Welcome to New Years Newsletter
Happy holidays everyone! We’re excited to bring you our end of year newsletter. We’ve been up to a lot here at Savage Game Design. It’s been a few months since our Summer News Letter and we wanted to catch up with you all. Below you’ll find out about our newest releases, what events the team has been to, and what we’re looking towards in the coming year. Our community is as busy as we are and we have plenty of spotlights on their hard work as well. Let's jump in…
S.O.G. Nickel Steel Mod
On November 14th we set free our newest creation. S.O.G. Nickel Steel is the result of our excellent team of artists and encoders who simply can’t stop making things for S.O.G. Prairie Fire. In this free Steam Workshop mod you’ll find an ever growing repository of assets that we didn’t have the time or manpower to include in the S.O.G. Prairie Fire releases. The first two exciting assets are the AC-119/C-119 and the humble Water Buffalo. The mod has just over 10,000 subscribers and can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3083451905
Water Buffalo:
AC-119:
Support our Patreon
We are pleased to announce that we’ve launched our very own Patreon site. It has a variety of tiers with different levels of offerings. From sneak peeks of upcoming assets before they make their way to the Public version of S.O.G. Nickel Steel, to voting rights on where we focus our time and effort on new assets, to exclusive Veteran QA’s, digital Graphic Novels and more.
The support that you give here goes to paying our artists and encoders to keep delivering new content into S.O.G. Nickel Steel. We’d love for you all to peruse these offerings, and if you’ve loved S.O.G. Prairie Fire to consider supporting us going forwards so that we can keep bringing you exciting new weapons, vehicles, and more.
Find that here at: https://www.patreon.com/savagegame
You can watch our launch video here, featuring MACV SOG legend Tilt Meyer:
Frozen Dagger Expedition
In our summer newsletter we talked about Royal Marine Sam Cox’s upcoming expedition. If you missed that, he had attempted a 2,000km solo expedition across Antarctica. Some of you donated to our fundraiser and helped Sam buy the tent that he was surviving in and we thank you for it.
Unfortunately Sam was withdrawn from the expedition by his medical team, with a suspected kidney infection, after traveling 620 km towards the South Pole, dragging his 450lb sled. We have spoken to him, and he is in characteristic good cheer, despite being absolutely gutted at the necessary decision. Thank you all for supporting him, and we hope he will regroup and attempt the expedition again in future.
Veteran Events
Special Operations Association Reunion
This year Team Savage sent a crew down to Las Vegas to attend SOAR. The Special Operations Association Reunion was an incredible event and we were so lucky to be able to attend. We took laptops and set up a booth to demo S.O.G. Prairie Fire to the veterans there.
We were regaled by incredible stories, got to meet the men who lived the history that we’re all so engaged with, and had an overwhelmingly powerful experience. 
Here is a video recorded by SOG son Bruce Christensen:
More images and video from the event can be found here:
https://vimeo.com/unconventionalwarriors
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1v3FMoulSVIXfu5SXeGJM1miY6YlV9AYO
Modern Warfare Week
In November, Team Savage attended Modern Warfare Week at Fort Bragg as part of the Special Operations Association team. Major General Ken “El Cid” Bowra and Major John “Doc” Padgett joined 5th Special Forces Group’s Command Sergeant Major Josh King on stage to deliver a fascinating talk about MACV SOG tactics and lessons learned from Vietnam that are still in use in today’s Special Operations.
Team Savage supported the SOA table in the foyer of the event with a video of MACV SOG history, which also uses our DLC to recreate battle scenes.
You can watch the video here:
Community News
Community Missions, Assets, Mods
One of our favorite things about the Prairie Fire community is how enthusiastically they go after making what they want to have. We appreciate you populating the environment with your hard work and we want to shout out the projects that have been released since our last newsletter. Some of these are new mods, and some are existing mods that have been updated that you may wish to revisit.
US Army Vietnam War
Created by Astute, this is a config faction of infantry and SpecOps groups that utilizes assets from SOG Prairie Fire, Laws of War, and S&S mod to create very period accurate models. It features too many units to list, please check it out for yourself.
Find it here
US CIA & Embassy Staff Vietnam War
Another mod from Astute, this time a config faction using SOG Prairie Fire and S&S mod assets to create CIA and embassy staff units. Featuring CIA Field Agent Team, Embassy Military Police and more.
Find it here
Project Red Dawn
An Arma port of a cult classic film, made by brendob47. Project Red Dawn has a variety of factions, vehicles, and weapons to put you right into the story. Recently updated with a set of bug fixes, ammo cap updates, and Air Auxiliary integrations. Join the Discord for more in depth information and discussion. https://discord.gg/pBvfet5Zj6
Find Project Red Dawn here
Project Red Dawn - Air Auxiliary
An addition to the previous piece by brendob47, this brings in a small list of aircraft for the various Red Dawn factions. Recently added is the F-15B/E, F-14A/IRST, F-4B, F-16C/D.
