For those that don’t know, the World Boardgaming Championships (WBC) takes place every year in late summer and is held at the beautiful Seven Springs Mountain Resort in southwestern Pennsylvania. WBC is a national, even international, event where players come together to play games both competitively and for fun with other gamers. The competitive side of the games include everything from tiddly winks, to Robo Rally, Diplomacy and to heavy wargames including many from one of our favorite publishers GMT Games including games such as Combat Commander, Empire of the Sun and Panzer. Also at this convention, the initiates of the Battles of the American Revolution Series gather to hold a competitive tournament competing for the Golden Tricorne (this award doesn’t exist as I just made it up but maybe Mark Miklos will figure out how to get this accomplished!).

Each year, series designer Mark Miklos writes a fairly in-depth and lengthy After Action Report that he posts in various locations on the interwebs including on Facebook, the Consimworld Forum folder for BoAR and on GMT’s website on their InsideGMT blog. This year, Mark has again agreed to share his AAR with us to post here on the blog for our readers to enjoy.

On a side note, I had a chance to meet up with Mark this year and shoot a video taking a look at his upcoming The Battle of Green Spring and also to discuss his upcoming book titled Liberty! A Military History Survey of the American Revolution from GMT Games. That video had some technical difficulties but I hope to have it up on the YouTube Channel in the next few weeks.

WBC 2026: BoAR AAR
Nearly a Record for the 250th

This was a special year for American Revolutionary War gaming at the World Boardgamiong Championships. Our Battles of the American Revolution event nearly drew record attendance. Thirty three players, one short of the all-time high, battled across eight classic Rev War battlefields. Our numbers included seven new players from among the fifteen who attended our demo on Sunday evening. In addition to the gaming itself, this year’s BoAR event included three special activities to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary: a seminar, a trivia game and a party. Each will be described below.

We were given a dedicated space for the entire week in the Foggy Brews unlike in year’s past when we had to compete for table space in Winterberry. This year we hung flags and banners, played period music, and in general had an 18th century refuge to further enhance the special mood and vibe.

Two heats were played on Monday. Heat 1 was the Chatterton Hill scenario from the Battle of White Plains. Twenty two players competed as we kicked off the week. Because White Plains is the most recent volume in the BoAR Series it has a short competitive record. Nevertheless, the outcomes this year were telling. Each side scored four decisive victories with the British adding another three substantial ones. This is a 57% winning percentage for the British which closely approximates the 60% edge that the British have had in this scenario based thus far on twenty four tournament games.

Heat 2 was the old classic, Saratoga. Sixteen players squared off in this one. We played the campaign game with this year’s British players dominating. They scored four substantial victories to two. Each side added one marginal win as well. Ten players returned on Tuesday morning to face off in the full Brandywine Creek campaign. The optional “Muddying the Waters” intel rules were not used. It was great to see this big battle on the table. I took the approach this year of selecting larger games that typically are used for a final and instead used them during the heats. Outcomes in this battle were comparable with the Americans earning one decisive and one substantial victory while the British earned two substantial and one marginal win.

Eleven players showed up for the Battle of Germantown on Wednesday morning necessitating the first and only bye in this year’s tournament. It was given to yours truly as last year’s champion according to standard WBC protocol. The remaining ten players earned one American substantial victory, one British substantial victory and one British marginal victory. The other two games witnessed the first draws in this year’s tournament as John Vasilakos and Bruno Sinigaglio completed a game of maneuver in which neither earned a VP. The match between Chris Mlynarczyk and Frank Sinigaglio was a little more robust with Chris’ British earning two VP’s and Frank’s Americans earning three.

