Weekender: New Star Wars X-Wing Set Spotted & FoW Team Yankee Previews
August 29, 2015 by dignity
Welcome to The Weekender where we're catching up on some of the awesome stuff we've seen over the week! There's plenty to talk about when it comes to terrain and did someone say a new X-Wing Force Awakens set was on the horizon?
Flames Of War: Team Yankee
Team Yankee is making the team in the studio very excited and John takes us through some of the new vehicle previews we've been seeing for this new theatre of war for Flames Of War.
If you're looking for awesome Artillery and Aircraft then this might be the game for you.
High Sci-Fi Terrain
It's also time to get stuck into some awesome terrain. Lots of the focus is on the Hardfoam Terrain coming out of Micro Art Studios and the HDF Terrain by ZEN.
Both manufacturer's terrain would suit your high Sci-Fi tabletops and Lloyd in particular is a fan of the Hardfoam route.
4Ground have also sneaked up this weekend and dropped some new 10mm Terrain for Dropzone Commander which helps dream up all sorts of scenarios.
Force Awakens X-Wing
If you were excited about Star Wars: The Force Awakens and you also liked the dogfighting of X-Wing by Fantasy Flight Games then you'll want to listen in as we talk about the new Starter Set dropping (hopefully) later this year.
Fancy a new age X-Wing and some revamped TIE Fighters?
Lobotomy Board Game
Titan-Forge have also been running a campaign for their insanity inducing board game known as Lobotomy. We take a look at the game and discuss some of the mechanics that could make this quite the original experience.
Prize Winners!
Last but not least make sure to tune in to see if you were a winner of not one prize draw but two.
- Winner: theniffrig Prize: £50 KoW Army and Gamer Edition Rule Book
- Winner: Andrew Page Prize: KoW Gamer Edition Rule Book
- Winner: Martin Hawk ---Prize: KoW Gamer Edition Rule Book
- Winner: silverstars _-_--Prize: KoW Gamer Edition Rule Book
- Winner: Éva Jakab --Prize: KoW Gamer Edition Rule Book
- Winner: ozzyuk Prize: Dungeon saga & Adventurer's Companion
Claim Your Prize Here
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Gooooooooood morning!
Happy Weekend!!
As someone who works in the field of mental health, the Lobotomy game sounds very shite. Sense of humour failure on my part.
Yeah this was pretty much my response too. I’ll hold my judgement until we know a bit more about it though.
Totally agree. Society still has a long way to go in its attitudes to mental health. Crap like this doesn’t help.
I agree that the theme of the game is rather tasteless and did anyone else notice that those character cards look a lot like Arkham/Eldritch Horror?
For myself, I don’t blame the guys for doing what they do. To them it’s obviously just a game, not one that I would buy into but just a game however I do understand the distaste, especially for people with personal experience of mental health issues.
I get that it’s just a game, but the way it was reported on was appalling. Phrases like “you’re a nutter in an asylum” are just awful and insensitive. I’m genuinely annoyed by this. It’s shameful.
It’s a game, a characature, fiction. The chaps are not ‘reporting on’ anything real life here.
A little bit of perspective here would be a good thing. If you want to take offence, there is plenty of topics covered you can do that on here.
Or…
You can cut the guys some slack and understand they are talking about a game … Not real life.
If you would like to have a conversation with them about real life I’m very happy to arrange that for you.
@warzan had you chosen to pm me about this, I would have replied in kind. However, since you chose to do this publicly, here goes;
I’m sure it was done in all innocence @warzan , but that does not make it any less offensive. There are huge numbers of people around the world, myself included, for whom mental health issues have an impact on their lives everyday, even to the point of actual or attempted suicide. We don’t have a choice about this (although we can apparently choose whether or not to be offended by being referred to as “nutters”.) I’m certain no offense was deliberately meant and you could have taken this opportunity to apologise for any offense you inadvertently caused. (Although how anyone could innocently think calling people with mental health issues nutters isn’t offensive is beyond me). Instead you choose to be utterly dismissive. So no, I don’t want to discuss this further thank you and I’ll be taking a long and possibly permanent break from BoW.
As you wish @erastus
I don’t believe for a second that any of the chaps referred directly or indirectly to you or anyone else. So yes you have the choice on taking offence because I’m certain it was never intended.
It’s a difficult thing not offending folk, sometimes because you can wander unwittingly into topics that cause offence and sometimes because someone chooses to take offence.
I do know that there never has (or will be) an episode aired where the intention is to upset or offend anyone, but I also know that if every topic has to be vetted to see if it might offend someone… Well you can kiss good bye to almost every topic.
My response was to ask for a little perspective, if you genuinely believe that any of us would ever set out to cause you discomfort or hurt, well then you clearly don’t know us.
All the best.
I’ve been a psychiatric nurse for the last 25 years and I actually found the game and the way in which the guys talked about it offensive. The media has a massive part to play in the way that people with mental health problems are perceived. This game and your presentation was unfortunately not positive.
