Grognard seeking recommendations.

February 19, 2010 9:19 PM

I'm looking for hex and chit open source single player wargame recommendations.

I'm in the mood for a single player old school style computer wargame, open source, and preferably for OSX. I've played through lgeneral and a lot of additional campaigns for it, and I'm done with Wesnoth for now. Looking for something in the vein of AH, SPI, GMT, MMP style games. Bonus if it's historical. Thanks hivemind!

posted by voxpop to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (3 answers total)

I read where somebody mentioned looking up "Fantasy General" on one of the DOS abandonware websites and playing that in DOSBox. That probably applies to a lot of old strategy games, however open source would only be a small part of that picture.

Other than that, have you looked at Crimson Fields? Not exactly historical, but otherwise would seem to fit the bill.

Also worth mentioning: Lordsawar
posted by circular at 2:54 AM on February 20, 2010

Not sure if it's close to what you're after, but Dwarf fortress is worth checking out - huge, procedurally generated worlds, neuvo-ASCII style, beautiful music (!) I've also had good luck with Good Old Games working on Wine/CrossOver games on the mac. Opening things up to PC classics should provide options. The Might and Magic series could fill the bill, though they're not open source.
posted by dylanjames at 9:55 AM on February 20, 2010

I've been keeping an eye on this for two days now in the hope that there'd be more little-known gems mentioned. It seems not so much . . . which makes me sad because I love wasting hours pondering over hexes . . .

Ah well, I'll make a shred of a contribution to the question anyway:

It doesn't tick the open source box and I don't know anything about emulating / running it on OSX, but The Operational Art of War is the hex wargame that I've been coming back to over and over for 12 years. Version III has the original plus the cream of user designed scenarios all the way from the Franco Prussian war to hypothetical 20XX SE Asian Conflicts, with scenario scales from battalion engagements in Vietnam to multiple Army Groups in operation Barbarossa.
posted by protorp at 10:04 AM on February 21, 2010