2012 in review – HFC says Thank You!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 59,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

Dear HFC friends,

we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May you have a wonderful time with your family and friends, enjoying good food and strong drinks and maybe you think about the fact that we are living in good times, no matter what it seems to us sometimes – there were times that were much harder, but even then folks tried to cheer up at Christmas like the German soldiers in the picture, celebrating a WWII Christmas.

2012 for us was both – a great time with lots of games and battlefield trips and also a difficult year with a serious illness in our family, a time full of anxiety and stress. In the end and after a hard time it turned out well though, so we are looking forward to a great family Christmas this year

We are glad to have you all as our readers and hope you enjoy our website and that you will continue to visit the HFC in the next year as well. Hopefully it will be a more relaxed year so we can produce more interesting articles for you! Stay tuned and stay healthy!

All the best for 2013,

Denny & Andreas

To our readers…

"Hey, you see that sign over there? HFC will be back soon!" - "Really? Cool!"

…just a quick note about the lack of activity that you may have noticed here on the HFC website for some time. Real life got a bit busy due to our jobs and because Denny decided to move her HQ closer to my area of operation which in fact means she’s moved to a lovely old house just 2 minutes away from my Rohan battle hall

That will give us even more opportunities to play our games together and we do have some great ones sitting on our shelf that will be tested and getting in depth reviews. Also we plan to expand our gaming to the whole wargame universe which means we’ll add tabletop to the hex ‘ counter consims, LCGs, board-/card based wargames and the rest we already play regularly. We are currently reading anything we can get about the huge Warhammer 40k universe and have already decided with which factions to begin our journey into this new area of our hobby, so prepare to read some AARs about fierce Space Wolves vs. Chaos Space Marines battles.

We are in the end phase of the renovation now and hope to get back to our old and new games (which we really miss to play…) and the usual support of our hobby with infos and stuff here asap. So stay tuned and expect the Homefront Wargame Center to move into gear again soon!

Thanks for visiting our website!

“Operation Red Nose”: the HFC Game Meeting March 2011

"Operation Red Nose" - 4 days of eating, drinking, and non-stop gaming!

This years’ HFC & Friends Game Meeting was again held around the days that are known in Germany as ‘Karneval’ or ‘Fasnacht’ and which is a time when folks start wearing silly costumes, drinking a lot and dancing to a very weird form of music

Since we don’t belong to those who take part in such strange rites, we usually use the time to prepare ourselves with beer, food, and games and then just close the door for a few days of gaming. A good friend of ours, Wolfgang,  who is living in Mainz (also a city which is ruled by the ‘fools’ during this time) then comes over to join us and so he arrived on Friday, quite early. Denny and I got some new cool games over the year which he didn’t know yet, and we were also eager to get some multiplayer games going with games we could only play with two players so far, so we were looking forward to some great game sessions.

When Wolfgang arrived, we started with a little chitchat and had a beer for starters and then we prepared the gaming table. He was very interested in trying out some LCGs about which we talked before and he had some first impressions about the core gameplay of these sort of card games when he played Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers on the Xbox 360 (it’s not a LCG, but not actually a CCG either, so it’s a game in-between with pre-built decks and limited possibilities to customize your deck). But he at least knew the basic gameplay and he liked it, so he was interested to see how a real LCG would be played face to face.

Call of Cthulhu (LCG)

The first game: Call of Cthulhu (LCG)

The first game on the table was Call of Cthulhu (FFG), which is the easiest of the three LCGs published by FFG so far. Since we all love Arkham Horror and the Lovecraft theme, this game seemed to be a good introduction to the LCG genre. We set it up, I explained the basic Sequence of Play and then we started playing right away, using the player aid sheet that we had printed out and laminated before, to make things as easy as possible.

Wolfgang chose the Miskatonic University deck and I played a Shub-Niggurath deck, all of which were mono decks. By now, we own enough Asylum Packs to play all factions of the game as mono decks, and although for some players out there this doesn’t seem to be the best way to play the game competitively, we decided to use mono for Wolfgang’s introductory games for several reasons. First, it’s easier for a new player to see how a faction in a pure format is played, how it feels, and he will soon realize the strengths and the weak points of that faction. To know the specific strengths and weaknesses of a given faction is an important prerequisite for deck customization.To give Wolfgang a very harsh and brutal impression of each fashion, we even removed the neutral cards from all decks, so that he could feel the raw characteristics of each faction without any fine tuning and balancing. The intention was to show him the options for deckbuilding and deck enhancements by chosing a certain focus, adding neutral cards, or even by building a combi deck with a second faction, which will eventually lead to a deck that works great. If you don’t know the characteristics of a certain faction, you don’t really know how to counter their weaknesses or how to maximize their strong aspects.

