Early in the rulebook for The Glasgow Train Robbery, designers Eloi Pujadas and Ferran Renalias — whose names you might recognize from fashion dueler The Battle of Versailles — clearly spell out their stance on the 1963 train robbery that is the topic of their game. “The Glasgow Train Robbery is a board game inspired by historical events,” the disclaimer reads. “It does not intend to glorify crime or violence.”

Look, I’ll just come out and say what we’re all thinking: Unlike Pujadas and Renalias, I absolutely intend to glorify robbing a train full of cash. That’s the coolest and most morally correct action a human being can take. Yes, people were hurt. Yes, property was stolen. But the only villain here is Monopoly. That’s right, the board game. Without it, the heist would have been successful.

When The Glasgow Train Robbery opens, we find ourselves in the shoes of those plucky gangsters during the early hours of 8 August 1963. It’s dark out. The nearby town is asleep. The tracks are beginning to hum.

The gang consists of roughly fifteen individuals, although Pujadas and Renalias limit their players to two roles. First up is the Coordinator. This player is tasked with running things from the safe house: tallying inventory, passing out equipment, minding how much evidence the crew leaves in their wake, keeping everybody on the same page. Next is the Operative. They’re out in the field, moving down the paths that run parallel to the tracks, ferrying tools and manpower from one place to another, handling problems on the fly.

Right away, the beauty of this particular cooperative system is that it doesn’t quite resemble anything that’s come before it. There are antecedents, of course, but they’re pleasantly muted. Unlike the world’s thousand Pandemic imitators, this isn’t one of those games that sees players responding to three fresh crises per turn; unlike our hobby’s countless adventure games, there are no encounters to resolve.

Instead, the core experience could be described as one of fragmentary communication. There are plenty of board games about that, too, but here the few garbled words spoken through commercial walkie-talkies are especially precious. Both players have their jobs to do, and they’re different enough that they only intersect at certain junctures. But those junctures are crucial enough that even the slightest misstep can result in mission failure.

Here’s what this setup looks like. At any given moment, both players are neck-deep in their own concerns. The Coordinator is running a safe house that’s been transformed into a temporary loading dock, crammed full of coiled rope and guns and masks and gloves. They have plenty of helpers — nine people in that little farmhouse when the game begins — but it’s still all they can do to pass out enough tools.

Outside, the Operative is playing their own game. They take those tools and head down to the tracks. There they use their limited manpower to access caches of equipment, quiet any passing patrols, and, above all, prepare for the train’s arrival.

In other words, while one person plays warehouse manager, the other is playing a movement game with a sprinkling of whack-a-mole.

But as the train grows closer, the game counting down its passage one sleeper at a time, those roles converge. There are five steps to the plan: stop the train, tie up the crew, unhitch the back cars, roll the mail car into position, unload the loot onto the waiting truck. Each step requires the players to get the right people into the right locations, not to mention bring along the proper tools. The details of those steps, however, are unknown when the game begins. Worse, once known, they can’t be communicated openly.

Instead of talking like mature adults, the Coordinator and Operative prefer to communicate solely through signals and occasional bursts of static. Toxic masculinity, am I right? This presents some unique conundrums. Perhaps the upcoming step will require the train to stop alongside the open field with the tractor, require an individual with technical aptitude to be nearby, and ideally provide some walkie-talkies and batteries for rejiggering the whatsit.

But as the Coordinator, how do you tell your partner what you need? As the Operative, how do you hint that you need an extra gun and some gloves to solve the problem over at the water tower? The easiest option is to call them up on the radio, but these opportunities are few and far between. Limited, too, with players only capable of speaking two or three words per card. So other possibilities appear. Maybe you can divide the tools in such a way that your partner realizes you need extra rope. Maybe you boot another smooth-talker out of the safe house for them to walk down to the tracks. Maybe, eventually, you thump the table or something. That’s probably cheating. But you know what they say. Ninety percent of all communication is cheating.

What begins somewhat sedately, that train seeming distant enough that there’s no need to rush, very quickly becomes a race to tackle the last few steps and get away free and clear. It’s a brilliant little system, capturing both the drawn-out tension of planning and the scurry of tackling a half-dozen problems at once. As new witnesses wander into the scene, as the evidence accumulates, as the train gets closer to passing in the night, the game starts to feel suitably close to any number of heists we’ve only watched on the screen or read about in thrillers.

