Wargame

War of the Human Tanks is a very strange Japanese title, localized into English by Fruitbat Factory, a company that specializes in doing so.

Its gameplay is somewhat Advance Wars-like, though unlike that game, it's not turn-based; instead, each unit has a timer and becomes available to receive orders when the timer counts down. Units have different speeds, of course, but this increases the tenseness of play, as you often want to react quickly when a unit at a key position becomes available.

Your units are "human tanks," apparently something like replicants, since you build them; but they have anime personalities of their own, and all appear as little anime girls in uniform.

Armada d6 is a space war boardgame by Eric Zimmerman and John Sharp. Emulation is not only for software. Since Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 was released under the Open Game License as the d20 system, numerous clones are being published. New designers are taking the d20 system and making retro clones of Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition as well as ultralight systems. For instance you can play the official Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 modules (adventures) with the Microlite d20 system which has two-page core rules that emulate a full Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 system.

Zimmerman and Sharp is doing something similar. Several years ago Zimmerman and Sharp serendipitously ran across photocopies of partial rules and notes of an unpublished board game, Armada d6 at a book store. Twenty years later, they are emulating rules from partial information to reconstruct Armada d6.

The goal of Armada d6 is to build five monuments on the board. The board is made up of modular square tiles that you can arrange to create a large variation of maps. Each tile is divided in eight movement squares surrounding an impassable circular build site for a monument. Within the circles are costs and slots for monument construction.

Ars Victor is an innovative, light war boardgame that has surprising strategic depth for a simple game. Ars Victor uses Richard Borg's popular Command and Color system and, adds Richard Sivél's Friedrich movement system and Mark Herman's command points, which are common in card-driven wargames. The Command and Color system is in use by several games and expansions, including the Memoir '44.

The core gameplay of Ars Victor is similar to that of Memoir '44. You manage a hand of cards that dictate what units you can move on a hex map and you roll custom dice to resolve combat. The differences are few but definitely game-changing. The map is made up of nine modular, double sided pieces that form a 9x9 grid. Because of variable locations on the 9x9 grid, terrain orientation, and the front/back side that one can use, there is huge variability in map setup.

Armor Attacks: The Tank Platoon is a serious gamebook created as "An Interactive Exercise in Small-Unit Tactics and Leadership." The designer and author is colonel (retired) John F. Antal, the former commander of a tank battalion in South Korea. He is better known in the game industry as the Executive Producer at Gearbox, responsible for historical accuracy for the Brothers in Arms series.

I have a sort of love/hate relationship with Dragons of Atlantis. It's the first Facebook game I've played for more than a month, and the first I've really been tempted to spend money on (though I've resisted). And there are things about the design that I really admire, but also things I hate. I've even fantasized about going to work for Kabam, to teach them some basic truths about wargame design that they apparently lack.

It's a Travian-style game, but with better graphics, and, at least for me, a more interesting backdrop. You start with a single city, and build buildings that produce resources -- good, stone, wood, and metal -- that you use to build more buildings and troops -- as well as other buildings that improve your tech or increase your troop production capabilities. The basic algorithm is a triangular/doubling one; each upgrade of a building increases its production as a triangular number, but building time for the structure doubles. (Google triangular number if you don't know what I'm talking about here.) This is minimalist, interesting design, and a fundamentally sound approach.

Hannibal: Rome and Carthage is a complex wargame that is a digital adaptation of a descriptively titled boardgame, Hannibal: Rome and Carthage in The Second Punic War 219-202 B.C. by Glenn Kidd. Besides a few minor change in game balance and the map art by designer and artist James Warshawsky, the videogame is a straight port of the boardgame. The videogame has an interesting history. The original 1983 boardgame influenced a more complex Avalon Hill's Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage 1996 boardgame by Mark Simontich, while the 2010 videogame port, derives game balancing ideas from Avalon Hill's boardgame.

SteamBirds is a top-down, turn-based, aeriel dogfighting game with an unusual core mechanic. Each turn, you give orders to your aircraft by moving a pointer that indicates where it will end the turn; the system only lets you drag the pointer to a location the aircraft can reach, so that the turning radius, speed, and ability to accelerate or decelerate is build into the scheme. Elevation, and diving/climbing, are neglected. Guns are fore-mounted, so the trick is to get behind the enemy and stay on their tail.

Small World is a European and American hybrid wargame, a reworking of Philippe Keyaerts own previous game, Vinci. Like a good Eurogame, the rules are streamlined and easy to follow. However, Small World is unlike typical Eurogames, which favor indirect conflict. Every turn you attack and seize territory from your enemies and thus your gain is their loss. The combat is an almost diceless system that uses an auction-like system derived from Francis Tresham's Civilization boardgame. There is also an auction system for picking your faction. There are fourteen Race banners and twenty Special Power badges; both are shuffled then interlocked to create a six Race and Special Power Combo, or a faction. The numerous permutations of Race and Special Power Combos create numerous factions making every game different. There is also two, double-sided map boards, scaling for two, three, four, and five player games to ensure that crowding occurs, which produces territory conflict.​

Memoir '44 is Richard Borg's landmark game of World War II tactics, notable both for excellent production quality, including a plethora of little plastic solders, armor, and artillery, and for a game system that, while fairly complex by Eurogame standards, is nonetheless extraordinarily simple by board wargame standards, while retaining the strategic complexity of far more rules-complex board wargames.

Julius Caesar is a reenactment of the Roman Civil War between Caesar and Pompey, Co-triumvirs of the Republic, during 49–45 BC (the third of the triumvirate, Crassus, had already died in an ill-advised invasion of Parthia). Caesar broke the peace by marching on Rome to seize sole power. The war was waged around the Mediterranean, centering on the Italian peninsula. Historically Caesar won, marking the end of the Roman Republic and beginning of the Roman Empire (hmm, sounds like a movie about wars across the stars...) but since Julius Caesar is a finely balanced game, the more skillful player will win either as Pompey or Caesar.