A is for Alphabetised wargame and sim news. Every four weeks or so I hang up a streamer of industrial strength fly paper in The Flare Path dunny and see what wargame and simulation news stories adhere to it. Below is this month’s bag – 25 bite-size stories involving virtual vehicles and surrogate slaughter. If you wince when someone calls a locomotive a train, and can put these three battles – Trenton, Turnham Green, Trafalgar – in chronological order, you should probably click where it says… (more…)

My nice grandad fought in World War Two, along with all of the other nice grandads, against the fascist grandads who were causing quite the stir around Europe at the time. As far as I can tell my grandad had a relatively pleasant time, romping around in the desert with his fellow grandads, firing some really big guns into the sky until he was captured and allowed to safely wait out the rest of the war in a POW camp. It probably wasn t quite as relaxing as a weekend at Center Parcs, but from what I ve been told grandad never had to eat his own shoes in a trench, or witness a dog catch a grenade in its mouth before it ran directly into an enemy machine gun nest and valiantly exploded in a shower of shrapnel and collie parts.

These very real horrors of war are sensibly avoided in Kards, a kollectible kard game that turns the darkest and bloodiest chapter of human history into a delightful free-to-play strategy lark, with booster packs and neat animations and everything. It s very much in the vein of Hearthstone and Artifact, except instead of blighted goblins and dark wizardry you ve got a deck of dry-sounding World War Two themed units, such as the 95th Rifle Regiment, the 506th Airborne and the 980 Volksgrenadier (surely everyone s favourite Volksgrenadier).

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Another day, another free-to-play collectable card game, but Kards does well to set itself apart from the Hearthstone and Magic-inspired pack. Developed by 1939 Games, this one fully commits to its World War 2 setting, with faded cards bearing authentic propaganda poster art and a soundtrack featuring old jazz played through a gramophone. While the goal is familiar enough – bring the enemy HQ down to zero health – players are constantly fighting over the front-line, a central row that only one player can inhabit at a time. Below, some extended thoughts from my first couple games against AI.

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