Big month of games incoming! I was able to easily find games to share with you and I am excited for you to get this one in your inboxes. This month, I was able to find 37 games to share (including the 3 from our sponsor PHALANX and with 1 entry including 2 games), with 20 of those being newly announced pre-orders and 14 being new releases. I was also able to find 5 games being offered on Crowdfunding platforms Gamefound and Kickstarter.
Again this month, we have a sponsor for the Wargame Watch post in PHALANX, who is the maker of fantastic wargames such as U-BOOT, Hannibal & Hamilcar, Freedom!, Purple Haze, Total Domination, Iron, Blood, Snow and Mud,A Very Civil Whist, 1944: Race to the Rhine, Fire in the Sky and more. We have really never had a bad experience with any of their games and have really loved many of them!
They have a lot of great games upcoming and in the pipeline and are always developing new titles for pre-order or funding on Gamefound.
One of their more exciting recent offerings is a group of similar subject games set in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. I personally love PTO wargames and these both look extremly interesting. These include 2 separate titles 1943: Race to Rabaul and Tora Tora Tora!. We did an interview with Volko Ruhnke who designed 1943: Race to Rabaul earlier this summer and you can check that out on the blog at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2026/06/15/interview-with-volko-ruhnke-designer-of-1943-race-to-rabaul-from-phalanx/
Both of these games are beautiful and look very good and you are in luck as both can still be pre-ordered on the Gamefound page listed in the interview or by clicking the picture to the right.
They also have Sovereign: Shōgun, which is a new game in the Sovereign Series that includes one of my favorites in Bretwalda. This game was funded on Gamefound earlier this year and is a massive undertaking with a ton of content and add-ons that can create a massive game, both in its playability and replayability as well as its options for players. You can also still pre-order on the Gamefound page by clicking the picture below.
They have several other projects in the works including Independence, Saga, Lords of the North, Dust in the Wind and Lords of Heaven all planned for near future pre-order/crowdfunding campaigns or fulfillment.
One more thing before we get to this month’s games. Bill Molyneaux does this fundraising calendar of the Battlefield museums and historical sites on the East Coast for Toys for Tots and I wanted to share that with you so you can look at buying one.
1. The Great Escape from Sound of Drums Currently on Gamefound
If you like historical themed games that focus on challenging objectives, cooperative play and teamwork then I have a great game to introduce you to this month. I have known about this game’s existence for a while now. In fact, I saw a prototype last fall while attending Spiel Essen, but recently it was officially announced on Gamefound with a campaign kickoff of October 20th. The game is called The Great Escape and is designed by Philip duBarry, the designer of one of my favorite cooperative historical games in Black Orchestra. The Great Escape is based on a true story and shares the account of the escape attempt by Allied soldiers from the infamous Stalag Luft III POW Camp during WWII. The game is a cooperative or solitaire experience for 1-5 players and is just beautifully produced.
From the game page, we read the following:
On the moonless night of March 24, 1944, Allied prisoners emerged from a tunnel ending outside the fence of Stalag Luft III. They silently crawled the remaining feet over frozen ground to the cover of the surrounding forest. The men who escaped wore carefully-tailored civilian clothes and carried suitcases, intricate identification papers, German money to purchase train tickets, and several days of food.
76 prisoners escaped before the German guards sounded the alarm. A furious effort to recapture the prisoners ensued, and all but three were found. In an unprecedented move and in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, Hitler ordered 50 of the recaptured prisoners to be secretly executed. The escape cost the Germans hundreds of thousands of man hours and countless resources meant for the war, delivering a devastating blow to German morale.
Now the wire waits again. The ground is stark and cold, the guards are watchful, and the forest beyond the fences offers both salvation and deadly risk. Will you dig far enough, plan carefully enough, and seize the right moment before the alarm sounds?
Behind the barbed wire of Stalag Luft III, time is measured in whispered plans, and the constant threat of discovery. In The Great Escape, you and your fellow Allied air force officers must organize the camp, gather scarce materials, craft civilian clothes and forged papers, dig secret tunnels beneath the perimeter, invent ingenious devices, and carefully time your escapes—all while guards conduct ever-more-ruthless searches and the Gestapo tightens its grip. Draw on the unique skills of legendary officers, trade with compromised guards, execute daring Escape Plans, and keep the tunnels hidden. Every action risks drawing Trouble. If the Gestapo locks down the camp before twelve soldiers slip into the forest under cover of night, the attempt has failed. Outsmart the search parties. Carry on the war from behind the wire. Help twelve men escape, and you will have struck a blow that echoes far beyond the fences of Stalag Luft III.
The Great Escape is a cooperative board game for 1–5 players, designed by Philip duBarry. Play time is 60–90 minutes and is recommended for ages 12 and up.
We have completed a designer interview with Philip duBarry that will publish on the blog as of Tuesday, November 3rd, which is unfortunate but I will edit this entry with a link to it after it publishes.
As of November 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised €34,416 ($38,601 in US Dollars) toward its €12,500 ($13,942 in US Dollars) funding goal with 598 backers. The campaign will conclude on Monday, November 9th at 6:00pm EDT.
2. Fix Bayonets! Volume III: 1806: Auerstädt from Tactical Workshop Currently on Gamefound
Last year, I became aware of a new edition of a very interesting looking Napoleonics game series called Fix Bayonets! designed by Frederic Delstanches. That game was 1811: Albuera Second Edition from Tactical Workshop, which was originally released in 2020. Since that time, Frederic has been busy and designed the 2nd volume in that series called 1809: Talavera. Due to the success of these efforts, Tactical Workshop now is embarking on a new project in the series called 1806: Auerstädt that covers the Battle of Jena–Auerstädt fought on October 14, 1806, near Jena and Auerstädt, Germany being the decisive engagement of the War of the Fourth Coalition.
From the game page, we read the following:
1806: Auerstädt is a tabletop wargame that allows you to recreate this astounding asymmetrical battle of the War of the Fourth Coalition, face to face with another player or as a solitaire experience.
Take command of the French III Corps under Maréchal Davout, one of Napoléon’s best commanders, and attempt to reproduce his astounding victory against a vastly superior force! If you like a challenge, you can instead lead the Prussian Royal Army and rewrite history, overcoming your poor leadership and frail morale, by overwhelming an opponent half your size with your mighty manpower and cavalry superiority.
I want you know the backstory of this new boutique publisher and will share that here:
Tactical Workshop is a small, family owned and operated entity that started as non-profit and that we expanded into a small business last year with the success of 1811: Albuera. We are established as a LLC in Orlando, Florida and have an antenna in Yokohama, Japan. We started using the “print on demand” model in 2019 by publishing play aids for various other games then designing our first two boxed games: 1811: Albuera and 1810: Bussaco. Despite good reviews, the games were not selling well due to the very high prices required by the model. The only way to expand was to produce our games using a professional game printer. We successfully launched and funded 1811: Albuera Second Edition in 2025 and 1809: Talavera here on Gamefound. This is our third professionally printed game in the series.
I own the first 2 volumes in the series, and while I have yet to play them because we just received them, I can attest to the production quality and the great amount of components that come in the box.
As of November 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $8,553 toward its $6,000 funding goal with 145 backers. The campaign will conclude on Monday, November 30th at 12:00am EDT.
3. Aces & Armor – Spitfire: Battle of Britain & North Africa from PKB Games Currently on Kickstarter
A few years back, we backed a very interesting looking miniatures based board game set in World War II called Aces & Armor from PKB Games. We played it last year and very much enjoyed the combat system as well as the way units gain experience and become more effective. That game did very well on Kickstarter and PKB Games is back with a new addition to the series called Aces & Armor – Spitfire: Battle of Britain & North Africa that is currently on Kickstarter.
From the game page, we read the following:
Aces & Armor – Spitfire: Battle of Britain & North Africa is a tactical World War II strategy game set across Britain, France, and the North African desert. Players command combined forces of aircraft, tanks, and infantry, including iconic units such as the Supermarine Spitfire, and must use the strengths of their different units and the battlefield terrain to their advantage.
During the game, players maneuver their forces, engage enemy units in combat, and develop experienced units over the course of the battle. Combat takes into account factors such as unit type, attack strength, armor, damage, experience, formation, and terrain, making the positioning and composition of an army an important part of each engagement.
I think that the most interesting part of this new entry into the Aces & Armor Series is the ability to play this entry with the original.
Spitfire can be played as a standalone game for one or two players, or combined with the original Aces & Armor to create larger battles with up to five players. Players compete or cooperate according to the chosen scenario, and win by completing its specified victory objectives before the opposing side does.
The production is also top notch and the miniatures are very well done. I will add here that there is an option to have them pre-painted so they will look that much better.
As of November 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $184,526 toward its $11,172 funding goal with 1,035 backers. The campaign will conclude on Thursday, November 12th at 2:59am EST.
4. Dragon Ships & Iron Knights: Three Battles from the Year 1066 from Legion Wargames
I have always loved the games that come from small boutique publisher Legion Wargames. Their offerings are always on interesting and lesser gamed topics and they always seem to have great looking art as well. I also know that when I buy one of their games, I am supporting a great guy in owner Randy Lein and also the stable of great designers that they have relationships with. This month, I saw a new pre-order game offered in their Customer Pre-Order Program called Dragon Ships & Iron Knights:Three Battles from the Year 1066, which takes a look at 3 separate battles in England and Scotland that had major impacts on the course of those countries. The game is designed by Norm Smith and is a hex and counter game that appears to be more on the tactical level.
From the game page, we read the following:
Dragon Ships & Iron Knights is set of three, 2-player, tactical level wargames covering the battles that shaped the future of England for centuries to come. The game includes the following battles:
The Battle of Hastings
The Battle of Stamford Bridge
The Battle of Gate Fulford
Each battle includes its own map and rulebook and comes with 3 maps measuring 17″ x 22″, 3 sheets of unit counters/markers and 3 player aids.
If you are interested in Dragon Ships & Iron Knights: Three Battles from the Year 1066, you can pre-order a copy for $53.00 from the Legion Wargames website at the following link: https://www.legionwargames.com/legion_DGS.html
5. Traces of Tunisia from VUCA Simulations
This month we get 2 new pre-order games from VUCA Simulations. The first of these is Traces of Tunisia and I am always in the mood for a good North African Theater wargame. The games I have played on this theater are always very, very good and I love the struggle with the harsh North African terrain and the importance of supply. Traces of Tunisia is a part of the Traces of Series of operational level wargames that have included titles such as Traces of War, Traces of Hubris and Traces of Victory. This system works really well and is a chit-pull activation system that keeps you on your toes and always fretting over the order of the chits during any given round.
From the game page, we read the following:
At the conclusion of the North African campaign, German and Italian forces found themselves squeezed into the mountainous, canalized terrain of Tunisia. Facing advancing Anglo-American and Free French forces from the west and British veterans from the east, the Axis fought a desperate campaign of operational counter-strikes and delaying actions to hold the Mediterranean gateway.
Traces of Tunisia puts you in command of this critical operational struggle.
Take control of the Axis bridgehead forces or the Allied armies in a tense operational-level game of command activation, logistics tracing, and maneuvering across compartmentalized terrain.
Allied player: Coordinate multinational forces, leverage expanding air power, manage supply lines, and push rapidly toward Tunis and Bizerte before time runs out.
Axis player: Utilize inner lines, mount dangerous armored counter-offensives, destroy infrastructure, and prolong the campaign to deny the Allies an early springboard into Europe.
Every decision matters—overextend into mountain choke points without logistics, and your spearheads will be isolated; hesitate, and enemy air superiority will paralyze your operations.
The game is designed for fans of Operational level wargames, WWII North African history, chit-pull activation systems and players who value clarity of rules combined with strong thematic immersion.
6. Gateway to Falaise – Caen-Normandy 1944 from VUCA Simulations
The 2nd new pre-order game offered this month from VUCA Simulations is another dandy. The first thing that caught my eye was the beautiful yet simple cover and the way that the smoke and other elements form a camouflage pattern. Just gorgeous! The game is called Gateway to Falaise: Caen-Normandy 1944 and is a part of the Formation Series. The game is designed by Andrew Glenn.
From the game page, we read the following:
Following the D-Day landings, the Allies faced a desperate, grinding war of attrition in the bocage and open fields of Normandy. To break the deadlock and trap the German forces, the British, Canadian, and Allied forces launched a series of high-stakes operational pushes aimed at capturing the strategic hubs of Caen and Falaise.
Gateway to Falaise puts you in command of this crucial campaign—the second installment in the Formation Series.
Command the Allied forces attempting to smash through entrenched defenses, or take control of the German defenders fighting desperately to hold the line and delay the Allied advance.
Allied player: Plan concentrated armored and mechanized pushes, deploy massive artillery and air support, navigate restrictive terrain, and strain the Axis defenses to force a complete breakout.
German player: Utilize superior tactical positions, manage precious armor and elite formations, execute timed counterattacks, and inflict maximum casualties to stall the Allied momentum.
Every decision matters—overextend into prepared anti-tank zones, and your spearhead will be wiped out; hesitate, and the opportunity to trap the enemy slips away.
Built on an engaging formation-based system, the game balances strategic planning with operational friction:
Dynamic formation activation keeps both players constantly engaged and simulates the uncertainty of command.
Combined arms warfare seamlessly integrates infantry, armor, engineering assets, heavy artillery, and air/naval support.
Fast-resolving combat maintains high tension while reflecting realistic unit attrition and tactical consequences.
Streamlined operational rules allow for swift gameplay without sacrificing historical depth.
7. Eagles of 1807 – Volume I: Winter from Fellowship of Simulations
A good Napoleonic wargame is always welcome at my table. The grandiose uniforms, fantastic cavalry charges, focus on experience of soldiers and the like are what I have always thought of first when I think about the subject. Fellowship of Simulations has a new offering this month that is a part of their Eagles of France Series called Eagles of 1807 – Volume I: Winter. This game focuses on 3 major engagements during the winter of 1807 including Pultusk, Golymin and Eylau.
From the game page, we read the following:
The Eagles of France Series is back in force! This master box covers 3 battles. Pultusk and Golymin: December 26th 1806, the two armies are struggling in a sea of mud. They collided in two locations. At Pultusk, Lannes engaged a larger force. At Golymin, the Russians played a delaying action.
Then came Eylau and the bloodbath in the snow.
The game includes these 3 battles, including historical variations and what ifs.
In addition, the full order of battle of both armies for winter 1806 is available. This will allow even more flexibility to test alternative scenarios. Also, unused counters might be used for future expansions with additional battles.
If you are interested in Eagles of 1807 – Volume I: Winter, you can pre-order a copy for €99,00 ($110.29 in US Dollars) from the Fellowship of Simulations website at the following link: https://www.fsimgames.com/en/eagles-of-1807-winter-box/
8. Peace 1905: Ending the Russo-Japanese War from Fort Circle Games
In 2023, while attending SDHistCon in San Diego, we sat down with Maurice Suckling to get a look at his new game called Peace 1905: Ending the Russo-Japanese War from Fort Circle Games. We have enjoyed many of Maurice’s designs including Hidden Strike: American Revolution, Chancellorsville 1863, 1565 Siege of Malta and Crisis: 1914 and very much enjoy how his mind takes a historical event and wraps mechanics around it to create an experience that helps players in understanding the situation. Peace 1905 deals with the negotiations between the Japanese and Russians at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The game was very good and plays in about 30-45 minutes.
From the game page, we read the following:
By August 1905 the Russo-Japanese War had been raging for 18 months, with over a million soldiers, sailors, and engineers in arms, it had cost the lives of between 100,000 to 200,000 participants and brought death and destruction to civilians. The war had seen the sinking of the Russian Pacific and Baltic fleets, and the great sieges at Port Arthur and Mukden. The world was shaken by the emphatic rise of Imperial Japan as a land and naval power. Russia had been blooded and humiliated.
But Russia was not yet done. Although both sides were financially exhausted it was Russia who continued to funnel troops into the war, while Japan’s manpower reserves were depleted. The war might yet continue, with further loss of life and property, and protracted instability in the Far East. With this would come the risk of further Russian humiliation. Both sides needed a way out. The door to that way out was opened by US President Theodore Roosevelt when he invited delegations of both sides to Portsmouth, New Hampshire – to a peace conference through August 1905. But with the sides so far apart on numerous key issues – the Russian Czar had stipulated no territorial concessions or reparation payments, and the Japanese Emperor wanted exactly those things and much more – what real hope was there that both sides could find a mutually satisfactory resolution?
In history, the answer is found in the Treaty of Portsmouth, a complex and significant diplomatic achievement, for which, for his part in facilitating and assisting, President Roosevelt was the first American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In Peace 1905, you – the players – will have Roosevelt’s assistance, but the work of successfully negotiating is down to you. Will you end the war, and bring a peace your governments approve of, or will the conference end in failure, and the war ignite again?
Here is a link to our interview with Maurice Suckling designer of Peace 1905 from Fort Circle Games during our trip to SDHistCon in 2023:
If you are interested in Peace 1905: Ending the Russo-Japanese War, you can pre-order a copy for $60.00 from the Fort Circle Games website at the following link: https://www.fortcircle.com/peace-1905/
9. Commands & Colors: American Civil War from GMT Games
The Commands and Colors Series is a simplified and introductory wargaming system designed by Richard Borg. The system is fairly simple and uses a deck of Command Cards, which can be classified as Section cards and Tactics cards, that are used to take actions with various groups of units on a hex board that is divided into 3 sections, including the Left, Center and Right. There are also custom Battle Dice that represent hits, retreats and special actions. The units on the field of battle are made up of figures or blocks. The series have volumes representing various different historical periods, including both modern and ancient, and I have found that there is something to like in the series for anyone’s taste. We have played every volume in the series and very much had a good time with the series and its mechanics. It is just a very solid and easy to play system for new wargamers and old. Recently, GMT announced a new entry to the series focused on the American Civil War called Commands & Colors: American Civil War designed by series mastermind Richard Borg.
From the game page, we read the following:
By design, Commands & Colors: American Civil War is not overly complex. Although this version does have slightly more detail than its earlier brothers, the Classic Battle Cry board game from 1999 or Battle Cry 150th Civil War Anniversary Edition released in 2010, yet at its heart, the game is still not overly complex. If you are already familiar with the core game from one or both of these earlier editions, you will recognize most of the rules and game play. Yet, over 25 years since the original design, we have taken the opportunity to once again enhance the game’s historical feel in order to immerse players even more fully in the experience of moving and fighting troops on a stylized American Civil War battlefield.
The game is based on the highly successful Commands & Colors game system, where the Command cards drive movement while creating a “fog of war,” and the battle dice resolve combat quickly and efficiently. Commands & Colors: American Civil War, however, introduces a number of new game concepts and has slightly modified some rule sections, all of which will add additional historical depth. All these enhancements plus the new deck of Civil War Combat cards will provide even the most veteran Battle Cry player with many new play experiences and challenges.
The scale of the game fluctuates, which allows players to effectively portray some of the larger American Civil War battles, as well as smaller size skirmish actions. In some scenarios, an infantry unit may represent an entire brigade, while in others a unit may only represent a few companies of soldiers. Still the tactics of the period that you will need to execute to gain victory conform remarkably well to the advantages and limitations inherent to Civil War Armies of the day and the battlefield terrain features on which they fought.
The battles showcased in the core game scenario battle booklet feature a stylized battlefield map that emphasizes the important terrain features and highlight the historical deployment of forces in scale with the game system. There are 70 new scenarios that complement the group of updated 30 Battle Cry scenarios previous presented.
A word of advice, if I may be so bold. Even the previously-presented scenarios, now with the rule updates and a new deck of combat cards, are totally worth revisiting.
10. The Napoleonic Wars 25th Anniversary Edition from GMT Games
Over the past couple of years, GMT Games has had a focus on bringing back and upgrading several of their most classic games in either Deluxe Editions or the Anniversary Editions. These are not just straight reprints and typically involved new and upgraded components, cover art, board art and rules changes, corrections or upgrades. I own and have played several including For the People 25th Anniversary Edition, SPQR Deluxe Edition and Silver Bayonet 25th Anniversary Edition. These volumes are a great way to get older classic and out of print wargames back into the hands of players both old and new. Recently, GMT announced their newest Anniversary Edition; The Napoleonic Wars 25th Anniversary Edition designed by Mark McLaughlin.
From the game page, we read the following:
The first edition of The Napoleonic Wars was published in 2002. A second edition was published six years later and a double-sized, two-cardboard-map was made available in between. Now, thanks to the tireless work of developer Gareth Williams, who GM’ed the WBC tournament for over a decade, we are ready to bring you a 25th Anniversary Edition that will put an exclamation mark on this game’s history.
Over two hundred competitive games have been analyzed to give birth to what will be the 3rd edition of the rulebook. Likewise, about a third of the cards have been edited for clarity or balance. Six brand-new cards were also added. What hasn’t changed though is the possibility to relive the epics of Napoleon’s conquests at a strategic level with up to five players, each trying to carve up a place for their nation when 1815 comes around or when the infamous Peace Roll succeeds!
A complete graphics redesign by Wouter Schoutteten brings the game to modern standards. We are pulling out all the stops and making no compromises to production quality. The goal has always been clear: this is a deluxe edition, not an overpriced collector’s edition. We want each and every one of you to be able to enjoy this Mark McLaughlin classic at its best.
The HQ Displays now include a setup visual aid on the back. Each also features a force pool with a painting of their nation’s capital, to remind players of what they are ultimately defending!
While the black and white had its charm, cards now feature full-color artwork from the painting masterpieces of the era.
Nine major leaders such as Blücher, Davout and Bagration join Napoleon and Wellington in having a unique portrait for both their counter and standee. Oh and these leader standees will now be custom-cut!
Whether you’re a veteran of The Napoleonic Wars or you have been waiting a long time for us to reprint it, don’t miss out on your chance to get this acclaimed multiplayer game! Hours of fun await rewriting history!
I am truly impressed by this version of an Anniversary Edition and very much look forward to seeing it in real life. We have played this game once and very much enjoyed it although the balance seems a bit questionable in my mind as France, understandably, is very powerful.
11. Commands & Colors: Ancients Expansion 1: Greece & Eastern Kingdoms 4th Printing from GMT Games
This is the 2nd entry that deals with the Commands & Colors Series and is just a straight reprint, with known errata included as well. And any wargame has made it to 4th Printing should tell you something about the quality of that game. Commands & Colors: Ancients Expansion 1: Greece & Eastern Kingdoms 4th Printing is the next entry in the venerable series to get another reprint and Ancients is one of my favorite entries.
From the game page, we read the following:
Some of you have already discovered that Commands & Colors: Ancients is much more than a game. It is an expandable game system that allows players to fight a host of historical Ancient battles.
The Greeks & Eastern Kingdoms is the first expansion to Commands & Colors: Ancients. The armies of Philip, Alexander and the Successors meet the hosts of Persians, Scythians and Indians to the east. In this expansion, you will find historical scenarios that focus on the hoplites of classical Greece fighting off the invading Persian army at Marathon and Plataea; epic battles from the Peloponnesian War, the rise of Macedon and Alexander’s battles of Gaugamela, Issus and Granicus against the Persians; and battles involving Alexander’s successors. With your Greeks you will be able to turn west and battle the Carthaginians in Sicily, or as King Pyrrhus at Heraclea and Ausculum, battle the Romans.
In this first expansion, we showcase over 20 scenarios (the package includes over 300 new unit blocks and stickers you need to fight out these battles). Now, that is a lot of history, but we can do this because Commands & Colors: Ancients is, by design, a unique historical game system that will allow players to effectively portray stylized Ancient battles that play to a conclusion in less than an hour.
The battle dice resolve combat quickly and the command cards provide an element of luck that creates a fog of war and presents players with both challenges and opportunities for victory. Yet the tactics you need to execute conform remarkably well to the advantages and limitations inherent to the various Ancient units, their weapons, terrain and the history.
12. Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion 1: The Spanish Army 5th Printing from GMT Games
My favorite volume in the Commands & Colors Series is C&C: Napoleonics hands down. I think that the reason for this is the unit variety represented in the game as well as the various extra army expansion packs that were released after the base game came to market. The 2nd Commands & Colors Series reprint offered this month is Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion 1: The Spanish Army 5th Printing
From the game page, we read the following:
The Spanish Army is the first expansion for Commands & Colors: Napoleonics.
At the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Spain was only a shadow of its former power. Spanish troops and leaders, as many Napoleonic historians point out, performed badly on a large number of occasions. Yet there are a number of battles, Bailen, Tamames, Alcaniz and San Marcial where the Spaniards fought valiantly and gained victory. Ironically, the point most historians overlook is the fact that the Spanish armies constituted a threat that the French simply could not ignore. As good as Wellington’s Anglo-Portuguese field army was, that army faced multiple French armies. They could only defeat one French army at a time. The Spanish Armies and the accompanying guerrilla warfare against French troops tied down the remainder, allowing the Anglo-Portuguese army to ultimately emerge victorious.
In this expansion you will find 18 historical scenarios that focus on Peninsular battles fought by the Spanish army from 1808 to 1813, plus all the new units you’ll need to field for these engagements.
1808
Bailén – July 19 1808 Zornoza – October 31, 1808 Gamonel – November 7, 1808 Espinosa – November 11, 1808 Somosierra – November 30, 1808
1809
Medellin – March 28, 1809 Alcaniz – May 23, 1809 Maria – June 6, 1809 Talavera (Spanish Flank) – July 28, 1809 Tamames – October 13, 1809 Ocano (Cavalry Action) – November 18, 1809 Ocano – November 19, 1809 Alba de Tormes – November 28, 1809
1811
Barrosa (French Attack) – March 5, 1811Albuera – May 16, 1811
1813
Vitoria (Hill’s Attack) – June 21, 1813 San Marcial – August 31, 1813 Ordal Cross – September 13, 1813
The quality of Spanish troops varied, from very poor to good, and the Spanish National Unit Reference Card presents a wealth of subtle unit characteristics that set the Spanish Army apart from all other Coalition armies that opposed Napoleon. Command of the Spanish Army, therefore, will truly challenge even the most experienced Commands & Colors: Napoleonics player.
13. Labyrinth 3″ Game Box 2026-27 Reprint from GMT Games
One of the problems with a successful game series is the concept of growth. As a game does well, and more and more copies are sold and the buzz continues to build and grow, the inevitable happens and expansions come out for that game. These expansions not only add new and interesting mechanics and content to an already great game but they add stuff that you must store in the game box. And this stuff can multiply and get out of hand really quickly outgrowing the box that the original game was published in. Such is the case with Labyrinth as it has now had 2 published expansions, including The Awakening and The Forever War, and about a year ago we got the 3rd expansion The Rise of Al-Qaeda announced. 3 game expansions will add up and will not fit into the 2″ original box. So, GMT has offered a reprint of their Labyrinth 3″ Game Box on P500…and the price is very, very affordable.
From the game page, we read the following:
We’ve listened to those of you who asked us to put the Labyrinth 3″ Box back up on the P500 list to help you with storage of the game’s modules. So to accomodate you, and all those players who own earlier editions of Labyrinth and would like to get a deeper box, we are now reprinting a 3″ deep box via P500.
14. SCSDrive on Kharkov: Gallop, Star and the Backhand Blow from Multi-Man Publishing
One of my favorite hex and counter wargame series is the Standard Combat Series from Multi-Man Publishing. The series is a classic with simple rules, typically 6-10 pages of exclusive rules, solid move and fight mechanics and good solid design that always creates and fun and interesting way to take a look at operational level wargames typically set in World War II. We have played about 8 of the games in the series and own many more but it is a staple on our shelves and recently MMP announced the newest volume in the series called Drive on Kharkov. Drive on Kharkov takes a look at 3 separate but related battles on the East Front including the Soviet twin offensives, Operation Gallop and Operation Star, as well as the German counter-offensive referred to as von Manstein’s “Backhand Blow”. Once announced, I couldn’t mash the pre-order button any quicker and you should do the same.
From the game page, we read the following:
Drive on Kharkov is a Standard Combat Series (SCS) game covering the Soviet twin offensives, Operation Gallop and Operation Star, as well as the German counter-offensive (von Manstein’s “Backhand Blow”) that ended the Soviet winter offensive of 1942-43. Intended to cut off retreating Axis divisions in the south and capture Kharkov and the Donbas region, Operations Gallop and Star initially met with good success. However, the hasty nature of the offensives coupled with a poor supply situation slowed progress, and the Axis forces recovered and finally unleashed a counteroffensive that retook substantial ground and set the stage for Kursk, the last Axis offensive on the Eastern Front.
The game covers this pivotal post-Stalingrad dueling offensives at the operational scale. Each turn represents 2-3 days. Each hex is 5 kilometers wide. Soviet units are generally brigades and regiments with cavalry divisions. Axis units are mostly battalions with a few Kampfgruppen (KG) and regiments.
Game specific rules include HQs at the Soviet Army and German Corps level, artillery and air strikes, divisional refits, and mud that hampered operations late in the campaign. This famous battle comes alive with SCS where you can see if you can do as well as a Field Marshal von Manstein or Colonel General Vatutin.
If you are interested in SCSDrive on Kharkov: Gallop, Star and the Backhand Blow, you can pre-order a copy for $45.00 from the Multi-Man Publishing website at the following link: https://mmpgamers.com/drive-on-kharkov-p-471
15. BCS The Breaking Point: Battle of France and Belgium, May, 1940 from Multi-Man Publishing
As affectionate as I am about the Standard Combat Series, I may have a greater love for the Battalion Combat Series as the scale of the game and the way it integrates and connects positioning and supply into the results of combat is just superb. And those dreaded SNAFU Rolls that will get you if you don’t watch out or if you push your troops too far. MMP also announced a new entry to this series called The Breaking Point: Battle of France and Belgium, May, 1940
From the game page, we read the following:
The Breaking Point is a Battalion Combat Series (BCS) game depicting the critical point in the Battle of France. The Phoney War between France and Germany ended abruptly when panzers raced through the Ardennes Forest. France replied, executing their Dyle Plan, by advancing into their neighboring neutral countries to meet the threat . Believing it would take the Germans a week to cross the wooded and rough terrain, the French advanced their reserves hoping to form a cohesive defensive line. The Germans emerged from the Ardennes in two days, setting up a race to the Meuse River. Who will get there first? Will the French arrive in force and stop the enemy from crossing? Will the Germans vault over the river into the French heartland? The decisions and actions ultimately decided the fate of France and Belgium.
The game covers this unique and often misunderstood campaign in splendid detail. Not just focusing on Sedan where Guderian crossed, the game covers the length of the main German drive. It spans from the armored feint north of the Meuse River leading to the biggest tank battle to date at Hannut; to the crossing at Dinant where Erwin Rommel’s initial exploits were demonstrated; to Monthermé where a panzer division was held up by French Colonial troops; and finally to Sedan the French finally met its breaking point leading to the struggle for Stonne, and ultimately the breakout to the English Channel. Game specific rules capture important aspects like bridge blowing, bridge construction, tank breakdowns, Dyle Defensive Plans, and French Battle Doctrine. The intent is to reflect the historic capabilities and limitations of both sides without heavy handed rules or one built on myths.
Extensive research was done, including original French and German sources, to correctly depict the forces involved as well as how each sides’ doctrines drove how they could be used effectively. The French and Belgians fought bravely and were executing a post-WWI defensive strategy. This was compared to the dynamic tactics of the Germans, where brashness and sometimes outright insubordination wasn’t necessarily the winning factor, but rather luck. This fascinating and complex campaign can be explored by players in the way that only BCS can show.
If you are interested in BCS The Breaking Point: Battle of France and Belgium, May, 1940, you can pre-order a copy for $90.00 from the Multi-Man Publishing website at the following link: https://mmpgamers.com/the-breaking-point-p-472
16. Until the Bitter End 3 Print ‘n Play Wargame from Matt White Currently on Kickstarter
Several years ago, we posted an interview with Matt White, who is a very talented graphic artist and budding game designer, that focused on his artistic talents and love of tanks. He has since designed several very interesting small scale print and play wargames, with his most recent series being a World War II tactical wargame series for 1-2 Until the Bitter End. He has had multiple entries in the series including British Airborne versus the German Wehrmacht called Until the Bitter End, Until the Bitter End – US Airborne and Until the Bitter End – Tanks. His most recent offering in the series is called Until the Bitter End 3 and is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter.
From the game page, we read the following:
Welcome to Until the Bitter End 3, a World War 2 wargame. This is the third and latest game in the series and a print and play game for solitaire and two-players. This is a standalone game in my series of WW2 print and play games. You don’t need to have played the first games – everything is included (you simply need to print it all out and need a regular six sided dice and a pencil).
The game is quick to setup and play, it takes around 30 minutes to play a game and requires very little space.
Example of the game setup ready to play – one of the smaller scenarios on just one map, with only a few counters needed.
The game sets a small squad of American Airborne against their German enemies in a series of small skirmish scenarios. The game’s counters (or chits) each represent an actual soldier with the gameplay being in the thick of man-to-man combat.
American forces preparing to assault the German defended church.
Key Features
Each counter represents an individual soldier with unique artwork.
Rules and multiple scenarios for 2 player and separate unique rules and scenarios for Solitaire play.
Geomorphic maps and scenarios so you can decide the gameplay length from 30 minutes to a couple of hours.
Third release in the series with a robust and play tested core rule set, with easy to learn mechanics that have depth of tactical play.
Easy to print out and construct with just a few sheets of paper and only a few counters needed to start.
This is a print and play game with the PDF containing all the rules, scenarios, maps, player aids and counters required to play. You’ll need to print them out, mount the maps and counters to card and provide your own pencil and a regular six sided dice. We have kept the maps and counters to a few sheets (of either Letter or A4 size) so very inexpensive and quick to print out and mount.
One of the best parts of these print ‘n play games designed by Matt is the art. He has a real skill and creates some very memorable counters, drawings and maps that create a great deal of thematic immersion into the battles and makes it very nice to simply look at. The games are also great but his art is superb!
As of November 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $1,615 toward its $172 funding goal with 63 backers. The campaign will conclude on Tuesday, November 17th at 4:00pm EST.