@raglan I’m not going to dispute that 🙂
As said above its a perilous thing wandering through topics, and I have no doubt the guys will be feeling rather low on this one (they are a sensitive bunch really)
I have been in psychiatric treatment on and off since I was 18 (now 62) I recently stopped Prozac after 15 years and still refer to them as my happy pills! I did not find anything the boys said offensive or hurtful to me. For Christ’s sake as you said it’s only a game, for which I am now a backer for on Kickstarter!
Keep up the good work and tell the boys this is one nutter who supports them.
I feel that saying that the segment needs a little perspective is very true, but also very disingenuous. It feels almost like a Get Out of Jail Free card to any subject, as long as it’s a game.
Personally, my own issue is one of disappointment that this level of lack of understanding/empathy still pervades, and in such a “public” forum as a main page video. It says to me that there is still a long way to go to increase the understanding of mental health problems, and to reduce the social stigma.
I also do not feel that the guys need to make an apology, as such. I don’t believe that any of them would intentionally set out to cause offence, on any subject that affects a person’s life. All of you seem great guys, and that is one of the reasons that I am a back-stager.
It’s potentially easier to have an empathy for subjects such as the World Wars, because there is so much material in the public domain that illustrates the effects that it had on individual human lives, and so it creates a sensitivity around the subject: we can game in that setting, and have a laugh in that setting, but a lot of us are sensitive enough not to find amusement in (for instance) stories of resistance fighters being tortured for information. There’s an informed balance, I guess you could say. So, referring to the segment about the Lobotomy game, I suppose that the problem was the absence of “informed balance”.
That’s not to say there is an absence of humour around the subject of mental health, because there is humour in almost any situation. It’s probably gallows’ humour, but I could see the “funny side” when a guy who was planning to end his life by jumping off a high building said that it would enable him to tick Base Jumping off his bucket list. Or when a person asked for liquid medication after an overdose of tablets, because have a problem swallowing……tablets.
So, in the interests of introducing empathy into the subject, and also because that empathy can increase the enjoyment of entertainment media, I’d like to ask interested people to try to imagine how they might feel in the following situations that I’ve come across:
– I spoke with a person who was very quiet and withdrawn. They described seeing (and feeling) evil black witches crawling over the walls and ceiling. As someone who finds this imagery disturbing in films, I found it very easy to empathise with the person’s fear.
– You cannot leave your room, because *someone* is inserting thoughts into your head. These thoughts aren’t your own. And everyone else knows about it, because they watch you in the street, but everyone also denies it and says you are making it up. But they know, and you have to protect yourself!
– Your children are in danger, and are going to be abducted and killed. You can’t prove who is going to do it, so no one believes you. You also know that you have to kill yourself to stop these unknown people from harming your children, but you don’t want to do it. So you harm yourself by burning your skin, or cutting into your body, because you know that this will delay the harm coming to your children.
– You are having very upsetting thoughts, of subjects that are so disturbing you cannot share the content with anyone, because you are scared and ashamed. But you cannot get rid of the thoughts, and the more you try the more they invade your mind.
– You are feeling anxious and afraid all of the time. You don’t know why you are feeling this, because logically you cannot identify any cause. The anxiety is constantly triggering all of the accompanying physical fight-or-flight symptoms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response
– Something very bad is going to happen to someone. You don’t know who, or how, but the feeling is strong inside you. As long as you flick the light switch on and off 40 times when you leave a room nothing bad will happen. But it has to be EXACTLY 40 times, and so you anxiously count each time you flick the switch. If there is ever a moment of doubt that you may have miscounted, you MUST start again. And you know that it is irrational, and that everyone looks at you when you are doing it. And you also know it is self-reinforcing, and that every time you flick the switch 40 times and nothing bad then happens it reinforces in your mind that it succeeded.
– You feel sad all of the time, but you don’t know why. You gain no enjoyment any more, but you go through the motions with friends so that they don’t worry about you. You have no energy or motivation, and you try to sleep more and more so that you don’t have to experience the drudgery of your existence. You feel hopeless and lost, and nobody knows how empty you are inside. You don’t want to kill yourself, but you wish you weren’t alive.
– You hear voices. They come when you least want them to. They are real people, real voices, but you never see where they are coming from. No one else seems to react to these voices. The voices say bad things to you. They know the most hurtful things to say to you. They know the things that make you feel afraid. They know your thoughts! And they are always there. You sometimes feel that it would be better to be dead than to experience this constant awfulness, and sometimes the voices even tell you to kill yourself because you are so worthless.
– And on the flip side…. You hear voices. They come when you are feeling down, and they cheer you up. They are real voices, but you never see where they are coming from. No one else seems to react to these voices, which is a shame for them because the voices are always telling the funniest of jokes to you. The voices help you when you are feeling down or stressed out. You would never want to lose the voices.
So, there’s a few exercises in imagination. As I said before, empathy can help with understanding of mental health problems, but also increase the enjoyment of games/films/books that deal with those themes.
