Grant: Javier welcome back to the blog. What historical period does your new game Partizan! cover? What did you want the title to imply to the players?
Javier: Many thanks. Glad to be back.
Well, I wouldn’t call it a “new” design. A first version of Partizan! was published in World at War Magazine back in 2011. Partizan! is a simulation of the Guerrilla warfare in World War II, from the Axis invasion in the spring of 1941 to late 1944, when the Soviet forces entered the region and the guerrilla struggle ended in the south and east of the country, even though the war iWan Yugoslavia would go on until May 1945.
The title, of course, evokes the epic of the Partisan struggle, the foundational myth of the Communist Yugoslav regime of Josip Broz Tito, “Tito” is a prime example of “Sic Transit Glory Mundi” if there is one. Upon his death, in May 1980, Tito went from being idolized at home and hailed abroad as one of the most outstanding leaders of the 20th century, to being reviled in his own country and all but forgotten abroad.
Grant: Who is publishing this new edition of the game?
Javier: Chinese editor Kilovolt Studio did this new edition.
Grant: How has the game changed from its original publication in 2011 in World at War Magazine?
Javier: It is a boxed version complete with upgraded graphics, a sturdier map and pre-rounded counters. The editor added errata, rules and counters that were left behind from the original version and later published as add-ons online and in later issues of World at War Magazine. Apart from that, the game is basically the same.
Grant: What was your inspiration for this game? Why did you feel drawn to the subject?
Javier: Well, that region of the world (let’s call it Southeastern Europe – “Balkans” can be found offensive by the locals for a number of reasons) is one of my pet subjects, so to speak. So far I have designed several games on WWII in Yugoslavia (Partizan!, Balkans ’44) as well as on the Yugoslav Wars of Independence in the 1990s, including War Returns to Europe: Yugoslavia 1991 and Bosnian War for Strategy & Tactics. As mentioned in earlier interviews, I have travelled extensively across former Yugoslavia and the neighboring countries and always had a great time there.
Grant: What was your design goal with the new edition?
Javier: The game mechanics basically remain the same, although the editor added an important element that was left out from the first edition, namely the Chetniks or Yugoslav royalists that played a key role in the war.
For the Chinese wargaming public, this subject has a particular interest as well because in the People’s Republic of China the Partisan epic (one of the ideological/propaganda foundations of Socialist Yugoslavia) was, and is, wildly popular so much so that the Chinese edition is called Walter’s War. “Walter’s War” refers to the 1972 Yugoslav film Walter Defends Sarajevo (Serb Croatian: Valter brani Sarajevo) based loosely on the military feats of Vladimir Peric, aka “Valter”, who defended Sarajevo during the German retreat from the southern Balkans in late 1944.
Walter’s War is one of the most famous examples of the “Partisan movies” subgenre, a series of films on the Partisan epic made in Yugoslavia between the 1960’s and the 1980’s. It was particularly popular in the Eastern bloc countries-on the year of its release, it was viewed by some 300 million people in the People’s Republic of China alone. Fifty years later, it is still something of a cult movie in China and other countries.
Chinese poster of Walter’s War.
Grant: What type of research did you do to get the details correct? What one must read source would you recommend?
Javier: Thankfully, over the last 20 years quite a few books have been written on the Yugoslav War. This interest in guerrilla warfare was partly due to the use of historical models to understand modern insurgencies such as Iraq in the GWOT years.
Another historical player that began to receive long overdue attention were the Yugoslav Royalists, or Chetniks, that until the early 21st century were almost forgotten or considered a footnote when compared with the Partisan epic of Tito and his guerrilla army. The military museum in Belgrade, Serbia reflects this perfectly. The first time I visited the military museum there were two floors, one dedicated to praise the feats of Tito and his partisan army, the other covering the rest, from Medieval times to the 1999 War against NATO. The second time I visited the museum, in the early years of the 21st century, I found out that the “Partisan” area was closed for reforms, and all Communist era exhibitions were being replaced with exhibitions dedicated to Col. Draza Mihailovic and his Chetniks.
Grant: What from World War II in Yugoslavia was most important to model?
Javier: Simulating what was de facto a three player game (Partisans, Chetniks, Axis and local Allies).
The third player – the Chetnik – presents a major problem. Basically, they didn’t fight the Axis- their policy was to wait for the Western Allies to arrive while preparing for the final showdown against the Communists. On the other hand, while the Partisans had a central command, the Chetniks were a loose coalition of local leaders that followed orders when it suit them to do so, and often reached temporary agreements with the occupying forces to fight the Communist Partisans. Tito had mobile troops which could operate everywhere and hit the enemy targets without concern about the inevitable and brutal enemy reprisals. In fact, the reprisals ended up being a source of recruits for his Partisan army. Mihailovic’s units, however, were strictly territorial, and he could not control them. Most of them (especially the Chetnik units in Bosnia) recognized him only as an honorary leader, but only followed their orders when, and if they matched with their own priorities. So, in practice, the Chetniks are not a “player” in the game, but they can be mobilized by the two players (Axis and Partisans) depending on a number of circumstances.
Grant: What is the scale of the game?
Javier: Turns are quarterly (three months per turn, covering from mid 1941 to late 1944). So to speak, each turn condenses several major operations and smaller actions.
Grant: What different unit types does each side have access to?
Javier: Being a guerrilla war in the Balkans, the standard unit is leg infantry, of course. There are a handful of motorized/armored and cavalry units, but almost all units are infantry. There are air support markers and a Special Forces unit or two.
Grant: What is the anatomy of the counters?
Javier: Units have two basic factors: conventional and guerrilla combat. Guerillas, of course, are better at guerrilla combat, regular units are better at conventional Combat. There are two Combat Tables, guerrilla and conventional-which that is used depends on leadership, initiative and terrain. A guerrilla force fighting in forest or mountain hexes for example has a better chance of using the Guerrilla Table. A conventional unit fighting in a railroad or clear hex has better chance of using the conventional table.
Grant: What is the general Sequence of Play? What type of experience did you want the Sequence of Play to invoke?
Javier: In general, the Guerrilla player has the initiative, while the Axis player has to react. The turn begins with the guerrilla phase were the Partisan player determines resources receives and recruits/upgrades units. This is followed by the objective placement phase, where players deploy a number of targets on map representing intelligence on possible targets provided by their network of spies and other intel sources. Then the Guerilla player moves and attacks targets, and/or enemy units. After that the Axis action phase begins. Upon receiving reinforcements, the Axis player may attack guerilla units. However, catching guerrillas can be difficult-they can easily avoid being forced to fight in particular in forest areas.
The Axis player begins the game with large forces (Germans, Croatians, Italians, Hungarians, Bulgarians) while the Partisan begins with a handful of odreds (detachments). However, as the play goes on, the Italians surrender and the Axis player is increasingly stretched thin. Besides, Bulgarians and Hungarians cannot move from their respective regions. The German and Croatian policies in Yugoslavia all but ensured that the population would join the Partisans.
Grant: What is the layout and area of Yugoslavia covered by the game map?
Javier: The map covers all of Yugoslavia and neighboring areas, from Slovenia to Macedonia and parts of Hungary, Albania and Bulgaria. The map contains all charts and tables needed to play.
Grant: What strategic pinch points does the terrain create?
Javier: Terrain is important, like in the systemic cousin Red Partisans (published by Paper Wars in 2025). Forest, mountains and swamps are the Partisan’s friend. Avoid flat terrain, and particularly railway hexes, that can be reinforced quickly. However, railroads are a major objective of the Partisans, so the Partisan player must strike a balance here.
Grant: What is your focus on Zones of Control in the game?
Javier: In general there are no Zones of Control. Zones of Control are exerted depending on the unit and terrain type. Regular units, for instance, do not exert ZOC on mountain or forest hexes for Partisan units.
Grant: What is the Guerrilla Political Phase? What does this represent from the history?
Javier: Basically, it represents the prestige of the Partisans among the local populace and abroad. If the guerilla player attacks at least one ground attack against an Axis ground unit, they roll for Tito’s Prestige. The higher the prestige, the more resources he can receive from the Western Allies. Tito’s prestige begins at box 1. When it reaches box 6, the Partisans can receive extra resources and the support of the Balkan Air Force (Allied bombers). When it reaches level 7, the Partisans can deploy and use a British Special Force unit, the 2nd SAS.
This simulates the increasing prestige of the Partisan guerrillas among the Western Allies, who initially opted to provide support to the Monarchist forces of Col. Mihailovic. After the reports by the Deakin mission came from Yugoslavia in 1943, and thanks also to ULTRA intercepts, Tito began to be regarded as the only effective guerrilla movement fighting the Germans, while Mihailovic did nothing, or, even worse, reached agreements with the enemy occupiers to fight the partisans.
Grant: What is the Allied Landing Scare roll? What does this represent?
Javier: Several of the major Axis anti-partisan drives in Yugoslavia (Operations Schwarz, Weiss…) were launched with the objective of clearing the coastal areas from hostile guerrillas and prepare the defense of the Balkans against an expected Allied landing. Beginning with 1943, there were several “landing scares” that had all sides (Partisans, Chetniks, Axis) scrambling to occupy the best coastal positions before the arrival of the Western Allies.
For instance, in January 1943, fearing Allied landings in the Balkans, the Axis launched Operation Weiss (White), the largest anti-partisan drive to date, involving 90,000 troops, aimed at destroying Tito’s stronghold at Bihac. Tito planned to move back to Serbia and Eastern Bosnia to destroy the Chetnik forces there before they could join forces with the Western Allies.
Grant: What is the purpose of the Weapons Cache markers? How are they concealed in combat? How does combat work?
Javier: Weapon Cache markers represent weapons sent by the Western Allies along with arms captured to the enemy, used to improve Partisan detachments into Partisan brigades and divisions.
Grant: What is the makeup of the Combat Results Table? What unique odds are represented and why?
Javier: There are two Combat Tables, guerrilla and conventional-which one is used depends on leadership, initiative and terrain. A guerrilla force fighting in forest or mountain hexes for example has better chances of using the Guerrilla Table. A conventional unit fighting in a railroad or clear hex has better chances of using the conventional table.
Grant: How do Replacements and Withdrawals work?
Javier: The Guerilla player collects replacements-the more territories they control, the more replacements received. Control of towns greatly increases recruitment, but guerrilla units are much more vulnerable in urban terrain. Axis reprisals increased the number of recruits. They also receive “weapons caches” that can be used during the game. They represent clandestine weapon factories, and, as the game goes on and Tito gains popularity among the Western Allies, they represent weapons shipments from the West. Certain game results yield weapons caches as well. These can be used to upgrade partisan units into Brigades and Divisions.
The Axis reinforcements and replacements work differently-They receive a fixed number of replacements per turn, with the exception of “Allied landing scare” turns, when they received extra replacement with which to launch anti partisan drives and clear the coastal areas of Partisans.
Grant: How are Artillery, Air and Naval Support handled?
Javier: There are no artillery units in the game. It is modeled into the regular brigades and divisions. There are only two air support markers that add or decrease odds shifts in attack or defense.
The Partisan army, of course, had no air support units, although they can receive the support of the Allied “Balkan Air Force”. The Axis has only one marker -Yugoslavia was very low on the priority list of the Luftwaffe. Naval Support is handled by the “Partisan navy” counter that provides an odd shift in attack or defense in combats in coastal hexes. The Partisan navy counter enters play after the Italian surrender.
Grant: How do players win the game?
Javier: The Partisan player can add Victory Points by blocking railway lines from resource centers (there are five on map) to Germany. This represents the disruption of resource exploitation in the Balkans. Another way to score Victory Points is to destroy objectives such as fuel depots, train stations or bridges, or rescue downed Allied pilots, determined prior to the turn by the objective table. During the Victory check phase of each turn, the Partisan player rolls 1D6 for each objective marker under their control and adds the corresponding modifier for that objective. Destroying a Dam, for instance, adds +3 to the die roll. The final result is the number of VP’s scored for that objective. Control of towns and cities at the end of a turn gives extra VP’s to the Partisan player. (Control of towns and cities, even temporary, allow Partisans to recruit extra manpower and liquidate collaborationists).
Finally, “Landing scare” turns allows the Partisan player to earn VP’s for controlling port towns and cities, from Bar in Montenegro to Zara/Zadar in Croatia. This simulates the chaotic fight that followed the Italian armistice of September 1943. The Italians controlled large parts of former Yugoslavia, and their surrender ignited a race to arrive first to the huge caches of arms and supplies in the Italian zone, in a free for all between Partisans, Germans and Chetniks. Tito was furious at the Allies for not warning him of the upcoming Italian surrender. Some of the Italian forces joined the Partisans against their former Croat-German allies. This is included in the game as well.
The Axis player must try to deny VP’s to the Partisan player, and make him pay dearly for every VP gained: each guerrilla ground unit eliminated deducts 10 VP. The Axis can also kill Tito. If Tito is eliminated, the Partisan player loses 2 VP’s at the start of each subsequent turn, and their prestige is reduced to 1, so they receive no more extra resources from the Western Allies. The Axis player can try an assassination attempt with the 500 SS Parachute Battalion that historically tried to kill or capture Tito in May 1944, in operation “Knight’s Move”.
Grant: What type of an experience does the game create?
Javier: The game creates a cat-and-mouse experience, quite similar to the history, where the Axis launched constant anti-partisan drives but Tito and his Partisan army always escaped to fight another day, despite of suffering huge casualties. By the mid to late game, after the Italian surrender, the Partisans are too powerful and the Axis player lacks enough resources to launch mass offensives, thus remaining mostly on the defensive. It is now time for the Partisans to gain as much terrain as possible before the arrival of the Soviet forces in the Fall of 1944.
Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?
Javier: I think that the game gives a fair idea of what happened in Yugoslavia in 1941-44. It was an extremely complex situation, with many different national and political loyalties at play. The Axis conduct of the Balkan counterinsurgency was a case study of how not to wage a guerrilla war. Their policies, and in particular that of the Croat state, created the perfect conditions for the Communist movement to thrive and take over: they destroyed the existing authority, set the different nationalities against each other, but lacked sufficient strength and brute force to impose a different system. The final result was anarchy and an ideal situation for the triumph of a revolutionary war, which Tito exploited to the fullest.
Grant: What has been the response of playtesters?
Javier: As far as I know, many players really enjoy the Partisan hidden movement rules in Partizan! and found the cat-and-mouse game play quite engaging. They appreciate the combination of simple rules, short playtime, and asymmetrical game play, with a full game often completed in just one day. The scoring mechanism, which rewards destroying objectives, forces Partisan players to carefully consider their strategy—whether to focus on scoring points or increasing their forces. Axis players get a true feeling of frustration of counterinsurgency operations.
Facing an Axis player with a good memory can sometimes be challenging for the Partisan side. Partisans can counter this by swapping the positions of units within the same hex. Overall, the game offers a simple yet enjoyable take on Partisan warfare. Although some players find it a bit troublesome to place markers every turn, the Chinese edition includes tables and numbered markers to help the setup. Most players find the experience enjoyable.
Grant: What other designs are you working on?
Burmese tribal irregulars in Burma ’45 (World at War #109)
Javier: Strategy & Tacticsjust published Pensacola 1779-82, and soon will be publishing Forgotten Front: Italy 1944-45. Curiously enough, in these games are featured both irregular and conventional forces. In Forgotten Front, for instance, guerrilla and counter guerilla operations play a key role as the ORBAT includes not only regular Axis and Allied divisions and brigades, but also Italian partisans and Fascist Italian counter guerrilla forces, such as the infamous Black Brigades. Pensacola 1779-82 includes irregulars, militias and Indian levies that are highly useful for recon, foraging and to harass enemy regular forces.
World at War will publish my design on the 1945 Burma campaign, where (again) guerrillas played a decisive but little known role.
I am currently working on a number of designs for Decision Games, Paper Wars and Banzai Magazine. I am currently working on the playtest and development of Aragón ’38 for SNAFU Design and Battle for the Mediterranean for VUCA. You can see here some spectacular previews of Battle for the Mediterranean by Pablo Bazerque here.
A look at the board for the upcoming Battle for the Mediterranean from VUCA Simulations.
As always, thanks for your time Javier in answering our questions as I know you are a busy man and always have lots of interesting gaming subjects on your design table.
May is here and the grass is growing, birds and bees are out busily going about their lives and summer is just around the corner. And with all of this change, there are tons of new games that are appearing on both pre-order and as new releases that I am looking forward to getting on my table. Now, if I could only have more time or discover a time manipulation method! This month for the Wargame Watch, I was able to find 25 games (including the 5 games from our sponsor Sound of Drums). I was also able to find 4 games being offered on Crowdfunding through Kickstarter.
This month we have a sponsor for the Wargame Watch feature in Sound of Drums who has made some really great games over the past few years including their History of the Ancient Seas Trilogy (HOTAS: HELLAS, HOTAS: DIES IRAE and HOTAS: MARE NOSTRUM), 1793: Patriots & Traitors, Eylau 1807 and a few others. Sound of Drums really has a great approach to game design and they also are committed to high quality production with great components, fantastic art and really sharp graphic design. They are definitely a publisher to keep an eye on and you should give their games a try!
Most recently, they released the first volume in their Napoleonic Wars tactical level Battle Commander Series designed by Card Paradis called Battle Commander Volume I – Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns. The Battle Commander Series recreates historical 18th-19th century battles and features a fresh framework focused on providing two key aspects: command decision and maximum playability. In Volume I, the player takes on the role of an Army Commander in a series of six dramatic Battles fought during Napoleon’s two Italian campaigns. Volume II will cover engagements of the Second and Third Coalitions, including the Battle of Austerlitz and the Battle of the Pyramids.
In Carl’s own words, here is what the game is focused on and attempting to model:
The system is at Brigade/Division scale, is very playable, with no downtime or complex computations or mechanics. I am a game component maniac, so the package will be super-deluxe, using a very large box, allowing the 2-sided mounted maps to be folded only once (think of the 70’s Avalon Hill flatboxes maps), game pieces will be painted-on wood blocks of different shapes, so no annoying stickers to apply, you’ll have a couple dozen blocks per side in a game, often less. Also, no dice, almost no markers, the emphasis is on the gameplay!
The crux of the game engine will be ( 1 ) the deck of event cards, that will also take care of all the combat results and other dice functions, and ( 2 ), the cube-pull mechanism, that will manage player unit activations, but also turn end, when combat and rally happens, and other similar game happenstances. It’s all a very granular affair. The whole package has a definite “Kriegspiel” look, with all the graphics done in a contemporary Napoleonic style, with a very different way of maneuvering units on the field of battle compared to other Napoleonic games.
They also recently released the Assault Sicily ’43 – Primosole BridgeExpansion for the Assault Sicily ’43 base game. We got a chance to play a scenario from this one with the designers Wolfgang Klein and Erich Rankl while attending Essen Spiel last fall and we had a great time with the new innovations and mechanics as well as the beautiful new production of the expansion.
The big new game that Sound of Drums is offering on pre-order at this time is the Designer Edition of No Retreat! The Russian Front 1941-1945 from designer Carl Paradis.
I am very much looking froward to this one as we have played the Deluxe Edition from GMT Games several years ago and very much enjoyed the system and its narrative on this titanic confrontation on the Eastern Front of World War II. I am interested to see what they change, both mechanically and graphically, and how the final product turns out. The cover though is simply amazing and shows off the skill of their graphic designer Marc von Martial and new artist Wouter Schoutteten.
From the Sound of Drums website, we read the following:
No Retreat! The Russian Front – Designer’s Edition is the definitive evolution of Carl Paradis’ acclaimed Eastern Front wargame.
Building upon the original 2008 release and its later Deluxe editions, this new version refines gameplay, streamlines core systems, expands the Event Card deck to a full 70 cards, enhances solitaire play, and introduces upgraded visuals by renowned artists Marc von Martial and Wouter Schoutteten.
With dual maps, optional historical-symbol counters, dual layered Army Mats, and deluxe player aids, the Designer’s Edition represents Paradis’ final, authoritative vision for his landmark design.
This isn’t just a reprint. It’s the version the designer always dreamed of — crafted after 45 years of studying the Russian Front.
They also have lots of games in the oven and we got a look at a few of them at Essen Spiel including Operation Valkyrie, which is a solitaire game that simulates the events immediately after the attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944 and The Great Escape, which is a cooperative game about the escape attempt from the infamous Stalag Luft III POW Camp during WWII. Both look amazing and there are preview pages already published on Gamefound so I would expect them to kickoff sometime in the near future.
As you can see, Uwe Wallentin and his team at Sound of Drums are busy working on some great projects and I cannot wait to see where they go and what they attempt to tackle in the future.
But now onto the games for May!
Pre-Order
1. Foxes and Lions: Renaissance City-States in the Age of Machiavelli from GMT Games
We have played all of the games in the series designed by Ed Beach, including Here I Stand (multiple times), Virgin Queen (multiple times but not as many as HIS) and Tanto Monta (once) with our most recent play being a full 5-player game in March while attending Buckeye Game Fest, and the series is just special. The card driven mechanic simply makes the series and it really is a bit of a sandbox as you can win in various and sundry ways. Recently, GMT announced the fourth entry in the series called Foxes and Lions:Renaissance City-States in the Age of Machiavelli designed by the duo of Paul Wright and Liz Davidson. This one looks to be epic and is set during the Italian Wars. I am very keen on a new addition to the series and look forward to diving in and learning more about the game over the next year or so.
From the game page, we read the following:
Foxes and Lions: Renaissance City-States in the Age of Machiavelli is the next game in the series that includes Here I Stand, Virgin Queen, and Tanto Monta. Focused on the warring city-states and dominions of Renaissance Italy during the era known as the “Italian Wars” (specifically, the period from 1494 to 1527), this game zooms in on the Italian peninsula. Unlike many other games on the Italian Wars, Foxes and Lions puts the focus on Italian experiences of this era of enormous upheaval, which also saw some of the greatest cultural splendors that we now associate with the period known (not without controversy) as the Renaissance. The game depicts the political, military, economic, religious, and cultural affairs of five key Italian powers brought to life by players (Florence, Milan, Naples, the Papacy, and Venice).
Players will struggle to create political legitimacy for themselves while contending with both Italian rivals and external great powers intent on conquest of their own objectives in Italy (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire). For those who have played other series games, much will be familiar mechanically, but there are many new concepts and mechanics to enjoy, including experimenting with different government types, managing local sentiment, and gathering precious florins to pay for mercenaries and their fickle condottieri captains.
Furthermore, players will be faced with the possibility of collective defeat to the great powers. Players will individually pursue Virtù Points, drawing on Machiavelli’s famously pliable conception of political ability and military strength, while at the same time striving to avoid collective defeat by loss of Italian Virtù. Dwindling Italian Virtù embodies Machiavelli’s abiding fear of great power domination of Italy. Players will each attempt to win without Italy falling into the subjection that was historically its fate, and should they fail to prevent that, the game ascribes blame to the specific players viewed as the scourge of Italy and the new lapdog of the great powers. Can you thread the needle between your Italian rivals’ ambitions and the threat posed by the great powers of Europe?
In case you thought that maybe they are squishing a square peg into a round hole or just copying the tried and true system then you will be glad to find out there is lots of new to explore in the design.
Concepts and Features New to the Series
Political traditions—These are the governments (current and past) that define the political character of any given space in the game (featuring merchant republics, feudal aristocracies, princedoms, theocracies, tribute states, and vassals). In keeping with Machiavelli’s respect for founders of institutions, lawgiving will be an available action that permits you to attempt to alter governments in your dominion. Each space under your control may have a very different political arrangement, which affects its prosperity, unit construction capability, and many other things. Your central government (that of your capital) may also change over time.
