hex based wargames – Page 2

About

Lance – I am the original sole developer at Yobowargames and work on developing wargames in my spare time. My main focus is to bring traditional hex and counter war/historical themed board games to the digital world.

A wargamer since my parents brought me some Airfix French Imperial Guard when I was but a mere pup. Started off with Plastic figures and then onto board wargames. Life then intervened and wargaming stopped but my reading about history increased. Finally in 2017 I published my first PC game “Kursk – Battle at Prochorovka” and since then have released a further seven other games.

When not working on developing games you can find me playing board games, reading about history, or watching a movie.

Since starting Yobowargames I have had the good fortune to meet other like-minded individuals and produced games in collaboration with them.

Bruce – I’ve been writing software since the early ’80s. My first computer was an Atari 800. My first computer game: Chris Crawford’s Eastern Front. Writing software for businesses paid the bills, but working on computer games was where the real fun lay.

My first exposure to building games was as the coder for a Quake 2 mod, Night Hunters. In the early 2000’s, I was part of the team that created the Red Orchestra modification which eventually won the Unreal Tournament 2003 Make Something Unreal contest. After I retired, I started looking for a more serious game project. That search led me to Yobowargames when I asked Lance about getting started building hex-based war games. That led to my contributing to Iwo Jima and working on all other games since then.

BruinBearGames – Approached me for some initial advice on his game WinterThunder. Since then we have collaborated on Krim

Iwo Jima

Battle for Iwo Jima simulates the Invasion and desperate fighting for the island from Feb 19th 1945 to March 26th 1945. You take command of the US Marines and will test your ability to do better than those brave Marines did back in 1945.

Each turn in the game represents one day with each day broken into phases. Units are approximately company sized.

Be warned this is not an easy game to win. You will need to exercise Command and Control over your units by keeping them in range of their HQ. Armor should be used in a supporting role and not in the front lines otherwise the Japanese will eat them for breakfast. Troops need to rest and not be constantly engaged in combat.

Use the support points on units that are likely to be fired upon by the Japanese, especially when moving, to reduce your losses.

Keep your units fatigue levels low by resting them from combat as they will become less effective as they suffer fatigue.

Somewhere there are a lot of dug-in Japanese soldiers…

Fall of France 1940

Coming late 2020

The Fall of France was one of the most surprising events of the war in Europe. Even with the example of Poland the previous September, no one on either side expected that Nazi Germany could almost simultaneously conquer France, Belgium and Holland and evict Britain from the European mainland, all in only six weeks.

It was, in many ways, a string of miracles at key points from
the German point of view and debacles from the Allied.

Sample Units

Supported Platforms

Battle for Korsun

January 1944. The German Army had their last toehold on the Dneiper River. This salient projected between two powerful Soviet army groups, the 1st, and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts. Though weakened in their previous efforts against the Germans, on January 25th and 26th, these two powerful groups attacked and surrounded two German corps.

The Germans responded quickly to this threat, hurrying reinforcements from other sectors. Their relief drive made good initial progress, but stalled in the face of stiff Soviet resistance and both sides antagonist, “General Mud”. In the end, the trapped Germans made a desperate breakout attempt from the pocket. Less than half of the encircled forces escaped the trap, with none of their heavy weapons or equipment.

Battle For Korsun is a simulation of these battles in January and February 1944. Players control the various German and Soviet forces which took part in these struggles. The Soviet player must coordinate the offensives of his Fronts to encircle the Germans quickly before the Germans powerful reinforcements arrive. The German player must form a pocket perimeter, then orchestrate his relief drive with his Panzer divisions to rescue their trapped comrades

Sample Units

Buy from Matrixgames at https://www.matrixgames.com/game/kursk-battle-at-prochorovka

Platforms Supported

Invaders from Dimension X

Available Now!

Based on the board game of the same name designed by Hermann Luttmann and published by Tiny Battle Publishing. Invaders from Dimension X! is a solitaire game that begins the story of the brutal war between the invading alien Kay’otz race and the only human force capable of defeating them – the “Old Reprobates” of the 124th Galactic Marine Raider Battalion. You control the various Marine squads, each with a specialized skill, as they fight their way through an alien enemy that is totally unpredictable. The Kay’otz come from another dimension of space and do not behave in a way humans can comprehend. Only with perseverance and skillful strategy – and yes, some good fortune – will you be able to eventually discover the plans and tactics of these mysterious beings.