Preaching moment…. Mental and physical health are intertwined, and are not unconnected entities: one affects the other. As with physical health, a person’s mental health will vary throughout their day to day lives. Everyone is “normal”, in that it is “normal” for their health to vary.
Apologies for the length of this. If only essays had been this easy to write. 😉
@erastus
Understand. I just think it was done in all innocence. Anyway, I respect your point of view and your concern and I think it’s a good thing that this is discussed.
I didn’t look at the cards, but the mini’s are very nice. I love their theme.
It’s unfortunate some people have felt the segment of the show about the Broad Game Lobotomy caused offence. I was in the show and I can assure you that we would not aim to offend people. Human’s are varied and complicated and one can not always know what may be felt to be offensive.
We talk about lot’s of different gaming scenarios on Beasts of War and allot of them are based on real world events such as WW2, Vietnam etc. and as such do try to be sensitive to peoples feelings.
In this case we have been chatting about a game with lot’s of references to none real world characters such as a sort of daemon and a construct I guess based on Frankenstein and movie references. As such we may not have appreciated that it’s a game based on a real world problem and what people affected in some way by metal illness may make of this segment of the show.
Actually Lloyd, I think it’s unfortunate that you featured the game at all. The game and it’s presentation was ultimately in poor taste. Most of the time you guys are awesome, but this was a wrong call and an apology may be helpful.
I think that was him making an apology in a long winded sort of way 😉
(That’s an @lloyd trait 😉
Warren, I don’t believe for one minute the guys purposely set out to cause offense, you all seem like a very nice bunch who try hard to tow the PC line. However, I have witness mental health organisations over the years fight extremely hard to breakdown the negative stereotyping relating to mental illness. As a result, I personally didn’t like what I heard today and felt the need to raise my views on the forum.
@warzan @lloyd at no point has anyone accused you of deliberately setting out to offend people. Let me make a less emotive analogy.
If I was walking down the street, not looking where I was going and accidentally bumped into you, you might expect me to say sorry. I didn’t set out intending to bump into you, but saying sorry would be the polite thing to do. You might reasonably think me rude if I didn’t.
I haven’t seen a single word here that sounds like sorry. I’ve seen plenty of excuses. I’ve seen you imply rather heavily that it’s my fault if I’m offended. It’s the equivalent of me bumping into you and then saying, well you did choose to stand in my way.
You’ve essentially put out an extended piece laughing at mental illness. I totally get why some people who do suffer from mental illness might find this funny, but you should acknowledge that others wouldn’t. I make jokes about it myself, so do my friends, but that is totally different from mental illness being ridiculed publicly in this way.
I’m actually less annoyed by the content of the video than I am by the fact that not one of you has actually said sorry if you inadvertently caused offense. All you’ve posted is excuses. Had you just said “sorry, we didn’t mean to cause offense” I’d have thought, ok fair enough and forgotten all about it. However you’re response amounts to, it’s not our fault if you choose to be offended. Even Lloyd’s long winded attempt doesn’t actually say ‘sorry’.
You didn’t offend me I enjoyed it. See my comment to Warren’s post
I would be a bit miffed if Battlefront didn’t do the rest of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The variety of vehicles and aircraft surely means it is just good business from an expansion point of view. They of course would need a terrain option for the British, a row of garages where all the vehicles that are broken down can fight from (let’s face it that’s pretty much all of them!). They could also model in damaged doors and bent bollards just to give it that true BAOR feel! Oh how I do miss dragging out 432’s with no engine and final drive, so I can paint it for a crews front parade…….NOT!
Lobotomy the used to a very credible way of treating many cases of mental health. What if all we do now is seen by our future generations as barbaric, like the mass prescription of medication. I only mention this because we should not judge, but rather analyse. Dr McCoy made mention of medieval treatments of the 21st Century. I would like to see the game based on its playability; Pandemic as example is a great board and app game. I’m sure that the gallant ladies and gentlemen who were and are still involved in Ebola similarly dislike it. But it’s a game, mental to test strategy. High 5 though, I’m glad people like you exist to help. I’m a TRIM leader, so I know a tiny bit about the beginnings of aid mental health issues (a very small bit). Happy Saturday.
Medical treatments, and the understanding of the human mind & body, are constantly evolving so it’s very likely that in 100 years times people will be appalled at our current treatments. Dr McCoy’s line is a good reminder about that. 🙂
Your point about Ebola is a valid one, but I think the difference lies in how the subject matter is treated. War games, for instance, are only really playable because we are able to discard how it would affect people in the real world. The first Austin Powers film highlighted the disconnect when it showed the ‘real world’ consequences whenever a henchman of Dr Evil was killed: a wife making dinner for her hardworking family-man husband and then getting a phone call saying that that he was killed by a mutated sea bass, etc.
In the case of the old lobotomy treatment, it is never good when a doctor decides to use a household item to scramble part of your brain. 😉
You made me smile at the ‘No by thinks about the henchmen’ What an awesome film, I’m going to watch it right now man, thanks for the laugh
Morning All,
I’d highly recommend ‘Red Army’ by Ralph Peters. It outshines ‘Chieftains’ by a country mile in terms of realism, grit and expertise. I read ‘Chieftains’ last week and I have to say I wasn’t that impressed.