Sentiment—This captures the current attitude of the local population to the government overseeing it. The scale of sentiment reflects Machiavelli’s own terminology, ranging from “Hated” to “Feared,” to “Feared and Loved” (the latter an ideal Machiavelli thought hard to achieve, opting instead for being “Feared” whenever a choice between fear and love was unavoidable).
New unit types—Regulars are split into citizen militia and feudal levies, alongside a more detailed look at mercenaries (with elite variants including the Swiss reisläufer and the Imperial landsknechte).
Condottieri captains—Twenty of the colorful, talented, and sometimes treacherous mercenary captains of the era will be available to players in competitive blind bidding for their services, with each captain reflecting unique battlefield abilities, vulnerabilities, and other surprising game impacts. Captains are essential to success in the game, and if not properly paid and retained, will go up for auction again; they may even be suborned and taken from you by nefarious rival actions. Among the captains are the infamous Cesare Borgia, Fabrizio Colonna, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, and “El Gran Capitán” himself, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba.
Money economy—Alongside the high-level political capital of command points (CP) already familiar to CDG players, Foxes and Lions features the cold, hard cash that mercenaries and dominions crave. Florins are collected by a trade action connected to the prosperity of the various governments in one’s dominion. The florin economy will be necessary not only to pay or bribe mercenaries and captains, but also for espionage, government maintenance, and more. Player treasuries are hidden behind a screen, so no one is ever quite sure of a rival’s wealth. Should you run out of florins for a required or desired expenditure, the banks will be available to lend to you at exorbitant interest rates, and failure to repay may cost you dearly.
Espionage available from turn one—Nefarious measures are available to players from the outset of the game, including familiar operations from Virgin Queen like Gain Intel and Assassination, now supplemented with Pacification, Foment Rebellion, Sabotage Fortifications, and Suborning others’ employed condottieri to your cause.
New patronage systems and figures—For those familiar with Virgin Queen, patronage now features three tracks (artists, scientists, and humanists) with 10 figures of each type. Patronage targets may now be selected rather than randomly drawn, and each affords unique game effects. Among the 30 patronage subjects are figures such as Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Botticelli, Copernicus, Pacioli, Paracelsus, Machiavelli, Manutius, and even a prying poet-courtesan, Tullia d’Aragona.
New ruler dynamics—Each player will have an often-volatile lineup of rulers who will transition based on circumstances in the game (26 rulers in total across five player powers). In the case of the Papal States, a conclave procedure involving all five players will determine the next pope whenever the current pope dies (however mysteriously).
Variable impulse order—Players may bid their florins to change the impulse order for a given turn, creating dynamic opportunities for surprising your enemies—or lying in deadly wait for them.
More opportunities to declare war mid-action phase—No game about Machiavelli’s era would be complete without the temptations and risks of back-stabbing rivals, even erstwhile allies, including in the middle of a turn. Great coalitions (like the historical “Holy League”) may form, but no alliance is ever truly safe.
2. Chariots of the Gods: A Module for the Great Battles of History Chariots of Fire Game from GMT Games
My experience with the Great Battles of History Series is not very deep. I own SPQR Deluxe Edition and have played it and enjoyed it and it is a beautiful monster with around 6 full counter sheets and 6 double sided maps with 19 scenarios. There is a lot of game here in each of the volumes in the series! The series is really very deep and there are a lots of rules and exceptions based on the different units that are included in each scenario. The game system really emphasizes the important role of command on the ancients battlefield. Leaders are the most important counters in the game and consequently without leader’s order, the player will find that their very powerful and important phalanx and legions will not be able to take any actions, even moving closer to the enemy. There is a new expansion module that was recently announced that deals with Ancient India covering the period of 1700 to 1800 BCE called Chariots of the Gods.
From the game page, we read the following:
Chariots of the Gods (CG) simulates tactical-level combat in the period of India’s ancient Vedic era. Covering a period extending from roughly 1700 to 800 BCE, the age of Vedic India was one of sweeping battles between great kingdoms for supremacy over northern India. This was the age of the chariot-knight, whose prowess with the compound bow from his speeding war-car inspired legends. Often the bravery of the charioteer, whose skill in commanding the vehicle safely through the chaos and danger of the ancient battlefield was no less legendary.
Given the heroic nature of the age, the Chariots of Fire Heroes rules have been expanded to portray the fighting styles in the Vedic poems. All scenarios feature Heros and Heroic Challenges. Rather than Heroes engaging in personal combat only on foot, the Vedic heroes duel each other from a moving chariot wielding their bows. The Hero counter represents not only the Hero, but his Charioteer, and his Chattra (banner) all of which may be hit by his opponent.
CG introduces three new unit types:
Javelin Infantry: Javelin/light spear armed troops with no armor and no missile capability, fighting in loose formations. These units provide the shock power for most of the tribes.
Dismounted Chariots: Noted on the reverse side of the CH-2 counter, these are the knights on foot rather than in their chariots. This mode is mostly useful for traversing rivers and other non-chariot favorable terrain.
Lance Armed Cavalry: Early light cavalry armed with lances with limited Shock capability.
There are special rules for river crossings, strongholds, and given the coalition type armies in the larger battles, rules for Tribal Flight.
Battles included in the Module
Hariyupiya River (ca. 1660), the Anu vs. the Vrcivans
Invasion of the Purus (ca. 1540), the Puru-Bharata vs. the Turvasha-Yadu
Battle of the Dasyus (ca. 1500), the Puru-Bharata vs. the Dasyus
Khandava Expedition (ca. 1415) the Bharata vs. the Kikatas
Parushni River (ca. 1400), Tritsu and Bharata vs. the Kings of the Puru Confederation
Yamuna River (ca. 1400), Tritsu and Bharata vs. the Kings of the Puru Confederation
The typical tribal army consists of mixture of Chariots, bow armed infantry, and javelin armed infantry with minimal shock capability. The Vrcivans, Dasyu, and Kikatas are infantry armies composed of Shock or Barbarian infantry along with bow armed infantry. The battles against the Daysu and Kikatas play out on rough terrain which tends to neutralize the Chariots mobility. The Vrcivans, on the other hand, need to force their way across a river and then contest the chariots in open terrain. The other three battles are set piece affairs occurring on mostly chariot friendly terrain showcasing the full capabilities of that weapons system and the dueling Heroes of legend.
If you are interested in Chariots of the Gods: A Module for the Great Battles of History Chariots of Fire Game, you can pre-order a copy for $37.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1230-chariots-of-the-gods.aspx
3. Liberty! A Military History Survey of the American Revolution from GMT Games
In our travels to several gaming conventions over the years we have made some great friends, which include gamers, designers, publishers, other content creators, etc. While attending the World Boardgaming Championships a few years ago, we had the chance to interview Mark Miklos who is the creator of the Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) Series. We also have interviewed Mark several times for new volumes in the BoAR Series, including for Volume XI: The Battle of Green Spring: Prelude to Yorktown, July 6, 1781, Vol. X Battle of White Plains as well as play several of the games in the series at WBC and SDHistCon including Savannah and Germantown. Mark is a very enthusiastic student of the American Revolution and has now taken all of that knowledge and written a book on the subject that was offered up for pre-order by GMT Games this past month called Liberty! A Military History Survey of the American Revolution.
From the page, we read the following:
War has been defined in many ways; as a continuation of politics by other means, as the locomotive of history, and as Hell. Whatever your definition, war is undeniably a spectacle. And in all the spectacle of war, the conflict variously known as the American Revolution, the Revolutionary War, or the War of American Independence has seldom been equaled for its cosmopolitan nature or for the allure it has on the popular imagination.
Here the Ancient Regime, the New World, and the world of the indigenous First Nations collided across oceans and in forest depths, in urban centers and on the frontier, atop mountains, on fertile plains, and across great rivers. Faith and great doctrines were tested. This was the Age of Reason which saw a reexamination of politics, economics and science and, with the vigor of a fledgling leaving its nest, took umbrage against the constraints of a still-enduring older social order.
What began as an assertion of the rights of Englishmen transformed into a movement for independence that ultimately led to a second world war in as many decades. An erudite debate that included statements such as, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety,” or, “If this be treason, make the most of it,” led to a sanguine test of arms and yet fully one third of the people in the American colonies simply asked to be left alone to live a common life as it had commonly been led.
Just in time to help celebrate the 250th anniversary of American Independence, Mark Miklos, in his new book, Liberty! A Military History Survey of the American Revolution presents us with the arc of this epic story, a story of the quest for Liberty. Alternating between a 20,000-foot overview and comprehensive detailed analysis, this book informs what you may not know and refreshes what you may already know about the military perspective of the American Revolution.
Anchored on the original essays that appeared in his Battles of the American Revolution Series by GMT Games, Mark has expanded upon his original work to include new chapters, summaries, and transitions which present a compelling and cogent story. Mark has researched the most comprehensive chronological listing of over 600 battles, sieges, engagements, skirmishes, raids, ambush and sanguine quarrels across the nine-year duration of the war which provide context for the primary chapters.
The book features a foreword by Harold Buchanan, designer of GMT Games’ Liberty or Death and the creative force behind the SDHistCon franchise, as well as appendices, comprehensive endnotes, a bibliography, twenty four maps and dozens of illustrations.
As Mark writes, “The dawn of the American Revolution was a period much like others in human history. There was famine and plenty, avarice and charity, misery and joy. Yet something else unique and profound was manifesting, the spark of Liberty.”
Follow that journey in quest of Liberty. Revisit the great battlefields. Renew your acquaintance with heroes, villains and scoundrels along the way, and enjoy the story as Mark takes you on the journey in Liberty! A Military History Survey of the American Revolution.
4. Cuba Libre: Castro’s Insurgency, 1957-1958 5th Printing from GMT Games
Any time a game is on its 5th Printing that should tell you something right there. The game is interesting. The game is fun to play. The game teaches some really great history. Well, in the case of Cuba Libre, all of the before are true and then some. The 2nd game in the COIN Series, Cuba Libre is the smallest of the series in map spaces although All Bridges Burning comes close. This game is usually put forward as a good starting point for the series for new players and we would wholeheartedly agree with that, although I would say even above that is that you should have a passion and interest in the history first and foremost.
From the game page, we read the following:
Following up on GMT Games’ Andean Abyss, the COIN Series next volume, Cuba Libre, takes 1 to 4 players into the Cuban Revolution. Castro’s Marxist “26 July Movement” must expand from its bases in the Sierra Maestra mountains to fight its way to Havana. Meanwhile, anti-communist student groups, urban guerrillas, and ex-patriots try to de-stabilize the Batista regime from inside and out, while trying not to pave the way for a new dictatorship under Castro. Batista’s Government must maintain steam to counter the twin insurgency, while managing two benefactors: its fragile US Alliance and its corrupting Syndicate skim. And in the midst of the turmoil, Meyer Lansky and his Syndicate bosses will jockey to keep their Cuban gangster paradise alive. Cuba Libre will be easy to learn for Andean Abyss players—both volumes share the same innovative COIN system. Like Volume I, Cuba Libre is equally playable solitaire or by multiple players up to 4—and with a shorter time to completion than Andean Abyss. But Cuba Libre’s situation and strategic challenges will be new.
Here is a link to our most recent COIN Series Ranking Video:
5. Panzer: The Game of Small Unit Actions and Combined Arms on the Eastern Front 4th Printing from GMT Games
Panzer is a well regarded system that I have personally never played even though I like tactical games and combined arms is always fun because you get to use tanks. That is sad but one day I will get to it. GMT recently announced a new 4th Printing of the game and maybe this is my chance.
From the game page, we read the following:
Panzer is a complete game system designed for small unit actions from platoon to battalion-sized formations in World War II. The primary focus is Armored Warfare simulation, but Leg (Infantry) and Towed units are also part of the game. Each 7/8” double-sided counter represents a single vehicle, towed gun or aircraft. The 5/8″ double-sided leg unit counters represent squads, half-squads and sections, including their attached weapons.
It’s a modular rules system with Basic, Advanced and Optional rules, which the players can mix and match according to taste – you can keep it simple or make it as complex as desired. All Unit data is included on the full-color Data Cards. The streamlined chit-based command system moves the action along at a brisk pace.
The base game comes with 10 Scenarios, some of which are aimed at new players and use only the Basic rules.
Note on 4th Printing: This will be a straight reprint of the previous printing, with any known errata corrected.
If you are interested in Panzer: The Game of Small Unit Actions and Combined Arms on the Eastern Front 4th Printing, you can pre-order a copy on the GMT Games P500 game page for $65.00 at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1228-panzer-4th-printing.aspx
6. Combat! Blitzkrieg from Compass Games
Compass has been churning out new volumes for the Combat! Series over the past few months with volumes focused on Crete, Arnhem and the Eastern Front. I love that there is such a variety in the topics and settings of these solitaire tactical level wargames and look forward to seeing how the system branches out to involve other historical conflicts but also to see how they innovative and make each volume feel like it belongs to the period with new mechanics and unit types. This month, they announced the newest volume in the series called Combat! Blitzkrieg. This volume focuses on squads of Polish, French, or early-war German soldiers and the fighting ranges from the open fields of Poland to the snowy woods of Norway, to the villages and cities of Belgium and France. The game comes with 11 scenarios, 6 bonus Armor scenarios, a competitive 2-player mode, a comprehensive Random Scenario Generator which is always a good innovation to add variety to any game, a Campaign Game and the ability to combine with other 2nd-generation Combat! Series volumes.
From the game page, we read the following:
Combat! Blitzkrieg is a stand-alone solitaire game of man-to-man combat in World War II. This game depicts the countless squad-level actions that were fought as part of the first campaigns of the war, with the player commanding a squad of Polish, French, or early-war German soldiers in those engagements.
In the 11 scenarios, the fighting rages from the open fields of Poland to the snowy woods of Norway, to the villages and cities of Belgium and France. It is bursting with value, whether enjoyed on its own or combined with other games in the series, such as Combat! Eastern Front, Combat! Tunisia & Sicily, or Combat! Crete. The comprehensive Random Scenario Generator (and Campaign Game) further expands your gaming possibilities. With this tool, players can generate a limitless supply of unique scenarios for Combat! Blitzkrieg.
Combat! Blitzkrieg also includes new easy-to-use Armor rules, along with 6 extra Armor scenarios. Tanks, anti-tank guns, and infantry anti-tank weapons are included for the French, Poles, and Germans, as well as the Italians, British, Soviets, and Americans, for use with previous series games.
One of the things that I do like about this system and the various volumes is that it is not just cookie cutter churning out new games but each game has their own unique elements modeled into the game play as special rules or changes to account for the history of the setting. Here is a look at the changes in this new volume:
Other new features in Combat! Blitzkrieg include:
New Terrain types, including a Steeple, Graveyard, Fence, and Barricades.
Flamethrowers for use against enemy defenses.
Competitive Play rules for head-to-head battles!
Combined rulebook containing the special rules from previous Combat! volumes.
Plus, you get rules for air support, fortifications, city fighting, light mortars, weather, fire, and much more, making this the most comprehensive Combat!volume yet published!
7. Iberian Tide: The Spanish Civil War from Compass Games
Recently, we have been playing a lot games on the Spanish Civil War. It is a fascinating period of history leading up to the start of World War II and we have really played some great games on the subject including most recently Crusade & Revolution from Compass Games and The Republic’s Struggle from NAC Wargames. The Tide Series is the brain child of Gregory M. Smith and he is now working with a newer designer in Michael Vitale to tell the story of the Spanish Civil War in a Card Driven Game with the newest volume in the series called Iberian Tide: The Spanish Civil War.
From the game page, we read the following:
Iberian Tide is a 2-player operational-level game that places you in command of either the Nationalists (Franco and his German/Italian support) or the Republicans (Government troops and their Soviet/International support) during the Spanish Civil War. Many would point to this conflict as a ‘warm-up’ for World War II.
Starting with “Viva La Muerte” in 1936, the Nationalists try to quickly knock out the Government by attempting to capture Madrid, all while each side tries to organize amidst the chaos of the Coup.
Each turn, or ‘Block’ is about 3-6 months long, during which multiple card plays occur. These give the players movement, combats, ‘Dug-In’ positions, units and other actions or items. At the end of each Block, players must make critical decisions on which cards to re-buy in an attempt to win the game. Iberian Tide is based on the popular, action-packed “Tide” system of card-driven games (Pacific Tide, Imperial Tide, Rebel Tide, Desert Tide), with many combat and strategic decisions to challenge players in just a single evening’s game.
While the game is probably best as a 2-player game, there is a dedicated solitaire mode.
While Iberian Tide is designed as a 2-player experience, an additional option for solitaire play is provided by the inclusion of a Solitaire Bot. This “Bot” creates action priorities for the non-human player, and has the advantage of being simple enough to implement without spending an inordinate amount of time as the non-player
8. To Kyiv! The Russian Invasion of Ukraine from Compass Games
I know that many designers and publishers have a strict “no current ongoing war designs allowed” policy. I also understand that not all games are for all gamers and that is fine. With that being said, with the events in Ukraine over the past 4+ years, it is just a matter of time before we get several of these designs (this being the 3rd I am aware of with the other 2 games being 2022: Ukrainefrom Conflict Simulations Limited and Defiance: 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War 2022-? from GMT Games). The situation in Ukraine is a study in modern warfare and I for one am glad that this game is coming to light. The newest game to tackle this ongoing conflict is To Kyiv! The Russian Invasion of Ukraine from Compass Games designed by Ivan Notario.
From the game page, we read the following:
A Card-Driven Wargame of the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine. On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, aiming to rapidly seize Kyiv and replace the country’s government. The campaign soon stalled in the face of determined Ukrainian resistance, exposing deep flaws in Russian planning and logistics.
To Kyiv! simulates this modern conflict at the brigade level, covering the chaotic early months of the invasion and the prolonged struggle that followed. Players alternate playing event and action cards that drive military, political, and logistical developments across the theater of war.
The game features variable turn lengths, reflecting the fluctuating tempo of operations, from rapid breakthroughs to extended periods of stalemate. Success requires balancing offensive ambition with the hard realities of supply, morale, and international support.
Designed as a serious historical simulation, To Kyiv! seeks to model the strategic and operational dynamics of the war as faithfully and respectfully as possible. It does not glorify or justify the conflict, but rather aims to help players better understand its complexity and consequences.
I am very much looking forward to this design and to see how it explores a conflict that has so recently been, and continues to be, in the headlines! I also love a good CDG and this one looks very promising.
I normally don’t highlight non-wargames in this Wargame Watch but this next game is just too juicy looking to not share. Do you love a good pirate game? With broadsides, walking the plank, scurvy, boarding parties and booty? Well, you are not alone and there will soon be another great game on the market to quench that thirst for mayhem and adventure with Pirate Hunter: 1718 designed by Joe Carter. I think that the best part about this game is that it is a solitaire game and Joe Carter is a very good designer who is doing a lot of them great titles.
I do own the first game in this series called Golden Age of Piracy: 1718 but have not had a chance to get it played yet as it sits atop my very high and ever growing pile of “to be played” games. A shame really as it looks amazing!
From the game page, we read the following:
Pirate Hunter: 1718 is a solitaire, tactical-level, open-ended sandbox game—being part wargame, part adventure game, and part RPG. As captain of a Royal Navy ship during the year 1718, you are tasked with hunting down and defeating pirates, with your ultimate goal being to attack and shut down the notorious pirate town of Nassau!
Ship-to-ship combat, boarding parties, and the search for buried treasure are to name but a few of the adventures that await you on your patrols across the high seas. But beware of lurking dangers such as the destructive Kraken or the haunting Ghost Ship, all the while you sail the crystal blue waters in pursuit of marauding pirates, fame, and fortune.
10. Rebel Tide: The U.S. Civil War, 1861-1865 from Compass Game Currently on Kickstarter
There is no secret that we really enjoy Gregory M. Smith designs and we also count him as a close friend so take that for what it is worth. He is a great designer and has put together some of our favorite narrative-driven solitaire wargames, such as Silent Victory, The Hunters and The Hunted, but also has done some great 2-player strategic level games on various historical periods including Imperial Tide, covering WWI, and Pacific Tide, taking on the Pacific Theater of WWII. His new game in the Tide Series deals with the American Civil War and is called Rebel Tide.
From the game page, we read the following:
Rebel Tide: The U.S. Civil War, 1861-1865 is a two-player strategic level game that places you in command of either the USA (Union) or CSA (Confederacy) during the Civil War. Each turn consists of a year, during which multiple card plays occur. These give the players movement, combats, entrenchments, and other actions. At the end of each year, players must make critical decisions on which cards to re-buy in an attempt to win the war outright or to win by placing the other side in a disadvantageous position by 1865. Rebel Tide is based on the popular, action-packed Imperial Tide/Pacific Tidegame system by Gregory M. Smith, with many combat and strategic decisions to challenge players in just a single evening’s game.
The core of the game is the unique card re-buy system, in which players take their annual production (adjusted for blockades and blockade runners) and decide which cards they need for the upcoming year. Cards not only provide for reinforcements, but allow for movement, combat, and entrenchment. Which cards to rebuy is without question one of the key decisions the player must make to prepare for next year’s operations.
The game has infantry units for all of the major participants, cavalry, and artillery units. Naval operations are mainly abstracted, although the Confederate player must worry about Farragut invading a port from the sea. Besides the focus on card play, the game features a small footprint (one standard map) and also is designed to be played in just a single evening – estimated at 3 hours for experienced players to fight the entire war.
But don’t worry because the game is not just a reskin of the same system used in those other two games, although the system is really interesting, but instead attempts to create new mechanics and elements to tell the proper story of the struggle for the soul of the country in the 1860’s.
One new mechanic in Rebel Tide is the Political Track, which is an abstract measure of the support of England and/or France to the Confederacy. If this track reaches the maximum early in the war, it can trigger an early CSA victory.
Another new key mechanic in the game system is the addition of historical Leaders, who range in ability from excellent (5) to poor (2). Bad leaders may be “sacked” and removed from the game and randomly replaced by the expenditure of a movement action. Leaders are vital in advancing after combat and also can add strength to an attack’s total combat power.
While attending WBC a few summers ago, we had a chance to sit down with Gregory M. Smith to cover a few of his upcoming designs and Rebel Tide was included in that discussion. Here is a look at our video interview with Greg:
As of May 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $9,098 toward its $2,500 funding goal with 101 backers. The campaign will conclude on Monday, May 4, 2026 at 10:00am EDT.
11. Battle Box – Age of Sail from Feral Wizard Currently on Kickstarter
Small and unique wargames are a rare commodity in our hobby of large and bloated 1,000 counter and multiple map monster games. Nothing wrong with bloated but sometimes it is nice to have a simple and quick to set-up game that is interesting and fun to play. Well, I found this offering on Kickstarter called Battle Box – Age of Sail and it simply looks amazing. It fits into a mint tin and seems to have a lot of flexibility and interest.
From the game page, we read the following:
Battle Box – Age of Sail is a complete naval wargame within a small tin box that fits in your pocket, perfect for a quick game on the go or even full naval campaigns.
The game in full display.
Battle Box – Age of Sail includes ships, battle mat, dice, scenarios, and cards for in-game effects such as critical hits and special ship rules.
4 ships and tracking tokens in different colors.
3 double-sided sections of a hexagonal grid battle mat; with open sea on one side and terrain features such as coastline, island and shoals on the other side.
4 dice and 1 set of rules to play in under 30 minutes while capturing the tactics and flavour of age of sail warfare.
