A few years ago, I played and very much enjoyed a cool little solitaire WWII card-driven game called Campaign: Fall Blau from Catastrophe Games and designer Martin Melbardis where the player attempted to breach the Soviet defenses on the East Front in the pivotal German summer campaign of 1942. The game system is very playable and simple, but has some strategic depth to it as the player has to make a lot of choices about what to go after, how to manage their scarce resources (fuel) and what generals to use to take advantage of their special abilities to amass enough VP to claim victory over the Soviet Union. They now have the counter punch of that game in a new entry in the series called Campaign: Operation Bagration and it is currently being offered on Kickstarter.

If you are interested in Campaign: Operation Bagration, you can back the project on the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/campaign-fall-blau/campaign-bagration

Grant: Welcome back to the blog Martin. What is your current game Campaign: Operation Bagration?

Martin: Thanks for having me back! Campaign: Operation Bagration is the long-awaited successor to my very first published game, Campaign: Fall Blau and tells the story of the Soviet offensive in 1944 to take back the occupied center of Russia gained by the Germans during Operation Barbarossa and is based on the successful Campaign: Fall Blau game system.

Grant: What was your design goal with the game?

Martin: My design goal for Campaign: Operation Bagration was to switch perspectives to the Soviet side using my tried-and-tested Campaign Game System. I wanted players to take command of the Soviets during one of the most devastating offensives of the war….Operation Bagration, which tore through German Army Group Center in 1944. From a design standpoint, I found it very rewarding to adapt new game mechanics and ideas to fit this pivotal WWII Campaign on the Eastern Front, while keeping the core of the system intact.

Grant: What are the hallmarks of this solitaire Campaign Series?

Martin: I’d say a minimalist approach to wargaming. Very streamlined, using only cards, dice, and cubes, with a 6–7 page rulebook. These are light solitaire wargames designed to be fast and furious with no extra fat or bloat, especially when compared to more traditional hex-and-counter wargames that can take hours to play.

Grant: As a follow up to Campaign: Fall Blau, what do you believe you have improved in the gaming experience?

Martin: While the system as a whole is more or less exactly the same as Fall Blau, I injected some new ideas into the experience to better reflect the historical realities of this campaign. The core game, such as defeating Campaign Cards, the Order system and how Generals work, will remain familiar to players of Fall Blau, but the feel is distinctly different. 

Grant: What elements from Operation Bagration did you need to model in the design?

Martin: Operation Bagration was a completely different beast to tackle than Fall Blau. In addition to taking control of the Soviet army this time around, the mountainous regions of the Caucasus region have been replaced with the swamps of Belorussia and Poland. You’re also facing a much weaker and mostly static German Army Group Center, desperately trying to rebuild a frontline and stop the Soviet advance from swarming into their rear echelons. This is represented by the new “Rebuild Frontlines” rule, which replaces the old “Local Counter-Attacks” rule from Fall Blau. In Bagration, counter-attacks are now only triggered by Event Cards representing Panzer Divisions trying to blunt the Soviet offensive. In fact, the entire Event Deck has been changed to reflect the research I did on Operation Bagration with all sorts of cool ideas popping up on how to reflect the history, units and tactics of this Campaign.

Grant: As a solitaire game, what type of experience does the game create? 

Martin: The game system prides itself on being fast, easy to learn but hard to master. It creates a very similar experience to Fall Blau such as tough decisions weighing the player down each turn on how to best use your limited Orders and finding the right balance between Attacking, Advancing, or stopping for Logistics to catch up. 

Grant: What is the goal of the player?  

Martin: The goal is to capture enough Campaign Cards before the game ends and earn enough Victory Points from those Campaign Cards to reach the victory or even the Brilliant Victory threshold.

Grant: How does the player go about choosing and managing their Generals? 

Martin: Each game starts with the player choosing three Soviet Generals. All of these generals are historically accurate, with options such as Bagramyan, Konev, Rokossovsky, and a few others. Each General has the generic “Hero of the Soviet Union” special ability plus one unique ability. Additionally, each General leads a certain type of army: either a Tank army or a regular Infantry army. Tank armies have fewer manpower cubes but benefit from added mobility, which helps them bring more Campaign Cards to the frontline when using the Advance Order. Infantry armies, on the other hand, have more “meat” and thus more manpower cubes to absorb losses. Each General also has a set number of cubes representing their starting strength in manpower and available forces. Managing your Generals comes down to picking a balanced mixture and using each general’s individual strengths (number of cubes and abilities) to maximum effect.

Grant: What unique abilities do the different Generals possess? 

Martin: As mentioned, each General has the “Hero of the Soviet Union” special ability, which allows you to discard a red cube to re-roll a single die. This represents the Soviet ability to historically take massive casualties and still push on. On top of that, each General also has a unique ability reflecting their historical traits. For example, General Bagramyan is an offensive-minded General, while Rokossovsky was known to always plan two steps ahead and this is represented by his ability to draw extra cards from the Event Deck.

Grant: What type of events does the Event Deck contain? 

Martin: In addition to the Campaign Cards, the Event Deck is really where the historical aspects of the Bagration Campaign really come to life. I made sure to only include Soviet and German units and tactics that were instrumental to the Bagration campaign. The Event Deck contains mostly cards that help you during the game, such as attached Soviet units like the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps, which can help you exploit the flanks of the German frontline by removing adjacent defenses, or the 4th Tank Army, which grants extra attack dice when attacking a Campaign Card. These cards not only add flavor to the game but also a strong sense of historical flavor.

Grant: What are the different type of German effects included in the Event Deck? 

Martin: The Event Deck also contains cards that hurt the player, such as German Panzer divisions that trigger a counter-attack when drawn, or German reinforcement cards that add additional German cubes to active Campaign Cards on the frontlines. In addition, things like German bombers or bad weather can and will slow your progress.

Grant: What Actions/Orders are available to the player?  

Martin: There are three available Orders each turn, and you may perform one per General. The Advance Order (costs 1 supply) brings unlocked Campaign Cards to the frontline. Once a card is on the frontline, an Attack Order (also costs supplies) can be used to attack and remove any cubes (representing German formations or defenses) on that card in order to capture it and gain the VP listed on the card. Finally, the Logistics Order adds supplies and reinforces a General with a cube to replace losses.

Grant: How do they manage their Supplies? How can they obtain additional fuel? 

Martin: As mentioned, each Advance and Attack Order costs supplies, and the Logistics Order replenishes supplies as well as lost manpower cubes from attacking. Finding the right balance and knowing when to rest using a Logistics Order instead of Attacking or Advancing is very important. However, resting too long will slow your progress, as the clock is always counting down. A General who uses the Logistics Order adds two supplies to your shared supply pool and adds a single manpower cube to their card.

Grant: How do they manage to defeat the various Campaign Cards? 

Martin: After using the Advance Order to bring an unlocked Campaign Card to the frontline in front of a General’s Card, that Campaign Card then immediately deploys a number of grey cubes (listed on the card) onto itself. The card is now available to be attacked using the Attack Order. When you attack, you pay supplies then calculate the number of cubes on the attacking General’s Card and roll that many dice. You need rolls of 4+ to remove a single white (defense) or grey (German units) cube from the Campaign Card. Some Campaign Cards such as fortress cities (Festerplatz) or swamps reduce the attack dice by -1. Rolls of 1–2 result in your General losing a manpower cube (red cube). Once all German cubes are removed from the Campaign Card, it is considered captured and removed from the frontline, and you gain the Victory Points listed on the card. Capturing Campaign Cards also unlocks additional Campaign Cards.

Grant: How do the German forces fight back? 

Martin: This time around, the Germans are much more static than in Fall Blau, which better reflects the historical situation in 1944. While you may still lose manpower cubes through bad rolls on Attack Orders, counter-attacks are now only triggered through Event Cards. A Panzer Division drawn as an event will immediately counter-attack by deploying to the frontline and attacking the General directly in front of it. There’s also the Operation Doppelkopf Event Card, which is placed near the end of the Event Deck during setup and represents a large German offensive action late in Operation Bagration, designed to blunt Soviet momentum.

Grant: What strategy should the player use to do well? 

Martin: Pick a good, balanced mixture of Generals and learn when to attack versus when to build up supplies and manpower through the Logistics Order. Using Generals with Tank Army abilities to bring multiple Campaign Cards to the frontlines helps a lot but too many Tank Generals will lower your overall manpower total. Also, optimize your use of Event Cards to either prioritize Attacks or to regain manpower cubes. Overall, calculated risk management is the single most important factor in the game.

Grant: What different options are built in to make the game more of a challenge?  

Martin: The game is already pretty challenging, but we are also currently planning on developing a Hard-Mode for the Kickstarter that adds 4–5 additional very difficult Event Cards to the deck for those players who love challenges or are even simply masochists.

Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design? 

Martin: I’m pleased with the way I’ve adapted the old Fall Blau Game System to incorporate new game mechanics and Events to reflect the different historical aspects of Bagrations’ unique Campaign. Such things such as the German’s use of blocking detachments to try to stop the Soviet steamroller with whatever they could (represented by the rebuilding the frontline mechanic), and the use of Festerplatze or Fortress cities in Belorussia to hold at all cost. Added to this is the liberal use of Soviet tactics such as mine sweeping tanks, the massive God of War bombardment to signal the start of Bagration, Maskirovka deception techniques and American lend-lease trucks to help the Offensive are all well-represented in the game through the Event Deck.

Grant: What has been the response of playtesters? 

Martin: Early on, I got some great and positive responses from playtesters when I initially designed the game. Later, I handed off playtesting and development to Catastrophe Games, who further developed the game and ran additional playtests. I’ve heard good things from them as well.

Grant: What other historical campaigns might the series delve into?

Martin: Next up, I am planning to adapt the series to either the North African or the Pacific Theaters in WWII. I also strangely find that representing the Japanese early-war successes against the Allies in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore a very interesting twist and is a subject rarely touched upon in wargaming. This could also be a good option in the future but who really knows where my creativity can take me? 

Grant: What other designs are you currently working on? 

Martin: As always, I am continuing to design lighter Print & Play wargames with my own independent company, Solo Wargame. I usually release a new wargame every two months or so on Kickstarter and want to continue that trend with a WWII wargame about commanding a Soviet battalion during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. I also plan to release a new version of my continuing series on WW2 Roll & Write games, this time focusing on the Torch landings in North Africa in 1942–43 with new ideas about convoy interdiction, diplomacy with the Vichy government and eventually pushing the Germans all the way to Tunisia. Like most other creatives, I honestly have way too many ideas and too little time!

Thanks so much once again for having me on! 

If you are interested in learning more about the Campaign Series and how it works, you can watch my preview video for the Campaign: Fall Blau Kickstarter from 2022 at the following link:

If you are interested in Campaign: Operation Bagration, you can back the project on the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/campaign-fall-blau/campaign-bagration

-Grant

A few years ago, I came across a new designer named Wolfgang Klein (no relation to Alexander Klein) and his new company Assault Games. They create fantastic tactical level wargames and we have played several fo them and also got a chance to meet both Wolfgang and his friend and partner Erich Rankl. They are currently working on a new edition of their first game called Assault – Red Horizon ’41: Revised Edition and they readying it for a Gamefound campaign yet this spring. I reached out to Wolfgang to get some information about the revisions and changes to the game and he was more than willing to provide a lot of great information.

Grant: Wolfgang welcome back to the blog. It is good to have you on again and I wanted to thank you and Erich for playing Primosole Bridge with us last fall at SPIEL Essen. How has Assault – Red Horizon ’41 evolved over the past few years since its original release in 2021?

Wolfgang: Over the past 5 years, Red Horizon ’41 has evolved significantly through continuous development, community feedback, and extensive gameplay experience. What began with Rulebook 1.0 has gradually been refined into a much more mature and developed system. The new revised edition incorporates years of player feedback, integrates content from various expansions, and improves clarity, balance, and presentation across the entire game.

Over the past 5 years, RH41 has developed considerably, both in terms of the Assault System rules and its graphical presentation. In particular, with Sicily ’43 – Gela Beachhead (Rulebook version 2.0) and its expansion Primosole Bridge, we feel that we gained valuable experience that directly influenced the design of this revised edition and that will assist us in future volumes as well to improve the player experience and simulation value of the game.

Most of all, however, we are grateful for the intensive exchange we have had with our Assault fans over many years. We have remained very active in our forums on BoardGameGeek, and it is there that we have gathered, discussed, and evaluated a huge amount of positive and constructive feedback. With all the great ideas and contributions from our players, we have continued refining the rules step by step.

As far as version 2.5 is concerned, the door for feedback will remain open until the end of the upcoming Gamefound campaign.

In concrete terms, rules have been refined, adjusted, expanded, or removed. All texts have been revised to make them easier and more efficient to read. We have also made a clear step forward in wording and terminology. However, we have not changed the core gameplay mechanics. So players familiar with version 1.0 should still find it easy to get back into the system.

A detailed overview of the changes made to the system can be found on our website at the following link:
https://assault-games.com/assault-living-rules/

Grant: What is the upcoming new edition of the game? How has it changed?

Wolfgang: The upcoming version is referred to as a Revised Edition of Assault: Red Horizon ’41. It is not simply a reprint, but a comprehensive refinement of the system.

Major changes to the game and the Assault System include the following:

• Updated rules from Rulebook 1.0 to Rulebook 2.5
• Integration of rules and content from the TA / OAS (Tactical Air / Off-Board Artillery Support) Expansion
• Revised scenarios and a reworked campaign
• New terrain types
• Updated graphic design and artwork
• Improved components and markers
• New fortifications and obstacle elements
• A box inlay designed for the safe storage of all game components

Overall, the revised edition reflects everything we have learned about the system from our players and through continual play on our end since the original release. I do believe that the system will continue to evolve as other rule clarifications or needed changes come to light.

Grant: How did this opportunity for a new edition arise?

Wolfgang: After the original edition sold out, interest in the game continued to grow. At the same time, years of development, playtesting, and community feedback had accumulated.

In addition, RH41 is something like the core game for the Eastern Front within the Assault System. Our plan is to design an entire series of modules focused on the Eastern Front, and Red Horizon ’41 is the natural foundation for that planned series.

This created the perfect opportunity to bring the game back in a fully refined and improved edition rather than simply reprinting the original version.

Grant: How has the process of working with Sound of Drums been?

Wolfgang: I would describe it as a very special journey. We have now been working in cooperation with Sound of Drums for 3 years.

What makes this collaboration different from the traditional designer–publisher model is that we at Assault Games work with Sound of Drums on equal footing while maintaining our own independence.

The goal of this cooperation was to free ourselves from the typical publishing tasks such as production, logistics, and distribution, so that we could focus more fully on developing the Assault System and expanding into future opportunites. In many respects, this has worked very well. In other areas, there are still things that can be improved.

Sound of Drums, and Uwe Walentin in particular, has worked very hard to keep our backs free for designing by carrying the responsibility for taking care of the worldwide distribution network, logistics, and shipping. From my point of view, that works very well. Uwe is also a highly knowledgeable and perceptive figure when it comes to wargame design, and he has become an important advisor for us. His experience in the games industry helps us do things the right way — and focus on the right things.

One area of the cooperation where we have made major progress is in the structuring and preparation of our print files. I would especially like to thank Marc von Martial (Art Director at Sound of Drums) on this point. Thanks to his templates, we are now able to turn our designs into print-ready files in a much shorter time. That has been a tremendous help for Sicily 43, Primosole Bridge, and now also RH41 Revised Edition.

In the end, I would say that our journey is not over yet. Sound of Drums, like us, is still a young company, so there are new challenges every day. But as the saying goes: “Everything will be fine at the end of the road. If it is not fine yet, then the road is not over.”

Grant: Why have you wanted to amend or revise these various items in the game?

Wolfgang: We started the Assault System a long time ago as a new tactical game system, and from the very beginning it was clear that both the rules and the content would continue to evolve over time. Other systems refer to their rulebooks as “Living Rules,” and that is very much how we see the Assault System rules and the game as a whole.

At the same time, it is important to us that we do not do this alone. We want to actively involve our player base in the further development of the system so that it can become the best game system possible. Standing still is simply not an option for us.

Many of the changes were driven by years of gameplay feedback from the community and by our own experience with the system. Over time, we identified:

• areas where rules could be streamlined
• components that could be improved or added
• visual elements that could be made clearer

The goal was always to improve clarity, usability, and gameplay flow without changing the core identity of the system.

Grant: How has the graphic design specifically evolved? Who is the artist?

Wolfgang: The most visible aspect of the game’s development is undoubtedly the graphical redesign and the addition of new visual features. Michael Grillenberger, supported by Marc from Martial, once again did outstanding work, just as they did on Sicily ’43 and Primosole Bridge. I would like to thank them both once again for that work.

The map artwork in particular will immediately catch the eye. We have raised it to the same high standard seen in Sicily ’43 and Primosole Bridge, which creates an even greater sense of immersion.

Overall, the graphic design has been significantly refined compared to the first edition. Maps, symbols, counters, and other visual elements have been redesigned to improve readability and consistency. Vehicle artwork has also been updated, and the game’s entire visual language has been unified to create a stronger overall identity.

Grant: How does the artist’s style fit with your vision for the system?

Wolfgang: The visual style supports the core philosophy of the system: clarity, immersion, and functionality.

The artwork strikes a balance between historical authenticity and tabletop readability, which is essential in a tactical wargame where players need to process information quickly. In that sense, the artwork helps reduce the players’ workload so they can focus fully on the game and on the tactical situation on the battlefield.

Grant: How have the visual presentation for various things such as elevation levels and terrain changed in this new edition?

Wolfgang: One major improvement is the integration of visual symbols directly onto the maps. Last year, we conducted a survey among our players because it was important for us to understand what they thought about the idea of including symbols on the map boards. The result was extremely close.

Many players were concerned that such symbols might reduce immersion. Because we take those concerns seriously, we decided on a more subtle compromise. Elevation levels and some terrain rules are now represented with discreet graphical indicators, allowing players to understand the battlefield layout more quickly without constantly consulting the rulebook.

That, in turn, makes things much easier for the players.

Grant: How have those changes made the game even better?

Wolfgang: Quite simply, these changes make the Assault System much more accessible and easier to play. The need to search for information is reduced, and the overall handling of the game becomes smoother.

In particular, readability, gameplay flow, and ease of learning have all improved. Players can now interpret terrain and elevation at a glance, which speeds up play and reduces rule lookups.

Grant: How have the graphics for the vehicles changed?

Wolfgang: The vehicle illustrations have been updated and refined, providing clearer identification and a more consistent visual style across all units. I think Michael also worked on them simply because he really enjoyed doing so.

These changes enhance both the historical feel and the table presence of the game.

Grant: Can you show us some examples of the new graphics as compared with the old?

Wolfgang: Certainly — here are a few examples:

• Updated vehicle illustrations
• Revised terrain
• Redesigned damage and smoke markers
• Improved map graphics

These updates create a much more cohesive and modern visual presentation compared with the first edition.

Grant: What new terrain features have you included in the system? Why were these important to include?

Wolfgang: The revised edition introduces several new terrain types:

• Wheat and crop fields
• Steep slopes
• Covered trails

These elements are closely tied to the historical landscape of the Eastern Front, particularly the region around Białystok in the summer of 1941. Large expanses of wheat and crop fields dominated the countryside and often influenced visibility and movement for advancing troops. During the opening phase of Operation Barbarossa, German and Soviet forces frequently fought across agricultural land where tall grain could provide concealment but also limit observation.

Steep slopes and covered trails reflect the natural terrain features of the area, which included rolling ground, wooded ridges, and narrow rural tracks. Such features often shaped the movement of infantry and vehicles, creating opportunities for ambushes or concealed manoeuvres.

Including these terrain types allows the game to better represent the tactical realities soldiers faced during the early battles around Białystok, while also expanding the range of strategic options available to players.

Grant: What are the new Fortifications & obstacle elements? Can you share examples of these counters?

Wolfgang: The system now includes additional fortifications and obstacle elements, allowing players to represent defensive battlefield preparations more realistically. These counters reflect the kinds of improvised and field-built defenses commonly used by Soviet forces in the border regions during the first days of Operation Barbarossa.

In June 1941, Soviet units attempted to delay the rapid German advance by establishing temporary defensive lines, often using field entrenchments, tank barricades, and hastily constructed obstacles. Barricaded roads and reinforced firing positions were typical features in defensive positions around key crossroads and villages. Although many of these defences were incomplete because of the speed of the German attack, they nevertheless influenced the course of local engagements.

By incorporating such fortifications and obstacles, the game is able to reflect the defensive measures historically present on the battlefield. These new counters expand the tactical possibilities in scenarios and campaigns, while also helping to recreate the atmosphere of the chaotic and desperate fighting that characterised the opening days of the campaign around Białystok.

Grant: How will the box be changed for this revised edition?