It will be interesting to see what the infantry are equipped with as there were a number of man portable anti armour weapons for taking out vehicles and how the aircraft interact with the game.
Those hard foam buildings in black have a real feel of the aliens film. They may work really well with the AVP game or as bunkers for the Terminator game.
Lobotomy looks like an interesting game in the vein of the Sucker Punch film. I wonder if you could adapt it to play the film scenarios out. Dig out your dragon model, alternate WW1 models and giant samurai with miniguns. Hmmmmmm that last one may be a tough one.
use the malifaux samurai. they already have shoulder mounted miniguns
It’s the weekend!
Infinity day at my FLGS vs my son’s birthday… Tough call!
Shamefully, it does cause pause for thought. I love infinity
he’ll have other birthdays and once the presents are given out kids usually ignore you till they get hungry
check out my forum post for Xwing. Ive been putting all the info i cant find about the new set there http://www.beastsofwar.com/groups/sci-fi-gamer-town-square/forum/topic/new-xwig-models-and-cards-sighted/
@johnlyons – why don’t we stick it all in a rocket and launch into into space?
Answer: Just think of the environmental disaster should the rocket explode on launch, after all the STS (Shuttle system) had a failure rate of about 1 in 70! Also certain space missions have launch with RTG (Radioisotope Thermal Generators, basicaly small lumps of radioactive material) and the environmentalists were shouting about the small (a few kgs) of material being launched then. Back in the mid-90’s when I was studying Space Science at Uni we were told about a mission from ESA being launched with an RTG and the word was “don’t mentioned the RTG!”.
That’s me told 🙂 Thank you for the insight 😀
We were queueing up John. 😎
How about drilling a veeeeery deep hole, and then dropping it down the hole. It always works in the films, except when people throw things down disused mineshafts. Things thrown down disused mineshafts have a way of coming back….
Wrote something but it cut me off so I’ll try to remember .
I’ll probably be down voted but I was upset with the conversations regarding mental health. Although I have no issue with the game I certainly won’t buy it.
I was saddened by the use of slang words by Justin and Lloyd (sorry guys but I was) to describe sufferers such as nutter etc. if slang words were used for ethnic minorities there would be uproar and rightfully so so I think we should treat people with equal respect as mental health affects everybody at some level. I did cringe a few times during this part of the show as 3 adults rubbed their hands at possibilities of people attacking potted plants or using fantasy weapons that didn’t extist but maybe that’s just me.
To end on a positive I enjoyed the rest of the show and look forward to tomorrow.
“Cringe-worthy” would be how I’d describe that section too.
they weren’t having a discussion about mental health – It was clearly obvious they were talking about a game with an entirely fictional setting that references pop culture and fictional horror movie characters, themes and settings. It seems strange to take offence to this and make into something that it isn’t.
I think “taking offence” is different to finding something cringe-worthy. My dancing is cringe-worthy, but no one has been offended by it yet.
Huzzah! Snoopy dance engaged! Thanks BoW and Mantic folksies!!
Congrats ozzyuk. That’s an incredible prize!
Team Yankee does go nuclear in a way. It is set in the reality of Sir John Hackett’s book The Third World War and a couple of cities are taken out in that but no battlefield nukes were used.
Great Weekender, I am now signed up to Lobotomy.
Really enthusiastic about the Team Yankee stuff coming out. The Harrier JJ is a ’70s craft so defiantly well past ‘just being introduced’ by the ’80s. May have to go NATO because Warthog, nuff said.
@gazky I’m in total agreeance with you. This game shouldn’t have been given the time of day in my opinion and especially in the manner it was handled. Methos games featuring madness get away with it because these monsters are real and the unfortunate is regarded as mad by a society that will or cannot believe in the awful ‘truth’ these people have seen but having a game that’s whole premise is “ohh crazy people! Oga boga boga! The’ll get ya!” is not just not cool.
In an age where we have games like ‘Freedom: The Underground Railroad’ or ‘Dog Eat Dog’ (reviewed here: http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/review-dog-eat-dog/) that can deal with sensitive issues in a mature, thought provoking and often heartbreaking way, why should we stand for games that deal with issues like this in a backward and frankly childish manner? This does nothing to further the hobby, in fact, it’s shameful.
I was quite interested in John’s idea about launching nuclear waste into space before Justin interrupted him. 😎
But seriously, the only reasons I can think of against space disposal are the cost and more importantly the risk. If you are launching a cargo of nuclear waste through the stratosphere and it goes bang then I don’t think it would bode well for the human race.
At last. X-Wing. Hurrah!!!
Space elevator is the key I think 🙂
Yes, once we get it into space then it’s problem solved. The elevator might just be the way to do it, so I think we should keep up that nanotube research.
We will need to also solve the space junk problem. As I would’nt think a space elivator could be moved to avoide a collision. Then we’re do we send it, the Moon maybe?
