Unleash iHell!

So my great plan to kick myself up the backside today came to nought as I have spent most of today ill with some kind of stomach bug. However some toys arrived in the best which I will talk about tomorrow...

So feeling under the weather I downloaded Slitherine's iPad fantasy warfare game Hell, which is based on the excellent Battle Academy engine so should be good. Unfortunately my first battles have been pretty resounding defeats to the forces of evil so I need to up my game (and probably reduce the complexity level!)

Despite two major defeats I must say it looks great and hopefully when I get my head around what tactics to use, should provide hours of entertainment.

i40k

I managed a fair bit of painting today, flitting between some Dwarves, Jungle Gremlins, Hairballs and an Earth Titan, but finishing none. Obviously going through a fantasy phase...

I also noticed that Slitherine are working on an iPad version of their PC game Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon, which looks pretty good and no doubt will be downloaded as soon as it's available...

Atlantic Fleet Launched!

After a minor set back last week, Killerfish Games have now released the iOS version of their new game Atlantic Fleet. I loved Pacific Fleet, but this looks much, much better and no doubt will provide many hours of entertainment like its predecessor...

Here's their blurb about the game features:

- No In Apps/Advertising. No Pay-to-Progress. One Price = Full Game
- Stunning full 3D graphics and environments, including underwater
 - A unique blend of deep strategic planning combined with quick tactical decisions
- Play as the Royal Navy and her allies or Kriegsmarine (German navy)
- Up to 10 versus 10 ships in combat
- 3 Game Modes: 1) Single Battle Editor with 30 Historical Missions for standalone combat 2) Campaign of 50 missions per faction 3) Full Dynamic Campaign from 1939 to 1945
- Individually saved games for each campaign and faction
- Multiplayer Hotseat for Single Battles
- Sink ships with realistic buoyancy physics, not with hit-point bars!
- Target specific ship subsystems to sink or cripple the enemy
- Destructible ships, subsystems and visual damage to ships
- 60 historical ship classes representing over 630 ships and 350 submarines
- 13 playable aircraft - Submarine warfare, wolf packs and convoys
- Carrier operations and land-based air strikes
- Too many more to list here, visit killerfishgames.com

Atlantic Fleet Set To Launch!

Great news, Killerfish Games have submitted Atlantic Fleet to the Apple Store, so it should be available to play very soon. RRP is $9.99 which seems very reasonable for a game that has a much wider scope than the hugely enjoyable Pacific Fleet.

As it is a bank holiday weekend in the UK, I had hoped to crack on with painting some Lion Rampant retinues today, but a stinking cold has taken hold in Bleaseworld with both myself and SWMBO wrapped up in blankets swigging Lemsip. A quarantine is in effect and son and heir warned to stay at Uni! :-(

Hearts and Minds...

I spent most of today helping SWMBO dismantle my mother's kitchen so didn't get a chance to paint anything, though I did sneak in a couple more games of BA2: Kursk, the fourth scenario becoming impossibly hard if you accidentally shell and destroy the only bridge before you get your armour over the river! Doh!

Whilst looking for advice online how to get past the broken bridge (before I realised I'd blown it up accidentally) I did come across another new release from Slitherine in the form of Vietman '65, which looks pretty cool and no doubt will be bought soon.

"It is 1965 and the US ground war in Vietnam is in full swing. As a US Army commander, wage a counter-insurgency (COIN) war to secure the Ia Drang valley, on the border with Cambodia..."

Battle Academy 2: Kursk Expansion

I restarted playing the Normandy Campaign for Battle Academy yesterday, but that came to a rapid halt when I saw Slitherine released the Kursk expansion for Battle Academy 2: Eastern Front...

Based on the largest tank battle of the war, you get two campaigns for your £7.99,  the first containing six scenarios as the Germans on the northern edge of the salient and the second six as the Soviet defenders on the southern edge.

Unlike the previous Battle Academy campaigns (with the exception of the excellent Arnhem one), the scenarios are locked until you successful complete the preceding one. So far I've played two of the German ones and found them very well balanced and challenging, the first victory being won in the final turn.

Order of Battle: Pacific

My eyes are playing me up today so I've not been up to doing any more painting, however I did have a nose at Slitherine's website and came across news of a forthcoming hex-based WW2 strategy game called Order of Battle: Pacific.

Sitting feeling sorry for myself on the sofa yesterday watching Tora! Tora! Tora! once more rekindled my interest in the Pacific war and looking at the screengrabs below, this may well help scratch the itch...

All At Sea...

Ever the romantic I spent St Valentine's Day with SWMBO in Currys PC World looking at cookers, washer dryers and dishwashers and then treating her to a Big Mac meal for tea! :-) This, again, meant I was not able to finish the last bit of block painting on my Confederates - maybe tomorrow...

I did manage to get some "gaming" in on the iPad with a new game recommended to me by a friend in the States. Where Battle Academy is my iPad vice, Pacific Fleet is Tommy's, so I thought it worth trying out the free Lite version, which led me to splashing the cash (all £4.49 of it) on the full game.

