Welcome to our first Inside GMT Guest blog! Designer Mitchell Land is going to discuss the Next War Series. This is a series that I have some personal ties to, design-wise, and I’m really thankful to Mitch and his team of developers and testers for continuing and expanding the series. Enjoy! – Gene

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I’m flattered that Gene has granted me the opportunity to pen this guest post on the Inside GMT Blog and pleased to share with y’all some of the inside workings of the design and development going on with the Next War Series. Thanks, Gene!

In the next few paragraphs, I’d like to discuss the history of the series, some of the inner workings of Next War: Taiwan (NWT), make some comments on our proofing process, talk a little about Next War: India-Pakistan, and wrap up with some thoughts on future directions.

Right off the bat I think it’s important to share the history of the Next War series. Next War: Korea (NWK) is based on Gene’s design, Crisis: Korea 1995 (CK:95), which GMT Games released in 1992. In late 1998/early 1999 Gene started talking about upgrading the game and providing updated Orders of Battle, a new map, and rules revisions. That sort of languished for a few years moving in fits and starts as Gene found time to work on it with periodic updates. In early 2009, I pulled CK:95 off the shelf and played it a few times. I quickly fell in love with the overall system, and, once I really started to pay attention to the Consimworld folder, I grew excited about the pending update. So much so that I started sending Gene all sorts of suggestions about what I thought needed fixing or updating. He must’ve gotten tired of reading it all because, at some point, he just emailed me back and said, more or less, “why don’t you do it.” And that, as they say, was that. My work on the system began mid-to-late 2009 and came to fruition when it was finally released in 2012, twenty years after the original.

While we were waiting for NWK to be published, talk naturally turned to “what’s next.” My preference led me to the idea of creating a “ring” of games with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the pivot point. That is, the next few games in the series would concentrate on potential conflicts between the PRC and its neighbors. The two primary contenders were Taiwan, due to its unusual situation vis á vis the PRC, and an intervention game with India and Pakistan as the primary players. This created the opportunity to potentially provide a massive ubergame which combined all of the individual games into one large scenario. Next War: Taiwan (NWT) and Next War: India-Pakistan (NWIP) will fulfill the partial realization of that idea. NWT is at the head of the queue primarily because the map was already well along and the Orders of Battle had already been created. It was just a matter of writing the Game Specific Rules. That, it quickly became apparent, was an understatement.

Due to the obvious form which any conflict between the PRC and the Republic of China (ROC) would take, I realized that the current state of the highly abstracted naval sub-game in the Next War series simply wasn’t going to cut it. The “Anti-Shipping Strike Rules” existed in a protean form for players to try out with NWK, but that wasn’t going to be enough. Over several iterations, the necessity for providing an expanded naval map became obvious.

This led to changes in Sea Control and Contested Sea Movement and the addition of naval mines which, in turn, meant that aerial mining missions needed to be provided for as a new Air Strike Mission. The vast majority of my time has been spent working over the newly updated naval aspects including the interaction between various other sub-systems such as the air system and theater weapons (cruise missiles). The overall naval system is still abstracted in that submarines and ASW capabilities are handled via tracks and there still aren’t any individual ship counters, but the appropriate nuances exist to reflect each side’s concerns surrounding the main event: the invasion of Taiwan.

Scattered in the midst of all this work on expanded naval activity, some other changes have been incorporated into the series rules. Some of these already exist in one form or another as the “Alternate Rules of Play,” which are in the NWK rule book or available on the support site (http://1drv.ms/VEHIqg), while others are simply clarifications (more on that later) or tweaks to the existing rules such as Attack Helicopter basing and Collateral Damage. There are a couple of new ones, too, such as the Air Unit and Helicopter Recovery rule allowing players to Recover and Reconstitute damaged/destroyed air units and helicopters. The Game Specific Rules also add in some new concepts. These are mostly around the new Naval Display and unique to the situation around Taiwan.

