Although I had a brief spell with Napoleon’s Army du Nord playing Risk as a youngster (I blame the episode of Red Dwarf called Marooned), I never really got into table top role playing. Partly because we didn’t have a Games Workshop near us, but mostly because I didn’t have the skill to paint the figures or the patience to play the games themselves. Fortunately a lot of the early PC strategy game I started playing were actually underpinned by table top rules, often hidden underneath isometric or 3D graphics. A lot of the D&D roleplaying games were like this and a lot of strategy games too. Fortunately since it was well and truly buried, it didn’t stop me thoroughly enjoying it a 12 hour straight session on my PC when I was younger.
In the years BC (before children), when I could spend a couple of evenings working my way through a tutorial to a strategy game, I used to love lining up my archers in Total War to completely decimate the oppositions foot soldiers as they blithely marched past a copse of trees up-slope from their route.In fact, I even got as far as cobbling a PC together from spare parts, and wall mounting network boxes in our library and spare bedroom so I could have mates round for a bit of multiplayer action.
Of course, now we’ve got kids I get less gaming time in a week than I used to spend in an evening just working my way through tutorials on strategy PC game. The skippable cut scene is now my friend. However, now, 7 years after we’ve moved in, we’re finally getting the house sorted properly and I once more have a desktop PC. Since it’s capable of editing 1080p60 (thats high definition video at 60 frames per second in case you’re not technically minded and a whole 12 frames per second more than the Hobbit), had a discrete graphics card and an i7 processor, I’m figuring it would be pretty decent for some new gaming.
Oh what’s that? Total War: Rome 2 is out in September? Well don’t mind if I do…