Wolfgang: The revised edition features an improved box design, including:

• A box inlay designed for sleeved cards
• A transparent lid for better organisation and visibility of components

These changes were made to improve both storage and usability for players. Many players prefer to sleeve their cards to protect them during repeated play, particularly in games with frequent handling such as card-driven tactical systems. The redesigned inlay ensures that sleeved cards fit comfortably inside the box without bending or compressing them, allowing players to keep their components protected while still maintaining a compact storage solution.

The transparent lid also helps players organise and identify the different components more easily. Counters, cards, and markers can be seen at a glance, which speeds up setup and makes it easier to keep the game organised during play. For a system that may include multiple scenarios and campaign elements, quick access to components is especially useful.

Overall, the improved box design reflects feedback from players of the original edition. By making the storage solution more practical and user-friendly, the new edition aims to make preparation, transport, and long-term storage of the game more convenient.

Grant: I know that you have covered this concept but I would like a bit more detail? Specifically, how have the overall rules for the game changed?

Wolfgang: The rules have evolved from Rulebook 1.0 to version 2.5, and possibly eventually to 3.0.

Key changes include:

• Integrated expansion content
• Clarified rules
• Streamlined mechanics
• Improved structure and organisation

Since the release of the original rulebook, the system has gradually developed through playtesting, player feedback, and the addition of expansion material. Earlier supplements introduced new mechanics and scenario elements that are now fully integrated into the core rules, allowing players to access the complete system without needing to consult multiple documents.

Another important goal of the revision was to clarify rules that had previously caused questions during play. Certain mechanics have been rewritten with clearer wording and additional examples, making it easier for players to understand how the system works in practice. This also reduces ambiguity during gameplay and allows players to focus more on tactical decision-making rather than rule interpretation.

The revised rulebook also streamlines several mechanics. While the core gameplay remains unchanged, some procedures have been simplified to maintain the fast-paced flow of the system. The intention was not to make the game less detailed, but rather to ensure that its mechanics remain intuitive and efficient during play.

Finally, the overall structure of the rulebook has been improved. Sections are now organized more logically, making it easier to locate specific rules during a game. Together, these changes reflect the natural evolution of the system and aim to provide both new and experienced players with a clearer and more accessible ruleset.

Grant: How have these changes improved the gameplay?

Wolfgang: The revised rules make the game:

• Easier to learn
• Smoother to play
• More balanced

Over the years, extensive playtesting and feedback from players helped identify areas where the original rules could be improved. Ambiguities in certain mechanics were clarified, and procedures that occasionally slowed down gameplay were simplified. As a result, the revised rulebook presents the system in a more accessible and consistent way, allowing new players to learn the game more quickly while still preserving the depth that experienced players expect.

The streamlined mechanics also improve the overall flow of play. Turns progress more smoothly, and players can focus more on tactical decisions rather than consulting the rulebook. This is particularly important in a fast-moving tactical system set during the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa, where battlefield situations changed rapidly and decisions had to be made under pressure.

In addition, the revisions helped refine the balance of the system. Through years of scenario testing and community feedback, certain interactions between units, terrain, and combat mechanics were adjusted to ensure that engagements feel both challenging and historically plausible. Together, these improvements create a more polished and engaging gameplay experience while remaining faithful to the original design of the system.

Grant: What is the timeline on the release of this new revised edition?

Wolfgang: The revised edition is currently in active preparation, and our immediate next step is the upcoming Gamefound campaign which is planned to start in May 2026. The campaign preview page is up and you can see that at the following link: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/sound-of-drums-gmbh/assault-red-horizon-41-rev-edition

 As mentioned before, feedback on Rulebook version 2.5 will remain open until the end of that campaign.

Our goal is to use this period to gather final community input, complete the last refinements, and move the project into production in the best possible shape. A more precise release timeline will be shared as soon as the campaign and production planning are finalised.

Grant: Last but not least, what is currently in the design kitchen for Assault Games?

Wolfgang: Well, I think Assault Games might become a never-ending story. We will keep working on it as long as we continue to enjoy it—and that could still take a very long time.

Joking aside, we are very active when it comes to new ideas. I actually talked about some of this in our most recent SITREP (a bit of self-promotion here):

We have started publishing a development roadmap so that everyone can see what we are currently working on and what might be coming in the future. Of course, the roadmap only shows the official topics we want to share publicly—and yes, there are also a few unofficial ideas we are exploring behind the scenes.

To give you a small glimpse of what might be ahead, you can already see a draft cover for our upcoming Normandy journey. And that’s not all—there are several other things in development.

Thank you so much for your time in answering our questions Wolfgang and I look forward to future games from Assault Games and Sound of Drums.

If you are interested in learning more about Assault – Red Horizon ’41 Revised Edition, you can visit the Gamefound previews page at the following link: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/sound-of-drums-gmbh/assault-red-horizon-41-rev-edition

-Grant

Last month, as I was trolling the internet, I came across a new solitaire game from the guys over at War Diary Publications called Battle of the Bismarck Sea designed by Allyn Vannoy. Battle of the Bismarck Sea is a solitaire wargame that uses individual ships and flights/squadrons of aircraft. The Player assumes the role of General George Kenney, Commander of the 5th U.S. Army Air Force, with the mission of intercepting the Japanese effort to reinforce its ground forces on the island of New Guinea. I am always into a good Pacific Theater of Operations game and I reached out to Allyn to get some inside information about the design.

Grant: Allyn welcome to our blog. First off please tell us a little about yourself. What are your hobbies? What’s your day job?

Allyn: I’m retired, having worked 18 years for Intel as a program manager. Presently, I work for a minor league baseball team in the summer, an affiliate of the Arizona Diamond Backs, and volunteer two days a week at the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, both in the Archives and giving tours of Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose; I also write (freelance) for a number of military history and gaming magazines.

Grant: What motivated you to break into game design? What have you enjoyed most about the experience thus far?

Allyn: During Covid, I started getting back into gaming, having become interested in Avalon Hill games in the 60’s and as an early subscriber to S&T Magazine. I enjoy the challenge of trying to turn history into a game—a teaching tool—in the process I learn more and hopefully, understand more.

Grant: What is your new game Battle of the Bismarck Sea about?

Allyn: The Battle of the Bismarck Sea, 1943, was the 5th Air Force’s attempt to interrupt the Japanese effort to reinforce its ground forces on the island of New Guinea. The Player must utilize the limited resources available and determine their application over the 10-week period that operations are conducted. The results of these efforts will be borne out in the effectiveness of air operations.

Grant: What games gave you used for inspiration for your design?

Allyn: I hadn’t seen anything like this design; I wanted to make something new and hopefully unique.

Grant: What is important to model or include in a game about the Air Naval combat in the Pacific during WWII?

Allyn: The most important thing to understand is how to organize and implement an air strike force to accomplish the mission given.

Grant: What type of research did you do to get the historical details correct? What one must read source would you recommend?

Allyn: I tried to locate good and detailed sources:

Arbon, J. and Christensen, Chris. The Bismarck Sea Ran Red; Walsworth Press, Marceline, MO, 1979.

Birdsall, Steve. Flying Buccaneers: The Illustrated Story of Kenney’s Fifth Air Force; Doubleday, NY, 1977.

Henebry, John P. The Grim Reapers at Work in the Pacific Theater: The Third Attack Group of the U.S. Fifth Air Force; Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, Missoula, MT, 2002.

Jablonski, Edward. Outraged Skies; Doubleday and Co., Inc., Garden City, NY. 1971.

McAulay, Lex. Battle of the Bismarck Sea; St. Martin’s Press, NY, 1991.

Recommendation: McAulay’s book, Battle of the Bismarck Sea.

Grant: What challenges did the subject cause for the design? How have you overcome them?

Allyn: The design initially focused just on the single action that occurred on March 2-4, 1943, but there was a larger struggle that began in January 1943—that Allied commanders realized they needed to adapt and change their forces and tactics if they were to meet the challenge they faced. Once the design was expanded to a 10-week time frame it became more complex, but also more interesting. This also required more research into the changes that took place within the 5th Air Force.

Grant: What is the scale of the game?

Allyn: Unit scale: single ships and flights (3-10 planes) of aircraft.

Time scale: 10 Command/Support turns, each of one week; 13 Operational turns, over a two day period.

Ground units represent 200-300 personnel.

Grant: What are the different units that the player has control over?

Allyn: The Japanese units include transport ships, destroyers, ground units (presenting the troops and equipment carried on the transports), and fighter aircraft. These are controlled by the Bot. The player controls the Allied units: a mix of aircraft—reconnaissance, heavy bombers, medium bombers, and fighters, and also PT boats.

Grant: What does the concept of Endurance mean for the player? What does this model from the 1943 campaign?

Allyn: Endurance is the amount of time that aircraft can remain airborne. This models the range of aircraft from their bases to the target area. In the initial design, a series of range arcs were used for the individual aircraft types. It was quickly realized this would make for a very complex game. To address playability, aircraft range was changed to consolidate to a single arc (a line on the map) for medium bombers and P-38 fighters, and set Operational turns to 3-hour periods.

Grant: What decisions do they have to make about their assets use and management over the campaign?

Allyn: The game is conducted in two parts: a Command/Support Sequence and an Operational Turn Sequence.

The Command/Support Sequence is a one week period that allows the Allies to receive resource points and reinforcements, then decide how to apply the resource points—rebuilding units, modifying tactics, and determining how to find a convoy at sea.

The Operational Turn Sequence is a two day period where the convoy is moving along convoy routes as the Allies attempt to identify it and then determine the organization of strike forces in an effort to sink it and prevent Japanese forces from reaching Lae, New Guinea.

Grant: As a solitaire wargame how does the Bot behave? What are its priorities and decision points?

Allyn: The Convoy, when dispatched from Rabaul, advances towards its destination (Lae), with random events impacting its progress. The rules introduce the Fog of War that the player must overcome in order to first find the Convoy and then disrupt and attempt to destroy it.

As for decision points, there are several. How are resource points to be spent? When and how to go after a convoy? What assets to use in a given sortie?

Grant: What type of an experience does the Bot create? 

Allyn: Designing a solitaire versus a 2-player game presents a whole different set of challenges. Can you design a Bot that will maintain the player’s interest and also challenge them? It should create variety; i.e., when and where will a convoy attempt to make a run; as well as a certain level of anxiety as certain elements are unknown until they can be revealed.

Grant: What are Resource Points and what do they represent?

Allyn: Resource points are the player’s currency and represent personnel, equipment (aircraft), and training.

Grant: What are Resource Points used for?

Allyn: The Resource Points are used by the player to improve tactics, provide replacements for losses, strengthen forces with personnel and equipment, and to launch air attacks. They are the real currency of the game and the player has to use them wisely to do well.

Grant: What is the layout of the board?

Allyn: The board includes the map (the area between New Britain and New Guinea); the turns tracks (for both Command/Support and Operational Turns); the Convoy Display (for air-sea combat); displays for the ships (transports and destroyers) and for tracking victory points and resource points. 

Grant: How does combat work?

Allyn: Combat is based on the attack strength of the units for air combat, air-to-surface, and surface combat. The result of a die roll is compared to a unit’s combat strength, and if it’s equal to less than that number (combat strength), a hit is made on the opposing force.

Grant: How are bombers and fighters used in combat?

Allyn: Bombers are used to try and sink the ships of the Convoy. Heavy bombers operate separately from medium bombers, as they drop their bomb loads from altitude, with limited chance of success, while medium bombers engage Japanese ships at low altitude (mast-high approach). Fighters are used to engage the Combat Air Patrol aircraft that the Japanese dispatched to provide air cover for the Convoy.

Grant: How is victory obtained in the game?

Allyn: Victory is based on the number of Japanese troops that fail to reach Lae—by sinking the ships and their cargo of personnel and equipment, they are removed from participation in combat operations on New Guinea.

Grant: What do you feel the game models well?

Allyn: The fog of war; the challenge to figure out how to build and prepare the needed forces, and then how to employ them to accomplish the mission (sink the enemy shipping).

Grant: What has been the experience of your playtesters?

Allyn: Comments led to a major change in design—moving from a single mission to a 10-week campaign and all the elements associated with that larger picture/time frame.

Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?

Allyn: That it offers two layers to the player experience – organizing and building forces, then utilizing them to execute missions.

Grant: What other designs are you contemplating or already working on?

Allyn: Operation Tidal Wave, the USAAF Ninth Air Force strike on Ploesti, Romania, August 1, 1943.

If you are interested in Battle of the Bismarck Sea, you can order a copy for $30.00 from the War Diary Publications website at the following link: https://wardiarymagazine.com/products/battle-of-the-bismarck-sea

-Grant

Neva Game Press (originally called Neva Wargames) is a new publisher who appeared on the scene in the past few years. When I started seeing their posts on Twitter and Facebook, I was immediately impressed with their interesting topic choices for their upcoming games as well as the fact that they are trying to make small footprint wargames that pack a punch. And the art is also very appealing and brings an aesthetically pleasing and attractive look to their games! Recently, they placed their next few games up for pre-order through their Incoming! Pre-Order System including Peking: 55 Days of Fury and I reached out to the owner of the company and design José to see if he could share some information about the design.

If you are interested in Peking: 55 Days of Fury, you can pre-order through the Incoming! Pre-Order System on the Neva Game Press website at the following link: https://nevagamepress.com/product/peking-55-days-of-fury/

Grant: José welcome back to our blog. What is your new upcoming game Peking: 55 Days of Fury about?

José: Thanks, Grant, it’s a pleasure to be here! I’d like to start by mentioning that we’ve recently rebranded from Neva Wargames to Neva Game Press. This change reflects our evolving catalog, as we’re excited to include more thematic games moving forward.

Today, I’m presenting one of my latest designs: Peking: 55 Days of Fury. It’s a 1-2 player game where one side commands the Chinese forces and the other leads the International Legations (an alliance of 8 nations). The game spans 6 turns—representing roughly 9 days each—where players fight to secure the most victory points by the end of the siege.

A full game typically lasts between 2 and 2 1/2 hours, making it perfect for a single session. Please keep in mind that we are still finalizing the artwork and graphic design, so the images shown here are not final.
Also, our second pre-order campaign, featuring both Reformation: Fire and Faith and Peking: 55 Days of Fury launched on March 15th. Don’t miss out on the Early Bird discount!

Grant: What does the subtitle “55 Days of Fury” mean and reference?

José: I imagine many of you have seen the classic film 55 Days at Peking—if not, I highly recommend it! It’s a fantastic movie and a core inspiration for this project. With the subtitle “55 Days of Fury”, I wanted to pay tribute to the original title while carving out its own identity. It reflects the sheer intensity of those 55 days of siege, and I wanted the name to capture that raw energy.

Grant: Why was this a subject you wanted to focus on?

José: I’ve always been fascinated by sieges throughout history, from ancient times to the modern era. Because of this, it’s very likely you’ll see more siege-themed titles from me in the future. I already have several compelling projects in mind, such as the 1453 Siege of Constantinople or the Siege of the Alcázar during the Spanish Civil War. There is so much tactical and human drama in a siege that I’m eager to explore the subject and see how to model the differences in each of the sieges and eras represented.

Grant: What are the unique features with the system used for the game?

José: Sieges are often associated with static gameplay—that’s just the nature of the conflict. However, I wanted to design a system that keeps the action fluid and engaging. To achieve this, the entire besieged area is streamlined into four main zones, allowing for a more dynamic experience.

Each side faces unique strategies and challenges, and that asymmetric touch gives the game immense replayability. At its heart, the cards are the engine of the game. It’s important to note how much depth they offer; your success depends entirely on how you plan and optimize your strategy based on card management.
I’ve also implemented a unique twist on Fog of War. Instead of these being ‘dead’ or useless cards, you’ll have to make tough tactical decisions about how to use the Fog of War cards you draw at the end of each turn. They could be a resource, not a penalty.

Grant: What must you model regarding the history in the design?

José: There is a wealth of historical detail in this design. From the unit stats to the card events and specialized mechanics, my goal was to represent the siege as authentically as possible without sacrificing a manageable playtime.

For example, the Boxer units have much lower Firepower than other factions, but they boast the highest Manpower values. This reflects their limited weaponry while highlighting their superior numbers—they have the strength to build and repair barricades quickly. In contrast, the Imperial Chinese Army units have better Firepower but generally lower Manpower.

On the other side, the International units are better armed but severely outnumbered. To represent this attrition, when a Chinese unit is defeated, it returns to the unit pool to potentially reappear later. However, injured International units are sent to the Infirmary instead.

The Infirmary is a critical mechanic; it honors the men and women who worked tirelessly to save lives during the siege. The International player must manage this correctly, or risk losing their limited forces for good.
Finally, I’ve included Diplomatic Relationships. Based on historical accounts, the International player will face diplomatic tensions between the allied nations. These tensions carry various penalties, forcing the player to balance military action with the need to restore diplomatic stability to avoid major setbacks.

Grant: What is your design goal with the game?

José: My main objective with this design was to prove that sieges don’t have to be limited to solitaire play. I wanted to turn them into a compelling, dynamic head-to-head experience where two players can truly feel the historical pressure and the weight of their consequences.

I want players to experience the unique hardships each side faced during the siege while navigating a system full of fresh ideas and meaningful choices. By providing so many strategic layers and branching paths, I’ve ensured that the game offers deep replayability every time it hits the table.

Grant: What other games did you use as inspiration?

José: While there are other games on the Boxer Rebellion, Peking: 55 Days of Fury offers a completely different perspective. I’ve taken a fresh approach to this fascinating siege, focusing on dynamics and mechanics that haven’t been explored this way before. That’s exactly what makes it so attractive—it fills a gap in the market by providing a unique experience that feels unlike anything else currently available on the subject.

Grant: What sources did you consult about the history?

José: In terms of research, my design was primarily informed by three key works:

• The Boxer Rebellion by Diana Preston: This was my main reference—an incredibly comprehensive account full of the historical nuances that allowed me to build the game’s framework.
• Peking 1900: The Boxer Rebellion by Peter Harrington (Osprey Publishing).
• The Boxer Rebellion by Lynn E. Bodin.

While Preston’s book provided the narrative and thematic depth, the works by Harrington and Bodin were essential for the technical details. They helped me accurately determine the troop sizes for each nation and provided the visual references needed to correctly represent the uniforms and equipment of every soldier type.

Grant: What is the scale of the game? Force structure of units?

José: I’d classify this as a tactical-scale game. Each International military unit represents approximately 8 to 10 soldiers, highlighting the small, elite nature of the legation guards. In contrast, the Chinese units represent much larger groups of combatants. This difference in scale on the board really emphasizes the ‘few against many’ tension that defined the historical siege.

Grant: What are the differences between the playable factions of the Eight Nation Alliance and the Qing army and Boxers?

José: The asymmetry between both sides is woven into every aspect of the game. As a general overview, while the International forces possess superior weaponry, they are heavily outnumbered by the Chinese. Their logistics also differ significantly: the International player must struggle to manage dwindling supplies within the besieged legations, whereas the Chinese side operates under a completely different set of pressures. Key thematic elements like Diplomacy, the construction of Siege lines, repairing Barricades, the looming arrival of the Relief Column, and the management of the Infirmary all work together to ensure that playing each side requires a totally different mindset and strategy.

Grant: How did you differentiate them in their mechanics?

José: To give you a better idea of how this asymmetry translates to the table, here are some key differences in how each side operates:

• Unit Quality vs. Quantity: While International units are superior in combat, the Chinese player must compensate for this by effectively using artillery pieces, surveillance markers, and sheer numbers.
• The Detachment Display: The International player can have a larger detachment of up to 6 units ready for combat, whereas the Chinese side is limited to a smaller detachment of 3, requiring more frequent rotations or reinforcements.
• The Infirmary & Attrition: When International units are injured, they are moved to the Infirmary. If it becomes overcrowded, units will die, awarding Victory Points (VP’s) to the Chinese. Managing this by “installing beds” and healing soldiers is a vital survival sub-game.
• The Relief Column Mini-Map: The Chinese player manages a specific mini-map tracking the progress of the two Relief Columns marching toward Peking. Their goal is to stall this advance; the further they keep the rescuers at bay, the more VP’s they secure.
• Supply Lines: Logistics are a constant struggle for the besieged International side, whereas the Chinese side enjoys much more reliable access to supplies.
• Diplomacy & Defenses: The International player starts with fully built defenses but must navigate precarious diplomatic tensions. Conversely, the Chinese side must actively build and maintain their own barricades throughout the game to score VP’s.
• Unique Action Phases: Both sides have access to a distinct set of special actions and historical Fog of War cards, ensuring that no two turns feel the same.

Grant: How does the game use cards?