Sample Units

Buy on my site https://www.yobowargames.com/product/invaders-from-dimension-x/

Or from

Platforms Supported

Valor & Victory

Valor & Victory is a fast-playing, easy-to-learn World War II squad-level game system. Based on the original Valor & Victory board game, the digital edition provides you with an accessible and deep challenge, developed for classic tabletop game lovers.

With 19 scenarios based around real events shortly after the Normandy Landings in 1944, the game challenges you to achieve different objectives: eliminate the enemy, capture objectives, or exit certain units off of the map.

Valor & Victory is a complete WWII wargaming system, covering infantry and armored combat, close assaults, armored overruns, fortifications, and much more.

COMMAND, FIRE, MOVE, DEFEND, ADVANCE. REPEAT

Just like the original board game, each turn is divided into phases:• Command: Automatically rally your troops, split or merge your squads, and exchange weapons. In the command phase, you lay the foundations for a successful turn.
• Fire: Check your line of sight and firepower, and prepare to set the battlefield on fire. If you have any eligible weapon, you can fire smoke instead of attacking and gain extra protection for your units.
• Move: Move any of your units that did not attack during the previous phase, and try not to be taken by surprise: hostile opportunity fire may be just around the corner.
• Enemy Defense: Be ready to defend your squad. Enemies that did not opportunity fire will have their last chance to harm your units.
• Advance: Advance any of your units by one hex, or conduct a close assault with your infantry forces.

You will roll the dice to determine the combat results, but your luck is in your hands: wise use of terrain, covers, leaders, hindrance, and many more modifiers will greatly improve your chances of success.

MULTIPLAYER SUPPORT

Valor & Victory comes with full multiplayer support: challenge your friends in 1v1 multiplayer matches over PBEM and hot seat. If you’re looking to test your skills, sign up for official tournaments and climb the leaderboard as well.

SCENARIO EDITOR

An extremely intuitive built-in scenario editor allows you to build and play your own scenarios either against the AI or against your friends. Pick a map, set the objective, choose the factions, and place units and defenses where you prefer. Add details and customize your rules: decide the number of turns, the weather conditions, and the starting team. The scenario editor gives you all the tools to create custom, unlimited different challenges.

FEATURES

Random Scenario Generator – endless random battles based on player preferences

Choose AI difficulty levels
Game turn lengths
Fog of War
Steam Workshop functionality
AFV wrecks

Sample Units

Kursk – Battle at Prochorovka

A fan of the old Avalon Hill/SPI WW2 strategy war games? Like to think about your next move rather than having quick reaction times? Battle Series Eastern Front – Kursk – Battle at Prochorovka is the game for you.

Battle Series Eastern Front – Kursk – Battle at Prochorovka, covers one of the largest single tank battles in the history of warfare. Approximately 1400 tanks and assault guns met head to head near the town of Prochorovka, in a battle that became a desperate close-range shoot-out which would decide the ultimate success or failure of Operation Zitadelle.

The 2nd SS Panzer Korps began its attack on July 3rd and spent the next 8 days breaking through the dense Russian defensive positions. During the late afternoon and evening of the 11th, they broke through and repulsed a counterattack by the Russian 31st Tank Corps. Reorganizing during the night, the panzers struck northward before dawn on the 12th. As dawn broke, the lead German elements ran head-on into the lead elements of the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army and the battle was on. It was to last all day, in confused and savage fighting at close ranges.

This game recreates that day with the player being able to play both as the Russians and Germans. Go to yobowargames.com for the latest updates as the game develops

Key Features:

Turn Based with each turn having a Move and Attack phase
Units are at battalion level and represent the units present on the day of the battle
Units have an Attack, Defense, and Movement Allowance
Artillery units also have a Range allowance
The map represents the key features at the time with the embanked railway line and river causing the fighting to be fought almost as three separate battles
2 player game (Hot seat at same PC) or versus Computer playing Russians

Sample Units

Reviews

Real and Simulated Wars – “…fluid-game play, the evident reward for using good grand-tactical approaches and the challenging scenarios are worth the price of admission.”

Wargamer – “…the game meets its goals of translating a simpler system to computers with an accurate and enjoyable result. Bravo and encore!”