18 cards with ship status tracking, critical effects, ship upgrades, narrative scenarios based on real events, a wind rose (plus wind token), and advanced rules for frigate duels.
And all of it fits within a small and neat tin box!
The set of 4 ships, each of a different colour, are used to represent generic men-of-war and merchant ships. The status, crew quality, ship upgrades, and critical hits on each ship are tracked by means of cards and a token matching the ship’s colour.
Ship Cards – Track ships status and bonuses/penalties deriving from it, such as an eager crew aboard a frigate, or a merchant ship so damaged that can’t sail effectively.
Upgrade Cards – Special rules that can be assigned to each ship for special scenarios, such as a fighting captain or a weatherly ship.
Critical Effect Cards – Attached to a ship as reminder of the critical conditions she is suffering, such as a raging fire or a mast going down.
As of May 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $10,175 toward its $270 funding goal with 230 backers. The campaign will conclude on Thursday, May 21, 2026 at 9:01am EDT.
12. Old School Tactical Volumes II and III: The Pacific and WestReprint from Flying Pig Games
Old School Tactical from Flying Pig Games is a tactical combat system that focuses on World War II to date. The game focuses on the simulation of small unit combined arms engagements where historical units, weapons, armor and vehicles will duke it out on a beautifully crafted board full of hexes. During a turn, players will go back and forth using an Impulse Point System to activate units to either Move, Assault Move or Fire. The players will play through a predetermined amount of rounds and at the end, victory points and casualty points will determine which side is the victor.
The first volume in the series was Old School Tactical Volume 1 Eastern Front 1941/1942 and focused on battles between the Russians and Germans. Old School Tactical Volume 2 West Front 1944/1945 was a follow-up effort and focused on the titanic struggle in Europe following the D-Day landings in 1944 with battles between the Americans and Germans. Then came Old School Tactical Volume 3 Pacific 1942/1945 which includes battles between the Japanese and their Special Naval Landing Force and the American Marine Corps. Since that time they have done Volume 4: The Italian Theater and Volume 5 German invasion of France during 1940. But, they are now doing a reprint campaign for Volumes II and III and it is currently on Kickstarter.
From the game page, we read the following:
War is often remembered in sweeping movements across maps and history books, but it is decided in far smaller moments—when a single squad holds the line, when a machine gun nest refuses to fall, or when a bold maneuver turns confusion into opportunity. Old School Tactical is built to capture those moments. It is a squad-level system that places you in direct command of infantry, leaders, heavy weapons, and armored support, where every decision carries weight and every action can alter the course of a battle.
This Kickstarter brings together four outstanding entries in the acclaimed Old School TacticalSeries: two core games and two expansions that span the European and Pacific Theaters of World War II. Together, they offer a complete and deeply immersive tactical experience built on a system known for its accessibility, tension, and replayability.
At the heart of Old School Tactical is a design philosophy focused on clarity and engagement. The rules are streamlined without sacrificing meaningful decision-making, allowing players to quickly grasp the system while still exploring its tactical depth. Each turn is driven by an impulse-based structure that keeps both players involved, eliminating downtime and ensuring that every moment at the table feels active and consequential. The system emphasizes maneuver, firepower, leadership, and timing—core elements of battlefield command—while remaining intuitive and fast-playing.
This reprint Kickstarter offers four different games including Vol. III: Pacific War 1942–1945, Hell Bent Expansion, Vol. II: West Front 1944–1945 and Ghost Front Expansion.
Here are links to some of our content on these 2 fine games.
Video: So What is Old School Tactical? – A Look at the Old School Tactical System from Flying Pig Games:
Video Review: Old School Tactical Volume II with Airborne Expansion:
For my part, I think that Old School Tactical is one of the finest tactical systems out there. Its ability to generate the gory details of close quarters squad level combat while keeping the game rules relatively lite and intuitive is quite miraculous. We love it and I would definitely highly recommend the system to anyone that hasnt tried it.
As of May 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $62,668 toward its $12,000 funding goal with 280 backers. The campaign will conclude on Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 12:00 noon EDT.
13. Blitz Creed – The Card Game from Blitzcreed Currently on Kickstarter
I love a good card based wargame. They are definitely a change of pace and a lot of the times are really great experiences. This past week, I found a new and interesting looking card based wargame called Blitz Creed – The Card Game on Kickstarter and wanted to make sure to share it with you.
From the game page, we read the following:
In the wake of global conflict, powerful countries fight for supremacy. Territories shift hands, alliances crumble and soldiers await their commands. Enter Blitz Creed where players engage in intense battles and use their wits to emerge victorious in this world of relentless warfare.
Blitz Creed is a fast-paced, military-themed card game where players battle for global dominance. Set in a world of strategic warfare, players control countries and deploy soldiers to engage in battles and conquer regions. The game combines elements of military strategy, outsmarting opponents and anticipating the moves of others in a contest of wits and power.
In Blitz Creed, you use a deck of 110 cards that include countries, soldiers, dispute cards and reinforcements. You’ll strategically play your cards to deploy soldiers, attack other countries while protecting your regions. Each country has a strength which determines it’s ability to win or lose a battle. There are also special cards like Regional Strike, which let you unleash powerful attacks on your enemies.
The goal is simple: conquer and secure 3 regions by collecting the required number of countries. The first player to secure 3 regions becomes world leader & wins the game.
As of May 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $4,346 toward its $2,625 funding goal with 75 backers. The campaign will conclude on Thursday, May 21, 2026 at 6:54am EDT.
14. Cry Havoc– Medieval Man to Man Combat from Footsore Miniatures & Games Currently on Kickstarter
Nostalgia is a real thing and we have it for many of the things from our childhood. Sometimes that nostalgia is kind of like fool’s gold, meaning that we see something differently than it really was and have a favorable memory of it because it might have been one of our first tries of something that we love. But, nostalgia doesn’t always mean that those feelings are not real and true. Well, I recently came across one of these “nostalgia grab” wargame Kickstarters for a game that originally published in 1981 called Cry Havoc – Medieval Man to Man Combat from Footsore Miniatures & Games. I have looked into this one, even though I didn’t play it during my formative years, and have jumped on the bandwagon and backed the project. Word of warning though. The Kickstarter page is quite sparse and you really cannot get a good feel for what the game is other than a few beautiful pictures of what appears to be lovingly hand drawn boards and art.
From the game page, we read the following:
The original game of medieval combat returns in a fantastic remastered edition, featuring new art from Gary Chalk. Time to bring dramatic clashes of mail-armored knights to your tabletop.
The original 1981 edition of Cry Havoc
In 1981, Gary Chalk and Standard Games collaborated to create Cry Havoc!, combining simple rules with gorgeous hand-drawn art and compelling narrative scenarios. The game became the introduction to wargaming for many gamers worldwide, and the original version can still be found on many tabletops, a testament to the game’s quality and presentation.
Fast forward to 2026, and Gary has collaborated with his friend Mark Farr at Footsore Miniatures to clean up and remaster the original game with new artwork, maps and tokens. The game remains the same classic wargaming experience, and is completely compatible with the original 1981 version (if you’ve still got one on your shelf or tucked away in an attic).
I love the look of this one and even if the game is lacking having the beautiful boards and art in my possession will be worth the $80 I will pay for the game.
As of May 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $50,162 toward its $20,267 funding goal with 624 backers. The campaign will conclude on Sunday, May 3, 2026 at 1:14pm EDT.
New Release
1. A Mad Endeavor: The Fight for Stoney Point, July 16, 1779 from High Flying Dice Games
With this year being the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the start of the American Revolutionary War here in America, I would expect to see a bunch of Am Rev focused wargames being released and to date this year we have seen 3 new ones (Trying Men’s Souls from Against the Odds Magazine and Battle of Pensecola 1781 from Strategy & Tactics Magazine) with the most recent of the bunch being A Mad Endeavor: The Fight for Stoney Point from High Flying Dice Games. I ordered a copy of this one and it arrived last week and looks to be a pretty good little game. Paul Rohrbaugh specializes in these little known and smaller scale battles throughout history and he uses an interesting card activation system that adds some of the unknown to the game and keeps it lite and interesting.
From the game page, we read the following:
The British outpost at Stony Point along the Hudson River prevented any movement by the Americans along this crucial waterway. It also allowed the British nearly unfettered transit that could cut off the New England colonies from the rest of United States. Such a position had to be taken and reduced. To that end, General Washington ordered General “Mad” Anthony Wayne to assemble a strike force to take Stoney Point by assault. What ensued was one of the most daring assaults in the Revolutionary War.
Can you as the British player hold off the Rebel’s attack at Stony Point? Will you as the Americans take the Loyalist stronghold to help secure New England’s position in the revolution? Learn and enjoy!
If you are interested in A Mad Endeavor: The Fight for Stoney Point, July 16, 1779, you can order a copy for $18.95 from High Flying Dice Games website at the following link: https://www.hfdgames.com/stoney.html
2. Cuius Regio: The Thirty Years War 1618-1648 from GMT Games
We have been collaborating with Francisco Gradaille a bit over the past few years as we have posted interviews for his first published design Plantagenet: Cousins War for England, 1459-1485, Onoda from Salt & Pepper Games as well as some other more generic game design and scenario articles. He now has a new game being fulfilled at the end of May called Cuius Regio: The Thirty Years War 1618-1648.
From the game page, we read the following:
Cuius Regio explores the operational military aspects of the pivotal period in European history called The Thirty Years War and focuses on the maneuvers and battles that shook Europe for three decades.
The Thirty Years War unfolded in four main phases: the Bohemian Revolt from 1618 to 1625, the Danish intervention from 1625 to 1630, the Swedish intervention from 1630 to 1635, and the French intervention from 1635 to 1648. It concluded with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which finally established a new status quo in Europe, the concept of the sovereignty of states, and shifted the focus of continental politics from southern Europe to the northern states.
The game is an operational scale game and contains all the grandeur you would expect on such an interesting and compelling conflict.
For two players, Cuius Regio is played on an operational-strategic scale. Each turn covers one year, and each hex is approximately nine miles across. Infantry and Cavalry strength points represent approximately 1000 men each, and an Artillery strength point is approximately five guns. Each leader has a Leadership Rating that affects how many troops he can lead and his effectiveness as a leader. Players maneuver their leaders and their armies around Central Europe, conquering cities, engaging in battles, gathering supplies, and preparing armies for yearly campaigns to gain control of the cities of the Holy Roman Empire.
The game includes scenarios covering the Bohemian Revolt, the Danish intervention, the Swedish intervention, the French intervention, and a Thirty Years War campaign of 31 turns lasting from 1618 to 1648. Each scenario has a unique character, and the game can be played in as little as an hour and a half (for a short scenario) or can be a multi-session game for the full campaign.
The turns are divided into two seasons (summer and winter), and each turn has a variable duration that depends on the number of armies activated. In addition, armies can conduct operations several times but become less effective as they accumulate fatigue during each action.
Combat is an integrated system for field battles and sieges and is resolved by a die roll, modified by each army’s leadership, composition, and condition, on a simple Battle Results Table.
If you are interested in Cuius Regio: The Thirty Years War 1618-1648, you can order a copy for $71.00 ($45.00 if you order quickly before they are shipped near the end of May) from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-971-cuius-regio-the-thirty-years-war.aspx
3. Empire of the Sun, 5th Printing from GMT Games
If you have followed us for long you know that we really love Empire of the Sun and have played it several times. The game is simply fantastic and really implements the CDG mechanic perfectly with the events of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Furthermore, if a game is on its 5th Printing now especially with the 4th Printing having been announced at the end of 2020, that says something about it.
From the game page we read the following:
Empire of the Sun is Mark Herman’s third card driven design since he introduced the system to the hobby in We The People. EotS is a strategic level look at the entire War in the Pacific from the attack on Pearl Harbor until the surrender of Japan. EotS is the first card driven game (CDG) to move the system closer to a classic hexagon wargame, while retaining all of the tension and uncertainty people have come to expect from a CDG. Players are cast in the role of MacArthur, Yamamoto, Nimitz, and Mountbatten as you direct your forces across the breadth of the globe from India to Hawaii and from Alaska to Australia. This is represented on a single map based on a 1942 equal area projection of the entire theater of conflict.
As in other games using the CDG system, players try to maximize the impact of their cards even as they hide their intentions and traps from their opponent. The player is faced with a wide set of clear strategic choices. The focus of EotS is on directing major offensive axes of advance. The Japanese early in the game are challenged to achieve their historical expansion as Allied forces battle the clock to react with their in-place forces trying to achieve maximum damage to the hard-to-replace Japanese veteran units.
If you don’t have this one, you need to get it now. Not only is the price right but the game is simply amazing. And it will be in a near perfect form with the 5th Printing.
We have lots of content on our blog and channel for you to choose from but here are a few of those pieces.
Empire of the Sun – Basic Training Episode 1 – Card Anatomy Video:
Empire of the Sun – Basic Training Episode 2 – Counter Anatomy Video:
If you are interested in Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War, 1941-1945, 5th Printing, you can order a copy for $88.00 ($56.00 if you order quickly before they are shipped near the end of May) from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1114-empire-of-the-sun-5th-printing.aspx
4. The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire 2nd Printing from GMT Games
I have said it before but Stephen Rangazas is a rockstar! Plain and simple. He has done some yeomen’s work over the past few years with games like Fall of Saigon: A Fire in the Lake Expansion, Sovereign of Discord: A Fire in the Lake Expansion and the recently released The British Way. The British Way is a really clean and quick playing 2-player COIN in a quad pack and we just love it. And it is now getting a 2nd Printing.
The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire covers four British counterinsurgency campaigns during the process of decolonization immediately following World War II. These include campaigns against larger insurgencies that sought to contest territory and topple colonial rule through armed conflict, such as in Kenya and Malaya, but also smaller more clandestine armed groups that sought to wear down British prestige to force a withdrawal as in Cyprus and Palestine.
From the game page, we read the following:
The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire is the first of several COINSeries Multipacks, containing four separate games exploring a series of thematically related insurgencies. Between 1945 and 1960, the British fought four major “emergencies,” as they referred to their counterinsurgency campaigns, each trying to manage their retreat from empire. The four games in this pack focus on exploring British counterinsurgent responses to a variety of different opponents, including communist insurgents in Malaya, militant nationalists in Kenya, and smaller and more clandestine terrorist organizations in Palestine and Cyprus. The games adjust the core COIN Series mechanics to provide a compelling new way of handling two-player conflicts, while also streamlining several mechanics to quicken gameplay. The British Way offers an approachable introduction to the COIN Series for new players, while presenting experienced players with four mechanically distinct games to explore and compare.
The four games in one box is a tried and true method as in the old SPI Quads and recently has had somewhat of a return with not only this new COIN Series Multipack format but with other publishers such as Compass Games and Brief Border Wars I, Brief Border Wars II and Brothers at War: 1862.
The British Way and the COIN Series Multipack has the following highlights:
Four full games in one box: Explore four different conflicts set during the twilight of the British Empire in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Each game uses a unique ruleset building on the same general mechanical structure, ensuring that they are easy to pick up while still offering a distinctive experience.
A new adaptation of the classic COIN system: Improved two-player sequence of play and a versatile Political Will track for determining victory.
Unique mechanisms reflecting the British approach to each conflict: New Villages in Malaya, the ‘Pipeline’ in Kenya, Curfews in Cyprus, and Mass Detention in Palestine.
Small board footprint with quick-but-deep gameplay: Each game plays in under 90 minutes and takes place on a single 17×22” board.
An “End of Empire” Campaign: A campaign scenario allowing players to play the four games in a linked series with a cumulative scoring system, random ‘external’ events relating to British decolonization, and new mechanics to integrate each game into the campaign.
As you know, I love the COIN Series, and this new multi-pack format is very exciting as it provides us more access to smaller, lesser gamed subjects that are fast playing. It also provides to us as players a comparable view at different types of conflict and how they affect the populace and the overall success of these efforts. I think this type of approach won’t work with every conflict and many conflicts will be better served in the framework of the larger COIN Series as their own standalone games. In speaking with Stephen on this very subject, he has shared that his “…hope is that a series of multipacks might provide new ways for wargamers to think about conflict and help cover some topics that would be difficult to design or sell as standalone products”.
5. The British Way: Enemy of My Enemy from GMT Games
In April 2024, we got the announcement that the first entry in the COIN Series Multi-PackThe British Way got a new expansion called The British Way: Enemy of My Enemy and more than that there were to be variants for the existing conflicts covered in the game.
From the game page, we read the following:
The British Way: Enemy of My Enemy is an expansion for The British Way, including two entirely new games on “prequel” conflicts using the Malaya and Palestine maps and expanding the base game experience with new variants for all four conflicts originally covered. The British Way: Japanese Occupation puts the British and the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) on the same side in their efforts to resist the Japanese occupation of Malaya during World War II. The British Way: Arab Revolt allows players to explore the brutal suppression of the Arab Revolt (1936-1939) that preceded the Jewish insurgency covered by the original Palestine game. The two new games involve entirely new mechanics to capture the unique features of each conflict and can each be linked to the original Palestine and Malaya games, which also allows them to feed into the “End of Empire” Campaign Scenario. The two new games in the expansion allow players to explore how British attempts to combat earlier threats to colonial rule involved collaborating with local armed groups that they would later end up fighting against (Jewish paramilitary groups in Palestine and the MCP in Malaya), ironically strengthening and preparing these groups for two of the conflicts featured in the The British Way.
So 2 new games in The British Way: Japanese Occupation and The British Way: Arab Revolt that use 2 of the existing boards. But there is more. The variants to me seem like the most interesting part as they add new elements to all of the 4 base games. For Palestine, they are adding a free functioning Lehi insurgency that does some neat looking things (I am not sure if these are a type of Bot or if it is controlled by the player). In Malaya, they add additional Jungle bases for the insurgents that make them harder to get to and the British get SAS units that can do that job, plus an additional 4 new Event Cards. In Kenya, we get a new British Detention Deck and the Mau Mau get a few leaders. And finally in Cyprus, are added some new Turkish group cell pieces to hinder the British. These expanded elements look very interesting and I think continue the focus of the game on studying the types and form of insurgency/counterinsurgency at the end of the British Empire across the world. Just fantastic!
If you are interested in The British Way: Enemy of My Enemy Expansion, you can order a copy for $67.00 ($42.00 if you order quickly before they are shipped near the end of May) from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1107-the-british-way-enemy-of-my-enemy.aspx
6. Air & Armor: V Corps, Tactical Armored Warfare in Europe from Compass Games
Another Cold War Gone Hot game. A look at 1985. This topic always makes for a fantastic wargame as there is lots of armor, aircraft and support technologies that pits the United States and NATO against Russia and the Warsaw Pact powers in the late Cold War period in 1985. It seems there have been lots of these games come out in the last few years or so and I always welcome a new one. Air & Armor: V Corps, Tactical Armored Warfare in Europe is an entry in the Operational Air & Armor Series that specifically focuses in on the the famed U.S. V Corps.
From the game page, we read the following:
Air & Armor is a highly realistic game system designed to simulate modern warfare at a grand tactical level. In the Cold War Series, set in 1986, players simulate a hypothetical Soviet attack on NATO forces in West Germany. V Corps depicts the collision of two Soviet armies, the 28th Army and the 1st Guards Tank Army, with the famed U.S. V Corps in ferocious battles from Fulda to Frankfurt. The U.S. 3rd Armored and 8th Infantry Divisions, covered by the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, attempt to halt the advance of four Warsaw Pact motor rifle divisions and five tank divisions in a titanic struggle for the approaches to Frankfurt.
Air & Armor employs a highly interactive game system with asymmetric rules, modeling each alliance’s different command-and-control capabilities. The game simulates all major aspects of modern warfare, including reconnaissance, combined arms operations, air, helicopter, and artillery strikes, chemical and electronic warfare, and combat engineering. Multiple levels of hidden intelligence produce a true “fog of war” experience and provide plenty of opportunities for deception, surprise, and ambush. Play this game to experience what it would have been like to command a Cold War division in battle.
V Corps includes 12 scenarios, each depicting a unique battle situation, most of which are playable in a single sitting. Players can choose to play the game in Open Mode or Hidden Mode. In Open Mode, each player knows his own unit strengths but cannot see his opponent’s. In Hidden Mode, unit strengths remain a mystery to both players until the moment of contact. Hidden Mode makes for highly entertaining solitaire play.
As usual, thanks so much for reading along and sticking with me this month as I navigated through the many websites and game pages looking for new and interesting games to share.
Finally, thanks once again to this month’s sponsor Sound of Drums!
The Tactical level wargame is a staple in my collection and in our hobby. I have played a lot of the various offerings out there over the past 10 years including Advanced Squad Leader from The Avalon Hill Game Company, Lock ‘n Load Tactical from Lock ‘n Load Publishing, Combat Commander from GMT Games, Fields of Fire from GMT Games, Conflict of Heroes from Academy Games, Old School Tactical from Flying Pig Games, Assault from Assault Games, Fighting Formations from GMT Games, Combat Infantry from Columbia Games, Valiant Defense Series from Dan Verssen Games, 2GM Tactics from Draco Ideas and Squad Battles from Flying Pig Games to name just a few. Tactical level wargames are just so gritty, action packed, bloody and in your face and I love that about them. But, there are some things that I don’t love, as with all games. In this edition of The Love/Hate Relationship, I want to share what I love and hate about Tactical level wargames.
Love
I love tactical squad level combat. I will say that I am partial to World War II tactical games but am always open and willing to play other time periods. There is just something about the strategy, the tension and fear inherent in the game that really draws me in. What is going to happen when I run my squad out from their comfortable and relatively safe building to cross an open field, offering little to no cover, in order to get into position to eliminate the enemy? I don’t know but whatever it is it will be fun!
I love that tactical level games focus on individual units, which can range from vehicles and squads all the way up to platoons or companies. These units are assigned rating factors based on what types of individual weaponry the units carry, reflected in firepower, range and usually movement. Tactical games are usually designed so that a rudimentary knowledge of military tactics will facilitate good gameplay. But this personal vantage point, as you control an individual soldier or small squad of soldiers, really feels personal to me. As opposed to larger Operational or Strategic level games where I am making decisions about 1,000’s of men and machines and it feels more generic and removed from the action, in the Tactical level game I get to put myself in the shoes of a soldier named “Joe”.
One of my first experiences with Tactical level games was Combat Commander. I remember sitting down and doing the Example of Play scenario laid out in the playbook where I was paying as the Russians going up against the Germans. The Russians had the initiative and immediately began taking shots at the Germans using an infantry gun controlled by a Weapons team. The first shot was a miss and I was disappointed. I wanted to see their aim be true and do some damage to the Germans but it wasn’t meant to be. I will say that it was amazing to see the range of the gun, which showed me the power of this type of ordinance. The Russians then finished their first turn by moving forces north from the orchard through the forest on a path to be within striking distance of the Germans holed up in the buildings. I saw the power in leaders as well as by activating a single leader, you can control the actions of the units within their command radius.
A Russian squad in Combat Commander: Europe from GMT Games designed by the late Chad Jensen.
I remember feeling the angst and weight of the role of Sergeant Kaminsky who was desperately trying to inspire his men to move up on the buildings to engage the enemy and knock them out of that fortification. I also experienced the disappointment of the German leader Sergeant Ganz as his troops were forced to retreat to the north to try to repel the Russians who were threatening the German troops in the buildings. I felt the disgust in my unit’s performance when the very powerful infantry gun continued to miss its targets! I was relieved when the random event put a blaze marker in between my troops and the German forces in the woods obscuring their line of sight and not allowing them to effectively fire. I love this aspect of Tactical level games because it is personal.
