erik
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> Well, I did consider going for April - like The Wargamer - but then
> games released in January of the year before can claim they seem "old"
> by then and that the newer games which are fresher in the minds of
> gamers have an advantage etc. Can of worms.
>
> In the end I decided that the "tradition" of doing this at the close
> of the year has an inherent value too and doing this later in the year
> makes it old news.

Understood and I think your point about recent titles sticking in
people's minds may be true in general - but I think that December 31st
is still too early and I think judging wargames is not the same as
judging mainstream games, where the "latest" is often considered the
greatest. I think you could make a case for the end of January, at
least then games that were purchased for Christmas have had a chance
to be played and understood. I don't think wargames can be accurately
reviewed 2 weeks after release, at least based on my experience and
pretty much every release these days gets not only updates for fixes
but also for improvements. Just my $.02...
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Here are my votes:

1 - AGEOD'S American Civil War - The Blue and the Gray
(I knew almost nothing about the American Civil War: this game made me to
buy books on the matter - 'nuff said)

2 - Air Assault Task Force
(The system is good, but it was the retrocompatibility who made it)

3 - Larry Bond's Harpoon Commander's Edition
(I just like Harpoon *as a system*, and the Commander Edition shows how the
games can still be good when done right)
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<eddysterckx.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2865ed6e-e5c4-4b8a-984c-70de452f7809@z11g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
>

1. Strategic Command 2 : Blitzkrieg - Weapons and Warfare (and yes its new
for all practical purposes..or drastically improcved including AI)

2.CEAW (tho I burnt out on it quick)

3. TOW. (cus Mario likes it) no not really:)

4.TLCS but its a wave mentality game so not really.

the rest all drop off the list for me.

PC3R (oh wait...thats old)

disqualifier: Not into ancients.
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1) Ageod American Civil War
2) Ageod Napoleon's Campaigns
3) Strategic Command 2 : Blitzkrieg - Weapons and Warfare
 >> Stay informed about: Wargame of the Year 2007 election 

My 1st-place vote is for Carriers at War, which was the only wargame I
bought this year - in fact, I'm pretty sure it was the only /game/ I
bought in the entire second half of this year!

I'm very pleased with it, even though the AI regularly kicks my arse.
The main thing I like about it is that its interface makes learning
the game very quick and is very nicely put together. The documentation
is also excellent and I'm glad I went for the physical shipment option
as the printed manaul is nicely produced and you get a proper box.

My only real complaint is that the final price from the Matrix Games /
Digital River site of £40.22 ($80) was maybe a little on the pricy
side but this is almost completely outweighed by the overall quality
of what I bought.
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On the 31 Dec 2007, Oleg Mastruko <oleg.DeleteThis@bug.hr> wrote:

<snip>

> 2. Silent Hunter 4

> A wasted vote, I know, as most people here don't consider SH4 to
> be a "wargame" so my vote here will be quite alone I guess. However, a
> man's gotta do what man's gotta do.

I meant to buy that this year, but a combination of my PC acting up
for most of the year (so I wouldn't have been able to run it anyway)
and reports of a large number of bugs meant I decided against getting
it. How stable is it now?

Current PC is 3.4GHz Pentium D with 2GB RAM and an X1650 Pro (512MB,
AGP) graphics card. Seems to cope very well with SH3 but I understand
SH4 has bigger requirements than the earlier game.

--
Jades' First Encounters Site - http://www.jades.org/ffe.htm
The best Frontier: First Encounters site on the Web.

nospam.DeleteThis@jades.org /is/ a real email address!
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In article <18e1065a4f.jades.DeleteThis@d.thurlwell.btopenworld.com>,
nospam.DeleteThis@jades.org says...

> My only real complaint is that the final price from the Matrix Games /
> Digital River site of £40.22 ($80) was maybe a little on the pricy
> side but this is almost completely outweighed by the overall quality
> of what I bought.

Yikes! How can this be?!? I'd have thunk that the weak dollar would
have made an American-published product cheaper to buy for you guys
getting paid in mighty Pounds and Euros.

--
Giftzwerg
***
"Are you impressed with a drop in home values of 6.6% over a year? It
doesn't seem like such a big correction, given the dramatic run-up in
prices over the last decade or so. ... And don't declining prices make
housing more ... what's the word? ... affordable?"
- Mickey Kaus
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In article <57e9045a4f.jades.TakeThisOut@d.thurlwell.btopenworld.com>,
nospam.TakeThisOut@jades.org says...

> > A wasted vote, I know, as most people here don't consider SH4 to
> > be a "wargame" so my vote here will be quite alone I guess. However, a
> > man's gotta do what man's gotta do.
>
> I meant to buy that this year, but a combination of my PC acting up
> for most of the year (so I wouldn't have been able to run it anyway)
> and reports of a large number of bugs meant I decided against getting
> it. How stable is it now?

As someone who disliked the game because of the manual, the lack of
meaningful tutorials, and an interface that I thoroughly loathed, let me
just say, to be fair, that the patched version of the game is solid as
bedrock. Aside from a single weird graphical anomaly where one - albeit
important - information panel was not showing up, I didn't have a single
crash or lockup or even burble. And even that one issue was fixed by an
update to either Vista or my graphics driver.

> Current PC is 3.4GHz Pentium D with 2GB RAM and an X1650 Pro (512MB,
> AGP) graphics card. Seems to cope very well with SH3 but I understand
> SH4 has bigger requirements than the earlier game.

I tried it on my wife's PC (IE, my PC from last year), running Vista on
a 3.2 Ghz Pentium with 4GB RAM and the ATI X700 256 MB graphics, and it
seems to run perfectly well.

--
Giftzwerg
***
"Are you impressed with a drop in home values of 6.6% over a year? It
doesn't seem like such a big correction, given the dramatic run-up in
prices over the last decade or so. ... And don't declining prices make
housing more ... what's the word? ... affordable?"
- Mickey Kaus
 >> Stay informed about: Wargame of the Year 2007 election 

On the 31 Dec 2007, "Gil R." <gil2.TakeThisOut@west-civ.com> wrote:

<snip>

> many more people are holding off on buying until that first patch or
> that first review comes out.

Good point there. It isn't a wargame, but waiting for the patch
situation to stabilise is the main reason why I still haven't bought
Football Manager 2008 and may give it a miss altogether. If that
happens, it will be the first time I've passed on two consecutive
releases of one of the very few series I used to buy every year on the
day of release.

> Voting now also means that release versions of some games are being
> compared with games that have been patched multiple times.

Maybe a little harsh, but shouldn't games be released when they're
done and without needing loads of patches?

The final reason I skipped Football Manager 2007 was that the
publishers released a 100-odd meg patch for Football Manager 2006 on
the same day the game came out - not encouraging when you've just paid
full-whack UK Retail and only have dialup at home...

--
Jades' First Encounters Site - http://www.jades.org/ffe.htm
The best Frontier: First Encounters site on the Web.

nospam.TakeThisOut@jades.org /is/ a real email address!
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