17. The Struggle for Union from Compass Games
A good sweeping Grand Strategic wargame is always welcome on my table! I love the experience of managing armies and entire fronts and the decisions that come with that including supply, logistics, politics and even war production and economic issues. And when the game is set during the American Civil War, I am very interested. One of Compass Games new offerings on pre-order is The Struggle for Union designed by Mark Melenovsky.
From the game page, we read the following:
Command the armies of the Union or Confederacy in a sweeping Civil War simulation that blends grand strategy, operational maneuver, and battlefield tactics. Build armies, manage production, and pursue your own path to victory as history unfolds across an open-ended sandbox campaign. Uncertainty reigns supreme. Fog of War conceals enemy intentions, Activation Chits create the friction and delays of command, and distant armies may “March to the Sound of the Guns” to reinforce a desperate battle underway.
When armies collide, the action shifts to an immersive Battle Board where leadership, terrain, reserves, and timing determine victory or defeat. Every battle becomes a dramatic test of skill, nerve, and command. The result is a richly historical Civil War experience where no two campaigns unfold the same way.
The Struggle for Union provides players with more of a sandbox approach to a Civil War simulation. To that end, Basic Resource Points (or Production Points) allow players to build their forces as they see fit and craft their own approaches to winning the game and have fun going down different force pool paths. Another fundamental decision was to enable players to accomplish the historical progress of the war with the least amount of rule exceptions. It was an important aspect of the design to have common rules and tables that governed most game elements, so once players learn them, they can be applied to most game situations.
Best played by 2–4 players, each playing a combination of Union and Confederate Eastern and Western Theaters.
18. Ten Years of Glory: The Tide Turns Against Philip II, 1589-1598 from Compass Games
The No Peace without Spain Series is a very interesting series from Compass Games, which is a family of card-driven, strategic-level wargames designed by Don Herndon and other contributors such as Kris Van Beurden that sets out to simulate major early-modern European conflicts from the late 17th through the mid-18th centuries. There is now a new volume in the series called Ten Years of Glory: The Tide Turns Against Philip II, 1589-1598 that was just announced and it is designed by Kris Van Beurden.
From the game page, we read the following:
Ten Years of Glory is a two-player, card-driven wargame using the No Peace without Spain system, depicting the turn of the tide in the Eighty Years’ War. During ten years (from 1589 to 1598), while the Spanish Empire was distracted by events in France, the Dutch Republic conquered territories which even today are still part of the Netherlands. One player represents the Habsburg family, while the other player represents the Anti-Habsburg Alliance.
The point-to-point map covers the Netherlands and Northern France, the traditional “cockpit” of Europe. Will Henri IV defeat the Catholic League and end the French Wars of Religion once and for all? Will Maurice of Nassau reunite the Netherlands? Where will Philip II send his most trusted and capable general, the Duke of Parma? It is up to you to answer all these questions and more!
During the designer’s research for No Peace for Thirty Years and the Eighty Years’ War (a personal favorite period of history) in general, his eyes were drawn to this little-known period of time, the Ten Years. Immediately prior to this period, the Dutch Revolt had almost been eradicated, and the Dutch Republic reduced to little more than the province of Holland, while after ten Anni Mirabiles, its Stadtholder Mauritz was able to give the Netherlands (almost) its current borders with Germany and Belgium.
Meanwhile, following the assassination of the French King Henri III, his protestant heir Henri of Navarre faces opposition from the Catholic League in a land weakened by the seven previous Wars of Religion. In between these two theaters, the Duke of Parma is governor of the Spanish Netherlands and receives conflicting orders from the Spanish King Philip II, who wants him both to support the Catholic League and defeat the Dutch Revolt. Ten Years of Glory is an asymmetric game. The Alliance player begins with a small section of the map while, historically, they ended with three quarters of the map in their hands. For this reason, the Alliance player is forced to win an Automatic Victory in order to win the game in a grand manner.
19. Brotherhood & Unity: War in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1995 Reprint from Compass Games
Not many games out there that cover the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 and this one is a very good game that does just that. Brotherhood & Unity: War in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1995 Reprint is now available to pre-order a gain and this game really is worth it. To me, this is a perfect CDG that is made for 2-3 players and should be played by 3 for the best and most immersive exprience.
From the game page, we read the following:
Brotherhood & Unity is a 2-3 player card driven wargame which depicts the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992-1995 (“Bosnian War”). The game shows all of the major events: from the siege of Sarajevo (shown in separate, detailed map), to the ferocious battles for the Posavina corridore, and desperate defense of the Bosniak enclaves. Main features are: Point-To-Point movement system, play driven by Strategy Cards, quick combat resolution (no CRT), streamlined rules and fast gameplay. Interaction between warring sides (Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats) creates an intensive and exciting gameplay experience.
Player’s military strength fluctuates based on historical facts, with Serbs starting superior in all aspects, and Bosniaks struggling to organize an effective fighting formation. Military units represent Brigades – standard military formations of the time, ranging from 1500-2000 soldiers. They have different combat and movement values (based on historical data), which forces players to use different tactics for different opponents. Majority of these units are non-motorized infantry formations (moving only several spaces per round), but with the use of special offensive cards players can increase their mobility and surprise the opponents.
The game simulates three distinct sides in the war: Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats – with no clear border separating them. That provides an interesting set of choices to players: to attack or to fortify, whom to ally with, and when to change sides. That leads to many turnarounds and pragmatical alliances with former enemies – as was historically the case.
Each player gets a deck of Strategy Cards, simulating a variety of historical events. The player starts an action round by playing a Strategy Card from his hand. A card can be played as an event (Combat Card, Offensive, Interrupt, Foreign Units and Other) or as one of the game actions (Movement, Attack, Strategic Redeployment, Diplomatic Action or Reinforcement). The events and card values have been carefully created to mimic the historical events and choices. Since each game uses only a part of the available card deck, players can’t be certain which cards will be drawn during the game. That creates a “card fog-of-war” and makes the game more replayable.
Game uses Strategic Will point system to keep track of the victories and losses, and to determine the final score. It is affected by a number of things: capturing or losing regions, capturing or losing key spaces, eliminating or losing units, and as a result of events. One of the most important aspects of the game is capturing player’s own key regions – which were different for each side, and which reflects the different aims the each side had.
20. Eastern Front Operational Battles from Compass Games Currently on Kickstarter
The classic qadrigame is a solid way of getting lots of content into a box and also packaging similar battles with the same rules set in an easy and accessible method. I love these quads and am very glad to see they are still alive and kicking. This month, Compass Games launched a quad designed by John Thiessen called Eastern Front Operational Battles and it includes Pincers, Operation Fridericus, Orel Salient and Operation Rumaiantsev.
From the game page, we read the following:
In May of 1942, portions of the Red Army were to attack the German 6th Army, as mandated by Stalin. This was to be a pincers type attack, enveloping Kharkov. The Germans coincidentally were planning an assault in May against the salient which formed the southern base of the Soviet May offensive. The Red Army struck first, and five days later the German attack commenced. These double offensives are what are covered in “Pincers” and “Operation Fredericus”. As the German Zitadelle offensive of 1943 was winding down, the Soviets launched a major attack of their own on the northern part of the Kursk area. Then on August 3 the Soviets attacked the southern part of the Kursk area. “Orel Salient” and “Operation Rumiantsev” cover these actions.
Eastern Front Operational Battles use the same basic rule set in all four games as one would expect in a quad game. The rules are accessible and straight forward for playability, and at the same time, all aspects, such as movement rates, combat outcomes, and so on, are based on historical analysis. All of the games play at the operational level. Units are mostly regiments/brigades and divisions in the 1942 games, and divisions and corps in the 1943 games.
There are also a few interesting small units in the mix. In the 1943 games, the Germans have a small number of the “animal” units available: Hornisse, Tiger, Brummbar, as well as Ferdinands (later called Elefants). There are a few Hungarian, Romanian, and Italian units that take part in the action. Both sides have a number of armored, motorized, and cavalry units in their orders of battle, so that movement and breakthroughs are frequent possibilities. Headquarters allow units within range to benefit from a number of characteristics. Airpower is represented with players able to give CRT column shifts and to attack various ground targets. Some randomized special events affect play. The system isn’t complex, and there are a few optional rules that are available if players want to add some chrome.
Gamers should find that ease of play and realistic modeling coexist in this system. All four games in Eastern Front Operational Battles can be for two players, and they are also readily accessible for solitaire play.
As of November 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $6,139 toward its $2,500 funding goal with 67 backers. The campaign will conclude on Thursday, November 10th at 8:10pm EST.
New Release
1. Fragile Crown, Hard Battle – Battle of Shrewsbury: July 21, 1403 from High Flying Dice Games
As you have heard me say before, small format wargames on lesser gamed subjects are always welcome at my table. High Flying Dice Games seems to specialize in these type of games and this month have 2 very interesting looking games on vastly different subjects.
The first is Fragile Crown, Hard Battle – Battle of Shrewsbury: July 21, 1403, which takes a look at the Battle of Shrewsbury between rebel forces of the Percy’s and Lancastrian’s.
From the game page, we read the following:
The rule of Lancastrian King Henry IV was precarious following his overthrow of his cousin, King Richard II in 1399. Richard had assumed the English crown at a young age following the sudden death of his father, the Black Prince, leading to Richard becoming the heir to the English throne following the death of his grandfather, Edward III. However, his regency fed the young king’s paranoia and narcissism, turning Richard II into a feared tyrant that bankrupted the realm and brought it to the brink of civil war. Henry’s usurpation of his cousin’s rule was seen as a liberation by many. However, the Percy family resented the Lancastrian house’s rise to power, as well as King Henry IV’s seeming reluctance to support them in the face of growing Scottish incursions and damaging raids into their estates.
Henry Percy, nicknamed “Hotspur”, at first supported Henry IV’s takeover of the English throne and was a long friend of his eldest son and now Prince of Wales, Henry V. In 1402 Hotspur won a major victory against the Scots, capturing many of their nobles and the Scottish King. King Henry IV demanded that all the Scottish nobles and King be turned over to him so he could arrange some sort of peace treaty. Hotspur, who had not been paid by either Richard II or Henry IV for his part in defending the realm (the monarchy was broke and Parliament reluctant to pay the bills), badly needed the ransoms his high-born prisoners would fetch from the Scots. By the summer of 1403, Hotspur’s patience was at an end and Hotspur and his supporters rose in revolt. The rebel forces of the Percy’s (about ten thousand) and Lancastrian’s (about fourteen thousand) met near the town of Shrewsbury and fought in one of the bloodiest battles in English history. Can you do as well or better than your historical counterpart?
If you are interested in Fragile Crown, Hard Battle – Battle of Shrewsbury: July 21, 1403, you can order a copy for $20.95 from the High Flying Dice Games website at the following link: https://www.hfdgames.com/shrew.html
2. Falling Skies – Operation Rolling Thunder March-December, 1965 from High Flying Dice Games
The 2nd game offered this month from High Flying Dice Games is a modern wargame that deals with airpower and the bombing campaign in Vietnam called Falling Skies – Operation Rolling Thunder March-December, 1965. I just love these type of airwar games that focus on routes and avoiding SAM’s and the like as they always create a very tense and interesting experience as you go about trying your best to avoid detection and attack.
From the game page, we read the following:
After the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed on August 10, 1964, full American intervention in the Vietnam Conflict was inevitable. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, believed they had a war winning strategy with massive air strikes against targets in North Vietnam and the “Ho Chi Minh Trail”, the route through Laos and Cambodia that funneled men and material to Communist forces in South Vietnam. Dubbed Operation Rolling Thunder, phased airstrikes against targets that progressively worked their way closer to Hanoi and Haiphong, would convince the North Vietnamese government of the futility of waging war against South Vietnam and encourage them to seek a negotiated peace settlement.
Trusting that the policy of regulated and judicious use of force that was used successfully in the Cuban Missile Crisis would also lead to victory here in Vietnam, Operation Rolling Thunder was launched weeks before the first US ground troops were to land at Danang. However, the historical result was far from what was anticipated in Washington, DC, and presaged the frustration and tragedy of a war that would last another ten years, America’s defeat and humiliation, and the fall of South Vietnam.
If you are interested in Falling Skies – Operation Rolling Thunder March-December, 1965, you can order a copy for $20.95 from the High Flying Dice Games website at the following link: https://www.hfdgames.com/skies.html
3. First Man in Rome – Strategikon Book II: The Civil War and the Fall of the Republic from Thin Red Line Games
If you are a monster wargame fan then you are probably familiar with Thin Red Line Games and the genius behind the madness Fabrizio Vianello. They are a small but passionate publisher and my favorite thing about them is that Fabrizio speaks in his military jargon so fluently that it is such a thematic boost to the games they produce. Over the past couple of years, we have posted interviews with Fabrizio covering their Cold War Gone Hot games called Die Festung Hamburg and In a Dark Wood as well as the first game in a new Ancients series called The Fate of All: Alexander’s Campaign Against the Persian Empire. Following along in that Strategikon Series is the new volume called First Man in Rome that was recently published.
From the game page, we read the following:
Citizens, the creation of the great mosaic depicting the beleagured civil war between Caius Iulius Caesar and Cneo Pompeius Magnus continues!
As already discussed in the Senate, we intend to represent the entire civil war, from the crossing of the Rubicon in 49BC to the defeat of the last Pompeian forces in Spain in 45BC. So it’s not just a glimpse of this epic confrontation, but the whole struggle for the greater good of the Res Publica.
I can now share some details on the map, almost at its conclusion. The map will be probably divided in six parts, each one with the size of a “standard” map. Due to the enormous extension of the conflict, the scale has been increased from 30km to 60km per hex, and the rules will be adjusted accordingly.
If you are interested in First Man in Rome– Strategikon Book II: The Civil War and the Fall of the Republic, you can order a copy for €150.00 ($167.19 in US Dollars) from the Thin Red Line Games website at the following link: https://trlgames.com/prodotto/first-man-in-rome/
4. Song for War: Mediterranean Theater from Invicta Rex Games
While attending Buckeye Game Fest in the spring of 2022, we met two new designers who had a very cool looking prototype copy of their new game setup in the War Room called Song for War: Mediterranean Theater. Chris Helm and Seth Stigliano were really nice guys who obviously had put a ton of time into their game and it was immediately evident that this was going to be a different experience. Unfortunately, because of our crazy schedule of events and already committed to games, we were unable to sit down and play the game but got a crash course into the design as well as a good look at the awesome components.
The game had an initial Kikcstarter that they pulled and made some changes to with a 2nd Kickstarter in April 2025. The campaign funded and it is now available for purchase. I got my copy last week and it looks really great.
From the game page, we read the following:
Song for War is a tabletop strategy game based in the contested regions of southern Europe, north Africa, and the Mediterranean Sea during World War II. Representing one of four nations, players must work together as the Allies (US or Great Britain) or Axis (Germany or Italy). Players have the option to set strategy, move units, attack and defend as individual nations or simultaneously as the Allied or Axis team. Innovative mechanics allow players to deploy their land, sea, and air units strategically as combined forces, with faster units moving first and more often, followed by heavy units with stronger firepower. Take strategic objectives, control shipping lanes and resupply, deploy new technologies and units, and recreate historical events to defeat the enemy and win the day.
One of the best parts is the asymmetry built into the design for each of the nations. This gives the game some feeling of reality versus everyone just having the exact same units with the exact same abilities. I also am really interested in each nations’ special units and want to see how these things work and feel as the game is played.
Fellow content creator Zilla Blitz did a preview for the game in 2023 and you can check that out at the following link:
If you are interested in Song for War: Mediterranean Theater, you can learn more about the project on the game page at the Invicta Rex Games website at the following link: https://www.invictarex.com/songforwar
Be aware that the link wasn’t working as of yet but should be functional shortly.
5. 1066: Year of Destiny from Legion Wargames
As mentioned above, I love Legion Wargames and their games as they are just good! The 2nd game they had this month was called 1066: Year of Destiny and covers the chaotic wars around successors to King Edward in January 1066.
From the game page, we read the following:
1066: Year of Destiny is a three player game covering the various claimants to the crown of England following the death of Edward the Confessor in January 1066.
The players fulfill the roles of Harald Hardrada, Harold Godwinson and William of Normandy. The game is split into 4 phases each of which is designed to illustrate a key component in determining who takes the crown.
Firstly there is a Pre-Invasion Political Event phase (PIPE) which is designed to showcase the political intrigue that took place prior to the death of Edward. During this phase the players can gain additional support from other leaders and regions and, crucially, they can gain additionally legitimacy from various monarchs, religious bodies and events. Many events are outside their control; death of the Aethling, Scandinavian Wars and the activities of Tostig but they will also be crucial. This simple game preamble will provide an infinite variety of starting points to be played out on the map itself. In addition this phase can be a time of acquiring operational and tactical chits to use advantageously later.
Legitimacy is central to the game. Unless a player gains an automatic victory then a players legitimacy level will be key in determining who has won the war. As well as during the PIPE phase it can also be changed by winning and losing battles and by taking controlling of areas on the map.
However before the Operational phase there are the perils of the sea crossings. When to sail is a crucial decision by both William and Hardrada. Go early and the weather should be kinder, go later and you can recruit more troops. Lady luck, in the form of stormy seas can destroy the best laid plans, in addition the prevailing winds can prevent you invading, even when you are ready to go (as occurred to William). If a crossing goes badly wrong, or you lose an early decisive battle your claim lies in shreds. Don’t despair – ‘Become a Dane’. A player can abandon their attempt, as William or Hardrada, and instead take up the cause of Sweyn of Denmark and try and gain the throne for the Danes (they historically invaded in 1069). It won’t be easy winning as the Danes but it means you are still in the game.
The first week in September is a dangerous time for Harold as the Fyrd stand down to collect the harvest, is this the time to strike? , will the weather conditions be in your favour. In the operational players move around the map of England to gain control of areas and improve their legitimacy as well as deciding when to strike to win a decisive battle against one of the two opponents. The operational phase is a real ‘rock, paper, scissors’ problem. How to square the problems of keeping your forces concentrated to win battles, spreading them out to take control of areas whilst keeping them feed without turning areas into wastelands.When battle is joined them the action is transferred to a battle board where the individual characteristics of the differing armies is highlighted. The longer you stay on the battlefield the bigger the loss if you are defeated; often the losses from pursuit are greater than the losses from the battle itself. Winning and losing battles result in big legitimacy swings which can decide the game.
Never before has this iconic campaign been gamed with all four key facets illustrated (politics, invasion, operational campaign and battles). There are a number of very good battle games but not much for the operational phase and nothing showing the political interplay or the perils of the sea crossings themselves. The victory conditions for each player differ slightly, requiring differing strategies for each side. Sweyn of Denmark is waiting in the wings. The game system will determine if he arrives or not. Leave London inadequately protected and he will take it and without it neither William or Harold can win a decisive victory.
6. Bear Trap: The Soviet-Afghan War, 1979-1989 from GMT Games
A few years ago, GMT announced a very cool looking game designed by Paul Daniels covering the Soviet-Afghan War from 1979-1989 called Bear Trap. The game was described as a block wargame that used a similar system to what was used in the design for Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan.
From the game page, we read the following:
Bear Trap is a quick-playing, low-complexity 2-player block wargame covering the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989).
In the Soviet–Afghan war, Insurgent groups—including the mujahideen—fought a guerrilla war against the Soviet 40th Army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) government. The game begins shortly after “Operation Storm-333” was executed at the end of 1979—in this coup, Hafizullah Amin (General Secretary of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) was killed, and Babrak Karmal, a Soviet loyalist, replaced him. By putting the Brezhnev Doctrine into practice, the Soviets sought to prop up the sympathetic local government and “solve the Russian Ice-lock Problem” while the Insurgents sought to expel the secularist government and foreign invaders.
Although the two sides in this conflict were fundamentally different in a variety of ways, they also faced some parallel challenges. For instance, they struggled to maintain loyalty. For the Soviets and the DRA, the DRA armed forces merely offered an opportunity for a paycheck, and there were cases where conscripts in the Soviet Army defected to the Mujahideen (e.g. Kazbek Hudalov). For the Insurgents, propaganda, threats, and promises to family drew would-be combatants away, as did injuries suffered from landmines and attacks on villages. Both sides also struggled to puncture the fog of war, not being able to secure reliable intel about force deployment and strength. And both faced various challenges around supply, communication, and coordination. Both sides needed to react to shifting strategies and developments over this decade long Cold War proxy war, where the landscape upon which it was fought presented many unique challenges.
Bear Trap is a spiritual successor to Sekigahara—building on the same core system. In both games, each player has their own deck of cards; players spend cards from their hand to activate areas or in combat to commit units to battle. This means fans of Sekigahara will find learning Bear Trap easy, but the feel and experience of the games are highly divergent. In addition to the difference in topics covered, other differences include:
In Bear Trap, forces are represented by blocks, stickered side hidden from the opponent, and the orientation of a block determines its disposition (i.e. the orientation of a block dictates whether it’s mobilized, fortified, disordered, poised to offer fire support to a battle initiated by friendly units, or ready to ambush enemy units). The orientation of a block also determines which battles it can join, whether card play is required to commit it to battle, and whether it can be moved or activated.
Bear Trap features an area-based map, rather than the point-to-point style found in Sekigahara.
The sequential combat system popularized in Sekigahara is utilized in Bear Trap, adapted to suit the setting. This includes the use of ‘loyalty challenges,’ making Bear Trap simulate the proneness of (for instance) Afghan forces to defect.
Bear Trap is, like Sekigahara, first and foremost a 2-player game—but Bear Trap includes a unique solo mode, built around a card assisted flowchart bot.
Bear Trap has fewer blocks than Sekigahara, and each player has fewer card types (‘suits’) in their decks.
Bear Trap introduces ‘strategy’ cards—powerful event cards. Although it would be misleading to label Bear Trap a deck-building game, players will add 2 cards from a pool specific to their side each time they reshuffle their deck.
Bear Trap is not a “clone” of Sekigahara—they are very different games with differences in topic, feel, and mechanism, despite having an underlying shared game system. Bear Trap is also a more asymmetric game than Sekigahara. Although Bear Trap is a slight step up in complexity (relative to Sekigahara), the mechanics remain simple, and Bear Trap can be completed in 2-3 hours.
7. Battle Line: Medieval 2nd Printing from GMT Games
Following on in this reprint trend this month, Battle Line: Medieval2nd Printing is now shipping. This is one of those famous classic wargames designed by Reiner Knizia that is very well thought of but that is a smaller, card based game that is portable and very approachable.
From the game page, we read the following:
Now in its 12th GMT printing, designer Reiner Knizia’s Battle Line is our #2 all-time best-selling game! This new re-themed version of Battle Line is a two-player strategy card game built around the theme of Medieval warfare. This Medieval-themed version of Battle Line features 60 beautiful new cards by illustrator Roland MacDonald, as well as 10 full-color tactics “wildcards” that give players extra flexibility and choices and help make each new battle wildly different from the last.
Battle Line: Medieval takes about 30 minutes to play. To win, you must create powerful formations along your side of the line of battle that are superior to those of your enemy. Victory goes to the player who wins 5 of the 9 battle flags (an envelopment) or three adjacent flags (a breakthrough). Based on Reiner Knizia’s original design published in Germany as Shotten-Totten,Battle Line: Medieval enhances and expands that game system to give players even more tactical options and gut-wrenching decisions.
Battle Line: Medieval is a beautiful game that will delight competitive strategy game players and also serve as an great introductory game for new or young gamers.
I own the Deluxe Edition of this one, which was released in 2018 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! I have only played the game on Vassal though with a few of the scenarios and have really enjoyed it. I must admit that this one is very deep and there are a lots of rules and exceptions based on the different units that are included in each scenario. I do feel that the rules could use some work but that concern does not sway me away from saying this system and the game itself are fantastic!
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.
One of my favorite rules from the game is the all important initiative. When in battle, the player will hold the initiative if you force your opponent to act first and can react on every move. Also, leaders are activated in their initiative rating order from lowest to highest. Leaders can issue individual orders up to their initiative rating to the units in command radius, or if specifically called for in the scenario, activate a whole line of units. Leader may also gain momentum, trying to take turn after the turn if passing their initiative checks. The game is really very playable, with some exceptions for rules that just are not as clear as they need to be, but this system takes into account what was most important on the battlefields of the ancient world.
From the game page, we read the following:
We are proud to bring SPQR back in print in a new and expanded 5th Edition. This edition will not only include the scenarios from the Barbarian module but also the six scenarios of The Hammer of God module published in C3i magazine and an updated version of the Battle of Pydna originally published in the SPQR Player’s Guide. Perhaps the most significant change to the original SPQR and Scenario Pack scenarios is the inclusion of the setups to play with the Simple GBoH 2nd Edition rules!
The game will feature a new edition of the rulebook incorporating all known errata and numerous clarifications based on player feedback. Known errata on the Player Aid cards have been addressed. The Game Turn Track Display will be replaced by a Rout Point Tracking card (which includes a Game Turn Track) in the same style as that in Great Battles of Julius Caesar. There are no changes to the maps. Minor errata on a few of the counters will be addressed and the counters associated with the early C3i Marathon scenario will be replaced with counters for the Pydna scenario along with additional counters to eliminate several counter substitutions.
Due to the increased content, the most significant change to the components is a restructuring of the previous edition’s three scenario/module books into three scenario books arranged chronologically.
I will play SPQR at anytime and I know that there are other games out there that have a better following but for me Herman and Berg were a magnificent team to create these very interesting and unique scenarios.
9. SPQR Deluxe 5th Edition Update Kit from GMT Games
If you already own SPQR (and let me tell you that you should and we will need to talk later), and feel that you are going to miss out with these improvements, then never fear! GMT Games has you covered with their SPQR Deluxe 5th Edition Update Kit.
From the game page, we read the following:
The SPQR Deluxe 5th Edition Update Kit allows owners of the 2008 and 2018 printings of SPQR Deluxe Edition to use the maps and counters from those games with the new content (see the SPQR Deluxe 5th Edition listing for details).
Components:
One Rulebook
Three Chronological Scenario Books (The Rise of Rome, The 2nd Punic War, and Rome and the Successors)
10. Small Battles of the American Revolution Volume I: The Battle of Cowpens from GMT Games
While attending the World Boardgaming Championships 2 years ago, I was able to meet up with Dave Stiffler (acting as Developer on the project) and Bruno Sinigaglio who is the designer to get an early look at the upcoming debut release in the Small BoAR Series called The Battle of Cowpens.
I didn’t get any pictures because they didn’t have the components along to show but learned a lot about the design and how it changes the Battles of the American Revolution Series from GMT Games. First off, the scale is the major difference as it is 1/8th of the scale used in the normal series. This means 25 yard hexes and 2-3 men per counter. They also have included both rifle fire and musket fire which is a change as musket fire is simply an abstracted part of the close combat mechanic in BoAR. They also have added some new mechanics to account better for things like morale and being shaken or even shattered.
But then recently I got a chance to play the game in its final form while attending the Gaming the American Revolution 250 Camden Event put on by GMT Games and it was absolutely golrious.
From the game page, we read the following:
Two critical battles were considered turning points in the American Revolutionary War: the Battle of Saratoga in New York and the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina. The Battle of Cowpens was a catalyst to a series of events that led eventually to the surrender of the British at Yorktown. Small BoAR Volume I, The Battle of Cowpens, puts players directly into the milieu of this decisive contest.
The goal of the Small BoAR design concept is to include small yet critical battles that otherwise do not fit the scale of the historically simulating and highly successful Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) system designed by Mark Miklos. This new system, aptly termed Small Battles of the American Revolution (Small BoAR), was designed by Bruno Sinigaglio working closely with Mark Miklos to preserve the continuity and popularity of the original Battles of the American Revolution game system.
Although extremely important to the history of the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Cowpens involved slightly over 1000 participants per side. In the Battles of the American Revolution system, which represents 100 men per strength point, this would equate to only ten or so combat factors per side. The scale for the battle of Cowpens, on the other hand, is 12 men per strength point, or one-eighth that of the BoAR system. The map scale is also correspondingly reduced to 25 yards per hex from the BoAR scale of 200 yards per hex. The time scale is approximately four minutes per turn as compared with one hour per turn in BoAR.
I think that one of the best parts of this new series, aside from the size and scope of the battles covered being smaller, is that they have not just rested on their laurels and reproduced the BoAR System but have added new mechanics and elements to better deal with these battles and to model the smaller scale battles.
Although Army Morale, the game-within-the-game in BoAR, is faithfully preserved in Small BoAR, and the Small BoAR sequence of play resembles that of BoAR and will look familiar to anyone who has played games in the original series, certain novel elements appropriate to the new scaling have been added. These include:
The ability to designate cavalry units in reserve
Artillery Fire conducted both offensively and defensively
Simultaneous ranged musket Fire as a complement to ranged rifle fire
A Cavalry Reserve Phase where units designated in Reserve may charge after the normal Close Combat Phase
And Opportunity Card Management
We recently did a video interview with designer Bruno Sinigaglio and here is a link to that video:
If you are interested in Small Battles of the American Revolution Volume I: The Battle of Cowpens, you can order a copy for $75.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1140-the-battle-of-cowpens.aspx
11. Cards & Command: The Western Front – United Kingdom vs. Germany and Cards & Command: The European Theater – United States vs. Germany from Jason Smith (Self-Published)
As I was finishing up this post, and still looking through the internet for anything I could find, I came upon a really interesting looking little WWII card based wargame called Cards & Command. I love a good card based game and started to check out their shop and it looked to be really pretty good and I very much loved the art style and graphic design. The game is designed by Jason Smith and self published so you won’t find any big website with glitz and glamor. But, the game does look really pretty interesting and there are 2 separate games including Cards & Command: The Western Front – United Kingdom vs. Germany and Cards & Command: The European Theater – United States vs. Germany. I bought copies of both of the games and they should arrive here in about 10 days.
From the game page, we read the following:
A World War II strategy card game designed for ages 14+. Take command of a World War II battlefield as you lead either the German or British forces in an intense battle of strategy, tactics, and firepower. Deploy infantry, tanks, artillery, and air support, outthink your opponent with clever manoeuvres, and make every dice roll count as you fight to eliminate the enemy commander.
With quick setup, fast-paced turns, and endless strategic possibilities, Cards & Command delivers the thrill of commanding a WWII army without the complexity of a lengthy war game.
Cards & Command is the ultimate WWII strategy card game — and the perfect gift for any history buff or board game lover.
Game Features
– Fast-paced gameplay — sessions typically last 15 minutes to 1 hour
– 2–4 players — battle head-to-head in Germany vs. the United Kingdom, or team up for 2v2 warfare
– Compact box — easy to take anywhere and play on the move
– Authentic WWII-inspired units — command iconic tanks, aircraft, infantry, and specialist troops
– Tactical depth — combine unit abilities, positioning, reinforcements, and dice-based combat to outmanoeuvre your opponent
Choose Your Army
United Kingdom
Command British forces and deploy iconic WWII units, including the legendary Spitfire, the formidable Churchill tank, and elite Special Air Service troops.
Germany
Lead German forces into battle with powerful units such as the fearsome Tiger tank, the Bf 109 fighter aircraft, and Fallschirmjäger paratroopers.
United States
Lead American forces into battle with iconic WWII units, including the versatile Sherman tank, the powerful P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft, and elite US Army Rangers. Use American firepower, tactical coordination, and combined-arms warfare to take control of the battlefield.
Germany
Command German forces and deploy formidable WWII units, including the fearsome Tiger tank, the Bf 109 fighter aircraft, and Fallschirmjäger paratroopers. Use powerful units and calculated tactics to break through enemy defences and eliminate the opposing commander.
Choose your side, build your army, and prepare for battle. Every unit has a role to play, and every decision could turn the tide of war.
If you are interested in Cards & Command: The Western Front – United Kingdom vs. Germany and Cards & Command: The European Theater – United States vs. Germany, you can order copies for $39.00 each from the Cards & Command Etsy Shop at the following link: Cards and Command
12. Firepower Strike Volume 1: The Siege of Midpoint Station Hammer Bastion from Blue Panther
In July 2019, in the “Before the Plague Times” when life was simpler, I had the pleasure of meeting designer Keith Tracton at the World Boardgaming Championships in Pennsylvania. He was showing off his new game at the time World At War 85: Storming the Gap and it was a thing of beauty! Since that time, we have seen Keith design a follow up effort to World at War 85 in the Blood and FuryExpansion and he has a Sci-Fi wargame called Raider Drop Zone. Recently I caught wind that he was working on another Sci-Fi wargame with Blue Panther called Firepower Strike Volume 1: The Siege of Midpoint Station Hammer Bastion, which is set in the same universe as his Raider Drop Zone.
From the game page, we read the following:
The Firepower Strike Series offers epic-scale two-player stand alone science fiction ground combat games. The series, set in the Firepower Pass universe, pits ground forces of the Terran Corporate Consolidation against the aggressive Procyonese Concordat and their alien allies, the Kraken.
Hammer Bastion shows one quadrant of the assault on the crucial walled-and-shielded starport of Midpoint Station, currently enduring its third siege–this time by the Procyonese Concordat First Line Army forces aided by curtain-wall-climbing, Kraken “Dragoon” warriors.
As the Terran command your mission is to simply defend the northwestern walls of Midpoint Station, centered on the Hammer Bastion.
As the Procyonese commander, you must coordinate a massive ground force to assault and overcome the Hammer Bastion’s formidable defenses, with the ultimate objective of destroying the station’s central spire containing the station’s critical shield-projecting tower.
If you are interested in Firepower Strike Volume 1: The Siege of Midpoint Station Hammer Bastion, you can order a copy for $85.00 from the Blue Panther website at the following link: https://www.bluepantherllc.com/products/hammer-bastion
13. Flames Across the Valley 2nd Edition from Bill Molyneaux Games
There is a need for introductory wargames in our hobby that can be used to teach the concepts of wargames to new players. Very few designers focus on this area but Bill Molyneaux is one of those as he has designed several very good introductory wargames over the years including Bloody Mohawk from Lock ‘n Load Publishing, Savage Wilderness from Lock ‘n Load Publishing, Battle of Brandywine from Fast Play Wargames, Horns of the Buffalo from Fast Play Wargames and most recently The Battle of Wyse Fork from Bill Molyneaux Games (with codesigner Kim Meints). Recently, he has worked on a 2nd Edition of one of his early games from 1993 with a new designer named Ron Toelke called Flames Across the Valley 2nd Edition.