After a few tries, the game’s limited communication becomes second nature. You and your partner in crime learn to divvy up tools like two hands of the same body, deploy gangsters to their proper posts at exactly the right moment, and handle your own troubles without making them the other guy’s problem. This is when Pujadas and Renalias suggest to begin mixing in additional modules. Now there are patrols on the tracks, or your insider on the train needs help overpowering the conductor, or there’s an all-new way to distribute tools that’s more powerful but also more dangerous. There isn’t unlimited variety here, but the game contains more to explore than I first assumed.

Along the way, perhaps the game’s one misstep is that the roles aren’t equally interesting to play. The Operative is the more challenging and dynamic job, always shifting between issues as they arise, while the Coordinator mostly feels like a glorified warehouse manager who’s sorting guns and balaclavas instead of crates of cereal and T.P. The distinction isn’t that great — both tasks are still challenging — but the Coordinator is given the lion’s share of the game’s intel while their partner gropes around in the darkness.

And then there’s Monopoly. The historical Great Train Robbery of 1963 very nearly got away with the crime. But while waiting in their safe house, they passed the time by playing the Parker Brothers ripoff that would compel multiple generations to associate board games with tedium. Even after the gang wiped the place down for fingerprints, and paid some bum to burn it to the ground (he ran off), Monopoly preserved everyone’s fingerprints. Most of them, anyway. Some members of the gang were never caught, and the money was never recovered. We can take some consolation from that.

(Yes, the game does include the Monopoly board! It’s the main component in what is basically a miniature rondel game for the Coordinator. Evidence piles up whenever anybody is left in the room with the game. It’s very silly. But like many silly things that seem too goofy for fiction, it’s also what happened in real life, so I’m happy to see it included.)

I’ve written before that Salt & Pepper is publishing some of historical board gaming’s most interesting titles right now. Whether they’re examining war criminals, papal conclaves, naval hunts, anarchist guerrillas, or Pujadas and Renalias’s own game of high fashion, I can always count on them to deliver a colorful, evocative, and capable portrayal of history. The Glasgow Train Robbery is no exception. It draws on familiar tropes while still feeling fresh, covers some surprisingly dense subject matter with a few clever turns of abstraction, and above all produces a kettle-tight heist unlike any other I’ve tabled to date.

 

A prototype copy of The Glasgow Train Robbery was temporarily provided by the publisher, but unlike some prototypes it was 99% finished, so I’m calling this a review.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read about which films I watched in 2025, including some brief thoughts on each. That’s 44 movies! That’s a lot, unless you see, like, 45 or more movies in a year!)

Operation Barclay is a 2-player game of low/medium complexity about the intelligence war between the Allies and their Abwehr counterparts in the Mediterranean Theater of WWII in 1942-1943. Operation Barclay puts players in the shoes of competing military intelligence directors who are attempting to mask or learn the truth about the Allied invasion plans for 1943. The Abwehr must attempt to learn where the Allies intend to land next. The London Controlling Section (LCS), the core intelligence agency responsible for Allied intelligence, must prevent the Abwehr from discovering the truth.

The LCS player uses a variable set-up, placing tiles face down to establish where in the Mediterranean a primary and a secondary offensive will occur. Over the course of the six game months, the Abwehr player attempts to win sufficient evidence tokens to be able to turn enough of these tiles face-up to reveal where the Allied offensives will come.

To win evidence tokens, players build hands of five cards to take tricks, similar to poker. While having the best hand will secure two evidence tokens, correctly betting after each player reveals the first three cards of each hand on who will have the best five-card hand is worth three evidence tokens.

Further, players have ways to manipulate the decks from which they draw. They may create a double-cross deck, allowing them to leave cards useful to them face down in a deck to draw from when they choose later — unless the other player takes those cards instead…but perhaps the player who planted those cards was bluffing and hoping the other player would waste their draw on a useless card. Alternatively, players may draw from their own dedicated deck to augment their hands with unique abilities inspired by historical figures, events, and capabilities. The LCS has access to Ultra — decrypts of German codes — but this alone will not be enough if it’s not used carefully.

We published an interview on the blog with the designer Maurice Suckling and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2024/06/10/interview-with-maurice-suckling-designer-of-operation-barclay-from-salt-pepper-games-coming-to-gaemfound-june-7th/

-Grant

With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.