Another favorite part for me is the narrative that is told as the battles unfold! As I have played Tactical level games such as Combat Commander, I imagine that I can feel what the squads felt in combat. The narrative is always the best part and allows my mind to participate in the battle, even though I am not there. It is a similar feeling to a well written book that forces you to take the role of characters and experience their feelings as you read the story as it unfolds on the written pages. If a game can do all that, it is definitely good!
I do love the strategy and tactics at play when playing a Tactical level wargame! Scoot and shoot, fire from cover, suppressing fire, using smoke to obscure movement, group fire, flanking, use of off-board artillery and fire support and all of the various elements of this level of fighting. I am in control of the game and have the tools and abilities of my troops at my disposal to try and best solve the tactical puzzle laid out before me and to plan how best to go about reaching my goal. Sometimes in these tactical games there are unit abilities that can be called upon. An example of this is found in the Squad Battles Series from Flying Pig Games. Special abilities or “Powers” that different types of units and Leaders have can be activated by playing the right type of card (see below pictured card with the word POWER shown) and really pay off when you can get them played. This element really adds some variety to the game play and always has me really thinking about how I need to effectively build my squads.
A Power found on a card in ’65: Squad Level Combat in the Jungles of Vietnam from Flying Pig Games.
Finally, I really like the granularity and realism of some of the Tactical systems out there. One of the best games in regards to this aspect is Advanced Squad Leader. Admittedly, I have only played the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #4, but got a real taste for the gritty minutiae that the system demonstrates. I have asked many people what the appeal is for them with Advanced Squad Leader. They typically all refer to many aspects of the game, including things like its depth, rules complexity (not I am just joking with this one!), granularity and realism as well as the thought that anything worth playing should be hard to learn. But, I would agree that the granularity of the game and its focus on realism are two of its greatest advantages.
A Banzai Charge in the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #4 The Pacific Theater from Multi-Man Publishing.
But I think that the systems used in ASL and the rules that prop them up are really quite realistic and provide you the player with a good understanding of the factors involved in these small tactical engagements and their pitfalls. I do really think that the system mimics the process and actions of soldiers in many ways. Does it do this perfectly? Probably not but I am unsure that I can’t definitively say at this time in my journey but I want to learn more and understand the answers to those questions. And hopefully I can play it again to get a better feel and understanding. I also think that people really enjoy the bits and pieces of chrome that are injected into the system. I bring this up as I experienced the chrome of banzai charges as we played ASLSK#4 The Pacific Theater of Operations.
Hate
Hate is such a strong word for me but there are things that are very displeasing about the medium of Tactical level wargames. First off, sometimes a Tactical level game can feel pretty generic, meaning that we have just thrown a scenario together that isn’t necessarily realistic or tied to a specific historical event. As a player of historical games, and an admitted lover of history, I really like playing games that are rooted in the events of the time portrayed. If I am just covering a generic run across an open field or an assault on a fortified line of trenches, I am not necessarily as interested or vested in this situation. But if you throw a name to it, such as the Marine defense at Alligator Creek, the British defense at Rorke’s Drift or the chaotic Battle of Castle Itter, then I sit up, take it a bit more seriously and can dive into the details of the fight. I just wish that more of the systems out there did a better job of integrating the actual small scale battles into their scenarios.
Castle Itter: The Strangest Battle of WWII from Dan Verssen Games designed by David Thompson.
Sometimes Tactical level games are not necessarily realistic as they are games and they always have some gamey elements such as the activation system, dice or the use of cards to determine results. Now before you blow me out of the water, my use of realism here isn’t to say that these Tactical games are simulations. Sometimes systems, such as ASL, gives the players a sort of God’s eye view of the whole battlefield and the omnipotent understanding of the situation and of what can and will happen. This allows for the players to somewhat plan around any difficulties or traps and make the best of a situation. And I think that any battlefield commander will tell you that this is not the case as you never know exactly who you are fighting, their makeup, their numbers and capabilities nor their support. But, keep in mind that one of the keys to any battles is the use of reconnaissance and scouting of the terrain and battlefield before committing so maybe there is more to this than I think.
Well, in summary, I love Tactical level wargames. They are the best and I love them for many reasons including those I have listed above but also because they are fun and exciting to play. Part of the reason that I play games is to be stimulated and to have to exercise my brain to come up with a workable plan and then to execute that plan in the face of adversity and poor dice rolling. Tactical level games give me this and I will always want to play them.
What do you love and hate about Tactical level wargames? What are your thoughts on my observations? Please share.
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.
#75: The Second Funnel 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 The Second Funnel. The Second Funnel is a 5 Ops card, which makes it a very important card in the German 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 interrupt to foil a successful British Search by playing it as a Reaction. If the British player ever searches for the Admiral Graf Spee, and The Second Funnel is played as a reaction, the British successful Search will be treated as unsuccessful and the German player will get to move the Graf Spee 1 space away from the space where the Search action was taken. This movement can be into any adjacent space so could be used to also reposition the Graf Spee into a space where a Freighter is located. Such a tasty surprise card for the German player! I know that when I play as the British, I have to always keep in the back of my mind that this card exists and that my efforts might be futile. But, as the British, I would rather that the German play this as the event. These Reaction cards are one of the elements that makes this game so good.
Picture of the Graf Spee taken in 1939 shows the second funnel mounted behind the aircraft catapult at the rear of the ship.
The “second funnel” on the Admiral Graf Spee was a fake structure installed by the crew in late November 1939, during its 1939 Atlantic raid, to alter the ship’s silhouette and disguise its true identity. The dummy funnel, along with a fake gun turret on the bridge, was constructed behind the aircraft catapult to make the German “pocket battleship” look more like a different ship, specifically a British or French warship, to Allied merchant ships. By appearing as a different vessel, the Graf Spee hoped to create confusion and avoid immediate detection and engagement by Allied naval forces while it targeted merchant shipping. The disguise was removed before the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939, so it would not interfere with the ship’s combat operations. The ship’s crew, under the leadership of Captain Hans Langsdorff, often undertook such modifications during its patrol in the southern Atlantic to maintain the surprise of their commerce-raiding mission.
Here is a link to our full video review of the game:
In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at Military Uprising from The Republic’s Struggle: Battle for the Republic, Spain 1931-1939 from NAC Wargames.
Form Square Games has recently offered their next several games on Gamefound, one in their Limits of Glory Series called Jersey New Jersey and the 2nd game a stand-alone non-series game covering the French & Indian War called A Strong War. I think that these games are well timed with this year being the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and I look forward to playing and exploring all of these games. I reached out to the designers of A Strong War named Mark and John Kwasny about an interview to give us a look inside the design and get more information and they were interested in answering our questions. One point about the game before we get into the interview, the title, A Strong War, refers to the type of war the Abenaki Nation threatened to unleash on the land-grabbing British in 1753. The sparks of war, ignited in 1754 near Fort Duquesne by an obscure colonel of Virginia militia, George Washington, spread quickly; soon, flames engulfed the entire globe as England and France vied for control of empire. Over the next 5 years, Regular regiments from the French and British armies, American and French-Canadian provincial units, and Native warriors all fought in a chaotic and violent series of campaigns and frontier raids that culminated in the British conquest of French Canada and the defeat of the Native Nations, most of which had sided with the French.
Grant: Mark & John welcome to our blog. First off please tell us a little about yourselves. What are your hobbies? What’s your day job?
Mark and John: First of all, thanks for inviting us to do this interview. We appreciate the interest in us and our game! I have watched many of your videos and learned a lot about different games that I have purchased or have considered buying.
We are both retired. John taught Middle School and High School history for 36 years and I taught American and Military history at the college level for 33 years. One hobby we share is playing wargames purely for fun! We have been wargaming since we first made our own game (60 odd years ago) out of a dozen decks of cards. John is an avid fisherman as well, we both read a lot, especially history, my wife and I do a lot of babysitting with our little grandchildren, and we share the unending quest for the perfect chocolate donut (we live 100’s of miles apart and whenever we can get together, we consume a generous amount of such donuts, trying different ones!).
Grant: What is your relationship to each other? How has this aided you in your design endeavor?
Mark and John: We are brothers and share similar historical interests in military history (he has an MA in Military History, and I have a PhD in Military History). But when it comes to wargames, we have vastly different views on what we like and what works for us in a game. That helped us try to incorporate different styles of play into the design. And John’s pro-French leanings and my pro-British sentiments helped us with the pursuit of play balance!
Grant: What motivated you to break into game design? What have you enjoyed most about the experience thus far?
Mark and John: About 15 years ago a person contacted us about making a game for a new game company he wanted to form. We chose the French and Indian War as the subject. Ultimately that fell through, but by then we had a game we really liked but it is a long game and thus was difficult to play a lot. We were both still working full time and had very limited gaming time. So we decided to boil it down to its essence – we wanted to make a game that gave the same feel for that war but was playable in a short time so we could actually play and complete it! (I don’t know about others, but the percentage of games I have played that I actually finished is not very high!) The key, we decided, was less resources and thus more tension for each decision. Our goal was simply to make a game we loved and could play together or with our other gaming friends. We already had all the research for the French and Indian War, so we took that earlier game and stripped it to its bones. We put ten years into this process of stripping it down: fewer rules, less units, to create more difficult decisions to use what little you have. The current version is the result of that decade of work.
Grant: What is your upcoming game A Strong War about?
Mark and John: As mentioned, it covers the French and Indian War, focusing on the fighting in North America between 1755 and 1760. The game takes a grand strategic approach with the players directing the entire war effort of the two sides through those six years.
Grant: What should the title convey about the French & Indian War?
Mark and John: Between the title, and the quote it comes from, it indicated a war to the end between British expansion, Native American defense of their lands, and French efforts to maintain control of French Canada. Either the French and their allied Native warriors would stop British expansion or they would lose everything. And therefore it was a strong war, no holds barred!
Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?
Mark and John: Braddock’s Defeat has always been a subject of fascination for both of us. Childhood visits to Fort Michilimackinac, Old Fort Erie, Fort George, Presqu’ile, and other places around the eastern Great Lakes (we grew up in Cleveland and we traveled around the area back in the 1960’s), these sparked our imagination early on. The characters involved deepened this interest: Washington, Braddock, Pontiac, William Johnson, Montcalm, Langlade, St. Luc de la Corne, Robert Rogers. We have both read numerous books over the decades on the war and these people, and I studied it while in graduate school for my focus on 18th Century and American warfare.
The Wounding of General Braddock by Robert Griffing.
Grant: What is your design goal with the game?
Mark and John: History is important to us, even in a small quick game such as this one. We wanted a good feel for the war and the overall situation, and we wanted a game that sets up quickly, plays quickly, with rules that we believe can be learned relatively easily without lots of charts and details. Also important to us are the types of decisions a player makes. We want those decisions to feel reasonably plausible for that war. Too many games play like WWII no matter their actual subject. We also wanted to be true to the geography of that area of North America – deep, unending forests, rivers and lakes, paths through the woods, limited avenues of approach to the other side, the feel of the constraints imposed by the geography had to be present. And finally, we wanted to create a game that we enjoyed playing over and over and over!
Grant: What elements do you feel are most important to model in a game set in the French & Indian War?
Mark and John: We considered the key to the war were the limited movement opportunities and the limited resources available to both sides. We also wanted to show the contrast between the formal military campaigns of the regular armies, and the frontier style of raids and destruction by the partisan forces. The need to balance these two very different types of warfare and differing types of forces was key in our opinion.
Grant: What sources did you consult fur the historical details? What one must-read source would you recommend?
Mark and John: We would suggest two. First, we recommend Francis Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe, published in 1884. It has a wealth of information, including the use of sources no longer available. One has to be ready for the 19th century prose, of course, which can help give a true feel for how people saw each other back then but can be difficult to read here in the 21st century. The other book is Fred Anderson’s Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766, published in 2001. It is a comprehensive study of the war.
[Editor’s Note: I own and have read Montcalm and Wolfe and very much enjoyed the overall vantage point it gave of the war and its inner workings. I also very much enjoyed the ending of the book, including a very dramatic and detailed depiction of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the fall of Quebec in 1759.]
Grant: What is the scale of the game? Force structure of units?
Mark and John: The game is deliberately very abstract but the forces available are modeled on the relative strengths of each side. There are yearly turns with multiple activations during each turn/year. It is a game about the Grand Strategy of the war. The focus is on the overall command of the entire theater and the allocation of your limited resources to achieve one of several possible goals. Thus, the force structure is based mostly on what we defined as five different types of combat forces available to the two sides.
Grant: What different units are available to each side? What special capabilities does each type bring to the battlefield?
Mark and John: The French player has French regular units, Canadian militia and Marine forces (referred to as Marines in the game), and frontier partisans representing Native warriors and the French Bush Rangers such as Charles Langlade. The British player has Colonial units and British regular units. Individually, each cube is equal to another cube, but the key is combining the proper types of units to maximize the bonuses in combat. For example, if a French Marine cube attacks a British Colonial cube, both sides roll a 4-sided die and high roll wins. But if the French player has a Partisan cube with the Marine, he gets a +2 bonus to his roll. Meanwhile, the British player gets similar bonuses for massing his regulars in combat. Regulars do not fight as well on the frontier, making the French Marines and Partisans even more effective out there. The most numerous forces are the British Colonial units who offer no bonuses but are present in many of the battles. Colonial units can also be used to recruit extra regular units.
Grant: What is used to represent the soldiers in the game? Why was this your preferred medium?
Mark and John: We use small wooden cubes. We like the feel and look of wooden cubes and the material feels appropriate for 18th Century warfare. Since there are so few units, wooden cubes seemed the most aesthetically pleasing and easiest way to handle the game’s needs.
Grant: How many soldier pieces does each side have? Why so few?
Mark and John: The French get three regular cubes, four Partisan cubes, and three Marine cubes, thus ten total. The British have nine Colonial cubes and four regular cubes, thus thirteen total. However, Colonial cubes can be converted into regular cubes at the risk of running out of Colonial cubes. We made it with as few units as possible so each decision on how to use each individual cube becomes critical and difficult. Overall, it gives the right feel of British army numerical superiority, the reliance of the French on their Canadian and partisan forces, and the important role of the British Colonials. Each cube is not meant to represent any specific number or specific units. It tries to represent the overall resources available to the commanders of each side.
Grant: What area of North America does the board cover?
Mark and John: The board covers from Alexandria in Virginia to Québec and the St. Lawrence River valley in Canada, and from Louisbourg and the east coast to Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) in the west. Thus, it covers the northeast corner of North America.
Grant: Why did you feel that point to point movement was the best choice for the design? What advantages does this give the game?
Mark and John: More and more, we like the simpler feel of point-to-point movement. We have played many hex games but as we get older and less able to manipulate stacks of units in small hexes, we find point-to-point movement physically easier to play. It was also easier to represent the difficult terrain between the two sides, and the very limited avenues available to get at each other. In effect, there are three main land routes (through Duquesne, through Oswego, and along Lake Champlain) as well as the naval option for the British. Using hexes or even areas for so few actual paths between the two sides would have created a lot of dead space. This approach fit with our goal of limited resources, limited avenues of attack, and thus tougher decisions.
Grant: What is unique about the combat system?
Mark and John: Players have very few units and thus have to use each one carefully. There are no real charts needed and though there is some luck, the players can mitigate it to a degree. This is perhaps one of the keys. You commit cubes one at a time in a battle and can call off an attack to save the remaining cubes for use later if the initial rounds of combat go badly. Perhaps the real unique aspect for us is the need to create combinations between which cubes you commit to a battle. And there are only so many combinations possible in a yearly turn, so you have to judge when to use the bigger combinations and when to cut and run. For example, the biggest combination for the French is a combined force of regulars, Marines, and Partisans. But in the first year, the French player has only one regular, so he can only use this super combo (as we always call it!) once in that year. Where does he want to commit this strong force? Does he prefer to defend a critical fort, or to raid the frontier to eliminate Colonial units, or to attack to secure control of a border location? These are the kinds of decisions we enjoy most in our combat system.
Grant: What type of strategy is needed with this focus?
Mark and John: A very careful use of the very limited resources. All games have that to an extent, but with so few units, players have to hoard their units and use them sparingly. You have to look at the whole year (one turn). You can only use each cube once a year. Committing your best forces early might gain an initial advantage but could then leave you with nothing to defend or attack with later in the year. Each battle, each combat round, and each activation has to be weighed carefully with what needs you might have against an unexpected disaster or opportunity later in the year.
Grant: How does the actual combat play out?
Mark and John: Perhaps an example is the best way to give a feel for combat. The British player declares an attack on a French fort at Oswego. He then commits three of his cubes (the maximum you can ever commit to one combat) to make the attack (two British regulars and one Colonial cube). Now the French player has to decide whether he wants to use precious resources to defend Oswego. It is not a home location, but it is next to two vital home locations, Fort Niagara and Fort Frontenac. He decides to defend with the maximum of three cubes as well (one regular, one Marine, and one Partisan). Round 1, the British player has to decide which cube to commit to the battle. He chooses one of his regulars. He could lead with the Colonial and save his regulars in case it goes badly early but leads with his power! The French player then decides which of his cubes to commit first and he starts with his Marines. Now both players roll the 4-sided die and the number rolled is the Strength gained from that cube for this combat. So if both players rolled a 3, then it is 3 to 3 after the first round. That is a tie and therefore if the combat is ended there, the defender wins ties. Instead, the British player commits his second regular and the French player decides to commit his Partisan. Both players again roll a die to determine what Strength they get for these newly committed cubes. In addition, the British player gets a +2 bonus to this roll because he has committed a second British regular. The French player gets +2 to his roll because he has two different types of cubes in this combat. The British player rolls 2 and adds his bonus to get a total of 4 Strength for this second committed cube. The French player rolls a 4 and adds his bonus to get a total of 6 Strength for this second committed cube. After two rounds, the British player has a total Strength of 7 and the French player has a total Strength of 9. If the combat ends now, the French player has a greater total Strength and would thus win. Still, the British player might at this point choose to call off the attack because he will not get any bonus for his remaining Colonial cube whereas the French player will get another bonus when he adds the regulars to the fight. The British player accepts defeat, saves the Colonial cube for use later in the year, the French player saves his regular cube, and the combat is ended.
Grant: Why did you choose to use a 4-sided die for combat?
Mark and John: We wanted to have some randomness in combat so that it was not just a math game. But we wanted to avoid wild swings of results between high and low rolls. We experimented with 6-sided dice, 4-sided dice, 3-sided dice, and 2-sided dice. Ultimately after hundreds (literally) of games, we determined for us the 2- and 3-sided dice did not offer enough randomness and combat was almost reduced to mathematics. The 6-sided dice provided too wide a variance of results. A difference between a roll of six and a roll of one overshadowed any strategy or skill in using the combinations and bonuses. Thus, we settled on a die that I personally hate, the 4-sided die (the triangular shape is hard to pick up!), because it gave us the best feel for some randomness but still allowed players’ skill and strategy to have a large impact on the results as well. Form Square Games has brilliantly come up with a way to generate a result of 1 to 4 using an 8-sided die, and that resolves my hatred of our chosen dice!
Grant: I see that each player has several paths to victory. What does this look like?
Mark and John: The multiple paths to victory offer the players strategic choices during the game and between different games. But these paths are not always compatible with each other, and thus players have to choose which to pursue and if/when perhaps to switch to another approach. The British player has two main options, either go for points gained by capturing enough French home forts to win without having to conquer all of Canada, or if his losses on the frontier become too heavy or the French gain too many points in the border locations, he has the option to switch to an all-or-nothing conquest of Canada and ignore points. The French player can also win on points early on by attacking border locations, but he can instead choose to focus more on frontier raiding to eliminate Colonials and win through the destruction of the Colonial military. It is difficult, however, for the French player to do both. Thus, the competing needs of the different paths to victory create tension for each player when determining his strategy year by year and over the course of the entire war.
Grant: What type of an experience does the game create?
Mark and John: We wanted an experience that becomes so nerve-wracking that you might just forget to drink your newly opened beer. John did this in one of our test games and it became our litmus test for how good the game was or was not. He opened a beer, we sat down to play, it was one of the better nail-biting contests, and when it was over, he declared he needed another beer. He picked up the open bottle and it was still full! He had become so immersed in the game that he had completely forgotten about his beer. That is the kind of experience we hope people get by being drawn into the excitement of a tense, quick playing game of nerves.
Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?
Mark and John: First, we set out to create a game we enjoyed playing. Once we had done that, our next goal was for somebody else to play it and enjoy it. When Form Square Games expressed interest and said they had had others play it and respond favorably, we were ecstatic. Having them publish our game is the ultimate goal we had pursued for years. For the game itself, as mentioned above, we wanted a game that is quick to setup and play (a typical game lasts an hour or so and can be set up for a rematch in a couple minutes), and that creates tension and tough but meaningful decisions. We have played this game to completion more than any other game we have played, and still look forward to playing it again!
Grant: What other designs are you working on?
Mark and John: We have tinkered with the idea of using this system to create a game covering the American Revolutionary War. We think it would work pretty well but we have not gone very far with that. We have also designed and played a game on the Battle of Ligny in 1815, which we enjoy but it is not fully finished or tested either. We want to represent aspects of tactical combat that we have not seen in other games and have had some good results. But ultimately, these two were designed again for our own enjoyment and we have not put in the serious work yet required to transform them into publishable games.
Fields of Fire is a solitaire game of commanding a rifle company between World War II and the Present Day. The game is different from many tactical games in that it is diceless and card based. There are two decks used to play. The Terrain Deck is based on a specific region and is used to build a map for the various missions your company must perform. The Action deck serves many purposes in controlling combat, command and control, and various activity attempts. The units of the company are counters representing headquarters elements, squads, weapons teams, forward observers, individual vehicles or helicopters. A single game is a mission and several missions from a historical campaign are strung together for the player to manage experience and replacements. A mission can be played in about 1 – 4 hours.
The Deluxe Edition includes a rewritten series rulebook, with a rewritten third edition ruleset, packed with examples, diagrams and clarifying notes while maintaining continuity with the second edition rules, a Starter Guide, a Full Starter Mission, which is a stand-alone mission tailored towards easing new company commanders into the full game, 4 fully Redesigned Mission Books, Normandy, Heartbreak Ridge, Naktong River and Vietnam campaigns are presented in a clarified and expanded manner, over 200 updated counters plus various additional reference markers and new units, new elevation cards to enhance the Heartbreak Ridge campaign and a completely new set of redesigned player aids including new charts and air assault planning cards.
Close Quarter Battles: Waterloo is a game of tactical combat set in the Napoleonic era. With this game, players will be able to recreate the famous assaults on the farms of La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont during the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815. It hopes to demonstrate how ferocious the fighting was around these iconic locations that even today bear the scars of that famous day.
Indeed, the capture of these two farms became an obsession for the French, and thousands of Napoleon’s men would become casualties trying to wrest control of them from the smaller Anglo-Allied garrisons. The fighting was intense, often involving hand-to-hand combat, and raged for hours through woods, orchards, and finally into the farms. Both the attackers and defenders demonstrated incredible bravery and their efforts helped in no small way to determine the outcome of the battle.
The February 2026 Monthly Debrief Video, which is the 2nd episode in Season 6 of this series, saw us discussing the Twilight Struggle Family Tree, which covers games that have spawned from or followed closely the tenets of the Card Driven Game system used in Twilight Struggle from GMT Games. We both love the Card Driven Game mechanic and also very much love TS.
Also, as usual, we covered the games we played in February, as well as the games we plan to play in March.