José: Cards are the primary engine of the game, and I designed them to be highly versatile. You don’t just ‘play’ a card; you have to decide how to use it across different phases:

• Initiative & Events: Cards can be used during the Initiative phase or played for their Main Event.
• Boosting Mechanics: You can even activate Secondary Events by ‘boosting’ a card with another from your hand, creating powerful combinations.
• Action Points: During the Action phase, cards can be spent for Action Points (AP) to perform essential maneuvers.
• Deck-Building Elements: As the game progresses, you can incorporate common cards into your hand to improve your deck—often depending on how you manage your Fog of War cards.

I deliberately split the card-driven mechanics into two distinct phases. I wanted to ensure that even if you draw a ‘difficult’ hand, you still have the Action Point phase to fall back on. This gives you the flexibility to spend those cards as AP, ensuring you always have agency over the situation. It’s all about hand optimization and adapting your strategy to the shifting tides of the siege.

Grant: Can you show us a few examples of these different type of cards?

José: In the cards you will find Faction cards, Common cards and Fog of War cards:

Faction Cards
Each side has nine Faction cards.

1) Descriptive image of the event.
2) AP value.
3) Support icon – used to execute a Secondary Event during the Event Phase. A card can have a maximum of two different Support icons. Icons can be of the Lion, Heron, or Dragon type.).
4) Initiative value.
5) Event title. The color of the title indicates which side the card belongs to (blue = International, red = Chinese).
6) Description of the Primary Event.
7) Secondary Event Support icon requirement.
8) Description of the Secondary Event.
9) Card number (for identification purposes only; has no effect on the game).

After a Faction Card is played, it is placed in the playing side’s discard pile. The discard pile is reshuffled to form a new draw deck if the existing deck is exhausted when drawing a new hand at the end of the Turn.

Common Cards

1. Side colors: red and blue. 2. Reminder to remove the card when its events are used.

Fog of War Cards

1. Fog of War Icon.
2. Side color (red or blue).
3. Reminder to remove the card when its events are used.

Grant: What is the layout of the Board? Who is the artist?

José: The central part of the board is where the heart of the action takes place. It features a detailed map of the International Legations and their surroundings, strategically divided into four key sectors. Surrounding this central battlefield, you’ll find various common and individual tracks, along with dedicated display areas for each player to manage their resources and units.

As for the visuals, we are currently in the middle of the creative process. I’m thrilled to be working with a very talented team: David Prieto is handling the Graphic Design, while Germán Pasti and Moreno Paissan are the illustrators bringing the 1900s to life. Although the artwork is still a work-in-progress, we are striving for an immersive and historically evocative look.

Grant: What is the purpose of the various Outer Zones?

José: The board is designed for maximum clarity, with dedicated zones for each player. On the International side, the player manages their Morale and Supply tracks, along with the Detachment, Diplomacy, and Infirmary displays.

The Chinese side also tracks their Morale and Supplies, but their side of the board features the unique Relief Expedition mini-map. This is where the tension builds as the International forces attempt to advance from Taku to Peking, and the Chinese player must do everything in their power to stall them.

Grant: How is diplomacy and diplomatic relations used in the game? What benefits and detriments does it bring?

José: After the Supply check, the International side performs a Diplomatic Status check. The International side rolls one die for each Diplomacy marker (in the Diplomacy area of the International section) on its Parchment side. On a roll of 1, the marker is flipped to its Tension side to indicate tensions between nations.

When Tension occurs, the International side must apply the revealed effect in any Zone where MU of the nation(s) who’s flag is shown are present. If the first Diplomacy box is affected (with flags of Britain and Russia), only Map Zones with both British and Russian MU present are affected.

Tension effects can be cumulative if multiple effects apply to the same Zone. There are several types of effects such as: Tactical dispute (reduces combat strength), Communication Breakdown (it is not possible to use modifiers), Conflicting Priorities (reduces manpower), Water hoarding (it makes it more difficult to extinguish a fire).

Grant: What is the anatomy of the counters?

José: Here is a look at a few of the counters.

Military Units (MU)
Each MU marker represents a group of soldiers.

1) Illustration of the nation’s soldier.
2) Flag of the nation.
3) Combat Strength – Ranging from 1 to 3. During combat, the Combat Strength of all MU on each side are added together.
4) Manpower Factor – Ranging from 0 to 3. Used by the International side to Repair Barricades, and by the Chinese side to Lay or Repair Siege Lines.

Grant: How are units activated and chosen?

José: Units are activated through specific actions, and I’ve designed a system that balances tactical planning with the Fog of War. While units are often drawn randomly from a bag, both sides have a dedicated Detachment Area. This acts as a pool of visible, ‘ready-to-deploy’ units that you can plan around. This means you have the flexibility to deploy known forces from your detachment in addition to the tension of drawing new reinforcements directly from the pool.

Grant: What is the general Sequence of Play?

José: The sequence of play is the following:

Initiative
• Both sides reveal one card from their hand, simultaneously.
• Tie – the player who had the Initiative in the previous turn wins.
• Tie on Turn 1 – the Chinese side wins.
• The Initiative cannot be given away.
• If Fog of War cards were played, execute the Events (Initiative side first).
• Played cards are discarded (or removed if a Fog of War Card of the playing side).

Initial Engagement
• The Initiative side places their Engagement marker in any Zone. The non-Initiative side then does the same in another Zone.
• The Initiative side resolves the Engagement in their chosen Zone, acting as the attacker.
• The non-Initiative side then resolves the Engagement in their chosen Zone, acting as the attacker.
• Note: If there are no MU present in the Zone, or only MU from one side, the Engagement does not occur.

Events
• The Initiative side plays two cards from their hand for their Events. They may play a third Support card to execute Secondary Events.
• The non-Initiative side repeats the process.

Maintenance
• Both sides, starting with the Initiative side, perform two types of Maintenance checks.
• International:
 Supply Status check (1 die).
 Roll of 1 to 4 – Lose two Supply levels.
 Roll of 5 to 6 – Lose one Supply level.
 Update the Supply Track.
 Any Supply Track effects are applied: MU are moved to the Infirmary.
 Diplomacy Status check (1 die per Diplomacy marker on its Parchment side).
 A result of 1 flips the Diplomacy marker to its Tension side.
 The revealed effect applies unless the marker is flipped back to its Parchment side via a Diplomacy Special

Action.
• Chinese:
• Supply Status check (1 die).
 Roll of 1 to 2 – Lose two Supply levels.
 Roll of 3 to 4 – Lose one Supply level.
 Roll of 5 to 6 – No Supply loss.
 Update the Supply Track.
 Any Supply Track effects are applied: Morale level reduction.
 Relief Expedition roll: 1 die:
 Number of spaces Relief Expedition marker advances on the Relief Map: (1) = 1, (2-4) = 2, (5-6) = 3.

Action
• The Initiative side performs Actions with the APs on the remaining card in their hand.
• The non-Initiative side repeats the process.
• Two types of Actions:
 Basic: Common to both sides. Cost 1 AP. Can be repeated once per side per Turn.
 Special: Different for each side. Cost 2 action points. Cannot be repeated.

Command
• 6.1. Scoring & Victory Check:
 (Turns 3 & 6 only): Chinese side gains or loses VPs based on the position of the Relief Expedition marker on the Relief Map.
 (Turn 6 only): Both sides gain VPs based on their Intact Barricades (International) and Intact Siege Lines (Chinese).
o Check for Automatic Victory (one side has 15+ VP advantage). If Turn 6, determine the winner of the game.

Grant: What actions are available to players?

José: Both players have access to a core set of Basic Actions to manage the conflict:

• Combat: Including Engagements, Raids, and Artillery Fire.
• Maneuver: Movement and Surveillance to gain the upper hand.
• Logistics: Supplying forces and Repairing vital defenses.

However, the true flavor of the game comes from the Specific Special Actions available to each side, reflecting their unique historical roles:

• The International Player focuses on survival and rescue: Expanding the Infirmary, healing wounded units, advancing the Relief Expedition, managing Diplomacy, and increasing political Commitment or Morale.
• The Chinese Player focuses on pressure and persistence: Laying Siege Lines, coordinating Artillery Support, increasing Commitment, and rallying their forces to Raise Morale.

This structure ensures that while the basic rules are easy to learn, the strategy for each side is completely distinct.

Grant: How is supply used in the game?

José: Supply management is a cornerstone of the experience, especially for the International side. During the Maintenance Phase, both players must check their supply status. The consequences of failing to maintain logistics are severe and thematic:

• The International Side: For the besieged, a lack of resources is devastating. Failing to meet supply requirements can force healthy units directly into the Infirmary due to exhaustion or starvation.
• The Chinese Side: For the attackers, supply issues represent a loss of momentum and logistical strain, resulting in a direct hit to their Morale.

This ensures that players cannot just focus on combat; they must spend precious actions and cards on the Supply action to keep their war machine running.

Grant: How is victory achieved?

José: To win a game of Peking: 55 Days of Fury you must get more victory points (VP’s) than your opponent. Each side has different ways of doing this:

International Side

• For each Chinese MU KIA +1 VP.
• For each Chinese Artillery Unit Sabotaged: +1 VP.
• For each Intact Barricade at the end of the game: +1 VP.

Chinese Side

• For each International MU KIA +1 VP.
• For each Destroyed Barricade: +1 VP.
• For every two (rounded down) Intact Siege Lines at the end of the game: +1 VP.

If the Relief Expedition marker is held in a +1/+2 VP space on the Relief Map at the end of Turn 3, and again at the end of Turn 6 (it can be scored twice). If the marker is on a –1/-2 VP space, the Chinese sides lose that many VP’s at the end of Turn 3 and Turn 6.

There is a case when the game can end automatically in the following cases:

• If any side scores 30 VP’s, they are immediately declared the winner.
• If at the end of any Turn a side has a 15 VP advantage or more over their opponent, they are declared the winner.

Grant: What type of experience does the game create for players?

José: The experience is defined by a shifting sense of pressure that is unique to each side. Since it is an asymmetrical game, the tension evolves differently for each player as the siege progresses. In the first half of the game, the International player often feels they have the situation under control, but as the turns pass, the weight of the siege begins to take its toll, and maintaining their position becomes increasingly desperate. Conversely, the Chinese player starts by testing the defenses, and their momentum builds as they tighten the noose around the legations.

This ‘cross-fade’ of emotions—from early confidence to late-game survival for one, and from persistence to a final push for the other—ensures that the tension remains high from the very first turn until the final victory point is counted.

Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?

José: I am truly proud of the system I’ve built for this game. My goal was to prove that a siege doesn’t have to feel static or repetitive, and I believe we’ve achieved a dynamic flow that will surprise players.

If the community enjoys this system (Siege & Storm Series)—which I’m confident they will—I would love to adapt and implement it for other historical sieges in the future. I am always open to feedback and suggestions! Which historic siege would you like to see next? Let me know in the comments.

Grant: What other games are you working on?

José: Beyond Peking, I have several other exciting projects in the pipeline. I am currently putting the finishing touches on Spartacus: Rome Under Threat, a 1-2 player game focusing on the Third Servile War. I am also mid-way through the development of Cid Campeador: Warlord, a 1-4 player game. It spans the dramatic 15-year period from 1085 to 1099—a time defined by El Cid’s exile, the expansion of the Christian kingdoms, and the rising shadow of the Almoravids.

Looking further ahead, I have plenty of ideas in the works, including a new thematic game centered on the Roman Empire and Volume II of our Blind Valor Series, which will utilize the system from Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth. There’s much more to come from Neva Game Press!

José, thank you so much for your time and effort in responding to our request for this interview and for the great detail that you have given us about this game. I am very much interested in Peking: 55 Days of Fury and cannot wait for it to be available to play!

If you are interested in Peking: 55 Days of Fury, you can pre-order through the Incoming! Pre-Order System on the Neva Game Press website at the following link: https://nevagamepress.com/product/peking-55-days-of-fury/

-Grant

Neva Game Press is really exploring the space of wargame publishing and have games that are being worked on spanning all of history including modern and ancient. They also are looking at non-traditional topics to cover such as the Reformation. Their newest pre-order offering is called Reformation: Fire and Faith and is designed by Clint Warren-Davey. I am keenly interested in this one and have been working with Clint on this interview and maybe a series of other articles on strategies.

Grant: Welcome back to the blog Clint. With 4 published games to your credit what lessons have you learned about the design process and been able to put into practice?

Clint: Thanks for having me back guys! Yes I have learned a lot. Mainly, my iterative loop has become faster. I use mainly digital prototypes on PowerPoint and can get a prototype up and running pretty fast. This means I don’t need to print components and then reprint when things change. I also have a larger “toolbox” of ideas to draw from as I’ve played a wider variety of games. I still have a core design philosophy though – I want games that give players lots of meaningful decisions and a minimum of busywork, plus I generally prefer a high level of player interaction and interdependence.

Grant: How do you pitch games to publishers? What is your approach?

Clint: First I make sure the game is ready. I play-test the game myself a minimum of 20 times. Then I give it to external play-testers (basically my followers on Twitter/X). I keep refining it and make sure all the rules are nailed down. Once I have a fully functional and viable digital prototype, I send an email to a lot of different publishers to see who wants the game. So far, I’ve usually found at least one publisher who will accept each game. 

Grant: What is your new game upcoming game Reformation: Fire and Faith about?

Clint: It’s about the wars and religious struggles that tore Europe apart during the Reformation, from 1517 (Martin Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg cathedral) to 1555 (the Peace of Augsburg). This is during the “pike and shot” era, which I love. It also includes a lot of political, religious and military conflict that is fascinating on multiple levels. It’s the perfect setting for an asymmetric wargame.

Grant: What image and feeling did you want to convey to players with the subtitle “Fire and Faith”?

Clint: Well this subtitle was decided by my publisher, Jose Neva of Neva Game Press. He wanted to convey both religious and military struggle in the title of the game, hence fire and faith. Before that the game title was undecided – it was either going to be just “Reformation” or “One Hour Reformation”  – though upon further development it was clear this game doesn’t really fit with my other “One Hour” games.

Grant: Why was this a game you were inspired to design?

Clint: I am fascinated by the Reformation – both from a religious and a historical perspective. When I converted to Christianity about 10 years ago I had to choose which church to join, which forced me to read more on this time period, and read the arguments put forward by Protestant and Catholic apologists, then and now. I should state here that although I decided upon Catholicism, I hold no ill-feeling towards Protestantism and I understand the impetus behind it.

I was also drawn in by the fascinating geopolitics and tactical level military transformations of the time. The struggles between the French, Habsburgs, English, Ottomans, Venice, Scotland, Hungary, the Papacy and many other much smaller states were kaleidoscopic in their complexity but endlessly entertaining. To take one example of the political maneuvering of the time – the French lost the battle of Pavia to the Habsburgs, partially because 5,000 of their Swiss mercenaries just left and went home to defend their own cantons from rampaging German Landsknechts. Losing Pavia meant that King Francis I was captured. This in turn meant the English sensed weakness and struck in north-eastern France.

Seeking allies against this double threat, the French turned to the one great power that might help them – the Islamic Ottoman Empire! This outraged the Habsburg Emperor Charles V, who had his hands full containing the spread of Protestantism in Germany. The Saxons, Hessians and Brandenburgers following Luther’s lead would be much better used to help defend Vienna from the Turks, but instead both the Pope and the Emperor found themselves facing a full-scale religious revolt at the same time as renewed Ottoman offensives in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. This was all taking place against the backdrop of a military revolution in which pike and shot, and artillery, were replacing feudal levies of armoured knights.

Grant: What other Reformation games did you study for inspiration?

Clint: The complexity of this time period, and the sensitivity of religion as a topic, has meant that few game designers have been willing to tackle it. The exception is Here I Stand, the classic 6-player card-driven game by Ed Beach. This game is a well-renowned and even genre-defining title that managed to cram tons of inter-faction dynamics and historical chrome into the CDG system invented by Mark Herman (who made the first such CDG – We the People). It is absolutely brilliant in so many ways. Baroque, intricate, full of theme. It is almost like a historical equivalent of Twilight Imperium – one of my other favorite games.

The problem? It takes way too long to play for most gamers. Ever since playing Here I Stand many years ago, I had kept the idea of a simplified version at the back of my mind. Then, when I started teaching religious history at a Catholic school, I found myself teaching the Reformation. A classroom game on the topic would sure come in handy. So, in 2024 I made one. The images below give an idea of this, including my very basic graphics made in PowerPoint and Word. In 2025, I revisited the idea and thought it might be worth making into a serious game, still using the basic concepts and inter-faction dynamics borrowed from Here I Stand.

Grant: What is your design goal with the game?

Clint: To make a game with 6 asymmetric factions that shows the inter-factional dynamics and key decisions of the period, all with mechanics that are simple enough to be used in a high school classroom AND simple enough for non-wargamers to pick up. Also, a game that players of Here I Stand would enjoy – especially when they are pressed for time. I believe I have succeeded in this goal but time will tell.

Grant: What main mechanics are used in the design?

Clint: The core gameplay loop is very simple. Each faction has a list of actions to choose from. Each turn, each faction will choose two actions. That’s it. But these vary greatly. They include everything from exploring the New World to translating the Bible to raising armies to piracy and everything in between.

All the factions have some actions in common – like Recruit (placing military units) and Campaign (moving and fighting). The two religious factions – the Protestants and the Papacy – are set apart from the others by having most of their actions focus on non-military functions.

The Protestants are trying to convert people to their new faith (or rather, in their terms, restore an older and more purified form of the Christian religion). As such, their overriding focus is placing Followers on the map. As a rough approximation, each Follower piece represents 5-10% of the population converting to Protestantism. What the Protestant faction is aiming for is gaining a majority, or a near-majority, in the countries of Europe. So, their main way of earning Victory Points is by having 5 or more Followers in as many spaces as possible. Now, the Reformation did not initially take hold everywhere. Geographically it was concentrated in Germany above all, then England, then in scattered pockets throughout France. In the game this is basically where the Protestants will be focusing all of their efforts. They start with only 1 Follower on the map in Germany – this represents Martin Luther and the nascent reform movement that started to gather around him in 1517. From this humble beginning, I wanted the Protestants to build up and expand, sometimes rapidly, across the map.  

To speed up their placement of Followers, the Protestants can translate the Bible into local languages – German, English and French. This is an idea I took directly from Here I Stand and of course from the actual history of the Reformation. Having the Bible in the vernacular language, and spread by the printing press, was key to the spread of Luther’s ideas. Bible translation is a simple, two-step process in the game. First you need to accumulate “Knowledge” through the Study action and then use the Translate action to place Knowledge markers on the three Bible language spots on the Protestant faction sheet. Initially, this was the only purpose of Knowledge. But then I expanded it to other uses – especially the Debate action, which is a competitive bid against the Papacy that can score a valuable “Issue” token worth a precious VP. These Issue tokens represent the points of dispute in the Reformation, like the role of Scripture, Tradition and authority of the Magisterium. I liked the idea of carefully studying to build up knowledge in preparation for a debate – it’s a case of the game language matching the theme.  

The Papacy works in a similar way to the Protestants – but in reverse. The Pope is trying to remove Protestant Followers, through Preach and Debate actions. Every 3 Protestant Followers is minus 1 Victory Point for the Papacy, so they are incentivized to contain the spread of the Reformation. The Papacy also has ways of building up their own points, through Churches. This general term refers to all the infrastructure of the Catholic religion – not just beautiful cathedrals (like St. Peter’s, which was being built during the Reformation) but also schools, Jesuit universities, seminaries, monasteries, trained clergymen and church councils. I was originally going to have a track or chart on the Papacy faction sheet to measure this but later decided to have it as pieces on the map – the Churches you see in the game.

This was because I wanted the Papacy to have some of physical presence on the map like the other factions. This was loosely inspired by the building tokens in games like Root or the resources placed on the map in Scythe. It has the advantage of opening up the Papacy’s primary victory metric to attacks from the other factions. Just like Protestant Follower pieces, papal Church pieces can be attacked and removed. This represents iconoclasm and persecution of Catholic clergy, as well as periodic waves of destruction like the Sack of Rome in 1527. Unlike Protestant Followers, I had the Papacy’s Churches cost Wealth. This Wealth is gained entirely through the Tithe action – which takes money from any nations that are still Catholic. Early in the game this includes three out of the six factions: Habsburgs, England and France. But England and France might convert to Protestantism, and a greedy Pope constantly demanding their money might hasten this on! 

Grant: What are the playable factions? How did you differentiate them?

Clint: There are 6 factions in the game: Protestants, Papacy, Habsburgs, England, France and Ottoman Empire. Each one has a faction sheet, like the one below, which summarizes their victory conditions and available actions.

The Protestants and Papacy are religious-focused factions. They do have military forces, but they are relatively few in number and are not the main priority. The Protestants are trying to build up their knowledge of the Bible and translate it into vernacular languages, preach to the masses and debate the Catholics to spread their ideas. Their main goal is getting their Followers on the map. The Papacy is trying to contain the spread of Protestant Followers and remove them from the map as much as possible, plus place their own Churches. Both Churches and Followers are immobile and do not count as military units. But they can be attacked and persecuted off the map.