We do what superman did bro 🙂
Tie it all up in a big net and sling it towards the sun!
We can’t send the radioactive stuff to the Moon, because when we terra-form it there would be areas of New Eden that were off bounds. Gotta plan for the future. 😉
If we put it on the moon, then it’ll detonate and send it and the attached Moonbase Alpha hurtling through space.
1,00th floor -Nuclear Waste, thank you
You could dump all your nuclear waste on the moon…. Oh wait maybe thats not such a great idea after all ..lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g
Wow, after talking to people about Team Yankee, Third World War, Red Storm Rising, and especially especially especially “Red Army,” someone’s tipped ME off about a CWGH novel I’ve never read or even heard of. Chieftains, eh? Thanks very much, @johnlyons . I’ll be checking that out. 😀
John’s idea about fighting in an “NBC” environment is probably the best idea I’ve seen on BoW re: how to actually incorporate nuclear or post-nuclear table top.
Do it! Infact, PM me dude and we could discuss it 🙂
Purchased and on the way, @johnlyons. I will read when it arrives and PM you thereafter. :).
HI Folks, remember during that period we also had Tactical Nuclear Weapons which were designed at the time to be used on the battlefield. These are the types of weapon that were referred to in Twilight: 2000 rpg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon
Using “nukes” on a “realistic” minis table, even “tactical” nukes, is pretty problematic. I think this is what @johnlyons was talking about. Average FoW tables represent, what, 400-800 feet on a side? Tactical nukes usually ran 20-300 kt, fired from nuclear artillery like the M110A2 at a range of 25 miles (1250 feet at 1/100). So yeah. Then again, I don’t usually use “heavy” artillery or big air strikes on a minis table. Scale, scale, scale. 🙂
“Tactical” nukes against an army usually meant an actually army, (most minis game field platoons or coma is even though we call them “armies”) 2-3 corps totaling 200,000+ men on a battlefield 150 miles across.
Agreed I find the nuclear conundrum on table top fascinating.
At our typical scale of games, they very quickly wipe out a quarter of a table, and if you scale up (or is that down lol) you get to the point where the weapons scale up and then it goes very quickly to MAD (mutually assured destruction) or in games terms – game over
Is the ‘game mode for nuclear’ everything up until first strike?
I agree, @warzan . . . although I would honestly say that even the “average” sized artillery or air strike would wipe out “a quarter” or the entire board completely . . . but that’s my “operational” scale side talking. 🙂
What I was intrigued by, and what I may actually try in some weird way in the near future, is what @johnlyons was saying about a POST-NBC battlefield (NBC = nuclear, biological, chemical). When nukes go off over a certain area (or other weapons of mass destruction), that particular “table” of the “battle area” has in some was become almost sci-fi, the surface of another planet, i.e., inhospitable to human life. Having worn “MOPP-4 level gear on training exercises a few times myself, I can can only imagine what it would have been like to wear and try to fight in this stuff.
Certain tanks and APCs had NBC overpressure and filter systems that can allow a vehicle to fight and operate in irradiated, devastated environments like this, almost like Terminator’s “Los Angeles 2029” environment.
The point of “tactical nukes” (insanely) was to use the smaller nuke to burn a hole in an enemy’s operational line, then rush conventional forces through the breach (trained and equipped in NBC warfare, or course).
This was kind of of the point of Soviet “Sarin” nerve gas and American equivalents . . . it killed and then broke down into harmless component elements after say 30-60 minutes or so.
The huge question, and probably where the “strategy” (if you want to call it that) breaks down, is whether “tactical” or “operational” nuclear warfare could have been prevented from IMMEDIATELY escalating into “strategic” nuclear warfare, which is, well . . . yeah, game over.
There’s an old BBC film called Threads that dealt with the aftermath of a nuclear war, and its effects on society. Perhaps not very useful for a wargame, but interesting stuff for a role playing game.
Link for it on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/18781528
If you are looking for source material of the cold war going hot, check out Twilight 2000, published in the 80s and 90s, did a great job of describing immediate aftermath.
Twilight 2000 was an awesome game back in the day. We never did reach Kraków, though …:)
We did. It was bloody awful
As bad as it was even trying to get TO the damned place, I’m not surprised. We had a hugely-overpowered group, too. But I think the more firepower we amassed, the more hostile attention we drew . . . that and we made the game unmanageable. 🙁
Congratulations to all the winners! I am green with envy. Great video as usual.
I LIKED Warren’s segment on nuclear warfare. It introduced us to NUKEMAP, and these occasional digressions onto topics such as nuclear warfare and the finer points of archery make the show a little more interesting and less predictable.
A10! A10! A10! A10! A10! A10! A10!
etc. and so on. Wow!
Folks – the original Harrier entered RAF service in 1969 so yes it (or some of the later variants) would have been there for a late 1980’s hypothetical WW3.