CoC gaming table

Apart from this, we generally don’t mix all factions wildly together because we love to play the game based more on theme than on raw competition power, so Denny and I also chose our decks based on the humans vs cultists dichotomy that is part of the Lovecraft stories. Denny is playing all cultist/Old Ones factions while I am playing the Syndicate, Miskatonic University and the Agency. In our games, we pimp these factions with neutral cards but seldom mix them with the other factions, it just feels right for us to actually play from a certain story perspective.

The first game indeed showed that the Miskatonic University (with all their professors and students, who are well-educated and learned in old scriptures dealing with arcane content) is a difficult faction to play without any neutral cards. The MU is quite strong in the arcane and investigation struggles, but really weak in terror and combat. That means if you are sending out some of these academics to investigate what’s happening, they might have the knowledge to solve the arcane and investigation struggles but they are easily frightened by anything supernatural. So before they can use their strengths to get some success tokens on a story, they often will flee the scene because of a lost terror struggle or be dead and out of the game after an attack by the monsters lurking around.

Shubb-Niggurath vs. Miskatonic University

Shub-Niggurath, on the other hand, is quite strong in terror and combat, but lacks on the investigation side, so usually this deck doesn’t score a point in the investigation struggle, even if no one is around to stand against them. Therefore, bringing success tokens on the story is taking some time and the fastest way to achieve this is by eliminating the opponent’s characters with terror and combat, so at least you get the additional success token for being unchallenged in a story. The match MU vs. SN seemed to be a bad choice at first and very unbalanced as the first game was a complete domination of my Shub-Nigurrath faction over the MU, who never really got thru because of losing the first two struggles (terror and combat). Afterwards, we decided to play a second game with the same factions nonetheless, because Wolfgang didn’t want to base his judgement about this particular faction on his first game alone, so now feeling a bit more competent and knowing what the MU faction can do – and what not, we shuffled the cards and started again.

This time – and that’s the beauty of the game, really – things went completely different and not really well for me. I wasn’t able to bring out characters in the first turns at all and in later turns only some weak ones while Wolfgang had some great guys on the table, who were able to limit my actions and could control the game by their various character abilities. He hit me fast and hard with some spells, which limited me even further and he actually rushed me and won quite easily this time. Since I couldn’t send out some of my better characters to challenge him, he had not to deal with the terror and combat struggles as much as in our first game. Some of his abilities changed all terror or combat struggles into ones that could only be won with investigation icons and since that’s not the strength of Shub-Niggurath, I usually lost these as well as the genuine investigation struggles. So the second game ended with an easy victory for the MU and it was a good example how even such an unbalanced combination of factions in a game can be won by the faction that is considered the weaker one if things go right for them.

Still, the MU usually has a hard time alone and makes for a much better support faction in a combi deck, so a strong partner who can deal with terror and combat is able to cover their backs, while they can use their arcane and investigation icons to keep standing after being involved in a story and collect success tokens on a regular base.

Generally, Wolfgang liked the game and stated “that it demonstrates very well the strong aspect of LCGs -  very simple game mechanics, but still lots of tactical/strategic options and the possibility to play it according to your very own ideas with the customization of the decks”. This ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ nature of the game appealed to him and so he said: “Let’s try out another LCG!”.

Warhammer Invasion (LCG)

The next game: Warhammer Invasion (LCG)

So we prepared the gaming table for the next LCG, one step up in complexity and options (complexity is a relative term here, of course, because compared with a consim, all LCGs are quite simple) and that was Warhammer: Invasion.

Warhammer: Invasion is based on the Warhammer Fantasy universe, a different universe than the known Warhammer 40k universe, and we only own the core set so far. Thus, when using only the core set, you simply choose your faction from the pre-built decks in the box, spice up this basic deck with 10 random neutral cards and you are ready to go. Wolfgang stuck to a human faction as he did in the previous game, so he chose the Empire. As in CoC, Denny and I had divided the factions among us – she’s playing the Orcs, the Chaos etc. and I’m going into battle with the Dwarfs and the Empire. I didn’t have any problems with Wolfgang’s choice because this would allow me to play a faction which was completely new to me as well. I wanted to try out the Chaos, so after choosing sides and dealing out the neutral cards, we laid out the citadels and the war-horns were blowing…

The Chaos was crushed by the Empire

Using our player aid sheets and the rulebook, we got into the game easily and it didn’t take long before we were engaged with each other, thinking about our possibilities. I had some form of deja vu however, because I couldn’t really bring out many characters. What I had on my hand was expensive and so I had some troubles to defend my citadel while lacking the force to really attack his one. The game went on with some discussions about the rules and the card wordings, which is still a general problem of this whole genre. You are easily disappointed when you come to the game with a consim mind, expecting some clear and extensive rules about all details of the game. One has to adapt to a very literal understanding of the cards’ wording to not get into trouble about how some cards are used and especially when to use them.