We will remind you here that we are fortunate to be continuing our relationship with Noble Knight Games as the sponsor for our Monthly Debrief Video series. In case you don’t know, Noble Knight Games specializes in hard to find games but also carry all the new releases. But what makes them truly unique is that you can find some of the rarest games, long out of print games, hand made games, imported games from overseas, etc. Thanks to them for their sponsorship and we hope that you will consider them first when looking for the games we cover.
John Poniske is a prolific designer and we have enjoyed several of his games including Revolution Road from Compass Games, Plains Indian Wars from GMT Games, Bleeding Kansas from Decision Games, Hearts and Minds from Worthington Games and Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars 1845-1872 from Legion Wargames. We also own several of his designs but have not had a chance to get them tabled yet including King Philip’s War from Multi-Man Publishing and Pontiac’s War: Frontier Rebellion, 1763-66 from Compass Games. We have done several interviews with John over the years and I always enjoy this thoughts on the subjects that he decides to cover. In this entry in the Best 3 Games with…Series, I take a look at 3 of John’s designs that have spoken to me.
3. Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars, 1845-1872 from Legion Wargames
Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars, 1845-1872 from Legion Wargames is a game that uses as a background the uprisings that took place between 1845 and 1872 due to British colonial incursions into native Maori lands on the North Island of New Zealand. The ensuing conflict over a period covering nearly 30 years involved the destruction of a number of Maori villages, Pas, which are fortified villages that featured intricate trench-works and some colonial settlements. The war introduced the British to a very skilled and strategic combatant who used a strategy of ambushes and bush raiding to catch off guard and frustrate the professional British ranks. The hallmark of the game is that it is highly playable by featuring low counter density, a play time of under two hours for most of the scenarios and easy to understand rules.
Playing as the British, players will have to deal with swinging tribal loyalty and will need to master the rivers and seas to move their more powerful troops and gunboats around while the Maori player will be focused on bush-raiding, which allows the Maori to move units temporarily off the board and out of harms way, but then to later bring them back in a more favorable strategic location of their choosing. The asymmetry in the fighting styles is really very good and I like the way it factors into account the history.
Maori Wars is a great game with some really beautiful art, not only on the board but also on the counters. The game is a slugfest between the mighty British and their Queenite allies against the inhabitants of the island in the various Maori tribes that resisted their colonial oppressors. The tribes have lots of tricks up their sleeves and use the land and their knowledge of it to great advantage as they conduct bush raids regularly and are very difficult to bring to decisive battle.
Here is a look at our unboxing video for Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars, 1845-1872 :
We also did a video review and you can watch that at the following link:
2. Bleeding Kansas from Decision Games
Bleeding Kansas is a very well designed 2-player game that deals with the violence and politics of pre-statehood Kansas from 1854-1861. The game focuses on the tensions between pro-slave and abolitionist parties and their attempts to win over emigrants to Kansas to their cause and thereby influence the outcome of elections to move the state toward their leaning on the issue of slavery. The game has four elections that players will fight over trying to have the most influence in Kansas counties to score victory points. At its heart, the game is an area control game that has splashes of election dynamics that feels very Euro-like as it uses cubes to represent forces.
The core mechanism in the game is the cards. Each of these cards is tied to an historical event, important person or other factor involved in the conflict and allows players to choose their actions for that immediate turn. The game proceeds as players alternate the play of one of the cards from their hand to take various actions from symbols that appear on the cards. These symbols provide actions such as influencing new settlers to the region to join their side in the conflict, build up forces for the coming battle, take control of counties by moving these forces around or displacing those of your opponent, attacking the opposition, burning down their population centers, enticing settlers to migrate to their areas or request intervention from the Federal Garrison stationed at Leavenworth. The cards carry out the plans of players and create a historical narrative of the conflict.
The game really is pretty simple mechanically but don’t let the game’s simplicity fool you. This is a knock down drag out bare knuckle fight for supremacy in the Kansas Territory and will test you’re meddle as you fight back and forth undoing what your opponent has just done. The game boils down to staying the course and playing your cards smartly to gain the upper hand in elections. You have to be able to judge where control stands as you play each card and you have to plan as scoring elections can really sneak up on you if you are not paying attention.
Here is a look at our unboxing video so you can get a good look at the components:
Here is a look at our video review of the game:
Here also are links to a series of Action Points on the various aspects of the game:
1. Devil Dogs: Belleau Wood 1918 from Worthington Publishing
Devil Dogs: Belleau Wood 1918 is an easy to learn, fast-playing card-driven game for 2 players. The play map covers the historical French battlefield geography and the 300 counters and markers represent the historical units and incidents involved along with chits that determine initiative and order choice. The game is unique in that it captures the tension and high rate of casualties without ever casting a single die, relying more on planning and issuing orders as the active or reactive player. Each side will have a 30 card deck that is faction specific.
I love Multi-Use Cards in a game and this one uses faction specific decks that can be used in several different ways. The combat system is also quite unique as hits are not calculated by a die roll and reference to a CRT but by the combat strength of the units attacking determined by the play of a card and then in what terrain the targets are hiding. The best element of the game though was having to play a card to each sector on the map without knowing what your opponent will play and then seeing how you did. Really interactive and interesting game and this one was a big hit with both of us! Although the rules were a bit challenging in their format and presentation but nothing that we couldn’t handle after a few turns into the game.
Here is a link to our video review of the game:
There you have it. My Best 3 Games with…Designer John Poniske! He has done so many good games and the narrative and historical immersion of all of them are top notch.
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.
#74: Open Borders from 2040: An American Insurgency from Compass Games
2040: An American Insurgency is a card driven game that attempts to simulate a near future US civil war in the 21st century. In this 2-player game that plays in less than 3 hours, the blue team is the Federals representing agents of the government in Washington. The red team are the Rebels including militia groups trying to seize control of states, highways, and cities. The conflict spreads across the entire continental US, from Miami to Seattle and from Los Angeles to New York.
This game is not perfect and it has some issues and the graphics are not that great frankly. As I played the game, I actually felt like it was a pretty decent game, with some very interesting mechanics covering an interesting topic. I know it isn’t perfect and in some ways the designer was so careful not to offend anyone in the game that he really didn’t get to say anything about the situation and its causes, and the game somewhat suffers from that. But it was interesting and I believe that we are about the only ones who played the game.
In this post, I will be taking a look at a Neutral Card called Open Borders. Remember, that each event is either friendly, enemy, or neutral. Friendly events help you; enemy events help your enemy while Neutral events can help either player. Gray cards such as Open Borders have no identifying side’s markings in the bottom right corner and when you play a Neutral Card, you may choose to do the Ops or the Event. Open Borders is a very good Neutral Card because it is a 3 Ops card and can be used to take various standard operations, such as raising troops, fundraising and attacking. The card also is identified as a Momentum Card, which means that if played as the event, the effect will persist until a time specified in the text of the Event or, if none, until the end of the game. With Open Borders, the spaces of Mexico and Canada become playable areas on the board. These areas typically become a way for the Rebels to build and develop bases from which they recruit fresh insurgent units and then cross over the Open Borders to attack those States that border these areas eroding their Order and creating chaos and Revolt. The Open Borders Card allows this but also allows the Federal player to respond by crossing over the border and attempting to squash these recruiting centers.
The other effects of the Event provides both sides with a bonus when they take certain actions such as Tax for the Federals and Recruit for the Rebels. When the card has been played and is in effect, the Federal Tax Action will provide an additional $4 worth of income from the action. This is an effect of open borders and the unrestricted use of free trade and cross border commerce creating new jobs, providing additional sources of income and employing workers who ultimately pay income taxes on those improved wages. The Rebel Recruit Action will gain an additional Militia unit per space where taken. This reflects the stoking of anger at home as illegals and other bad actors are able to pour across the borders unfettered. I very much like this card for its game effect but also for the questions and concerns that it raises in this debate. Such an interesting economic spin on this issue through the game and I think is a very well done part of the design.
The concept of open borders highlights a fundamental tension between national security, economic openness, and civil liberties. Post-9/11, critics argue that porous or “open” borders allow terrorists to exploit security gaps, while proponents of open borders emphasize that excessive restrictions hurt economic freedom and that security should be managed through intelligence rather than isolation. The biggest concern regarding open borders is that unvetted, irregular migration through porous borders can be exploited by extremists to enter countries and perform acts of terrorism, sedition or general mayhem. To manage the tension between security and economic openness, many nations have turned to the concept of biometric borders. This involves using risk profiling and digital identity such as fingerprints and facial recognition to separate “civilized” business travelers from “illegitimate” and bad actors. This use of these high tech instruments in surveillance, data tracking and technology to distinguish between legitimate travel and potential threats has raised more concerns with civil liberty and privacy. This debate often pits “secure borders” against “open doors,” with officials grappling with protecting citizens without sacrificing the democratic principles of open societies. In one of the most famous quotes from history about privacy, Benjamin Franklin stated “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety“. Where do you land on this issue of Open Borders?
Here is a link to our unboxing video showing the components:
A DECADE…a DECADE of content…a DECADE of wargaming…unreal! Time just flies by anymore and I am blown away to think that The Players’ Aid has existed for a FULL DAMN DECADE! That is literally 1/5th of my life! Just unbelievable but we are here and there is no going back or undoing the damage we have done over those 10 years. But we have reached our 10th Anniversary and if you told me 10 years ago that we would be around in 2026 I would have laughed at you. I thought that this was simply another experiment or hobby and that one day in a few years we would come to our senses and move on. But, that didn’t happen and frankly it was because of the fantastic support of the hobby, the strong “family” that we have built and the relationships that have been formed that has kept us fueled and going. Make no mistake, this landmark was reached by ALL of us in the hobby and we thank you all so much for the fantastic experience that we have had along with you.
2025 was another fantastic year for The Players’ Aid and we have continued playing and reviewing wargames and have hit several large milestones over the past 12 months including 3,300+ posts on the blog, nearly 6.4 million lifetime views on the blog and recently we surpassed the 21,500 YouTube subscribers threshold. It is cliche to say but what we do doesn’t feel like work, or a commitment or a chore, and we really enjoy what we do! And to have done this for 10 years is mind blowing. We are continually reenergized by our followers and your comments on our content and want to thank you all for that! I am not a person that needs praise and encouragement often, but when it comes organically it really feels good and pumps me up! Overall, the last year was a HUGE success for us as we have once again experienced good and steady growth in our written blog as well as in our YouTube Channel views. Even after all of this time doing what we do, we still have a desire to meet weekly and play new wargames to share with you. It has truly become our passion and we couldn’t envision a future without this.
Happy Birthday To Us!
We started the blog in 2016 with our first post being on April 17, 2016 which was a very short AAR on our first attempt at playing Empire of the Sun from GMT Games (I look at the pictures we used in that AAR and notice that the counters were not clipped! Barbarians!). We still laugh to this day about the fact that this was one of our first games that we tried to cover. I guess we both like diving into the deep end of the pool! From those meager beginnings, we have posted consistently and I think have improved the quality of our content since that first try. Your readership and viewing has helped keep us inspired and motivated to put out consistent content. Its been a lot of work, and does take up quite a bit of our free time, but we do enjoy it and have no plans to slow the train down. We also have been very lucky in the support that we have received from various publishers, websites and designers as they have worked to keep us going as well. From sharing our posts on Twitter and other social media sites, to posting our videos and reviews on the game pages on their websites, a good portion of our views come from these sources and we truly appreciate that. We know that we cannot possibly reach all of the wargamers out there by ourselves and need the community to help in spreading our words.
We also want to thank the host of game designers who have taken time out of their busy schedules to answer our long and sometimes deep questions about their designs in our written interviews. I know that when I reach out initially they are always gung-ho about answering the questions but then they get my email with 20+ questions and all of a sudden I am sure it feels like homework! Our Designer Interviews Series has been a huge success and is a big part of our weekly posts generally starting each week off with a new post on Mondays. II work hard to try and stay up on the newest games and give our readers an inside look at the mechanics, design process and game play on these in-design games. I have very rarely been told no by someone when I contact them on email to discuss their game and have been able to build quite a number of what I would call friendships with several of these designers. I will not name specific individuals, as I don’t want to inadvertently leave someone out, but thanks to you all! You are simply the best!
We have continued with our monthly Wargame Watch Series, Action Points, First Impressions posts and the occasional Best 3 Games with… Series and The Love/Hate Relationship Series. My newest series on the blog is the My Favorite Wargame Cards Series and we are now up to a total of 73 of these posts since May 2024. I really like revisiting some of these Card Driven Games that we have played in the past and finding those cards that are unique, interesting and that incorporate some of the historical flavor into the game through the cards. On our YouTube Channel, the Monthly Debrief Series is alive and well, although we have had a tougher time over the past 6+ months of getting them done on time mainly due to new job responsibilities and tough schedules, our Car Videos continue to do well and Alexander has continued his very interesting From Cover to Cover Series where he reads a historical book and shares his thoughts on it and pairs it with an overview of a few games on the subject. I have continued to work hard on my solo gaming and was able to fully play 17 new solitaire games in 2025 along with shooting playthrough and review videos. We appreciate all of your response to these continuing series and hope to be able to continue them but also create some fresh and new ideas in the future.
The Blog By the Numbers
With the introduction to the post and pleasantries out of the way, onto a look at the blog statistics, which is always my favorite part of writing this post! Statistics are a good indicator of how we are doing and I personally pay a lot of attention to our daily, weekly and monthly numbers. Actually, I might say that I am addicted to looking at them and check several times per day. I am a results driven person after all and have to win at everything!
Since the blog started in April 2016, we have been viewed nearly 6.4 million times (as compared to 5.4 million this time last year). These views have come from an astounding 2,127,173 visitors (as compared to 1,810,122 visitors as of April 2025). This means that each visitor that comes onto the blog averages 3.0 views. This number is down slightly form last year’s 3.04 views per visitor but is still very comparable. In fact, I have noticed that this views per visitor number has slightly gone down 6 out of the last 7 years. I am not sure I know why that is but it is a thing and it is good that when people do find us and come onto the blog they seem to spend some time viewing our current content and sometimes even dive back through our older stuff. That is one thing that I like about how our platform WordPress runs, as they will link comparable articles and posts below the new post so that when the reader is finished they can simply click a link there to take them to another similar article. This type of thing drives the number of views up and I am glad that it has this feature.
We have really been blown away by the response that we have seen in our blog over the past 10 years. While Alexander no longer writes on the blog, I have really enjoyed continuing to cover games in the written format as I know that there are people out there who prefer it to videos and our statistics prove that point. I know that I prefer written blogs over videos when consuming gaming content but everyone is different! I still marvel that we actually started this little venture but more importantly that we are still going 10 years later.
My mind is very analytical and I really like to think about and consider strategies and probabilities of outcomes during game plays. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a card counter or anything like that but I do like to consider the odds of success before taking certain actions. And I like to put those thoughts down on paper (digitally) here on the blog to share my insights with you. One of my most favorite series to write are Action Points. They give me the opportunity to sometimes create tables and graphs to look at the numbers inside of games as I analyze a game and its mechanics. These posts are not always the highest view garnering posts we do but I am not going to give up doing them as they are really for me and my enjoyment. If others read them and gain something from them, then that is great!
I also really do enjoy the process and activity of writing. It is soothing and takes my mind off of life for a while and really speaks to the creative side of my brain. I also love to consider how to introduce a subject to the reader, how to incorporate my brain’s hard drive full of nostalgia and movies into the narrative I am trying to spin. Sometimes I am more successful with this effort than others but I do enjoy doing that. I have no plans to stop writing but do have a bit of an obsession with it and spend a lot of time (really too much time) on the blog. Last year, I had quite the streak going with posting something on the blog every day for nearly 2 full years! That streak came to an end on January 2, 2026 when I didn’t post for 3 full days. The holidays were fun and I was spending lots of time with my family rather than with writing. I have tried to again get back to consistency this year and have done pretty well by posting at least 4-5 times per week and currently have a modest 35 day streak as of the posting of this entry.
You will also notice that we have done 3,325 posts over the 10-year period that our blog has existed. Remember though that 2016 only included 9 months of content while 2026 only takes into account the first three and a half months of the year, which accounts for the lower numbers for those shown years. If you look at the individual years’ numbers though you will see that we posted a lot in 2017 (432), 2018 (335), 2020 (355), 2023 (267), 2024 (410) and 2025 (385) while 2019 (194) and 2021 (200) were both a bit of a slow year as I had started a new job and was very busy with some travel and out of town work that kept me from my regular routine of writing. 2022 picked back up though and I made a concerted effort to get back to regular content. Also, early on, remember that there were three of us writing for the blog (remember Tim?) and over the past few years it has just been Alexander and I, although at this point as mentioned earlier I do 99.9% of the posts on the blog. Our posting consistency has kept our blog fresh in our readers minds and on their timelines. Over the past few years, the number of posts has begun to increase again but has slowed down a bit in 2025 and now in 2026. But never fear, posts will be regular. I promise!
Another interesting statistical compilation that is provided by our WordPress software is a look at not only the number of posts but also the total number of comments, total post likes, total words written as well as some averages across those numbers. Interaction on posts has been much improved over the past few years as compared to previous years with more comments and more likes saw a big drop in comments. I do love to hear your thoughts on my posts and about the games or subjects being covered so please say something if you would like. I consider myself to be pretty wordy in my posts and that is being proven with total word counts in 385 posts in 2025 of 662,977 and average words per post of 1,722, which are a bit lower than in 2024. It appears that through the first 3 1/2 months in 2026 I have become a bit wordier but I know that I have done more lists and have started some more in-depth looks at games.
Over the past 10 years, we have built quite a library of content and we still come up often in internet searches which brings a lot of visitors to our site. In fact, here is a look at some interesting data from the blog where you can see our top Referrers from 2025. These are sites that send visitors to our site as they have hosted or linked to our articles, videos or other content and people find us this way. Notice though that Search Engines sent 152,693 views our way, which is about 17.1% of our total views (Total Views for 2025 were 897,777). Social Media is also a good source for views as Facebook brought in 23,296 views and Twitter 5,450 (down quite a lot over 2024 from 15,401 views). Consimworld, which referred just 1,649 (down a bit 2023 from 7,287 views) used to be a much larger part of our referrers but has dipped and you will notice that GMT Games is not on the Top 10 list as it appears nothing has come from them. Not shown in the graphic are the myriad of smaller referrers that send views our way. That list is really very long and I couldn’t post the whole graphic but there are about another 130+ referrers ranging from 250 views referred all the way down to just a handful of referrals. We appreciate all the views though and will never not be grateful for any help that we can get.
The following graphic shows our Monthly Views since 2016 and tells a really interesting story. As you can see, our monthly views had been steadily increasing over the years, growing from a Monthly Average Views of just 16,153 in 2016 to over 71,856 in 2021. This slowed down quite a bit though in 2022 with a Monthly Average Views number of just 43,891. We refer to this as the “Dark Times”. As you can see, as I started posting on the blog less starting in July 2021, our monthly views dropped off to the lowest point since 2016. But in 2025 we had a banner year with a whopping 897,777 views, which was our largest annual view ever on the blog. Why was this the case? I am not sure but we did see China pop up as a country where views were coming from and that had never really been the case before so maybe the Party was monitoring my posts as a possible secret code to American operations across the globe. Thus far in 2026, we are doing solidly and have actually outpaced the views for the first 3 months of 2026 as compared to the same months in 2025; January with 57,200 views (52,700 in January 2025), February with 68,400 views (45,500 in February 2025) and March with 52,600 views (51,200 in March 2025). This is a good trend for the blog and I am happy to see it. We may not break the record for highest views this year but we are on pace for another very solid 600,000+ view year.
A few years ago when we posted these stats there was a request for a map of viewers and viewership based on location. The WordPress (powered by JetPack) statistics are pretty good so here’s a look at the top country views for 2025. Obviously the US (296,300 or 33%) is where the majority of views come from with the UK (68,100 or 7.5%), Canada (32,700 or 3.6%), Germany (28,600 or 3.2%) and France (27,800 or 3.1% ) bringing up the 3rd-6th spots respectively. But, this year we had a new entry in the views from Countries arena in China with 264,300 views or 29.4%. I am shocked. I do know that I saw where a couple of warganing focus sites had shared some posts that they translated into Chinese (without my permission I might add) but the added views has been nice. I am very pleased to see our growth in the non-English speaking (I realize some are bilingual and do speak English but not as their primary language) views from these great European nations and even from China. I am always surprised when we get a comment or interaction with fans from other countries and when I look at this graphic I realize that we are a global blog with lots of fans in lots of countries and that makes me very happy.
Top Performing Blog Posts for 2025
In the anniversary post last year, I showed you a list of our best performing posts on the blog. So I will continue that trend this year by showing our best performing posts for 2025. The same as last year, it seems that lists of games do the best, such as Alexander’s Top 10 Wargames, Grant’s Most Anticipated Wargames of 2023!, Grant’s Most Anticipated Wargames of 2025! and so on. People really like lists as they are a quick source of lots of good games that people can investigate, purchase and play. Most of our blog posts get 200-700 views in the first week they are on the blog and then over the next month will get an additional 200-400 views, sometimes more depending on the topic and how often I share them on social media. We are not a high view blog, partly because we are a wargaming blog really with only ever a smattering of coverage for traditional board games, but also because we don’t pay to promote our posts on social media nor do I spend a glut of time posting our stuff on other forums. I could do that and we would get more response but I just don’t have that kind of time.
Designer Interviews
In 2025, the blog hosted 51 interviews with designers (down 19 interviews as compared to 2024 with 70 hosted). That means that we posted almost every week (usually on Monday of each week) of that year. Thus far in 2026, we have posted 14 such interviews and seem to have no problem finding interested designers who want to share their games. I regularly scour various sources for news and anytime I find information about an upcoming game I add it to my list and try to reach out to at least 3-4 designers each month. The goal here is to have a continual pipeline of these designer interviews in the works, either having sent questions out to the designers or working to format and schedule interviews I have received back on the blog, I am always a few weeks ahead in order to make sure I have a continual flow of posts. Since our inception in April 2016, we have posted a whopping 587 designer interviews and I am very proud of that accomplishment. I was once told by Ty Bomba that our blog is an indispensable resource for designers and developers to read to understand how other designers have used interesting and new mechanics and overcome design issues and challenges. I like that and it makes me smile to think about the past 10 years of these weekly interviews and that someone has read them and learned something.
Currently, we have interviews already scheduled to post on the blog through May 4th and I have at least 8 others that I need to review, edit, format and then load onto the blog. Here is a look at some of our better performing designer interview posts from 2025:
These were simply a few of our best performing designer interviews on the blog throughout the year. To access our backlog of these interviews, just go to our blog and check out the Categories section located on the right side of the screen and enter Designer Interviews.
Social Media/Other Platforms
One of our most important marketing efforts is our focus on various Social Media platforms with the most used platform being Twitter or “X “as it is now called (although it is becoming a black hole and both interactions and views from are down) followed by Facebook. We share our posts from the blog on Twitter (@playersaidblog), Facebook (@theplayersaid), Mastadon, although this platform just hasn’t taken off yet and I am afraid is already dying (@theplayersaidgrant@wargamers.social) and Blue Sky (@playersaidblog.bsky.social) daily and have expanded into sharing in around 7 Facebook groups including Wargamers, Solitaire Wargames, Official GMT Games Group (when our posts focus on one of GMT’s games), GMT Games Fans, The Solo Board Wargamer, The Board Wargamer, THE BOARDGAME GROUP and finally our own page The Players’ Aid. I always worry about our frequency of posts and upsetting the groups but I do spend time trying to respond to comments and questions on our posts, share my gaming pictures there and read others posts and comment on them as well.