The other factions – the Habsburgs, England, France and the Ottomans – function more like the nations in a wargame. Amassing armies and fleets, fighting battles, aiming for control of spaces on the map. There are plenty of differences though. The English, French and Habsburgs have the option of Explore action – sending their Atlantic Fleets to explore the New World, gaining varying amounts of Wealth or a valuable New World colony (at the risk of losing the Fleet). This provides a great way for factions to gamble early on in the game in a high-stakes race for colonies. Two tweaks were made to the Explore action during the design process. First, my co-designer Ed Farren suggested that New World colonies should provide extra income during the Trade action if the owner has a Fleet in the Atlantic.

I loved this idea and implemented it immediately. I later thought that the Habsburgs should have a distinct advantage in exploring the New World, what with Hernan Cortez and Francisco Pizarro active during this time. I gave the Habsburgs a way to boost their Explore action with “Conquistadors” – effectively tripling their chance of finding a colony at the cost of an additional action. This means the Habsburgs will be raking in more money. But there are a lot of ways for the other factions to steal it! The English, French and Ottomans can all use the Piracy action to get that Spanish silver, and the Ottomans can also Raid on land if their Armies make it through to Austria.   

The relationship between the military/political factions and the religious factions is also fascinating. I kept the Habsburgs as a staunchly Catholic faction – they can’t change their allegiance and will act as the strong right arm of the Holy See throughout the game. But England and France are a different story. England needed a historically-rooted incentive to convert to Protestantism, and this was solved in two ways. First, if England officially converts, they will earn 1 VP if England itself contains at least 5 Protestant Followers. This also gives 1 VP to the Protestant player, so there would be strong reasons for both players to work together in the conversion for England. I also wanted some of the high drama of Henry VIII and his wives without an entire sub-system and chart like Here I Stand. This became the “Dynasty” action – a simple die roll to gain a VP by producing a viable heir to the throne.

If England is Catholic, they need a 6 for this. But converting to Protestantism offers success on a 5 or a 6, as Henry can start divorcing his infertile wives. England can therefore grab 2 VP quite easily by ushering in the Anglican faith, which is handy because their opportunities for expansion on the continent are quite limited. France can also earn VP by converting to Protestantism and having at least 5 Protestant Followers in France. For both England and France, converting to the new faith costs an action – which Ed quite appropriately labelled “Reform”. This could be a wasted action if Protestantism doesn’t end up spreading in that nation or if the Dynasty action still fails. But it’s a live issue. Among experienced players, I expect that the Papacy player and the Protestant player will spend a lot of their table talk trying to convince England and France to side with them in religious terms.  

Grant: What is the layout of the board?

Clint: I made the map as simple as possible. There are 7 land spaces: Spain, France, Germany, England, Austria, Italy and the Ottoman Empire. There are 2 sea spaces: the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. And that’s it! But you will find that this still provides plenty of interesting strategic choices, as there are 6 factions crammed into these 9 spaces. So, like the proverbial “knife fight in a telephone booth,” players are stuck in fierce competition from the very beginning. For example, the Papacy, France and Habsburgs all have some presence in Italy in the game’s set up. Plus, there are pieces from neutral nations there – like Venice and Florence. So inevitably there be some conflict there!

Grant: Why did you feel area movement was the best approach? What strategic decisions are forced upon the players by the layout?

Clint: Honestly, I didn’t want this to be game about operational level maneuver, more about strategic level decisions and inter-faction dynamics. The map is very heavily abstracted. But you can see it this way. Every faction has a “homeland” space. The Habsburgs, being the hegemon of Europe, have two (Spain and Austria). Each faction will usually be aiming to keep its homeland secure while pushing into 1 or 2 other spaces. Taking control of a space is a big deal and will involve good timing, negotiation and applying just enough force. Some spaces – like Germany and Italy – will usually become battleground spaces with multiple factions vying for control.

Grant: What is the counter anatomy? What different units are included?

Clint: Like the map, the counter anatomy is as simple as possible. There is really no information on the counters other than their type. There are Armies and Fleets – which are the only military units in the game. There are also two religious “units” – Churches for the Papacy and Followers for the Protestants. These don’t fight and can’t move, but they are essential for the two religious factions to build up their influence and victory points. There are also counters for many other things – New World Territories, the Royal Heir for England, the Issues that can be won in a Debate, Knowledge, Wealth and a few other things.

Grant: What is the scale of the game?

Clint: There’s no specific ground or time scale as many things have been heavily abstracted. But very roughly you could say that each turn represents about 2-3 years and each army piece represents 5,000-10,000 men.

Grant: What actions do players have each turn? 

Clint: Players can choose two actions per turn. As explained above, they are different for each faction. But there are some similarities. I will give a list of the actions for each faction.

Protestants: Recruit, Campaign, Diplomacy, Preach, Study, Translate, Debate.

Papacy: Recruit, Campaign, Diplomacy, Preach, Study, Debate, Tithe, Build.

Habsburgs: Recruit, Campaign, Diplomacy, Conquistadors, Explore, Trade, Persecute.

England: Recruit, Campaign, Diplomacy, Explore, Trade, Dynasty, Reform, Persecute, Piracy.

France: Recruit, Campaign, Diplomacy, Explore, Trade, Reform, Persecute, Piracy.

Ottomans: Recruit, Campaign, Diplomacy, Janissaries, Piracy, Trade.

Many of these are self-explanatory but I will explain some of my favourite ones. Diplomacy means getting a Minor Nation on your side, or pulling one away from an enemy. These Minor Nations include Venice, Florence, Genoa, Hungary and Scotland and they have their own Armies or Fleets or both.

Piracy means using your Fleets to steal money from the enemy. Explore means trying to find a valuable New World Territory – worth VP and more income during Trade actions if you have a Fleet in the Atlantic.

The Persecute action means placing or removing Protestant Followers. The Reform action – available only to England and France – means officially converting your nation to Protestantism.

Dynasty is unique to England and represents Henry VIII trying to get an Heir (worth a VP). It’s a dice roll, but it’s easier when you’re Protestant to represent Henry being able to divorce and try with a different woman.

Janissaries is unique to the Ottomans and gives them a valuable +2 bonus in battle that turn. Conquistadors is unique to the Habsburgs and gives them a bonus on their Explore rolls – making it more likely that they will grab a New World Territory.

Grant: How does combat work in the design?

Clint: Very simple – add up your Armies/Fleets, add a D3 roll, the highest score wins. If there were a total of 7 or more units in the battle, the winner suffers 1 loss and the loser suffers 2 losses. Otherwise, the loser suffers 1 loss.

Clint: How do players obtain victory?

Clint: Every faction can score Victory Points (VP) in multiple ways. The margins here are very tight – typically the winning faction will score 5 or 6 VP while second and third place will have 4-5. So, a single point really matters. Every faction can score VP for control of spaces – this is hard to pull off as you need more Armies or Fleets in the space than all other factions combined. So, you might retain control of your own homeland, but taking control of another space is hard. Aside from control, each faction has other ways of getting VP:

The Protestants earn 1 VP for translating the Bible into all 3 languages (French, English and German), 1 VP for each space on the map with 5 or more Followers, 1 VP for each Issue you win in a Debate and 1 VP for having more Knowledge than the Papacy. So the Protestants need to focus on their religious actions – studying, translating and preaching.

The Papacy earns 1 VP for each Church they have on the map MINUS 1 for every 3 Protestant Followers on the map. They also earn 1 VP for having more Knowledge than the Protestants, 1 VP for each Issue they win in a Debate and 1 VP for having more Wealth than any other faction. So, the Pope also needs to focus more on his religious goals – but can also use the Tithe action to build up Wealth (for building Churches) and maybe get a point for rolling in cash.

The Habsburgs earn VP for each New World Territory they discover – and they are better at it than other factions because of their Conquistadors. They also earn VP for having 2 or more Churches in their homelands (Spain and Austria) and can earn VP for having the most Wealth.

The English earn VP for New World Territories and for having the most Wealth. They can also earn 1 VP for producing an Heir with their Dynasty action. The Dynasty action represents Henry VIII’s efforts to produce a legitimate male heir for his throne, and is easier if England becomes Protestant. England earns 1 VP if it converts to Protestantism and has 5 or more Protestant Followers in England. If it stays Catholic, it earns 1 VP for having 2 Churches in England.

France is basically like England but doesn’t have the Dynasty action. They will focus on military action, exploration and building up Wealth. If they stay Catholic they will want the Pope to build up Churches in France, if they go Protestant they earn VP for having 5+ Protestant Followers in France.

The Ottomans are the most straightforward – they can earn 1 VP for having the most Wealth but mostly they just get VP for control of spaces – they earn 2 per space instead of 1. They are an expansionist juggernaut and don’t care about the religious squabbles in Europe.

Grant: What type of an experience does the game create?

Clint: I think it gives you an understanding of the key inter-factional dynamics of the Reformation era using mechanics that are simple to understand and easy to enact.

Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?

Clint: The asymmetry, the simplicity and the interaction between the players. I’m also really happy with the “bot” rules which allow you to play at anything from 1 to 6 players, with non-player-controlled factions run by a simple dice-based action sheet.

Grant: What has been the response of playtesters?

Clint: Very positive. Every play-tester has said the game is really fun and easy to learn, their only suggestions have been refinements to improve the balance between the 6 factions. For example, one play-tester noticed that the Debate action was under-powered and that the Protestants and Papacy were scoring fewer VP than the other factions on average. Changing the Debate action to winning “Issue” markers (worth 1 VP each) solved both problems. This is why play-testers are so valuable!

Grant: What other designs are you working on?

Clint: A lot! I will share a few of them with you.

First, there is One Hour Napoleon and One Hour WW1, sequels to my game One Hour WW2. Napoleon should be out this year, WW1 next year.

Then there is Messiah – my “Jesus COIN game” which is set in 1^st century Roman-occupied Israel and lets you play as the Christians, Zealots, Pharisees or Romans. Similarly, there is “Testament” – my card drafting game on the entire Old Testament, inspired by 7 Wonders. These are still in development but they have a publisher and will certainly be made.

Anyone interested in my designs should follow me on X at @Clint_Davey1 to keep up to date with all the new releases. Thanks for having me on again!

If you have followed us for a while now, you know how we feel about Here I Stand: Wars of the Reformation from GMT Games. And, you know that we enjoy multi-player wargames. So, this one really seems to b simple and take in the concepts of negotiation and the asymmetry of each of the factions. I think that this game will be a good quick playing substitute for the longer and more involved Here I Stand experience. I cannot wait to get this one hopefully this year.

If you are interested in Reformation: Fire and Faith, you can pre-order a copy for $49.00 from the Neva Game Press website at the following link: https://nevagamepress.com/product/reformation-fire-and-faith/

-Grant

While I have not played a bunch of games focused on the Punic War, the few that I have played are very good and I am always interested in a good Ancients combat game. Last fall, GMT Games announced a new 2nd Punic War game called Punicus: The Second Punic War designed by a newcomer in Carlos Oliveras. I have been very eager to learn more about this game and reached out to Carlos recently for an interview and he graciously accepted.

*Keep in mind that the design is still undergoing playtesting and development and that any details or component pictures shared in this interview may change prior to final publication as they enter the art department.

Grant: Carlos welcome to our blog. First off please tell us a little about yourself. What are your hobbies? What’s your day job?

Carlos: Thank you for supporting the hobby in these times. As for me, I’m a guy—well, more like a man with presbyopia now—who’s starting to struggle to read the counters without glasses. I’m into the same things most people of my generation grew up with: films, books, and music, plus a hobby that wasn’t nearly as widespread in Spain in the ’80s and ’90s: games—Eurogames, role-playing, video games, and above all, wargames. And to pay for all that, I work as a naval architect.

Grant: What has motivated you to break into game design? What have you enjoyed most about the experience thus far?

Carlos: I’ve been involved in wargames for quite a while. For instance, I was the rules editor for Mark Simonitch’s Stalingrad ’42, I put together the player aids for Craig Besinque’s Conquest & Consequence, and I translated Successors into Spanish—so I suppose the next natural step was this: designing my own game.

There are a lot of fun parts to creating a game, but there’s one aspect that may not be strictly “design” and yet is genuinely enriching: working with so many people from so many different places. You realize that despite differences in countries, cultures, and ways of being, people—if they want to—can understand each other, and we’re not as different as we sometimes think. If there were more wargames, there’d be less war. Coming away with that conviction leaves you with something genuinely positive.

Grant: What is your upcoming game Punicus about?

Carlos: I haven’t exactly found some untouched topic that no one has ever made a wargame about — honestly, I wasn’t that original. It’s another Second Punic War game: Hannibal, Scipio, and the whole cast. It’s a block wargame with cards of medium complexity, designed to be playable in an afternoon.

Grant: What games gave you used in inspiration for your design? Why?

Carlos: Punicus is built on Craig Besinque’s Hellenes System, one of my all-time favorite games—one of Craig’s real gems. I’ve played it so much that I always wanted to see it applied to other settings: the Second Punic War, the Gallic Wars…I kept hoping Craig would eventually design something along those lines. In the end, I got over my hesitation and decided to do it myself.

Grant: What is the scale of the game? Force structure of units?

Carlos: Because this war is so long, if I want the game to be playable in an afternoon it has to take a very strategic, high-level view. Each turn represents one year. As for the units, given how diverse (and sometimes contradictory) the sources are, I’ve adapted the order of battle to what produced the best balance during playtesting. For example, even though it seems Hannibal began the war with more elephants than his brother, in the game they both start with the same number of elephants.

Grant: How are the units represented? What is the layout of the blocks?

Carlos: The units are essentially wooden blocks with stickers. In short, the sticker shows the unit type (infantry, auxilia, cavalry, etc.); its Combat Value (the number of dice it rolls in combat); its Combat Rating, which determines when it attacks (in alphabetical order) and what it hits on or uses to cause routs; its Movement Rating; and, very importantly, its Home Box, which tells you where that unit can be recruited.

Grant: What advantage do blocks offer the design?

Carlos: Basically, it’s the fog of war. And not just because you don’t know what unit is in a given block—you also don’t know its exact strength state, since a single block can have up to four step levels. On top of that, there’s the physical feel of handling something solid like wood, which—without taking anything away from cardboard counters—is simply satisfying. I know that’s not strictly a design point, but it matters. If I have the choice, I’ll always prefer playing Punicus on the table rather than on Vassal.

Grant: Why was this a subject you wanted to create a game on?

Carlos: I love history, and I have to admit that when I was a kid, Hannibal’s campaign really blew my mind—elephants, crossing the Alps…to me it was like a movie, with the extra thrill that it had actually happened. Years later I was lucky enough to play Mark Simonitch’s Hannibal, and it made me feel like a kid again. So when I found myself with the chance to create a Second Punic War game using the Hellenes engine, I didn’t hesitate. And yes—designing it has been just as fun as discovering who the Carthaginians were back then, and as fun as playing Hannibal years later.

Grant: What are the unique features with the system used for the game?

Carlos: If we compare it to Hellenes, what sets Punicus apart is basically three things. First, the addition of non-combat units such as Generals and Catapults. Generals, for example, improve the units they are stacked with, and if that general also happens to be an active leader for their side, they can apply their special ability. For instance, Marcellus’s special ability improves the assault capabilities of the units with him. Second, new actions like production, piracy, and diplomacy—yes, you can take cities by sending ambassadors and persuading their citizens they’ll be better off with you. And third, the addition of a personal player board where each side can invest Supplies into researching projects, letting you shape your long-term strategy.

Grant: What unique elements of the Punic Wars did you want highlight in the game?

Carlos: I’d like the game to capture two things. First, the asymmetry between the sides. Carthage starts with tremendous striking power, but its enemy is far away. Rome is a sleeping giant: it loses battles, but it keeps standing—unyielding, impossible to discourage. You know it will wake up; how long it takes, and what form that awakening takes, will shape the rest of the war. Second, I wanted to reflect how the war evolves. Early on, players have fewer options, but as the campaign advances new possibilities open up to explore—investing in projects, diplomacy, piracy, and so on. The idea is that turns shouldn’t feel repetitive as the game goes on.

Grant: What various unit types are included in the game? What is unique about these units?

Carlos: There are three classes of units: Civians, Barbarians, and non-combat units. Civians represent the era’s city-based forces: Infantry, Auxilia, Cavalry, Elephants, and Fleets. Each unit type has something that makes it distinct. For example, Cavalry can perform a special attack called Harrying. Elephants are a powerful arm, but with the drawback that they can panic your own troops. Barbarians are slow but hard-hitting units, with the key trait that they dissolve in Winter—unless they are with Hannibal. Finally, there are the non-combat units: Generals and Catapults. They cannot operate on their own, but they can significantly influence battles.

Grant: How are cards used in the design? What are Action Points?

Carlos: The game is played in Years. At the start of each Year, each player is dealt six cards. In each of the seasons that make up the Year, players choose one of their cards face down and reveal them simultaneously. The card’s orientation determines whether the player will resolve its event or use its Action Points—one or the other. Each Action Point allows you to take one action, chosen from: Movement Actions (from standard Maneuvers to Piracy actions), Building Actions (recruiting and reinforcing), Production and Diplomacy.

Grant: Can you share a few examples of the cards?

Carlos: Yes, of course. Here is the “Hannibal Leads Carthage” Card and its key features. This card starts on the Carthaginian player board. It is a Leader card: while it remains on the player board, it grants its player its Leader Value (additional Action Points) and also gives Hannibal’s block a Virtus, or special ability—in this case, it means that any Barbarians with him do not dissolve in Winter. You can also see a value labeled Damage. When a unit crosses a mountain border, or a Fleet runs into a storm, you draw a card to see whether it takes damage.

Grant: How are cards used for research?

Carlos: At the start of the Year, players still play their cards either as events or for Action Points, but in this segment those Action Points are not used to take actions. Instead, they are used either to make an offering to a god (which will allow future appeals to that god to do things like reroll dice) or to invest Supplies in projects. This is the only time projects can be researched. That means that if, in the previous Year, a player didn’t produce Supplies—or spent them on maintaining troops during Winter—they may have no opportunity to research at all.

Grant: What different research options are available and what are their benefits?

Carlos: There are basically three branches: one that boosts production, one that increases naval power, and one that benefits land forces. It’s also worth noting that the projects for each side are not 100% symmetrical, which further differentiates how Rome and Carthage play.

Grant: How does activation work?

Carlos: Units don’t activate on their own; players have to spend their cards’ Action Points to move them. In other words, if a player plays a card as an Event, they won’t be able to move their units that season—the only combat they might still carry out is siege attrition from sieges established in earlier turns. Likewise, if a player plays a card for Action Points but it only provides 1 AP and they spend it on something other than movement—for example, using that AP to produce—then their troops won’t move that season. So each turn you have to think carefully about what you do, because your Action Points are limited: if you do one thing, you can’t do another. It’s that Twilight Struggle feeling of always being short on points—more or less.

Grant: What is the layout of the player boards?

Carlos: The player boards are dual-layer boards, so units and Supply cubes can sit neatly recessed in place. Each player board has a Praetorium, an area that holds units the player cannot recruit at the start of the game; these units will enter play later through Diplomacy Actions or Events. There is also the Proiecta section, where players invest and accumulate Supply cubes while researching projects. At the top, there are slots to hold groups of blocks in case the stack becomes too large to keep on the main map. At the bottom of the player board are the Rostra, where each side places the cards of its active leaders.

Grant: What key choices are forced upon the players?

Carlos: Each season, the player has to ask themselves which card to use and how to use it: for Action Points or for the Event. On top of that, the decision must factor in that the number of Action Points has a direct impact on initiative—who will act first that season. In principle, you don’t know in advance whether you will go before your opponent or not, so even what you intended to do with your Action Points when you committed the card may have to change, because your opponent has altered the board situation. That card-use choice is a recurring one every turn, but there are more decisions. For example, when you are besieging a city and the battle phase arrives, you have to decide what to do: attrition or assault. And for the defending side, when you are assaulted you have the option to capitulate—you lose the city, but in a less dishonorable way than if you were to lose the assault. Also, in battles a side can always choose to withdraw at the start of its round to execute an ordered retreat and limit losses.

Grant: How does combat work?

Carlos: It’s fairly straightforward. In a battle, blocks are revealed and sorted alphabetically by their Combat Rating. Blocks attack in letter order (A/B/C/D…), with defenders acting before attackers when the letter is the same. A block attacks with a number of dice equal to its printed Combat Value, and it scores hits and routs according to its Combat Rating. For example, an A2 block would attack first because it’s an “A” unit, scoring hits on 1–2 and causing routs on 5–6. Each hit reduces the strongest opposing block, and each rout forces the weakest opposing block to leave the battle. When all blocks in the combat have attacked, the Combat Round ends. Combat Rounds repeat until one side is eliminated or retreats. Combat also changes depending on the battle type. For example, in an Assault, the forces inside the city are treated as A2 blocks and they also receive a defensive bonus.