From the game page, we read the following:
October 1780. The American rebels and the British army battle for control of Scholarie, New York. Whoever captures this settlement can turn the tide of the war. The fate of New York is in your hands.
The New York frontier, a place of peaceful valleys and rich farms, has been the scene of savage warfare since the beginning of the American Revolution. British soldiers, dispossessed Loyalists, and their Indian Allies seek to bring fear and ruin to the “breadbasket” of the rebellious American colonies. The settlers and their families, with the aid of some Continental soldiers, struggle to preserve their homes from the invaders.
Flames Along the Valley recreates the raid on the Schoharie Valley in October, 1780, by British forces under Sir John Johnson. Three forts guard the valley, places of refuge and defense. Can the forts be taken and destroyed, the defenders scattered? Will the militia and Continental troops stand fast against the enemies of liberty? Can the invaders be prevented from burning every barn and house in sight? Return to the cold and snowy day of October 17,1780 to once more do battle.
Flames Across the Valley: Second Edition is a reworking of the game that was first released in 1993 by Chatham Hill games and Ron Toelk. This “second edition” was started by Bill Molyneaux and the late historian Paul A. Supley, whom this game is dedicated to. Mr. Molyneaux would like to thank Mr. Ron Toelk for the right to use his work for this updated version.
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 PHALANX!
Strategic level American Civil War on a postcard. The map of the Confederacy is divided into areas. The U.S player must strangle the Confederacy and reduce their will to continue fighting. Players use a standard deck of playing cards to activate armies (three Confederate and up to six Union) for movement and combat. Units can fight enemy armies in the same area. Combat is done by rolling 1D6, adding combat strength (for the Union) or Resistance Level (for the Confederates) and comparing results. Highest result wins. Losses are taken in retreats or in step losses. There are up to eight turns, each of which is six months. The key mechanic is the Confederate Resistance Level (CRL). As Union armies occupy areas, the CRL falls. If the CRL falls to zero before the end of turn 8, the Union player wins, otherwise the Confederate player wins.
Morgan’s A’ Comin’ is the fourth game in the Pocket Battle Games Series from LPS, Inc.
Rebel raider John H. Morgan defies orders, crossing the Ohio River in the summer of 1863 to bring war to the Yankees! All across the Midwest his incursion results in numerous alarms, property damage, and Union fears that he will link up with Robert E. Lee. While the raid succeeds in diverting a small Union army away from Bragg, the fierce pace and determined Union resistance wears the invaders away to little more than a small band, all being captured in the end. Could Morgan have tipped the balance on not one, but two fronts?
Einblicke in ein zersplittertes Reich voller Magie, die Welt der Sturmlicht-Chroniken oder über 40 Jahre an deutscher Rollenspiel-Geschichte: Auf der SPIEL Essen 2026 präsentiert Ulisses Spiele wieder einige neue Hintergrundbände und Szenarien von verschiedenen Systemen. Welche Bandbreite der Verlag wieder im Gepäck hat, erfahrt ihr hier.
During the summer of 2019, we were introduced to Maurice Suckling and his very interesting design Freeman’s Farm 1777 from Worthington Publishing and really enjoyed the mechanics and how they all came together to create an interactive and interesting look at the Battle of Saratoga during the American Revolution. I was very impressed with Maurice and his appraoch to design and we have followed him every since and played many of his great designs. including Hidden Strike: American Revolution, Chancellorsville 1863 and 1565 Siege of Malta and Crisis: 1914. In this entry in the Best 3 Games with…Series I wanted to highlight the games of Maurice Suckling and share those that I have had the best experience with.
3. Freeman’s Farm 1777 from Worthington Publishing
Freeman’s Farm 1777 is the first in the Battle Formations Series from Worthington Publishing that are designed for both solitaire and two players. The focus of the system is on the individual formations that appeared on the battlefield and places the players in the role of overall commander to make decisions about which formations to activate and how to use those formations to position themselves to attack the enemy. The key to these decisions is the morale of those formations as each command utilizes one of their levels of morale and if pushed too far, through attacking or being attacked, the formation will be forced to take a morale test to see if it will break.
There are a couple of things that I really liked about this one as I felt it told the story of the style of fighting of the time and incorporated some elements that were very important. This series has centered the focus on formations and how they can interact with each other on the battlefield. It simply looks at how the relative positioning of the formations opens up opportunities for attack or provides advantages or disadvantages to one side or the other. If you are above an enemy formation on high ground or have a superior firing angle on a formation in battle, shouldn’t you gain an advantage? And furthermore, if you are relatively inexperienced green forces and are facing the smoking gun barrels of your enemy’s cannons, don’t you think that your attempts to return fire will be less effective than if firing with hardened troops from cover? This spatial element is a major inclusion in the design and really feels right and makes your choices as commander that much more difficult as you decide how to activate your troops to take advantage of the situation. I really have enjoyed this spatial relationship during my plays of the game and think that the approach is very novel.
The other element that I really enjoyed was the concept of morale. The design has the player controlling several different Formation Cards that represent their troops on the battlefield and each has their own set of actions they are able to take. The key for these Formation Cards is that each time they are activated through the play of the corresponding Activation Card they have to pay for this activation. The payment comes in the form of paying 1 point of Morale from the Morale Track by moving the cube marker down one space. The formation may also lose Morale as they attack and are attacked throughout the game. The moment that a formation’s morale reaches 5 on the Morale Track they have to conduct a Morale Test to see if they will break and leave the field. This Morale Test is conducted by rolling a single d6 with any modifiers from Tactics Cards that the player controls and then comparing that result to the current Morale of the formation (i.e. where the Morale marker is currently on the Morale Track). If the die roll is higher than the marker location, the formation has failed the test and becomes broken. If the roll is equal to or less than the marker location, the formation passes the test and remains on the battlefield. Each successive reduction in the Morale of that formation will trigger another test which will be harder and harder to pass as the number decreases. Soldiers spend their strength and will to fight in each skirmish and as they are pushed more and more, and in the face of losses and exhaustion, reach a point where their will to fight is gone and they break. I like how the design dealt with this issue and it feels right.
The game uses wooden cubes, disks and sticks to mark formations on the board and it looks like those pictures in text books showing the location of troops during these historical battles. This was a nice thematic touch for me and helped me to get into the mind set of a Revolutionary War battle.
I wrote a series of Action Point posts covering the various aspects of the game. You can read those at the following links:
Action Point 1 – Game board that represents the locations and roles of both sides’ formations as well as their relative positions on the battlefield.
Action Point 2 – Formation Cards and how the Activation Cards are used to command and how Morale Tests work.
Action Point 3 – Momentum Cubes and how they are used to purchase the all important Tactics Cards.
Action Point 4 – Examples of combat and discuss the way the dice are used.
Here is a look at our video review of the game:
2. Chancellorsville 1863 from Worthington Publishing
While the next game on this list uses the same system, this entry in the series is definitely improved and matured and I very much liked the blind movement aspect which was added. Chancellorsville 1863 covers the Battle of Chancellorsville during the American Civil War using a similar system to Freeman’s Farm1777.
At the start of the game some units on each side are visible, which is mostly because they are adjacent (units adjacent to enemy units are always visible on the main map.) Other units are hidden, placed on spaces on their respective mini map hidden behind a screen, in one of a variety of spaces. The mini map is a smaller representation of the main map, with the same movement arrows and nexus points but with the same scale for ‘spaces’ so the same blocks fit on both maps. Each side has their own mini map. If units move into a space on the mini map that is adjacent to a space occupied by a unit on the main map, that unit becomes visible and is transferred to the main map.
There are also some spaces found deep inside the enemy’s lines of communication and moving onto those spaces on the mini map compels an immediate transfer to the main map. In addition, there are some spaces where the lead Union units are visible. This represents Jeb Stuart’s cavalry tracking the Union advance on the Confederate left. This added aspect really makes the game and creates a sense of tension for the players as they simply don’t know where all of the enemy units are located and have to play for those units coming up on their rear even as they are engaged in major battles along the front lines.
Activations are also slightly different from the Freeman’s Farm game as each side only has 15 activations per game but each activation card identifies at least 2 commanders to activate and move. This is very necessary because the Union side has more units to move, and farther to move them to put pressure on objective locations. This has been balanced with the addition of fortifications that allow the defender to set one die per combat at the number desired. This makes for some very interesting decisions about whether to attack or not and how. I have really enjoyed this one as the system is obviously evolving and introducing new elements. I am glad that the designer has decided to take the system to the next level as there are lots of opportunities and applications to various battles for the system.
Crisis: 1914 is a game of international brinkmanship meaning if you back down too soon, you lose. If you back down too late you lose. But you have hawks and doves in your cabinet and in your government, and out of these conflicting views you must somehow formulate a coherent response to the crisis to win the day and prevent war. The game is played with players building a tableau of event cards that will score them a certain number of points, some building off of each of the type of cards played, with some of the cards increasing the Tension level of Europe at the time. If the Tension gets too high The Great War will break out and the player causing it by the play of a card will lose with the others winning based on their total Prestige Points. It sounds really simple, and the game is not overly complex, but there is a lot of strategy to how you play your cards, when you play them and how are you are willing to push your luck each round.
There are 3 concepts at the heart of Crisis: 1914 including Prestige, Tension and Diplomatic Pressure. Diplomatic Pressure is how you score Prestige and reflects the skill at which you play your cards to keep your faction moving ahead of the others while simultaneously balancing the level of Tension. Tension is how you lose. Every card has a DP value and you apply DP by playing cards. The player with the most Diplomatic Pressure at the end of a turn earns Prestige points. There are other ways of scoring Prestige points too, but this is the most important one. Prestige is how you win. The player with the most Prestige at the end of the game is the winner.
I have played this one 3 times now and and I cannot wait for the next opportunity to play. It is best with 5-players so make sure you get the right group and give yourselves a chance to really learn the game as each faction’s deck is completely asymmetrical and repeated plays will help you understand each faction’s strengths and strategies. While this game is not necessarily a wargame, but more of a war themed Euro game with a bit of negotiation and tension as you build your tableau of cards, we had a great time with it and really feel that the game is a bit under the radar of folks and should be one of those games that is played at conventions as it seats up to 5 players and is really quite good.
Here is a link to a RAW video we did after our 2nd play while attending Buckeye Game Fest in 2024:
There you have it. My Best 3 Games with…Designer Maurice Suckling! He has done so many good games and the narrative and historical immersion of all of them are top notch. He is definitely a designer to keep an eye on and I know that he has multiple games currently in design including Rebellion: Britannia from GMT Games, Peace 1905 from Fort Circle Games (we played a prototype of this one at SDHistCon a few years ago and it is top notch) and The Emperor’s Choice from Worthington Publishing (I played a short game of this at WBC and it is very good).
What are your favorite games from Maurice Suckling?
In 1539, a small Spanish garrison of troops numbering 3,500 men held the Albanian village of Castelnuovo for 22 days against the massive Ottoman army consisting of over 54,000 Turk soldiers. This siege took place as a part of the Ottoman-Habsburg struggle for control of the Mediterranean Sea in July 1539 at the walled town of Castelnuovo, which is the location of present-day Herceg Novi, Montenegro. After days of open trench warfare and more than a month of smaller combats, skirmishes, assaults and bombardments from the Turkish navy, the last Spanish defenders fell ending the siege. Castelnuovo 1539 is a wargame that focuses on this siege designed by Francisco Ronco. The defenders are safe behind sturdy walls and battlements but time and continual shelling from the Ottomans will lead to assaults over the walls. The battle is hopeless for the defenders but they can win the game by doing enough damage to the Ottomans to end their campaign and stop them from invading further into the Albania and then onto Spain and the rest of Europe. The game is very well produced using wooden blocks for soldiers, stylized walls, siege trenches and cannon along with ships and the board is also beautifully illustrated. The game is a block wargame where the strength of units are hidden from the opponent and plays pretty quickly in less than 90 minutes and really is a great representation of the battle and its history.
In Action Point 1, we took a look at the beautiful Game Board and its area movement scheme. In Action Point 2, we examined the units available to both sides and compared their relative strengths and weaknesses. In this Action Point, we will take a look at the different types of Command Cards and discuss how they are used.
Command Cards
In Castelnuovo 1539, there are 72 Command Cards with 36 unique cards per player side that are used to drive the tactical asymmetry of the siege. Players will draw hands of 4 cards during Siege Rounds or 7 cards during high-intensity Assault Rounds to be used for maneuvers around the board, bombardments and various special events. The Spanish and Ottoman factions utilize distinct and asymmetrical decks meaning that their available action options differ to reflect historical realities of the forces and their roles. I have already said this in previous posts on this game but the asymmetry is so very well done in this game and each side truly feels different from one another which creates a really interesting tactical challenge as players have to understand not only their own deck and its capabilities but those of their enemy to be able to effectively prosecute or defend against the siege.
There are 5 distinct types of Command Cards in the game, which include Action Cards, Order Cards, Combat Cards, Reaction Cards and Immediate Effect/Event Cards. Each has their own purpose and place in the game and I very much like the way the cards create opportunities for each player. Let’s take a bit of a deeper look into the types of cards, give a bit of a background on their general use and provide some examples.
First off are Action Cards, which are used by the players to execute specific actions such as engineering, trench-digging or board-manipulation tasks, such as generating Trench Points to advance through or destroy Spanish bastions. The cards basic purpose is to activate units to take actions on the board.
Order Cards typically dictate the movement, repositioning and coordination of military units, marches, and artillery batteries across the board. These are the most common of the card types and are frankly the most important as you cannot use the other cards to attack until you are in position to do so.
Combat Cards are the force multiplication cards and are played during combat resolution to enhance striking power, modify dice roll or trigger pre-combat attacks like the specialized Ottoman volley actions. These Combat Cards are best used as a hold in your hand to use them when they most benefit the player. This can be challenging as holding too many will mean you are not drawing the Order Cards that you need to advance on the enemy.
Reaction Cards are played out of turn during your opponent’s Action Phase to counter maneuvers or provide mid-combat support for engaged troops. These cards can be lifesavers and are important to any good strategy.
Finally, there are Immediate Effect/Event Cards that are used to inject the historical narrative into the game and to replicate the historical action. These cards can also be focused on environmental factors such as the faith of the defenders/attackers, fire devices or the like that will change the flow and pace of the battle instantly.
Each of the 5 different type of Command Cards have a unique color coded icon to assist the players in understanding the capabilities of the card and the appropriate phase to use the card in. These 5 icons are as follows:
Keep in mind though that several of the Command Cards will have 2 icons listed which means that they belong to either of the types and can be played as either during a play. You cannot play the same card again and use its other icon though. This duality provides the players with a bit more flexibility and creates a more engaging and free flowing game. In my opinion, sometimes games which rely on cards to activate units for moves or attacks can suffer from poor draws. While that can still be an issue in Castelnuovo 1539, the dual icon cards make this a bit less of a problem.
Here is a look at the makeup of the Command Cards by type per faction. Keep in mind that dual icon cards will count double in the categories they represent.
As you can see, the Spanish have more icons represented on their 36 cards than the Ottomans demonstrated by the Total Type of Card icons for the Spanish being 50 (1.39 icons per card) as compared to only 44 (1.22 icons per card) for the Ottomans. This is not a huge difference but does give the Spanish player a bit more flexibility in their cards draws and they will be able to be a bit more nimble than the attacking Ottomans. The Spanish have the advantage in the number of Action icons of 18 to 16. Remember that Action Cards are typically used for specific actions such as engineering, trench-digging or board-manipulation tasks. The Ottomans have the advantage in Order icons which means they have more move and march cards than the Spanish. Keep in mind that the onus to attack lies with the Ottoman player as they will have to move their units on the board to be able to attack the Spanish defenders. Also keep in mind the Bombard is an Order and the Ottoman has more of these type of card icons than the Spanish player 5 vs. 3. One of the most glaring differences is the high number of Reaction icons that the Spanish player has. These type of cards are used in response to your opponent’s card play and include things like Counterattacks, Arquebusiers, which gives a free attack when Ottoman units come adjacent to any Arquebusier unit on the board or Friendly Fire, which allows free rolls against Ottoman units located in between their firing artillery and the Spanish.
Another key card for the Spanish include Cheveaux de Frise, which allows the Spanish player to place a chevaux-de-frise cube in a Wall area or a Bastion. Each cube allows the Spanish player to ignore 1 hit in combat. These cubes are not destroyed by absorbing the hit. In addition, if a combat is tied in an area with these cubes, the Spanish player wins the battle. This card is a huge advantage for the Spanish and these should be played as soon as possible in order to minimize the damage taken from the Ottoman onslaught. If the Ottomans occupy an area with chevaux-de-frise and no enemies, the cubes are automatically destroyed. Another very important card for the Spanish player is Comisado. This Action Card can be used as a normal attack or, during a Siege Round, to make a special attack called the Camisado. The Camisados were night raids carried out by the Tercios troops in reduced numbers, specifically intended to sabotage and attack the Ottoman camps, trying to eliminate the enemies while they slept and to inflict material damage to the camp. The Spanish player selects a group of Spanish units, which may include the Leader Sarmiento, and these units can attack an area that is a maximum of 2 areas away from the selected group. This is a hit and run type of attack that gives the Spanish the powerful opportunity to sally forth from the walls to enact damage and then retreat back to safety.
The Ottomans have their own tricks with special cards including For the Faith. This card can only be played in combat if there is at least 1 Azab unit involved. When used, all dice rolled by Azab units (not Janissaries or Sipahi) in combat have a +1 bonus to hit, but at the end of the battle, the Ottoman player must eliminate 3 points of strength from the Azab units. This card is a tradeoff but the price paid can be very much worth it if the dice are kind.
Both sides have access to cards that perform special attacks or provide bonuses like Fire Devices which is a Combat Card that allows the player to roll 3d6 against enemy units at the start of Combat, when the card is revealed. Any result of 5 or 6 counts as 1 hit, to be assigned by the opponent. It can only be played in areas that contain, or are adjacent to, Walls or Bastions built by the Spanish player. These type of cards are very important to the game and its combat system as the weaker units are the fewer dice they will roll and the chances of hits are lessened.
The Command Cards are very well done and truly create the setting for the asymmetry of the game. These cards serve as a highly effective, dual-purpose engine of the game’s dynamic card driven design and I think that the designer did a fantastic job in creating a very balanced and playable game that provides an opportunity for “victory” for both players. The Command Cards are highly effective because they completely abstract command and logistics into a tight tactical choice with units only moving or initiating combat when activated by a card.
In Action Point 4, we will take a look at the 2 different types of rounds including a Siege Round and an Assault Round and how they differ.
If you are interested, I was able to shoot the following review/overview/summary video with the designer Francisco Ronco after playing the game earlier this year:
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.
#98: The Balkan Wars from Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 from VUCA Simulations
Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 is a massive card driven game that blends diplomacy, warfare, and statecraft and feels a bit akin to games like Here I Stand and Virgin Queen from GMT Games, which are both grand scale sweeping epics that play multiplayers and take a day to play. Players play as 1 of 6 major powers in the game including Germany/Prussia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The game is quite grand and ambitious as it covers 70 years near the end of the Victorian Era and the Progressive Ear and sees quite a lot of global change and competition between the great powers of the time. The game is a Card Driven Game and uses Action Cards as a type of currency to spend for their Command Points or the printed event to take actions such as recruiting armies and navies, industrialize, moving fleets and armies around the globe, influencing minor powers and establish colonies in Africa, India and the Pacific Ocean. The cards are all tied to the history of the period but the game can be played very much as a sandbox allowing players to explore strategies by trailblazing new horizons or following history.
Before we dive into today’s chosen card The Balkan Wars, I want to first make sure you know about Mandatory Event Cards in the game and how they work as they work slightly differently from normal Action Cards. Mandatory Event Cards are all lime green colored and bear a large block “M” just under the CP Value listed in the upper left hand corner. Mandatory Events, as the name suggests, must be played for their events. However, when playing a Mandatory Event Card, players trigger the event and also receive the CP to spend on various actions. The events on Mandatory Event Cards are always resolved first before the CP are utilized. If a Mandatory Event Card is discarded, the event will immediately trigger. There is no way around these cards and they are included in the game to drive the action historically and interject the various special circumstances that drove the rise and decline of these Victorian Age empires. The player that discarded the card resolves the event as if they were the active player. If two such Mandatory Event Cards are discarded in the same impulse the events are resolved in turn order.
Some of the events that occurred historically prior to 1914 were ultimately precursors to The Great War in many ways. The Balkan Wars were two conflicts fought in 1912 and 1913 that stripped the Ottoman Empire of almost all its remaining European territory and directly set the stage for World War I. The Balkan Wars saw similar levels of carnage as machine guns and artillery equipped with hydraulic recoil mechanisms were used in large numbers. Politically, they highlight the volatile nature of international politics in the Balkan Peninsula and are included as a Mandatory Event to ultimately drive up the World Tension Track on a path toward the outbreak of World War I. When played, the World Tension Track will increase by +1 and if the Ottoman player controls any territory in the Balkans other than Istanbul, or has Diplomatic Influence with countries, they will have a chance to lose their control there as a result of the chaos of the First and Second Balkan Wars. If these checks fail, and they will incur a -1 DRM for each Ottoman Army that is located anywhere in the Balkans, non-player armies will be placed in those locations and will increase the difficulty for the Ottomans to gain a foothold in this area. According to the designer Michael Lorino, mechanically this event causes all kinds of trouble in the Balkans, as intended. Similar to the Mandatory Event Card Empire of the Sun, the original event was a bit more involved and had players fight an actual war. In an effort to keep the game in the playable zone, he decided to abstract these wars through a die roll.
I very much enjoy the concept of a Mandatory Event, although they are never convenient for someone at the table as they typically have negative effects for at least 1 faction. But I very much like the approach taken here with The Balkan Wars with the -1 DRM for control of a territory and its thematic connection with the Ottoman Empire’s presence in the region generating tension and setting off these Balkan Wars.
A Bulgarian postcard depicting the Battle of Lule Burgas.
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan states of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and defeated it, in the process stripping the Ottomans of their European provinces, leaving only Eastern Thrace under Ottoman control. In the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria fought against the other four combatants of the first war. It also faced an attack from Romania from the north. As a result of these wars, the Ottoman Empire lost the bulk of its territory in Europe. Although not involved as a combatant, Austria-Hungary became relatively weaker as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. The Balkan Wars set the stage for the July Crisis of 1914 and was a prelude to the First World War.
We have put out several pieces of content covering Imperial Elegy and find it to be a fantastic game. These include written posts and videos. You can visit those by following the links below:
Unboxing Video:
Video Review:
Summary of Solitaire Bots presented by our friend James:
September has been really, really busy for me. We attended the Gaming the American Revolution Camden 250 Event in Camden, South Carolina and work was pretty busy as well. As such, I just feel like I have been unable to really give this post the time needed to make it as good as it can be. Don’t get me wrong…I am still writing it but I am not spending as much time searching this month. I also was unable to find a sponsor for the post so we are foregoing that this month as well.
This month, I was able to find 15 games to share. I was also able to find 5 games being offered on Crowdfunding through Kickstarter.
1. Battlegroup Clash: Baltics 2nd Printing from Sapper Studio
James Buckley is a name we all know in the wargaming space. He has worked with publishers like PHALANX and Nuts! Publishing and also is now a burgeoning designer as he published his first game in 2025 called Battlegroup Clash: Baltics from his new publishing company called Sapper Studio. The game has already sold out and they are currently offering up a 2nd Printing on pre-order
From the game page, we read the following:
Battlegroup Clash: Baltics is a two-to six-player tactical land warfare game that plays in two to three hours. It is a commercially-adapted version of a game recently developed for the British Army to help train its junior officers.
The game is set in Estonia and covers a hypothetical near-future Russian invasion of the country, and attempts by NATO land forces to repulse it. Each side has a maximum force size equivalent to a reinforced battalion, with individual unit sizes being platoons or sections.
It comes with six scenarios and has three play modes and optional rules, allowing for players to vary the level of realism and complexity of play. The Basic mode of play is equivalent to a light complexity commercial wargame. The Standard and Advanced modes are equivalent to a medium-light complexity game.
While the game mechanics and components will be familiar to anyone that has played a hex and counter wargame, there are several unique features about Battlegroup Clash: Baltics:
Preparation & Planning – In the Standard and Advanced modes of the game players will need to draft Orders for their forces. This happens at the start of the game. These Orders drive the actions individual units take in the game. This is a simplified version of the type of planning that would occur in real life. It presents both a challenge and opportunity to players, and greatly enhances the immersion of the game.
Drones and Electronic Warfare – Events in Ukraine have shown how much the use of drones has changed the modern battlefield. Reflecting this, in the game players use UAS drones for reconnaissance and FPV (‘kamikazi’) drones to attack enemy units. Each side can intercept their opponent’s electronic transmissions to improve targeting, and apply tactical Electronic Warfare effects such as jamming the enemy’s drone assets or crippling their GPS navigation.
Real World Mapping – The four maps in the game are based on satellite imagery from key locations in Estonia. Using computer aided design, that imagery has been turned into a highly realistic map. There are no hexes, just grid lines, the same as a real world map. Players must read the map terrain to determine key locations and terrain features, and assess how they fit into their battleplan and objectives.
If you are interested in Battlegroup Clash: Baltics2nd Printing, you can pre-order a copy for £69.00 ($92.38 in US Dollars) from the Sapper Studio website at the following link: Battlegroup Clash: Baltics (2nd printing) | Sapper Studio
2. VEKTYR: The Geopolitical Struggle for Central Asia, 1991-2020 from GMT Games
I love a good geopolitical wargame as well as a good multi-player wargame. And when these 2 are mixed, it can really make for a very interesting gaming experience with diplomacy, alliances, asymmetry and the like. This past month, GMT offered a game that have both in VEKTYR: The Geopolitical Struggle for Central Asia, 1991-2020 that takes a look at the ongoing struggle between the United States, Russia, and China. for influence and control in Central Asia. The game is designed by a new designer named Kyle Farrell so I am very interested in connecting with him to discuss the design and get more information about how it plays and what his vision and basis are for the game.
From the game page, we read the following:
VEKTYR is a 2-3 player geopolitical wargame that simulates the ongoing struggle for influence in Central Asia between the United States, Russia and China.
The game takes players from 1991 after the newly independent Central Asian nations – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union through 2020 when multiple international crises accelerated the global shift towards a multipolar world.
The extensive action deck covers over 120 distinct historical occurrences that have shaped Central Asia’s relationship with three global powers – the United States, Russia and China – as well as the rest of the world.
Over the five turns of the game, each player will have to bend history to their will in order to establish influence throughout Central Asia as well as periphery territories in the Caucasus, Türkiye, and Afghanistan. Your mission is to win hearts and minds, catch the ears of the region’s presidents, invest in critical industries and showcase your power’s prowess through military assistance.
In VEKTYR, players will accrue victory points by playing “Scoring” cards, playing event cards that award VP’s, or building pipelines for VP payouts. The game consists of 5 turns: 3 turns within the Post Independence epoch from 1991-2016 and 2 turns within the Central Asian “Renaissance” epoch from 2016-2020. Each turn consists of 6 rounds.
At the start of each turn, each player draws up to a hand size of 7 cards and plays one round in succession until every player has played 6 rounds. All of VEKTYR‘s cards have a dial in their upper left corner noting which global power the card’s event pertains to. Some cards are fully-neutral cards meaning any power can play them, others can be played by 2 of the 3 powers, and others still can only be played by a single power. Whenever a rival plays a card with an event pertaining to you, you’ll have the opportunity to resolve the event during your rival’s round. A delightful mechanic that keeps the game dynamic even when it’s not your go!
Every round, players either use their card’s event or action points to lay influence on the board, seize the ear of the region’s presidents, invest in industries, provide military assistance or build pipeline infrastructure. Much of the game centers around your ability to build influence in the Central Asian provinces as well as periphery countries. Players will use events and action points to gain a strategic foothold in these wide stretches of Eurasia. But how effective will your soft power be in fending off your rivals’ similarly enticing offers?
Also, what have you done for me lately? One of the mechanics that keeps the board fresh in VEKTYR is called “atrophy” and mimics the ephemerality of political popularity. Under this mechanic, at the end of every Turn, each player removes some of their influence from the board, opening up new possibilities for their opponents as they are forced to abandon specific countries or provinces.
I am very much interested in this title and would like to learn more about how it works and how it tries to simulate the complex situation and politics involved.
3. Empire of the Sun: China Expansion from GMT Games
Empire of the Sun is Mark Herman’s card driven design that takes a strategic level look at the entirety of World War II in the Pacific from the attack on Pearl Harbor until the surrender of Japan and is the first card driven game (CDG) to move the system closer to a classic hex and counter wargame, while retaining all of the tension and uncertainty people have come to expect from a CDG. Recently, GMT announced an expansion to the game that deals with the China Theater and the action that took place there between the combatants. The game comes with a new replacement map that will replace the China Front Track as well as some new cards. The game was dreamed up by a few Chinese designers, and fans of Empire of the Sun, named Ji So and Liu Zhijun.
From the game page, we read the following:
Empire of the Sun examines the China theater as a frontline ‘piston’ model that reprises its historical role as an Allied resource need based on the level of Japanese offensive efforts to force its surrender. We are now releasing a new expansion for the core game, which you will need to play this expansion that adds all of the ground and air forces to open up a path not really taken to include the eventual Soviet invasion of Manchuria.
About two years ago, two Chinese gamers contacted me that they had developed a China expansion for Empire of the Sun. I was certainly interested and what you hold in your hands is the product of my collaboration with Ji So, Liu Zhijun, and my developer Francisco Colmenares. What has changed is my original piston model China Front track has been replaced with a map and counters. There are a host of rules to handle this unique theater of operations, but what I have found at their core is how well we have gotten the new module to perform to history and the original track.
What you will find is if the Japanese play cards into China offensives, they will likely capture and control the rail lines plus the coastal ports. Achieving more is possible, and everyone is likely to try, but it is hard to get forward momentum as long as the Allies put some equivalent effort into defending Chungking. This is exactly how the original track worked, but what is very interesting is you more clearly see the connection between the China-Burma-India (hereafter CBI) theater and mainland China. In my various opposed playtests, I have found that in half the games there is some action in China and in others not much happens. I have also found that if the Japanese army strategy is followed, the US makes quicker progress across the Pacific. What this will give you is more control over how you decide to prosecute the war from the Japanese perspective. That said, every so often I have had spectacular success with a surprise Chinese offensive. More options, more strategy, and for me, more interesting game play.
Empire of the Sun: China Expansion comes with 33 new cards (18 Allied and 15 Japanese), a 22”x34” paper map (original map art with the China theater shown in detail), one counter sheet featuring new US, Nationalist Chinese, Communist Chinese, Japanese, and Soviet air, ground, and naval units, replacement player aids with the new rules added for China, PLUS an integrated rulebook with all rules integrated into the original core system. Empire of the Sun: China Expansion is now available for the low, low, low, low price of $35.
4. Pax Romana & Genesis Dual Pack Reprint Edition from GMT Games
I very much love these Deluxe Edition Multi-Packs from GMT Games. They are an insane value with multiple games included in the same box, typically with new components, updated rules and sometimes additional scenarios. A newly announced pack is the Pax Romana & Genesis Dual Pack, which contains 2 classic Ancients games in Pax Romana and Genesis designed by Richard Berg.
From the game page, we read the following:
GMT is proud to bring back into print Richard Berg’s Pax system games, Pax Romana and Genesis in a dual pack format. This printing of Pax Romana will be identical to the 2nd edition published in 2015 with all known errata incorporated along with additional editing where necessary to improve clarity. Similarly, this printing of Genesis will be identical to the 1st edition with the exception that Kingdom Displays will be enlarged to 8 ½ “ x 11”. All known errata will be addressed with additional editing where necessary to improve clarity. The games will share a back-printed mounted map and come in a 3” box.
Components
Pax Romana
One 22″ x 34″ back printed full-color mounted map board shared with Genesis
Three full-color die-cut counter sheets (1/2” counters, 280 counters per sheet)
One smaller full-color die-cut counter sheet (5/8” counters)
One smaller full-color die-cut counter sheet (round counters)
55 Event Cards
Four 8 ½ ” x11″ Player Mats
Two 11” x 17” Player Aid Cards (four sets of the two PACs)
Rule Book
Play Book
Two six-sided dice
Genesis
One 22″ x 34″ back printed full-color mounted map board shared with Pax Romana
Three full-color die-cut counter sheets (840 1/2” counters)
55 Event Cards
Two 11” x 17” Player Aid Cards (five sets of the two PACs)
Five 8 ½” x 11” Kingdom Display Cards
Rule Book
Play Book
Two six-sided dice
Pax Romana
How did Rome get to be Rome? Why did the Glory That Was Greece fade? What stopped Carthage from making an empire of the Mediterranean? Could the Seleucids really have conquered the western world?
These are a few of the questions you can explore in Pax Romana, designed for play by all levels of gamers, from the competition-oriented, one sitting players to the Let’s Recreate History on a grand scale afficionados.
Pax Romana covers the Europe from 300 BC through the end of the 1st century BC, when control of the Mediterranean was in a state of flux with four possible empires. And it does so with a scale and system that is filled with decision-making tension but also highly accessible and easy to play. The emphasis is on strategic operations, from raising armies to colonizing outlying areas, to fighting barbarian incursions, to maintaining political stability at home.