As you can see from the table above, I missed noting our stats for these Social Media platforms in 2019 but we have had a lot of growth in our Social Media reach in 2025 with a 4.3% increase in Twitter followers, 25.9% increase in our Facebook follows and 2.6% increase in Instagram followers (which is a platform that we really have ignored over the past couple of years). Our Blog Follows have dropped and I am not sure why. You can follow the blog one of two ways, either with your own WordPress site or through email. In just over 9 1/2 years, as we didn’t use social media much the first year, we have built a network of followers on these platforms that really helps us to engage and have discussions on various topics. In 2024, we added Blue Sky to our social media repertoire and have built a good little community there with a large number of increased subs of +240 and hope to continue good growth there so we can chat and connect with you.
Now we come to the YouTube Channel. And normally, I get to say that we had a banner year and added lots of subscribers, etc. But, in 2025, we just didn’t have a very good growth year on the channel. We added 1,363 subscribers, which is a good healthy growth number at +6.8%, but is not as good as we had seen over the past 4 or 5 years with double digit growth percentage and well over 2,000 to 3,000 new subscribers every year. I am a worrier by nature and Alexander doesn’t share my concern with the Channel but I look at others and their growth and we are no longer the largest pure wargaming channel out there. That position is now held by ZillaBlitz, and congratulations to Mike, as he has 28,400+ subscribers. I just take pause to ask myself what has changed? Have we somehow turned people off? I know that we are a bit all over the place and unorganized in our thoughts and videos with rambling discussions and over excited takes on games, which are all genuine for us and nothing is faked or staged. But what has happened? I would also say that over the past few months our views have dropped off by about 20% or so. I think that normally within a day or 2 of posting most of our videos, we would see well over 1,000 views but now we are seeing only 600-800. I just don’t know the answer and I wanted to make that statement here so you can help me to figure it out.
As you can see in the graphic below, we had 773,139 total views of our videos on YouTube over the past year (April 2025 through April 2026). That is about 100,000 less views than in 2024-2025. I am a bit disappointed in this number but feel that we are still really strong in our analytics. Sometimes people get disenfranchised with things and stop having interest. Plus there are even more content creators out there now than before and some of them are doing really well (I am looking at ZillaBlitz). If I were guessing, and based on our slower growth over the past year, I would say we will reach 22,500 subscribers in late 2026 so please subscribe to our channel if you haven’t already.
Overall, since starting the channel in 2017, we have had 6.4 million views, 229,400 Likes, 29,600 Comments and 18,200 Shares. That is very pleasing to see and we are so glad that our videos are being consumed and hopefully making a difference in the wargaming community. One other thing, it is interesting to see what videos are getting the most views and as expected these are our lists or our Monthly Debriefs, such as the Top 10 Wargames, Convention Debriefs and my Top 10 Solitaire Games of 2024 video.
Monthly Debrief Videos
In 2021, we started the Monthly Debrief Series of videos where we talk about what games we played the previous month and what we plan to play in the coming month as well as what games are on Kickstarter and a protracted discussion on a chosen monthly topic. These videos have been very well received. We have done one of these videos each month since their inception in January 2021 and to date are in Season 6 Episode 2 and these videos have garnered over 450,00 views. We tend to ramble on in these videos and they are over an hour each with some approaching 2 hours so thank you for watching and sticking with us as we go on and on! This year we have started Season 6 of these videos and I am really amazed that they still garner views and engagement. They are admittedly long, and I always find them fairly boring, but people tend to view them for sure. We still have lots of great topics that we can discuss and always seem to come up with something new to share.
To wrap this up, we just want to express our humble gratitude and say thank you for all of the support that you give us and for your interest in our content. Ultimately blogs and YouTube Channels only really continue with consistent posts if there is a response. The work involved, while it is a hobby and something that we do for the love of the games, does take us away from some of our other responsibilities at least partially and it is good to see that our content is having an impact on someone. We have made a lot of good friends through this little content creation experiment of ours and we look forward to seeing many of you this summer at great conventions like the World Boardgaming Championships (WBC) (July 25th-August 2nd), Gaming the American Revolution – Camden 250 (September 24-27th) and possibly at least one more, if I can spare the time in the fall, SDHistCon (November 6-9th) in San Diego, California. Please come out and say hi and maybe we can play a game together!
Please let us know what you would like to see from our blog and YouTube Channel in the future and also tell us what you enjoy about our content. Thanks and here is to another successful year in 2026!
A few years ago, we became acquainted with Andrew Rourke through his Coalitions design from PHALANX that went on to a successful crowdfunding campaign and has recently been delivered. He has since been a busy guy with starting his own publishing company called Form Square Games and also publishing the first 5 designs in a new series called Limits of Glory that will take a look at the campaigns of Napoleon and other contemporary conflicts. In Campaign I, which is called Bonaparte’s Eastern Empire, the game is focused on the campaign of the French in Egypt between 1798 and 1801. Campaigns II, III and IV was Maida 1806 and Santa Maura & Capri. Campaign V was Donning the Sacred Heart, which covers the Vendee Civil War, and just recently fulfilled as I have my copy sitting on my gaming table awaiting an unboxing video.
And now, recently, Form Square Games has announced the next entry in the series which is a two-fer with Campaigns VI and VII called Jersey New Jersey and is set during the American Revolutionary War but also including a 2nd game called A Strong War set during the French & Indian War. I think that these games are well timed with this year being the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and I look forward to playing and exploring both of these games. I reached out to the designer of Jersey who is Peregrine Nicholls about an interview to give us a look inside the design and get more information and he was interested in answering our questions.
Grant: Peregrine welcome to our blog. First off please tell us a little about yourself. What are your hobbies? What’s your day job?
Peregrine: I have been a wargamer ever since my Dad came home with a 1912 1st edition of Little Wars by H G Wells, when I was 8. I have very fond memories of us playing toy soldiers on the floor using these rules and firing matchsticks at each other’s troops from toy artillery pieces. I still have the book and even recently bought a Britains 25pdr gun on eBay to add to my display shelf! Wargaming ballooned from there and today 50 years later I have almost 25,000 miniatures and over 400 board games!
Apart from reading (mainly history books or historically based novels), my main other hobby is following my beloved Leeds United, an English football team, whom I always watch on TV and also manage to get to 4-5 homes fixtures per year – a 500 mile round trip from where I live now in south west England.
My day job is working in the family property business, where with my wife & son we buy, sell, manage and develop property.
Grant: What motivated you to break into game design? What have you enjoyed most about the experience thus far?
Peregrine: Andy, that is Andy Rourke of Form Square Games. I was being shown one of his games at a convention and after he had soundly beaten me, we had a beer and I told him about a game idea that had been sitting in my filing cabinet for almost 40 years! After boring him to death for 20 minutes, he said “I’ll publish that!” – at which point I was speechless! But two years later now here we are, at the Gamefound funding stage!
The most enjoyable part of the process has been rediscovering the history. A lot of reading was needed and now having the internet as a tool, (when previous work on the topic was pre-word processing software!), was a massive advantage and led me down countless rabbit holes of historical threads and narratives.
Grant: What is your upcoming game Limits of Glory Campaign VI: Jersey about?
Peregrine: I am responsible for the Jersey game, not the New Jersey game, which is Andy’s baby.
The Isle of Jersey is the biggest of a small group of islands just off the coast of France in the English Channel. When William the Conqueror (as Duke of Normandy, of which Jersey was a part) invaded England in 1066 the Channel Island become part of the English crown. When Bad King John (he of Robin Hood fame) lost Normandy to the French in the early 1200’s, the Channel Islands decided to remain English and they have been ever since – they are now self-governing British Crown Dependencies.
The French did try to capture them during medieval times, but it was half-hearted as the islands really had no particular value at that time. This changed when England and France became constant enemies in the early 1700’s as by then Jersey had quite a merchant fleet (because of its trade with its colony New Jersey) and like all merchantmen when war came, privateering beckoned.
Jersey then became a real thorn in the French side, massively disrupting French coastal trade; after the first year of the American War of Independence the Jersey fleet had captured and brought back to the island over 200 “prizes”. This is what led the French to the two invasion attempts; the 1779 aborted landing and the 1781 successful landing.
The game covers both these actions, with the 1779 scenario allowing a campaign to develop as if the French had actually landed and the 1781 scenario allowing the player to recreate the actual very brief campaign to see if they get the same or a different outcome.
Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?
Peregrine: That’s easy – I grew up in Jersey! The Battle of Jersey was something we learned about, although since I left the island in the early 1980’s its anniversary has been elevated locally to include uniformed re-enactors in the town square and all the trimmings!
Grant: What is your design goal with the game?
Peregrine: To give the player an enjoyable game on a topic about which 99.9% of them will know nothing! That is one of the things I love about our hobby, discovering history, stories, narratives and personalities from military history about which one would have been ignorant, without our hobby.
Grant: How have you modified the Limits of Glory System to fit the American Revolutionary War?
Peregrine: I have not really had to change anything about the series. Andy and I have added lots of small flavor elements, but fundamentally the game will be very familiar to anyone who has played other games in the system.
Grant: How has designing a game in a tested and established system been? How constrained did you feel?
Peregrine: A little, but not hugely, as Limits of Glory is after all a very clever and innovative system, particularly the Event Clock and the Glory concept – so there was lots to work with.
Grant: What elements do you feel is most important to model in a game set in the American Revolutionary War?
Peregrine: The Jersey game really doesn’t have the feel of the AWI, in the sense that it is set in Europe, without all the quirks (terrain, native Americans, divided loyalties, etc.), that the fighting in America involves. It was coincidental really that the French decided to attack Jersey during the AWI, it could have easily been in a period during say the War of the Austrian Succession or the Seven Years War – or in the French Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars that followed.
We have included John Paul Jones though – so there is an American link!
Grant: What sources did you consult for the historical details? What one must-read source would you recommend?
Peregrine: Lots of sources. The Societe Jersiaise was most helpful with access to the online resources, some of the contemporary documents were brilliant.
For example, we found a set of standing orders (in Jersey French – a local Normandy dialect) issued by the Colonel of a Jersey Militia regiment, specifying what his men were to bring to the muster point (the parish church) at that time when invasion alert was sounded. Once I had found a connection in Jersey, through an old school friend, who could translate it for us, (although there were a few words in the old copperplate hand writing that alluded us), we had a real flavor for the situation and it even led us to introduce a special rule into the game for 1779 – “harrows” – but you’ll have to buy the game to find out what they are and how they can be used by a player to frustrate his opponent!
One “must read” source? The Battle of Jersey by Richard Mayne, Phillimore Press 1981. There are still second-hand copies floating around on the web bookstores.
Grant: What was it about the French invasion of the Island of Jersey that made you believe the Limits of Glory System would work well modelling the campaign?
Peregrine: The Limits of Glory System is a very open one in campaign terms so fitting Jersey into its strategic mechanics was actually very easy.
Grant: What different units are represented in the game and what advantages do they bring to the battlefield?
Peregrine: In Jersey there are only four types – British Regulars, Jersey Militia, French Nassau Legion infantry and French Royal Regular infantry. There is also some light artillery floating about as well.
The troops were all of a similar standard, although the Legion was an inferior unit, represented by their stats on the Combat table.
We did of course incorporate contemporary doctrine, so you will find that a Jersey Militia officer cannot issue command to British Regular forces – “After all Sir, the cheek of the fellow!”.
Grant: What challenges does this campaign bring to the system? How did you address them?
Peregrine: Great question. There were several:
Tides – how were we to represent that Jersey has one of the most difficult tidal systems in the world (it’s tide range is in the top 5 on the planet), and it frustrated the 1779 attempt to invade and had an affect in 1781 also.
Alarm – in 1781, the island was asleep when the French landed, so we had to bring in rules for how the alarm would be sounded, spread, and how local troops would muster, etc.
Hopefully players will feel we have successfully dealt with these issues, with some simple and innovative mechanics.
Grant: What area does the map cover? Who is the artist and how does their style assist in creating theme and immersion?
Peregrine: It covers the whole island. Jersey is not a big place, approximately 45 square miles, so this was not difficult. We also have a separate “break-out” map showing key locations in the capital, St Helier, which will be the focus of the fighting in 1781.
The artist is from 1795! We were lucky that a contemporary map – The Richmond Map – has been digitized by the Societe Jeriaise and is available through their web portal, so were able to use that. Andy worked his usual graphic magic to clean up the color and tones and we are really pleased with the result. Little details like the fact that we have put the parish crest by the church for each of the 12 Jersey parishes (very important in the cultural & contemporary heritage of the island), is very pleasing and really adds to the period feel.
Also, the picture on the box cover and superimposed behind the map & the player aids is contemporary too – being the painting The Death of Major Pierson by John Singleton Copley which was created in 1782-3 and now hangs in the Tate Britain gallery in London.
The Death of Major Pierson by John Singleton Copley which was created in 1782-3 and now hangs in the Tate Britain gallery in London
Grant: What purpose do the various numbers appearing in each space on the board serve?
Peregrine: These are “difficulty” ratings – the lower the number the more difficult it is going to be to move your forces out of an area. You will notice that the Jersey map has some land and sea spaces that are rated “0” – we built some special rules in for those!
Grant: For those that are not familiar, what is a Glory Rating? What role does it play in the game?
Peregrine: It is a major part of all the Limits of Glory Series games – every Leader has a glory rating. It represents the ability, resources, luck and circumstance of each Leader and is used by them to mitigate failures or to turn success into better success. It becomes intuitive to use after a few game turns.
Grant: What was the process like assigning these ratings to the commanders on both sides?
Peregrine: Fun and difficult! Glory must be set to be playable as well as accurate, so we tinkered and play tested until it felt right.
Grant: What Commanders are included for each side? Are there any real interesting personas here?
Peregrine: Lots – I’m not quite sure where to start, so I’ll give you a few from 1781.
Major Pierson – the British hero, who has a St, Helier street and a pub named after him. At 24, he was young for a Major and because the two Colonels on the island were in England on Christmas leave when the French landed (12th night, 6 January, 1781), he found himself the most senior British officer on the island. He defied a written instruction to surrender his troops from the Governor of the Island (who had been captured by the French), mustered his men and some militia, assaulted St Helier, won, and was killed at the climatic moment of the final assault! Hollywood where are you!
Baron de Rullecourt – the French commander in 1781, who had been the 2IC for the 1779 expedition also. Not a Baron at all, but rather a clever charleton & adventurer who had ingratiated himself in the right circles and persuaded these people to let him command the invasion and had secured a promise he would become the new Governor on the island if successful. A good planner, he pulled off the daring night landing and marched to the capital without detection, capturing the governor in his nightgown! At this point though success went to his head and he assumed all the Jersey & British forces would just surrender as ordered – they didn’t! He was also killed in the climatic battle, at about the same instant as Major Pierson. Some very interesting artifacts were found in his travelling trunk after the battle – I’ll leave the reader hanging here!
Emir Said – a mysterious Indian Muslim “prince”. He accompanied De Rullecourt, dressed in full flowing Arab style dress, turban, the “works”, including a nasty looking large scimitar on his belt. He stood behind De Rullecourt making unintelligent but threatening noises during the surrender negotiations. We have brought him into the game as an NPC – he is fun and unpredictable!
John Paul Jones – a single source identifies the AWI hero as the commander of the naval flotilla for 1781, (following his success at the Battle of Flamborough Head), so of course we had to include the “Father of the American Navy” in the game!
Grant: What is the makeup of the Combat Table?
Peregrine: It is pretty standard for the Limits of Glory System with different troop types (British Regulars, Jersey Militia, Nassau Legion & French Regulars) being given different abilities and success ratings.
Grant: How does combat work in the design?
Peregrine: Again, pretty standard for the Limits of Glory System – although that said there may be some slight changes to reflect the continual nature of the running fights, in what is a truly small campaign in terms of time span.
The big change for Jersey is that there are no sieges. The time span of the campaign is tiny where compared to other games in the system. The actual 1781 campaign lasted less than 1 day; and had 1779 resulted in a landing, 1-2 days would have brought the campaign to a conclusion. That doesn’t mean there are not castles & forts in the game however – we just have a different way of them possibly being captured!
Grant: What is the general Sequence of Play?
Peregrine: If the player has played any Limits of Glory Series game they will be right at home.
Each turn starts with an event, followed by momentum rolls, followed by alternate turns for the players to move or initiate combat, until both players run out of momentum.
Grant: What multiple strategic decisions are presented to the player every turn in this campaign?
Peregrine: Like all Limits of GlorySeries games the player must focus in on the objective and get cracking with their plan or they will run out of time.
Who do I move? Where do I move them to? Can I risk it? Have I got the Glory to mitigate a failure? Where do I muster forces? Do I go and attack the French now, or do I wait until I can rouse more militia out of their beds?
Decisions, decisions, decisions!
Grant: How is victory achieved?
Peregrine: In 1781 the key to the whole game is Royal Square in the center of St Helier (this is where the real climatic battle took place) and whoever holds this location when the time clock runs out, wins.
In 1779 taking overall control of the island is the objective for the French and denying this to them is the Jersey players goal.
Grant: What are some basic strategies for the French and the British players?
Peregrine: That is probably too detailed to go into here, but Andy has promised that I can have multiple pages in the rulebook to walk players thorough some basic ideas for strategies for both games.
In essence though the French must successfully negotiate the tides & coastline to get their force ashore in a concentrated way and then either push for St Helier with the Governor & Royal Square as their prizes in 1781; or spread across the island capturing & holding militia mustering points & forts, whilst also beating the resident troops in battle in 1779.
For the Jersey player it is all about getting your troops mustered and then into strong enough groups to deny the French their objectives – in the words of Wellington, “give them a damned good thrashing!”
Both sides have equal chances of winning the game and with the fluid nature of the Limits of Glory System, replayability is high.
Grant: What type of an experience does the game create?
Peregrine: Tense, with an increase in this tension as the game proceeds – and hopefully fun! This has certainly been the experience of the scores of play testers we have played it with.
Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?
Peregrine: All of it! The idea to bring a game about my childhood home to market has sat in my filing cabinet for almost 40 years, so brushing the dust off and making it a reality has been a dream come true for me. To think that the history of this obscure, globally unimportant, battle will be available to a wider audience is fabulous, as it has a fascinating and vibrant narrative with great characters and heroes that deserves to be better known.
I particularly love the map and the use of the John Copley painting in the game also, as a copy of this painting has hung in my home for as long as I can remember.
Grant: What other designs are you working on?
Peregrine: Wow, give me a chance! Just working on this one has been a major task! Let the dust settle on JerseyNew Jersey and I’ll cogitate from there!
In early 2024, Worthington Publishing announced a unique 2-pack of games on Kickstarter that were marketed as easy to play travel friendly solitaire games. And you know that I love a good solitaire wargame! And when I heard that these games were small, even portable, then I was even more interested. One of the games covered the Pacific Theater of WWII called Pacific War 1942 Solitaire and the other covers the War of 1812 called (you guessed it) War of 1812 Solitaire. These games are designed by Mike and Grant Wylie and each game has 4 pages of rules, a beautiful mounted board and double sided counters. I played both and really very much enjoyed the experience.
Taking its roots from SPI’s Central Front and NATO: Division Commander, In a Dark Wood is the fourth module of the C3 series, focused on Command, Control and Communication and pioneered by Less Than 60 Miles – one of the five nominees for the 2019 Charles Roberts Awards as Best Post-WW2, Cold War, & Hypothetical Era Board Wargame.
Several typical wargame mechanics have been reinterpreted, and both sides must fight three equally dangerous foes: the enemy, their own plan and time. Even a simple action can quickly turn into a disaster when facing an opponent using more efficiently the real key to victory: the OODA Loop theorized by John Boyd in the early ‘80s and used today as the basis for several military doctrines.
Crusade and Revolution: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 Deluxe 2nd Edition is a card-driven point-to-point movement strategic-operational wargame that covers all the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Its rules are based on Ted Raicer’s Paths of Glory. Each player takes command of one of the sides (Nationalist or Republican), and looks after all the aspects that involve a war including mobilization, recruitment, movement of troops, offensives and construction of defenses. There are also historical events that must be taken into consideration, thinks such as foreign military aid, international policy, change of Republican Government, etc.
As I have done with my Top 10 Wargames of each year list I am going to do the same with the Top 10 Solitaire Wargames/Games that I played that were published in 2025. I played a total of 17 new published solo games in 2025 so take this list with a grain of salt as I didn’t play all the titles released in 2025 nor even all of the games that I purchased this past year. The games that I played include the following:
Okinawa: The Last Battle of WWII from Solo Game of the Month
Iwo Jima 1945 from Worthington Publishing
The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth from Blue Panther
Operation Dragoon Travel Game from Worthington Publishing
Crusaders: The Siege of Acre 1291 from Art of Wargames and Blue Panther
SPQR: The Battle of Alesia 52 BC from Art of Wargames and Blue Panther
Siege Works: A Napoleonic Siege Roll & Write from Solo Wargame
War In The Pacific: A WW2 Roll & Write from Solo Wargame
Fields of Fire Deluxe 2nd Edition from GMT Games
Europe at War 1940 Solitaire from Worthington Publishing
Shogun Solitaire from Worthington Publishing
Black Skin Black Shirt: Ethiopia vs Fascist Italy 1935-1937 from White Dog Games
Empire of Grass from White Dog Games
Onoda from Salt & Pepper Games
Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth from Neva Game Press
La Der de Ders – The War to End War from Hexasim
Thermopylae: Last Stand from Solo Wargame
I have really grown to love my solo wargaming and it is partly because there are plenty of well designed and engaging games out there that continue to feed my curiosity and hunger for a tough challenge. Here I present to you my list of the Top 10 Solitaire Wargames of 2025!
10. Crusaders: The Siege of Acre 1291 from Art of Wargames and Blue Panther
A new solitaire game is always welcome on my table…and if that game is about the Crusades, even better! Earlier this year, Blue Panther released a new game designed by Joe Fernandez called Crusaders: The Siege of Acre 1291. The game is what I would call a lite dice-chucker with some very interesting aspects of a siege baked into the game. There are tracks on the board that track the condition of the outer wall, inner wall and accursed tower and the Crusader Knights, including Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights, inside the city of Acre have to defend against the Mamluk siege for 13 turns.
The game has a random event that kicks off each turn that will do damage to the city walls, kill knights and advance the Mamluk miners who are attempting to tunnel under the walls. There is just one event that if rolled can do a loss to the attackers but this occurs only on a roll of 3 on a 10-sided die.
The rules are very simple clocking in at 5 pages and are easy to understand and once read the game can be played only from the excellent player aid. I very much enjoyed the Deus Vult actions that are special actions that can be used to do things like repair a wall, reverse a Mamluk mining action or sally out of the city to offensively attack the besieging units. But, these actions can be nullified if certain conditions occur so you should use them while you have them and not wait too long or they might disappear.
I feel like this game really scratches that quick playing, easy to get into but intense and difficult game itch. The Crusaders have an uphill battle for sure as they really don’t have as many options or choices as I would like to see but what is there makes sense, is full of historical flavor and plays well. I have not been that successful with the game, meaning that I haven’t won very often, but despite that I still want to come back play after play and that should tell you something about the game and what it is. If your dice luck is really bad, this one can snowball quickly ending in a catastrophic defeat. I think that the other real attractive part of the game is that it is quick to set up, has good rules and plays quickly. This one will not blow your socks off but it is good for what it is and it comes in a small box that is very portable. In fact, I played it first while attending a work conference.