Card #66: Harwood’s Intuition from The Hunt from Salt & Pepper Games

I have played several hidden movement games over the years and enjoyed them all. Some of these titles have included wargames such as They Come Unseen from Osprey Games, Sniper Elite: The Board Game from Rebellion Unplugged and Bomber Command from GMT Games as well as a few board games including Hunt for the Ring from Ares Games. The concept of moving cautiously, attempting to evade pursuers, all while trying to locate and acquire or destroy objectives makes for a very interesting gaming experience. These situations can make for some really tense games that cause your head to ache and your wits to be tested. But they rely on some bluffing as well. Trying to force your opponent to anticipate where they think you should be and then trying not to be there. A really great mechanic in board games but not always easy to pull off and make for a very playable and interesting game. In 2022, we played a new design from Matthias Cramer and Engin Kunter that took this hidden movement concept and put it into a historically based game about the struggle over control of the South Atlantic between the British Royal Navy and the German Kriegsmarine during the early years of World War II called The Hunt from Salt & Pepper Games.

The Hunt is a Card Driven Game where the German player has to attempt to stay hidden while trying to sink merchant shipping as the Royal Navy hunts for them throughout the South Atlantic. The players each have asymmetric actions to use to accomplish their missions and each has a tough time doing what they have to do. But, if they manage their cards wisely, using them as effectively as possible, they can successfully either evade their pursuer or catch their prey.

In today’s post, we will take a look at the very useful British card Harwood’s Intuition. Harwood’s Intuition is a 5 Ops card, which makes it a very important card in the British deck as it allows for the taking of 2-3 actions in a single turn, but for which there is an even more important use as an ambush by playing it as a Reaction to a German action. If the German player ever searches for a Freight Ship in a space where there is a British Task Force, and Harwood’s Intuition is played as a reaction, the British will get a free Search action with a +1 DRM to the roll. Normally, a Search requires a 5+ on a d6 to be successful, but with this bonus +1 that will mean success on a 4+ which is a 50/50 proposition. And remember, the point of the game for the British is to find and sink the Graf Spee at the Battle of the River Plate. Such as tasty surprise card for the British! I know that when I play as the Germans, I have to always keep in the back of my mind that this card exists and that if there is a Force present, I have a risk of being ambushed. This is one of the elements that makes this game so good.

The Battle of the River Plate was fought in the South Atlantic on December 13, 1939 and was officially the first British naval battle of World War II. In the months leading up to this infamous date, due to several successful sinkings of merchant shipping by the Graf Spee, the Royal Navy was ordered by Admiral Sir Henry Harwood Harwood to keep observation between Medanos and Cape San Antonio located off the coast of Argentina south of the River Plate estuary. In the lead up to the climactic final battle, following various raider-warning radio messages from the merchantman Doric Star, which was sunk by Admiral Graf Spee off South Africa, Harwood suspected that the raider would try to strike next at the merchant shipping off the River Plate estuary between Uruguay and Argentina. He ordered his squadron to steam toward the position 32° south, 47° west. Harwood chose that position, according to his dispatch, because it was the most congested part of the shipping routes in the South Atlantic and therefore the point at which a raider could do the most damage to enemy shipping. A Norwegian freighter saw Admiral Graf Spee practicing the use of her searchlights and radioed that her course was toward South America; the three available cruisers of Force G rendezvoused off the estuary on December 12th and conducted maneuvers.

Though generally considered a river, the River Plate has been considered by some geographers as a large bay or a marginal sea of the South Atlantic. Principally this is due to the River Plates enormous width, if we are considering it a river the widest in the world, with a maximum width of about 140 miles. Acting as the marine border between Argentina and Uruguay, the River Plate was a main artery of maritime trade and a gateway into the interior of the South American continent.

It was here that Harwood predicted the German raider would strike and his assumption made sense. The River Plate’s Estuary acted as a natural bottleneck for ships with perilous tides and sandbanks additionally hampering any ability for a British Merchant vessel to escape the guns of a German raider. So it was near the Estuary of the River Plate that Harwood’s H.M.S Exeter, Ajax and Achilles would make their stand. With their force concentrated here, on December 12th preparations were made and tactics drawn up in anticipation for an arriving adversary and to spring the trap and catch the elusive Admiral Graf Spee off-guard and send her to the bottom.

Here also is a link to our full video review of the game:

We also published an interview on the blog with the designers Matthias Cramer and Engin Kunter and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2023/03/13/interview-with-matthias-cramer-and-engin-kunter-designers-of-the-hunt-from-salt-pepper-games-coming-to-gamefound-march-15th/

In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at Frederick Douglas from Votes for Women from Fort Circle Games.

-Grant