I'm only a few missions in as the commander of the SS Gato but have found this to be a great game with wonderful graphics (here are a couple of screen grabs from two of my games). If you have an iPad (or an iPhone there is a version for that), check it out, it is great fun. The invasion of Poland with Panzer Corps is now on hold whilst I sink the Imperial Japanese Navy!!!

Vorwarts Panzer Korps!

Yet another day lost to work and synthesizer shopping (though when you get reviews like this, I can't begrudge son and heir the time). So sitting down this evening I dug out the iPad and had a look at my latest iOS game, Sliterine's Panzer Corps.

This has been around for sometime and has a solid reputation. In some respects it is similar to the Shenandoah Games I enjoyed as well as Wars and Battles, but the campaign scope in the basic game alone is epic (you fight the war as the Germans from 1939 through to 1944).

I've only played the first couple of tutorial games, but it already has me hooked and I can see that there is going to be fun balancing the need to blitz the Allied forces, whilst keeping units reinforced. Ok, off to invade Poland, wish me luck...

War and Battles: October War Coming Soon...

Of late, most of my gaming has unfortunately been restricted to the iPad, however I have had a lot of fun with the likes of the excellent Battle Academy and War and Battles which I came across last December.

Whilst the initial missions are quite short and relatively easy, the D-Day campaign develops and becomes challenging. You can also change sides and run the scenarios as the German defenders which gives you a whole load of new problems.

As I said in December, publishers Kermorio, have said they will be releasing new campaigns using the W&B engine covering a range of periods from Napoleonic to Modern, the latter being a 1973 October War campaign. They have just posted on their FB page that the release of October War is about a month away and uploaded some screen grabs. I must say I am really looking forward to this...

From Normandy to Gettysburg?!

Wars and Battles may be the worst game name ever, but it is the latest iPad game I have tried, this time on the recommendation of pockettactics.com. The basic game is a hex-based WW2 divisional level game based on the Normandy campaign.

I'm not quite sure what I make of it so far, it seems fairly basic tactically although stupid tactics get punished by the AI pretty ruthlessly and I soon find myself being drawn back into the next battle so it can't be that bad!

What has intrigued me about the game are the planned extensions for 2015 which include Arnhem, Korea and Yom Kippur, as well as rather intriguingly Gettysburg and Austerlitz. I'm not quite sure how the engine will cope with black powder battles as opposed to mechanised ones, but it sounds interesting.

Operation Mercury Revisited

One of the intriguing things about Slitherine's Battle Academy is the ability in the PC version to create your own scenarios and share them with other players, including iPad players like me. They are, by and large, quite good, I especially enjoyed the WW1 campaign and found the Wittman Tiger in Villiers- Bocage more interesting and challenging than I suspected. I have, however, not really got on with Crete: Operation Mercury campaign.

I played the first scenario They Are Coming a number of times, but found it poorly balanced from  game point of view. The Fallschirmjäger are invariably swiftly overwhelmed by lots of British, Greek and Cretan Irregular forces, I have only once managed to achieve the objective when one para out of a unit of five managed to sit ignored by the advancing enemy and slip behind the lines through pure luck.

The second scenario, Maleme, is also hard to complete. I have come close, but the New Zealand infantry are incredibly powerful and it is somewhat irritating that when you eventually fight your way through them the large naval guns on Hill 107 are able to snipe advancing troops with stunning accuracy. Previously, this is where I have given up with the campaign.

However this weekend I decided to try out the third one, Counter Attack, and found it balanced, challenging and very tense. Similarly, the fourth one, Galatas, is is also very good and produces a tense, tight battle which ebbs and flows. I've played this one twice now, a close defeat and a close victory resulting, it would make a great miniatures scenario. Off to try The Road to Sfakia now...

ps. I have managed to do some painting today, the Kriegsmarine have been base coated, the Norts dipped and a Panzerfäuste Forest Troll finished but there was no natural light to take a photo, so you will have to wait until tomorrow...

Frontline: The Road To Moscow (well, Leningrad)

Having finished the four campaigns in Battle Academy 2: Eastern Front, I decided to have a look at some of the other games Slitherine produces for the iPad. Frontline: The Road to Moscow piqued my interest, a more strategic level game with units representing larger (slightly abstract) units, I had great fun with the first part of the game up to the Battle for Smolensk.

Unfortunately though there is an unfixed but in the first part of Act II and you are unable to unlock your resources and obtain reinforcements for the Leningrad battle, which makes it impossible to move on. Hopefully a v 1.06 comes along soon and fixes this bug (which I believe is only an iPad one not an iPhone or iPod one).

Battle Academy 2 - the Eastern Front on iPad

You may recall I became a little addicted to Slitherine's hugely enjoyable Battle Academy iPad game earlier in the year! A great game, as I said it is rather akin to playing a 1/300th wargame on a tablet (or PC). Having fought through France, the Western Desert, Sicily, Belgium, Holland etc, I was excited to read that an Eastern Front version was planned.

The great news is that Battle Academy 2 - Eastern Front now out on the iPad...