In the mid game, I was able to bring out better characters and at least could stand against the fast Empire deck for some time, but in the end I lost. Apparently, you have to get used to the abilities and characters of the Chaos faction if you want to be successful, so we decided to shuffle the decks and used the same cards for a rematch.

This time I had some great cards in my starting hand and was able to bring out some good characters and cards that created corruption to the enemy, while my characters could gain strength thru their corruption! I had some nice little synergies in effect and prepared for some major attack… when the Empire cleared the battlefield with a card that killed all characters in play who were not in a zone with a developement! I didn’t have any developments in play because I planned to use my cards offensively and Wolfgang had only a few characters out and one developement which saved a good character.

As scary as the dark forces of Chaos: The cake, forged by orcs in the depths of Mordor, made of blood and steel

So I saw myself totally open to the enemy with all my good cards and my smart little synergy plan destroyed in one single sweep. Things went bad again for my Chaos faction from then on, I didn’t get any good cards anymore or at least not cards I could afford with my now limited resources and from my citadel I could watch Wolfgang preparing for battle with more and more troops. In the end he had out a dozen cards both for the attack and the defense while I could barely bring out a little demon then and now before everything was killed again and so that game ended also with a glorious victory of the Empire over the Chaos.

This game was even more appealing to him because of the nice touch of options you get with the three zones in play, but the cards and rules questions that came up were a bit disappointing for him. The problem is not so much the fact that a game which uses many different cards and effects and time frames to play cards and defend against cards, has some ambiguous aspects in the wordings of rules and card texts, but the unsatisfying situation that there’s not really any answer to get by the designer(s). When you look for some answers that might help you to clarify specific points, you usually only have the official FAQ and the forum over at FFG or BGG.

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

The HFC staff wishes all of our readers and their families a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Thanks for your interest in our reviews and opinion on the hobby wargaming, we are glad to have made the switch to the new format and the English version of the site. Since the reboot and relaunch of the HFC website 4 months ago, we are now beyond 16000 visits which is quite a success. Some of the reviews crossed the 1000 single readers mark which is actually a great reward for the many hours that went into these articles and of course is a motivation to write more of these long detailed reviews and to help you with a decision to buy or not to buy a certain game.

We plan to bring you even more reviews and interesting stuff in the new year, so keep visiting us here and share your thoughts with us on whatever aspect of the hobby is important for you.

So, we hope that the year ahead will be one with plenty of time for all of us to play all the great games out there, may the wargaming community grow and prosper and may you all stay healthy and safe in the new year wherever you are

 

Happy Gaming!

Denny & Andreas

Remembrance Day – The Longest Day

June, 6th

June 6th, 1944 - D-Day - was the startingpoint for the liberation of Europe

How can you “play war”?

All members of the wargaming community are sometimes facing trouble when explaining their challenging hobby to others – and there are often questions like “how can you “play” war” and “how can someone enjoy such a brutal and nasty event, turning it into something “funny“.”

Especially in Germany, the need of explanation and lack of understanding for the hobby “wargaming” and “historical conflict situation” is significantly higher than in the US or UK, at least for games dealing with WWII or WWI, while other historical eras, for example Napoleonic or Ancients, are at least tolerated, but nevertheless frowned upon.

Of course nobody would be playing these games if there wasn’t any fun in playing them, but such debates often don’t end very satisfying because it’s very difficult to explain “wargames” to folks who are strongly opposed to violence in general and war in particular. The fact that these games are “about war” makes it difficult to explain to ‘outsiders’ what the fun actually is we see in playing them:

That it’s about understanding tactics and strategy, understanding historical decisions, that we use it as a sort of ‘educational tool‘ to get some insights you don’t get by simply reading a book or watching a movie. That we love the chess-like competition and the challenge of tense decison making in an interesting and historical setting. That you can use historical consims to answer “what if” questions (“why didn’t they do this and that historically”, keyword: Operation Sealion) and to understand historical situations better, for example battles for seemingly useless hills or other positions. Last but not least, “those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat ist”.