Pax uses a unique marker-oriented play sequence that provides surprise and opportunity, plus a deck of unusual cards that provide the historical background of events and calamities within which the players must operate. Each turn represents 25 years, with the movement of forces and the shifting of power occurring at a proportionately very large scale. Combat takes place throughout the game, but they, too, represent ongoing conflict as much as individual battles. But even here, subtleties are built-in: force composition matters – armies overbalanced by cheap light infantry suffer penalties, while cavalry can single-handedly make the difference between winning and losing – and knowing when and where to make a stand and when to withdraw to safer places can literally decide the fate of a power for an entire generation. And at this scale, of course, the best-laid plans frequently go awry.
Most important for gamers, though, is the wide variety of scenarios Pax provides, from fast-playing, one-sitting two-player games to vivid recreations of the entire era with four players. The game works well with 2, 3 or 4 players, and is designed to be playable solitaire for those interested in the historical view it provides. Scenarios range from The Punic Wars, through the Eastern Med conflicts between the Greeks and the Seleucids, all the way up to the entire 10 turn game, covering 300 years of history. In addition, there are two versions of Pax: the Standard Game, designed for fast play, and the Advanced version, which adds in much tangential history and allows for a more introspective examination of the era.
Genesis
Genesis is a campaign-level game covering the turbulent Late Bronze Age in the Middle East, where kingdoms rose and fell while establishing many of the systems and ways of life that underwrite Western Civilization. Much like its ancestor game, Pax Romana, Genesis is a game that provides the players with the historical dramatis personae and allows them to forge their own empires. It also has a great emphasis on the control of the important trade routes and commercial centers and the building of the spectacular monuments these civilizations left for posterity and wonder.
All the “high”-points of this era are included: lots of gods that have major effect on play (Astarte, Baal, Dagon, Marduk, et al), the rise of chariot warfare … peasants, slaves, and a host of historical kings: Thutmose, Akhenaten, Suppiluliuma, Mullatawi, Tushratta, Hammurabi, Agum III, Shalmaneser, Shamsi-Adad , and many more. . . even Sargon the Great (the world’s first great conqueror (2270-2215 BCE) … along with Sea Peoples, independent kingdoms (Canaanites, Arzawans) and pirates, and guys with great beards (see below):
There are several two-player scenarios for short-time play, an introductory scenario to get you into the system (featuring Sargon), and the big, 5-player multi, included all the major players – Egypt, The Hittites, the Mitanni, Assyria and Babylon – more color than a Crayola Factory and more fun chrome than a ‘57 Chevy. The main scenario can also be played with 3 or 4 players.
Of course, there are the cards (the game is not card-driven but card-augmented), such as:
The Begat Effect: Independent Expansion (2): The card player may move a Peasant unit from a friendly City space to any unoccupied independent City space within 4 spaces of where that Peasant starts. This card may be held in Hand until played.
Baal (2): It’s Time to Pay Baal … and all those priests running those temples. For every Monument he has in a Home Kingdom City, the card player must pay 2$. If he cannot pay, the player must remove the Monuments that he cannot pay for.
The Akhenaten Effect: If you are Egypt and your Pharaoh/King is Akhenaten, you do not pay anything; you simply remove all Monuments in your Home Kingdom cities. This card must be played when drawn.
5. Enemy Coast Ahead: The Dambuster Raid Mounted Map from GMT Games
One of my complaints about wargames is that that boards that you play the games on are paper. These are generally flimsy, have severe folds on them that disfigure the beauty of the boards and also are a bitch to get to lay flat without having humps in them that act as steep terrain and make it hard for me to line up my units. Now, once again, I want to say that I generally am ok with paper maps for multi-map hex and counter wargames where having a nice thick mounted map, or in the case of many maps, is infeasible for storage purposes. But, when the game is a different kind of game, such as Waro (Euro focused wargame), I very much like having a solid mounted mapboard. One of the offerings this month is a step in the right direction to fix a great game with a new Mounted Map for Enemy Coast Ahead.
From the game page, we read the following:
Based on positive feedback to our mounted mapboard releases, we are continuing to offer mounted maps for several of our most popular games as P500 items.
We are now offering a 22 x 34″ mounted map for Jerry White’s Enemy Coast Ahead: The Dambusters Raid. This is intended to ship separately along with the game’s 2nd printing. But note that it will work with either 1st or 2nd printing, so this will work just fine for those of you who want to get a mounted map for your original game. Enjoy!
6. In the Desert 1940–1943: WW2 in North Africa from Dissimula Edizioni Currently on Kickstarter
Several years ago, Sergio Schiavi broke onto the scene with his new company called Dissimula Edizioni with their first Kickstarter called Radetsky’s March: The Hundred Hours Campaign and that game was then followed a few years later by From Salerno to Rome: World War II – The Italian Campaign, 1943-1944 and their third game called Give Us Victories: The Chancellorsville Campaign. They also have a line of smaller, simpler games that started with 1943-1945 from a few years ago that dealt with the war for Italy during WWII. That game was fantastic and they have now worked on the 2nd entry in that series called In the Desert 1940–1943: WW2 in North Africa that is currently on Kickstarter.
From the game page, we read the following:
Between 1940 and 1943, North Africa was the theater of a war fought between the Axis forces and the British Commonwealth; numerically limited armies faced each other in a long sequence of offensives, retreats, and counterattacks. The clashes often took place in the desert, where mobility and the ability to maintain supply lines were as decisive as the strength of the weapons.
Behind the front loomed Malta, a strategic British base and a constant threat to the vital supplies heading toward Tripoli…
The game system used in In the Desert 1940–1943: WW2 in North Africa is derived from 1943–1945, but features significant differences. The game lasts eight turns, during which players alternate their operations by spending Supply Points (SP). Each activation requires careful decisions: commit your forces immediately or preserve them for later operations? Supply is essential: without a clear line to their own bases, units risk remaining engaged and vulnerable. Meanwhile, control of Malta constantly threatens Axis supplies. Special events allow players to alter the situation on the battlefield, recover forces, strengthen attacks, or create new strategic opportunities.
As of October 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $5,461 toward its $3,643 funding goal with 156 backers. The campaign will conclude on Wednesday, October 7th at 4:25am EDT.
7. Napoléon 1870: The Collapse of the Second French Empire from Shakos Currently on Kickstarter
I do love a good Napoleonics wargame and The Conquerors Series from Shakos is really very good as we have played a few games over the years. They have a new volume in that series on Kickstarter that is designed by a tandem of great designers in Brian Asklev (Baltic Empires from GMT Games and 1812: Napoleon’s Fateful March from VUCA Simulations) and Fred Serval (A Gest of Robin Hood and Red Flag Over Paris from GMT Games as well as A Very Civil Whist from PHALANX) called Napoléon 1870: The Collapse of the Second French Empire from Shakos. This game is set in a different period but uses the same system to tell the story of the collapse of the Second French Empire during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870’s.
From the game page, we read the following:
In 1870, Napoleon III’s Second Empire was on the brink of collapse. After hastily declaring war on Bismarck’s Prussia, the French armies were overwhelmed and surrounded at Metz.
This is your opportunity to write something different.
Napoléon 1870 is the fourth instalment in the Napoleon Series, a series devoted to the great strategists of history. Following on from Napoléon 1806, Napoléon 1807 and Napoléon 1815, Napoléon 1870 brings its own unique challenges to this well-tried and highly acclaimed campaign system.
In Napoléon 1870, two players, assume the role of Napoleon III or Bismarck, making the key decisions that will shape the fate of Europe. In the role of Napoleon, will you manage to escape the trap set by your opponent and avoid being trapped in Metz, or, like Bismarck, will you succeed in taking the French armies by surprise and outflanking them? A variety of scenarios, lasting from 40 minutes to 2 hours and a half, will allow you to rewrite the battles along the borders right up to the final assault on Metz.
Napoléon 1870 is aimed at both seasoned grognards as well as enthusiastic young conscripts keen to understand how history is made. Thanks to a set of simple rules that remain faithful to historical reality, all the key aspects of the campaigns of the Napoleonic era are recreated so that players can engage with them. As events unfold, there will be scope for both subtle bluffing and the brutal use of overwhelming force.
Napoléon 1870 follows the rules of the Napoleon Series (also referred to as the Conquest Series) created by Denis Sauvage, but two designers wellknown to the general public have teamed up to produce this new installment:
• Fred Serval, a specialist in the Second Empire and author of Red Flag over Paris and A Gest of Robin Hood from GMT Games.
• Brian Asklev, an expert in Napoleonic strategy and operations, author of 1812: Napoleon’s Fateful March from VUCA Simulations.
As of October 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $32,894 toward its $17,079 funding goal with 294 backers. The campaign will conclude on Tuesday, October 13th at 2:00pm EDT.
8. Band of Brothers BLACK BULL: British 11th Armoured Division Bull from Worthington Publishing Currently on Kickstarter
There are some series out there that people really love and enjoy playing. This love leads to the series selling well and then expanding as the market is able to continue supporting the games. Band of Brothers from Worthington Publishing is such a series. A tactical level squad based game set in World War II, the series has expanded into several different theaters and has multiple stand-alone expansions. Recently, I saw news that there would be a new volume coming to Kickstarter called Black Bull, which focuses on the exploits of the British 11th Armoured Division during World War II.
From the game page, we read the following:
The Band of Brothers Series returns to Europe with BLACK BULL: British 11th Armoured Division, a new standalone game focusing on one of the British Army’s best-known armoured formations of World War II.
The British 11th Armoured Division was formed in 1941 and adopted the distinctive Charging Bull as its divisional emblem.
The game includes 14 scenarios following the 11th Armoured Division through its campaign in Northwest Europe.
The scenarios put the British player in command of the infantry, tanks and supporting weapons of the Black Bull against German forces in a variety of tactical situations.
As of October 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $19,020 toward its $500 funding goal with 267 backers. The campaign will conclude on Saturday, October 10th at 4:00pm EDT.
9. Aces of Aces: Handy Rotary & Flying Machines Deluxe Editions from Mr. B Games Currently on Kickstarter
A classic reborn is how I would classify the newest edition of Ace of Aces. With very unique mechanics trying to provide the experience of dueling it out with an enemy biplane over the fields of World War I, Ace of Aces is now making a comeback with the Powerhouse Series rebirth all the way from 1981. The newest edition include a look at 2 games in Aces of Aces: Handy Rotary & Flying Machines Deluxe Editions.
From the game page, we read the following:
We’re back with two more Ace of Aces books! We are giving our deluxe treatment to two more books, Ace of Aces: Flying Machines and Ace of Aces: Handy Rotary. We promised these during our Powerhouse Series Kickstarter campaign, and we’re excited to bring them to you now. Just as with our Ace of Aces: Powerhouse Deluxe Edition, these will both be redone in full color with the same slipcase design as the Powerhouse edition.
The Ace of Aces family of games uses two books to simulate a duel in the skies between two fighters in World War I. Using Alfred Leonardi’s innovative matrix system, players choose maneuvers in their book. Each maneuver leads to a page in the book that matches the first-person perspective of the pilot. Players maneuver to line up their planes so they can unload their guns on their opponent. Take too many shots, and you go down in flames!
Each of the Ace of Aces sets includes two books; these are the dogfighting books, as well as a rulebook and chart book, all in a beautiful slipcase! The slipcase also has an extra drawer to store dice and chips.
We’ve updated all the interior graphics with all new artwork. All in full color! These aren’t the final pages, but they are pretty close
As of October 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $162,075 toward its $50,000 funding goal with 1,335 backers. The campaign will conclude on Thursday, October 8th at 6:00pm EDT.
10. Afrika Korps 41 from Trafalgar Editions Currently on Kickstarter
Who doesn’t love a good North Africa wargame? No one says me and I am excited to share with you this new upcoming game called Afrika Korps 41 from Trafalgar Editions. The game is currently on Kickstarter and really looks to be pretty good.
From the game page, we read the following:
The North African desert, 1941. The armored columns of Rommel’s Afrika Korps and the British 8th Army clash in a brutal war of movement for strategic control of the Mediterranean theater.
Afrika Korps 41 puts you in supreme command of this legendary campaign. Featuring an intuitive, deeply challenging, and highly immersive gameplay system, it delivers the true grit and tactical depth of historical conflict—without the dense complexity of traditional wargames.
There are several games that recreate the North Africa campaign in World War II, but Afrika Korps 41 offers a unique experience thanks to its balance between accessibility and strategic depth.
Simple Rules, complex decisions – Unlike other denser wargames, here the rules are easy to learn, but mastering the game requires planing and efficient resource management
Area-based system – Forget about hexes. Movement and territorial control are resolved intuitively with clearly defined strategic areas.
Innovative combat chart – We’ve designed a combat resolution system that moves away from the traditional, offering dynamic and realistic results without relying on complex tables.
Clean map with integrated aids – Key information is incorporated directly onto the game board, facilitating quick reference and speeding up gameplay.
Three difficulty levels – From an introductory mode ideal for new players to advanced levels that will challenge even the most experienced.
Flexible experience – You can play the full campaign or choose between three historical scenarios of 30-40 minutes, in addition to the option of starting the campaign from different key moments of the conflict.
Solo mode – Perfect for those who want to enjoy the game without needing an opponent.
Larger counters (17 mm) – Greater comfort and visibility on the battlefield.
Afrika Korps 41 is designed to offer an immersive, strategic, and dynamic experience, with innovative mechanics that differentiate it from other games about the same campaign.
And the game comes designed with a fully functioning solitaire game mode for those that either prefer to play solitaire or have difficulty finding opponents.
Afrika Korps 41 features an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) system designed to deliver the full gameplay experience in solo play, allowing you to command either side (the Axis or the Allies). Both the full campaign and individual scenarios are completely playable without a human opponent, ensuring a tactical challenge that is as tense as it is dynamic.
Forget predictable automation. Our AI makes strategic decisions based on the actual, real-time context of the board. By evaluating the map situation and vital objectives, the system dynamically shifts between two core mentalities:
Offensive Posture (Attacker Mode): The AI aggressively seeks to breach your lines, pushes relentlessly toward strategic objectives, and exploits every single tactical blunder you make.
Defensive Posture (Defender Mode): The enemy digs in smartly, focusing on consolidating key positions, containing your advances, and efficiently deploying their reinforcements.
Infinite Replayability: Thanks to this adaptive behavior, no two solo games will ever play the same. The system immerses you in a war of attrition where your ability to counter the AI’s unpredictable maneuvers is your only path to victory.
As of October 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $12,704 toward its $7,932 funding goal with 151 backers. The campaign will conclude on Friday, October 16th at 6:00am EDT.
New Release
1. Colossus Stumbled: The Second Battle at Kharkov, May 12-23rd, 1942 from Three Crown Games
Three Crown Games is a great little company and their games really cover some great historical topics and also look the part as they are well produced, even though they are poly bag and not boxed games and are just plain desirable. This month, I noticed that they were shipping one of their new games called Colossus Stumbled: The Second Battle at Kharkov, May 12-23rd, 1942 and I very much wanted to share it with you.
From the game page, we read the following:
Colossus Stumbled is the title of the game that handles the first 12 intensive days of the second Battle of Kharkov (nowadays Kharkiv), 12 to 23, May 1942. On 12 May 1942, Soviet forces launched an offensive against the German 6th Army from a salient established during the winter counter-offensive. After a promising start, the offensive was stopped on 15 May by massive airstrikes and the Axis started their counter-offensive ‘Operation Fredericus’, in the region around Kharkov. Its objective was to eliminate the Izium bridgehead over Seversky Donets or the “Barvenkovo bulge” which was one of the Soviet offensive’s staging areas.
If you are interested in Colossus Stumbled: The Second Battle at Kharkov, May 12-23rd, 1942, you can order a copy for 49,50 € ($57.30 in US Dollars) from the Three Crown Games website at the following link: https://www.threecrownsgames.com/product-page/colossus-sumbled
2. Medieval Command: Battle of Varna, 1444 Print & Play from Solo Wargame
Martin Melbardis began his design career with Campaign: Fall Blau from Catastrophe Games. This was a very interesting little dice chucking solitaire game on Operation Barbarossa during WWII. Since that time, he has started his own independent wargame company called Solo Wargame and has designed 10 different and very interesting roll and write wargames on a plethora of subjects including World War I (Trench Tactics), World War II (Operation Barbarossa, Lone Wolf: U-Boat Command and War in the Pacific), Napoleonic Wars (Siege Works) and Ancient Rome (Rome Must Fall). His newest game called Medieval Command: Battle of Varna, 1444 starts a new series and is focused on the Crusade Battle of Varna and looks really interesting.
From the game page, we read the following:
On the fog-shrouded morning of 10 November 1444, the fate of southeastern Christendom hangs by a fraying thread as your heavily outnumbered Crusader army stands before the terrifying mass of Sultan Murad II’s Ottoman host near the Black Sea port of Varna. You are outnumbered nearly two to one; however, your heavy cavalry advantage can make the difference. Medieval Command: Battle of Varna 1444 is a solo Print & Play wargame that simulates the epic last ditch crusade attempt to free the Balkans from Ottoman rule. As the solo player, you play the role of Crusader, while the BOT handles your opponent, the Ottomans. You must master a tight dice-drafting system where GREEN dice power Ottoman attacks and Crusader defenses, while WHITE dice fuel your own offensives. Because you cannot win a war of attrition against these odds, your only hope is to tactically bank your dice to unleash devastating Boosted Actions like a thunderous, multi-die cavalry charge to smash the elite Janissary Wall before your lines crumble and the young King Władysław III is slain in the mud.
Here is a link to a playthrough video from the designer:
3. Thirty Years of Misery: The Thirty Years War 1618-1648 from VUCA Simulations
A couple of years ago, I came across a new designer named Brian Asklev and have done interviews with him covering Baltic Empires from GMT Games and 1812 – Napoleon’s Fateful March from VUCA Simulations. Brian is a pretty sharp designer and I very much like his approach to design as well as the choices in designs that he is doing. His new game is called Thirty Years of Misery: The Thirty Years War 1618-1648. The cover art is amazing, the topic looks great and the approach that he is taking seems to be very novel.
From the game page, we read the following:
Between 1618 and 1648, Europe was consumed by one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in its history. What began as a rebellion in Bohemia soon engulfed the Holy Roman Empire and drew nearly every major European power into a struggle over religion, dynastic ambition, and political supremacy. Millions perished as armies marched across Central Europe, cities were besieged, alliances shifted, and entire regions were devastated.
Thirty Years of Misery places you in command of the major powers that shaped this conflict. Lead the Imperial Habsburgs, the Catholic League, Sweden, or France as you fight to reshape Germany through military campaigns, religious influence, political maneuvering, and strategic diplomacy.
Victory requires more than battlefield success. You must secure electorates, protect your heartlands, influence the religious landscape of the Empire, and achieve your faction’s unique historical ambitions before peace is finally negotiated at Westphalia. Rather than recreating individual battles, Thirty Years of Misery captures the entire strategic conflict across three decades of war.
Every campaign combines:
Military operations
Religious conflict
Political objectives
Coalition warfare
Historical events
Dynamic diplomacy
Each round features a randomized turn order, ensuring that no two campaigns unfold the same way. Players must continually adapt to changing circumstances, unexpected interventions, and opportunities created by both allies and enemies.
4. The Far Seas: German Cruiser Operations at the Onset of WWI from VUCA Simulations
Another new order game from VUCA Simulations this month is The Far Seas: German Cruiser Operations at the Onset of WWI and I am always in for a naval focused wargame. I have not played that many and frankly not that many of the ones that I have played are that good but this one does look intriguing. I have also always been interested in the German efforts to solidify their place around the globe navally and with the founding of colonies in Africa and the South Pacific. So this one looks to fill that niche and looks to be really very interesting.
From the game page, we read the following:
At the outbreak of World War I, eight German cruisers were scattered across the globe—isolated, outnumbered, and cut off from home. What followed was a daring campaign of commerce raiding, evasion, and naval warfare that forced the British Empire to divert vast resources in pursuit.
The Far Seas puts you in command of this asymmetric naval struggle.
Take control of the German raiders or the Allied fleets in a tense operational-level game of hidden movement, search, and decisive engagements.
German player: Plan secretly, strike where the enemy is weak, raid merchant shipping, disrupt supply lines, and attempt the long journey home.
Allied player: Coordinate a superior fleet, protect trade routes, and hunt down elusive cruisers across the world’s oceans.
Every decision matters—overextend, and you risk destruction; hesitate, and the enemy slips away.
The system is built for fast turns, high tension, and meaningful choices:
Hidden movement and intelligence gaps create constant uncertainty
Elegant search and encounter mechanics lead to dynamic engagements
Combat resolves quickly but carries lasting consequences
Modular rules allow you to scale complexity to your preference
The core experience is accessible, yet layered with strategic depth for experienced players.
Beyond the core system, the game integrates historical realities that shaped naval warfare in 1914:
Coaling constraints force long-term planning
Convoy systems create high-risk, high-reward targets
Colonial operations add strategic pressure points
Special events introduce uncertainty and narrative moments
These elements enhance realism while preserving smooth gameplay.
If you are interested in The Far Seas: German Cruiser Operations at the Onset of WWI, you can order a copy for $99.99 from the VUCA Simulations website at the following link: https://vucasimulations.com/products/the-far-seas
5. In Fours to Heaven: The Invasion of Poland 1939 from VUCA Simulations
Last year, while trolling the interwebs, I came upon the In Development section of the VUCA Simulations website and saw a very interesting looking operational level wargame on the German invasion of Poland in 1939 to kickoff World War II called In Fours to Heaven. The subject caught my eye, the title caught my eye and the cover caught my eye and I am very much interested in this one. I know that this campaign is seen as very one sided and that the outcome was predetermined as there was really no way for the Polish army to stand against the might of the German war machine but this one takes a look at the situation and makes it a gameable effort.
From the game page, we read the following:
In Fours to Heaven places you at the operational command level of the German invasion of Poland in 1939—a campaign often considered decided, yet far more complex, chaotic, and uncertain than history suggests.
Will you execute a lightning campaign—or struggle against friction, supply, and coordination breakdowns? Will you delay the inevitable—or collapse under pressure?
This is not a scripted retelling. It is a dynamic operational simulation of the Polish Campaign—driven by uncertainty, command limitations, and morale.
The German player must achieve rapid operational success before time, logistics, and resistance slow the advance.
The Polish player fights a desperate but intelligent campaign of delay, coordination, and survival—where morale becomes a decisive factor.
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.
Wie setzt man Spiele im Unterricht ein, ohne das Lernziel aus dem Blick zu verlieren? Und wie gehen wir damit um, wenn Schülerinnen und Schüler die Regeln selbst verändern oder […]
What a great time we have had at this convention! 2 fulls day of gaming in a fantastic historical setting here in Camden, South Carolina. But it hasn’t just been gaming though. Today started with a 3+ hour tour of the Camden battlefield and a demonstration at the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill as well.
Rick Wise who is the Executive Director of the South Carolina Battlefield Preservation Trust gave us a 90 minute tour and discussion on the battle fought at Camden on August 16, 1780. The Patriots led by Horatio Gates and Baron DeKalb fielded about 4,000 muskets versus around 2,200 British soldiers led by Lord Charles Cornwallis and Lord Rowdon. The battle resulted in a major British victory with Cornwallis’ force suffering just over 300 casualties while Gates’ suffered almost 2,000.
Rick had a British Brown Bess musket and a French Charleville musket used by the Patriots that we were able to see fitted with bayonets and wielded by 2 lucky volunteers. These would have been truly terrifying to stand against and when wielded by trained soldiers were deadly weapons.
He also shared with us that archaeologists discovered the skeletal remains of 14 soldiers at the battlefield alongside period artifacts like musket balls and buttons.
Forensic and artifact analysis identified 12 Continental soldiers from Maryland and Delaware, one North Carolina Loyalist militia member (who was also Native American), and one British soldier from the 71st Regiment of Foot (Fraser’s Highlanders). They also were able to reveal that some of the Continental soldiers were teenagers, including two young men aged 16 to 19. It was truly sobering to see their unmarked grave and to find out that several were so young. Honor and bravery as well as the desire for freedom knows no age and these soldiers truly gave their lives for a cause they believed in.
There also was a nice monument to the sacrifice of de Kalb who commanded the American right wing during the engagement leading the premier units of the Delawareans and Marylanders. When the left and center of the American line disintegrated, de Kalb’s force had to beat a retreat before becoming completely surrounded. During this juncture of the fighting, the Baron’s horse was shot out from under him and he was thrown to the ground. Before he could gain his feet, he was hit with three musket balls and bayoneted multiple times by approaching British soldiers. The wounds would prove to be mortal.
Captured shortly thereafter by the British, the wounded general was picked up by General Lord Charles Cornwallis on his way to the rear. The British general, upon seeing de Kalb said the following: “I am sorry, sir, to see you, not sorry that you are vanquished, but sorry to see you so badly wounded.” Showing respect to the Baron though, Cornwallis reportedly, oversaw the dressing of the German’s wounds by his own surgeons. de Kalb would die 3 days later of his wounds.
We then made our way to the site of the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill and were instructed by a US Army artillery officer on the use of Continental cannon. I was lucky to be chosen to act as the rammer or spongeman and very much enjoyed the activity where we trained to load and fire the cannon in under 15 seconds.
Here is a video of the firing of a musket but you will have to wait for the cannon video to come out on the YouTube Channel.
Such a great experience and I was very glad we took the time to participate in the tour. We then returned to the gaming area and setup BoAR Newtown from GMT Games.
I have wanted to play this for a while now as it is a unique and specialized entry to the BoAR Series. Newtown feels quite different from standard BoAR titles mainly because it replaces traditional line-infantry tactics with combat rules for the Indians that are very different.
The Movement and Activation System simulates the decentralized, individual nature of Indian warfare, where small war parties act on their own initiative rather than rigid command structures which is represented with a chit pull mechanic. In the chit pull cup are each of the Indian formations along with a single combat chit. When formations are pulled they can move and if the combat chit is pulled only those formations that have already moved and are adjacent to Patriot units may then attack. Formations pulled after this bit can move but cannot fight. This was very chaotic and created some task challenges for Alexander.
The Indians are lined up behind fortifications at the start of the game and will await the approaching Patriot troops from the protection of these improvements.
The game also includes Opportunity cards that adds a layer of hand management and tactical unpredictabilityas the cards act as one-off events or provide bonuses. The game also includes custom rules for Indian honor, ferocity, evasion and their specific resolve when facing artillery fire and have a chance to break. Just a very interesting game and I am glad that we played it.
To end the evening we got the chance to sit down with designer Bruno Sinigaglio and play his new game called Small BoAR The Battle of Cowpens.
The aim of the Small BoAR design concept is to include small and critical battles that otherwise do not fit the scale of the Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) system designed by Mark Miklos. This new system was designed by Bruno Sinigaglio working closely with Mark Miklos to preserve the continuity and popularity of the original system. It feels very familiar to the original but takes the scale in a new direction. From 25 yard hexes vs 200 yards in BoAR, the scale change gives players the chance to try new tactics with rifle and musket fire as these are now up to 8 hexes range for rifles and 3 hexes for muskets while artillery is now up to 24 hexes.
The game also highlights the importance of cavalry and their tactics as their proper use on the battlefield can lead to devastating results.
We had a great time with this one and while we only played 5 full turns there is more to explore and we can’t wait to get our hands on a copy. We have been told it should be releasing in mid to late October.
That was it for today and we are now finished with the gaming portion of the trip. Tomorrow we are going to leave early and travel to 3 battlefields in the area on our way to Columbia and the airport in Buford’s Massacre in the Waxhaws, King’s Mountain and Cowpens.
Continuing along in this series devoted to the best looking boards found in the wargaming world where I will highlight the art and layout of a different board in a wargame that we have played to show you the various talents of the artists and graphic designers involved. In my humble opinion, a well designed and attractive board can make all the difference in the world to me enjoying a wargame. Don’t get me wrong, the game has to be good, but if it’s also good looking it always is a better experience. A board can draw me in. Can make me feel that I’m there. Can set the stage for the thematic immersion that we all crave. And I have found many of these type of boards and I want to make sure that I share them with you.
In this entry in the series, we will be taking a look at the fantastic looking board for Great Campaigns of the American Civil War: Thunder On the Mississippi: Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign, April-July, 1863 from Multi-Man Publishing. The board is illustrated by the very talented Charlie Kibler whose work on the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War Series dates back to its creation in 1992. He has done a ton of great looking boards including The Battle for Normandy (2009) from GMT Games, The Day Was Ours: First Bull Run (2021) from Revolution Games, Border Reivers (2023) from GMT Games recently as well as a slew of Advanced Squad Leader boards stretching back through the years and a lot of series games for GMT Games such as Great Battles of the American Civil War and Great Battles of the American Revolution. We have already highlighted a few of his boards in the past like Storm Over Jerusalem from MMP and Battles of the American Revolution Volume II: Brandywine from GMT Games. He is very effective at creating great looking terrain and weaving in very nice details to highlight the main functions of the board and I very much like the simplicity and accurateness of his boards.
The board consists of 2 separate 22″x 32″ full-color map sheets that when combined create a large playing surface. The borders of the board include off-board information that is related to the geography and locations in and around Vicksburg. When I first saw this, I wasn’t really quite sure how to take it but after playing and also thinking about this decision, I really like how it was used to frame up or provide a significant visual contrast to the main game board. The brown coloring really contrasts well with the colorful terrain features and create a clear distinction for the players. I initially thought this was a poor decision and felt that it was a missed opportunity but it works really well.
Here is a closeup of this part of the board so you can get a good feel for what I am talking about.
I always like to look at the game title box/area of the board and find these to be really great insights into the mindset and approach of the artist. On the board for Thunder on the Mississippi, we see Charlie used a washed out period look map for the background of this area. The really interesting part is how it transitions from the non-colored portion of the board title box to the game board itself. There is no connection between the 2 and the elements found on the board are not carried over or connected to the period map. I would maybe have liked to see there be a connection for an immersive approach but I understand that this was not the purpose of the use of the period map.
In Thunder on the Mississippi, there are 2 new terrain features unique to the Vicksburg region introduced including loess hills and coastal bluffs. Loess has not been featured before in GCACW Series games. Each loess hex is depicted with many small tan dots superimposed on an olive base color. This stippling gives it a sandy feel and I think really works well as loess is a fine-grained, powdery soil, a wide belt of which runs on the east side of the Mississippi on a southwest – northeast axis. Because loess is highly susceptible to erosion, it is marked by sharp, irregular ravines, many of which were so overgrown with vegetation as to be nearly impassable to military units.
In the game, loess hexes are identical to woods hexes in terms of Movement Point costs and MP penalties to enter a friendly-occupied hex. Also, loess hexsides untraversed by roads or railroads exert a restricted ZOC the same as woods hexsides similarly untraversed. I think that the type of terrain, and what it does to the units that enter, really mimics the soft soil type as it is always hard to run in sand. I very much like the color used as well and it serves to set this specific terrain type apart from the rest of the board. Here is a look at the western portion of the West Map that is up against the Mississippi River.
The other new terrain feature is that of coastal bluffs, which has also not been featured before in the series. Each coastal bluff hexside has a downhill side in which the light brown bluff line-pattern is uneven and an uphill side in which the bluff line-pattern is smooth. I know that it might be a bit hard to see in the below picture but the downhill side is found on the left side while the uphill side is on the right. Think of it this way…the uphill is simply a straight line border while the downhill side reflects the ravines from erosion and is made up of multi-length lines pointing out. I very much like this new terrain and also think that Charlie did a great job with the distinction even though it is a bit hard to distinguish from afar.
And that brings me to the portion of the board that I think is my favorite. Not because it is some revolutionary technique but because of the power and permanence that is offers the board, acting as an anchor and a framing of the action to be played out on it, and that is the Mississippi River itself. There is no real use of stylized marks or special features shown on the board but it is just a thick and dark blue line that meanders through the countryside. But the dark blue really gives a sense of size and scope and I very much feel that it is important to the board and what is to transpire on it.
I also very much like how Charlie decided to keep in the exact layout of the river and shows its many twists and turns and oxbows that are found along its length.
The board for Thunder on the Mississippi is really a visual masterpiece. It provides great transition from terrain type to terrain type, frames up the board itself very well and uses very smart and poignant color choices, including the loess terrain color and the dark blue of the Old Man, all to create a fantastic canvas upon which to play out this titanic struggle and key turning point of the American Civil War.
If you are interested, here is a link to our video review:
The next board that we will take a look at in the series is The Marianas Campaign: Volume One: Saipan – The Bloody Rock from Compass Games.
Here are links to the previous entries in the series:
I love a different style and focus of wargame. A game that takes a look at an important but somewhat obscure or rarely addressed historical topic, such as espionage or intelligence, and creates a gaming experience tailored around the events to highlight and evoke the difficulties and tension that would have been present. In January 2026, GMT Games announced such a game in Checkpoint Charlie, which is a solo or cooperative game focused on SIS espionage missions in Berlin in the 1960’s designed by Russell Brown. We have posted an interview with Russel and it was very well received and he has now agreed to create a series of History Behind the Cards to highlight the events of the 1960’s Cold War struggle in West Germany but also to share aspects about the game play and how it models the history.
*Note: The cards highlighted in this series and their event text, as well as any pictures used showing any of the various components, are still in the design and development process and as such event effects and text might still change prior to final development and publication.Also the art and layout of the cards are only for playtest purposes at this point and the game will enter the art department as it nears publication.
History Behind the Cards – Checkpoint Charlie from GMT Games – Card #7: Ich Bin Ein Berliner
In the summer of 1963, the Berlin Wall had been in place for almost two years, the reality of a city split between east and west, between Soviet and Western influence, was impossible to deny. Politicians, military leaders, and the people living day-to-day in Berlin continued to argue about the lack of forceful response from the west, particularly the Americans, when the wall went up. Other than a modest buildup of US forces within and around the city, there had been precious little action to re-assure the people of Berlin that the west hadn’t abandoned them.
In June of that year, President Kennedy hoped to change that perception by personally visiting this western city in the center of Soviet-controlled East Germany. He received the reception and the reaction he was hoping for, driving through the city to crowds of cheering West Berliners, and giving his famous speech on the steps of the Rathhaus Shöneberg to a gathered crowd of over one hundred thousand. In a calculated risk, he referred to the city as West Berlin, officially acknowledging the split created by the wall. He introduced his “Fellow Americans” and at the mention of General Clay (Card #6), the crowd interrupted the speech for some heartfelt cheering for the man that saved their city during the Berlin Airlift. Kennedy’s famous line of solidarity, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” — I am a Berliner — came at the end of the speech and may have been a bit off-script.