Platforms Supported

Operation Typhoon

A fan of the old Avalon Hill board WW2 strategy wargames? Like to move counters around a hex printed wargame board? Then this is the wargame for you!

The Battle for Moscow – the Germans code-named it ‘Operation Typhoon’ – started on October 2nd 1941.

The capture of Moscow, Russia’s capital, was seen as vital to the success of Operation Barbarossa. Hitler believed that once the heart, Moscow, had been cut out of Russia, the whole nation would collapse.

This is a solo player wargame in which you get to play both as the Russians desperately defending their capital and as the Germans equally desperate to capture it. Whoever holds Moscow at the end of the wargame wins.

FEATURES

✔ Turn-based strategy action in WW2
✔ Hot-Hand multiplayer battles
✔ Historical German and Soviet units
✔ Beautiful hand-drawn map
✔ Detailed graphics

April 15, 2018

Fall of France, Helping out the poor QA guy and Website Statistics

Almost 12 months ago I proudly announced I was going to publish Fall of France, designed by Peter Schutze, sometime in 2017. I was young and foolish then and thought I could write a game every 2 or 3 months.

Time and experience have taught me that is just not possible. However, I made a commitment and have finally started some background work on the game.

Below is the final map with some sample German units. Target date to publish? Late 2018…

Helping my poor QA guy

Jonathan, who tests my games to bits, has complained I don’t make it easy for him to get logs and take in-game screenshots to help him show me potential bugs. So this Saturday, while enjoying coffee and double bacon with egg breakfast roll at Starbucks with my wife, I actually got around to writing some code to do just that.

So next time you see some nerdy person at Starbucks coding away just assume they are doing the same thing!

Statistics

Traffic to my website has slowly been growing over the last 12 months. Interestingly the most read article was the one about why no one has published a computer version of Squad Leader.

I also did some comparisons against my store pages on Steam. I wonder if there is a way to draw visitors to my store pages to the other store page or my website? Any tips appreciated.

As you can see from the Steam pages stats China is becoming a very important market.

First up some stats for yobowargames.com.

Next my yet to be released game Battle for Korsun

and then finally Kursk

Finally

Has anyone got some experience of using Discord? I am wondering whether it might be a better way to engage with fans of my games?

April 9, 2018

What Inspires Me

The last three weeks have been a relentless, sometimes soul destroying, drive to polish Invaders from Dimension X and find every bug possible. I have to call out and credit Jonathan for his constant quest to find everything possible that might be wrong with the game.

Between us, I am sure we have played various parts of the game 100’s of times. I can visualize the code in my sleep.

What has come out of these past three weeks is, I believe, a highly polished game. Time will tell if others think the same but I am very happy.

However, the job is not quite done yet. I need to prepare a video, edit the manual, fix a couple more small items in the game and just generally prepare the game ready for launch.

In the meantime, I set my oldest daughter a challenge (paid challenge – shes streetwise and $$$$ wise!). Design a splash screen for my future Picketts Mill civil wargame. The header for this blog is the result. I think she did a great job.

This is what inspires me to keep doing this. The satisfaction of coding a complete game from start to finish. To see new images for a future game.

Oh, and I managed to do a little bit more work on my Model Carrier.

So whats next?

I need to get back to finishing off Battle for Korsun. I am guessing there is maybe a month or twos worth of work left.

In May my graphics artist will free up and start working on Valor and Victory custom maps for me. They will be based on the originals – I will be interested to see what the community think of them.

I also have the map for France 1940 coming. The three games – Valor and Victory, France 1940 and Picketts Mill will share a lot of the common framework that I have built as I worked on Korsun and Invaders. The differences start to appear when implementing each games individual ruleset.

What this means is I can have a basic game with a Map, Units, and movement in about a week. As an example, this weekend, as a break from Invaders, I put together the basic framework for Picketts Mill.

Finally

I see that Matrix finally released Desert War by Brian Kelly. I really admire Brian for working on one game for so long. It shows a real passion and I believe that like me this is not his day job but something he worked on in his spare time.

I am not sure that enough people realize that a lot of wargames are written by developers in their own spare time and they likely won’t make any money from it. There would be a lynching if I came home one day and told my wife “Hey Honey, I quit my job so I can focus on wargames. Everythings going to be ok….”

Did you know that Nightfighter from GMT is still being worked on by two guys? Also in their spare time with young families. I hope they get to see the game published one day.