Our final heat, played on Thursday, was the full Monmouth Courthouse campaign. This is another big game which was nice to see played by twelve players. The British swept the field with one decisive, one substantial, and one marginal victory. The other three games ended in a draw: Charles Orndorff and Bob Jamelli (3 VP’s each), Tim Miller and Randy Collard (3.5 VP’s to 1 with Tim missing a marginal win by one-half VP), and John Vasilakos and Father Eric Tolentino (1 VP to none respectively). After the heats we advanced the top eight players to single elimination beginning with a quarter final round. The top seeds were Miklos (17 tournament points), Father Todd
Carter (15 TP and 83 cumulative army morale points), John Vasilakos (15 TP and 10 cumulative AM), Young Rob Doane “The Good” (10 TP), Tim Miller (7 TP), Charles Orndorff (4 TP, 74 AM), Chris Mlynarczyk (4 TP, 49 AM), and Bruce Cota (4 TP, 20 AM). Bruce was unable to play and so the eighth seed was offered to the first alternate, Jim
Dauphinais (4 TP, 19 AM). Jim was also unavailable and our second alternate, Jeff Lange graciously stepped up (2 TP, 32 AM).

The game was the first day at the Battle of Newport. The full two-day battle of Newport had been played three previous times as a final with the Americans winning all three. Interestingly, in the Day 1 action, it was the British who won three, two decisively and one substantially, while the Americans managed one substantial victory when Father Todd’s Americans defeated Chris Mlynarczyk. It was now on to the semifinals. To fit the semi-final and the final into a single day I selected short games which were welcomed after the string of long contests at Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth and Newport.

Thus, our semifinal was the Guilford Courthouse historical scenario. Here John Vasillakos’ British won a solid marginal victory over Father Todd’s Americans, 5.5 VP’s to 1. Meanwhile, Rob Doane’s Americans won marginally over my British. In our match the VP’s were tied at 3 each, but the British need a margin of +2 VP’s to win, otherwise the Americans do.

The stage was set for the final pitting John Vasilakos against Rob Doane at the Battle of Eutaw Springs. Over the course of 225 competitive games of Eutaw Springs, the Americans have won 89 times, the British 90 times, and 46 contests have ended in a draw. Since this was the final, however, victory in a draw would be awarded to the
player with superior army morale at game’s end. There was no bid as each player got their preferred side, John the British and Rob the Americans. John formed his line forward, anchoring it between swampy ground on his
left and the blackjack oak on his right. Rob’s approach took advantage of surprise, initiative, morale, and momentum and he was able to capture a British Regular plus Major Marjoribanks. This gave Rob 2 VP’s to John’s 3 for holding the British encampment. Rob’s gambit was then to slowly fall back, preserving the draw and his
now superior army morale, which would be all he would need for victory. John, of course, pursued. In the end each player scored 4 VP’s, but John’s army morale had fallen to 8 while Rob maintained a robust 14 army morale points. Victory for the Americans marked a fitting conclusion in a year of celebration for the 250th anniversary
of independence. Congratulations to both Rob and John for an exceptional week of competition and a hard fought final contest. I finished 3rd, Father Todd finished 4th, Tim Miller was 5th and Charles Orndorff rounded out the top six. This year’s final was videotaped by WBC. An overhead camera rig was set up above the Eutaw Springs big board game set prior to play. Audio was recorded. We are all anxious about the chance to watch it when it becomes available and I will share that information with those who may be interested.