I started the Barbarossa campaign yesterday and am having lots of fun, the great thing with this version is that, in addition to the four single player campaigns, there is a skirmish game where you set the parameters (terrain type, period etc) and the computer draws up a new scenario for you to play. Great stuff, if you have an iPad (or PC), this is a must have game...

iAlamein

Back in February you may recall I got rather excited over Shenandoah Studio's WW2 Strategy iOS games Battle of the the Bulge and Drive in Moscow. I hadn't played them recently but having to sit on a hot train to and from London today I decided to chill out in a virtual snowy Ardennes!

Much fun was had which reminded me that Shenandoah had released the third game in the series, Desert Fox: The Battle of El Alamein so a visit to the App Store was called for when I got home this evening.

I've just downloaded the game and may be gone some time!

iCaesar

Most of today was spent on the train as I had a meeting in Basingstoke, but it did allow me to get another battle in Normandy on the iPad! On the subject I forgot to mention I downloaded Slitherine's Legion for the iPad as they had it on offer at the weekend. A mix of a strategy campaign and battle simulation it looks a bit like the original Total War: Rome. Should be fun once I've got the Battle Academy bug out of the system...

On the miniatures front, some more progress on Watch Am Escargot with the Somua S-35's coated yellow tan and the Laffly's 80% base painted in their green/brown camo. Hopefully all should be done by the weekend.

Battle Academy Goes East!

I am having a LOT of fun working my way through Battle Academy and the various additional campaign expansions on the iPad most evenings (the tension when the first Tiger turned up in North Africa was amazing!). At present I am part way through Rommel in Normandy having just successfully beaten back the American attack on the Channel ports and smashed Operation Epsom (all praise the might Hetzer!).  However as much fun as I am having in the Desert and North-West Europe I was given to wondering where the Russian campaigns where? I wonder no longer...

Slitherine have just released an Early Access Programme version of Battle Academy 2: Eastern Front for the PC. I'm content to continue working through North West Europe, after all I've not started Market Gardens, Metz or the Bulge campaigns yet, or the Blitzkrieg and Sealion ones so still lots to play, but the screen shots from the Eastern Front look just great. Hopefully we'll be off East on the iPad sometime later this year!

Battle Academy - War on the iPad...

Following on from my "discovery" of the excellent iPad strategic level games from Shenandoah Studios, I've now been hooked by another iPad game, Slitherine Studio's Battle Academy. Whereas the Shenandoah games are computerised boardgames, Battle Academy is like playing a 1/300th wargame on the iPad.

Units are individual AFV's, light weapon teams and infantry sections and the basic game covers a selection of theatres including the Western Desert (above), Normandy and the Ardennes. There is extra downloadable content covering other theatres such as 1940, Sicily etc. (which you pay for) and also quite a bit of free stuff designed by fans of the game which includes the Pacific, Crete and WWI. I actually started with the WWI stuff and must say the Cambrai campaign was superb and extremely challenging, especially the canal bridges battle (below).

At £13.99 is its a premium price product but it is exceptionally good value for money for the amount of entertainment provided. The game can also be synchronised across other platforms such as PC and MacBook and played against players on those platforms if desired.

All in all, if you have an iPad and are interested in WWII (or WWI) this should be a must have game.

iBarbarossa

Having had great fun with Shenandoah Studio's Battle of the Bulge iOS game on my iPad I decided to have a look at the second game in the series Drive on Moscow. As it is currently on sale at £2.99 I bought a copy and last night invaded Russia!

Like Battle of the Bulge this is a great little game, albeit with lots more units and different problems to face, including the changing weather. The use of supply is really important and cut off units grind to an ineffective halt, you can also pin enemy units making them ineffective by surrounding them, a useful tactic for tying down quality enemy units.

Great fun, Shenandoah have two new titles coming soon, another WW2 title in the form of El Alamein and an ACW based around Gettysburg. Based on the two I've played I think I'll be buying both...

iWacht am Rhein

Due to the bumbling bureaucratic micro-managed inefficiency of "they who shall not be named" at work, I had a very odd day today, sitting waiting on someone to do their job, so I could do mine! This did allow me to snatch some odd moments to slap some more paint on some Coldstreams and base the Mohicans and some Rogue Trooper figures from Mongoose. Nothing finished, but hopefully (SWMBO permitting) the Coldstream pike may get finished this weekend.

Last night I downloaded a "lite" version of Shenandoah Studio's iOS Battle of the Bulge game into the iPad. I'm not a great "computer gamer", FIFA 13 is my limit, but this looked interesting and it was soon 1.00 am before I realised the last several hours had gone!

The game is campaign level, with the basic units being divisions and can be played against a human opponent or (more usefully for me) the computer. I had several cracks at the free scenario and at best managed a draw against the computer lead Americans, more often my Panzers failing to reach the Meuse (to win) or take Bastogne (to draw). There are a number of interesting aspects to the game, including keeping your supply lines open and I have just downloaded the full game so tonight should see General von Blease trying to succeed where Generalfeldmarschall Model failed!

Shenandoah have released a companion Barbarossa game that looks interesting and have an El Alamein one in the works. Whilst it hasn't the attraction of toy soldiers, the games look like they will be a fun distraction for nights sat in the car on Dad's Taxi duties...