Staying in the small, travel sized wargame department is Shogun Solitaire from Worthington Publishing. I say wargame, but it is probably more of a strategy card game with a war theme being set in the period of the Sengoku Jidai. Shogun Solitaire is a card based dedicated solitaire game where the player is leading a coalition of four clans to unite feudal Japan. These clans are one of 4 different colors in the game including green (Hōjō), purple (Takeda), red (Katō) and blue (Amago). Each of the clans must secure 3 objectives within their territory to achieve unification under a single Shogun including the port, village and castle of that region. To accomplish this, you’ll need to deploy armies in the form of cards in strategic combinations to gain control of those objectives. These cards are built up in the players tableau and you must get a run of 3 same colored cards (not the same type of soldiers although you cannot play 2 of the same soldiers consecutively) played in order to win the next objective. But, there are Enemy cards colored black or gray that represent assassins, Ronin and raids. There are also neutral Envoy cards that are bronze colored that act as dead space in your tableau and represent the court responsibilities and diplomacy of the Shogun with allied clans and if you ever build up too many of them in the area you will have to take a breath and wipe the slate clean by sending them home.
The really great part of this game is that each of the different types of cards have different special abilities and you must deploy them properly in order to gain the greatest advantage before the 102 card deck runs out. There are six types of Shogun cards that represent the available forces that can be deployed to seize objectives. Samurai can protect and will cancel enemy cards before they can do damage. The Ninjas allow the player to search the top 4 cards of the deck and then reorder them in order to finish a run of the same color cards before bad things can happen. And one of the most important cards is that of the Leaders which act as a wild card that can be played like any Shogun card of its color. I found that trying to utilize these cards to their highest effect was very fun and tense and I found myself really trying to utilize each ability at the right time.
This game is fast playing, playing in 20-30 minutes, and is very fun. But it can be very luck dependent as when you draw bad cards a few hands in a row, there is not much that you can do and the game begins to pound you down and it can come to an end very quickly. But, this game is very good and well designed for what it is; a lite, card based, quick playing travel sized game that is also very beautifully produced with gorgeous period art, thick cards and a fantastic board that flips over to show a
A look at a very lucky win! Notice the back of the board turned over the reveal the beautiful art!
A few years ago, Worthington Publishing published their first game in the Island Fight Series called Tarawa 1943. That game was awesome and was truly difficult to win, as it should be. Now, they have published the 2nd volume in the series called Iwo Jima 1945 that covers the only island assault during the Pacific war that the attacking US forces would suffer worse casualties than the Japanese defenders. On February 19, 1945 the USMC would land 30,000 marines on the island against a Japanese defensive force that numbered roughly 21,000 Japanese soldiers. Facing a Japanese commander who had learned valuable lessons from the losses on other Japanese islands, the USMC would eventually land over 70,000 marines and suffer over 25,000 casualties during the 36 day campaign.
In this solitaire game, the player takes on the role of the USMC commander leading the invasion of Iwo Jima. The game system, driven by cards, will simulate the strategies of the Japanese defenders, often referred to as the Japanese AI, adding a layer of historical authenticity to your gaming experience. If you have played Tarawa 1943, you will be familiar with the system.
Iwo Jima’s play deck is larger than that of Tarawa’s, which provides a bit of breathing room in the game but doesn’t necessarily change the difficulty appreciably. There are also added mountain positions on the island where the attacking USMC will roll 1 less attack dice making it very challenging to overtake several of the key positions and that will need the player to use special cards to assist. The USMC player is allowed to play any number of the cards from their hand during their turn as opposed to just 3 from the previous entry in the series. The other rules are almost all the same, and you can begin playing with just a brief read of them.
I have played this one about 10 times and have not even come close to winning. It is tough and the way the dice system for combat works it is truly difficult for the Marines to score hits quickly enough to make significant progress, which is how it should be. But, the game is fun, tactically challenging as you have to manage your Cohesion as well as decide when to deploy and replace front line troops with fresh troops and plays pretty quickly. I have never had a bad play of this system and very much look forward to other entries in the series.
I am always on the lookout for an interesting and different type of historical game. And when that game is solitaire and allows the player to experience and gain insight into the life of a tragic figure then I am very interested. A few years ago, I came across this very interesting looking solitaire game designed by Francisco Gradaille called Onoda from Salt & Pepper Games. Onoda follows the tragic life of Hiroo Onoda who was a Japanese soldier who wouldn’t believe that Japan had lost World War II and stayed at his post on the island of Lubang in the Philippines from 1945-1974 when he finally surrendered after a visit from his commanding officer. I have played this one several times and can say the game is very interesting, educational and also gives the player an opportunity to learn and gain insight into the life of this person who is remembered as an insane criminal and a story of tragedy.
During 6 rounds of variable duration, the player has to obtain a number of resources represented by rice that will allow them to finish the round without suffering penalties, such as reduced health and morale. In each round, the player will have to undertake a series of missions, earning honor points for accomplishing them. During the game, the player will get to experience some of the events that the real-life Onoda had during his stay in Lubang as well as some of the tragedies. The missions includes things like sabotaging key infrastructure, gathering equipment and other useful items all the while trying to evade detection and capture. But the game goes deeper than that as the crux of the game is the management of morale and the level of insanity in the mind of the soldier due to paranoia, death of comrades or illness.
During these missions, the player will have to draw tokens from a draw bag that represent the level of alarm that is present on the island due to his shenanigans. Each time that a player has to perform a check to accomplish a mission or to avoid danger from the random events, the player must take a Resource/Resolution token from the bag and check its number side against the relevant level of alarm or paranoia in the are where the operation is being undertaken. These Checks are successfully passed when the token’s number is higher than the Alarm or Paranoia level so keeping these low and also moving around the island stealthily will spread out the alarm level and keep Onoda safer and more able to accomplish these missions. Failure will lead to negative effects and lost opportunities as the game has only 6 turns.
I very much enjoyed this game and also loved it because it made me think about this tragic “hero” and his motivations and life those 30 years on the island. What commitment he must have had as well as derangement and you have to respect that or at least give it some thought. Just a great little narrative generator with some very gamey mechanics that create an interesting experience.
6. Black Skin Black Shirt: Ethiopia vs Fascist Italy 1935-1937 from White Dog Games
I have really enjoyed my plays of several games designed by R. Ben Madison. He has a knack for including elements of the history into the gameplay while placing the events into the framework of his chosen system, which is usually the States of Siege Series…but not always. His newest offering called Black Skin Black Shirt: Ethiopia vs. Fascist Italy 1935-1937 from White Dog Games uses the States of Siege Series System and delves into pre-WWII conflict in Africa.
First off, this game is very challenging, as is to be expected as the Ethiopians are desperately outmanned and outgunned by the Fascists as they invaded to take over the oil rich area for their own purposes and I have not done well at it at all in my few plays. I normally would have played it a few more times before adding to the list but I just had such a good experience with it and the history that I felt that I needed to add it to the list. It uses the States of Siege Series but in a bit of a different layout as there are not tracks per se but there are paths that lead through various regions of the country of Ethiopia as they converge on the capital of Addis Ababa.
The game is chit pull and the chits that are pulled give instructions about the actions of the AI Italians as they move on each path. The player will also gain a number of action points that can be used to take actions such as attacking to drive back the invaders. I very much like the concept of support of the Fascist invasion as they have the ability to place their support focused bases on the map as they advance and this leads to the player no longer being able to drive them back to beyond that point so the pressure really ratchets up as the game goes along.
As is the case generally with these games, Black Skin Black Shirt is an easy-to-play, straightforward solitaire game that creates a very interesting historical narrative about how the conflict plays out. There are really lots of tough choices and the game is about the management of your resources and assets, such as your Ras warlords who can go out and make devastating ambush attacks but can also be killed in action and removed from the game, The game forces the player to take charge of the defenses, by calling up troops and marshalling resources as well as attempting to call on the League of Nations for aid and support.
Here is a link to my unboxing video:
If you are interested in Black Skin Black Shirt: Ethiopia vs Fascist Italy 1935-1937, you can order a copy for $56.00 from the White Dog Games website at the following link: https://www.whitedoggames.com/ethiopia
5. The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth from Blue Panther
A few years ago, while attending the WBC, I had the chance to meet Wes Crawford who was demoing his upcoming game Engine Thieves. He was a very nice guy and his game was pretty interesting as well. Since that time, he has another game that has been released designed in partnership with Ryan Heilman in The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth published by Blue Panther. I had a chance to play the game solitaire (with Wes overseeing the game and giving me guidance and pointers) at WBC in 2024 and have since played the game on my own several times and had a really great time with it. Great little solo game with several other modes where the player uses resources like police and detectives to search for clues in the hunt for Lincoln’s assassin after the events at Ford’s Theater on the evening of April 14, 1865. Definitely not a subject that has been gamed before and it is really refreshing to be able to experience this history in an interesting and engaging game. There really is a lot to like with the way that clues are found and chits are blindly drawn to verify clues from a bag. There is also a great little movement mechanic with police and detectives to try to acquire more clues.
I know that this is not a traditional wargame but the topic is just so very interesting and the variety of modes you can play in is also very cool. I think that this one is a game that will stay in my collection for years to come and I think that you will enjoy the chit pull, use of your special Stanton Cards that give special events or actions and the way that the movement, searching and raiding works when you find Booth.
4. Siege Works: A Napoleonic Siege Roll & Write from Solo Wargame
Until a year or so ago, I had literally never heard of the concept of a Roll & Write game. But, I started seeing these things pop up on Kickstarter from a new company called Solo Wargame and I was immediately intrigued as the topics for the games were so interesting and varied that I thought that there just might be something worth looking into. Since that time, I have played 2 of these Roll & Write games from Solo Wargame and really found that Siege Works: A Napoleonic Siege Roll & Write was my favorite. I say my favorite because who doesn’t like a siege game and a game set during the Napoleonic Wars is always fun!
Roll & Write Games are typically small and portable games, some are even Print ‘n Play games like Siege Works, that involve the player rolling dice and then marking the results on sheets of paper or sometimes erasable boards. These markings can mean several different things including goals being met, pre-requisites being completed or enemies defeated. The genesis or archetype for these Roll & Write Games is Yahtzee, where players roll a handful of dice looking for various combinations of results to mark off on their sheet that then score points in the end. But recently that game genre has started to include a bit more player agency and choice about how they go about reaching goals including dice selection from those that are rolled, choosing results that are needed at the time but may be less than optimal in the long run and in completing certain goals that will open the door for additional future beneficial options for the player. Don’t get me wrong. A Roll & Write Game is very simple and is not a traditional style of wargame with hexes, counters and Combat Results Tables. But the game tells a story of a siege and how it works. So I was initially skeptical about this form of game and just had to give it a try to see what it was about. I have actually played 2 of them and found them to be lite, fun and interesting. And Siege Works is a solitaire Roll & Write Game so I have played it by myself on my gaming table and had a good time with them.
The biggest plus to the game is the simple rules, easy setup and fast onboarding with learning and being able to get the game played. You can play this easily with a simple read of the rules and a bit of review of the Game Sheet before playing. The sequence of play is very good and easy to follow as well and I found that the game is pretty intuitive. My only issue with the rules was that I found that they sometimes needed just a few more words or an additional sentence for clarity. But this is combated somewhat by the fact that the rules contain a lot of good play examples for the different actions in the game.
3. La Der de Ders – The War to End War from Hexasim
La Der des Ders – The War to End War from Hexasim is a 1-2 player slightly abstracted strategic level look at World War I. The game allows the players to relive the First World War at a strategic level, with each player controlling one of the 2 sides either the Entente, consisting of France, England, Russia, Serbia and other minor nations or the Central Powers including Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and a few minors. La Der des Ders can also be played solo, with a dedicated solitaire bot called “Athena” who utilizes special Cornflower Cards to make decisions about what technologies to invest in, where to undertake offensives and how to utilize limited resources and reinforcements. Each turn, players gain an amount of Resource Points dependent on what nations are in the war, which they can allocate to different areas to guide their overall strategy. Victory is achieved by launching offensives that drain the morale of enemy nations, forcing them out of the conflict through collapse.
One of the best parts of La Der de Ders, and typically the best part of any strategic level wargame, is the Technology Phase and the player’s ability to spend their limited resources on various types of technologies to improve their performance on the battlefield and in the economic war. But, keep in mind that there is a risk here as resources are limited and you have to pay to develop these technologies and there is no guarantee of success as it is up to a dice roll, albeit a modified one at that. Each of the players has their own Technology Tree board that is used to track their technological progress over the course of the game. There are a total of 6 different Technologies that can be researched including Attack, Defence, Artillery, Aviation, Naval, and Air Raid.
The process of taking Offensives is really pretty simple as players take turns to activate one of their sectors that has not yet been activated this turn. The sector chosen will then be activated and must launch an Offensive against an adjacent enemy sector. There is a cost to the launching of Offensives though as the player will have to pay the appropriate cost by first choosing the size of their Offensive, which in game turns means the number of dice they will pay to roll in the Offensive. The size of the Offensive must be at least 1 and can be up to the current Operational Value of the attacking sector. The player launching the offensive then spends as many Resource Points as the size of the Offensive. Dice rolling is fun and the real key here is how to plan for an prioritize your chosen Offensives as you cannot just do one each turn or you will risk collapse and will be unable to do other things such as invest in technology development.
Victory in the game is well done and I very much like the concept of only calculating the value for those countries who have not Collapsed and who are still in the war when the end game is triggered. We all know that it is easier to negotiate a peace that is favorable to your side when you are still a threat and if too many nations of either side have collapsed then their Prestige Points will reflect this as those countries won’t contribute to the final value. And I also like the simplicity of the scoring system. If certain key countries like France and Germany surrender, then that equates to a victory for the side causing the surrender and if the game continues to grind on through the final turn, then there is this calculation that is really pretty simple and gives importance to each goal with a different value that can be earned. Just a solid method for determining victory that makes sense and fits with the historical aspect of the outcome of the Great War.
The Athena bot is the solitaire mode of the game and it is not just tacked on but is very well done and creates an interesting and challenging game. It is a really well designed system that removes most of the work by the player when playing solitaire. There will be times when you have to make a decision, such as the priority of how Offensives occur from the non-player side, but these decisions are easy and the hard work is done by the simple flipping of a card. I do want to point out one final thing. The sequence of play differs slightly from the 2-player game as it rearranges when the Athena bot does a few of the steps during the Spend Resource Points Phase as shown below. The human player will start by doing their Reinforcements first followed by their Technology investment. Athena will then go and do their Technology investment first followed by Reinforcements. Both players will then move into the Offensive Phase and the player with initiative as shown on the turn track will take the first Offensive of the turn.
I wrote a series of Action Point posts on the game and you can read those at the following links:
Neva Game Press (formerly Neva Wargames) is a new publisher who appeared on the scene 2 years ago. When I started seeing their posts on Twitter and Facebook, I was immediately impressed with their interesting topic choices for their upcoming games as well as the fact that they are trying to make small footprint wargames that pack a punch. And the art is also very appealing and brings an aesthetically pleasing and attractive look to their games! Recently, they released their first game called Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth which is a solitaire look at the amphibious invasion of the island of Iwo Jima in 1945 during the end of WWII.
Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth is the first game in their Neva Skirmish Line and it is a hex and counter wargame with some interesting mechanics for combat and a combination of secondary mechanics to keep the game fresh and replayable. This solitaire game lets you play as the U.S. Marines during Operation Detachment. It offers a challenge for both intermediate and experienced wargamers and is really very, very good. I have only played the game 1 time all the way through but as the year is getting away from me already I had to finish up and decided that this was a very good experience deserving of the position on this list. I hope to play again very soon and put together some video content to share more about the game.
One of the things that I really liked was the focus on the hidden Japanese units that play a significant role in the game. Collecting intelligence for the U.S. as they move up the beaches and onto the mainland ensures more strategic planning and greater success of attacks. Additionally, hidden units, combined with a randomized initial Japanese unit setup, enhance the game’s fog of war and replayability. No play will be the same and I think that is a good way to design a solitaire game. U.S. intelligence has some information about potential Japanese defenses, but it is important to verify on the map that there are actual units at those locations. Additionally, more information about those units should be gathered by revealing them to see their actual composition and plan a better attack. Units can be revealed through successful bombardment, combat or reconnaissance. Making a better attack means that the player has access to different type of weapons and attacking a tank unit with a heavy weapon will give modifiers that will not be gained if the asset is not present.
If you attack a hidden unit or if a hidden unit is supporting the attacked Japanese unit, you will draw Intelligence Chits that provide information about the unit and their combat support value. While attacking hidden units can be risky in certain situations, it is essential to continue advancing to achieve timely victory. Understanding when to attack hidden units or gather intelligence through reconnaissance actions is crucial for success and one of the better parts of the game.
Combat is varied and there is a lot of choice about how to go about attacking the defenders. A unit can engage in combat through Direct Attack, Indirect Attack, or a combination of both. In a Direct Attack (with a maximum of 2 U.S. units adjacent to the target), the combat factor value of these units is utilized. For an Indirect Attack (with a maximum of 3 U.S. units if conditions are met), the units’ combat support type and value are used to participate in the combat. Units involved in a Direct Attack may also be used for Indirect Attacks as needed. The next step of combat involves comparing the combat ratio to determine the appropriate table column for checking the die result. Die Roll Modifiers must then be determined, based on factors such as the type of Japanese defense units, which could include Trenches, Pillboxes, or Caves, the comparison between the combat support from the U.S. player and the Japanese side, and terrain effects. The combat is very crunchy and fairly involved and I will definitely classify this one as a good hex and counter wargame experience.
I need to get this one back to the table soon but this is a keeper and I cannot wait to play again.
1. Okinawa: The Last Battle of WWII from Best with 1
I love a new and interesting way to tell the story of a key battle and I found a very interesting one called Okinawa: The Last Battle of WWII from Best with 1 earlier this year. This is a solitaire only game and for each game the player will draw four objectives from a possible 12 that you must survive and capture before time runs out. On your turn, the player will roll special dice and then spend those to take actions such as movement, attack and take special actions from different unit action cards that will be set up in a square from from 1 to 10. The numbers coincide with the dice of the attacking Japanese and as the player moves through the rondel they will be able to activate and use their different soldiers to attack the Japanese defenders or use their special abilities to gain tokens that can be used for rerolls or healing of wounds
I think that the best part of the game is the concept of resource management as you have to use the dice appropriately to move and fight and also to manage your troops as you can upgrade certain cards as you pass the midway point of the round as well as when special actions are granted via the special resource chits. Upgrading units is very important as this will unlock things like heavy weapons in the form of bazookas, a Sherman tank and planes to be able to take out the Japanese armor units defending the island. The game is about efficiency of movement and doing the most with what you have. The dice determine what you can and can’t do and movement is optional as you don’t have to move unless you feel it is advantageous. But remember, that you have to defeat the defenders and the various objectives to be able to advance to your final objective and sitting in one space too long is not advisable.
The different units have various functions including attack, such as the Rifleman, Machine Gun Team and Sniper but also have secondary functions to remove the fog of war, heal your damaged units or gain additional resources. The Japanese defenders are well hidden and also have various defenses such as pill boxes and caves that will require the player to defeat these before moving to attack the units located inside.
In the end the game is about defeating the Japanese defenders while doing so in a set amount of revolutions around the rondel setup. This can be as few as 2 times around or as many as 4 and knowing when to use your resources to reroll your dice, as you either didn’t get the run of consecutive numbers you were looking for or just need a specific number, you will run out of resources quickly and you must plan them out as best you can to win the game. This one is really fun and I have played it about a dozen times winning about 70% of the time. The game plays in about an hour and the action is fast and furious and you are immediately beset by the staunch Japanese defenders and must act quickly.
Here is a link to our unboxing video:
Here is a link to my playthrough video:
Here also is a link to my video review:
If you are interested in Okinawa: The Last Battle of WWII, you can order a Print and Play copy from the Best with 1 website at the following link: https://bestwith1.com/product/okinawa-pnp/
There you have it. My list of the best solitaire wargames/games that I played in 2025! What a year. There were just so many great games but unfortunately only so much time. There were other games that I was unable to get played that I had acquired and I regret not getting to but there is only so much time.
What were your favorite solitaire wargames from 2025?
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.
#73: Russian Leader Tsar Alexander I from Congress of Vienna from GMT Games
Congress of Vienna from GMT Games is a diplomatic card driven wargame based on Churchill and is the 4th game in the Great Statesmen Series. The game is set during the years of 1813-1814 and sees players take on the role of the main characters of the struggle between the Napoleonic Empire and the coalition of Russia, Austria, and Great Britain with their Prussian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish allies. Congress of Vienna has two different but related phases including the conference table where players first debate over the control of issues germane to the factions and the period of the war and second these issues are then used on the battlefield to recruit units, attack and take overall command of battles. The players will be playing cards from their hands to “debate” over the various issues that were placed on the table, which include all types of things such as Military Operations, Recruitment, who will lead the combined Coalition forces (Generalissimo), Future of French Government, British Financial Aid, Liberalism vs. Absolutism, Austrian Neutrality and several other issues, and then later the players will use their accumulated Resources gained from the issues to enact action on the Military Map and do things like mobilize troops, place Military Support Markers and the ultimately to conduct warfare.
The game relies on cards and cards can be used to negotiate, i.e. move an issue to your National Track. Cards can provide a particular issue with positive and negative DRM’s depending on which nation plays them and can also be traded with another player during the Diplomacy Phase. Certain cards are better than others for debating an issue moved by another player; and finally, if they are saved for the War Phase, staff cards can be used to modify dice rolling in battles. These are very versatile cards and the players will have to learn them and their benefits in order to be effective at the game.
In this entry, we are going to take a look at the Russian Leader Tsar Alexander I card. The fist thing that you may notice about this Leader Card is that is that it has no benefit for military operations, meaning that Tsar Alexander is watching the war from the sidelines and not directly involved like Napoleon, but does have a potential negative effect if used on certain Issues. But his power lies in the ability to utilize his 7 value to influence issues significantly on the Negotiating table. Particularly, Tsar Alexander I is an ardent believer in the philosophy of Absolutism and wants to retain his crown as the leader of Russia. This concept is played out in the game between the great powers of the time, including Russia and Austria for Absolutism, and the more democratic players including Britain and France for Liberalism. On the board appears this Liberalism/Absolutism Track, which provides the players an opportunity to debate over the Liberalism/Absolutism Issue and gain various advantages and Victory Points from the track. On this Liberalism/Absolutism Track, Europe’s post-war governing philosophy is fought over. This is a double track in green and red with a common At Start area for the use of 2 pawns. Tracks for Liberalism (red: Britain/France) and Absolutism (green: Russia/Austria) each have four boxes and an assigned total Victory Point amount. In order to score the VP from this track though, the player scoring must have their philosophical leaning portion of the track occupying a space at least 1 box ahead of their opponent. Also, if they want to score the maximum Victory Points listed at the top, they have to occupy the top box and their opponent cannot occupy theirs. For the Russia player, this should be a huge part of their strategy as 5VP is nothing to sneeze at in this game. But, in order to do that they will most likely have to try to go first and use Tsar Alexander and his 7 value to try and move that Issue up the track to end under their control. If an Issue every reaches a Track’s Seat, meaning the 7th space, or more after any declared debate is calculated in, then that Issue is considered to be secured and can no longer be moved through negotiation during future rounds. This reminds me a bit of the way that I always plan to use Joseph Stalin in Churchill, to go first and then bring the hammer down on the A-Bomb Research Issue. Getting control of this Absolutism/Liberalism Issue at least 4 times is very important for the Russian player and they will need to utilize this ability as much as possible. But remember that there is a penalty called the “Meddling Tsar” Rule where if Tsar Alexander is used for the negotiation of the British Financial Aid, Liberalism/Absolutism or the Generalissimo Issues, it will inflict a -2 DRM on all battles involving 1 or more Russian units during the upcoming War Phase. This is quite a cost and the player should carefully consider if and when they use the ability throughout the game. If the turn is expected to contain little to no combat for Russian units, then it is safe to use but if France is being aggressive and pushing on Poland and Prussia you might want to consider not going after the Liberalism/Absolutism Issue this turn and instead focus on Recruitment and Military Operation Issues.