The BAOR was part of the NATO front line, so maybe Battlefront will cover them. I would like to see the West German equipment – Leopard 1 and 2, Marder, Flakpanzer Gepard and suchlike.
“Harrier entered RAF service in 1969 so yes” – Cool and really great looking equipment you listed there. I goggled them and the Flakpanzer Gepard looks like a beast.
Hell yeah, @lloyd -Harriers were the whole Falklands War of 1982 – so they’re definitely ready for a mid80s Team Yankee war! 🙂
I’ve always loved Gepard. Maybe the Brits would get Marksman as thier AA tank, a bit more ugly but still…
We actually had a Gepard in our old Twilight 2000 party . . . or was it a “Sergeant York?” Either way, twin 40mm autocannon in a world without aircraft!! What’s an armoured self-propelled AA gun platform to do? Oooo, look! Dismounted Soviet infantry in the open! Load up the proximity fuzed HE, baby! Time to clock in and do some WORK!
Great video!
The Broad Game Lobotomy looks great! It looks like it will be a trip to play and I intend to grab a copy based on your video.
Team Yankee is really starting to look interesting. At the very least I expect to get so great minis out of it. Hopefully they will not cripple the Soviets with to many silly rules. Slightly lower training(not SF). Also armored vehicles can catch on fire is all that they need. The fire thing we(grunts in the field anyway) didn’t know at the time. Having seen many T-62/72 set on fire with 40mm WP and larger rounds since is just hindsight. SO getting the rules will be my first priority.
Those A 10s were slatted for striking rear area columns by NATO not for CAS in the 80s. Nice models but the game seems to be heavily based on flawed source material though.
So just three A10s for me please…
I don’t feel the boys were at all insulting to the mentally ill. I have several clients who have been residents of an institution; One, a severe schizophrenic, says of himself “if I don’t take my meds I’m a total nut job”.
I also don’t find the game offensive, edgy maybe, but not offensive. The game simply puts forth what these individuals MIGHT be seeing in their disturbed thoughts. I actually find it a fascinating and refreshing look at the topic.
I understand not everyone seeing it the same way I do. Though in my opinion, the solution is simple. Don’t buy the game.
Have you not heard self-stigmatizing, it can be one of the most damaging things mentally we can do to ourselves? Best read up on that if you are working with clients with mental health problems.
Try not to beat yourselves up guys. I am sure myself and many others are looking forward to tomorrow’s episode and please don’t let the above comments dampen your enthusiasm and passion for all things geek.
I was shocked by the discussion on the game Lobotomy. Mental illness is not funny and the idea of the game is sick. The use of terms ‘nutter’ and ‘looney’ was sad. What next a game were players get cancer? Apology please.
I’m very sorry that the chat about the game offenended you and others. Although I suspect you already know that it wasn’t intended that way?
Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in chatting about the games, that the real world aspect is just not so very obvious 🙁 (to be fair we do try to just keep it focused on the games as a lot of the games we cover have a lot of heavy real world attachments – so there is no perfect balance)
I can’t say it won’t happen again, because we’re only human and it’s not easy to be sensitive to every issue, but as always we’ll certainly try 🙂
So, people can get offended by a GAME that takes place in a mental institution, but the same people don’t get offended by wargames (killing, death and so on)?
I just don’t get it?
I think Jim Morrison was right “people are strange”.
It is always strange how we pick and choose what we determine to be ok or not. As you say, surely wargames where we re-enact actual real battles that killed real people ‘could’ be seen as very insensitive if you chose to view it that way. I didn’t see anyone taking offence about BoW blowing up their local town with a nuclear bomb last time, but I might have missed the comments 😉
We’re able to disconnect games from how the events would really effect people. A model getting “killed” is simply removed off the table, no harm done. If we think about them as ‘real-world’ events the tone changes. Even in the Weekender where the nuclear blasts were discussed the tone changes when Warren linked it to the number of deaths that would occur, and the horror of the real-world effects surfaced.
I don’t have any issue with the Lobotomy game itself (I just won’t buy it), but more with the slang language gleefully used during the video segment. It didn’t offend, but the lack of empathy/understanding did disappointment me. There been a drive for years to reduce the stigma people suffer in regard to mental health illnesses, so for me it was a stark reminder that there is still a long way to go. But offended? No.
@locust I don’t see how you can determine they have no empathy from this video, as they were discussing a game and it’s fictional theme. For me it seemed clear they entirely focused on the game and the game’s ‘craziness’, and weren’t trying to parallel the game to real people or mental issues (which if they had would of course been out of order). Is ‘nutter’ really meant as a bad slang word now? Honestly had no idea, thought it was just a silly term you called yourself and friends when you did something stupid.
@spamelot
I didn’t say they had no empathy.
“the lack of empathy/understanding did disappointment me” – errrr?
I don’t see how you can extrapolate me saying there was a lack of empathy/understanding regarding mental health stigma to mean “they have no empathy”. Two totally different ends of the spectrum.