Grant: How is victory achieved?

Carlos: There are different types of victory. A Decisive Victory requires reaching 15 points and controlling an enemy Core City. A Negotiated Victory can be achieved with only 12 points. If neither of those victory conditions is met and the game reaches the end of its campaign years (which, in principle, players also won’t know in advance), a final comparison determines who wins—or whether the game ends in a draw.

Grant: What do you feel the game models well?

Carlos: What I think the game models well is the overall course of the war. It’s not that it perfectly models individual battles or grand strategic movements, because the game is somewhat sandbox in that respect. It’s more about the feeling that, with the sides being so different, both players are under constant pressure to perform at their best—because one mistake can swing the whole game. It feels like a war, not just a series of skirmishes. For example, Carthage starts with an impressive striking force, but its native recruitment base is far away and the war is long, so there’s constant pressure: victory can’t rely on a single great general forever. Rome, on the other hand, knows its potential is enormous, but it has to survive long enough to actually bring that potential online before its opponent brings it down.

I have come to Italy not to make war on the Italians, but to aid the Italians against Rome. – Hannibal Barca

Grant: What has been the experience of your playtesters?

Carlos: I think they’re having a good time. The fact that they want to play it again means the game has them hooked. And beyond that, their help has been invaluable—adding rules that turned out to be fundamental, or even almost creating cards like Mutiny. We’ll most likely put out a call for a new round of playtesters in an upcoming GMT newsletter, so if anyone’s interested, keep an eye out.

Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?

Carlos: What I’m enjoying most is that the playtesters (including the developer, Joe Dewhurst) have had very few questions about the rulebook wording. It also helps that I started from a very polished manual like Hellenes.

Grant: What other designs are you contemplating or already working on?

Carlos: Right now, almost all my time goes into Punicus, but I have rough outlines for a block game about the Spanish Civil War (something like Spain Front, maybe) and a solo game about a certain Julius Caesar.

I love a good block wargame! And, in my opinion, this game looks extremely interesting and I am very much excited to learn more about it. I also very much like the idea of investing in technology and projects. Just such as neat addition to any wargame as you have to balance investing in replacements for your lost troops or new abilities and strength.

If you are interested in Punicus: The Second Punic War, you can pre-order a copy for $69.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1196-punicus-the-second-punic-war.aspx

-Grant

I love a different style and focus of wargame. A game that takes a look at an important but somewhat obscure or rarely addressed topic such as espionage or intelligence. And this past month, 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. I have reached out to Russell and he was more than willing to provide some great insight into his design.

*Keep in mind that the design is still undergoing playtesting and development and that any details or component pictures shared in this interview may change prior to final publication as they enter the art department.

Grant: Russ welcome to our blog. First off please tell us a little about yourself. What are your hobbies? What’s your day job?

Russell: Happy to be here to talk about Checkpoint Charlie! My wife and I live in a lovely town called Waukesha, just outside Milwaukee. I retired a little early from a career as a software developer and went back to the University of Wisconsin to study creative writing. That led to my main hobby, which is writing science fiction novels. On most days, I leave my house, walk to downtown Waukesha, and write at a local university library or public library or down at my favorite coffee shop. Basically, I’m livin’ the dream.

Grant: What motivated you to break into game design? What have you enjoyed most about the experience thus far?

Russell: I’ve done a lot of freelance writing for tabletop RPG publishers, but what got me interested in historical game design was solitaire bots. A couple years ago, I found a bot for Command and Colors: Ancients created by Paulo Miranda, and I had a blast playing against it. I expanded it for Samurai Battles and had fun with that. I decided to create a full bot, with no decisions made by the player, for one of my favorite games, Here I Stand. It took months, but I ended up with deck-based bots for each power that had their own personality and did some basic negotiating with the players and the other bots. In my last game against them, as France, I came in fourth. After that, I made full bots for Talon and Combat Commander: Europe. The next step was to develop a solitaire game from scratch, and the idea of a game about espionage in Berlin had been bouncing around in my head for decades. What have I enjoyed most about the experience? The answer is strange, but I think I actually miss being a programmer. Game development uses those same parts of my brain. It’s very different than writing novels.

Grant: What is your upcoming game Checkpoint Charlie about?

Russell: Checkpoint Charlie is about managing British Secret Intelligence Service espionage missions in early 1960’s Berlin. You play as a case officer, a mastermind if you will, not an individual agent. It’s inspired as much by the fictional works of authors like John le Carré as it is by accounts of actual espionage operations. If you’re familiar with le Carré’s novels, you play as George Smiley, not one of his field agents.

Grant: What games have you used as inspiration for your design?

Russell: That’s a tough one. I struggled to find a game mechanic that evokes the feel I want, a lack of complete control over agents and the situation. I’ve probably been more inspired by computer games with simultaneous movement, maybe something like RimWorld, than by any particular boardgame.

Grant: What is important to model or include in a game about the British Secret Intelligence Service?

Russell: The first question is, who is the player supposed to be? I didn’t want to model the experience of an individual field agent. What fascinated me most about accounts of these missions, including faithful fictional accounts, is the way all the assets work together and adapt to a changing situation. I want the player to experience that, all within the context of secrecy, of trying to not be discovered and compromised. To fully experience that, the player has to be a case officer, a person leading and coordinating the mission. What that means, however, is that the player doesn’t have full control of every individual action taken by every agent.

Grant: What challenges did the subject cause for the design? How have you overcome them?

Russell: I’ll limit my answer to what I think were the two biggest challenges. The first was creating a game in which the player doesn’t have complete control, but still has enough agency to successfully complete a tough mission and feel like they did something amazing. We’re working on an article about this for the Inside GMT blog, but the solution mostly comes down to the card draw movement mechanic. Most of the movement and actions that take place on the map of Berlin happen based on which card the player chooses from the draw area. That one choice triggers the movement of up to five assets and KGB agents and also affects where surveillance and intel appear on the map. The second challenge was making a game about missions taking place in secret over hours or days, with fictional agents, feel at least somewhat historical. I hope we accomplished this by using actual locations on the map and including historical events to anchor the missions in this period.

Grant: What type of missions do players undertake?

Russell: I hope Checkpoint Charlie will be perceived as a “toolkit” game. For me that means there are enough components there, and enough interacting mechanics to be able to create many different missions that feel unique. Specifically, there are missions that are basically pick up and deliver with a KGB agent on your tail, missions where you set a trap for a KGB agent by planting a piece of tempting intelligence, a mission where you have to cross the Berlin Wall to deliver instructions to a dissident Russian scientist, and a mission where you have to protect a Soviet defector and get him safely to the airport with identification papers in hand. If you play Checkpoint Charlie in campaign mode, you’ll uncover evidence of a mole in your station and run another mission to get them to expose themselves. Every mission requires you to worry about the basics of moving assets around on the map, but beyond that each mission is unique. There are twelve missions included, and so far, we haven’t run out of interesting ways to combine all the elements provided in the game.

Grant: How does the game work in its cooperative mode?

Russell: When playing solitaire, the player has four cards in their hand. With two players, each player gets three cards, and with three players, only two. However, each player contributes one of their cards to a shared hand available to all players. In this way, each player always has four cards to choose from. This also helps reduce the issue of a player holding a card that’s important for the mission, but it isn’t their turn when it’s needed. The game also includes optional secure communications rules, where players cannot discuss plans or strategy or future game states except when they exhaust a meeting token to pause the game and have a discussion.

Grant: How do players work together?

Russell: The players are all working toward the same mission objectives, taking turns going through the turn sequence. They work together by having the same plan so they’re not working against each other. They work together by being smart about which cards they contribute to the shared hand. In secure communications mode, players have to save their meeting tokens for those critical moments when they’re presented with a new challenge or it’s clear that the existing plan has gone off the rails. The cards contributed to the shared hand are even more important in secure communications mode, because they can signal basic agreement on a plan without having to call a meeting.

Grant: As a solitaire game how does the bot work? What are its priorities and how does it make decisions?

Russell: The opposition basically emerges from two mechanics in the game. The first is the surveillance pawns placed in locations around the map. These appear when a surveillance card is drawn from the mission deck and they are placed based on which cards are showing in the draw area. When an asset moves into a location under surveillance and fails a save roll, they become detected, along with any items they carry. The second mechanic is the movement of KGB agents on the map. They move around based on which card the player takes from the draw area, in the same way that the player’s asset’s move. Running into a KGB agent almost guarantees an asset will be detected. In addition, when an asset or item is detected, every KGB agent gets a free move every turn and converges on that asset or item. If a detected asset or item is ever in the same location as a KGB agent at the end of a player turn, they are compromised and removed from the mission. There are some very simple priority rules governing which location KGB agents will move to if they have a choice, but otherwise the logic of how they move is the same as for the player’s own assets.

Grant: What type of experience does the game create for players?

Russell: I think the word is “constrained,” or maybe “desperate.” The game is designed to make players feel like they don’t have much control of the situation, when in fact they do have enough to successfully complete the missions. Toward the end of a mission, when the players look at the cards in their hands and the draw area and see that there is a path to victory, despite the fact that their key agent has been detected and KGB agents are closing in, I want them to breathe out and realize they haven’t truly relaxed for thirty minutes.

Grant: What decision points face players?

Russell: Good question. Players will feel, with good reason, that the most important decision they make each turn is which of the two cards they take from the draw area. That decision effects so many parts of the game, and often involves making difficult tradeoffs. But players also make many other decisions each turn. When assets and KGB agents move, they often have a choice of two destination locations, and the player can usually decide between them. The player also must decide which card to play at the start of their turn, and this can significantly impact the outcome of everything that follows. The player can spend Intel cubes to look ahead at the next card, or to improve the odds of a detection save. They decide when an asset picks up or drops an item. In a multi-player game, they choose cards to add to the shared hand and decide when it’s necessary to call a secret meeting.

Grant: What is the layout of the board?

Russell: First, I need to point out that this is all just my own prototype artwork for playtesting. The two most important areas on the board are the map of Berlin and the card draw area. The map is roughly a five by four grid of iconic locations connected by travel lines. It’s made up of sixteen locations in West Berlin and four in East Berlin, on the other side of the Berlin Wall. The player’s assets will move around this map, gathering intel, interacting with items and other assets to complete the mission, and hopefully avoiding detection. The KGB agents also move around this map and are the players’ primary adversaries. Below the map is the card draw area, a row of five face-up cards representing locations, items or assets. Above each card location is a spot for a chit representing one of the moving tokens on the map – the assets and KGB agents. The draw area is the core mechanic of the game, determining where assets and KGB agents move, where surveillance and intel cubes are placed, and even where some historical events take place. In addition to these two areas, the board also contains locations for intel collected by either side, as well as unused surveillance pawns available to the KGB.

Grant: Why was a point to point layout of locations your choice for the board?

Russell: Checkpoint Charlie evolved from a smaller card game in which the player built up the map of Berlin by placing cards in a grid, so I think that led to a point to point map. It’s also important for the paths between locations to be immediately clear and easy to process for the players, since they’re often calculating which is the shortest path between two locations. Perhaps the main reason we’ve stuck with this layout, instead of say, going to an actual map of the city divided into regions, is that it allows us to highlight iconic locations Instead of entire neighborhoods. Assets move from Checkpoint Bravo to the Berlin Hilton, or from Café Adler to the Tiergarten. It allowed us to give the whole game a more narrative feel.

Grant: What is the purpose of the draw area at the bottom of the board?

Russell: The basic mechanic is that players can only draw one of the two cards on the ends of this row of five cards, and then all the other cards shift before refilling the empty position. No card stays in the same location from turn to turn. This is important, because these cards are used to determine where tokens move on the map. Each card location can have a chit above it corresponding to an asset or KGB agent on the map, and every turn, after the cards shift, that asset or KGB agent moves toward the location, item, or asset depicted on the card below their chit. In this example, the Dentist token will move to Mehringplatz, because that’s the card below her chit. Jester will move one location closer to Checkpoint Charlie, and Svetlova, the KGB agent, will move one location closer to the 1958 Rambler item currently at RAF Gatow. In addition to their role in moving tokens on the map, each card also has an effect printed on the bottom that applies whenever that card is showing in the draw area. As cards are drawn and new cards replace them, these effects come and go and can have significant impacts on the mission. Finally, the five cards in the draw area are also used to determine where surveillance pawns and intel cubes are placed.

Grant: How does the game use cards?

Russell: Cards are used for a few different systems in the game. When they are showing in the draw area, they determine where assets and KGB agents move, apply special effects to their depicted location, item or asset, and are used to place surveillance and intel. When a card is in a player’s hand, or in the shared hand in a cooperative game, they are only used for the played effect printed at the top of the card. There are also cards in the mission deck used to trigger historical events and the placement of surveillance pawns and intel cubes.

Grant: What types of cards are included?

Russell: The three most important types of cards, and the only cards that will ever end up in the draw area or a player’s hand, are location, item, and asset cards. The draw deck for the mission, referred to as the mission deck, contains one card for each of the twenty locations on the map, plus one card for each asset and item involved in the mission. The mission deck will also include a variable number of surveillance cards, intel cards and event cards, depending on the mission.

Grant: Can you provide us with a few examples of the cards and explain their uses?

Russell: Certainly. Let’s start with the location card for Checkpoint Bravo. On the map you’ll find the Checkpoint Bravo location at the bottom left. In reality, this was the main entry point for road traffic coming into West Berlin from West Germany, and it was actually a much busier crossing than Checkpoint Charlie. The name and the image on the card make it easy to match it to its corresponding location on the map. At the top of the card is the played effect. This is what happens when the player plays the card at the start of their turn, and it generally isn’t optional. At the bottom of the card is another printed effect. This is the active effect and applies as long as the card is showing in the draw area. The Checkpoint Bravo card is actually quite powerful. It moves a KGB Agent of the player’s choice one location closer to Checkpoint Bravo. The active effect of this card is very good, as well. As long as the card is showing in the draw area, the player may spend an intel cube to make a detected asset entering Checkpoint Bravo become undetected.

Next let’s look at the Papers card, arguably one of the most important items in the game. This card will only appear on missions that include the Papers item marker. If a detected asset has picked up this item and is carrying it, playing this card can make them undetected. For some missions, the active effect at the bottom of this card is even more important. Dotted travel lines on the map cross over the Berlin Wall and assets normally can’t traverse them, but while this card is showing in the draw area, an asset carrying this item can cross into East Berlin, or back.

Finally, let’s look at an event card. This is the Powers Abel Exchange card. It represents the 1962 CIA prisoner exchange of Soviet spy Rudolph Abel for captured U.S. U-2 aircraft pilot Francis Gary Powers at Glienicke Bridge, as depicted in the movie Bridge of Spies. When this card is drawn, it has the printed effect and then is set aside for reference. Event cards never stay in the draw area or go into a player’s hand.

Grant: What types of missions confront the players?

Russell: I’ve mentioned a few, but others include transferring intelligence documents through a dead drop to throw off enemy agents, making sure a West German Stasi agent finds evidence that the KGB has infiltrated the West German secret police, using radio receivers and any means necessary to gather intel from East Berlin, and planting a bug on the other side of the Berlin Wall.

Grant: What happens when a mission fails or succeeds? 

Russell: If you’re playing a single mission, completing the objectives of the mission means you’ve won. There are no victory points, just success or failure. If you’re playing through missions as part of the campaign, then whether you win or lose a mission may determine which missions you’re assigned in the future. If you successfully deliver instructions to the dissident Russian scientist, then at some point you’ll be assigned a mission to cross into East Berlin and extract him to the West. If you failed to deliver the instructions, you’ll be assigned a different mission. Most importantly, your score in the campaign game is based on how many of your eight missions you complete successfully. Losing a mission also typically implies that one or more of your assets were compromised, which may limit their availability for future missions.

Grant: How is victory obtained in the game?

Russell: Each mission has one or more specific objectives that must be completed. As soon as those conditions are satisfied, the players immediately win. Conversely, there are one or more conditions that immediately end the mission in failure. In the campaign game, the player is rated based on how many missions they completed successfully.

Grant: What role do intel cubes play? How are they acquired and what do they offer?

Russell: Intel cubes represent intelligence available in the city that is pertinent to the mission. This could be coded signals, special documents, or known informants. Missions typically start with a couple intel cubes already on the map, and every time an intel card is drawn from the mission deck, an intel cube is placed on the location represented by the rightmost card in the draw area. Whenever one of the player’s assets moves into a location with an intel cube, the cube is collected and can be spent by any player during their turn for various benefits. For example, spending a cube allows the player to look at the next card in the mission deck. When a KGB agent enters a location with an intel cube, that cube is placed in the next box of the numbered KGB Intel track, and mission-specific events are triggered when specific numbers are filled. For instance, a mission may specify that another KGB agent is added to the map when the KGB Intel track reaches space 3.

Grant: What role does surveillance play?

Russell: Each time a surveillance card is drawn during a mission, a location in the draw area is placed under surveillance, signified by a red surveillance pawn. This means KGB surveillance resources have been allocated to that location. Some card effects remove surveillance pawns, while others place locations under surveillance. Each mission has a limited number of surveillance pawns, so when surveillance is added in one location, it may be removed from somewhere else. When an asset moves into a location under surveillance, they must roll a 10-sided die and pass a save or become detected. Some locations improve this roll, as do some items, and some assets are just better at avoiding detection. Some event markers, like demonstrations, also affect this save. As I mentioned earlier, once an asset is detected, KGB agents will move toward them and they will soon find themselves compromised and removed from the mission.

Grant: How does the campaign system work?

Russell: Players undertake eight of the twelve missions and are rated based on how many are successful. The set of missions assigned depends on success or failure of some of the earlier missions. Some of the intel cubes gathered during one mission may carry over to the next, and compromised assets may have to sit out a mission or two. Any historical events that occur are also removed from the campaign so they’re not repeated in later missions.

Grant: What do you feel the game models well?

Russell: I think Checkpoint Charlie shows that the mission is going to move forward one way or another. You have to guide it and use what resources you have to nudge it back on track when it strays. You can try to force it by drawing cards that always move your favorite asset to their best location, but that probably means your other assets are going to stumble into a KGB agent, or the KGB agents are going to gather too much intel and trigger some unwanted event. This is a game about making intelligent tradeoffs and using what control you do have to mitigate the bad effects when there aren’t any good choices.

Grant: What has been the experience of your playtesters?

Russell: The pleasant surprise for me has been how quickly they adapt to the way their assets and the KGB agents move. Compared to other games with movement points or action points or an activation system, Checkpoint Charlie is very different. They’ve figured out the whole draw, shift, move process within a couple turns. It is different, but it’s actually fairly simple. It has also been fun to see them view the components of the game, and particular card events, as part of a narrative. The game is telling a story.

Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?

Russell: I’ve played this game a lot, in all of its iterations. I’ve been through all of the missions many times, and then played through them all again to make sure we didn’t break them after we adjusted some rule or changed the effects on a couple cards. What pleases me most is that when I play this game, even after playing it all those times, I still really enjoy it.

Grant: What other designs are you contemplating or already working on?

Russell: I’m working on solitaire bots for Virgin Queen and for Combat Commander: Pacific. I have three board game designs in various stages. The first and farthest along is Allied Advance, a small, one-hour solitaire game where the player commands allied forces in Europe from the capture of Monte Cassino to the fall of Berlin. The second is Gilgamesh, a three-player game of Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period, where the winner is the ruler whose reign inspires the most memorable epic. The third is Bletchley Park, a two-player game that spans all of World War II in Europe, with one player as the axis commanders encoding the details of large military operations, and the other as allied observers and codebreakers trying to undermine those operations without revealing which codes they’ve broken. It’s going to be a lot of fun figuring out the bot for that one.

Thank you. I’m grateful that I had this chance to answer your questions.

In my opinion, this game looks extremely interesting and I am very much excited to learn more about it. I am so glad that this topic is being covered here and look forward to playing this one day soon.

If you are interested in Checkpoint Charlie, you can pre-order a copy for $48.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1211-checkpoint-charlie.aspx

-Grant

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 13 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), the Crusades (Crusade: Road to Jerusalem) and Ancient Rome (Rome Must Fall). His newest game called Fliegerkorps is focused on the airwar during WWII and looks really interesting and I reached out to Martin to get a bit more information about the game.

At the time of the posting of this interview, the campaign for the Kickstarter is active but time is running out and you can back the project at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/105281170/fliegerkorps

Grant: Welcome back to the blog. What is your new game Fliegerkorps about?