Find Air Auxiliary here
DCX_VN, DMOrchard's cDLC Crossover mod, SOG Prairie Fire
A retexture/reconfig for our awesome S.O.G. Prairie Fire vehicles for use with other factions, DLC’s, and mods. This had a huge update in late August just after our last newsletter adding WAY too many assets to list here.
Find it here
Cold War Resistance Part 1 ver. 1.2
"Cold War: Resistance" reimagines the original ArmA 1 campaigns set on the Gabreta map by the team behind ČSLA: Iron Curtain DLC, inspired by the 1968 SSSR invasion of ČSSR. It merges two iconic campaigns, following the story of Viktor Troska's resistance against the USSR invasion and NATO soldier Corporal David Armstrong's longing to return home. A variety of updates since our last newsletter smoothing mission flow and updating cosmetics.
Find it here
Huey Formation Flight Practice
You wouldn’t take a new rifle into the field without hitting the practice range, so why try to fly your buddies in without some trial runs first. This excellent mod by Brainreaction teaches you to fly in formation so you’re ready for the chaos of real insertions and exfiltrations.
Get behind the stick here
ACE 3
Is Arma 3 not realistic enough for you? The teams behind the joint project ACE 3 agree. In a truly mind boggling list of changes they’re pushing more and more gritty realism into the engine. This is by no means a new project but the team is still regularly updating and we wanted to showcase them for newer players who haven’t encountered this yet.
Get ACE 3 here
DMOrchard's KP Support Gabreta
A scenario that sets you as a pilot supporting ground troops from rotorwing and fixed wing aircraft. Pulls assets from a variety of DLC’s. This got a big run of updates during october. More great helicopter practice to be ready for your SOG missions.
Find it here
ANZAC Army Service Dress Uniform Retextures
UprisingUnknown’s retexture for Aussie forces for a variety of armies and ranks. The Aussies often get overlooked in history and this gives them some much needed love in Arma.
Find it here
Single Player Combo
The Forgotten Few 2
The Forgotten Few 2, by KingN, is a Dynamic Campaign Generator. It has been in development since 2017 and it shows. Useable across a variety of settings, our favorite is of course playing this in conjunction with S.O.G. Prairie Fire. Due to the generative nature of this mod, no two playthroughs will be the same.
Forgotten Few 2 allows you to customize your experience with a panel of modular options determining factors like: enemy strength, how many animals and civilians populate the world, the levels of friendly support, and more. It also plays well with our SOG AI mod to combine a dynamic and responsive AI team with the ever changing mission needs of Forgotten Few 2.
We highly recommend you check this out alongside SOG AI. Find this gem here
If that didn’t extol the virtues enough then check out Hazbo’s new review below:
The Ultimate Arma 3 Dynamic Mission Generator!?
SOG AI
SOG AI is Johnnyboy’s hugely impactful upgrade to the AI and squad commands. This mod enables a smooth single player experience for the S.O.G. Prairie Fire campaign. It’s also actively supported with regular updates. You’ve probably used SOG AI already, if you haven’t it’s an absolute game changer. Just in the time between our last newsletter and now Johnnyboy has added the following features:
Moving your squad parallel to an object, allowing teams to move along walls and buildings. Check out his demonstration here: SOG AI - New Command: Move Parallel to Object
SOG AI has expanded beyond just S.O.G. Prairie Fire. It also works in Spearhead, Global Mobilization, Force Recon, and a much longer list available on the workshop mod. These are also continually supported as you can see here:SOG AI: Thatched huts BURN in Spearhead Normandy
The most recent, and perhaps most exciting, update is an enhancement to movement responsiveness and aggression from your AI team. Setting your team to bounding assaults, contact breaks and repositioning and more. Johnnyboy walks through those upgrades here:
SOG AI Update: Squad AI movement more responsive and aggressive
If you’re newer to S.O.G. Prairie Fire and haven’t filled out your own squad of players, or you’re just a single player minded gamer, then SOG AI is a true must have and we highly encourage you to check it out.
Find it here
Looking Ahead to 2024
The Team has been hard at work in 2023, first delivering the 1.3 update to S.O.G. Prairie Fire, then releasing the Nickel Steel mod along with our new Patreon site.
In the background we are continuing to develop a cool new singleplayer and co-op game mode called “SOG: Across The Fence” - we’ll tell you more about that as it develops. Patreon members can also help us beta test it when it’s close to being ready.
Our plan is to continue supporting S.O.G. Prairie Fire long into the future. There is also a small update containing fixes based on all your tickets coming soon - thank you for filing bug reports - we enjoy squashing them!
Beyond that, we continue to work on our SOG documentary, SOG graphic novels, SOG TV show screenplay and prototyping our next unannounced SOG game in the Unreal 5 engine.
In January we are also taking Larry “Gambler” Trimble back to Marble Mountain and the site of the CCN compound. Click the link to watch his podcast with Tilt. Expect photos and footage in the New Year!
Thank you for supporting our team, we wish you all a fantastic 2024!