The difference is not the subject matter, but the way it’s handled. Most historical war games deal with their subject matter respectfully, and sensitively, and the tone is just about right. Fictional settings are obviously largely uninhibited by the need to do so (nobody in real life lost family in the battle for Macragge), but even then, tend not to be needlessly crass about it.
Even so, many people, including myself, have expressed reservations about some war games. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable gaming Vietnam. This comes down to personal preference.
This game deals (lobotomy) with something that is very real, and does so in a way which doesn’t bring anything positive to the table.
Well said sir!!
I think lobotomy looks fantastic game I’m going to back this Kickstarter
and when it comes out I will take it to my therapy groupI think the guys at the men’s group will really enjoy it
I thought Lobotomy looks absolutely fantastic, what a brilliant idea for a game, to take the thing that we are all afraid of (loosing control of our rational minds) and putting it into a horror board game. I think that it would make people think a little or a lot about mental health; and have a f-ing awesome time by themselves (love 1 player options) or with their friends. Don’t get so up tight about the common phrases people use. Political correctness can take a running jump. If people just said what was on there minds and others not take everything to heart like bunch of flowers then world might not be so f-ing two faced. I’m backing the Kick starter.
What about pandemic? What about 40k where you try to kill everything? What about Operation where it’s funny to conduct medical negligence, what about strip poker where your trying to get…….laid hee hee. What to do good, give 10% of all you earn to charity.
A interesting show like the figures & bunkers that are coming out.
Don’t forget Chernobyl that was a reactor that burst in to flames and melted! @lloyd
I am very excited about Team Yankee. The idea of fielding units that I have so much history in this time period. The A10 is one incredible weapons platform. There is an aerial gunnery range at Ft. Leonard Wood that the A10 practice at all the time. You hear the brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr sound of their 30mm nose gun going off is incredible. The amazing part is being able to put a round in every square inch of a football (American ) field in a single pass.
Talking about Star Wars offended me. I demand an apology! If I don’t get an apology, I’m packing my dice bag and leaving. That talk of R2 D2 was disgusting.
Talking about GW products always offends me, but I rise above it. 😉
I agree! R2D2 is a filthhy little runt who has haunted my entire life. I saw a psychiatrist about it once in the nineties and all this talk about that damned robot is clearly no joking matter at all! Also, think of the children!
I love how people who feel offended by [insert any topic ever created] want to blow it out of proportion. There are several things in life which I take very seriously (having a physically and mentally disabled sister can be fairly tough at times) but I’ve never taken offense when people crack disabled people jokes or so. Why would I? They aren’t joking about MY sister or indeed any other specific disabled person as such. People who feel offended chose to do so themselves and their egocentric world view (I don’t like this subject and I don’t want anyone else to enjoy/have fun/use it/play it either) is deeply sad and myopic. Alas, such are the times, many get offended over no offense given.
By the offended victimhood mentality we should also ban all wargames since war is hell and we trivialize death, suffering and jingoism. Also, ban games with magic as religious people might feel offended by magic which isn’t in their own “good” books. Do you feel offended? Good.
I love how people who disagree with an opinion throw out the “blowing it out of proportion” argument, and talk about “victim mentality” to try to ridicule the people they are disagreeing with. 😉
People in this thread need to remember a few things:
1) Disagreeing with something DOES NOT mean that someone has felt offended by it. It just means they don’t agree with something. It’s not rocket science guys.
2) Everyone has an opinion about things. Everyone’s opinion is equally valid, because it is THEIR opinion. Disagreement with the content of the opinion is fine. 😉
3) If someone actually HAS taken offence to something, it’s bloody rude to suggest they are in the wrong for feeling that way. Unless they want to tell you about their life, you have no idea why they might feel the way they do. This can also be summed up by Wheaton’s Law: “Don’t be a dick”.
4) The world does not revolve around you, or your personal opinions. See point 2.
I’m just speaking up for @locust here. His contributions to this topic have been rational and polite. You might disagree and that’s ok but I think his opinions have been well thought through and well presented.
I’m not often called polite, and even less often call rational, so thank you. 😀
Agreed
Zen make some amazing stuff, I have painted most of their range and it is superb to work with at an awesome price point
The restaurant/bar that Justin was talking about is a strip bar called the ‘Girl in a Glass’
Have a look at my thread in the Hobby and Painting section of the forum if you want to see some more of it painted
They have just put out some imagery for a new police station that looks incredible
Hmm… Knowing many people who do or who have suffered from mental health issues and people who work in the area and people who campaign for political changes to improve the treatment and lives of people with mental health issues I am not surprised that some people feel very uncomfortable about this game – and its coverage here.
I think most of the comments made by such people here have been quite reasonable too. The context is that for years people have been trying to get mental health issues better understood, taken more seriously and make the way society treats people with such issues more effectively. As we are still a long way from doing that, it’s nor surprising that people think that treatment of the subject in this way undermines progress.
I think that’s the key difference between this and similar arguments over the appropriateness of playing games about killing, war, etc. There is a much better general understanding of war and its consequences than there is about mental health issues. And although for many wargaming is little more than a lighthearted hobby, there is also a large part of the gaming community that furthers research into the world’s wars, furthers understanding of and respect for combatants and civilians and even goes as far as fundraising for veterans’ charities, etc.