Martin: Hello everyone, great to be back! Fliegerkorps, my newest game, is a solo operational air war game where you command a German Fliegerkorps (air corps) across one of three historical campaigns, The Battle of Britain, Barbarossa, or the Mediterranean. At the very beginning of the game you build your Fliegerkorps by choosing a commander to lead them and choose four aircraft cards to make up your air corps. During each of the fixed 12-turn campaigns, you manage your aircraft, fuel, and squadrons under mounting enemy pressure from air, land, and sea. You must complete enough missions to rack up Victory Points (VP) to influence the campaign before attrition grinds you down.

Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?

Martin: I’ve always been in love with military aircraft for as long as I can remember, but honestly, it started with late-night YouTube rabbit holes on the Battle of Britain with those grainy clips of Spitfires vs. 109’s which got me hooked on the subject recently. After a few days, I came to the realization that I’ve never seen a wargame about managing an entire air corps. I’ve seen plenty of games about dogfighting or perhaps controlling a squadron of aircraft…but never at the corps level where you must deal with logistics, maintenance and planning sorties. I soon came to the realization that I wanted to design something that felt like you were commanding from a smoky ops room in 1940, watching your force slowly bleed out through attrition and sorties while high command demands more. One night I sketched a rough game design document on the idea and couldn’t sleep until I had the basics down.

Grant: What is your design goal with the game?

Martin: My goal was to create a light-to-medium operational solitaire air game that feels tense but stays streamlined and abstracted. I wanted players rolling dice, making meaningful decisions, and constantly weighing risk versus sustainability. Most importantly, I wanted to capture that operational rhythm of launching, suffering losses, refitting, and launching again.

Grant: What sources did you consult to get the historical details correct?

Martin: Core was the Rand McNally encyclopedia of World War II for consulting on general WWII aircraft histories, campaign overviews of the Battle of Britain, Barbarossa, and the Mediterranean Theater, as well as aircraft production and deployment timelines. 

I’ll admit that I’m a total visual guy, and that shapes everything I design. YouTube documentary dives into Battle of Britain dogfights, early air war chaos, and Luftwaffe ops kept me fired up, motivated and increasingly informed on the subject throughout the entire Fliegerkorps development. 

Grant: What battles are included in the game?

Martin: Battles in Fliegerkorps are more or less abstracted into missions rather than recreated tactically. For example, something like the potential invasion of Malta is represented through a Campaign Mission rather than a detailed operational scenario.

The game includes three campaigns: the Battle of Britain (1940), which focuses on an air supremacy grind, Barbarossa (1941), which blends air and land operations on the Eastern Front and the Mediterranean (1942), centered around convoy strikes, the siege of Malta and desert support. Each campaign has its own mission structure and pressure profile, so while the core system remains the same, the overall challenges change depending on the theater.

Grant: What elements from the early air battles of WWII did you need to model in the design?

Martin; I wanted this game to lean heavily into the simulation aspects of controlling an air corps in WWII and leave out much of the unit tactics involved in battles. Several key elements needed to be represented in the design were aircraft rotation between the Operational and Refit rows, logistical limitations, and escalating enemy pressure tracked through the Air, Land, and Sea Campaign Dice. I also wanted the game to reflect the reality that these campaigns were multi-domain efforts. Air operations rarely existed in isolation, they influenced and were influenced by events on land and at sea. It was important for me that the player could meaningfully affect the larger campaign across all three theaters: Air, Land, and Sea.

Grant: How does the player have to balance their missions, fuel, aircraft losses and worsening strategic conditions?

Martin: In the Mission Phase, all existing mission timers are reduced by one (if they reach zero, you fail the mission) and so missions can’t be ignored for long. If you allow timers to expire, penalties escalate with VP losses, Campaign Dice increases, or additional enemy cubes entering play. If you choose to engage those missions, it will cost fuel and you risk aircraft losses. Launching aircraft costs fuel and after attacking, you move the squadrons to the Refit Row on the aircraft card for maintenance. Larger aircraft like bombers take longer to recover than lighter fighters. So every turn becomes a balancing act. The tension builds steadily over the 12 turns, and that operational pressure is really what the game is about.

Meanwhile, Campaign Dice track strategic pressure in the Air, Land, and Sea sections. As missions and events accumulate, those values can possibly creep up. If a Campaign Die ever reaches 5+, Saturation penalties will apply and certain section-specific restrictions will come into play. This will reduce your options and make future attacks on that section even tougher.

Grant: How does campaign pressure from air, land and sea campaigns affect the player?

Martin: All Campaigns have on their gamesheet containing three Campaign Sections…Air (red for enemy fighters), Land (green for ground forces, AA, and infrastructure), and Sea (blue for convoys, naval logistics, and supply lines). Each one has its own Campaign Die that tracks how bad things are getting in that section. The higher the number, the worse conditions are getting for the Germans. Things such as more enemy pressure, tougher challenges, and nastier effects kick in. If a section becomes Saturated, it seriously lowers your effectiveness when dealing with that Campaign section. In addition, that sections’ specific penalty applies (like in the Battle of Britain, where the Land die at 5+ blocks any chance of rerolls.) Ignore any section too long, and the pressure snowballs across turns.

There is also the chance of a Campaign Collapse which happens if any two of those dice ever hit 6 at the same time (Air + Land, Sea + Air, whatever), the whole campaign falls apart and you lose immediately. No VP tally…it’s game over. It’s a tipping point where one front collapses and drags everything down with it.

Grant: What is the dynamic mission system? How does it work?

Martin: Missions are the central heartbeat of Fliegerkorps, popping up fresh each turn right in the Mission Phase. Each Mission has a die as a timer that you tick down by -1 each turn and meaning no mission lasts forever, and can expire if not completed in time. This does really well to reflect history by adding a sense of urgency to each mission.  

Usually Missions are generated by rolling a 1D6 on the Standard Mission table for routine ops like fighter sweeps or convoy strikes and deploy enemy cubes in the section. However, if you land on a green spot on the Timeline? You Skip the roll and generate a Campaign Mission with bigger risks, but juicier rewards. Campaign Missions are unique, historical operations like the London Blitz or the Encirclement of Kiev.

Grant: What choices does the player have for building their Fliegerkorps?

Martin: I absolutaly wanted to include some sort of customization or army building mechanic in the game to allow players to build their own Fliegerkorps using a tight 25 Victory Point (VP) budget.

Before each game you start by choosing a Commander card and pay its VP cost. Commanders simply provide a single, but powerful, special ability.  An aggressive option like Richthofen boosts offensive output, while others may reward efficiency or control. Always choose one that matches your style.

Next, choose exactly four Aircraft cards, keeping in mind theater and year restrictions. A mix of fighters, bombers and some Recon aircraft is usually best.

If you have unspent VP, you can always buy extra black Fuel cubes or white Iron Cross cubes (for clutch rerolls.) In Campaign-mode, after each Campaign, you get a chance to further upgrade your Fliegerkorps by buying upgrade cards, or exchanging aircraft cards as new aircraft become available in later campaigns.

Grant: What does an aircraft card look like?

Martin: Aircraft cards are the real stars of Fliegerkorps, they include fighter, dive-bomber, recon, bomber, or even heavy fighter wings, with 2-4 grey cubes each to track the strength of the squadrons that make them up. I honestly think one of my best design decisions for the game was to have an airfield diaroma on the top half of each of the aircraft cards which is further divided into the Operational Row for launch-ready aircraft cubes and the Refit Row, just below, for beat-up aircraft nursing wounds, maintenance and parts.

Each card also has attack ratings vs. Air, Land, or Sea, plus a special ability that will help you during the Campaign. In addition, each card also lists if it’s a Large or Small aircraft type (which affects some actions, the reasoning behind this is that bombers are much more “hangar queens” than small fighters.) Finally, all cards have a VP cost to buy them in your 25 VP build, a year availability and sometimes icons for Recon. 

Grant: What is the ultimate player goal for the game?

Martin: The goal is all about how well you balanced your aircraft sorties to complete as many important missions as possible before time runs out. At the end of an intense 12-turn campaign it really boils down to pushing aggressive launches and attack tempo, against refit, recovery and the logistical limitations of WWII Germany. At the end of the game, you tally up those hard-earned VP’s from mission completions and lowering Campaign dice enough and check them against the Victory threshold table on your game sheet. 

Grant: What is the layout of the Game Sheet?

Martin: The Game Sheet in Fliegerkorps is laid out so everything’s visible at a glance. I always try to make it as easy as possible for solo play without over-complicated charts or even flipping pages. The top left has the Timeline with 12 slots or turns. Green spots on the Timeline for triggering those rare high-stakes Campaign Missions and with the VP thresholds just above the Timeline.

The center is dominated by the three Campaign Sections (Air: red fighters, Land: green AA/ground, Sea: blue convoys and naval forces) while the top right lays out the Standard Mission and the Campaign mission tables. Finally, the Bottom right has the all-important Action Boxes.

Grant: How are Action Cubes used by the player?

Martin: In the Luftwaffe Phase each turn, you grab four Action Cubes (think of  them as your command orders), and allocate them one by one into any empty slot inside any of the Action Boxes at the bottom-right of the game sheet. Slots are limited on certain actions and some slots cost more Fuel or gives less options than others.  For example, the Logistic action allows you to pick three options such as recover a loss aircraft or gain fuel. However, using the same action a second time limits you to picking only two options. I felt that adding diminishing returns for repeated use of the same action would help prevent players from spamming certain actions.

Grant: How is the number of Action Cubes available determined each round?

Martin: Action Cubes are fixed at four Action Cubes every Luftwaffe Phase. Campaign effects, Commander abilities or upgrade cards can sometimes alter the available actions in a turn, but for the most part you will always be given four Action Cubes per turn. 

Grant: What different orders does the player have access to? How do they affect the game?

Martin: Orders, or Actions, are where the player get’s a chance to react to the evolving Campaign.  Some actions require Fuel and each action resolves immediately once placed. The available actions are:

Launch/Attack: Launch aircraft from the Operational Row of one Aircraft card to target a Campaign Section. Successful rolls remove enemy cubes, which may be placed on Mission objectives if possible. After resolving the attack, those squadrons move to the Refit Row.

Recon: Use Recon-capable aircraft to gain Recon points, which can be spent to re-roll dice, ignore Saturation, gain an extra action, or adjust missions and events.

Refit: Moves squadrons from the Refit Row back to Operational status. Larger aircraft recover more slowly than smaller fighters.

Logistics: helps manage fuel and/or aircraft losses.

Grant: How is “victory” achieved?

Martin: At the end of the 12-turn campaign in Fliegerkorps, you simply total your VPs from completed Missions and any Campaign Die bonuses earned for keeping pressure under control. You then compare that total to the Victory threshold. Each campaign has its own required totals. The difference between Victory and Brilliant Victory is simply a matter of having a few extra VP’s to upgrade your Fliegerkorps at the end of the campaign (not to mention bragging rights) 

In Campaign Mode (or Linked-Campaigns), any VP earned carries forward and can be spent on upgrades for your Fliegerkorps, such as additional Fuel or Iron crosses as starting resources, upgrade cards or exchanging aircraft cards .

Grant: What are the loss conditions?

Martin: You lose in one of two ways…First, if at the end of the 12-turn campaign your total VPs fall below the required threshold of Victory listed on the Game Sheet. For example, in the Battle of Britain you need at least 11 VP to achieve Victory. Anything below that is a loss.

Second, you lose immediately if a Campaign Collapse occurs. This happens if any two Campaign Dice reach 6 at the same time. For example, the Air and Land Campaign sections both maxing out. When that tipping point is reached, the campaign ends instantly. This reflects the idea that sustained pressure across multiple fronts can overwhelm theoverall campaign of your Fliegerkorps. Ignore one theater too long, and the consequences will cascade quickly. 

Grant: What type of experience does the game create for the player?

Martin: I’ve always enjoyed fast-playing management-style games where you’re juggling resources and trying to prevent systems from spiraling out of control. That feeling was something I really wanted to reflect with Fliegerkorps. At its core, the game is a compact operational simulation themed around running a WWII Luftwaffe air corps. Each playthrough runs about 30 to 40 minutes. I also added options for different force builds and campaign theaters to try and create strong replay value. 

Grant: What other topics are you planning to create games for in the future?

Martin: Firstly, some big news… Catastrophe Games will soon be launching a boxed edition of my game, Campaign: Bagration on Kickstarter. It’s the direct sequel to Campaign: Fall Blau, but this time you’re on the Soviet side in 1944. 

I’ve also begun designing a new game called Shock & Awe, centered on the 1991 Coalition air campaign against Iraq’s integrated air defense network. I’ve also been exploring something completely different, a fast, arcade-style air combat experience centered on piloting a single Cold War-era fighter such as an F-15, MiG-29, or F-16. It’s still in the conceptual stage but the idea will evolve.

Beyond that…my solo print-and-play pipeline always remains active where I’m planning to continue my epic WWII Roll & Write series, focusing next on a North African campaign or possibly D-Day. Smaller games like this allow me to finish them relatively quickly while keeping the designs accessible and portable. I may also put out a voting poll to backers soon to help shape ideas for a future project. There are simply so many wars and time periods still worth exploring, and to me, community input is always valuable. As you can probably tell, I have far more game ideas than time to fully develop them all!

As mentioned above, the Kickstarter campaign has just a few days remaining so if you act quickly you can still back the project at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/105281170/fliegerkorps

-Grant

Hexasim has really been stepping up their game recently with some great looking wargames. Late last year, they announced their newest game called La Der des Ders – The War to End War, which focuses on World War I and is designed by Arnauld Della Siega. We reached out to Arnauld and he was more than willing to provide us some insight into the design.

Grant: Arnauld welcome to our blog. First off please tell us a little about yourself. What are your hobbies? What’s your day job?

Arnauld: Hello, everyone. Despite my Italian-sounding name, I am French. My hobbies? Gaming, of course. Formula 1. American football and flag football – I am assistant coach for my youngest son’s team. Oh, and I play badminton. And when I had a little more time, astronomy. Add Motörhead and Lovecraft to that, and I think you’ll have a pretty good idea of who I am. My real job? I’ve been working for Hexasim for three years. I mainly handle communication and game development (clarity of the rules, layout of the rulebook, some of the graphics).

Grant: What motivated you to break into game design? What have you enjoyed most about the experience thus far?

Arnauld: I think this is true of many designers, but my brain is constantly buzzing, whether I’m writing stories or inventing game systems. I wanted to create something to give shape to the ideas swirling around in my head. Then, and perhaps most importantly, to leave something behind for my descendants. Creating is more frustrating than rewarding, but seeing your game released is a bit like the birth of a child. A culmination.

Grant: What is your upcoming game La Der des Ders about?

Arnauld: La Der des Ders is the story of the First World War in its entirety, from the early stages to 11 November (and even a little beyond). It follows the timeline of the war and focuses on technological developments. La Der des Ders is a grand-strategy game in which you control sectors. You decide how to allocate your resources between recruiting new soldiers to rebuild your forces, technological research and preparing offensives. La Der des Ders is a revised and corrected version, with greatly improved artworks, ergonomics and rules, published in VaeVictis Magazine #145.

Grant: What is the translation of this French phrase La Der de Ders?

Arnauld: La Der des Ders means « the last of the last ». You may translate it by « The War to End War ». I asked my testers and Boardgame Geek whether to use a French or English title. The players unanimously opted for a French one.

Grant: Why was this a subject you wanted to create a game on?

Arnauld: After creating No Man’s Land – Trench Warfare 1914-1918 from Ludifolie Editions, I had acquired a good amount of knowledge about the First World War at a tactical level. I thought it would be a good idea to take a step back and look at the First World War from a different angle. That’s how La Der des Ders came about.

Grant: What are the unique features with the system used for the game?

Arnauald: It depends on what we mean by ‘unique’. Are there any truly unique games? When it was released in 2019, La Der des Ders was, to my knowledge, the only solo game covering the entire First World War. What makes it unique is its focus on technology (the game includes 41 levels of technology). It is also this abstraction, which facilitates the narrative without distorting it. This is particularly evident in the Collapse Tracks (which will be discussed later), which manage the erosion of the belligerents.

Grant: What is your design goal with the game?

Arnauld: What I look for above all else in a game is elegance. I like it when a lot of thought has gone into it, both in terms of the ergonomics and the gameplay. For La Der des Ders, I wanted to create a game that was easy to learn, designed for solo play, and with engaging mechanics. A game made to be played and able to learn more about the historical WW1.

Grant: What unique elements from WWI did you feel important to model in the game?

Arnauld: I think that sometimes a game is less about ‘what is important to model’ than ‘what the designer wants to model’. I like the ‘technical’ side of conflict. For this reason, 1914 interests me much less than 1918. I love all the technologies that abound. It was the shape of those funny steampunk-style tanks that made me love WW1 (basically, I’m more into Francis I, the Assyrians and the like).

Grant: As a Strategic Level wargame, what economic or political elements are included?

Arnauld: The entry of neutral countries into the war is managed by events. I did not want countries to be able to adopt a stance different from their historical one. That would have had too much of an impact on historicity. Neutral countries will therefore certainly enter the war in the same year as historically, but players do not really know on which turn (1 turn = 4 months).

The economy is managed by Resource Points awarded each turn. These Resource Points are the heart of the system, as they act somewhat like Action Points. Each sector contributes to the overall amount of Resource Points. The British and American navies also contribute an ever-increasing number of resources. The Naval Control Table simulates the war between merchant ships and U-boats.

Grant: How does the Collapse Track work?

Arnauld: The Collapse Track represents both a sector’s willingness to fight and its military potential. With each loss, a cube moves to the right, towards surrender. These losses also reduce the number of Attack dice a sector can roll during an offensive. Spending resources allows you to counteract this slow erosion and regain power.

Grant: What technologies can be developed?

Arnauld: There are six categories of Technology (Attack, Defense, Artillery, Air, Naval and Raid). Each category is divided into several levels, specific to each side.

Once unlocked, Technology levels grant bonuses in attack or defense, Artillery dice, rerolls, bonuses during the Naval Control Phase (which reduces the number of Resource Points available to the opponent), or the ability to cancel some events.

Grant: How does the game use cards?

Arnauld: There are two types of cards. Cornflower Cards are used to manage the solitaire bot.

The other cards are Events. Three are drawn at the beginning of each turn, and the effects are applied. Events are classified by year, and one card remains at the end of each year when the new year’s deck is brought into play. This adds variety to the game without sacrificing historical timeline.

What I am most proud of with these cards are the top banners. I made sure to copy the headlines from newspapers of the time, even going so far as to put a credible date and, above all, a number that, unless I am mistaken, should be correct. Yes, I had a lot of fun.

Grant: What different types of cards are included? Can you provide a few examples?

Arnauld: There are several types of Event Cards. Blue cards, such as the Schlieffen Plan, are only available in 1914. Red cards are Pivotal Cards that cannot be cancelled. These include cards that bring countries into the war, such as Lusitania and Zimmermann Telegram. Finally, green cards, which are the most numerous, allow players to obtain Resource Points, additional bonuses by attacking a particular country, but sometimes penalties. I looked for the most important events of the conflict, thought about their impact on the course of the war, and then translated that into game terms. A little tip: each color has a specific design, which means that color-blind players are not at a disadvantage.

Grant: How does combat work?

Arnauld: Combat is referred to as ‘offensives’. A single sector can only launch one offensive per turn, and a single sector can be attacked by multiple sectors. The player chooses the attacking sector and designates its target. They spend a number of Resource Points equal to the number of dice they wish to roll. This number cannot exceed the current Operational Value of the attacking sector (indicated by the position of the cube on the Collapse Track). To inflict a loss on the enemy, the player must obtain a certain value (often 5+). However, the dice roll is modified according to the technologies unlocked by the attacker or defender.

Artillery technology is important, as it allows black dice to be rolled that will not be modified. This highlights the power of artillery during conflict.

Grant: How are historical events handled?

Arnauld: By drawing three cards at the beginning of each turn. The cards do not go into the players’ hands. They are applied during the current turn. Some are applied immediately, others during offensives, and a few during the Resource Collection Phase. Some cards remain in play for several turns, such as Von Lettow, which allows the Germans to launch free offensives in Africa until the end of the war.

Grant: What variants are included?

Arnauld: The Fast Play variant speeds up games by bringing this version closer to the original version published in VaeVictis, removing the two new Technology categories and not charging sectors for implementing unlocked technology levels. I don’t really like it when a designer offers variants. It makes me think that they haven’t taken responsibility and are leaving it up to the player to figure it out.

You know what? I’m going to offer your fellow readers a great variant. This variant is for use in 1 vs 1 games, if you find it too difficult to win with the Entente.

Here it is:

Countries that are still neutral do not pay to implement an unlocked technology. Once the sector is at war, they must pay as normal.

You can consider this variant official. It has been tested.

Grant: How does the solitaire mode work? How are the Cornflower Cards used?

Arnauld: For each phase (Reinforcements, Technological Research, Offensives), the player draws a card and refers to what is indicated on the card.

