Next JTS Strategic War Game?

[rommel222]

Greetings to All,
I have hopes that the 3rd installment for JTS Strategic War will be the East Front to complete the trilogy.
I like Southern Front more than First Blitzkrieg due to scenarios for Greece, Crete and Syria, among others.
A.I. claims to be improved but I think it is just different for the strategic scale.
https://www.johntillersoftware.com/Stra ... Front.html

https://www.johntillersoftware.com/Stra ... krieg.html

There are almost no reviews of this John Tiller series.
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... =&#4403279

http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=11572.0

[Michael T]

Yep, that would be great. A playable Division level East Front by JTS. Bring it on.

[76mm]

When did the last of these JTS strategic games come out? I was under the impression that that series was D.E.D dead?

[rommel222]

Greetings 76mm,
HPS sims published First Blitzkrieg and had an update in Jan 2008.

HPS sims announced & JTS released Southern Front in 2012-14 I think.
https://www.hpssims.com/Pages/Products/ ... sofro.html

Wargamer review webpage is 404 error

JTS store sale page has First Blitzkrieg at $29.99 and WW 1 France '14 at $29.99.
https://john-tiller-software.myshopify. ... sale-items

Wargame Design Studio may be developing one or two future releases for this series.
East Front and Pacific Front (based on a post several years ago)

[Bamilus]

Yea, I believe they're from 2000's. Would love to see it, though. JTS games are at a little bit too low of a level, for me. I typically like division and up.

[Michael T]

If the SW series ever gets moving again I am in for sure. Really cool, playable system.

[rommel222]

Greetings Again 76mm,
I found the post from an interview w/John Tiller back in 2014:
John, there has been very little information of late regarding your strategic WW2 series of games like Southern Front, and the First Blitzkrieg. What plans are in the works to further develop the series, and might we see the First World War depicted at that level?

John Tiller: We have three future games under development in this series. Our primary researcher, Wig Graves, is working on the extensive order of battle data right now. And yes, this scale, with some changes to the map and the rules for the period of World War I, would work well. And I have some other related development right now for other platforms, which I think is working out well.
http://grogheads.com/interviews/6546

[Zovs]

I picked up First Blitzkrieg going to install it soon. Want to get Southern Front. I saw and read an article showing the East Front SW game somewhere just in the last 6 months I thought

[rommel222]

Greetings Zovs,
Please let us know how you find pros and cons of the game.

[76mm]

Interesting, thanks.

[PzKw43]

The Wargame Design Studio is doing some work on it but no ETA.

[Zovs]

Okay, its been a few months, I have been busy with work and playing a lot of JTS games, mainly from ACW, Napoleonic's and of course PzC series. I have purchased both The First Blitzkrieg (TFB) and War on the Southern Front (WotSF).

Pros
Both are typical JTS games so learning the UI/interface is a breeze.
Both have a Getting Started guide (TFB is 7 pages and WotSF is 11 pages).
Both have a User Manual.
Both games have the typical hot key commands (zoom in/out, display map text, etc.)
Both games you can combined and breakdown units.
Both games you can force march.
HQ units have a range.
Both games have a series of 6 buttons where you can see the Number of Units, Stack Points, Attack Points, Defend Points, Movement Points and Components. Clicking each one displays a number over the stack.
TFB longest scenario is 22 turns (its hypothetical).
WotSF longest scenario is 63 turns (the Italian Greek War).
WotSF has the most varied scenarios covering North Africa (14, with one being in Syria), Balkans (6 in Greece, 2 in Crete) and Sicily (one 20 turn scenario for Operation Huskey).


Cons:
TFB only has 18 scenarios. 9 of which are hypothetical.
WotSF only has 24 scenarios.
Both games have only 3 zoom levels (PzC and others generally have 5).
Both games do not seem quite as developed or updated as the Gold PzC series or even the Napoleonic or ACW series.

General
Combat is a little different in that instead of firing like how you do in the Napoleonic's, ACW, PzC or PzB, you select your stack of units and right click and then resolve battles. It may just be my machine, but I don't see any results like who you do in PzB/PzC or the other series (2 men, 13 men or 2 vehicles) the strength of the divisions just goes down by a percentage (starts at 100% and it could be 90% etc.)

My general impression is that both games are okay, they do remind you both of JTS PzC series and board war games, but they also show their age and what seems to be a lack of full development like the PzC series (and the rest) have going for them (especially the Gold series). Both are easy to play and get into, but are fun and you really want the game series to mature a bit. I don't know how easy it would be to mod these graphic wise, but it seems that they may need just a little more polish and they would be pretty fantastic.

Overall they are pretty good games. Worth $39.95, I don't know, I paid $29.95 and for that price they are okay.

[Para87]

Thanks for that. Just recently I was looking for info on these titles. As a fan of the higher strategic level games and lesser covered theaters, the combination of both in the Strategic War series is intriguing.

I'm really looking forward to see what they come up with in the future.