The other part of this ability is that if Tsar Alexander I is used to move the Liberalism/Absolutism Issue then Napoleon cannot be used to Debate that movement. I would say that this is not an issue though as typically the France player will be using Napoleon on the battlefield for his DRM abilities.
I also like the historical and personality connection between this card and the game. At the top of the card you will notice that if you use Tsar Alexander I to negotiate the Peace Congress, Future Government of France, Bavaria or Poland Issues, that you will gain a -2 on his value bringing it from a 7 down to a 5. I think that this ability really highlights the philosophy and view of the Tsar regarding the time. He doesn’t believe that France should get to continue to exist as a main player in the power structure of the time and definitely doesn’t want to see France become more democratic. But, he also has a feeling that Bavaria and Poland are Russian vassals and should not be allowed to be turned to any other side’s allegiance. If he has to be used in this manner to defend or negotiate these issues I feel like the -2 Value penalty really shows that leaning in his thinking and probably causes him to be more brunt and less diplomatic thereby losing some of his influence in the court of opinion. Ultimately, Tsar Alexander I thought that monarchy is a noble and viable alternative to the crude and materialistic mob mentality of republicanism and the abilities of his Leader Card definitely cement that view.
After playing now a few times, I am here to say that Congress of Vienna is probably my favorite game in the Great Statesmen Series. I believe that this game has matured the system and made it something that is more than where it started. Congress of Vienna is very much more like a true wargame and was extremely interesting. We are still learning and need to keep playing this one but I did enjoy what it was that we were doing.
Alexander I, nicknamed “the Blessed”, was Emperor of Russia from 1801, the first King of Congress Poland from 1815, and the Grand Duke of Finland from 1809 to his death in 1825. He ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the Napoleonic Wars.
The eldest son of Emperor Paul I and Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg, Alexander succeeded to the throne after his father was murdered. As prince and during the early years of his reign, he often used liberal rhetoric but continued Russia’s absolutist policies in practice. In the first years of his reign, he initiated some minor social reforms and in 1803–04 major liberal educational reforms, such as building more universities. Alexander appointed Mikhail Speransky, the son of a village priest, as one of his closest advisors. The over-centralized Collegium ministries were abolished and replaced by the Committee of Ministers, State Council, and Supreme Court to improve the legal system. Plans were made, but never consummated, to set up a parliament and sign a constitution. In contrast to his westernizing predecessors such as Peter the Great, Alexander was a Russian nationalist and Slavophile who wanted Russia to develop on the basis of Russian rather than European culture.
In foreign policy, he changed Russia’s position towards France four times between 1804 and 1812, shifting among neutrality, opposition, and alliance. In 1805 he joined Britain in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but after suffering massive defeats at the battles of Austerlitz and Friedland, he switched sides and formed an alliance with Napoleon in the Treaty of Tilsit and joined Napoleon’s Continental System. He fought a small-scale naval war against Britain between 1807 and 1812 and took Finland from Sweden in 1809 after Sweden’s refusal to join the Continental System. Alexander and Napoleon hardly agreed, especially regarding Poland, and the alliance collapsed by 1810. Alexander’s greatest triumph came in 1812 when Napoleon’s invasion of Russia descended into a catastrophe for the French. As part of the winning coalition against Napoleon, he gained territory in Poland. He formed the Holy Alliance to suppress the revolutionary movements in Europe, which he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs.
During the second half of his reign, Alexander became increasingly arbitrary, reactionary, and fearful of plots against him; as a result, he ended many of the reforms he had made earlier on in his reign. He purged schools of foreign teachers, as education became more religiously driven as well as politically conservative. Speransky was replaced as advisor with the strict artillery inspector Aleksey Arakcheyev, who oversaw the creation of military settlements. Alexander died of typhus in December 1825 while on a trip to southern Russia. He left no legitimate children, as his two daughters died in childhood. Neither of his brothers wanted to become emperor. After a period of great confusion (that presaged the failed Decembrist revolt of liberal army officers in the weeks after his death), he was succeeded by his younger brother, Nicholas I.
We have done 2 videos on this game including the following RAW Video after out 1st play at Buckeye Game Fest in May 2025:
We then did the following full Review Video after our 2nd play at WBC last July:
An Impossible War: The First Carlist War in the North, 1834-1838 from Bellica Third Generation is a block wargame that recreates the First Carlist War in the North of Spain which was a civil war between the Carlists who supported the succession of the late king’s brother Carlos de Borbón and the progressive and centralist supporters of the regent Maria Christina acting for Isabella II of Spain who were referred to as the Liberals. The game uses blocks representing units but also includes counters and uses cards. I was able to play the game about a month or so ago with Francisco Ronco who owns the publishing company Bellica Third Generation and very much enjoyed the game and how it represented this interesting struggle.
In this series of Action Points, we will first take a look at the Game Map, discussing the point-to-point movement configuration, the various spaces and the delineation of the Carlist versus the Liberal Zones, as well as explain the use of the Rest of Spain smaller map, examine the units available to both sides and cover the importance of Supply, take a look at the Carlist Uprising Phase and what it means for the game, take a look at the activation system and the use of Action Point Markers, and cover some examples of Battle, focusing on the tactical aspect of combat with the use of the Battlefield Board, as well as an example of a Siege.
Main Game Map
There is a Main Game Map, which is commonly referred to as the Northern Map, shows the northernmost tier of Spain along the coast of the Cantabrian Sea including Navarre, the Basque Provinces and part of Cantabria, Burgos and La Rioja, and a small secondary Game Map that reflects the regions of the rest of the country, where Carlist uprisings break out and the expeditions sent from the North may operate.
The Main Game Map contains various elements including named settlements, such as Towns and Cities, and also identify key Carlist Refuges and has a clear demarcation of Carlist and Liberal territory. There are locations identified by the name of a settlement or area, which can be of greater or lesser importance and size. There are four types of spaces including Cities, Main Towns, Carlist Refuges and Other Spaces.
Cities
Cities are represented on the Game Map by an octagonal shape and the name of the city is capitalized. If the City is Liberal it will be colored turquoise and if it leans Carlist it is colored red. There are five Cities on the Game Map including Bilbao, San Sebastián, Vitoria, Pamplona, and Logroño. All of them have a permanent Fortress as well as an Intrinsic Garrison marker indicating the controlling side. Also, the Bilbao space has a Port, identified by the anchor symbol, because it is connected to the Cantabrian Sea via the River Nervión. If the Carlist player is besieging Bilbao, or controls or is besieging either of the two spaces located next to the river (Portugalete or Guecho), the Port of Bilbao is cancelled for the purposes of naval transport and supply.
Supply is also determined based on 2 things, a Region and then each of the Cities within that Region. A Region can supply up to 6 Liberal Infantry and Cavalry units. But, a Region does not supply any Carlist units, which must obtain supply from a Supply Train or Knapsack in the Region. Without a Supply Train or a Knapsack, in order for Carlist units to get supply they then must attempt to forage. Each space can supply a certain number of units, depending on whether the space is located in the Carlist or Liberal Zone, the type of space, and the side the units belong to. We will cover this a bit more in Action Point 2 when we discuss units.
A player will gain +3 VP’s for capturing a City during the game. These are the most important ways to score in the game and protecting them is vital to either side. It is also important to keep in mind that if the Carlist player ever gains control of 2 Cities at the same time that were initially held by the Liberal player, that player will immediately gain an automatic victory.
Connecting the various Cities and Towns are the Roads. Units can move along these roads and there are 2 types of Roads including Main Roads and Secondary Roads. The Main Roads are indicated by a continuous thick black line while Secondary Roads are indicated by dashed brown lines. The cost of moving along a Main Road is 1 Movement Point and along a Secondary Road is 2 Movement Points. I found it very important to properly plan out your movements to maximize the distance that you can gain with a single action. These roads are somewhat of a spiderweb connecting points and you can reach all points eventually but finding the best and most efficient route is important. Studying the Game Map and the layout of the roads is key to playing the game well as you can block off the use of certain Main Roads and force your opponent ot move much slower on Secondary Roads frustrating their plans and efforts.
Main Towns
Main Towns are generally populated areas that have some political, economic or strategic importance and are identified on the board with a hexagonal shape that is of a similar size and proportion as the Cities. Also, the name of the town will be capitalized the same as the Cities. If the Main Town is Liberal it will be colored turquoise and if it leans Carlist it is colored red.
A player will gain +1 VP for capturing a Main Town that was held by the other side. These are not as valuable as the Cities but there are more of these on the Game Map than the Cities with 13 Main Towns as compared to only 5 Cities. Prioriting their capture and control is important for many purposes such as Supply, movement and being able to avoid interceptions and
Carlist Refuge
There are 2 Carlist Refuges identified on the Game Map including Améscoas and Baztán. These are spaces where the Carlists are particularly favored by geography and local popular support. Neither player may construct fortresses in these spaces. These Refuges are identified with a square with an X at the top and a dashed brown line.
Carlist Zones and Liberal Zones
The Carlist Zones take up a considerable portion of the Game Map which is denoted with a red shaded background and a dotted red line. All locations within it are considered to be in the Carlist Zone, while all locations outside of it are considered to be in the Liberal Zone. Also, spaces adjacent to the Carlist Zone are spaces belonging to the Liberal Zone, but that are connected via a road to any space within the Carlist Zone.
The Carlist units in the game are tied to specific localities—Navarre, the Basque Provinces, or “Castilians”—rather than a standard, monolithic national army and are numerically outnumbered by the Liberals. As such, they have a clear need to be nimble and move around the board causing difficulties. One of the ways the Carlist player scores Victory Points through the increase in Prestige is by is controlling at least 4 spaces with at least 4 units. If there are at least four Liberal infantry or Cavalry units in the same space in the Carlist Zone 1 is subtracted from the sum of besieged Cities and active Expedition.
Essentially, the zone embodies the “Impossible War” by forcing the Carlist player to maximize localized, high-quality forces in their home territory against a numerically superior foe. The Carlist player increases their Prestige by besieging cities and launching expeditions. They also benefit from the growing Carlist uprising in the rest of Spain. The Liberal player will be busy countering Carlist Prestige, putting down uprisings, and hunting down expeditions. They have the advantage that, in the long run, war fatigue will affect the enemy.
The terrain is simple with each space containing rough or open terrain, depending on the relief of its area. Much of the northern geography was rugged, which played an important role in favor of Carlism, as it mitigated three of the advantages of government troops: their superiority in numbers, cavalry, and artillery.
The spaces at the western, southern, and eastern ends of the map have connections to regions on the map of the rest of Spain, which can be used to move from one map to another.
Finally, the Game Map includes various game tables (Year, Turn, Initiative, Victory Points, Carlist Prestige, etc.), as well as a lot of information about commonly used rules, so players don’t need to consult the rulebook that often.
Rest of Spain Smaller Map
The map of the Regions of Spain is smaller and simpler. It consists of nine large regions that cover large territories. This map’s purpose is to record the spread of the Carlist uprisings, to enable Carlist expeditions to operate and for the Liberal player to hunt them down. We will take a closer look at the Carlist Uprising Phase in a later post but I wanted to show you the map so you understand its layout.
I very much enjoyed An Impossible War, even though I played just a few turns of a smaller scenario with Francisco Ronco. He was a master at the game, as obviously as the publisher and a playtester he is intimately familiar with the rules and strategies, and I learned a lot from him about how the game should be played. I am looking forward to future plays as the game is just very good and has some interesting aspects that create a very tense and interesting game of maneuver and strategy. The Game Map is very well done, from an aesthetic perspective as well as functionally, and the board makes playing the game easier.
In Action Point 2, we will examine the units available to both sides and cover the importance of Supply.
A few years ago, I played and very much enjoyed a cool little solitaire WWII card-driven game called Campaign: Fall Blau from Catastrophe Games and designer Martin Melbardis where the player attempted to breach the Soviet defenses on the East Front in the pivotal German summer campaign of 1942. The game system is very playable and simple, but has some strategic depth to it as the player has to make a lot of choices about what to go after, how to manage their scarce resources (fuel) and what generals to use to take advantage of their special abilities to amass enough VP to claim victory over the Soviet Union. They now have the counter punch of that game in a new entry in the series called Campaign: Operation Bagration and it is currently being offered on Kickstarter.
Grant: Welcome back to the blog Martin. What is your current game Campaign: Operation Bagration?
Martin: Thanks for having me back! Campaign: Operation Bagration is the long-awaited successor to my very first published game, Campaign: Fall Blau and tells the story of the Soviet offensive in 1944 to take back the occupied center of Russia gained by the Germans during Operation Barbarossa and is based on the successful Campaign: Fall Blau game system.
Grant: What was your design goal with the game?
Martin: My design goal for Campaign:Operation Bagration was to switch perspectives to the Soviet side using my tried-and-tested Campaign Game System. I wanted players to take command of the Soviets during one of the most devastating offensives of the war….Operation Bagration, which tore through German Army Group Center in 1944. From a design standpoint, I found it very rewarding to adapt new game mechanics and ideas to fit this pivotal WWII Campaign on the Eastern Front, while keeping the core of the system intact.
Grant:What are the hallmarks of this solitaire Campaign Series?
Martin: I’d say a minimalist approach to wargaming. Very streamlined, using only cards, dice, and cubes, with a 6–7 page rulebook. These are light solitaire wargames designed to be fast and furious with no extra fat or bloat, especially when compared to more traditional hex-and-counter wargames that can take hours to play.
Grant: As a follow up to Campaign: Fall Blau, what do you believe you have improved in the gaming experience?
Martin: While the system as a whole is more or less exactly the same as Fall Blau, I injected some new ideas into the experience to better reflect the historical realities of this campaign. The core game, such as defeating Campaign Cards, the Order system and how Generals work, will remain familiar to players of Fall Blau, but the feel is distinctly different.
Grant: What elements from Operation Bagration did you need to model in the design?
Martin: Operation Bagration was a completely different beast to tackle than Fall Blau. In addition to taking control of the Soviet army this time around, the mountainous regions of the Caucasus region have been replaced with the swamps of Belorussia and Poland. You’re also facing a much weaker and mostly static German Army Group Center, desperately trying to rebuild a frontline and stop the Soviet advance from swarming into their rear echelons. This is represented by the new “Rebuild Frontlines” rule, which replaces the old “Local Counter-Attacks” rule from Fall Blau. In Bagration, counter-attacks are now only triggered by Event Cards representing Panzer Divisions trying to blunt the Soviet offensive. In fact, the entire Event Deck has been changed to reflect the research I did on Operation Bagration with all sorts of cool ideas popping up on how to reflect the history, units and tactics of this Campaign.
Grant: As a solitaire game, what type of experience does the game create?
Martin: The game system prides itself on being fast, easy to learn but hard to master. It creates a very similar experience to Fall Blau such as tough decisions weighing the player down each turn on how to best use your limited Orders and finding the right balance between Attacking, Advancing, or stopping for Logistics to catch up.
Grant: What is the goal of the player?
Martin: The goal is to capture enough Campaign Cards before the game ends and earn enough Victory Points from those Campaign Cards to reach the victory or even the Brilliant Victory threshold.
Grant: How does the player go about choosing and managing their Generals?
Martin: Each game starts with the player choosing three Soviet Generals. All of these generals are historically accurate, with options such as Bagramyan, Konev, Rokossovsky, and a few others. Each General has the generic “Hero of the Soviet Union” special ability plus one unique ability. Additionally, each General leads a certain type of army: either a Tank army or a regular Infantry army. Tank armies have fewer manpower cubes but benefit from added mobility, which helps them bring more Campaign Cards to the frontline when using the Advance Order. Infantry armies, on the other hand, have more “meat” and thus more manpower cubes to absorb losses. Each General also has a set number of cubes representing their starting strength in manpower and available forces. Managing your Generals comes down to picking a balanced mixture and using each general’s individual strengths (number of cubes and abilities) to maximum effect.
Grant: What unique abilities do the different Generals possess?
Martin: As mentioned, each General has the “Hero of the Soviet Union” special ability, which allows you to discard a red cube to re-roll a single die. This represents the Soviet ability to historically take massive casualties and still push on. On top of that, each General also has a unique ability reflecting their historical traits. For example, General Bagramyan is an offensive-minded General, while Rokossovsky was known to always plan two steps ahead and this is represented by his ability to draw extra cards from the Event Deck.
Grant: What type of events does the Event Deck contain?
Martin: In addition to the Campaign Cards, the Event Deck is really where the historical aspects of the Bagration Campaign really come to life. I made sure to only include Soviet and German units and tactics that were instrumental to the Bagration campaign. The Event Deck contains mostly cards that help you during the game, such as attached Soviet units like the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps, which can help you exploit the flanks of the German frontline by removing adjacent defenses, or the 4th Tank Army, which grants extra attack dice when attacking a Campaign Card. These cards not only add flavor to the game but also a strong sense of historical flavor.
Grant: What are the different type of German effects included in the Event Deck?
Martin: The Event Deck also contains cards that hurt the player, such as German Panzer divisions that trigger a counter-attack when drawn, or German reinforcement cards that add additional German cubes to active Campaign Cards on the frontlines. In addition, things like German bombers or bad weather can and will slow your progress.
Grant: What Actions/Orders are available to the player?
Martin: There are three available Orders each turn, and you may perform one per General. The Advance Order (costs 1 supply) brings unlocked Campaign Cards to the frontline. Once a card is on the frontline, an Attack Order (also costs supplies) can be used to attack and remove any cubes (representing German formations or defenses) on that card in order to capture it and gain the VP listed on the card. Finally, the Logistics Order adds supplies and reinforces a General with a cube to replace losses.
Grant: How do they manage their Supplies? How can they obtain additional fuel?
Martin: As mentioned, each Advance and Attack Order costs supplies, and the Logistics Order replenishes supplies as well as lost manpower cubes from attacking. Finding the right balance and knowing when to rest using a Logistics Order instead of Attacking or Advancing is very important. However, resting too long will slow your progress, as the clock is always counting down. A General who uses the Logistics Order adds two supplies to your shared supply pool and adds a single manpower cube to their card.
Grant: How do they manage to defeat the various Campaign Cards?
Martin: After using the Advance Order to bring an unlocked Campaign Card to the frontline in front of a General’s Card, that Campaign Card then immediately deploys a number of grey cubes (listed on the card) onto itself. The card is now available to be attacked using the Attack Order. When you attack, you pay supplies then calculate the number of cubes on the attacking General’s Card and roll that many dice. You need rolls of 4+ to remove a single white (defense) or grey (German units) cube from the Campaign Card. Some Campaign Cards such as fortress cities (Festerplatz) or swamps reduce the attack dice by -1. Rolls of 1–2 result in your General losing a manpower cube (red cube). Once all German cubes are removed from the Campaign Card, it is considered captured and removed from the frontline, and you gain the Victory Points listed on the card. Capturing Campaign Cards also unlocks additional Campaign Cards.
Grant: How do the German forces fight back?
Martin: This time around, the Germans are much more static than in Fall Blau, which better reflects the historical situation in 1944. While you may still lose manpower cubes through bad rolls on Attack Orders, counter-attacks are now only triggered through Event Cards. A Panzer Division drawn as an event will immediately counter-attack by deploying to the frontline and attacking the General directly in front of it. There’s also the Operation Doppelkopf Event Card, which is placed near the end of the Event Deck during setup and represents a large German offensive action late in Operation Bagration, designed to blunt Soviet momentum.
Grant: What strategy should the player use to do well?
Martin: Pick a good, balanced mixture of Generals and learn when to attack versus when to build up supplies and manpower through the Logistics Order. Using Generals with Tank Army abilities to bring multiple Campaign Cards to the frontlines helps a lot but too many Tank Generals will lower your overall manpower total. Also, optimize your use of Event Cards to either prioritize Attacks or to regain manpower cubes. Overall, calculated risk management is the single most important factor in the game.
Grant: What different options are built in to make the game more of a challenge?
Martin: The game is already pretty challenging, but we are also currently planning on developing a Hard-Mode for the Kickstarter that adds 4–5 additional very difficult Event Cards to the deck for those players who love challenges or are even simply masochists.
Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?
Martin: I’m pleased with the way I’ve adapted the old Fall Blau Game System to incorporate new game mechanics and Events to reflect the different historical aspects of Bagrations’ unique Campaign. Such things such as the German’s use of blocking detachments to try to stop the Soviet steamroller with whatever they could (represented by the rebuilding the frontline mechanic), and the use of Festerplatze or Fortress cities in Belorussia to hold at all cost. Added to this is the liberal use of Soviet tactics such as mine sweeping tanks, the massive God of War bombardment to signal the start of Bagration, Maskirovka deception techniques and American lend-lease trucks to help the Offensive are all well-represented in the game through the Event Deck.
Grant: What has been the response of playtesters?
Martin: Early on, I got some great and positive responses from playtesters when I initially designed the game. Later, I handed off playtesting and development to Catastrophe Games, who further developed the game and ran additional playtests. I’ve heard good things from them as well.
Grant: What other historical campaigns might the series delve into?
Martin: Next up, I am planning to adapt the series to either the North African or the Pacific Theaters in WWII. I also strangely find that representing the Japanese early-war successes against the Allies in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore a very interesting twist and is a subject rarely touched upon in wargaming. This could also be a good option in the future but who really knows where my creativity can take me?
Grant: What other designs are you currently working on?
Martin: As always, I am continuing to design lighter Print & Play wargames with my own independent company, Solo Wargame. I usually release a new wargame every two months or so on Kickstarter and want to continue that trend with a WWII wargame about commanding a Soviet battalion during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. I also plan to release a new version of my continuing series on WW2 Roll & Write games, this time focusing on the Torch landings in North Africa in 1942–43 with new ideas about convoy interdiction, diplomacy with the Vichy government and eventually pushing the Germans all the way to Tunisia. Like most other creatives, I honestly have way too many ideas and too little time!
Thanks so much once again for having me on!
If you are interested in learning more about the Campaign Series and how it works, you can watch my preview video for the Campaign: Fall Blau Kickstarter from 2022 at the following link:
The Battle of Champion Hill game is called The Road to Vicksburg and uses the Blue & Gray System. It was included in Strategy & Tactics Magazine Issue #103.
The May 16, 1863 Battle of Champion Hill was the largest, bloodiest, and most significant action of Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign. 32,000 advancing Union soldiers met 23,000 Confederates in a fierce struggle for a vital crossroads roughly halfway between Vicksburg and Jackson, Mississippi. The field was dominated by bald Champion Hill, from which Confederate artillery opened fire on the Union army at 9:45 A.M. The first Federal assault on the hill drove the Southerners back with bayonets and clubbed muskets. As the Union soldiers tried to reform and consolidate their gains, they were swept away by a counterattack led by John Bowen’s Missourians and Arkansans. Ulysses S. Grant ordered more men towards the hill and Bowen’s Confederates were themselves driven off, compelling a general retreat. Southern Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman was killed while directing a desperate rearguard action that enabled most of the Confederate army to escape towards Vicksburg. The decisive Union victory at Champion Hill was instrumental in forcing the Confederates out of the open field and into a doomed position inside the walls of Vicksburg.
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