It’s very simple to set up and effective. No need for endless dice rolls, referring to multiple tables, or having to make decisions for your opponent. Everything is indicated on the card. It’s elegant. Players seem to love this simplicity and the relevance of the decisions made by the bot.

Grant: How is victory achieved?

Arnauld: Victory can be achieved in several ways. Either by forcing France or Germany to surrender, or by earning 6 Victory points (obtained by forcing the enemy sectors to surrender), or at the end of the game (triggered when the Peace Negotiations Card is drawn) when the side with the most Prestige Points (calculated according to the position of the cubes on each of the Collapse Tracks).

Grant: What do you feel the game models well?

Arnauld: You can really feel the Entente gaining strength, with more and more resources at their disposal thanks to British and American support, and Germany’s obligation to finish the war as quickly as possible before the task becomes insurmountable.

But I also particularly like the story that the game tells, which is very close to the actual historical timeline.

Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?

Arnauld: I like the fact that it is both simple and interesting. I like the fact that Dad can play with Junior. I like that players learn things while playing. I like the way it looks. And I like the price: we decided to make this game as affordable as possible so that more people could enjoy it. Games should not be a luxury item.

Grant: What other designs are you contemplating or already working on?

Arnauld: I have several projects in mind, mostly solo games. Some are well advanced, but I feel like I’m at a crossroads. I mean… there are too many games coming out. Designers need to learn to restrain themselves and, rather than flooding the market with games that are sometimes barely finished, take the time to polish them as much as possible and perfect the rulebook (which is often really awful). Given the price of games, I believe we should respect players and offer them flawless products. Fewer games, but higher quality. And that’s good, because that’s exactly Hexasim’s credo. If sales of La Der des Ders are fantastic, we can plan a sequel, perhaps World War II, to please as many people as possible, and/or fantasy. The ratings received on Boardgame Geek will decide.

If you are interested in La Der des Ders – The War to End War, you can order a copy for 49.90 € ($57.52 in US Dollars) from the Hexasim website at the following link: https://www.hexasim.com/en/4165-La-Der-des-Ders-The-War-to-End-War.html

-Grant

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 wargames, with his most recent series being a World War II tactical wargame series for 1-2 players pitting the British Airborne versus the German Wehrmacht called Until the Bitter End. He then designed the next entry in that series called Until the Bitter End – US Airborne followed by Until the Bitter End – Tanks. He has also done a few others including Would Be Aces, Operation Biting and Today Another Battle that have done very well. Recently, a new game appeared on Kickstarter from Matt called Saving Angels WWII Solitaire Wargame Print and Play, which is a wargame based on the American and guerrilla raid of the Japanese held Los Baños prison camp in World War II. We reached out to Matt and he was more than willing to share on the project.

If you are interested in Saving Angels WWII Solitaire Wargame Print and Play, you can back the project on the Kickstarter website at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1564988876/saving-angels-ww2-solitaire-wargame?

Grant: What is your new project on Kickstarter?

Matt: My new Solitaire game is called Saving Angels and it covers the bold US Airborne and allies, raid of the Japanese held Los Baños prison camp during WWII.

Grant: What was your inspiration for the name? What do you want it to convey about the design?

Matt: I came across the history of this subject, whilst researching the Operation Biting game (which is also an Airborne raid, only British) and the name refers to the US 11th Airborne Division, as they were described by the prisoners, who they rescued.

The main element of the design is that you command the paratroopers and guerrillas on this daring rescue mission. With most wargames, the mission is often defeat the enemy or hold a point, etc., but with this design the rescuing of the prisoners is your objective.

Grant: What about this historical event made you want to create this game?

Matt: The main inspiration really was the story, but from the prisoners point of view. They had been treated terribly, for the most part, from their captors. The prisoners were from all walks of life, civilians rather than soldiers who had been captured. I felt it was important to cover this story from WWII, which has not really been covered before. 

Grant: What research did you do on the subject?

Matt: I read a lot of history subject books so naturally I read as much as I could on the subject. There are also a few really good videos on YouTube that are also well worth watching.

Grant: Is this the start of a new series of games?

Matt: This is my third game in my Raid Series – the other games covering the British paratroopers, with this one being the first game in that series featuring US forces and where the main objective is the rescue.

Grant: What games have inspired your design?

Matt: To be honest, the biggest inspiration really is the history side rather than other wargames. I think also the first two games in the series was a natural source.

Grant: I know the design is a Print and Play offering. Why do you feel this model is best suited for your designs?

Matt: I like making print and play games as it forces you, as the designer, to make every component count and making the most of the physical space on a sheet of paper. I find that challenge one of the most interesting parts of the creative process.

Grant: I know you are not only the designer but you do the art as well. Please show us a few examples of your great art.

Matt: Here are several different pieces from the game.

Grant: How do you create your art? What is the process and what graphics tools do you use?

Matt: I use a variety of tools such as Sketchbook and Photoshop. I pretty much draw in a traditional method, just using a Wacom pen and laptop.

Grant: What difficult decisions do players have to make in the game?

Matt: The player must try and maximize their units to the best of the counter’s abilities. Each unit will have strengths and weaknesses so coordinating your units is crucial for success.

Grant: What dangers and threats meet the players with their airborne and amphibious landings?

Matt: As the player pushes towards the prison they may encounter Japanese enemy threat but also the risks associated with such landings.

Grant: What objectives does the player have to accomplish?

Matt: The player’s goal is to get to the camp, free the prisoners and then escort them back to the pick-up zone to make good their escape. This was a daring mission as the Japanese defended the area and the player will have to fend off Japanese reinforcements as the player makes good on their escape.

Grant: What is the purpose of the 2 different maps?

Matt: The game comes complete with 2 maps. The first map is for the approach to the Prison Camp and features both Airborne and amphibious landings. The second map is the Prison Camp itself where the player must locate and rescue the prisoners before escaping back across the first map.

Grant: How do players control these units and give commands?

Matt: During the game’s turn the player controls movement of their Units whilst the game’s AI will control the enemy Japanese.

Grant: What is the goal of the game?  How is victory obtained?

Matt: Get to the camp, rescue the prisoners and escape, whilst fending off the Japanese enemy. It will take co-ordination of the player’s units, using them to the best of their abilities and a bit of luck!

Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?

Matt: I really wanted to create the strong narrative experience, that’s quite tense, of having multiple objectives (with rescuing all the prisoners) whilst dealing with an unrelenting enemy.

Grant: What kind of an experience does the game create?

Matt: For me, the game creates the idea that sometimes you have to be bold, push your luck and try and achieve success by utilizing the resources you have to the best of their abilities.

Grant: What other designs are you currently working on?

Matt: I have a plate of other games I am working on, mostly WWII! I’d like to cover more of these historical daring raids whether they are land, sea or air. 

Thanks to Matt for his time in answering our questions and for his great little print and play games. I love it when one of these new games is brought to light as I get to oodle over the art and see what new things he has created!

If you are interested in Saving Angels WWII Solitaire Wargame Print and Play, you can back the project on the Kickstarter website at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1564988876/saving-angels-ww2-solitaire-wargame?

-Grant

I love air war games! They are always supremely interesting and I really like the tactical nature of maneuvers and positioning. A few years ago, we covered the Buffalo Wings Reprint in our Wargame Watch feature and recently saw an announcement about a new volume in the Fighting Wings Series called Tiger Wings designed by J.D. Webster. We reached out to J.D. to get some inside information about the design and he gave us plenty.

You can learn more about Tiger Wings: WWII Tactical Air Combat Over East Asia in Against the Odds Magazine Campaign Study No. 2 by visiting the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atomagazine/tiger-wings?ref

Grant: J.D. welcome to our blog. First off please tell us a little about yourself. What are your hobbies? What’s your day job?

J.D.: Thank you to the gentlemen at The Players’ Aid blog for this opportunity to share a little bit about myself and my time in our wonderful history hobby. I’m 69 years old, and a retired Military and Commercial aviation pilot and my number one love in life has been flying. Like many of us, I started young in traditional board wargaming, starting with Avalon Hill’s Afrika Korps as a kid in high school. At the time I was already a history buff, and my father, a civilian pilot had imbued a love for airplanes in myself at an early age. Growing up, my hobbies were building model airplanes, plastic, balsa, foam, etc., and I read everything I could get my hands on regarding WW-I and WW-II air combat. Naturally, that morphed into a desire to be a military aviator myself. In college, I joined Navy ROTC, got commissioned and went on to become a Naval Aviator, flying A-7 Corsair attack jets with VA-195 off the USS Ranger in the mid-1980s. My second tour was as a Navy jet flight instructor in the late late 1980s. In 1990, my life shifted, and I left the Navy to become a commercial airline pilot, but, at the same time, I did an inter-service transfer into the Air National Guard, flying Air Force A-7D Corsair jets with the 124th TFS and then, F-16C Fighting Falcons for a brief stint (Wonderful plane, BTW).Along the way, I built up a personal library of over 600 aviation books, becoming, as I would call it, an “amateur subject matter” expert. I apologize but this long-winded information is going to be relevant to your following questions. Of course, throughout this entire time I stayed an avid wargamer, picking up on all aspects of the hobby and, naturally, I was most excited when someone put out a game on aerial combat. I also, was most interested in “tactical” level games, squad vs. squad, tank vs. tank, ship vs. ship and airplane vs. airplane. Which brings us to your second question.

Grant: What motivated you to break into game design? What have you enjoyed most about the experience thus far?

J.D.: Although, I was active in other parts of the gaming hobby in my youth and early college days, aviation games excited me the most. I loved Richthofen’s War, Luftwaffe and the Air Force / Dauntless Series games, all of which I played until they fell apart. By the time, I was actually learning to fly in the Navy, I got hold of David Isby’s Air War, and struggled to learn it. By then, I knew enough about flying to realize, IMO, that these other game designers, talented as they were, were not themselves flyers, and the game models they were producing did not have the correct approach. Some designs were simpler than others, most were fun, but they did not model three dimensional air combat in the right ways, or worse, in an engaging way that would bring the gamers back around for multiple playings. I felt I could do better on my own – so in 1986, I designed Air Superiority, which was published by GDW. This was followed by Air Strike two years later, also published by GDW. Mark Miller and Frank Chadwick were wonderful mentors to a budding rules writer and those two games went on to very successful sales. To be honest, Air Superiority was really, me doing a game about my day job at the time, flying jets in the Navy.

As a young hobbyist in his early twenties, it was pretty cool to become a published “game designer” and naturally, I got interested in doing more. I moved over to Clash of Arms in the 1990’s, and they published The Speed of Heat, my first tome, on the history of jet air combat, using an upgraded version of the Air Superiority rules. As an active duty military person, however, I couldn’t go forward much without touching upon classified topics, so I decided to go backwards and build a game to model WW-II air combat instead. This led me to create the Fighting Wings Series of games, all of which share the same family of rules, and, of which, there have been four boxed volumes, and multiple magazine supplements made. Briefly, they are:

Over the Reich, published 1991 by COA. / FW volume 1 boxed

Achtung Spitfire, published 1993 by COA. / FW volume 2 boxed

Whistling Death, published 2003 by COA. / FW volume 3 boxed

Buffalo Wings, published 2010 by ATO Magazine. / supplement

Top Cover #1, Darwin’s Spitfires, published 2013 by COA. / supplement

Wings of the Motherland, published 2019 by COA. / FW volume 4 boxed.

My mission, and what gives me the most satisfaction in this effort, is knowing that my game rules, though sometimes considered complex, actually do an accurate job of modeling what the real important factors of air combat are, and that the airplanes perform correctly, in terms of their historical abilities relative to each other. Of course, one quick thing to mention, of importance is that Buffalo Wings, featured a simplified set of game rules, more of an introductory version of the general Fighting Wings rules set. Buffalo Wings, was reprinted just a few years ago.

Grant: What is your upcoming game Tiger Wings about?

J.D.: Every Boxed game and supplement I’ve done for the Fighting Wings, Buffalo Wings family of WW-2 air combat games has filled in some significant portion of the history the air war in WW-2 and Tiger Wings is yet another area of historical significance, seldom touched upon or previously explored in wargaming, which is that of the successful air campaigns waged by the Japanese Army and Naval air arms in the first six months of the war, when they swept across the Far East conquering Malaya, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies and Burma in just six months. What is unique about these campaign are the various myths involved with them. There is this idea that Japanese air power was overwhelming and that their airplanes were far superior to those of the Allies, but the truth is different. Qualitatively, Allied aircraft were better, and they were not heavily outnumbered, the problem was Allied air power was ineptly used and frittered away in a most incompetent way as will be covered and explained by the historical articles included with the Tiger Wings campaign study magazine game. For example, the famous AVG Flying Tigers, as heroic as they fought, and despite being effective defenders, were ground out of existence and disbanded within six months of  entering battle. They were defeated in Burma and pushed back to China, where, they disbanded to be replaced by the newly formed 14th Air Force. This isn’t the way history normally portrays them, but it is realistic, and one of my goals with every Fighting Wings related product is including the real history behind the situations.

Grant: What is being updated with the system or improved with this entry in the series?

J.D.: Tiger Wings is targeted both at my existing fan base, in terms of adding new planes to the game system and dozens of new scenarios to explore, but also to entry level players, who want to try the system for the first time, but without the extra details and complexity of the “full” level Fighting Wings rules. As such, the Tiger Wings rules are the Buffalo Wings beginner’s rules, cleaned up, and revised slightly, with all the second printing BW expansion rules for air-to-ground combat added in. We also plan to include a “quick start” player’s guide to facilitate understanding how to play the game. So Tiger Wings is a passport into the Fighting Wings game system. Players who like TW may want to delve further, trying the full rules products for even greater realism, but if not, I’m pretty sure they will be fascinated with Tiger Wings as a stand alone item, just as it is.

Grant: Why was this a subject you wanted to create a game on?

J.D.: Back in 1966, Martin Caidin, a famous pulp aviation author of the day wrote a book called the The Ragged Rugged Warriors, which is largely about air combat from the Spanish Civil War era through the end of the Flying Tigers era in mid-1942, which talks a lot about the Far East campaign and the fall of Malaya, etc. I was twelve years old when I first read the book in 1968 and my fascination with American pilots fighting against the odds at great sacrifice, to hold the line against the merciless Japanese, until the tide of the Pacific War changed in favor of the Allies never left me. It has always been on my to-do list since first designing the Fighting Wings Series and now, 34 years into my quest, I’m finally getting it done.

Grant: What are the unique features with the Fighting Wings System used for the game?

J.D.: This is a broad question. But for the unfamiliar, the key is to understand with my designs are that the FW, BW, and TW game scale is specifically designed to model not aircraft flight, per se, but what a fighter pilot can reasonably accomplish in what is known as a standard “OODA” loop cycle. Whether you were a fighter pilot flying Sopwiths in WW-1, or jet aircraft in the Korean War, forty years later, the one thing that hasn’t changed, is the “OODA” cycle. “OODA” stands for “Observe-Orient-Decide-Act”. It’s an actual mental process, first recognized and codified by Eric Hartmann, the most famous and successful German fighter pilot on the Russian front in WW-2. It has been taught at Top Gun and the USAF Fighter Weapons School, but under different names. You will often hear or read about the term “Situational Awareness” or SA. Guess what, SA is derived by OODA looping. In short, the OODA loop works this way – it’s a four second cycle, on average – and it is a continuous never ending loop, constantly changing, evolving, and getting modified as the fighter pilot maneuvers his way through a life and death air battle. It takes about one second of visual inputs, for a pilot to OBSERVE as much as he can. It then takes another second of time for the pilot to interpret and sort all the visual, aural and physical forces information assaulting his eyes brain and body to ORIENT himself to his situation. Based on that orientation, the pilot must then DECIDE what to do to attack or defend himself (about a one second process) and then the fourth second is taken up with the ACT of placing the aircraft controls in a position to start moving the airplane where he needs it to go. As his fighter’s flight path starts to change, he will be observing the changes, and reorienting to the changes etc. It should be understood that the OODA cycle in not sequential in nature. You don’t Observe-Orient-Decide-Act and then start over. It’s layered, each piece responsible for starting another cycle. Kind of like how a staggered “Row-row-row the boat song is sung.”  As the OODA cycle progresses each piece is being observed by the pilot for its effects and that requires Orienting anew, deciding anew, Acting…etc.

​Observe​ Orient​ Decide​ Act  <<< OODA cycle 1

​​​Observe ​Orient​ Decide ​Act  <<< OODA cycle 2

​​​​​Observe ​Orient ​Decide ​ACT  <<< etc.

Grant: What is your design goal with the game?

J.D.: Quite simply, to immerse the gamer into the accurate historical context of the Far East Air Campaign as fought in 1941 and 1942 and let him have some fun, while flailing about the map board solving the situations he himself creates while moving his aircraft in plane-on-plane tactical air combat.

Grant: Who is your developer Terry Simo? What does he bring to the design?

J.D.: I’m proud to say that Terry is one of my great life-long friends, a fellow Military Aviator, and he brings to the design his own instincts as a successful air game designer himself, having developed and even published his own air combat designs with GMT Games. With regards to rules balance, scenario play balance and a critical eye for ensuring that a “non-pilot” gamer that has never had any flight instruction will be able to understand the rules concepts put forth by myself to fly in the game – Terry has been invaluable. I can’t thank him enough for his efforts. BTW Terry and I met back in the late 1980’s during my jet combat game design era and he’s also been a life long Fighting Wings System player since that series was first published.

Grant: What was unique about aerial combat in the CBI Theater of WWII? How did you model this?

J.D.: Technically, Tiger Wings covers more than the CBI (China-Burma-India) theater. It covers the air fighting over Malaya, Sumatra, Java, the Philippines etc., with Burma, being just one portion. My approach to the game scenarios that is unique is to try to explore both the reasons for the many Allied failures and their few successes in these campaigns, in terms of highlighting what the tactical errors were and how the successful flyers, such as the Flying Tiger pilots were different in their approach to fighting the Japanese.

Grant: What various planes are included in the game? What is unique about their statistics?

J.D.: Tiger Wings has an eclectic and fun group of early warplanes to push around. On the Allied side for fighters, there is the Hawk 75, Brewster Buffalo, Curtiss Wright Demon, Hawker Hurricane, the Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk and the P-40E Warhawk. The Japanese Army Air Force pretty much only has Ki.27 obsolete fixed gear Nates and the newer Ki.43 Oscar fighter to work with, while the Imperial Japanese Navy shows up with the outstanding A6M2 Zero fighter. For the most part, all of the Japanese fighters are agile, but fragile, and woefully under-armed, except for the Zero. Almost all of the Allied fighters are much more robust, armored and well armed, and even faster than the Japanese planes, yet they were still defeated in detail by the Japanese flyers, and the reason goes to the use of good tactics by the Japanese and bad tactics by the Allies, exacerbated by the very poor experience and training levels of the Allied pilots facing the Japanese veterans of the air war in China.

Grant: What is the anatomy of the counters? What information is included?

J.D.: Each aircraft counter in the game represents a single aircraft. It will have a top view, a type name and an ID number and nothing else. Everything else about the fighter’s performance is kept noted on an aircraft log sheet, since the aircraft’s pitch angle, bank angle, speed and height can constantly change during play. All of the aircraft’s performance capabilities at different altitudes is summarized on each aircraft’s data card, known as an ADC. Here is a sneak preview of the Dutch CW-21 Demon fighter.

Grant: What information is included on the Aircraft Data Cards?

J.D.: As you can see from the Demon Aircraft Data Card example, everything you need to fly the plane on the game map is summarized on the Aircraft Data Card. For different altitude bands, each about 6,000 feet thick, there is a listed minimum level speed, maximum level speed and maximum safe diving speed and the numbers are in terms of “Hexes of movement”. So if an aircraft has a current speed of 6.0, it can move six hexes in a game turn. Each point of speed equals 50mph of scale speed, so Speed 6.0 equals 300 mph of speed, and so on.

Grant: How does combat work in the design?

J.D.: In the FW, BW and TW game system, standard war game odds tables are used along with a percentile die roll to resolve combat. Aircraft firepower diminishes with range, reflecting a loss of accuracy as range increases, and aircraft have a defense factor, which is increased by the angle of deflection of the attacker, to reflect the increased difficulty of a hitting a target from the side as opposed to from the rear. Ideally, the best shots occur if the attacker is directly behind the target with no deflection shooting required and at a close range. Damage is inflicted in terms of “hits” with multiple hits sometimes resulting in special “critical damage” events such as causing an aircraft to lose its wings or explode from a fuel tank hit. The combat system is one of the most popular parts of the entire series often creating entertaining story telling as you  play. “There I was, wing on fire, engine sputtering, pilot wounded…. And so on”.

Grant: What do you feel the game models well?