We let out all the stops this year in honor of the 250th. First up, on Tuesday evening, we enjoyed a one hour talk by designer Bruno Sinigaglio who spoke to us about the Battle of Cowpens. Cowpens is the first game in our new series, Small Battles of the American Revolution or Small BoAR. Bruno described the battle in detail and how he adopted its elements into the new design wherein he lowered the scale to 1/8 that of a full BoAR game; making a hex 25 yards instead of 200 and a strength point 12 men instead of 100. At that scale, muskets as well as rifles have ranged fire and artillery can fire across the board. This level of granularity allowed Bruno to introduce other elements as well such as placing cavalry in a reserve status that enables them to charge after the normal movement phase has ended. Bruno had an audience of twenty two who paid rapt attention while he shared several PowerPoint slides to enhance his talk. The timing was perfect because we were able to announce that Bruno and I were receiving our proof copies that very week which would be waiting for us to review upon returning home from WBC. This means all those who preordered on GMT’s P-500 will very shortly be receiving order fulfillments. It was a fitting way to kick off our agenda of special events for the week. On Wednesday evening we played Rev War trivia pitting the Bloody Backs against the Yankee Doodles. We had 11 players on each team plus several interested observers who came just for the fun. A spokesperson for each team was asked to put on a uniform, British Regular or Continental courtesy of our friend and reenactor, Chris Mlynarczyk. In each round they would come forward with their team’s written answer on a whiteboard. Nine rounds were played, corresponding to the years 1775-1783, followed by a bonus round. Questions for each round progressed in point value and difficulty. In the bonus round the teams were allowed to bid from among their accumulated points. It was nip and tuck for a while until the British broke through earning a 5 point answer that put them in the lead. They would never look back. In the bonus round the Americans bid it all while the British bid conservatively to protect their lead. Every member of the winning British team received a first day of issue, commemorative envelope from the USPS that featured a postmark of April 19, 2026 stamped Concord, Massachusetts. Each envelope also had affixed to it a commemorative stamp from the five battle series designed for the 250th by the USPS: Lexington & Concord, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Valley Forge, or Yorktown. It was a lot of fun and a great way to rev things up for our final event, our 250th anniversary celebration and party on Thursday night.

Thanks to Ken Guttermuth, we had signage located around the Seven Springs campus advertising our special events. All were welcome. Participation in the BoAR tournament was not a prerequisite. There were attendees at Bruno’s talk and at our trivia game who were not BoAR players. Likewise, over 50 people came to our party, several of whom saw our signs and were inspired to participate. We served an enormous cake, once again courtesy of Ken Guttermuth. A cash bar was opened directly adjacent to our venue in Foggy Brews just for the occasion. We had period music, remarks, readings, and a reminiscence to our fallen comrades who were not there to celebrate with us. There was a rousing three cheers for General Washington, and even a bit of a sing
along where we repeated the refrain, “Hurrah, our country forever hurrah” to the song “An American Frigate” about John Paul Jones and his victory over Serapis in the English Channel. They could hear us in 1776! It was a terrific night, every morsel of cake was eaten, and one or two attendees even got emotional, and we wouldn’t have had it any other way. This was a terrific WBC. Forty two total games of BoAR were played, likely enough to
maintain our status as a Century event at the convention. Special thanks to all those who helped to make this year’s event memorable: Ken Guttermuth for the space, the signs, the cake, and all his full-throated support along the way, my AGMs Dave Stiffler and Rob Doane, Dave doing double duty by reciting and leading the cheer for Washington during our party, Jeff Lange for running a companion event in our Rev War space, Freeman’s Farm 1777 by Worthington Publishing, Tim Miller for designing our Gaming the American Revolution logo and banner, Chris for the use of the uniforms at trivia, Bruno for agreeing to break away from his GM duties to give his talk, and to my wife Darlene who was our hostess at the party.

One more thanks must be mentioned. Grant with The Players’ Aid dropped by one afternoon to interview me. He took videos of our decorated room and we discussed several things. I was able to elaborate on our special 250th events. We discussed Volume 11 in the BoAR Series, The Battle of Green Spring. I had my prototype with me,
did a short show and tell, and updated the status of the project. We discussed GMT’s upcoming Rev War 250th anniversary event in Camden, South Carolina in September. Grant was also kind enough to inquire about my book, Liberty! A Military History Survey of the American Revolution which incidentally has just gone to the printer as of this writing. Grant is such a gracious host and so easy to talk to. We laughed a lot and probably digressed too much but once we get going, the sky is the limit. It was very kind of him to fit us into his demanding schedule at WBC and to give BoAR so much publicity. At some point soon this video along with his entire WBC 2026 exposé will be up on YouTube for anyone interested. Two down, one to go. We pulled out all the stops at RevCon during Prezcon in Charlottesville last February. Now, at WBC we once again gave it our all to celebrate the 250th. We have one last event on the horizon in Camden in September and I hope to see many of you there. “Hurrah, our country forever hurrah!”