A counter today was a real soldier then

But of course there’s also some truth in the allegation and we in the HFC think that we should from time to time aknowledge that we are playing something on our maps which was a real battlefield years ago, and that our little counters were indeed real men who did hope to survive, fought bravely and often lost their lifes under terrible conditions. To remember that what is today just calculating maths on the CRT was a real bullet those days. To lose a scenario today is totally different from losing one’s  life in the real thing…

Our maps and counters were real battlefields and real soldiers once

But we also think it’s not necessary to excuse ourselves for loving this hobby – and it is well known that one can get interesting insights into some battles, which is leading to a better understanding of the whole picture. This way wargames can help to provide a better understanding for the real men fighting in those battles – and dying.  If you read in a book that men died while taking a seemingly useless dirty hill somewhere in nowheres land may sound absolutely crazy and like a damned waste of life, but to set up the battle yourself may change your view about it entirely.

Sure, it’s still a hill and war as such is a crazy thing and everybody dying in a war is indeed a tragedy – but the consim you are playing about this specific battle might give you a better idea of how difficult it really was what these soldiers accomplished by taking the hill. And it might also become clear what the reason behind the assault on this hill was and how it affected the ‘bigger picture’. You might understand that it was a keypoint in a supply line and that by taking it other soldiers could be supplied with necessary stuff to stay alive. Or you might see that the whole situation was doomed to failure right from the beginning when generals thought it to be a good idea – giving you the necessary background to judge certain responsibilities of those who were in charge of a certain operation.

If you play a military strategy game about certain battles or operations, you come much nearer to it than by any other means. Wargamers – at least those who play historical conflict simulations – usually don’t just “play games”, but they use a whole bunch of ‘tools’ to understand and evaluate historical situations and learn about certain aspects of military doctrine executed in a historical battle. Reading books, watching documentaries, visiting historical battle sites, discussing with others, playing consims… all this is done in order to understand military thinking  and to learn from history.

Because of this, we consider it a good idea to hold a special day in memory and honor of all those soldiers who fought for the freedom we enjoy today.

It is because of those lads who died for liberating the world from dictatorship that we are allowed to  play these games today – in times of freedom and peace – and that is something we should at least be conscious of once a year.

We have chosen the Longest Day, June 6th, D-Day, as our Remembrance Day, because this brutal battle was the beginning of the end of WWII and therefore seems to be a very good choice for representing all other battles in that war.

On that day, in that battle, all soldiers fought for what they thought to be good reasons to fight for – and in our opinion that’s true for the entire war. The real bad guys those days were the politicians that were in charge and not the average, common soldier who was as abused in this war as he is in any war.

Remembrance Day is a perfect opportunity for visiting historical sites, for example Remagen Bridge

Thus, the Longest Day is held in remembrance of all participants of WWII in particular, but in honor to all soldiers that fought in other wars as well.

We suggest that those involved in THE HOBBY either do not play wargames on this particular day or do so with a heightened awareness of being in a lucky situation today. Maybe you choose to read a book instead, watching a movie about that time or visiting specific warfields, war-museums, taking a look into old family photos portraying those who perhaps lost their life in WWII etc..

If you choose not to play any games on this day (or any other day that you find a better choice for such a personal Remembrance Day) consider it a sacrifice of possible playing time, of having fun, once a year as a symbolic sacrifice to those who didn’t have the opportunity or choice to play it all out on some maps with a few counters, and were forced to take part in the brutal events on June 6th, 1944 that nevertheless finally gave us back – freedom!

So in a certain way this day was indeed the Longest One because the freedom it brought to us still continues today…

Welcome to the HFC – Homefront Wargame Center!

Welcome to the HFC website!

This website is principally dedicated to Wargaming – board and card wargaming, and historical conflict simulations (for example Advanced Squad Leader). But since we are dedicated gamers, we aren’t afraid of looking beyond the borders of the wargaming world, so from time to time, you will also find postings about other games we play, for example Living Cardgames (Call of Cthulhu, A Game of Thrones),  Fantasy boardgames (Arkham Horror, Marvel Heroes) or even videogames.

In the course of transferring the contents from our old static website to the new format, we decided to drop some of the old articles (especially some very old and outdated reviews which will be rewritten from a fresh perspective). In addition, we added more contents and wrote new stuff and hopefully, this website will grow and prosper!

In addition, you will find many travel reports and pictures – we love touring historical sites, not only of recent history (Ardennes, Huertgen Forest, A bridge too far at Arnhem, The Bridge at Remagen…), but also medieval and ancient sites, for example the 2000 year old Imperial City of Speyer!

We hope you like the interactive, modern format and layout. You are cordially invited to leave comments, suggestions, share our articles, send in articles, or to share your own opinion on all topics with us.

Enjoy your stay

Denny & Andreas

This site is a member of the Wargaming WebRing. To browse visit Here.