So how would Kennedy’s speech affect a mission in Checkpoint Charlie? I’m going to answer that with a story.
I spend a lot of time at a wonderful coffee shop near my home, so much time that my iPhone has labeled the location as my “work.” The baristas there know me, and one day one of them asked me what I was working on. “Right now,” I said, I’m working on a board game about spies in Berlin in the 60’s.”
He laughed. “Have you met John?” He pointed to an older customer at one of the tables. “He was a spy in Berlin in the 60’s.” It was true.
Since then, I’ve had many conversations with John about his time in Berlin. He was Army Intelligence, keeping track of what was going on in the city. He was there when the wall went up. He interviewed the refugees that, for a time, still managed to find a way into West Berlin. And he was there during Kennedy’s speech.
I asked him about the speech and said that in the game it resulted in crowds (a Demonstrations marker) near Tempelhof. He shook his head. “Everywhere. Crowds everywhere. All over the city.”
I’m sorry to report that I’ve restrained the effects of this card and the speech for gameplay reasons, but I haven’t ignored John in every case. The Daily Military Train event (Card #9) exists solely because of his stories, and after removing the Refugees event (Card #13) from the game because I assumed the flow of refugees disappeared after the wall went up, I put it back in because John assured me that they were still coming – he had met and interviewed hundreds of them.
In the next article in this series, we will take a look at the ongoing propaganda efforts from both sides of the Berlin Wall with Loudspeaker Wars.
In my opinion, this game looks extremely interesting and I am very much excited to learn more about it. I am appreciative to Russell and his efforts to bring us these cards and to write these entries to share with our readers. I am also very glad that this topic is being covered in a game and look forward to playing this one day soon.
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.
#93: German Home Card Otto von Bismarck from Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 from VUCA Simulations
Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 is a massive card driven game that blends diplomacy, warfare, and statecraft and feels a bit akin to games like Here I Stand and Virgin Queen from GMT Games, which are both grand scale sweeping epics that play multiplayers and take a day to play. Players play as 1 of 6 major powers in the game including Germany/Prussia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The game is quite grand and ambitious as it covers 70 years near the end of the Victorian Era and the Progressive Ear and sees quite a lot of global change and competition between the great powers of the time. The game is a Card Driven Game and uses Action Cards as a type of currency to spend for their Command Points or the printed event to take actions such as recruiting armies and navies, industrialize, moving fleets and armies around the globe, influencing minor powers and establish colonies in Africa, India and the Pacific Ocean. The cards are all tied to the history of the period but the game can be played very much as a sandbox allowing players to explore strategies by trailblazing new horizons or following history.
In Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920, the Otto von Bismarck Card is a powerful and extremely important German Home Card. Rather than being shuffled into the common Action Card Deck, it belongs exclusively to the Prussian/German player’s unique toolkit to represent the historical trajectory of German state-building. The card is mechanically tied to the first few turns of the grand 7-decade timeline and acts as a get started quickly card for the German player as they begin the long and somewhat difficult task of attempting to unify the Germanic peoples under one banner. The German player can choose to execute it on Turn 1 to abstractly simulate Bismarck’s rapid real-world rise to power and kickstart early diplomatic maneuvers or wars. Playing as Germany, the player should be focused on attempting the Unification of Germany and will most likely choose the Unification National Goal card as a standard at the beginning of games. The Bismarck Home Card is the primary historical vehicle used to achieve this unification and simulates driving the annexations or alliances needed to claim crucial minor regions including Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark and Alsace Lorraine. And like standard Action Cards in Imperial Elegy, the card presents a choice. The German player can either choose between using its high Command Point (CP) Value of 3 for a massive push focusing on industrial development or military actions, or using the card for its printed Event text. One of the really nice parts of the card is the way that it effects Stability in the game. Stability is a core national resource and rating that measures a major power’s internal political health, structural integrity and capacity to wage war or absorb setbacks such as economic downtown and social upheaval. Typically, when you declare war, your Stability will degrade but not in the case of a War of Unification. And with Bismarck, Germany will gain 1 Stability when they declare a War of Unification. This is such a powerful effect for the early game as it will allow the German state to build up their capacity and increase Stability to be able to perform later in the game.
1871 portrait of Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of the German Empire. He is depicted wearing his signature Prussian military uniform, including the distinct Pickelhaube (spiked helmet).
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman who masterminded the unification of Germany in 1871 and served as its first chancellor until 1890, in which capacity he dominated European affairs for two decades. He had previously been Minister President of Prussia from 1862–1890 and Chancellor of the North German Confederation from 1867–1871. He provoked three short, decisive wars, against Denmark, Austria, and France.
Following the victory against Austria, he abolished the supranational German Confederation and instead formed the North German Confederation as the first German national state, aligning the smaller North German states behind Prussia, and excluding Austria. Receiving the support of the independent South German states in the Confederation’s defeat of France, he formed the German Empire – which also excluded Austria – and united Germany.
With Prussian dominance accomplished by 1871, Bismarck skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany’s position in a peaceful Europe. To historian Eric Hobsbawm, Bismarck “remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for almost twenty years after 1871, and devoted himself exclusively, and successfully, to maintaining peace between the powers”. However, his annexation of Alsace-Lorraine (Elsaß-Lothringen) gave new fuel to French nationalism and Germanophobia. Bismarck’s diplomacy of Realpolitik and powerful rule at home gained him the nickname the “Iron Chancellor”. German unification and its rapid economic growth was the foundation to his foreign policy. He disliked colonialism but reluctantly built an overseas empire when it was demanded by both elite and mass opinion. Juggling a very complex interlocking series of conferences, negotiations and alliances, he used his diplomatic skills to maintain Germany’s position.
A master of complex politics at home, Bismarck created the first welfare state in the modern world, with the goal of gaining working-class support that might otherwise go to his Socialist opponents. In the 1870s, he allied himself with the low-tariff, anti-Catholic Liberals and fought the Catholic Church in what was called the Kulturkampf (“culture struggle”). He lost that battle as the Catholics responded by forming the powerful German Centre Party and using universal male suffrage to gain a bloc of seats. Bismarck then reversed himself, ended the Kulturkampf, broke with the Liberals, imposed protective tariffs, and formed a political alliance with the Centre Party to fight the Socialists. A devout Lutheran, he was loyal to his king, Wilhelm I, who argued with Bismarck but in the end supported him against the advice of his wife Queen Augusta and his heir Crown Prince Frederick William. While Germany’s parliament was elected by universal male suffrage, it did not have much control of government policy. Bismarck distrusted democracy and ruled through a strong, well-trained bureaucracy with power in the hands of a traditional Junker elite that consisted of the landed nobility in eastern Prussia. He largely controlled domestic and foreign affairs, until he was removed by the young new headstrong Kaiser Wilhelm II. He retired to write his memoirs.
This historic image shows Chancellor Prince Otto von Bismarck (center) with diplomatic envoys and plenipotentiaries of the Federal Council (Bundesrat) inside the Berliner Reichstag in 1889.
We have put out several pieces of content covering Imperial Elegy and find it to be a fantastic game. These include written posts and videos. You can visit those by following the links below:
Unboxing Video:
Video Review:
Summary of Solitaire Bots presented by our friend James:
The year is quickly fading as we are nearing the start of the 4th quarter of 2026. Man the year has just gone by so quickly and I still have so many great games awaiting us to give them the attention they deserve. But there are always new games and they are also equally deserving. This month, I was able to find 19 games to share (including 6 games from our sponsor). I was also able to find 3 games being offered on Crowdfunding through Kickstarter and Gamefound.
Again this month, we have a sponsor for the Wargame Watch post in Neva Game Press. This is Neva’s 3rd time sponsoring this post and they are very busy as they have a ton of new games upcoming. Neva Game Press 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!
Big Experiences, Small Footprint: New from Neva Game Press
At Neva Game Press, we believe great games don’t require massive boxes. Our ‘Hardcover Book’ box policy delivers premium components and deep, innovative mechanics in a shelf-friendly format—without compromising playability. We recently rebranded from Neva Wargames to Neva Game Press to reflect our expansion into thematic titles, though our commitment to wargaming remains stronger than ever.
End-of-Year Releases
We are closing 2026 on a high note with two major releases. After the rapid sell-out of Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth—the first volume of our Blind Valor Series—we are thrilled to bring it back as a Revised Edition, and we are grateful for the community’s support. We are also releasing an Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth Update Kit for owners of the original 1st Edition. Finally, we are launching our new tactical wargame, Peking: 55 Days of Fury—the first volume in our Breach Point Series.
Peking immerses 1–2 players in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion for a tense, 90-minute experience. Whether defending the International Legations or leading the attack, you’ll need to master our unique fog-of-war mechanic and hybrid system (featuring event cards and operation points split into two phases) to secure victory.
Our commitment to the community continues with an ambitious slate for 2027, featuring: Valls: Battle of the Goi Bridge, Spartacus: Rome under Threat, 1806: The Elbe Campaign and Reformation: Fire and Faith.
They recently announced their next Kickstarter project that would take their system to the Anglo-Boer War called The Great Anglo-Boer War: The Battle for South Africa 1899-1902. The game is currently on Kickstarter and appears to be a very important addition to the many games on the period.
From the game page, we read the following:
The Great Anglo-Boer War is a grand-strategic level game of the war between the British Empire and the Boer Republics in South Africa from 1899 to 1902. The Boers were armed like no other adversary the Empire had ever faced. By October 1899, war had become inevitable—and both sides were equipped for the first ‘modern’ conflict. Both sides had rifled breech-loading artillery, machine guns, bolt-action magazine rifles, trenches, barbed wire, and more.
The war started as a conventional contest but morphed into the first modern guerrilla war of the 20th century. In the end, the Empire overwhelmed the Boers, but by 1910 all of South Africa (including the contested republics of 1899) was granted self-government as a Crown Dominion, with Louis Botha as the Prime Minister. The Boers can be said to have lost the war but won the peace. A fascinating bit of history but an even more interesting study in military history.
The game places you in the position of the military commanders of both armies. Political events are largely beyond your control, but may influence what you are allowed to do. There are three scenarios – the Conventional War, the Guerrilla War, and the Grand Campaign Game. The full campaign is THE ULTIMATE BOER WAR EXPERIENCE – from the first desperate siege defenses of 1899 to the treaty of Vereeniging (or maybe not?) – and everything tactical and otherwise in between. Battles, blockhouses, farm-burnings, evasions, escapes, raids, concentration camps, sieges, drives, armoured trains, 1-pdr automatic “pom-poms”, surrenders, entrenchments, typhoid, barbed-wire, native spies, night marches, supply wagons and more. If it was part of the real Boer war – it is in the game. If you know about the war – this is the one you’ve been hoping someone would make, and if you are learning about it – this IS THE GAME for that. With a 44×34 map at 9 miles/hex scale, monthly game turns and an accurate order of battle, this is a game that truly does justice to the topic.
As of September 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has raised $7,389 toward its $12,900 funding goal with 86 backers. The campaign will conclude on Tuesday, October 20th at 1:38pm EDT.
2. Combat! Vietnam from Compass Games
This month we had another pretty big downloading of new pre-order games from Compass Games that I have affectionately referred to in the past as “Pre-Order Palooza”. This one was not their normal 6-10 new titles but there were 4 new games offered and they all looked very good. The first game that I am highlighting here is the next volume in the highly thought of Combat! Series of solitaire wargames. These games represent man to man combat where typically each of the counters on the board represent a single soldier. They have focused exclusively on World War II previously but now they have announced this new game set during the Vietnam War called Combat! Vietnam. I have yet to play any of the previous volumes in the series, even though I own 4 of them, but they are high on my want to play list and I am very much interested in this system because I love Tactical level games, very much enjoy man to man combat in games and also enjoy games that are set in during the Vietnam War.
From the game page, we read the following:
Combat! Vietnam is a stand-alone solitaire game of man-to-man combat in the Vietnam War, covering the years from 1965 to 1972. This game depicts the countless small actions that were fought during those years, with the player commanding a squad of American, Communist, or South Vietnamese soldiers. In the 11 scenarios, the fighting rages across the widely varied terrain of Vietnam, from dense jungles to city streets.
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! Vietnam.
Combat! Vietnam also includes Armor rules, allowing the player to relive iconic scenes such as T-54 tanks charging south during the Easter Offensive or Marine Patton tanks battling through Hué.
3. Viking Dawn: A Game of Viking Exploration & Expansion 800-1040 A.D. from Compass Games
The 2nd game from Compass Games today is a good one. And I know that because I have played it. But, our friend Gregory M. Smith is a solitaire game designing genius and has done many of these solo, narrative driven style wargames that we have all enjoyed for hours on end while we have been unable to find an opponent or just because we want to play a game on our timeline. We have interviewed him many times for his games such as Zeppelin Raider, Interceptor Ace, The Hunted, Western Front Ace, Amerika Bomber, Defending America, American Tank Ace, British Tank Ace, Rebel Tide, Sinking Yamato and most recently for a magazine wargame called B-52D Linebacker II. But Greg is a versatile designer and also has done many great 2-player games as well. He always has something cooking in his game design kitchen and recently we spoke with him about his new design with Kevin McPartland called Viking Dawn: A Game of Viking Exploration & Expansion 800-1040 A.D. from Compass Games. I was able to play this 1-4 player game while at the World Boardgaming Championships last month and you can read about my experience at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2026/07/27/world-boardgaming-championships-2026-daily-debrief-series-day-3/
From the game page, we read the following:
Viking Dawn is a low-complexity strategic game, with rules for two, three, or four players, each controlling a faction of Vikings (Norse, Swede, Dane, and optionally Geat). Inspired by SPI’s game Conquistador! from the 1970’s, Viking Dawn has exploration, trade (both internal and external), and minor leaders. The game also contains rules for solitaire play with the Danes or Norse.
Faction descriptions:
Norse – closest to the New World, they have the additional advantage of two Explorers, Erik the Red and Leif Eriksson.
Danes – closest to the lucrative raiding and settlement targets of England, they also have the advantage of having several early leaders.
Swedes – although further from England, they are closest to several Russian settlement areas, and river portage routes to the east and Constantinople.
Geats – ostensibly the weakest faction, as they must pay tribute to the Swedes for protection, they have the best trading advantage in the game.
Players compete to raid lucrative settlements and explore the world with longships and warbands. Each faction has named historical leaders, who have an impact on combat and exploration. Players may trade with each other or nonplayer-controlled areas and establish settlements. Includes rules for settlements gaining independence, leader burials, and establishment of the Varangian Guard.
If you are interested in Viking Dawn: A Game of Viking Exploration & Expansion 800-1040 A.D., you can pre-order a copy for $54.00 from the Compass Games website at the following link: https://www.compassgames.com/product/viking-dawn-pay-later/
4. Tunnel Rats: The Vietnam War Underground from Compass Games
Game 3 in this month’s mini-Pre-Order Palooza from Compass Games is another very interesting looking game set during the Vietnam War called Tunnel Rats: The Vietnam War Underground. This game is a solitaire game, which I think makes a lot of sense historically and thematically and actually gets me very excited for the possibilities, and I very much look forward to seeing how this one works. I have great hope for this one. The designer is Lisa Smedman who has done several recent popular solo games including Trench Raid.
From the game page, we read the following:
Tunnel Rats is a single-player game set during the Vietnam War. You will control two American “tunnel rats” who have been tasked with exploring an underground tunnel complex created by the Viet Cong. This complex is made up of tiles representing tunnels and underground rooms in which the enemy may be lurking. In this claustrophobic environment, the tunnel rats need to be as quiet as possible to avoid alerting the enemy. Tense firefights and hand-to-hand combat feature a unique initiative system, and encounters are fast and furious.
With a procedurally generated map, nine tunnel rat characters to choose from, and a variety of weapon and equipment load-outs, each “run” will provide a new and dynamic challenge. Your team’s objective will vary, shifting the focus of play depending upon which lieutenant is in command of the team. Tunnel Rats also includes rules for campaign play, allowing surviving tunnel rats to gradually hone their skills over time – if they survive.
Be on your guard, as the tunnel rats never know what they will encounter down in “the black”. It might be a hidden punji stake pit, a Viet Cong command center filled with valuable documents, a venomous snake slithering along a tunnel, or a water trap they must swim through without drowning!
5. Against the Reich Deluxe Edition from Compass Games
Game 4 from the Compass Games mini Pre-Order Palooza is a classic hex and counter operational level wargame set in World War II called Against the Reich Deluxe Edition designed originally by Joseph Balkoski.
From the game page, we read the following:
In June of 1944, the world held its breath as land and naval forces of six Allied nations launched the largest amphibious assault ever attempted. The long-awaited second front, the Western Front, was finally open. The Allies had to force the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany by crossing the great Rhine River into the Reich itself. Adolf Hitler was confident that the battered but undefeated Wehrmacht could hold two enormous fortified zones (the Atlantic and Westwalls) and repulse any attempt to cross into the German homeland. Against the Reich is the first game in years to cover the entire Western Front campaign. The players are in the positions of Eisenhower and Hitler, making the grand decisions that control the course of the campaign.
A Quick-Playing Simulation: Designer Joseph M. Balkoski, whose specialty is the Western Front, has provided an accurate, realistic simulation that plays like a game. With short and long campaign games, you can choose the length of the simulation.
Headquarters and Supplies are Realistically Linked: Players must decide where to concentrate their resources. Limited supplies make the placement of headquarters and depots a critical factor in the campaign.
Choice of Invasion Sites: The Allied player must decide where to invade – do you strike a lightly defended area and accept a long, grinding ground campaign, or strike close to the Rhine and risk quick destruction?
Historical Overview: Russel F. Weigley, author of Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, the definitive history of the Western Front, has analyzed the strategic options facing Eisenhower and Hitler – and the players.
Loaded with other Features: A short “Battle of the Bulge” scenario, Second Invasion, Flooding Holland, Port Repair, The Roer Dams, Rail Movement, Mediterranean Front Reinforcements, Amphibious and Airborne Assaults, and much more.
6. Enlightenment Empires: Power and Politics in Eastern Europe, 1725-1795 from GMT Games
One of my favorite parts about historical wargaming is that I get exposed to and am able to learn about some of the more obscure parts of our world’s history. Now you might be saying to me that the subject of power politics in Eastern Europe form 1725-1795 is not obscure and I think that you would be correct if I was from Eastern Europe. But as I am from the United States, this is not a period or locale that we learned much about in grade school. That being said, I am very much interested in this concept and history and am glad to see Brian Asklev taking another crack at a topic that focuses on some of the history from his neck of the woods. When Enlightenment Empires: Power and Politics in Eastern Europe, 1725-1795 was first announced a few weeks ago, I was immediately interested because I do love games where several nations have to compete economically, politically, diplomatically and through force of arms. I also recently played Brian’s Baltic Empires at WBC and very much enjoyed that game and this one appears to be in a similar style and uses the very interesting Dramatis Personae cards to inject historical characters with their abilities into the game play.
From the game page, we read the following:
Enlightenment Empires is an approachable 2-5 player strategy game about conflicts between the states of Central and Eastern Europe region during the Enlightenment era, a transformative period of political upheaval, large-scale warfare, and constant struggles for power. Players will have to develop their economy, decide their internal policies on the ideas of individual liberty and effective governance, secure trade deals and financial assistance within the context of the global rivalry between Britain and France, and finally build armies to become the dominant power of Central and Eastern Europe. Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Prussia, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire will fight for hegemony, using variable victory conditions that reflect their respective historical objectives.
Building on the solid foundation provided by Baltic Empires, highlights of Enlightenment Empires include:
Five new asymmetric factions with unique abilities and objectives, including a new “Constitution” objective reflecting the pinnacle of Enlightenment political ideals.
Another highly thematic deck of historical Dramatis Personae to constitute your royal court, now also including random events that can disrupt players’ plans…or present them with new opportunities.
A simplified, yet still deep and political, economic system that forces players to make tough decisions regarding their state’s internal policies (serfdom, noble privileges, and military spending) and its diplomatic relations to the superpowers of the period, England and France.
The same streamlined battle system based on custom dice per unit type, now modified by military reforms.
More detailed minor powers that players may form alliances with.
Variable player counts (from 2 to 5 players), with scenarios ranging from a tight duel to a tense multiplayer conflict replete with alliances and betrayals.
If there is a word that could define the whole of 18th century, it would be the Enlightenment. The philosophical thought that applied reason to all spheres of life guided the social and political developments of the 1700s, and intellectuals, scientists, politicians, and rulers alike acted either in support of it or against it. And while in Western Europe the republican ideals of enlightenment brought about the French Revolution, in Central and Eastern Europe enlightenment became a tool for state-building for the absolutist monarchs, including the Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria Joseph II, King Frederick II of Prussia, or Empress Catherine the Great of Russia. The mid-18th century period was formative for these powers, with Prussia and Russia continuing to struggle to establish their dominance in the region, while Austria and the Ottoman Empire fought to preserve their status, and the weakened state of Poland-Lithuania struggled to reform its constitution before meeting an unlucky demise. Three of the traditional “pentarchy“ of Great European Powers (namely, Russia, Prussia, and Austria) were Eastern powers that achieved this status during the 18th century. Their dominance in the region was forged by the work of bureaucrats and reformers, as much as by the soldiers and generals on the fields of the Seven Years‘ War.
Keep in mind that these type of games can sometimes be very complex and have lots of moving parts. And I am not saying that this doesn’t have them but Brian has said that the game is very approachable.
Enlightenment Empires presents these political and military conflicts in a fun and accessible format, while also doing justice to the fascinating history of the region during this period. The game features five asymmetric factions with different strengths, internal political conditions, military forces, and historical objectives, along with the capacity to develop their states by conducting reforms along (or against) Enlightenment ideals, investing in economic infrastructure, and recruiting key historical characters that offer unique game effects. The game also includes several scenarios for variable player counts and durations, offering additional flexibility and replayability.
7. The Last Hundred Yards Volume 6: The Forgotten Hell from GMT Games
If you didn’t know we really enjoyed The Last Hundred Yards as well as Volume 2: Airborne Over Europe. The system is extremely interesting for a tactical game and uses some novel elements in regards to how victory points are scored including a focus on time to complete missions as well as the casualties incurred. Really an excellent system with lots of crunch and potential! Now, even though there are a total of 5 other volumes that have been released, Mike Denson has forged ahead with the next entry in the series which gives us a look at the operations in New Guinea and the Northern Solomon Islands during WWII with The Last Hundred Yards Volume 6: The Forgotten Hell.
From the game page, we read the following:
The Last Hundred Yards: The Forgotten Hell is Volume 6 in The Last Hundred Yards Series. This game examines the Allied campaigns against Japan in 1942, focusing on U.S. operations on Guadalcanal and Australian fighting in Papua New Guinea.
In New Guinea, Australian militia and the Australian Imperial Force troops fought a brutal and desperate delaying campaign along the Kokoda Track from Port Moresby to Buna, Battling through jungle, mountains, rain, mud, hunger, disease, and exhaustion, they resisted repeated Japanese advances and flanking attacks. Their stubborn defense slowed the enemy, shielded Port Moresby, and eventually helped reverse the campaign. At Milne Bay, Australian forces pushed the Japanese back and shattered the belief that the Imperial Japanese Army was invincible.
On Guadalcanal, U.S. Marines and Army troops fought equally savage battles, destroying Ichiki’s force at Alligator Creek and later assaulting entrenched Japanese positions around Mount Austen. There, the enemy used caves, rocky ridges, and concealed strongpoints to prolong the struggle.
Together, these engagements reveal the intensity of jungle warfare in the Southwest Pacific, where endurance, small-unit leadership, and relentless attacks under terrible conditions shaped the early Allied offensive against Japan. These actions also showed how terrain, logistics, and morale could decide campaigns as surely as firepower across the battlefields of the Solomons and New Guinea alike.
8. Shenandoah: Jackson and Sheridan in the Valley, 1862 – 1864 (Stonewall in the Valley and Sheridan in the Shenandoah) from Multi-Man Publishing
A BIG and well respected American Civil War operational system is what Great Campaigns of the American Civil War (GCACW) is and the newest volume in the series is called Shenandoah: Jackson and Sheridan in the Valley, 1862 – 1864. One of the things that I very much appreciate about this system is the fact that they use some of the best art out there for their covers.
From the game page, we read the following:
Shenandoah: Jackson and Sheridan in the Valley, 1862 – 1864 is the latest design in the award-winning Great Campaigns of the American Civil War(GCACW) Series. It contains both a complete redesign of the Stonewall in the Valley (SIV) game covering Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 valley campaign and a completely new game module Sheridan in the Shenandoah that depicts Sheridan’s 1864 valley campaign. The game is designed by Joe Balkoski (the original GCACW Series creator) and Chris Withers. The original SIV game maps have been upgraded to contain the latest GCACW map features, with map design executed by artist Charlie Kibler—whose work on the series dates to its creation in 1992.
Shenandoah: Jackson and Sheridan in the Valley, 1862 – 1864 uses the latest version of the GCACW Standard Basic Game Rules, which also apply to all other games in the series, and these rules are now printed at an increased 11-point font size instead of 9-point. After more than a quarter-century of refinement, these rules are extremely well organized and relatively easy to learn, even for series newcomers. The Advanced Game rules cover situations specifically applicable to these unique campaigns such as “The Burning” that depicts the desolation of the valley by Union cavalry in 1864.
Stonewall in the Valley includes one new Basic Game scenario, the four original Basic Scenarios rebalanced, and the original Advanced Game campaign scenario extensively revised:
The Battle of Kernstown (March 23, 1862; 1 turn): Introductory scenario on the battle of Kernstown – ideal for beginners.
My Last Council of War (March 10 to March 23, 1862; 14 turns): Heavily outnumbered, Jackson moves south from Winchester thru Strasburg to Mt. Jackson. A Union force of three divisions follows to Strasburg while sending two divisions out of the Valley to reinforce McClellan. Jackson races back north and attacks the remaining Union division at Kernstown but loses the battle.
God Blessed Our Arms at McDowell (April 30 to May 11, 1862; 12 turns): Historically, Jackson moves west from Staunton and causes the Union force at McDowell to retreat north to Franklin. He briefly pursues them but then returns to the Valley. This scenario postulates what might have happened had Ewell’s division and Banks’ two divisions become involved in the McDowell campaign instead of holding fast in their camps in the south of the Valley.
Rebel Blitzkrieg (May 21 to June 2, 1862; 13 turns): Jackson and Ewell advance north on the Luray Pike and surprise the small Union force at Front Royal. A Union division entrenched at Strasburg to the west belatedly discovers it is in danger of being cut off and just beats Jackson north to Winchester. Jackson defeats the Union at the first battle of Winchester and pursues to Harpers Ferry. Meanwhile strong Union forces are moving in behind Jackson from both the east and the west. Jackson turns south, marching to Strasburg and then Mt. Jackson and barely avoids the trap.
Our Beautiful Valley Will be Cleansed (June 6 to June 11, 1862; 6 turns); Two Union columns, separated by the Shenandoah River, pursue Jackson south from Strasburg. Fremont’s force engages the Confederates at Harrisonburg and then two days later battles them at Cross Keys. Meanwhile Shields’ division advances into Jackson’s rear and almost captures his wagon train. Jackson turns his army from Fremont to Shields and defeats Shields in the battle of Port Republic causing both Union forces to pull back north.
Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign (March 7 to June 19, 1862; 105 turns): The entire Valley campaign is covered in this scenario. Both sides typically have forces moving all over all three maps in exciting maneuvers and with forces coming and going due to external events. The scenario plays quite fast due to lulls where sets of 5 turns are skipped. The original advanced rules have been simplified, and the scenario has been extensively playtested and re-balanced.
Sheridan in the Shenandoah includes twelve Basic Game scenarios and two Advanced Game campaign scenarios, all extensively playtested:
Second Winchester (June 13 to June 15, 1863; 3 turns): Ewell’s corps leads the Confederate army thru the Valley to invade Pennsylvania and routed the Union division at Winchester. The Rebels cut off the Union retreat and captured most of the Union division. The route was now clear for Lee’s invasion of the north.
The Battle of New Market (May 15, 1864; 1 turn): Introductory scenario on the battle of New Market – ideal for beginners.
Piedmont (June 4 to June 6, 1864; 3 turns): Picking up the after Sigel’s debacle at New Market, Union General David Hunter marches south from Winchester. With Breckinridge, Confederate hero of New Market, aiding Lee at Cold Harbor, defense of the Valley falls to a ragtag collection of troops that are rushed to the area under General W. E. “Grumble” Jones. The forces battle at Piedmont, Jones is killed, the Rebels are routed, and the Union captures Staunton.
In the Valley Again (July 23 to August 5, 1864; 14 turns): Early’s army moved back into the Valley in mid-July after retreating from the outskirts of Washington, D.C. On July 23, Confederate scouting revealed that Early was only opposed by Crook’s forces and not the VI and XIX corps, which had returned to D.C. Early attacked Crook at Kernstown and routed the Union forces which retreated across the Potomac. Confederate infantry destroyed the B&O RR at Martinsburg and threatened to invade north. Two Confederate cavalry brigades advanced north towards Chambersburg, burned it, and were chased by 2 Union cavalry divisions. Meanwhile, the VI and XIX corps had been recalled to the Valley, but then along with Crook’s force, moved east to protect against an assumed invasion again by the Confederates. The Union force soon countermarched back to Harpers Ferry and the Confederates retreated south.
Second Kernstown (July 24, 1864; 1 turn): A simple scenario covering the second battle of Kernstown – ideal for beginners.
Sheridan Takes Command (August 10 to August 14, 1864; 5 turns): Sheridan took command of all forces in the region on August 7th. His orders were “wherever the enemy goes let our troops go also”. The plan was to trap the Confederate infantry in the northern valley, but Early knew the danger and moved south just ahead of the Union. Both sides marched rapidly south until the Confederates setup a strong line at the Fisher’s Hill. Sheridan prepared to attack but halted his plans when a strong force under Anderson entered the Valley at Front Royal.
You Must Be Cautious (August 17 to August 21, 1864; 5 turns): With the Union infantry camped along Cedar Creek and the Confederates entrenched in a strong line at Fisher’s Hill just to the south, Sheridan learned of the approach of Kershaw’s division. This elicited a new directive from Grant warning Sheridan he “must be cautious and act on the defensive until movements … force them to detach” troops. Therefore, Sheridan conducted a night march to Winchester. From there the Union briefly defended at Berryville and then at Charlestown. The Confederates pursued and eventually tried to bring on a battle at Charlestown. However, Sheridan was cautious and followed the new defensive strategy and disengaged to retreat into a strong, compact line at Halltown, just in front of Harpers Ferry.
Third Winchester (September 19, 1864; 1 turn): This scenario depicting the third battle of Winchester is only one turn but still features lots of maneuver and combat.
From Winchester to Fisher’s Hill (September 19 to September 22, 1864; 4 turns): This scenario encompasses two significant battles in the valley campaign. The Union army attacked the Confederate defensive line just east of Winchester and eventually drove the Rebels back to Winchester. This final Confederate line collapsed, and they retreated south all the way to a formidable defensive position at Fisher’s Hill, just south of Strasburg. The Union pursued and then rolled the west flank of this line and routed the Confederates.
Early’s About Played Out (September 23 to September 26, 1864; 4 turns): After the battle of Fisher’s Hill the Confederates retreated south. The Union pursued with their entire army, but the action for the next few days was limited to cavalry and rear-guard skirmishes. The Confederates safely made it to Brown’s Gap, while the Union infantry stopped at Harrisonburg and Union cavalry started burning the countryside.
Tom’s Brook (October 9, 1864; 1 turn): This solitaire scenario is filled with cavalry action and is an excellent learning scenario for beginners.
The Battle of Cedar Creek (October 19, 1864; 1 turn): While this is only a 1-turn scenario it is filled with the action that took place in the battle of Cedar Creek. The Confederate player starts with a Night March and a Surprise Attack. The Union responds with a special “Sheridan’s Ride” action to enable counterattacks.
Sheridan Moves South (September 19 to October 20, 1864; 32 turns): This scenario spans the battles in the campaign from when Sheridan attacked the Confederates at Winchester, to when the Confederates were defeated at the battle of Cedar Creek. This campaign can be easily played in a weekend.
The Last Valley Campaign (July 21 to October 20, 1864; 92 turns): This scenario encompasses the entire campaign from when Early’s army returned to the Valley after his raid on Washington, to when he was defeated at the battle of Cedar Creek. There is maneuver and combat all over all three maps in this scenario. The action often starts with a Confederate offensive and advance to the Potomac. The Union then gets significant reinforcements to launch counteroffensives.
9. Okinawa: The Last Battle of WWII Reprint 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.
You do not have to buy the Hero Bound game but can order the game as an Add On.
10. Tank Clash: Eastern Front from Ameba Games
I love to highlight these little campaigns that I find on Kickstarter and this month there is a new company, or at least that I am not familiar with, called Ameba Games that is offering a small game called Tank Clash: Eastern Front. This games appears to be the 2nd game in the series with the 1st being called Tank Clash: Western Front.
From the game page, we read the following:
Tank Clash is back with new iconic World War 2 tanks!
The Red Army is spearheaded by the powerful Soviet armoured units like the T34, SU100 and IS2. Germany pins its hopes on the last of the panzer divisions to halt the Soviet advance. The Wehrmacht fields its fearsome tanks like the Stug III, Nashorn and Tiger II for the coming battle.
The stage is set for the largest clash of late-war heavy armour.
Tank Clash: Eastern Front is a standalone tactical tank warfare game for 2 players, designed for both newcomers and seasoned strategists. Easy to learn yet rich in tactical choices, it combines its signature checkers-style armour tracking system with dice rolling and hand management for intense skirmish battles.
Already own Tank Clash: Western Front?