Thank you to Mark for this great insight into the tournament. We appreciate the work he puts into this tournament each year and for his grace in meeting with me while I was at WBC this year. I look forward to the upcoming Rev War 250th Anniversary Event in Camden, South Carolina in September.

To take a look at the various games included in the BoAR Series, please check out the following game site on the GMT Games website: https://www.gmtgames.com/m-2-gmt-games.aspx#[PageNumber(0)|PageSize(50)|PageSort(Name)|DisplayType(Grid)|Category(3)]

-Grant

Rinse and repeat with the after gaming sleeping and eating of breakfast. I was very tired this morning when the alarm went off at 7:30am. I knew I had a big day and hoped that I’d have the energy to do all that I had planned.

First up was a learning game of the brand new The Weimar Republic from GMT Games. The Weimar Republic is a Card Driven Game of political struggle in interwar Germany where 4 unique factions compete for dominance including the democratic Coalition, the Soviet-backed Communist Party, Hitler’s National Socialists and the far-right Radical Conservatives. The game covers the Interwar Years between 1919-1933 and represents all of the different fighting factions trying to gain control in Germany’s regions and major cities, to maneuver the political landscape of the Republic, and to dominate through a combination of propaganda, parliamentary elections, street violence, economic influence and ideological zeal. This situation sets itself up perfectly for a game to explore the various parties involved. I was able to get into a game with the Hoosier Herd gaming group from Bloomington, Indiana.

The game appears to be a COIN Series like game as each faction has their own unique abilities and powers but also win in their own way. The game also visually looks like a COIN game as it uses multi-colored wooden cubes to represent influence in the various districts of pre-WWII Germany.

A major focus of the game is the concept of Elections. Each Era has a number of Election Cards (based on the historical number of Elections) that are shuffled into the Event Card decks. When an Election Card is played, both a Regional and a General Election is held at the end of that round. Election scoring is based on players’ Dominance over spaces and Regions, with modifiers such as Middle Class Sympathies, Cadres, military Supremacy, etc. Regional Elections gives Parliamentary Control over the game’s Regions while a General Election can potentially end the game – if anyone but the Coalition wins a General Election, that player also immediately wins the game.

Players draw a hand of cards for each Era and use their AP to conduct Actions. You don’t chose between AP and Event as when you play an Event Card the Event always takes place, unless there are some requirements that aren’t met. You don’t need to play a card every turn – in fact you can’t, as there are fewer cards in a hand than turns in an Era and you may only play one Event Card per turn. However, you always have a basic 1 AP that may be used by itself or in combination with any Event Card played, so during some turns you will be using only that basic point. You can also pass which allows you to discard a card and draw a new one.

I very much like what I was doing but need to grok the rules so I know what I should be doing. We had a good time and I look forward to another play in the near future.

Next up I sat down with Greg Smith to play the upcoming Korean Tide from Compass Games. I took Greg to the woodshed with the Chinese and had a great time with the game. This one is a very good addition to the Tide Series and adds in some new tricks.

One of the things that I liked was the addition of new Divisional Displays which hold the strength points and assets of each division. The player will track the strength points as they are lost and gained but also will keep track of their reserves which is a new concept. Reserves can be used to force a reroll of your opponents dice during combat or to reroll your dice. The reserves are created by reducing the division’s strength points by 1. There are also tank counters that are attached to units, particularly the North Korean units at the start of the game which add a single strength point but also cause the defender to retreat after being attacked regardless of outcome. Both of these additions are very nice changes.

Greg and I played for the first 2 years of the war including 1950 and 1951 and I was able to break his units and destroy several American divisions. But the real thorn in Greg’s side was my 6th KPA unit who was dug in and just wouldn’t die. I was able to continually feed them reinforcements and their combat rolls were amazing inflicting 2-3 losses on the UN forces while taking no more than 1 loss. Such an interesting system and I very glad that I was able to play it.

