Back in 1989, before the “G”, “M”, and “T” had even officially formed a company, I was working on my first “real” (as opposed to all the extremely amateur efforts that violated my game tables during the college and early-professional years. MAN, I kinda wish I’d kept the one on Brice’s Crossroads!) game design, an operational level game covering the campaigns of the newly arrived 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam’s Central Highlands in late 1965. That game was Silver Bayonet, and it was the game that tested a system that my other two initial designs, Air Bridge to Victory and Operation Shoestring, were based on. We actually released all three together in late 3rd quarter, 1990, but Silver Bayonet, to me at least, was always “my first published game.”

Later this year, to mark our 25th year in business – no small feat in this industry – we’re going to release a complete remake of that original game, as a special 25th Anniversary Edition of Silver Bayonet. This edition will feature WAY better map and counters than what we published in 1990 (thank you Mark Simonitch and Charlie Kibler!), a few new units, and a complete rework of rules, while maintaining essentially the same (streamlined just a bit) operational system that appeared in the original. Rodger is doing special cover art for this edition as well, so this should be a pretty cool package, all in all.

The only reason I can really make a new design of this original game a reality is because my friend (and our webmaster) Mitch Land has agreed to help. As many of you know, Mitch has taken over the reigns of my original Crisis: Korea 1995 system and is now creating new games using that system in our “Next War” series. Recently he came to me and inquired about basically doing the same thing with my Operational Series – updating it and then taking it to new topics and eras. I replied that “I’ve been thinking about doing a 25th Anniversary Edition of Silver Bayonet, and this would really help me with the workload.” So, we agreed, the only difference being that I’m way more involved in the Silver Bayonet project – it’s still my baby, I guess – than I was with any of the Next War series update. So I have the original game out on my game table and am looking anew at the system, scenarios, as well as scaling issues for the reworked map (more below on map and counters). We have a May deadline to send the game to the printers (for a planned Fall release), so this is something that I’m working on daily. And Mitch is a huge help, getting the rules in shape for Mark and helping me identify areas we can tighten up in the system and scenarios.