Second Blog

Please link to my second Blog which will document the experiences of Shiny O'Malley.
http://shinyomalley.blogspot.com/

More Conflict of Heroes news

Word has been going around the Forums that Academy might be working on a Solo CoH project for some time.
This apparently is true. Called Before the Rhine it is apparently being designed by  John Butterfield who designed a game called Ambush back in the 80s

A year ago Uwe wrote:

The first game will focus on battles on the German western frontier in late 1944 --"Before the Rhine". We will concentrate the firefights on battles such as Operation Market-Garden, Battle of The Bulge, Metz, and/or Hurtgen Forest.

Before the Rhine will be based on the CoH system. Each firefight will sport its own map and can be played solo either from the Allied or Axis side, with a two player option (but this is only an option, since the game is a solo gaming system). We tentatively plan on supplying 6 double sided maps with the game.

 This week he wrote again:

Oh yes, very much so. We are play testing the first firefights and they are incredible. I think that we will be able to also back design the previous games with this system. I am checking on some unique options, which I cannot disclose at this time. If they are not cost prohibitive, I will announce them.

 Sounds exciting.

Implied Coh: Guadalcanal release date

On Boardgamegeek Uwe Eickert has implied that Conflict of Heroes: Guadalcanal will be released in July of this year. ARRGGGH! (Charlie Brown style kite eating tree reaction) So long... So very long... what can I do until then... water! water! (of course I don't mind things being done right, it's just... I think I was hoping for March or April)
I wonder if Academy will release anything else before then?

Official US WWII histories online

I just randomly stubled across the Hyperwar site yesterday. It seems that they have all of the official US Army histories of WWII online including illustrations and (most importantly) maps.
This is a truly remarkable find. I've read all of Two of these volumes (Cartwheel and Victory in Papua) and much of another (Approach to the Philippines), am reading one now (Guadalcanal) and own two others (Fall of the Philippines, and Seizure of the Marshalls and Gilberts) but some of the editions I had did not include the Map inserts.
I include this link for your reading pleasure:
Hyperwar: US Army in WWII

Nerdlandia

From Chris Ware's ACME Novelty Library (#16) I think (used w/o permission)

Lately I've been lapsing into my semi-annual fruitless RPG nostalgia. Reread MAR Barkers first two (and only readable) Tekumel novels Man of Gold and Flamesong. Also investigating the phenomenon of Retro-Clone and Nostalgia  old school RPGs. Curious. Unfortunately it all seems to revolve around a worship of OD&D or Basic D&D, which I did like better than AD&D. But I was into other systems, namely TFT: In the Labyrinth, Basic Roleplaying: Worlds of Wonder: Magic World, Runequest II and EPT.

Mostly I'm waiting for CoH: Guadalcanal to come out. It certainly looks to be even better than I hoped. There's also talk of  a late War Eastern Front expansion pack which will be interesting especially since it will add Partisan counters..

I played in a quick Napoleonics game last weekend and had a lot of fun. For me Napoleonics are weird in that I like to play games in that era, look at the figs, etc. but I don't read hardly anything about it. I'm this way with Western Front WWII also, love to game it, not to read about it. See Napoleon's HQ blog for a brief account of this game. I was defending the town that the rogue French commander attacked.

Been reading Bergerud's Touched with Fire again (slowly), along with John J. Miller's Guadalcanal: the First Offensive. The Bergerud book is one of my all time top History books (see sidebar). Also indulging in my love of old school adventure comics (such as Joe Kubert's Tarzan and Enemy Ace, Hal Foster's Prince Valiant plus newer loves such as Love & Rockets and Xenozoic Tales.