Built with modularity in mind, Eastern Front is fully compatible with its predecessor. Combine both games to command 12 unique tank types across expansive battlefields with up to 4 players. Eastern Front’s new features – including new missions, battlefield tokens, event cards and enhanced gameplay elements can also be incorporated into Western Front for an even richer combat experience.
I know what you might be thinking, as the art is a bit cartoony, but I am going to give this one a chance. I think that any wargamer likes to use tanks and this one appears to be focused on these metal monsters and I am going to give it a go. Plus the components are really nice, including some very well made poker chips that are used on the board, and frankly the price of $40 is probably worth what you re getting.
As of September 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $9,054 toward its $3,928 funding goal with 108 backers. The campaign will conclude on Wednesday, September 16th at 9:00pm EDT.
New Release
1. A Hellish Fight: The Battle of Fort Sumter – 1863 from High Flying Dice Games
I love lesser gamed subjects. Or even sometimes games that have never seen the light of day and never touched certain subjects. It is always nice to play something unique and interesting while learning new parts of history. High Flying Dice Games does this exceptionally well as they have made their living on doing lesser (or even totally) unknow battles in their small format games. This month they have released a game that focuses on the 2nd siege of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina in 1863 called A Hellish Fight: The Battle of Fort Sumter – 1863. This one looks pretty interesting and appears to focus on the iron clad battles and bombardment of the ruins of the fort that were still held by the Confederates.
From the game page, we read the following:
Following the capture of Fort Wagner on September 7th, and the protracted bombardment of Fort Sumter by the Union navy’s ironclads as well as army land batteries, an assault to take the fort’s ruins was planned. Admiral Dahlgren and General Gilmore both felt that securing Fort Sumter’s capture would not only lead to Charleston’s surrender, but send a clear signal that the Confederacy’s days were numbered.
If you are interested in A Hellish Fight: The Battle of Fort Sumter – 1863, you can order a copy for $18.95 from the High Flying Dice Games website at the following link: https://www.hfdgames.com/sumter.html
2. Guadalcanal: The Battle for Henderson Field, Oct 23-26, 1942 from Dan Verssen Games
The Valiant Defense Series designed by David Thompson has been one of my favorite solitaire wargame series of the past nearly 10 years. Each of the volumes in the game address very specific situations and always have a very interesting take with fun mechanics, great art and fantastic production. The torch for the series though has been passed to a new designer in Vincent Cooper. He has designed Volume 5 Guadalcanal: The Battle for Henderson Field, Oct 23-26, 1942 and it has finally fulfilled off of Kickstarter.
From the game page, we read the following:
Take command of the valiant Marines of the 1st Marine Division, supported by Soldiers of the 164th Infantry Regiment, desperately defending Henderson Field against waves of Japanese troops. Guadalcanal: The Battle for Henderson Field is a solitaire and cooperative tactical wargame published by Dan Verssen Games (DVG) as Volume V in the Valiant Defense Series.
Here is a bit of a designer diary/commentary from the designer Vincent Cooper:
This all started about 3 1/2 years ago when I first played Pavlov’s House. I say played. I ‘played’ the game for about 10 minutes…and then I sat there in stunned disbelief at how a game could be sooooo good!!!!
By the time I finished there were two very clear ideas for games fully formed. I contacted DVG to see if there was any interest and they put me in touch with David Thompson. I didn’t hold much hope. There was no reason for him to trust his IP to me, a person he didn’t know.
But I gave it a try and David, it turns out, is one of the nicest people you can ever come into contact with. After some back and forth, the idea for Guadalcanal – The Battle for Henderson Field was born (not, in fact, one of the original ideas, but we’ll see what the future holds for them…).
The game has been through various stages of development and now stands ready to KS!! I will be giving more details in the future about the various variant play options, but have no fear: This will keep you scratching your head looking for the right decision for MONTHS!!
Art by the supremely talented Nils Johansson
Thank you to all the play testers, and in particular Glenn Saunders, Shane Freshwater and Martin Fenwick Charlesworth Much more to come from out design team in the near future!!!
A few years ago, Road to the Rhine designed by Frank Chadwick was announced and it is now ready to ship.
From the game page, we read the following:
In the cataclysmic battle of the Falaise Pocket, the Allied forces defeated the German army and drove them back across France in disorder. In the south of France, American and French troops of the 6th Army Group have stormed ashore and driven the remnants of the German 19th Army north toward the border.
Road to the Rhine covers the Allied pursuit of the German Army following the Normandy breakout through fierce fighting at the West Wall and bridging the Rhine River. The campaign game covers the period from September 1944 through April 1945, while separate shorter scenarios include Operation Market-Garden and the Battle of the Bulge. The game includes two battle games (one-turn scenarios), two longer scenarios, and one full campaign game. The game also includes extensive designer notes from original game designer Frank Chadwick and a historical play-through of the Bulge battle game.
Road to the Rhine is another classic by Game Designers’ Workshop, re-mastered by Compass Games. Originally designed by Frank Chadwick, this edition pays tribute to the classic by honoring the original game system while introducing many enhancements for gameplay purposes. In terms of presentation, we upgraded all components, including completely new full-color maps, new reinforcement and new unit displays, expanded turn and supply tracks, enhanced charts, a rulebook with incorporated errata, and larger counters.
This one does have two 22″x34″ maps but with only 2 countershafts so it is large in scope but not necessarily in scale as it appears to be fairly low counter density. One to keep an eye on though as it is designed by Frank Chadwick and is a remastering of the classis GDW release in 1979.
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 Neva Game Press!
The Rock of Chickamauga is the next game in the Black Swan Series and follows closely on the heels of A Most Fearful Sacrifice. Using the same proven game system, The Rock of Chickamauga covers the entire Battle of Chickamauga, fought from September 18th through the 20th, 1863 in northern Georgia. The Union Army of the Cumberland, under William Rosecrans, is driving south from Chattanooga, hoping to envelop and trap Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee in its vise. But Bragg anticipates the maneuver, pulls back and then counterattacks the overextended Union forces. They meet along Chickamauga Creek, the “River of Death”, in an epic struggle.
This scenario-driven, two-player war-game utilizes the ACW operating system called the Black Swan System, which is closely related to the Blind Swords game system first introduced in the game The Devil’s To Pay!. This version of the system is specifically designed to handle larger-scale battles yet keep rules overhead low. players will trigger activations by Corps instead of by lower-level formations but they still have tactical decision-making choices by needing to determine which Divisions get activation priority. Players will use card draws rather than chit pulls.
Ulisses und die RatCon können nur Das Schwarze Auge? Weit gefehlt. Von Replikanten über Brandon Sanderson über Hexen und Mythen sucht eine Ameise den Pfad zwischen verschiedenen Realitäten, um schlussendlich mit dem „Who is Who?“ des Warhammer-Universums gepflegt einen Pumpkin Spice Latte im Barista-Shop einer Hexe trinken zu gehen.
In November 2024, while attending the SDHistCon, we sat down with designer Sam London to play his upcoming game called Common Sense (it was originally called Absolved from All Allegiance), which was announced on GMT Games P500 last year. The game is an American Revolutionary War Strategic Level game that uses trick taking and is a struggle over the Will to Fight Track that measures the level of commitment by both sides to the fight. We recently reached out to Sam to get some more details to share about the design and he was very glad to oblige our request.
*Keep in mind that the design is still undergoing playtesting and development and that any details or component pictures shared in this interview are for prototype purposes and will definitely change prior to final publication as they enter the art department.
Grant: Sam welcome back to the blog. How are your other announced game projects coming along?
Sam: Thanks for having me back! Things are going well. I am hands off on Firefight Tactical at this point. All of the content art is complete and we are just working on things like rulebook layouts. I am very much looking forward to getting it out the door and into people’s hands. Microverse has most of the art complete. I am doing a few tweaks to the bot still to get it to a point I am happy with it, but in truth it is not tracking far behind Firefight Tactical. They both have been wonderful experiences from a development and production stand point and I cannot speak highly enough of the various teams I have worked with at GMT on these games.
Grant: How have you changed as a designer over the past few years?
Sam: This is an awesome question and I am grateful to be asked it as it forced me to do some introspection. To explain I will have to make some references to film making. As I have stated previously I have been designing games for a couple of decades at this point and only started trying to get my designs out there after Covid. The truth is that while this gave me lots of opportunities to refine my design chops, it was ultimately just me learning in a bubble. Coming into the hobby as a designer rather than a gamer, I fancied myself as a sort of auteur designer. For those not familiar with the term in the context of film making, this is an approach to creative endeavor where everything is made to conform precisely to one person’s specific vision. After getting to work with so many fantastic people, decidedly outside of my bubble, I have taken a bit of a 180. While I still own the ultimate vision, I now recognize that the odds that I understand the optimal route to get to that destination are unlikely, and that pretending I do will often result in an inferior game. This isn’t to say that I am going to incorporate every bit of feedback I receive into my designs. It does mean that I am more able to recognize weaknesses in my designs as conceived and solicit feedback from others to get around my blind spots.
Grant: What specific lessons have you learned about design?
Sam: The big one would be about systems pruning. Most people, myself included, understand academically that design complexity for complexity’s sake is not good. Putting that principle into practice, especially retroactively, is far more challenging. Every mechanism in the game has to serve the player’s enjoyment without making the cost of entry too daunting. This can often mean cutting mechanisms that I am particularly passionate about, but for which I am the sole audience (or close to it). This is especially difficult for me because I consider myself a systems designer, and I virtually always approach the mechanics of a design first.
Grant: What is your newest project Common Sense about?
Sam: Common Sense: An American Revolution, 1775-1783 is a card driven strategic level wargame covering the American Revolution. It attempts to offer a comprehensive view of the conflict, all the way from the battlefield to the halls of the Continental Congress and British Parliament.
Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?
Sam: I always knew I would want to do an American Revolution game. The problem was that I needed a system that would fit my thesis of the conflict. A few years back I was working on a Barbarossa game and every step of the way I was thinking I would rather do that system in the American Revolution. The more passionate I became about that, the more I started to flesh out the system in ways that didn’t make sense for Barbarossa. Eventually that game ended up in the trash bin and Common Sense got my attention instead. I think the American Revolution is such a fascinating subject because it’s a real David and Goliath story. I of course am keenly aware that in reality it was more of David vs Goliath while Goliath is arm wrestling another giant while also trying to solve a Rubik’s cube, but there is still a lot of inherent heroic optimism to that history. Also, everyone loves a good underdog story.
Grant: What is your design goal with the game?
Sam: My design goal for the system was to see how much personality I could give to the belligerents without making their asymmetries require too much rules overhead. We have all played asymmetrical games where you feel like after you read your rulebook you need to read the other player’s rulebook to have a comprehensive understanding of the game. Here, while there are some mechanisms that are specific to each side, the asymmetry is more in terms of each player’s strategic concerns rather than their tools to execute upon them. All of these relate back to this unifying concept of “resolve” which is an abstraction that allows us to relate the varying strategic concerns into a single mechanism.
Grant: How did you focus on creating asymmetry on each side? What are some basic examples of these differences?
Sam: As noted above, I viewed each side in terms of what was unique about their concerns and what was unique about their tools to address them. For the British as an example, they are tremendously constrained by supply. It isn’t just a supply line (though it is that too), it’s a currency they spend to move and battle with units. Obviously historically supply was a concern for the Colonials as well, but it did not hamstring them to the same degree, so the Colonials don’t have to worry about it at all. What’s more, this opens up strategic opportunities for the Colonial player to attack the British in other areas to force the British player to split their limited resources. An example for the Colonial player is Attrition Combat. Each time the Colonials battle in a space they control on their turn, they have the option to resolve Attrition Combat, in which they cede control of that space to the British but as a result can resolve the battle without risking return fire. At the beginning of the game this must be used strategically and sparingly, but as certain key personalities in the Colonial Deck, from George Washington to Francis Marion enter play it becomes far more powerful.
Grant: How does the game use trick taking? Why was this a good choice for your vision of the game?
Sam: I am actually trying to get away from that term, as I think it causes people to think that Common Sense is a lighter game than it is. It invokes pithy card games rather than sweeping strategic affairs played out on a map. The final rulebook will likely make no reference to standard trick taking terms. I chose it as a core mechanism though for a variety of reasons. One I will cover in a future question, but the other reason is because I became very interested in the question of card balance. If I have a card driven game with a variety of card effects, and I want them to vary in their power, they have to be balanced in some way. The most common way this is handled in game design is to make them have a proportionate cost to play using some in-game currency. I was more interested in making the powerful cards more difficult to play. In fact, I wanted to take a step beyond that and say that not only are they more difficult to play, but they are never guaranteed. This gave me a simple way to inject far more personality into the cards and make some have a tangible weight to them when they manage to enter play. “Ha ha, I play King George. You’re in trouble now.” Trick taking was a natural fit for this as the rules overhead for it is comparatively light and the cards come with their own intrinsic value based on the ease with which they can be used to win tricks.
Grant: What is the makeup of the cards? Can you share a few examples with us and explain their use?
Sam: Each year players will begin their turn with a ten card hand. They can perform a strategic mulligan of up to 5 cards each year. This is not in case a player got a “bad hand” but rather so they can try to postpone getting cards that do not fit their strategic objectives at the start of the year. The year is then played out over a series of ten “clashes” in which the initiative player plays a card face up and then the other player does the same. The initiative player’s card sets the suit for the clash and the non-initiative player must follow the suit of that played card if able. Then the player who played the card with the higher initiative value (ties going to the non-initiative player) resolves their card.
In this example (all placeholder art at this point in the game’s development by the way), the Colonial player has initiative and plays the Artemis Ward card into the clash who is a 6 value of the Battle suit. The British player then plays Battle of Quebec into the clash which is a 7 value of the Battle suit. Battle of Quebec then resolves.
The British player immediately gains a supply (the orange wagon in the upper right corner). This is a special bonus effect present on some cards. The equivalent effect for the Colonials is to go up on the Continental Congress Track. They now have the option to cancel the resolution of the card to perform any one of their available actions. If they choose to continue to resolve the card they resolve its event first. Battle of Quebec’s event is of the type “special action,” which offers additional effects to the action on the card. In this case, if the Battle action is used to resolve a battle north of the Winter Line, the Colonial player must reroll all their successful hit dice once. The last piece is the yellow star under the Battle suit icon which indicates Battle has “advantage” over the Special suit. This means that if the non-initiative player does not have a card of the clash’s suit to play into the clash, any Battle card will always beat a Special card.
Grant: What different suits are included? What use does each have for players?
Sam: There are three common suits which are universals and one special suit which is player specific. The three common suits are March, Battle, and Recruit. March is used to move armies about the board, Battle is used to fight, and Recruit is used to get more units to fight with. There are asymmetries in how these resolve but the goals of their use are the same, which is why they are considered the common suits.
Grant: What is different about the Special Suit? How does it benefit players?
Sam: The Special suit is different for a couple of reasons. First all of the actions contained in the Special suit cards are unique to that player. The Colonial player can train their militia units into the Continental Army and negotiate with the French, eventually bringing in and performing actions with French pieces once they enter the conflict. The British player can recruit, move, fight, and raid with Native units and move and battle with the British navy. A lot of the flavor of the two sides are contained in the Special suit. The other thing that is different about the suit is that the Special suit allows you to resolve any combination of these actions. For example a Battle x 3 card allows you to resolve up to three Battle actions. A Colonial Special x 3 on the other hand will allow them to perform a mix of any 3 train and French actions which offers flexibility.
Grant: What is the purpose of the Resolve Track?
Sam: I mentioned the Resolve Track earlier when I was describing how most of the asymmetrical concerns of the players coalesce into a singular concept. The Resolve Track serves three purposes. Firstly, it is the game clock. While the game can end in the event that you completely resolve the year 1783, it will more commonly end when the British and Colonial Resolve markers cross. Each player’s Resolve marker starts on opposite ends of the track and moves towards the other end as they lose resolve. Once they cross, the year is completed and final scoring occurs.
Grant: How do players manipulate this track? What benefits or detriments does it provide to players?
Sam: This is where the other functions of the Resolve Track come in. The second purpose is that many of the points for determining final score and victory come from the Resolve Track. Finally, resolve has a tremendous impact on both sides’ ability to recruit new units, the Colonials in particular. This is another demonstration of the game’s asymmetries actually, as the Colonials are far more impacted by resolve loss both from a scoring perspective and a recruitment perspective than the British. In regards to how the track is manipulated, common track manipulations only cause a loss of resolve. There are several ways resolve is regained, but they are all due to specific card effects. The British primarily lose resolve by losing British Regulars in battle and by being overcommitted to the American conflict at the expense of their other global conflicts. They can also lose resolve by overusing Hessian mercenaries, who are good and reliable but cost money that parliament is loath to spend. The Colonials on the other hand will lose resolve mostly due to the British seizing control of colonies, Winter Attrition, and failure of the Continental Congress to offer a believable alternative as a governing power to the crown.
Grant: What is dynamic about the initiative system?
Sam: I said I would come back to this when I was describing why I went with trick taking as a core mechanism. Essentially, you are the active (initiative) player for as long as you continue to win subsequent clashes. For the duration the other player is what I would consider a “reactive” player. They still have choices to make of course, for example which card to play into clashes, whether to resolve combat as a siege or not in fortified spaces, how much supply to commit to a protracted battle, etc. The point however is that while by sheer odds you are guaranteed to eventually get your turns in, the duration of the runs of turns is strongly connected to the skill of the player and their familiarity with the game. This is very much a game where a player will become far better after repeated plays. The other cool thing about this is that the events on cards require skill and forethought to combo them together. You may have the thought that if cards A, B, and C resolve in order you will have all but won the game, only to lose the clash for card C and have to pivot. This dynamism does a lot to keep the game fresh and challenging rather than thinking “I have cards A, B, and C so I already know how I will play this out.”
Grant: What different unit types does each player have access to? How does each type benefit them?
Sam: Again pursuing asymmetry I wanted to give each unit type its own character. Each unit has a potency and a resilience but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Militia are able to pop up virtually anywhere and are able fire first in battles where they are the aggressor, but they are poorly trained and can’t leave where they are recruited unless they are picked up by an army. British navies can contribute to naval sieges and amphibious assaults while they are also required end points for British supply lines. French regulars are able to operate as a distinct force while also being able to launch coordinated actions with the Continental Army, offering them incredible command flexibility. British Field Artillery is powerful, but is unable to retreat quickly when the battle is lost, meaning it will be commandeered by the Colonials (and may exchange hands several times over the course of the war). There are also Continental Army, Native Warband, Hessian Mercenary, French Navy, Tory Loyalist, Colonial Artillery, and British Ranger units. Each has its own complement of traits to figure out how to employ them optimally.
Grant: How does combat work in the design?
Sam: As I have alluded to, there are a variety of special combat resolutions possible like Attrition Combat, Sieges, Naval Bombardment, Raids, and Surprise Attacks. I will just be describing the standard battle procedure here though. Each unit has a number of dice they grant during battles. The British player will have to pay a supply for each unit they want to activate to gain dice this way. Players then roll all their dice simultaneously. Dice come in three flavors, red, white, and blue (see what I did there?). Red dice hit on 3 or better, blue on 4 or better, and white on 5 or better. No matter the die color, a 6 counts as 2 hits. The other player then takes as many dice as they have incoming hits (at this point color doesn’t matter) and rolls them. For each 6 they roll, they discard the lowest die among their rolled dice. They then go from their lowest rolled die to their highest, assigning dice to their units if possible. Each unit has a limited range of dice values they can be assigned which represents their morale. For example, the British and French Regulars are a professional army and so they can only be assigned 1s and 2’s. The Colonial Militia and Tory Loyalists on the other hand can be assigned anything from a 1 to a 4. After all dice have been assigned or there are no more rolled dice that can be assigned to any units legally, all units with a die assigned to them are eliminated. Then, if the resolving card grants additional Battle actions, the initiative player can choose to either resolve another round of battle in this space, or not, potentially beginning to resolve another battle in a different space. If no further battle rounds will occur in the current space, the total number of casualties is compared. If one side took fewer casualties and did not control the space, they gain control of the space. Then, if the side that took more casualties lost at least as many units as half the size of their army (stack), they are forced to retreat from the space.
Grant: What is the British Commitment Check? How does it work?
Sam: The British player uniquely tracks the number of clashes they win each year on their own “British Perception” Track. At the end of the year, they add their current level on this track to the number of British Regular and Navy units outside of the American Colonies available to fight the French and the Spanish. If this total is less than 10, they lose 1 level of resolve for each point of shortfall. This means that if they have run the table the entire year, they are free to overcommit to the colonies, thematically because the optics are good back home. If however they have a rough year, they may have to hold some forces back to avoid the war being cut short by Parliament because opinions have turned against it.
Grant: What is the Continental Congress Level? How does it work?
Sam: On average, every card in the Colonial deck is one initiative value lower than every card in the British deck. However, every card in the Recruit suit grants the Colonial players levels on the Continental Congress Track. Levels can be spent from the track as cards are played to increase the initiative value of the played card. The problem is that at the end of the year, the Colonial player is expected to have an ever increasing level on the Continental Congress track or they will lose resolve equal to the shortfall. This obligation is an even bigger potential headache for the Colonial player as the Continental Congress isn’t just a track on the board, it’s also a piece on the map. If the Continental Congress is forced to relocate (retreat) because their current space falls into British control, the Continental Congress levels reset to 0. Done later in the war this can be devastating to the Colonial player. Even worse, if the Continental Congress would have to retreat, but it has no valid place to do so since it is surrounded by British Controlled spaces, the Congress surrenders and the Colonial player loses the game outright with no points counted.
Grant: I have seen where you describe the game as a sandbox. What does this mean and how does it benefit the design?
Sam: I think this can best be demonstrated by the card I showed earlier, Battle of Quebec. Now of course, the Battle of Quebec occurred when Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold attempted to siege Quebec City on December 31, 1775. The Colonials suffered heavy losses and were soundly defeated by the elements as well as the British. Nowhere in that card does it specify that the battle needs to occur on a specific date, or at a specific location, just that it must be north of the Winter Line for the event to have an effect. There have been plenty of times in playtests where the card has been resolved in 1775 in Canada, but also many times where it hasn’t. This approach enables me to inject historicity into the game without shackling the player to recreate historical decisions. I think many historical gamers want experiences where they can recreate history, but they are not obligated to do so. Roughly paraphrasing what Gene Billingsley said about the game, “all the events are there, all the major players, and the outcomes, even though potentially very different from history, are entirely conceivable.” Put differently, it’s like the game hands you a toy box filled with American Revolution action figures to play with as you will. There will of course be some players who will miss some rigidity holding them to a more strictly historical course. However, I think this sandbox approach offers an opportunity to sink your teeth into the history and better appreciate the moving parts by seeing the different ways they could have fit together.
Grant: What are some general strategies for both sides?
Sam: From a general strategy perspective things are very historical. The British want a quick war. The fastest way to do this is to take the more valuable northern colonies which will tank the Colonial resolve and secure most of the significant strategic locations. By doing this they can force the Continental Army to suffer brutal winters away from the cities and put enough pressure on the Continental Congress that their resolve rapidly drains and they are forced to surrender. The Colonials want the opposite. They just want to hold out long enough using delaying tactics to organize a proper army, get the French into the war, and retake whatever key fortified locations they ceded to the British in the early war so they can force the British to the bargaining table.
Grant: What is the layout of the board?
Sam: Again, this map is placeholder art. The game uses point to point movement, with some spaces representing precise fortified locations and some representing large tracts of land (even entire colonies in some cases). Spaces are grouped into colonies that each have an associated hit to Colonial resolve if they are lost. There is also a British “in Europe” area and a number of tracks tied to the various game mechanics.
Grant: Why did you feel point to point movement was best?
Sam: The only two contenders here were point to point vs area based movement. Given the level of abstraction the system uses, any sort of hexed based representation was never an option. I decided to go with point to point because the game’s focus is really on the narrative more than anything else. An area based map would have forced me to have the visual importance of areas be at least somewhat to scale by the size of the colony. Instead by doing point to point I can give a colony as many spaces and fortifications as are thematically appropriate for the importance of that colony in the actual conflict.
Grant: What type of an experience does the game create?
Sam: The game is punchy. It is very competitive and intentionally so. You are only able to achieve so much on a given turn, and at the end of each turn you have another clash and a chance for your opponent to seize the initiative. The elation when the other player plays a card out and you realize you can beat it and put out Benjamin Franklin when you thought you weren’t going to get a turn for at least 2 more clashes is fantastic. It also plays very quickly for a game of its weight. Most games between players who know how to play will be under 2 hours.
Grant; What are you most pleased about with the design?
Sam: I would say three things. First, because it’s top of mind as I just finished it, the solo play. I knew how I wanted the solo to feel, but I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make it happen mechanically. I will be putting out some videos soon showing how it works, but suffice it to say for the moment that I am very pleased with it. Second, every game I design, I design to create stories at the table. If it always tells the same story it isn’t memorable. If there are never any surprises it isn’t memorable. Common Sense succeeds in both of these areas to a tremendous degree. Each time I catch up with a player I have played Common Sense with before they are able to remind me of our whole game by invoking strange or exciting moments from our game a year ago like it happened yesterday. Finally, when I design a new game I generally try to think about what aspects of it are specific to the topic and which could be modified slightly to make it work for other topics. I have my own plans for a Vietnam War version of this system that I am very excited about. What surprised me though was how many great designers have been inspired by the system and want to do their own designs with it. At the moment I am only at liberty to say that Ananda Gupta wants to do a French Revolution game with the system, which is such an incredible honor since Twilight Struggle is the primary inspiration for it.
Grant: What other designs are you working on?
Sam: I am always working on something. I have a non-historical game I am working on that has been picked up but I cannot talk about it yet. I have a train game that I may be able to talk about more publicly soon and an American Civil War game that I will be debuting at HistCon North. Oh, and I have a Sengoku Jidai wargamer’s party game that I am tooling around with. There are more, but that’s enough of a teaser. Thanks for the interview!
Thank you Sam for your thoughts on your game and for the effort you have obviously put into it. Having played the game while attending SDHistCon ta few years ago, I can say that we had a great time with the game, felt all of the aspects you discussed and very much enjoyed the way cards were played, how the initiative kept with the winner and the various frustrations of the asymmetry of each of the sides. I think that this one will be a winner and I look forward to playing it further in the future!
For a bit more information, we posted a quick video interview with Sam while at SDHistCon and you can view that at the following link:
As this month’s Wargame Watch posts on the blog, I will have just come back from attending the World Boardgaming Championships in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania where I was able to spend 5 1/2 days of fabulous gaming. I bring that up because this month I just didn’t have the time to do the deep dive that I normally do and only was able to find 27 games (including a new game from our sponsor Nuts! Publishing). I was also able to find 3 games to share being offered on Crowdfunding through Gamefound and Kickstarter.
This month we have a sponsor for the Wargame Watch feature in Nuts! Publishing. Founded in 2011, Nuts! Publishing is a French tabletop and board game publisher established by four wargaming and history enthusiasts. While initially famous strictly for historical and tactical wargames, the company has expanded its catalog to include cooperative, sci-fi, and family-friendly board games, while maintaining a strict selection process for those games they do publish. They are well known for developing popular original titles like Mini Rogue, Diluvium, and 300: Earth & Water, which is a part of their unique small format wargame series called Combat Rations that recently released the 3rd volume in the series called Guerre Eclair. The “Combat Ration” Series is a line of highly accessible, compact wargames designed to be played in about an hour including the 2 previous titles of 300: Earth & Water that delves into the Persian invasion of Greece in 492BC, and Port Arthur that retells the story of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War.
But, they also have a full line of more beefy traditional wargames including such titles as Urban Operations, Saigon 75, Stalingrad Roads, This War Without an Enemy, We Are Coming, Nineveh and Phantom Fury.
In addition to their own unique games, they also hold licenses to translate and distribute highly acclaimed international games for the French market, such as One Deck Dungeon, War of the Ring and the UndauntedSeries.
Their newest wargame release is called Guerre Eclair designed by Yasushi Nakaguro and is a part of the Combat Rations Series. Guerre Eclair is a remake of the 2019 game called The Rise of Blitzkrieg from Bonsai Games and is a card-driven game for 2 players lasting around 45 minutes. The setting is World War II in 1940 as the Germans unleashed their new Blitzkrieg tactic to invade France. The attacking Germans hide their intentions by choosing a conquest goal of either taking the Maginot Line, conquering Paris or controlling the ports at Dunkirk. Dice are rolled for combat and the highest 2 dice totals determine the outcome and if doubles are rolled losses to units will be inflicted. The French and British really cannot afford to lose many units as they don’t have a lot but neither can the Germans. The game is simple but fairly meaty with lots of decision points and we had a great time with it, as we have had with the other games appearing in the series.
Here is what Florent had to share on their upcoming slate of games:
In May, we released Guerre Eclair the third game in the CombatRations series and work on the next titles in the line is well underway (specifically Norway 40, followed by Bulge 20 – Yes, by Joe Miranda previously published by Victory Point Games). Urban Operations 2nd Edition is now available in stores worldwide. Please note that an upgrade kit is available on our website for owners of the 1st Edition.
Upcoming releases in early 2027 include The Coldest Winter, a card-driven game about the 1939–40 war between Finland and the Soviet Union (designed by Timo Pohja; art by Nils Johanssen), followed by Supremacy 2050, in which the world’s four major powers clash between 2020 and 2050 (designed by Pierre Razoux; art by Domhnall Hegarty).
Finally, we will launch two crowdfunding campaigns in 2027. The first will be for the second edition of Sword of Rome, covering the rise of Roman power in the 3rd and 4th centuries BC (designed by Wray Ferrell; art by Nicolas Roblin and Gabriel Pardon). The second will feature Nemto a cooperative sci-fi wargame (designed by Hermann Luttman; art by Nicolas Roblin and Christian Benavides).
Quite a variety of eras and gameplay styles!
Here is a link to an interview we did with one of the owners, designer and main bottle washer Florent Coupeau while attending Essen Spiel 2025:
Here also is an older video we did with Florent while attending SDHistCon 2024 where we discussed the excellent Combat Rations Series and Guerre Eclair (recently released) and the upcoming Norway 40:
1. Pacific Fleet: Rise & Fall of the Japanese Empire from VUCA Simulations
VUCA Simulations is a newer company on the scene the last several years (really since 2021) and they are coming out with some really great looking games. We have played several of their games and always have a great time with them. One of their newest pre-order offerings is called Pacific Fleet: Rise & Fall of the Japanese Empire designed by Hiroyuki Inose. I love a good Pacific Theater WWII game and this one looks pretty great.
From the game page, we read the following:
The Pacific War was unlike any other conflict of the Second World War. Vast oceans, isolated island chains, carrier task forces, long-range bombers, amphibious invasions, and industrial warfare all combined into one of history’s most complex military campaigns.
Pacific Fleet: Rise & Fall of the Japanese Empire places you in command of this global struggle. Lead the Imperial Japanese forces in their quest to establish dominance across Asia and the Pacific, or direct the Allied war effort as overwhelming industrial power gradually turns the tide. Every carrier strike, convoy, amphibious landing, and production decision shapes the course of the war.
This is not merely a naval game—it is a complete grand-strategic simulation where sea, air, and land warfare are seamlessly integrated into one operational system.
Fight from the opening attacks of December 1941 through the climactic campaigns that determined the fate of the Japanese Empire. Unlike many Pacific games that focus on individual battles, Pacific Fleet presents the entire theatre as one interconnected campaign where logistics, production, intelligence, and operational planning are equally important.
2. Modern Tactics: Afghanistan – British Forces Expansion from VUCA Simulations
We have played a lot of Old School Tactical from Flying Pig Games, which is designed by Shayne Logan. Shayne now has a design with VUCA Simulations that deals with modern warfare in Afghanistan called Modern Tactics: Afghanistan. That was announced on pre-order a while ago and has since been delivered but there is now an expansion of sorts to the game called Modern Tactics: Afghanistan – British Forces Expansion but it is being designed by another designer named Kenneth Tee of People Power from GMT Games fame.
From the game page, we read the following:
The war in Afghanistan was fought village by village, compound by compound, and patrol by patrol. Every operation demanded careful planning, disciplined infantry, close cooperation with allied forces, and constant vigilance against an elusive insurgency.
Modern Tactics: Afghanistan – British Forces Expansion places you in command of the British Army, Royal Marines, Special Air Service, and supporting Afghan forces during Operation Herrick. Experience thirteen new scenarios inspired by real operations fought throughout Helmand Province between 2001 and 2012, introducing new units, mechanics, and tactical challenges to the Modern Tactics system.
Whether conducting a night raid with the SAS, leading Gurkhas into hostile villages, defending isolated platoon houses, or escorting Afghan National Army units through dangerous territory, every mission presents unique tactical and operational decisions.
3. Thirty Years of Misery: The Thirty Years War 1618-1648 from VUCA Simulations
A couple of years ago, I came across a new designer named Brian Asklev and have done interviews with him covering Baltic Empires from GMT Games and 1812 – Napoleon’s Fateful March from VUCA Simulations. Brian is a pretty sharp designer and I very much like his approach to design as well as the choices in designs that he is doing. His new game is called Thirty Years of Misery: The Thirty Years War 1618-1648. The cover art is amazing, the topic looks great and the approach that he is taking seems to be very novel.
From the game page, we read the following:
Between 1618 and 1648, Europe was consumed by one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in its history. What began as a rebellion in Bohemia soon engulfed the Holy Roman Empire and drew nearly every major European power into a struggle over religion, dynastic ambition, and political supremacy. Millions perished as armies marched across Central Europe, cities were besieged, alliances shifted, and entire regions were devastated.
Thirty Years of Misery places you in command of the major powers that shaped this conflict. Lead the Imperial Habsburgs, the Catholic League, Sweden, or France as you fight to reshape Germany through military campaigns, religious influence, political maneuvering, and strategic diplomacy.
Victory requires more than battlefield success. You must secure electorates, protect your heartlands, influence the religious landscape of the Empire, and achieve your faction’s unique historical ambitions before peace is finally negotiated at Westphalia. Rather than recreating individual battles, Thirty Years of Misery captures the entire strategic conflict across three decades of war.