J.D.: Obviously I’m biased. It models how three-dimensional maneuvering impacts a dogfight’s overall geometry very well. There is a good reason to attack from above in a dive, because of the extra energy you’ll get from diving, and thus the extra speed, that may well then let you zoom out of a bad situation. Speed is life. Get slow…not good, you can stall and spin out if that happens in the game.

Grant: What has been the experience of your playtesters?

J.D.: Terry and I ran two different groups of playtesters through the rules and through multiple varieties of scenarios. In Terry’s group there were two players who had never played a FW or BW game before. They did fine. We also had experienced Fighting Wings players who – obviously had no issues with the beginner version rules. As far as I can tell, the playtesters, themselves, were entertained by the process. A good sign.

Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?

J.D.: The beauty of the game counters, and the game map, thanks to the fantastic talent of our counter Artist, Ian Wedge from England and our map artist, David Friedrichs from the USA.

Grant: What other designs are you contemplating or already working on?

J.D.: None at the moment, my plate is full, but on my to-do list…I’m contemplating how to best do a WW-I air combat game design.

Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for letting me blab a bit about this new product. I hope this will provide some interesting insights for your readers.

Thank you J.D.! It was a pleasure getting to know you a bit and we appreciate you doing this little interview on such short notice. Good luck with the Kickstarter!

If you are interested in Tiger Wings: WWII Tactical Air Combat Over East Asia in Against the Odds Magazine Campaign Study No. 2, you can back the project at the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atomagazine/tiger-wings?ref

-Grant

A few summers ago, while attending WBC in Pennsylvania, we met and played a game with Alex Knight (in case you were wondering the game was Nicaea from Hollandspiele). He is an aspiring new designer, with a quick mind and rapier wit, and we really enjoyed meeting him and I could see great things for him upcoming at the time. He then released his first game called Land and Freedom from Blue Panther that cover the Spanish Revolution and Civil War. The game is called Land and Freedom: The Spanish Revolution and Civil War and we very much enjoyed our plays of the game. He has since announced a new game called Hammer and Sickle: Hunger and Utopia in the Russian Civil War, 1918-1921 from GMT Games and we reached out to Alex to get a feel about the game and some more information to share with you here on the blog.

*Keep in mind that the design is still undergoing playtesting and development and that any details or component pictures shared in this interview may change prior to final publication as they enter the art department.

Grant: Alex thanks for coming back to the blog. How have you felt about your published game Land & Freedom?

Alex: Thanks for having me back. I’m thrilled by all the positive responses Land and Freedom has received! Being my first published design, from a small print-on-demand publisher like Blue Panther, I had no idea what to expect. For the game to garner the attention of so many articles, podcasts, academic talks, etc. was unforeseeable. I’m also pleased about the Spanish-language edition coming out, and that a new upgraded English edition will soon be in the works as well! Winning the SDHistcon Summit Award is the greatest honor of all, because it perfectly encapsulates what I’m trying to do in broadening the historical games hobby to new audiences.

Grant: What have you learned from that experience that will make you a better designer?

Alex: Since most of my current designs began long before Land and Freedom was published, I would say the biggest thing I’ve learned since the game was published is the importance and difficulty of extreme precision in writing board game rules. I always keep written rules of my designs and prototypes and revise them throughout the playtesting process. But even after revising and re-revising the rulebook to Land and Freedom before the publishing date, we still needed to release a newly revised version of the rulebook within a couple months of the game coming out, with various clarifications and additions. And even still, players submit various questions on Boardgamegeek that I realize aren’t sufficiently explained in the rulebook, or could be made clearer with illustrations. Obviously, it’s impossible to write perfect rules that 100% of people will understand, but the challenge is to get as close to that as possible, and it’s extremely challenging. So, submitting my designs to more rigorous blind playtesting in the future is an obvious goal.

Grant: What is the status of one of your other ongoing games John Brown? Has it found a publisher as of yet?

Alex: My John Brown game is still in the works, but there’s no news to report. It’s still going to be a 2-part game, the first part about the northern abolitionist movement’s clandestine activities, and the second part a storytelling adventure delving into the actual raid on Harper’s Ferry.

The next game of mine to be released will probably be the 2^nd Edition of Land and Freedom, with massively upgraded art and components, as well as improved balance and gameplay. Here is a peek at a rough draft of some of the cards from the new edition:

Grant: What is your new game Hammer and Sickle about?

Alex: Hammer and Sickle is an asymmetrical game for 1-4 players covering the Russian Civil War from 1918-1921. The four factions are Anarchists, Bolsheviks, New Nations, and Whites, each with their own objectives, tokens, and abilities. The focus is a streamlined, easy-to-learn ruleset that facilitates lots of player interaction in a game that takes about 2-3 hours. I’m really excited that GMT is publishing it and that we’ve met the P500 goal. Plus I get to work with developer Joe Dewhurst, which is a real honor and pleasure.

Grant: What does the subtitle “Hunger and Utopia in the Russian Civil War” mean and what should it portray to players about the game?

Alex: Hunger refers to the scarcity that permeates every aspect of gameplay, as well as the history. The Civil War coincided with a massive famine in Russia that brought down millions of people. In the game, there’s not just a scarcity of Food, the most elemental resource in the game’s economy, but also a scarcity of Actions, Commanders (essential for Combat), Firepower (the other key resource), and Objective Cards (one of the main ways to score Victory Points). The restrictive nature of this ever-present scarcity forces players to behave strategically, and the player that forges the best strategy given these restrictions is usually the winner of the game.

Utopia refers to the high hopes that each of the four factions held at the beginning of the game’s timeline of November 1918. With the end of World War I and the collapse of the old Tsarist Empire, each faction surged to fill the consequent power vacuum with their own particular philosophy for how the new world should look. And as the space was quickly slammed shut, their utopias smashed into shards of bitterness. What this says to players is that Hammer and Sickle begins as a canvas for the best intentions, but opportunities not seized will haunt you long after the game is over.

Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?

Alex: The Russian Revolution and Civil War was probably the defining period of 20^th Century politics, setting up the enduring conflict between three poles of Communism, Fascism, and Western “liberal” Imperialism. For that reason, the subject draws the interest of anyone interested in 20^th Century history or politics.

Personally, my investment in the period came through reading Emma Goldman’s memoir My Disillusionment in Russia, in which America’s most famous anarchist recounts her journey from being exiled by the U.S. for anti-war activity, to optimistically volunteering to work with Lenin’s new regime to spread the workers’ revolution in her native land, to being thoroughly disgusted at the systematic repression of that revolution by the very same Bolshevik State, and ultimately having to flee Russia forever. That narrative resonated with my own journey at the time (2007) while living in Venezuela. As a young anti-war activist who was disappointed by the lack of democracy or true transformation in the “socialist” regime I was witnessing in South America, Goldman’s account pointed me not only toward Russia and the past, but toward deeper, more meaningful political change in the future.

Grant: What is your design goal with the game?

Alex: The thesis of the game is to show how the Russian Civil War was much more than simply Reds vs. Whites. It was also a conflict between various nationalities demanding independence from an Empire, and above all a conflict between rebellious working class populations and competing projects of state-formation attempting to either suppress or co-opt that rebelliousness in order to gain supremacy.

The goal of the design is to streamline those complexities into a four-faction tabletop joy-machine, which plays quickly while maximizing player interaction and strategic decision-making, all in a very accessible ruleset. I think I’ve achieved this by allowing the asymmetries of the factions to orbit around basic rules like: one turn = play one card to activate one territory, and emphasizing the right kind of uncertainty when it comes to Combat, such that a large troop advantage doesn’t guarantee victory, not because of bad luck, but because of misreading your opponent(s). The possibility exists for unexpected support from other forces or an enemy going all-out with the bid of a fistful of firepower. In other words, players generally win or lose because of negotiation, smart bidding, and risk management, not because they didn’t understand an arcane rulebook or because of bad dice rolls.

This follows my general design philosophy of trying to make the most widely accessible and addictively-fun game that could theoretically inspire players to want to learn more about historical events that challenge mainstream assumptions about the past and present.

Grant: What sources did you consult about the details of the history? What one must read source would you recommend?

Alex: There are many valuable sources to consult about the Russian Revolution and Civil War – far too many to list. If podcasts are your thing, check out the (extremely detailed) Revolutions podcast series that Mike Duncan did with an entire series on Russia. If you prefer video, The Great War YouTube channel did quite a lot of excellent videos from 2017-2021 in a chronological 100-years-later approach that covered many tumultuous events in the former Russian Empire.

In book form, along with the aforementioned Emma Goldman memoir, you can get quite a lot from other radical contemporary accounts, such as Voline’s The Unknown Revolution, which gives detailed first-hand and second-hand accounts on such events as the Makhnovist insurgency and the rebellion of the Kronstadt sailors.

Yet, the best starting point for a big-picture view of the conflict as a whole is Jonathan Smele’s The ‘Russian’ Civil Wars 1916-1926, because it emphasizes the full scope of events beyond simply Red vs. White, including nationalist movements and peasant rebellions, in a surprisingly concise volume.

Grant: What other games did you draw inspiration from?

Alex: Strangely enough, the very first prototype was partially inspired by the Game of Thrones Board Game, though I quickly abandoned the idea of secret pre-programmed actions found in that title. My game also was inspired by elements of Tammany Hall, particularly the blind bidding in Combat, and the way turn order is determined via the Events drew indirect inspiration from Viticulture. This all goes back to 2019 when I began working on Hammer and Sickle.

Grant: What has been your most challenging design obstacle to overcome with the game? How did you solve the problem?

Alex: The most persistent problem until recently was how to prevent players who were falling behind from essentially giving up and throwing their support behind their supposed “ally.” The solution came not in the form of a catch-up logic, but through a mechanism called Season Goals. Season Goals are a public objective that all players compete over, for example “Most Combats Won.” Each Season has a different Goal, and at the end of the Season, whoever performed the best in that particular Goal receives Victory Points equal to the number of the Season. Since the game runs a maximum of 6 Seasons, the value of the Season Goals increases in a linear fashion as the game progresses. Therefore, if a player is falling behind, they always have an opportunity to seize a huge chunk of VP’s later in the game by focusing on Season Goals.

The introduction of Season Goals also solved some problems with the fact that all scoring used to come only from secret Objectives, which I will discuss in response to a later question.

Grant: You already mentioned this above but what are the 4 different factions in the game? How does each faction differ from each other?

Alex: The four factions are: Anarchists, Bolsheviks, New Nations, and White Army.

The Anarchists represent all left-wing opposition to the Bolshevik (Soviet) regime, especially through Makhno’s Black Army, the Kronstadt sailors, and peasant uprisings (Green Armies). Their asymmetry in the game is Agitation, a unique token they can build up in enemy territories to shut down production and even cause rebellions, which effectively turn territories Anarchist without requiring Combat. The Anarchists have few troops and little Firepower, but can spread rapidly through Agitation.

The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, have control of the urban industrial centers of the former Russian Empire, and therefore can theoretically produce a large quantity of troops and Firepower, however without a large agricultural base they risk starvation and therefore economic collapse. The unique token of the Bolsheviks is the Armored Train, representing Trotsky’s famous armored train, which unlike Firepower is a renewable weapon that can be used in Combat once per Season. Further, the Armored Train can be upgraded to become increasingly powerful over the long term.

The New Nations encompass all the territories of the former Russian Empire that declared independence and tried to break away after the end of World War I, from Finland to the Baltic states, to Poland and Ukraine, all the way down to the Caucasus. The New Nations’ asymmetries include their control of the seas, allowing movement between coastal territories, due to the backing of the British Navy, along with the unique token of Nationalism, which provides bonuses both in Combat as well as in recruiting new troops.

The White Army, finally, represent the counter-revolutionary forces of Kolchak, Denikin, et al. The Whites’ asymmetries include their receipt of superior amounts of Foreign Aid from Imperial Russia’s erstwhile Western allies, in the form of Food and Firepower, which can be upgraded to higher quantities later in the game. The Whites’ unique token is Terror, representing their systematic anti-Semitic pogroms and counter-revolutionary violence. Terror is a currency the White faction uses for benefits including improved recruitment and wiping out Agitation.

Grant: What is the overall goal of each player?

Alex: There are two loose alliances in the game, a Revolutionary Alliance of Anarchists and Bolsheviks, and a Counter-Revolutionary Alliance of New Nations and Whites. Unlike Land and Freedom, it is a totally competitive game, so one and only one faction will win. But there is an incentive to work with one’s “ally” to the extent that the target score for winning the game is based on the total number of territories held by your Alliance. The two Alliances are therefore in a tug of war to pull the victory star closer toward their side.

Ultimately, though, each player is working for their own victory, and it is entirely likely that you will have to betray your “ally” if they control a territory that you require for an Objective, or simply to deny them from snatching victory away from you. You want to score as many Victory Points as possible, hold your “ally” in check to minimize their VP, all while working together to weaken the enemy alliance overall.

Each faction has its own secret Objectives, 3 “Heroic” Objectives which are quite difficult and 3 regular Objectives. These are particular to the different factions and reflect historical goals. For example, the White Army faction has designs on Moscow and Petrograd, while the New Nations’ Objectives are primarily about defending and strengthening their own territories.

Grant: How does negotiation factor into the design?

Alex: Tabletop board games, as distinct to video games, are an inherently social experience. There’s not much better than sitting face-to-face with friends or acquaintances and interacting with the same puzzle from different angles. For me, negotiation is one of the great joys of board games. How can what I have be useful to you, and can what you have be even more useful to me? So I definitely lean toward incorporating negotiation into my designs.

In Hammer and Sickle, players can trade resources – primarily Food and Firepower. They can also ask for and promise Support in Combat, and they can even negotiate which faction’s troops will take casualties in battle. Agreements are not binding, so betrayal is always an option as well. But if you burn your ally, don’t expect them to come save you when Moscow is attacked.

Grant: How does the game use cards? What different type of cards are included?

Alex: You could call Hammer and Sickle a Card-Driven Game in the literal sense that cards drive the action, but it’s not a typical CDG in terms of mechanics. There are three main types of cards in the design: Objectives, Events, and Actions/Commanders, as seen below.

Grant: Can you show us a few examples of cards and tell us how they are used?

Alex: Here is an example of an Objective Card. It is a Bolshevik Objective called Seize the Oil Fields of Baku!, worth 4 VP if completed. The “normal” Objectives range from 1 to 5 VP, while the “Heroic” Objectives range from 6 to 9 VP and are more difficult. Also, on the top-right of the card is a Firepower symbol, which is the bonus acquired by the player if they discard the Objective, either abandoning it before completion, or discarding it after completion to gain the Firepower. There’s a set collection element – each faction has 3 suits of bonuses, and if a player completes a set of each of the 3 bonuses, they earn a bonus 3 VP as well.

Here is an Anarchist Event Card called Nabat Confederation. On the top-left is found the Morale Number, ranging from a low of 1 to a high of 100. Players bid their Event each Season, with the highest Morale assigning the first player that Season and the lowest Morale designating the last player to act. Since Morale is also the tie-break in Combat, it’s generally beneficial to have higher Morale. But of course, the Events with a higher Morale number are proportionally weaker in immediate effect.

Finally here is a White Commander Card. Each faction has 7 Action/Commander Cards, which stay in their hand throughout the game and can each be played once per Season. Commander Cards are used to initiate Combat, or to Support a Combat on another player’s turn. They are played face-down until Combat is resolved, and each player has a Bluff Card as well which feigns involvement in Combat to confuse the enemy. The other Action Cards are played face-up on your turn and include both a free Basic Action as well as an “Advanced” Action, which has a cost.

Grant: How is the economy of the Russian Revolution represented?

Alex: There are two types of Productive Territories: Hammer Territories and Sickle Territories, and they produce the two basic resources of the game – Firepower and Food.

Sickles represent the agricultural workers (or peasants), and they produce Food. In the Summer Seasons, each Sickle produces 1 Food. In the Winter, two Sickles are required to produce 1 Food.

Hammers represent the industrial workers, and they produce Firepower, but only on the condition that they receive Food. For each of your Hammers that you feed, regardless of Season, you receive 1 Firepower. But, each Hammer you don’t feed instead produces Agitation, which threatens a possible Anarchist rebellion.

Because of the need to balance these two symbols, along with the prevalence of Winter, there is always an inherent scarcity to the economy, as players with a lack of Hammers struggle to produce enough Firepower to defend themselves, and players with a lack of Sickles struggle to avoid being overrun with Agitation.

Grant: How does combat play out in the design?

Alex: The player initiating an Attack plays a Commander Card face-down and moves their troops into the (adjacent) territory they are attacking. This then prompts all adjacent players to decide whether they want to Support either the Attacker or the Defender. If they so choose, they play one of their own Commanders face-down and bring their troops into the Combat territory. But, they could be Bluffing (see next question).

The cost of Supporting is the loss of your Commander for the remainder of this Season AND the next Season, since effectively you’re playing a card out of turn. The benefit is that you can potentially swing the combat with your troops, Commander abilities, and Firepower.

Once all Support has been declared, players with troops in the combat bid their Firepower (and the Bolshevik player can bid their Armored Train). Each firepower removes 1 enemy troop from the board. Then Commander abilities are triggered if relevant, and finally the side with greater remaining Strength wins the combat. The losing side must retreat if possible – if the Defender loses and has no adjacent territory to retreat to, their troops are removed.

In this example, the Bolshevik player has 3 troops and their Claim in Kyiv (+1) for a total Strength of 4. The New Nations player has 2 troops (1 supporting), plus 1 Nationalism (+2), and Pilsudski has a +1 bonus for a total Strength of 5. The Bolshevik troops must retreat.

Grant: How does each side use bluffing, bidding and negotiation in combat?

Alex: I find it much more thrilling to attempt to calculate how much of my resources to risk on a move, while attempting to read my opponent(s) and whether they’re bluffing, rather than letting a roll of the dice determine my fate. So this is how the Combat system is designed in Hammer and Sickle. On top of that, players can negotiate all throughout the game, exchanging resources for immediate advantages or vague promises. For example, in Combat the Attacker and Defender are the ones responsible for assigning casualties to the troops on their side of the combat. So, if Player A decides to support Player B in their defense, one condition they could demand for this support could be to not take any casualties. It would then be up to Player B to decide whether to honor this request, or burn that bridge.

Grant: What type of an experience does this process create?

Alex: In my experience, Hammer and Sickle is my most fun game, because you need to understand what your enemies are doing and how to best them, and if you lose a crucial battle there is usually a lesson to be learned. Maybe you simply didn’t devote enough resources, or maybe that battle was always going to be a loss and it would have been better to sacrifice it without wasting any resources on it at all.

Even a victory can often come with lessons learned, if you’ve overcommitted resources to ensure something that could have been won easily enough through a simple bluff. These are the errors that live with you long after a game is concluded, and make you want to play again, I hope.

Grant: How much of a role does short-term and long-term planning play in the design?

Alex: The Heroic Objectives give players something long-term to work toward over the course of the game. It might take the entire game to fulfill one, particularly while much of your attention goes to more limited objectives or to the short-term fires that have a tendency to break out constantly. Also, with the Season Goals as explained above, there is always a new way to score VP’s should you choose to focus on that competition in each particular season. I think there is a good mix of short-term and long-term strategy required for a winning player.

Grant: How is victory achieved?

Alex: As mentioned above, the target score for winning the game is according to the total number of territories held by each Alliance (Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary). As territories change hands, the target score therefore is pulled back and forth on either side of the middle of the victory track. Meanwhile, each player scores VP based on their objectives and the Season Goals, inching their VP token up the track toward that target score. As soon as one player’s VP marker reaches the target score, they win the game.

There are a maximum of six Seasons in the game, ending with Summer 1921. If no player has achieved victory at that point, the player whose VP marker is closest to the target score is the winner. However, most games in my experience will end before the conclusion of Season 6 with an immediate victory.

Grant: What are you most pleased with about the design?

Alex: Even though I’ve been working on the game for the last six years, the current game isn’t radically different from the game that existed near the beginning. It has been distilled and refined continuously, but the core experience is largely intact. There hasn’t been a great deal of rules that have needed to be added, and the additions that have been brought in, particularly some of the asymmetries (Armored Trains, Nationalism, Terror), fit right into the game flow and enrich the overall experience with very little added complexity.

Grant: What has been the experience of your playtesters?

Alex: Very positive, I’ve found. I have learned a great deal from them, and I owe them tremendously. A game designer is lost without excellent and critical playtesters, and I’ve been very lucky so far in that regard.

Grant: What other designs are you mulling over?

Alex: I’ve started researching and brainstorming for a possible game on the French Revolution, specifically the heroic period (1789-1792). But it’s too early to say anything more!

If you are interested in Hammer and Sickle: Hunger and Utopia in the Russian Civil War, 1918-1921, you can pre-order a copy for $62.00 on the P500 game page at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1081-hammer-and-sickle.asp

-Grant