As for the game itself, the assumptions underlying NWT are, obviously, different from those in NWK. In the first place, there’s no guarantee that the U.S. will intervene on the ROC’s behalf. This means that the Allied player needs to roll on the International Posture Matrix for both the U.S. and Japan to see what, if any, help those two nations will give to the beleaguered island nation. That roll has major implications on the Air Superiority picture as the PRC not only has some good air units but they have a lot of them. Without major intervention, primarily by the U.S., the PRC is highly likely to achieve Air Supremacy. In addition, the Naval Display allows and tempts the PRC player into expanding the war and achieving more of their territorial claims by occupying the Paracels, Spratlys, and/or Senkakus. As in many things in life, there are consequences for doing so. Occupying the Senkakus, while increasing the efficiency and range of the PRC Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) Cruise Missile threat, also increases both the U.S. and Japanese Intervention Levels. Occupying the Paracels and/or Spratlys, may result in bringing Vietnam and/or the Philippines into the war on the Allied side, and, if they intervene, it’s possible the Malaysians may also intervene on one side or the other. That’s all a side show, other than VP, to the main event, which is the invasion of the Republic of China. The PRC has two Marine brigades and 3 Airborne divisions with which to force the issue, but they also have what they refer to as Amphibious Mechanized Infantry Divisions (AMID) which are also trained in amphibious assault techniques. The PRC can load these units on AMPHs for a one-way trip to help establish and breakout of the beachhead to accomplish the primary mission of the assault force: seize a Port so the follow-on units can land. Facing them is a fairly numerous ROC Army, but their ability to concentrate force is limited. If the U.S. hasn’t intervened at a level which provides ground forces, the ROC will be hard-pressed to contain the invasion much less throw it back into the sea, but they do have some advantages. Primarily, there are many para-military and police organizations in the ROC which I’ve translated into a -1 DRM on the Clearing Operations table making it just that much more difficult to advance. Overall, it’s shaping up to an interesting knife-fight with brutal qualities.

When I mentioned the clarifications above, while many of those are simply edits I’ve made over the course of time based on feedback from BGG and CSW questions, a large portion are the direct result of the proofing team Chris Fawcett, the Series Developer, and I have assembled. Our first round of proofing generated a virtual flood of comments regarding typos, garbled/difficult wording, and, in some cases entire rules rewrites. As many of you know, NWK had its share of issues upon publication, and I’ve taken that lesson to heart. Chris and I consciously sought out both NWK veterans and complete newbies to the system to take the engine apart and reassemble it so that the rules are clear, concise, and, hopefully, error-free. In addition, in our second round of proofing, we added all the components including the counters, map, and player aid cards to ensure accuracy and consistency. I won’t go so far as to say they’re perfect, but I am mightily impressed with the amount of effort these guys are putting in to the game to make it a better product. To ensure we got excellent results, round one proofing was conducted independently. That is, each proofer went off on his own and documented all the errors he found. Round two is more cooperative. They’re still working on their own, but all the responses are collated in a single repository so that we can achieve consensus on clarification items, ensure that things aren’t simply due to a mis-reading, and also make sure that early items such as odd-looking movement rates on counters can be explained quickly to prevent de-duplication of effort. After the second round, all the raw materials go off to the artist/rules layout guy (in this case, the inestimable Charlie Kibler again!) to put them in their near-final form. Once we have those on hand, we’ll conduct one final round of proofing to ensure that no errors have crept in to the components.

This, of course, is also the process which eventually will be used for NWIP. If you remember the history lesson above, then it won’t surprise you to learn that when Doug Bush approached me and kept pestering me about when the India-Pakistan game would get done, I turned right around and said, “why don’t you start on it.” So, he did. Although NWIP is currently taking a back-burner to NWT, Doug and I have worked out the OoB nuances, discussed some of the unique aspects of fighting in that area such as High Mountains and Bridges, and Doug’s put together some scenarios. Doug has done tremendous work on the game, and we’ve worked together to ensure that everything fits within the overall framework of the series. For instance, the addition of Tactical Nuclear weapons took some work to fit into the current systems, but I think we’ve achieved something that accurately reflects both their use and effects on the battlefield. I’m looking forward to focusing on NWIP once NWT is out the door.

And, so, finally, speaking of looking forward, one of the questions I get asked a lot is “what’s next?” The short answer is that I have no idea. The ring concept mentioned above still has some spots to fill: expanding the India-China border and the Russo-Chinese border. Beyond that, it’s likely that the series will move to the Middle East and/or Eastern Europe. I’ve posted some highly unlikely potential map snippets on CSW, but there is no clear direction yet. I’m open to suggestions!

Thanks,

Mitchell Land

Author: Mitchell Land