Every campaign combines:
Military operations
Religious conflict
Political objectives
Coalition warfare
Historical events
Dynamic diplomacy
Each round features a randomized turn order, ensuring that no two campaigns unfold the same way. Players must continually adapt to changing circumstances, unexpected interventions, and opportunities created by both allies and enemies.
4. Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth Revised Edition from Neva Game Press
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! Their first release called Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth, which is a solitaire look at the amphibious invasion of the island of Iwo Jima in 1945 at the end of WWII, was both commercially and critically successful and has sold out and now they are bringing back a revised edition for pre-order.
From the game page, we read the following:
Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth is a hex & counter wargame based on this iconic battle. This challenging solitaire wargame puts you in command of US Marine Regiments as they battle entrenched Japanese Battalions during the iconic 36-day Operation Detachment. Each game turn represents approximately four days, condensing the intense conflict into nine turns of strategic decision-making.
In Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth, your mission as the commander of US forces is to conquer the island of Iwo Jima to secure its three airfields and the iconic Mount Suribachi. The game simulates the 36-day battle in nine turns, with each turn representing approximately four days.
Victory is determined at the end of Turn 9 by calculating your Victory Points. You earn VP’s by: Eliminating Japanese units, Capturing key objectives on time and Japanese surrender. You can lose VP’s if: You play too many Special Orders and/or you suffer too many US casualties. Your final VP score will give you an assessment of your performance, ranging from a “pen-pushing job” (1 or less to 5 VP) to an “incredible victory” (19-20 VP).
I think that a new company selling out their first release is probably pretty rare in our hobby but Neva did it and it is partly because a good solitaire game is always in demand and their focus on quality, in both game play and components, speaks to wargamers and word will spread fast once it is out. So what is different in this new Revised Edition?
Because we are heading back to the printers, we saw the perfect opportunity to integrate our community feedback directly into the game. The Revised Edition will feature:
Upgraded Map: A minor visual tweak where hill hex frames are slightly thicker, making them much easier to identify during intense gameplay.
Box Art Variant: A fresh, slight variation of the original box art (while keeping the classic spirit of the original design).
Fully Integrated Updates: All components from our Update Kit (detailed below) will come standard inside the box!
5. Rebels Against Rebellion from Flying Pig Games Currently on Kickstarter
About 18 months ago, while attending Buckeye Game Fest in Columbus, Ohio, we met up with David Thompson to get a quick look at a few of his newest upcoming games at the time including Line of Fire: Burnt Moon from Osprey Games and the very interesting American Civil War game with a twist called Rebels Against Rebellion from Flying Pig Games. I got to play Rebels Against Rebellion and very much enjoyed the game and what it was trying to convey about the lack of support for the secession of Tennessee from the Union as most of the residents of Scott County voted against breaking away during the American Civil War. The game pits the local groups against each other as the Free and Independent State of Scott fights against the local secessionist residents as violent confrontations between Loyalist and secessionist-aligned partisans and outlaws engaged in raids on farms, stealing livestock, and destroying property. Since that time, the game has progressed and has already launched on Kickstarter.
From the game page, we read the following:
Rebels Against Rebellion is a card-driven war game designed by award-winning designers, David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin. The cards in your deck represent the units and locations under your control. Each turn you will play cards to perform actions on the board and to add, remove, and improve the cards in your deck. The player who most successfully spreads their control across Scott County is the winner.
Tennessee’s role in the American Civil War and the Secession Crisis was marked by significant internal divisions between its eastern, middle, and western regions. In early 1861, when South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, Tennessee’s legislature resisted the idea. However, following the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, Tennessee was forced to readdress its position. On June 8, 1861, a state referendum resulted in a decisive vote to secede.
Despite this formal decision, Tennessee remained divided. In the eastern part of the state, loyalist sentiment was strong. East Tennessee had overwhelmingly voted against secession in the 1861 referendum, while West and Middle Tennessee overwhelmingly supported secession.
As tensions escalated, residents of East Tennessee found themselves forced to take sides, often leading to violent confrontations. Loyalist- and secessionist-aligned partisans and outlaws engaged in raids on farms, stealing livestock, and destroying property. The establishment of local militia groups known as the home guard sought to defend loyalists. These small militias acted in secret, launching surprise attacks on Confederate soldiers and secessionist raiders, but they also faced constant threats from the Confederate army and local secessionist groups.
Of the thirty-one counties in East Tennessee, none voted against succession by a higher margin than Scott County. With a vote of 521 to 19 in favor of rejecting secession, the county’s stance was clear. Local residents so opposed the Confederacy that later in 1861, the county court approved a protest resolution declaring the county’s secession from the State of Tennessee and the creation of a “Free and Independent State of Scott.”
This is the story of the Free and Independent State of Scott during the Civil War.
If you are interested, we did an interview video with David while attending Buckeye Game Fest in the spring of 2025 and you can watch that at the following link for more information on the game:
Because I know that many of you will be paying this one solitaire, Denver did an overview video of the solitaire mode and you can watch that at the following link:
As of August 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $24,531 toward $10,000 funding goal with 450 backers. The campaign will conclude on Tuesday, August 18th at 12:00pm EDT.
6. Lee’s War: The War in Virginia 1861-65 from Worthington Publishing Currently on Kickstarter
One of the subjects that Worthington Publishing does really well is the American Civil War. They have their Civil War Brigade Battle Series that we have enjoyed and they really have a way of making these ACW games playable yet integrating some of the most important historical aspects to keep them grounded in history. Their newest series is focused on the Strategic Level and is supposed to be a 3 volume series. The first entry in the series is called Lee’s War: The War in Virginia 1861-65 and is currently on Kickstarter.
From the game page, we read the following:
Lee’s War is Volume I in what I hope to be a 3 Volume set on the American Civil War. It is meant to show the difficulties each side faced during the war. There is no plan currently for a full war campaign scenario. Players are given scenarios based on the campaigns and complete years of the war. I hope you enjoy playing the short crisp 2 – 3-hour scenarios giving an intense game experience as well as a study in Civil War command.
If this game is successful then Volume II, tentatively titled Grant’s War will be the Western Theater along the Mississippi from 1861 to 1864. Volume III, titled Sherman’s War, will be the Western Theater and the battle for Eastern Tennessee and Georgia from 1861 to 1865.
The game is for 2 or more players but is highly solitaire friendly (one player playing both sides) due to the random nature of certain rules such as Dice Differential and combat die rolls.
Lee’s War is a strategic level hex and counter war game for 2 or more players of the entire American Civil War in Virginia from 1862 – 1865. Leadership is highlighted using counters representing the combat leaders of the war. The destruction of the opposing players forces are the main objectives of the game, followed by the occupation of key cities or rail lines. The political aspects of the war are not reflected in the game per say, however they are reflected in the Victory Conditions. The longer the south drug out the war, and the more Union casualties inflicted, the better the chance that Lincoln would lose the 1864 election, and a peace Candidate (probably McClellan) would end the war with southern independence.
Here is the current 14 scenario list:
First Manassas / Historic 4 turns or optional long game 8 turns (July 1 – August 31, 1861)
The Peninsula Campaign / 10 turns (April 1 – June 15, 1862)
The Peninsula Campaign Plus Seven Days 16 turns (April 1 – July 31, 1862)
Second Manassas / 7 turns (July 14 – August 31, 1862)
As of August 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $27,212 toward its $1,861 funding goal with 304 backers. The campaign will conclude on Saturday, August 15th at 4:00pm EDT.
7. Warfighter: The WWII Eastern FrontSpecial Forces Card Game from Dan Verssen Games Currently on Kickstarter
The Warfighter system from Dan Verssen Games is a card based game designed for 1 to 6 players. You can play solo or cooperatively against the AI to complete World War II squad-level combat missions. One of my favorite parts of the game is at the start of each mission, you will select one or more Player Soldiers, equip them with skills, weapons, and combat gear within the mission’s Resource limit. You then fight your way through hostile territory and engage enemy soldiers, as you attempt to reach and complete your mission objective. Every mission is a stand-alone game. You build your Soldiers, select your Gear, and then run your mission. Within 30 to 60 minutes you will have succeeded or failed. We simply love the system and prefer the WWII focused modules (we really hated Fantasy!) and are very excited to see that they are doing this WWII Eastern Front offering as I think that it will offer a new and interesting view of the history.
From the game page, we read the following:
Warfighter WWII Eastern Front recreates the brutal skirmishes fought across the vast Soviet battlefields of World War II, where Soviet Red Army and German forces clashed for shattered cities, strategic strongholds, and hard-won ground in some of the harshest climactic conditions of the war. You will face fierce resistance from enemy troops, but the battlefield itself, from deep snow and choking mud to bitter cold and broken terrain, can prove equally deadly.
Do you have what it takes to defend the Rodina and drive the invader from our soil?
Warfighter WWII Eastern Front is the latest title in the Warfighter WWII Series, which includes other core sets for the Europe, Pacific, Mediterranean and North Africa Theatres of Operation. The Eastern Front has been an area of interest which we have been discussing for a time, and we began research and design work in January 2025. Now, the game design is complete, and we are ready to present it for crowdfunding support.
A key part of the game is squad building and mission planning. You decide which soldiers go on the mission, and which skills, weapons and gear to equip them with, best suited for the objective you are attacking. You control their actions and resolve all combat against hostiles and events encountered, but do not take too long, as the timer is counting down!
As a solitaire wargame, the game’s hostile response system handles all the enemy decisions and actions which will oppose your squad and thwart your mission plans. You will have to respond to the unexpected events and hostile attacks, as well as challenging weather and terrain, to make it to the objective and complete the victory conditions. Glory for the Motherland! Slava Rodina!
Along with the Eastern Front Core Box, there are seven Expansions which will allow you to extend your gameplay to include more armed forces and battles. The expansions offered with the Eastern Front core box feature Penal Battalions, Airborne, Partisans, as well as the Soviet Winter, Soviet Winter Vehicles and the Raid on Peenemünde.
We have also created the Critical Hit Deck pack, a new type of expansion which introduces critical hits to Soldiers and Hostiles alike, to add some cinematic flair and drama to your stories. All expansions are designed to be playable with the core set, and they add new Soldiers, Missions and Objectives, Gear, Skills, Locations, Hostiles and Events to your gameplay.
As of August 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has raised $24,469 toward its $20,000 funding goal with 151 backers. The campaign will conclude on Monday, August 3rd at 3:00pm EDT.
8. Lee Moves North: Campaigns of Antietam and Gettysburg from GMT Games
Several years ago, Mark Herman designed a unique and simple American Civil War game called Gettysburg that appeared in C3i Magazine #32. That game became the basis for his new Civil War Heritage Series with the first volume being Rebel Fury that focused on five battles from the Chancellorsville and Chickamauga Campaigns and Volume II being Army of the Potomac. Mark has now advanced the series with the upcoming Volume III called Lee Moves North: Campaigns of Antietam and Gettysburg that was announced this past month by GMT Games.
From the game page, we read the following:
Lee Moves North is a standalone game that covers the Confederate invasions that led to the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg. Lee Moves North is the third volume in Mark Herman’s Civil War Heritage Series that began with the Charles S. Roberts Award winning Rebel Fury (Best American Civil Wargame of 2024).
Lee Moves North is a low-complexity, grand tactical simulation that won the James F. Dunnigan Award for Playability and Design. Its unique combat system generates a detailed narrative that perhaps for the first time allows you to fully experience the risk calculus of a Civil War Army General.
If you know how to play Rebel Fury or Army of the Potomac, you can play the one map battles of Antietam and Gettysburg right out of the box. The game comes with 13 scenarios, 7 of which are played on one map to include 4 DOG (the four days of Gettysburg) with the remainder using all or some number of its EIGHT grand tactical maps, plus a standalone Theater scenario. The thirteenth bonus scenario covers Jubal Early’s 1864 invasion that led to the battle of the Monocacy River.
Through Lee Moves North you will experience these famous battles in a way that you have not seen them before. The grand tactical level is about maneuver combinations prior to and during a battle but make no mistake you will also see the brutal nature of Civil War combat. As the general leading an army, you will have player agency over when, where, and how often to attack using the unique Rebel Fury combat system. Following the combat narratives that are in every book that you have ever read on the Civil War you will experience the frustration of seeing your assaults fail more often than they succeed yet the better general is the one whose plans turn this historical reality into victory.
While we have not yet played Army of the Potomac, we have very much enjoyed the system and its first volume Rebel Fury. Here is a look at our video review for Rebel Fury:
If you are interested in Lee Moves North: Campaigns of Antietam and Gettysburg, you can pre-order a copy for $82.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1253-lee-moves-north.aspx
9. Rowing to Hades: Fast Playing Naval Battles of the Ancient World from GMT Games
Ancients games are always a good time and if that game has naval units, including triremes, Greek fire ships and the like sign me up. This past month, GMT announced this new game from designer Jason Walonoski called Rowing to Hades:Fast Playing Naval Battles of the Ancient World. Jason is a newer designer with his first game called Epipolae: The Athenian Expedition in Sicily, 415-413 BCE, which is a part of the Levy & Campaign Ancients Series. I share that because he knows something about Ancients and I also think that he is a good designer with a good approach.
From the game page, we read the following:
Rowing to Hades is a squadron-level naval wargame set in the ancient era. The era of oars, not sails. Rams, not broadsides.
Inspired by classics such as War Galley (GMT), Trireme (Avalon Hill) and the Commands & Colors system, it will appeal to gamers who want to enjoy quick naval battles at a different scale and complexity level.
A single battle can be completed in 30-60 minutes. There are scenarios for the Greco-Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars as well as a campaign system to link multiple battles together in an afternoon.
A key design goal was to create a fun quick-playing game, not a simulation. Many details are abstracted, while maintaining historical flavor.
Combat is simple and quickly resolved. After all units have moved, they may Ram. If units have not moved, they may conduct Melee.
Attackers roll a base number of dice determined by the unit type (different types of units roll different numbers of dice for ramming and melee), with the number of dice increasing or decreasing for factors like attacking from the rear, using a special maneuver card, or the enemy formation (for example, line abreast, line ahead, or kyklos).
I am very much interested in this one. Tactical level naval combat is something that is very appealing and this one looks to be on the lighter side of the spectrum but offers enough depth that it should be a very interesting experience.
If you are interested in Rowing to Hades: Fast Playing Naval Battles of the Ancient World, you can pre-order a copy for $55.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1252-rowing-to-hades.aspx
10. Commands & Colors: Ancients 8th Printing from GMT Games
Commands & Colors: Ancients depicts warfare from approximately 3,000 BC to the opening of the Middle Ages in 400 AD, which is quite a spread across time encompassing different strategies, tactics and even technology. CC: Ancients uses the standard card activation system which identifies a number of units that can take actions in one of three areas on the board, including the Left, Center and Right. This card system is standard to the series and really keeps the game light and fun as you sometimes simply cannot control take the actions you need to in order to win the game.
One of the reasons that I like Ancients and how it implements the system is that the scale changes during each of the battles represented. This means that some of the scenarios will have an Infantry unit representing an entire legion of fighters, while in other scenarios a unit may just represent a few warriors. This flexibility makes the game really interesting and you have to learn how best to use each of your units in each of the settings. This really adds to the replayability factor as well because you are learning from each scenario.
The unit variety in this one is interesting as compared to other games in the series such as Battle Cry and Memoir ’44 as each of those volumes had just three types of different units. In Ancients though there are multiple different types or classes of Infantry. Units are rated according to their makeup and in some ways their tactics and are placed in three neat and tidy categories including Light, Medium and Heavy. In the ranks of the Light Infantry, there are the standard Light Infantry, Auxilia, Light Bow and Light Sling for example. In looking at the other types of units there are Cavalry, Chariots, War Machines, Leaders, and the best part Elephants. The game comes with very clear and well done player aids that outline the different abilities of each type of unit and help you with an understanding of their movement, combat dice and any special abilities.
The final best thing about the game is the number of different engagements portrayed and how each of them uses different units and will require you to think on your toes about how best to utilize your assets. The battles covered include Akragas, Crimissos River, Ticinus River, Lake Trasimenus, Cannae, Dertosa, Castulo, Baecula, Ilipa, and Zama. All in all, I find Ancients to be a simple yet fulfilling gateway to the series and would recommend it heartily to anyone interested in getting on board.
From the game page, we read the following:
Commands & Colors: Ancients allows you to re-fight epic battles of the ancient world. Here the focus is on the two rivals for power in the Western Mediterranean – Carthage and Rome. Will you, as Hannibal, triumph over larger Roman armies; or as Scipio Africanus, will you beat Hannibal with newer tactics of your own?
Units in both armies can only move and fight when ordered. The command playing cards supply those orders, providing an element of luck that creates a fog of war and presents players with both challenges and opportunities. You must maximize your opportunities by playing your command cards judiciously. How well you handle the diverse units, their weapons, and the terrain, will determine victory.
Commands & Colors: Ancients contains the battles of Akragas, Crimissos River, Ticinus River, Lake Trasimenus, Cannae, Dertosa, Castulo, Baecula, Ilipa, and Zama.
11. Commands & Colors: Napoleonics 6th Printing from GMT Games
I will be honest with you, when we first played Commands and Colors, I was really leaning toward Ancients as my favorite one. But that all changed once we got the grand daddy of them all on the table in Napoleonics. To me, I really enjoy the added layers of depth to this one. It has six expansions for a reason as they have tried to capture the intricacies of each nation and their unique abilities and fighting styles to make for very highly stylized game.
Of all the C&C games this one is on the richer end of the scale, especially as you add in the expansions. The little bits of chrome make the combats more tactical. You can put your infantry into square formation to counter cavalry charges, but that comes with it’s own sub set of limitations. Each nation has their own special ability, and then each of their units have their own characteristics. An example of which are the Spaniards’ Infantry being straight up not as good as others. They roll dice equal to their number of blocks -1 for example. Each faction has strengths and weaknesses which gives you a little more to think about. Again, nothing overwhelming, and nothing you can’t handle but Napoleonics just has that extra richness and detail that brings the game to life and makes each play feel different from the last.
There are a few new differences in this one. Leaders play a very important role on the battlefield. They don’t add to attack but keep units in formation and from breaking. You must try to keep the Leaders away from the front line because they can become casualties but you need them to keep order on the battlefield as they will allow units to ignore some symbols.
Another major difference is in how units do when they are reduced. In all previous versions of the C&C system, the number of remaining blocks in a unit was not factored into the strength of that unit’s attack. If they had three units left, they would still roll their maximum 2 dice. But now that has changed and I really like this one. The basic attack strength of a unit is equal to the number of its blocks.
The color and the pageantry of a Napoleonics battle is hard to ignore and this one has a lot of substance to the game that the other volumes don’t approach. I will play Napoleonics at any time and relish the chance to learn new strategies and try out new tactics with the multitude of different units found in each expansion.
In the end, Commands and Colors is a fantastic system that has a little bit of everything that will appeal to any wargamer’s taste. I recently played Tricorne and man was that a fascinating experience. We also played the new one from GMT from 2019 Medieval and enjoyed it, and actually really liked some of the new additions, but just were let down by the theme. If you haven’t tried C&C yet, what are you waiting for? Pick a historical period you like and give it a try. You won’t be disappointed!
From the game page, we read the following:
The Napoleonic historical period has always been one of our favorites and was actually the second historical game that we developed using the Commands & Colors system. The Wars of Napoleon rules at first glance may seem more complex than other Commands & Colors games, but if you are familiar with the game system, you are only a few short steps away from taking Command. Even if you have never played before, learning the fundamentals of the game system is straightforward and will be an enjoyable endeavor.
For the game group in Orlando, Wars of Napoleon is one of our favorites. There is a wealth of subtle and bold features that set it apart from other historical periods and it truly embraces the tactical doctrines of France and the various nations that fought against Napoleon.
The Napoleonic period showcases a unique balance between the roles of Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery on the battlefield.
In combat, a unit’s battle strength is directly tied to the number of blocks present in the unit. Therefore, as a unit suffers block loses its combat effectiveness is reduced.
An Infantry unit, by forming square, can reduce the effectiveness of the most gallant Cavalry charge.
Artillery in combined arms combat along with an Infantry or Cavalry melee attack can produce the most devastating results.
As with other Commands & Colors games, the battle dice resolve combat quickly and the Command cards provide a fog of war and will present players with new challenges and opportunities for victory.
When in Command, the battlefield tactics you will need to execute conform remarkably well to the historical advantages and limitations inherent to each Napoleonic Army. For example, as the French Commander you will want to maneuver your infantry units into a position to take advantage of their melee attack dice bonus. While a British Commander will want his line infantry to take up a defensive position and stand and volley fire with a dice bonus. The other major powers also have similar seemingly simple advantages that can impact a battle and will influence your Command style for that army.
The core Wars of Napoleon game will feature French, British and Portuguese troops, while the expansions will showcase one Coalition army that opposed Napoleon.
12. Pacific War: The Struggle Against Japan, 1941-1945 Deluxe Edition 2nd Printing from GMT Games
Both Alexander and I love Empire of the Sun and really enjoy Mark Herman designs. Now I know that Pacific War is not EotS but it definitely was a precursor and led to its design and development. Unfortunately, I did not play the original Pacific War as I was 12 years old and focused on other things (baseball, football) and other games (mainly Dungeons & Dragons and other role playing in my teens). So, this one interests me because it will be a new experience for me.
From the game page we read the following:
Pacific War is a Strategic wargame that takes you from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the climatic summer of 1945… from Australia to China… from Burma to Hawaii… from the defense of Wake Island through the invasion of Guadalcanal culminating in the desperate battles to defend the Japanese Home Islands.
Strategic wargame that covers the entirety of the Pacific Theater of World War II…pretty big game, both in scale and distance. For a game to cover the entire theater, it has to be deep and have various systems to cover all of the different types of actions. Here is an answer on this aspect frog the game page:
For the first time in a Pacific Theater game, size, subtlety, and ease of play has come together in a game of sharp action and historical accuracy. Players can become familiar with the layered Pacific War systems in the solitaire Engagement scenarios, then fight their way through increasingly panoramic Battle, Campaign, and Strategic two player and multi-player Scenarios. As they learn the game’s basic maneuver and combat systems, they will then layer on more advanced systems for Strategic bombing, submarine attacks on merchant shipping, search and detection, amphibious assaults, and extensive Operations driven by their command decisions.
As this game is a reprint and updating of a classic, the first thing I thought about was what has changed in the design? Mark answered this question very well in the game write up on the game page:
So, what will change in the new version? The structure and feel of the design will be unchanged, so if you played it in your youth, you already know how to play. That said, a devoted number of players have been playing this game for 35 years and I have incorporated the best of their feedback into this new and final edition for this title. I am going over each scenario and updating them with information that I did not have available back in 1985. For example, I now have several Japanese translations of their official records that were only published in the last few years. Toward this end, I am adding at least six new campaign and strategic scenarios, so you can experience the entire panorama of the war in a long afternoon .
The key question that I consider when buying a new game is will it hit the table? The owners and reviewers who created the game’s reputation were excited that Pacific War had a layered set of scenarios that incorporated fifteen-minute solitaire learning engagements, two hour battles (such as Coral Sea and Santa Cruz that were used in a decade of tournaments), two to eight hour Campaigns (such as Malaya, Guadalcanal and Breaking the Bismarck barrier), and of course the Strategic scenarios that cover the entire war from a single year to the entire war. Will you ever play the entire war? It’s unlikely (to date I have only done it three times). However, Pacific Waris an operational level game and the Campaign scenarios are the heart and soul of this game system. Most play in an afternoon to completion. So, will it hit the table? Only you can answer that question, but from a time and learning perspective this game will support any time commitment you wish to make, to include the 100+ hour Strategic Scenario.
No cards, as this one is not a Card Driven Game, and lots of counters with 9 counter sheets listed. This is going to be blast and I hope that we get around to playing this game so that I can get a view of the original work from one of my favorite designers.
1. Bohemian Rhapsody – Battles of Wimpen: May 6, 1622 and Hochst: June 20, 1622 from High Flying Dice Games
Paul Rohrbaugh and his company High Flying Dice Games is a designer I love to follow. He is always doing games on smaller or lesser known conflicts and I just find his work to be superb and really draws me in. Recently I saw where he was releasing a new series of games covering the Thirty Years War called Bohemian Rhapsody – Battles of Wimpen: May 6, 1622 and Hochst: June 20, 1622.
From the game page, we read the following:
Bohemian Rhapsody – Battles of Wimpen: May 6, 1622 and Hochst: June 20th, 1622 is a game with 2 battles and both battles were part of the so called “Bohemian Phase” of the Thirty Years War and were one the result of the other. The first took place when the Catholic forces of Tilly and Cordoba surprised the smaller force of George Fredrick of Baden who was trying to cross the river Neckar near Wimpfen. Even if the Protestant forces made their best in the battle, thanks to a favorable uphill position, theywere defeated.
A month and an half later, another part of the Protestant troops moving around the Rhineland, the part commanded by Christian of Brunswick, was stopped by the same catholic army under Tilly and Cordoba near Hochst, while trying to cross the river Main. The ensuing battle was a sort of a draw, as at least a part of the catholic army was able to join the other catholic force under Mansfeld, but at so high a cost in losses, that the Palatinate theatre of the war was de facto closed.
If you are interested in Bohemian Rhapsody – Battles of Wimpen: May 6, 1622 and Hochst: June 20, 1622, you can order a copy for $20.95 from the High Flying Dice Games website at the following link: https://www.hfdgames.com/bohemia.html
2. La Conqueste: The French and Indian War 1754-1763 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 La Conqueste: The French and Indian War 1754-1763 from White Dog Games uses the States of Siege Series System and dives into the French & Indian War.
From the game page, we read the following:
Over 270 years ago, France controlled most of North America east of the Mississippi River. The British had colonized only along the Atlantic Coast and wanted to expand further west. Conflict between these two great powers in the New World was inevitable. The immediate issue in the new World was whether the upper Ohio River valley was to be a part of the British Empire, and therefore open for trade and settlement by English colonists, or part of New France. When, in 1754, war broke out between France and England in Europe, it quickly spread to the New World, where it was called the French and Indian War, and where two of the most famous generals in history fought one another: Wolfe and Montcalm.
In this exciting game of that titanic struggle in America designed by R. Ben Madison, you control the forces of New France against England and the British colonies as the epic nine-year long French and Indian War breaks out.
If you are interested in La Conqueste: The French and Indian War 1754-1763, you can order a copy for $60.00 from the White Dog Games website at the following link: https://www.whitedoggames.com/french-and-indian-war
3. Fortress of Oblivion: Iran in the Sasanian Era 224-651 AD from White Dog Games
Another new solitaire States of Siege Series offering this month from White Dog Games takes us to ancient Persia and Iran in the Sasanian Era covering the years of 224-651 AD. This one is also designed by R. Ben Madison and looks to be very interesting.
From the game page, we read the following:
Fortress of Oblivion is an exciting solitaire game by designer Ben Madison that puts the player in the role of the ancient Shahs of Iran during the Sasanian Era, 224-651 AD – or even later, if you survive! You will use the economic, military, and social resources of the Iranian Empire, called “Persia” in the west, to defend your realm against invading foreign armies from the west (Armenians and Romans, later called Byzantines), the east (China, Central Asian nomads, and the mighty empires and petty states of India), and marauding Himyarites and Ethiopians from the south, soon to be routed by your greatest foe: the giant Arab Caliphate!
If you are interested in Fortress of Oblivion: Iran in the Sasanian Era 224-651 AD, you can order a copy for $60.00 from the White Dog Games website at the following link: https://www.whitedoggames.com/fortressofoblivion
4. Santa Cruz 1797 Reprint from Bellica 3rd Generation
One well recieved wargame from 2017 was called Santa Cruz 1797 from Bellica 3rd Generation which was designed by Iván Cáceres. The game covers the British amphibious assault on the fortress at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in Spain and is a card driven siege game. Bellica 3rd Generation is now reprinting this game which has been out of stock pretty much everywhere with a new edition.
From the game page, we read the following:
Early morning on July 25, 1797…A squadron of His Britannic Majesty under the command of Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson set out to assault the fortifications of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The fight would be desperate and the first light of day would find the
On this occasion, in addition, Nelson lost his right arm due to an impact from a cannon (“El Tigre”) that is still preserved in the Museum of the Castle of San Cristobal, in Tenerife.
Santa Cruz 1797 is a game for two players in which each player has a well-defined role: the British must storm the city and occupy its key points while defeating the Spanish military forces, the Spanish must wait to see where his opponent lands and then launch into a tenacious and aggressive defense to defeat him.
The game is a block wargame and works with a card engine that allows players to act on the opponent’s turn and creates a situation of unparalleled tension and uncertainty until the end of the game.
If you are interested in Santa Cruz 1797Reprint, you can purchase a copy for 50,00 € ($57.00 in US Dollars) from the Bellica 3rd Generation website at the following link: https://bellica3g.com/en/product/santa-cruz-1797/
5. Lone Panther from Mike Lambo
Over the past several years, print and play solitaire wargames have gained a lot of traction in our hobby. A solitaire wargame that is very affordable at $10-$15 and can be purchased and downloaded online. What is not to like? And the name of Mike Lambo has been tied to a lot these games as he has designed 20+ of these titles and has built quite the rabid and loyal fanbase. His newest game is called Lone Panther and can be downloaded from Wargame Vault. I do know that typically these games are sold on Amazon but I have not seen this offering make it there as of yet.
From the game page, we read the following:
The German front in the Italian Po Valley is collapsing. Months of retreat, shattered divisions, and dwindling fuel have left the once‑proud Panzerwaffe reduced to scattered pockets of armour fighting desperately to hold back the Allied advance. In this flat, misty landscape of farms and villages, marshland, narrow roads and orchards, tanks are no longer committed in massed formations. Instead, single vehicles are thrown forward to plug gaps, delay Allied spearheads, or hold a vital crossroads.
You command one such machine, a Panther Ausf. G, operating alone, cut off from its parent battalion and reliant on its crew. Allied forces push north with growing momentum. British armour probes ahead, infantry screens advance through the fields, and fighter‑bombers circle overhead searching for targets of opportunity.
In this final phase of the Italian campaign, a Lone Panther can still shape the battlefield – if its Commander keeps his nerve.
Whilst this game is not a ‘narrative driven’ game as such, with a little imagination it will provide memorable stories. Some events are randomly generated, but the Player always has at least some degree of control over the level of risk they wish to take and how vulnerable they leave their Tank to these Events.
This game is designed to be easy to learn and good fun to play.
This is a solitaire wargame. You play the game, and the enemy is controlled by the game (or the Artificial Intelligence or ‘AI’). You will need at least 7, but preferably 9, standard six-sided dice (not included). There are 10 very replayable missions included with full colour maps and clear instructions.
It is highly recommended that the counters provided on the final page of the game are used to play this game. Simply stick them to card and cut them out. A video demonstrating how generally to do this can be found on the Mike Lambo Games YouTube channel. The easiest way to make these counters is to print or copy them onto an A4 printer label, leave the ink to dry completely, then peel the back and stick to 1-2mm card. Alternatively, any standard paper glue will do such as PVA. You can also find ‘Instructional Playthrough’ videos on the Mike Lambo Games YouTube Channel to see how the game plays.
6. Great War Battles Volume 2: Tankschlacht: Cambrai, 1917 from Revolution Games
World War I is always an interesting war to game. We have played our fair share of WWI games and pretty much enjoyed them all. The Great War Battles Series from Revolution Games is a wargame system designed by Kerry Anderson that simulates World War I engagements at the brigade and regimental level and the newest offering in the series is called Tankschlacht: Cambrai 1917, which is now available for purchase.
The Battle of Cambrai was a massive British offensive on the Western Front in France during World War I and was fought between November 20 and December 7, 1917. The battle is legendary for marking the first large-scale, effective use of massed tanks in warfare.
From the game page, we read the following:
Tankschlacht is the second game in the Great War Battles Series; the first being Death of an Army: Ypres, 1914. Tankschlacht is a brigade/regimental simulation of the Battle of Cambrai, November 20 – December 3, 1917. A two player game where players assume the role of the German and Allied troops as they desperately fight for the valuable position in the line.
7. Blind Swords Series Volume 13Early Threatens Washington: The Battle of Monacacy Junction, July 9, 1864 from Revolution Games
Blind Swords is a series that most all wargamers have heard of and played at least a few games that use the system. We have played several of these games including Shiloh: The First Day and Gettysburg: The First Day in the series from Revolution Games. Recently, they announced a new title in the series called Early Threatens Washington: The Battle of Monacacy Junction, July 9, 1864 designed by Mike Wimple.
From the game page, we read the following:
The Confederate’s 1864 Maryland Campaign, led by Lieutenant General Jubal Early, was designed to draw Union forces away from the siege of Petersburg, Virginia and pose a possible threat to Washington. On the morning of July 9, 1864 Early was in Frederick Maryland, ready to cross the Monocacy River and drive toward a lightly defended Washington. Opposing him was Union General Lew Wallace. Wallace put together a hurried defense using any available troops who delayed the Confederate offensive towards Washington long enough that battle hardened forces from Grant’s Army were able to reach the city and bolster its defenses. These additional forces proved sufficient to repel the threat to the city. Thus, the ensuing Battle of Monocacy Junction has been referred to by many historians as “The battle that saved Washington”.
Early Threatens Washington includes one introductory and two full battle scenarios. The all-day full battle scenario allows players to try various strategies for clearing the Georgetown Pike. Do you try Early’s plan of forcing his way across the Wooden and Railroad bridges while feigning interest in the other crossings or some other, more clever method? The half-day full battle scenario allows players to play out Early’s plan as it actually unfolded, ignoring the morning actions, and focusing on the afternoon climax of the battle. Even though the Union is outnumbered by the Confederates, the situation is balanced and offers tough choices for both players. The thirteenth game in Revolution Games’ popular Blind Swords system, Early Threatens Washington provides an immersive experience of tactical American Civil War combat without a heavy rules load. The game can be enjoyed solitaire, two-player or multi-player.
