Friday 28 October 2011

Wargames rules and the new technologies

Sorry for the lack of activity lately. Work, trips and family are sometimes a lethal combination to maintain the blog alive. I have a good pipeline of posts pending including a very impressive Zulu War AAR, a new game of our Stalingrad campaign and our first blood experience with the Vietnam era rules Charlie Don't Surf. I hopefully progress with this over the next days

But the great news are that the very much anticipated new version of I Ain't Been Shot Mum is out for sale since Monday this week. I have the opportunity to read them quietly on Monday, as I had a long-haul trip to the States, and I can only say the Señor Clarke has excelled himself this time. The lay-out is superb and the new game mechanisms included (some of them widely tested in previous rules sets like Charlie Don't Surf, TWT or Sharp Practice) do really look good. This is not a simple revamp of the previous version written 10 years ago, but a complete new set of rules.

The other great piece of news is that Señores Clarke and Skinner (IABSM co-writers) had decided to embrace the new technologies and  have launched the first (at least to my knowledge) Ipad-based wargame rules version. I was not sure what to expect from this, but our Italian(-American?) Lardie friend Victor Cina (also one of my favourite bloggers) came to the rescue, posting this interesting video in Youtube today.

Are we reaching a new an inflection point in the wargames rule world? And is TFLsetting a trend here: a high-quality, affordable, and friendly-user product? Only time will tell, but in the meantime I advise you to both watch Victor's video and give a try to IABSM: perfect wargames happines is only 12 British pounds away in Ipad or pdf... can't find a better price/risk product combination around. 

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