Next up was a game of Baltic Empires from GMT Games. Baltic Empires covers the tumultuous period in the Baltic region from the collapse of the Teutonic Order in 1558 to the end of the Great Northern War in 1721. The game really focuses on representing both the mercantilist economic thinking of the time, the very limited resources at hand on the state/ruler level and the destructive nature of warfare and its effects on the local economy. When war occurs in spaces infrastructure can be destroyed and it is very expensive to keep replacing units that just die on the battlefield.

The game has 5 factions including Denmark-Norway, Sweden, Poland-Lithuania, Prussia-Brandenburg and Russia. Each power has 2 common victory conditions and 1 or 2 that are specific to that power. The shared victory conditions are either control of 2 custom houses or being the hegemon on all 3 tracks at the same time.

One of my favorite parts was that each turn, 5 Dramatis Personae Cards are randomly drawn from the deck and become available for purchase by the players in the Production phase. These cards have a wide variety of effects, but can be broadly divided into 4 types: those that have permanent effects, those that have one-time effects, those that affect victory conditions and those that provide a special leader unit.

These cards are excellent fun and really create somewhat of a race to purchase the best cards before others can acquire them.

I loved the game and was doing quite well with Sweden as I had captured Riga and Kurland in the Baltics and had built up quite the nice economic engine.

The economic system is simple, but manages to capture a lot of key elements of this period. Each province has between 0 and 3 resource icons and between 0 and 2 city icons. If a workshop marker is present on a resource icon the province produces 1 of that type of resource and if a city marker is present on a city icon the province produces 1 thaler (the currency of the game). There is one twist though, as provinces under noble control will contribute a maximum of 1 of the resources and 1 of the thalers produced in it to the central administration while the rest is discarded as it goes into the coffers of the local nobility. Only provinces where royal control has been imposed will contribute their full income to the player. In addition to this there are 3 trade center provinces on the map, and these generate extra income for their controlling player as they are able to tax the trade there. Just a great little game that I hope to explore further later.

My final game of the evening was a look at The Emperor’s Voice and The Emperor’s Choice coming to Kickstarter soon from Worthington Publishing. I was able to sit down with Wes Crawford to play his game The Emperor’s Voice which covers midnight until noon on August 15, 1945 when an attempted Army coup occurred against the Emperor of Japan in order to stop the surrender. The Emperor’s Choice is about the week leading up to the attempted coup, where the Imperial Cabinet debated over the issues concerning the ultimate decision by the Emperor to surrender. The two games may be joined together to create one longer legacy game that may be played in about two hours, although each may be played separately as a complete game, too.

I played The Emperor’s Voice as the Honor player who is trying to convince the Emperor to call off the surrender. The game is played with each player having a set type of action cards with things like move, plot, force commit, attack and persuade. Each of these actions is used to move into position to influence key figures and generals to sway them to your side with the draw of random chits and event cards to overcome your opponents total influence of the figures.

It’s all very tense and planning is key as you only have a few turns of 4-5 card plays to sway the generals, find the recording to destroy it, pressure the emperor and take out resistance against you. It all works well to create a very interesting and thematic game. I was able to win the game by convincing several of the key generals to my side and then successfully moved the emperor. I ended with 11 total cubes or VP’s to 5 for Wes.

I also played 1 round of The Emperors Choice where players are moving 1 of 6 issues up a track to their side to score VP’s and to gain special abilities from the won issues to assist in their next turn.

Both are great fun and will be coming to Kickstarter in the 4th quarter.

I had a great time today and got in a total of 5 games. I’m a bit beat and my mind is mush but I’m really looking forward to tomorrow as we have a full 6-player game of Imperial Elegy from VUCA Simulations planned and a look at an upcoming WWI aerial dogfight game called Above the Trenches from Flying Pig Games.