If you are interested in Blind Swords Series Volume 13Early Threatens Washington: The Battle of Monacacy Junction, July 9, 1864, you can order a copy for $70.00 ($55.00 for a Ziploc edition) from the Revolution Games website at the following link: https://stores.revolutiongames.us/early-threatens-washington-boxed-edition/
8. Stalingrad: Advance to the Volga, 1942 from Revolution Games
I love a good solitaire wargame. And if that game covers the famous Battle of Stalingrad mores the better! A few years ago, they released the first volume in a new Solitaire Area Movement Series called Stalingrad: Advance to the Volga, 1942 designed by Mike Rinella. Mike has done a slew of area movements games, such as Patton’s Vanguard and Last Battle, Ie Shima, and his designs are always interesting and playable.
I have played this one quite a few times, and have also played the follow up version called Manila: The Savage Streets, and the AI and the overall design itself really worked well to create a very interesting and challenging game. In fact, after 4 or 5 plays, I have yet to taste victory. I really have enjoyed my experience with Stalingrad: Advance to the Volga, 1942 as the game is well put together, well thought out and frankly just works. They now have reprinted the game and you can get a copy now after the game was out of print for a year or so.
From the game page, we read the following:
There can be little question Stalingrad was one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the entire Second World War. The campaign by the German 6th Army to crush the Soviet 62nd Army and capture the city has been the subject of numerous two-player designs. It is a situation known to most gamers but is presented here in a new and exciting SOLITAIRE format, the first in a series of single-player area movement games by publisher Take Aim Designs. Stalingrad: Advance to the Volga, 1942 puts the player in charge of the attacking and far more mobile German side while the game system handles the defending and largely static Soviet side. No two games will ever be the same. Each turn presents new and unique challenges for the player in the form of random events, uncertain supply deliveries, and unknown Soviet area strengths and defensive strategies.
The primary game is a nine-turn campaign covering the first great German assault on the city during September 1942. The deeper German forces advance, from the city’s less developed periphery to its urban and industrial core, the greater Soviet resistance becomes. The number of German units bled white, effectively out of action, mounts. German determination to secure a rapid victory, represented as “morale” in the game, gradually decreases. The player wins by equaling or exceeding historical German gains and loses if they fail to do so, or if morale falls too low.
Also included is a five-turn “Factory District Scenario” representing the second great German effort in October 1942. The challenge is now even greater: the player must capture all of Stalingrad in order to release divisions in time to cover the German flanks outside the city against the coming Soviet winter offense, which was not far off. With a setup time of less than 15 minutes, low counter density, endless variability, and quick playing time, Stalingrad: Advance to the Volga, 1942 will appeal to every level of player, from the novice to the grognard.
9. Drive on Voronezh, June 28-July 27, 1942 from Legion Wargames
I love Legion Wargames. They are just a solid publisher and Randy Lein is such a great guy. Recently, they started shipping a new game designed by John Theissen called Drive on Voronezh, June 28-July 27, 1942 that deals with combat on the East Front of World War II.
From the game page, we read the following:
The Battle of Voronezh was fought on the Eastern Front of World War II, in and around the strategically important city of Voronezh on the Don river, 450 km (280 mi) south of Moscow, from 28 June-27 July 1942, as the opening move of the German summer offensive that year. The German attack in this sector bit into parts of the Soviet Briansk and Southwestern Fronts with German panzer corps leading the drive.The German assault was conducted by the element of the 4th Panzer Army′s forces of Army Group South under commanded by General Hermann Hoth, who was under strict instructions not to get bogged down in street-to-street fighting.
The armored units of the 4th Panzer Army partly captured Voronezh on 6 July by occupying the western river-bank suburbs, however German troops were subjected to a Red Army counter-attack. The 4th Panzer Army was to be followed by the Sixth Army, and when Voronezh was occupied the former was to wheel south-eastward and move down the right bank of the Don towards Stalingrad as part of Operation Blau. It took two days for infantry divisions from the Army Group South to reach Voronezh to hold the line and free the Panzer troops; Adolf Hitler later came to believe that these two days, when combined with other avoidable delays on the drive south, allowed Marshal Semyon Timoshenko to reinforce the forces in Stalingrad before the 4th Panzer Army could arrive to allow taking of Stalingrad.
Drive on Voronezh covers this opening move in the Fall Blau offensive. The scale of the game is nine miles per hex and two days per turn. The basic units in the game are divisions with special brigades for the Germans and brigades/corps for the Russians. The game uses a basic I Go – You Go system but also includes special event chits that allow players to augment certain combat and movement situations.
If you are interested in Drive on Voronezh, June 28-July 27, 1942, you can order a copy for $46.00 from the Legion Wargames website at the following link: https://www.legionwargames.com/legion_DOV.html
10. Bear Trap: The Soviet-Afghan War, 1979-1989 from GMT Games
A few years ago, GMT announced a very cool looking game designed by Paul Daniels covering the Soviet-Afghan War from 1979-1989 called Bear Trap. The game was described as a block wargame that used a similar system to what was used in the design for Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan.
From the game page, we read the following:
Bear Trap is a quick-playing, low-complexity 2-player block wargame covering the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989).
In the Soviet–Afghan war, Insurgent groups—including the mujahideen—fought a guerrilla war against the Soviet 40th Army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) government. The game begins shortly after “Operation Storm-333” was executed at the end of 1979—in this coup, Hafizullah Amin (General Secretary of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) was killed, and Babrak Karmal, a Soviet loyalist, replaced him. By putting the Brezhnev Doctrine into practice, the Soviets sought to prop up the sympathetic local government and “solve the Russian Ice-lock Problem” while the Insurgents sought to expel the secularist government and foreign invaders.
Although the two sides in this conflict were fundamentally different in a variety of ways, they also faced some parallel challenges. For instance, they struggled to maintain loyalty. For the Soviets and the DRA, the DRA armed forces merely offered an opportunity for a paycheck, and there were cases where conscripts in the Soviet Army defected to the Mujahideen (e.g. Kazbek Hudalov). For the Insurgents, propaganda, threats, and promises to family drew would-be combatants away, as did injuries suffered from landmines and attacks on villages. Both sides also struggled to puncture the fog of war, not being able to secure reliable intel about force deployment and strength. And both faced various challenges around supply, communication, and coordination. Both sides needed to react to shifting strategies and developments over this decade long Cold War proxy war, where the landscape upon which it was fought presented many unique challenges.
Bear Trap is a spiritual successor to Sekigahara—building on the same core system. In both games, each player has their own deck of cards; players spend cards from their hand to activate areas or in combat to commit units to battle. This means fans of Sekigahara will find learning Bear Trap easy, but the feel and experience of the games are highly divergent. In addition to the difference in topics covered, other differences include:
In Bear Trap, forces are represented by blocks, stickered side hidden from the opponent, and the orientation of a block determines its disposition (i.e. the orientation of a block dictates whether it’s mobilized, fortified, disordered, poised to offer fire support to a battle initiated by friendly units, or ready to ambush enemy units). The orientation of a block also determines which battles it can join, whether card play is required to commit it to battle, and whether it can be moved or activated.
Bear Trap features an area-based map, rather than the point-to-point style found in Sekigahara.
The sequential combat system popularized in Sekigahara is utilized in Bear Trap, adapted to suit the setting. This includes the use of ‘loyalty challenges,’ making Bear Trap simulate the proneness of (for instance) Afghan forces to defect.
Bear Trap is, like Sekigahara, first and foremost a 2-player game—but Bear Trap includes a unique solo mode, built around a card assisted flowchart bot.
Bear Trap has fewer blocks than Sekigahara, and each player has fewer card types (‘suits’) in their decks.
Bear Trapintroduces ‘strategy’ cards—powerful event cards. Although it would be misleading to label Bear Trap a deck-building game, players will add 2 cards from a pool specific to their side each time they reshuffle their deck.
Bear Trap is not a “clone” of Sekigahara—they are very different games with differences in topic, feel, and mechanism, despite having an underlying shared game system. Bear Trap is also a more asymmetric game than Sekigahara. AlthoughBear Trap is a slight step up in complexity (relative to Sekigahara), the mechanics remain simple, and Bear Trap can be completed in 2-3 hours.
11. Fields of Despair: France 1914-1918 2nd Printing from GMT Games
Fields of Despair: France 1914-1918 is a medium weight 2 player hex-based strategic level block war game set on the Western Front of World War I. Players take control of either the Allies, including France, England, Belgium, the United States and an abstracted Russia or the mighty Central Powers fighting the war not only on land, but also at sea, and most importantly and probably one of the better and more interesting parts of the game, in the air all while having to focus on and make tough decisions about your economic and technological progression.
Fields of Despair uses a very unique and revolutionary block system designed to maintain the confusion and uncertainty of the Fog of War throughout the entire game. The reason that I consider this system revolutionary is that in most block games, the combat values of individual blocks usually range from one to four, so as you scan the battlefield and after a quick calculation in your head you can come up with a pretty good guesstimate of what force power is arrayed against you, while in FoD the combat value of blocks ranges from zero (dummy blocks) all the way to a maximum of twenty. This difference in value ranges alone has completely changed the block wargame and has created a very strategic game that can be quite deceptive and difficult to play well. The reason for this deception is that you can build up one block in a hex to 20 when in other block games this would require 4 or 5 blocks that have tipped your hand and help your opponent to gauge your strategy and react more effectively to counter that. But, this deception does have its limits as air reconnaissance, one of the best parts of the design, allows players to scout out the strength of units and remove that deception. But, you cannot simply scout with no opposition as your opponent can place their air units in that hex you are scouting to initiate aerial dogfights that will ruin your recon attempt.
Movement in the game is also very straightforward and simple and can be used as a deceptive tool as well in addition to the use of dummy blocks. Players are allowed to “make change” during the movement phase, which means a larger block can be broken apart into 2 separate blocks or can even be done in reverse by consolidating a few smaller blocks into a larger force. So after the movement phase, you will not be 100% confident in your enemy’s strength and will have to sometimes just throw your hesitancy out the window and attack. The Fog of War also isn’t lost after first contact with the enemy. Blocks remain hidden even when enemies occupy the same hex and stay hidden until one player decides to allocate an air squadron for reconnaissance or sends his men across no man’s land to attack.
I love that this game is so unique with the Strategic Reorganization element as well as the continuous battle for reconnaissance with the airplanes. I have played several block wargames and the way this is handled is very revolutionary and I am sure will be replicated in future block wargame designs. I also am very impressed with the tightness of the rules and how easy they were to understand and apply. For an ambitious wargame covering the entirety of the Western Front of World War I, a 24 page rule book was a shocker. But it is done very well and has very few rules problems.
If you are interested in Fields of Despair: France 1914-1918 2nd Printing, you can order a copy for $108.00 ($69.00 if you hurry and place your order before they ship in mid-August) from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-686-fields-of-despair-2nd-printing.aspx
12. Small Battles of the American Revolution Volume I: The Battle of Cowpens from GMT Games
While attending the World Boardgaming Championships 2 years ago, I was able to meet up with Dave Stiffler (acting as Developer on the project) and Bruno Sinigaglio who is the designer to get an early look at the upcoming debut release in the Small BoAR Series called The Battle of Cowpens.
I didn’t get any pictures because they didn’t have the components along to show but learned a lot about the design and how it changes the Battles of the American Revolution Series from GMT Games. First off, the scale is the major difference as it is 1/8th of the scale used in the normal series. This means 25 yard hexes and 2-3 men per counter. They also have included both rifle fire and musket fire which is a change as musket fire is simply an abstracted part of the close combat mechanic in BoAR. They also have added some new mechanics to account better for things like morale and being shaken or even shattered.
I have known about this game for a few months, actually nearly a year or so, but am very excited to see this one added to the P500 and hope that the reception is great and that the game does well because I would like to see more small battles covered in future volumes.
From the game page, we read the following:
Two critical battles were considered turning points in the American Revolutionary War: the Battle of Saratoga in New York and the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina. The Battle of Cowpens was a catalyst to a series of events that led eventually to the surrender of the British at Yorktown. Small BoAR Volume I, The Battle of Cowpens, puts players directly into the milieu of this decisive contest.
The goal of the Small BoAR design concept is to include small yet critical battles that otherwise do not fit the scale of the historically simulating and highly successful Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) system designed by Mark Miklos. This new system, aptly termed Small Battles of the American Revolution (Small BoAR), was designed by Bruno Sinigaglio working closely with Mark Miklos to preserve the continuity and popularity of the original Battles of the American Revolution game system.
Although extremely important to the history of the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Cowpens involved slightly over 1000 participants per side. In the Battles of the American Revolution system, which represents 100 men per strength point, this would equate to only ten or so combat factors per side. The scale for the battle of Cowpens, on the other hand, is 12 men per strength point, or one-eighth that of the BoAR system. The map scale is also correspondingly reduced to 25 yards per hex from the BoAR scale of 200 yards per hex. The time scale is approximately four minutes per turn as compared with one hour per turn in BoAR.
I think that one of the best parts of this new series, aside from the size and scope of the battles covered being smaller, is that they have not just rested on their laurels and reproduced the BoAR System but have added new mechanics and elements to better deal with these battles and to model the smaller scale battles.
Although Army Morale, the game-within-the-game in BoAR, is faithfully preserved in Small BoAR, and the Small BoAR sequence of play resembles that of BoAR and will look familiar to anyone who has played games in the original series, certain novel elements appropriate to the new scaling have been added. These include:
The ability to designate cavalry units in reserve
Artillery Fire conducted both offensively and defensively
Simultaneous ranged musket Fire as a complement to ranged rifle fire
A Cavalry Reserve Phase where units designated in Reserve may charge after the normal Close Combat Phase
And Opportunity Card Management
As mentioned earlier, I had the honor of sitting down with Bruno Sinigaglio and Dave Stiffler to discuss this new series and The Battle of Cowpens. Here is a link to that video interview:
If you are interested in Small Battles of the American Revolution Volume I: The Battle of Cowpens, you can order a copy for $75.00 ($48.00 if you hurry and place your order before they ship in mid-August) from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1140-the-battle-of-cowpens.aspx
13. Twilight Struggle 20th Anniversary Hall of Fame Edition from GMT Games
As if you don’t know but Twilight Struggle is a 2-player game simulating the forty-five year ideological struggle known as the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States which can be played in 2-3 hours. The entire world is the stage on which these two countries “fight” to make the world safe for their own ideologies and way of life. The game starts right after the end of World War II in the midst of the ruins of Europe as the two new “superpowers” of the world squabble over what is left and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.
I remember my first impressions of Twilight Struggle was that it needed some graphic design improvements and the game just didn’t grab me visually but that was all erased the first time we played as the topic and the mechanics just really spoke to me. This game was our gateway to the CDG mechanic and I still have a real soft spot in my heart for it. Well, this month I got my wish and this new edition of TS with upgraded art is now on the P500.
From the game page, we read the following comments and a bit about the history of Twilight Struggle on the new offering:
“Twilight Struggle is my all-time favorite game. It is a brilliant first design by the team of Jason Matthews and Ananda Gupta. It takes the card-driven genre of games like We The People, Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage, and Wilderness War to its highest peak. Every game is different and the game gets better and better as you become more familiar with the individual cards. You are surprised as hidden combos are revealed game after game. Every turn is filled with tension as you try to figure out the best way to play the hand of cards you’ve been dealt. Gaming simply doesn’t get any better than this”. – Alan R. Moon
That quote from legendary designer Alan Moon, spoken not long after Twilight Struggle was released in 2005, helped sell out the game’s first print run and introduced thousands of gamers to Twilight Struggle. Fortunately, they mostly shared Alan’s opinion of the game and they told their friends. Soon, a groundswell of play and support for the game ran rampant across the gaming community as tens of thousands of players immersed themselves in the tense competition and compelling storytelling of Twilight Struggle. As a result, Twilight Struggle was the #1 ranked game on BGG for over five years, something no other game has achieved.
Soon there was a digital version of the game for Steam and tablets, introducing hundreds of thousands of additional gamers to GMT’s most commercially and critically successful all-time game and supporting a total of twelve sold-out versions of the boardgame. And over those years, the awards rolled in, reflecting the joy and challenge that Twilight Struggle brought to so many gamers: BGG Golden Geek Game of the Year, IGA Game of the Year, Charles Roberts Awards, and more.
Then, in the summer of 2024 at its Origins convention, GAMA (Game Manufacturers of America) bestowed on Twilight Struggle its most prestigious award, inducting Twilight Struggle into the GAMA Hall of Fame. Designers Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews attended the awards ceremony and jointly accepted the honor on their behalf and for all of the Twilight Struggle team at GMT.
As we now approach the 20th anniversary of the game’s release, and in light of the recent Hall of Fame honor, we are thrilled to announce a new edition of our most successful game. We invite you to check out Twilight Struggle 20th Anniversary Hall of Fame Edition.
So what exactly is new and different about this edition:
Twilight Struggle 20th Anniversary Hall of Fame Edition adds even more beauty and play options to the original game. Here are some of the additions you’ll see in this new Edition:
A brand new game box by the incomparable Terry Leeds
A double sided map with a new Terry Leeds map on the front and the familiar Deluxe Edition Mark Simonitch map on the back
The Turn Zero and Alternative Space Race variants included.
A new alt-history scenario, “Red Sun Rising” with new cards.
A collection of promotional cards including the Kickstarter Promo Packs #1 and #2 and a selection of promo cards from foreign editions of Twilight Struggle
A background booklet including retrospective essays from the designers
We cannot think of a better way to commemorate the Cold War, this vital piece of world history, than with our freshest and richest version of Twilight Struggle to date.
Here is a comment from Gene Billingsley about this game offering:
We’re really proud of Jason and Ananda and what they and their brilliant game have meant to GMT over these past 20 years—and for all of the TS team that helped to make their design vision a reality. And we’re so honored and really happy that Twilight Struggle was inducted into the GAMA Hall of Fame at Origins this past summer. That is a rare honor. So, to celebrate both the 20th Anniversary of Twilight Struggle and it’s HoF induction, we are adding a new Twilight Struggle 20th Anniversary Hall of Fame Edition to our P500 list this month. As you can see from the artwork, this is a beautiful new edition, featuring a new box and mounted map from Terry Leeds (with the Mark Simonitch map on the back side) as well as all new card fronts (we’re keeping the backs standard so there’s no problem mixing in cards from other versions). It’s also chock-full of a lot of new or hard-to-find play value, with a new scenario and a variety of cards and other game add-ons all in one new package.
With the recent advances in art and production, I have often longed for GMT to retouch some of their best games and give them the art and components that they deserve. It looks like this might be the first step in that direction and I would argue there are other great games that deserve a similar treatment including Here I Stand, Labyrinth, Wilderness War and others.
14. Falling Crescent: The British Offensive: September-October 1918 from Compass Games
More WWI is never a bad thing. Particularly when that game focuses on a front that doesn’t get a lot of love in the wargaming world. But Falling Crescent is such a game that focuses on the British offensive against the Turks in Palestine in the fall of 2018.
From the game page, we read the following:
Falling Crescent is an operational-level game of the British offensive of September-October 1918 against the Turks in Palestine. One player controls the Turkish, German, and Bedouin forces, and the other, British, French, and Arab guerilla forces. A three-player version, commanding the Arabs separately is also included.
After lasting for centuries, the Ottoman Turks’ hold on Palestine is at risk. British forces and Arabs in revolt threaten to bring down the Ottomans and their Crescent flag. The game is one of skill, in which it is entirely possible to change the course of history. This game proves to be an interesting challenge as modifications to the design, such as strategic and operational cards, bring a new feel to the classic model also built-in!
In designing Falling Crescent, designer Roger Nord brought out the flavor of encirclement and surrender, of charging cavalry and elusive Arab guerillas. The Palestine campaign is one of history’s last great cavalry actions. In this fluid scene, local plans can often go astray unforeseen developments may hinder or even alter command plans. The players’ cards, new to this edition, add their part to the fortunes of war with reactive tactics and shifting events.
The game’s pace is swift, and we believe players will enjoy it as a World War I game devoid of attrition and stalemate. Especially in the use of cavalry and air, they will see a hint of things to come in 1939-1940, when a later war will no longer be fought with horses and canvas biplanes, but with treaded armor and screaming dive bombers.
I am very much looking forward to this one. Games on this subject and with this scale are pretty rare and the comment in the description about “one of history’s last great cavalry actions” definitely has my attention!
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 Nuts! Publishing!
El Grande zeigt eindrucksvoll, wie viel Spannung aus wenigen Regeln entstehen kann. Kaum ein anderes Spiel lässt Mehrheiten auf einem gemeinsamen Spielplan so lebendig und umkämpft wirken.
Mit El Grande veröffentlichten Wolfgang Kramer und Richard Ulrich 1995 einen Titel, der bis heute als einer der einflussreichsten Vertreter seines Genres gilt. Die Neuauflage (2023) bringt den Klassiker mit überarbeitetem Material zurück auf den Tisch, ohne an den Regeln etwas Grundlegendes zu verändern.
Wir übernehmen die Rolle spanischer Adelsfamilien und entsenden unsere Caballeros in die verschiedenen Regionen des Landes. Dort versuchen wir, bei den Wertungen möglichst weit vorne zu liegen. Wer nach neun Runden die meisten Punkte gesammelt hat, gewinnt den Titel El Grande. Das klingt zunächst schlicht, entwickelt aber erstaunlich schnell eine Spannung, die viele moderne Spiele trotz deutlich umfangreicherer Regeln nicht erreichen.
Aufbau und Spielablauf
Ein Spielzug in El Grande beginnt bereits mit der Wahl einer Machtkarte. Wer eine hohe Zahl spielt, darf früher handeln, erhält aber weniger neue Caballeros. Danach wählen die Spielerinnen und Spieler reihum eine der ausliegenden Aktionskarten. Mit ihr bringen sie neue Caballeros aus ihrem Hof in die Regionen rund um den König, werfen sie verdeckt ins Castillo oder verändern die Lage auf dem Spielplan durch eine Sonderaktion. Ständig stellt sich dabei die Frage, ob man eine bestehende Mehrheit absichert, einen Gegner verdrängt oder bereits die nächste Wertung vorbereitet. Jede Entscheidung wirkt sich unmittelbar auf die Verteilung der Macht in Spanien aus und wichtig: Jede Karte darf nur einmal pro Partie genutzt werden.
Anschließend wandern neue Caballeros auf den Spielplan. Dabei richtet sich fast jeder Blick auf die aktuelle Position des Königs. Er bestimmt, welche Regionen überhaupt verstärkt werden dürfen und welche Gebiete vor Veränderungen geschützt sind. Kaum wurde eine vermeintlich sichere Mehrheit aufgebaut, verändert eine Aktionskarte die Lage wieder komplett.
Genau daraus zieht El Grande seine Stärke. Niemand spielt für sich allein. Jede Figur auf dem Spielplan ist sichtbar, jede Verschiebung verändert die Mehrheitsverhältnisse. Während einige Regionen hart umkämpft sind, entstehen anderswo plötzlich Chancen, die zuvor niemand auf dem Schirm hatte. Ständig wird gezählt, verglichen und neu bewertet.
Überraschungen aus dem Castillo
Besonders gelungen ist das Castillo, der große Turm in der Tischmitte. Dort verschwinden Caballeros verdeckt und bleiben bis zur nächsten Wertung geheim. Immer wieder richten sich die Blicke auf den Turm, weil niemand genau weiß, welche Überraschung dort wartet. Wenn die Figuren schließlich ausgeschüttet werden, können ganze Wertungen kippen.
Trotz dieser ständigen Konkurrenz bleibt der Ablauf erstaunlich zugänglich. Die Grundregeln sind schnell erklärt, doch die Entscheidungen bleiben bis zur letzten Wertung interessant. El Grande verlangt Aufmerksamkeit für das Geschehen am Tisch, belohnt gute Einschätzungen und sorgt regelmäßig für Momente, in denen sorgfältig geplante Mehrheiten plötzlich ins Wanken geraten.
Fragen und Antworten
Wie lange dauert eine Partie El Grande?
Eine Partie dauert bei uns (zu fünft) meist bis zu 120 Minuten. Das ist aber abhängig von Spielerzahl und Erfahrung der Gruppe.
Für wen eignet sich El Grande?
Vor allem für Spielerinnen und Spieler, die direkte Konkurrenz auf einem gemeinsamen Spielplan mögen und Freude daran haben, Mehrheiten auszukämpfen.
Was macht El Grande besonders?
Die Kombination aus offenen Mehrheiten, begrenzten Machtkarten und dem geheimen Castillo sorgt für ständige Spannung bis zur Schlusswertung.
Mein Fazit nach vielen Testrunden
Die Regeln sind klar, der Ablauf bleibt auch nach mehreren Partien nachvollziehbar und dennoch entstehen immer wieder neue Situationen auf dem Spielplan.
Besonders überzeugt das direkte Ringen um die Regionen. Punkte werden nicht über persönliche Auslagen oder kleine Einzelaufgaben gesammelt, sondern dort, wo alle hinschauen. Dadurch bleibt die Partie von Anfang bis Ende lebendig. Tolle Interaktion!
Weniger geeignet ist El Grande daher für Gruppen, die lieber ungestört vor sich hin planen. Wer direkte Eingriffe und wechselnde Mehrheiten nicht mag, wird mit dem ständigen Gerangel um die Regionen möglicherweise nicht warm. Mit drei bis fünf Personen entfaltet der Klassiker jedoch auch heute noch eine bemerkenswerte Präsenz am Spieltisch.
Pro & Contra
Was mir gut gefällt:
Spannung durch ständig wechselnde Mehrheiten
Einfacher Regelkern mit vielen interessanten Entscheidungen
Hinweis: Wertungen vergeben wir im Bereich 0 bis 4 Sternen. Spiele mit 0-1,5 Sternen sind sind schlecht, mit 2 bis 2,5 Sternen durchschnittlich. Ab 3 Sternen beginnen die empfehlenswerten Spiele. Nur außergewöhnliche Titel erhalten 4 Sterne („Four-Star Game“).
Der Brettspielverlag CMON, bekannt für Miniaturenspiele wie Zombicide und Blood Rage, zieht sich aus einem Ausflug in die Blockchain zurück. Wie das Branchenmagazin BoardGameWire am 23. Juli 2026 unter Berufung auf eine Pflichtmeldung an die Börse Hongkong berichtet, kündigt CMON das im April 2026 angekündigte Investment von 2,1 Millionen US-Dollar in den NFT-Spieleentwickler Blissful Link wieder auf.
Capverse: Was Blissful Link mit NFT-Charakteren plante
Blissful Link entwickelt Capverse, laut Unternehmensangaben ein Play-to-earn-Videospiel auf Blockchain-Basis. Spielerinnen und Spieler kaufen darin NFT-Charaktere namens Sumer und lassen diese online gegeneinander antreten. Der Reiz für den Käufer liegt weniger im Spiel als im Handel: Die Figuren sind digitale Besitztitel, die weiterverkauft werden können. Die Namen des Entwicklerteams hinter Blissful Link nennt die Meldung nicht.
Warum CMON den Blissful-Link-Deal abbläst
Als Grund für den Rückzug gibt CMON an, die Bedingungen für den Vollzug seien nicht erfüllt worden. Konkret nennt der Verlag laut Bericht offene Punkte bei der Prüfung von Finanzen und Rechtsstruktur von Blissful Link sowie bei vertraglichen Gewährleistungen. Welche Prüfung im Detail scheiterte, legt CMON nicht offen.
Der ursprüngliche Deal bewertete Blissful Link mit über 95 Millionen Dollar. Dem stehen magere Zahlen gegenüber: Für 2024 weist das Unternehmen einen Verlust von rund 197.000 Dollar bei einem Umsatz von gut 408.000 Dollar aus, dazu Nettoverbindlichkeiten von etwa 889.000 Dollar. Die Angaben sind ungeprüft, Zahlen für 2025 fehlen. Ziel des Investments war es laut CMONs Verwaltungsrat, „relevant in der Spielebranche zu bleiben" und den Umsatz zu verbreitern: Marken wie Massive Darkness und Super Fantasy Brawl Reborn sollten als digitale Assets in die Blockchain wandern.
CMON in der Krise: Verluste, Markenverkäufe, wartende Backer
Parallel warten Unterstützer auf Ware. Kampagnen wie DC Super Heroes United (4,4 Millionen Dollar) und DCeased (2,5 Millionen Dollar) sind noch nicht ausgeliefert, CMON erwartet die Lieferung nun für das vierte Quartal 2026. Neue Crowdfunding-Projekte hatte der Verlag im April 2025 wegen der US-Zölle auf in China gefertigte Spiele pausiert, ein Wiederanlauf ist für Ende 2026 geplant.
Schlechtes Timing: der NFT-Markt seit 2021
Der Zeitpunkt für den NFT-Einstieg wäre ohnehin heikel gewesen. Der NFT-Hype erreichte 2021 seinen Höhepunkt, die Spekulationsblase platzte bereits ein Jahr später: Viele Token verloren über 90 Prozent ihres Höchstwerts. Kickstarter verbietet NFT-Inhalte weiterhin: Die Kampagne Wonders of the First musste 2024 genau daran scheitern.
The morning dawned early and I was up and ready to go by 8:30am. I had a muffin in my room and a trusty diet Mountain Dew for breakfast and we were on our way to the Winterberry Room to get going on our continued game of GTS.
We jumped right back into GTS Where Eagles Dare and The Devil’s Cauldron from MMP. I was assigned to command the area around Eindhoven/Best/Son and to eliminate the few pockets of German resistance remaining there and then move our armor north to cut off possible German reinforcements from the east. We jumped back in at the 1100 turn and played into the 1700 turn although I had to leave shortly after lunch to meet up with Gregory M. Smith. This system is just so solid and is really great fun.
And I also very much enjoy the deep historical immersion into the event and its incorporation of things like heroes and artillery parks as well as the gorgeous production values with amazing counters, a very detailed and beautiful board and the way it portrays company-level combat. I will say that there is a fairly steep learning curve and rules overhead and while I feel the combat system works it is very involved and bits can be forgotten. But it really is a solid operational level portrayal of WWII combat. I very much can’t wait to play it again in the future and we actually have the reprint of The Devil’s Cauldron on pre-order and I have heard it might be out by the end of the year. I need to find me a copy of Where Eagles Dare as well although I most likely will never get the full combined games together on the table at the same time.
After 14 hours of pushing counters, I am now a follower of this system and want to thank Joe and Matt, as well as my friend Mike Heckman, for teaching me.
After lunch I found my friend John Sy from the Philippines and said hello but he had a gift he had brought for me. It was Japanese occupation currency in the form of Philippine pesos from WWII. What a very cool and thoughtful gift and upon my return home I will be placing it in a frame and hanging it in my game room. Thanks John!
I then was able to meet up with my friend and fantastic designer Gregory M. Smith as well as Kevin McPartland to get a look at a few games that they are designing together, including Viking Dawn from Compass Games and Star Spangled Tide: The War of 1812 from Compass Games.
Me, Greg Smith and Kevin McPartland.
We first got a play in of Viking Dawn and had a great time with the game. It is a light, beer and pretzels style game based on the SPI Conquistadors designed by Richard Berg where players control 1 of 4 Viking clans and are trying to build longboats, train war bands, develop explorers and lead them to explore, settle, raid and conquer Europe from Russia in the east, to Iceland and Newfoundland in the west, the Mediterranean and parts of North Africa. When leaders die you must bury them with silver gaining VP’s or if you can’t afford it bury them with nothing and lose VP’s. The main mechanic is a press your luck exploration mechanic where you must roll for the destruction of your fleets based upon how far they have traveled that year. You might lose all of your ships or may get lucky and lose none, you can mitigate this be investing in the journeys with additional supplies and tech to ensure better offs but the dice are cruel and you might just lose not only your fleets but also the booty they have collected from raiding.
It’s a very fun and lite take on this chaotic time in history and I very much enjoyed it. The game is nearly complete and should be printing and ready for shipping in early 2027. I think that this one is a perfect convention game and is sure to see more plays on my table.
We then shot a video with both designers together and then broke off with just Greg to talk about 6 of his other in-design projects. These included the following Korean Tide (next entry in the Tide Series covering the Korean War 1940-1953),Rifle Platoon (tactical level squad based solitaire game using the American Tank Ace Series), Project Z (what if bombing game where Japan won at Midway and began to run bombing operations against the United States mainland and Australia similar to Amerika Bomber), Western Desert Ace (solitaire Ace Series game focused in North Africa), B-52D Linebacker II (solitaire Vietnam War bombing game in 1972) and then finally a scoop on a joint design from Kevin McPartland and Greg Smith called Star Spangled Tide. It was a great discussion and I’m very much looking forward to all of these games.
To end the video, Greg spoiled his upcoming Lone Banner game which is a 1-4 player dungeon crawler set in the fantasy world of Kalar from Burning Banners from Compass Games. This one is going to be fun and I got a look at the characters, spells and weapons and also saw the dungeon tiles that will be laid out as players move through the dungeon encountering traps, monsters and bosses to fight. This looks great but it is a ways off as Greg said he has only been designing it for a month or so.
I then got to play the new The Great Hunger from Compass Games with designer Kevin McPartland. InThe Great Hunger players represent families of tenant farmers and field hands. At first, when the potatoes are plentiful your clan will grow, using the events on the top half of cards to help your family expand across the map moving into counties, working on estates and in factories. When the potatoes blight arrives, you’ll use the events on the bottom half to save as many as you can, finding them aid or employment in Ireland, or scrambling to ports to secure passage to America.
The game is a very light Euro style game of survival and is well done as it’s rooted in history and teaches about the struggles of the Irish. I am glad to have played the final production copy as I got to play a prototype copy a few years ago at WBC. This one will catch some heat from people for it’s dark topic and will just not be for everyone but it has something to teach about history and I have Irish ancestry and am interested as to what happened to cause my ancestors to leave their home to come to America.
One final thing I want to show you is the lineup of games that GMT has staged in the main gaming area. These are all of their newest arrivals and they are just gorgeous. I’m most interested in Coast Watchers designed by Volko Ruhnke and The Weimar Republic designed by Gunnar Holmbäck.
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