Nothing like this exists on any comparable scale with mental health.
That said, it is also clear that the guys didn’t intend to offend or upset anyone (as actually most of the critics acknowledged right from the start) and it’s also clear that many people who have had mental health issues or know those affected _can_ laugh at themselves and their predicament and enjoy games such as this. The problem is the concern about the lack of general awareness and the huge distance we still have to go as a society to deal with these issues effectively.
I am interested in the game: the miniatures look good, and I’m willing to be called a bit hypocritcal by saying that I think I would have fun playing this game. But I do still share the concerns of people who worry that in the context of how mental health issues are still handled by politics, the media, popular culture, etc. that this game risks stereotyping without displaying awareness about the issues that affect real people.
Oh, something else I wanted to say: one of the reasons I’m a big fan of Beasts of War is because normally I think the guys treat these kinds of issues very well. On race, for example, and particularly on gender and representation of women, I think BoW is open, pretty informed, talk about the issues in a sensitive way, etc. And they’re absolutely right to encourage diversity within the hobby. I may not think the guys always get it right, but it’s clear they’re aware of the issues and don’t want to let them go ignored. We can’t all be experts on everything and I think the guys are really decent people with hearts in the right place. On this episode, and in some of the comments, it looks like they just hadn’t thought about the context or how some of these issues affect some people in the real world.
Well said.
I don’t think it would make you a hypocrite by having fun playing the game. Laughter and having fun are the best medicine in the world, which is also one of the reasons why this hobby is so good for people. 🙂
@johnlyons @lloyd I served on an M109 during the Gulf war. There was a moment during the gulf when British MLRS pulled up behind us and did a 50 missile for for effect, it was flaming scary enough being just in front of the buggers, never mind on the receiving end.
Speaking of WWIII here is a book that might interest some, bit further in the future then Team Yankee but a nice read nonetheless.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Fleet-Novel-Next-World/dp/0544142845
Well guys I doubt that they’ll include Vulcans in team Yankee. The Vulcans were modified for a conventional role in the Falklands conflict and were later retired from the role in 1982. The Vulcan remained in service until 1984 as a tanker. I’m basing this on the date of the Novels publication of 1987 as being the probable date the novel is set in.
Harrier….. No problem in service ’69 if I remember right.
@locust – thanks for your post earlier. One of your exercises in imagination puts into words something I still don’t feel able to explain to people, and until recently wasn’t able to talk to anybody about at all, except my mum and my wife, in a limited fashion.
Something as well thought out and well written as that is very positive. The more people understand about mental illness, the easier it would be for people to talk about. And not feeling like you can talk about it is dangerous.
Also to reiterate what I said backstage, I don’t think the guys have anything to worry about here. I don’t feel an apology is necessary personally. I know you all normally go out of your way to avoid causing offence, and it’s clear none was intended here.
It’s just a touchy subject. You were discussing a game which is not particularly sensitive in the way it deals with that subject. Your discussion was very much in the context of that game. You could perhaps have acknowledged that lack of sensitivity in your discussion, but not a big deal.
Carry on with the good work.
The biggest thing in that new xwing box set is actually the damage deck. It is a brand new damage deck and (to cement the sale) if you wish to play tournaments going forward you MUST have the new damage deck from this set.
It is a nice balance tweak (the old damage deck really was quite outdated). Basically this is Xwing 2.0 (to a certain degree).
Oh that’s interesting good to know. Then I guess this will sell by the bucket load!
Just in case it wasn’t going to already? 🙂
A very interesting show guys.
I need to get me a copy of the Team Yankee book. Funny, they translated some of his books into Polish, but not this one. Thanks for bringing up Chieftains @johnlyons
I must say I am a little bit worried @lloyd Another week and no Dust? I started to like this part of the show even thou I am not a player of the game myself.
A good afternoon. Good show again and nice piece on X-WING, don’t know if already mentioned but the new X-wing design is not new. The late Ralph Macquirie who designed the original characters and ships etc designed the x-wing like this, half circle engines rather than the full round ones we know, Check out the book series the art of eg Star Wars episode 4 they give you lots of pictures and designs of the original ideas and concepts. Again good show and keep upthe good work.
In your Team Yankee you go on about nukes I use to play micro modern back in the day I have known the use of tactical nukes on the games table but think they would be to much in 15mm and in micro there were rules for troops under NBC conditions
lets stop talking about anything so as not to offend anyone, the poor delicate flowers out there need to get a perspective and lighten up. It’s just a game after all
I’m glad you think that. When I launch my game based on inner city deprivation, crime, drug addiction, and domestic abuse I’ll be happy to accept you as a backer. It being just a game and all. 😉
Wow i’m not the only one that remembers megalomania.
I absolutely loved that game. played it on my SNES iirc.
I hate watching this show. I always end up wanting everything they talk about. 🙁