See you tomorrow night!

-Grant

Good morning faithful readers and wargaming enthusiasts! At the time this post uploads to the blog at 8:00am on Saturday morning, July 25th, I will already be on the way to the World Boardgaming Championships held at the beautiful Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. This year, unfortunately, Alexander will not be with me as he is visiting family in the south of France for a reunion. This is now the 2nd time in the past 3 years that I have flown solo to WBC but this time I am more prepared and more ready to take on the convention and its coverage. I will miss my friend and partner Alexander but will have a blast anyway. I am leaving earlier than I have ever left before for the convention and plan to make a pit stop in Pittsburgh, PA to pick up a friend Mike from the airport on Saturday afternoon to travel down together. We should arrive at WBC around 3:00pm on Saturday, July 25th and I plan to be at the convention for a total of 6 1/2 days leaving on Saturday, August 1st to come back home.

I already have a lot of plans laid out and will have 6 1/2 days filled with gaming, designer interviews, looks at new prototypes, visiting with friends, publishers and designers.

Here are my scheduled games as of today:

Sunday-Monday – Grand Tactical Series The Devil’s Cauldron: The Battles for Arnhem and Nijmegen and Where Eagles Dare: The Battle for Hell’s Highway from Multi-Man Publishing. I will be playing this one with Mike Heckman and a few others. I am very much looking forward to my first exposure to the Grand Tactical Series.

Monday – sit down with designer Gregory M. Smith and maybe a play of his Viking Dawn and a look at a new surprise Burning Banners offering (I won’t talk….yet!). But what I can say is that you will be able to play tactical battles in Kalar. We will also discuss his other in-process designs.

Tuesday – World Order from Hegemonic Games Project taught by our friend Tom and Coalitions: Realpolitik from PHALANX taught by Ric Manns from Southern Indiana.

Wednesday – The Emperor’s Choice and The Emperor’s Voice coming from Worthington Publishing designed by Wes Crawford and Maurice Suckling. I am very much excited about seeing these games and getting to play them.

Thursday – Imperial Elegy from VUCA Simulations. This will be my 3rd play and is sure to be epic!

Friday – Here I Stand from GMT Games. Our standard play of one of the best games in the hobby. Always look forward to this.

Plus I am trying to schedule a game of Small BoaR: The Battle of Cowpens from GMT Games with designer Bruno Sinigaglio, A Forlorn Hope from Wharf Rat Games, Above the Trenches: The Fokker Scourge 1915-1917 from Flying Pig Games with designer Bob Tkach and a sit down with Uwe Wallentin to get a look at Sound of Drums upcoming games. Already a full schedule and that isn’t even accounting for the opportunities that will present themselves. Should be an exhausting blast!

This year will be my 8th trip to WBC (2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025) and this is by far the best of all the different conventions that we attend! WBC is an event put on by the Boardgame Player’s Association (BPA), which is a non-profit corporation established to support the shared interests of board game players everywhere. This is a membership organization and I have been a member since 2019.

At the end of each day, I will be putting together a short summary of what I was able to do that day at the convention. I would like to keep this to just a few paragraphs with several pictures to give you an idea of the games I played that day, designers I was able to speak with and other activities I found my way to participate in. I am still planning on doing some videos that will be released on the YouTube Channel over the next few months but this written coverage will supplement the videos and be a real-time look at my time at the convention. This summary will most likely not be posted until after 11:30pm EST each night, if not a bit later, so you might be checking it out the next morning which is fine.

If you might be interested in attending WBC in the future, here is a look at their schedule for the next few years.

Finally, if you are at WBC please feel free to find me and say hello. I love to meet people, discuss gaming and catch up so don’t hesitate. I will also have plenty of TPA buttons and stickers to give away so just ask. I also would like to take a picture with you so I can document it in our writings. As is usual at our convention attendance, I will be looking to get in some bigger multi-player games so hit me up if you are interested. Thank you and here is to a successful trip to WBC!

-Grant