The newest offering in our COIN Series—Volume IX, Gandhi—takes on the world’s most famous nonviolent resistance movement, the 20th century struggle to free India from British colonial rule. In today’s article, designer Bruce Mansfield introduces us to the ways this COIN volume treats population, support for/opposition to the colonial government, and the role of Gandhi’s strategy of peaceful civil disobedience within the broader framework of insurgency and counterinsurgency. Enjoy!
— Gene
When Designer Greg Ticer and I began our partnership to bring The Seven Years War: Frederick’s Gamble, henceforth referred to as 7YW:FG, into published form; we could not anticipate nor imagine the great outpouring of enthusiastic support and encouragement of so many gamers, the play test team (from West Coast to East and to the UK), and of GMT itself. This has been an exciting and gratifying experience as we watched 7YW:FG P-500 “make the cut” in its yet-to-be completed journey to print.
Printed form, of course, is not the only way GMT Games are today played. Michael Arrighi is an already known and established talent with taking games into VASSAL form. He was so enamored of Greg’s design, which results in a fun, fast-paced, and exciting game for play after play, that he volunteered to transition 7YW:FG so it could be played via computer with VASSAL.
As you’ll read and see in the ensuing article; what an excellent job Michael did! We hope this piece provokes your interest in the game, as well as patronage through a P-500 order, if you’re so moved. The entire 7YW:FG Team appreciates any interest and support, as well as questions/comments regarding this presentation.
Designing a game that is part of an established and well-liked series such as Mike Nagel’s Flying Colors (FC) requires a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, the setting for Volume IV requires some special handling: river shoals and sand bars, the preponderance of small vessels like gunboats and schooners, and some of the unusual tactics historically employed such as towing heavier warships by their own boats through shallow waters and over shoals require some special handling. At the same time, continuity with the other games in the series, keeping the flow of play and the “feel†of the FC system, means that any changes have to be very carefully considered and approached with caution.
This is the fourth part of the series regarding “Why we do what we do in The Last Hundred Yards.” This article deals with Armor operations.
Carla and I are proud to announce that Apocalypse Road is in the tidying-up stage at this point. The game just went up on the P500 last month, so this is very fortunate. The idea for the game arose from the response we got from people at conventions where we demonstrated Thunder Alley. Invariably, someone would want to ram other cars. Often the discussion went to putting guns on the cars. We took their desires to heart and sat down even before we started working on Grand Prix and tried to envision what Thunder Alley with guns would look like.
The following is part 2 of an after action review of my most recent test game of Red Storm with my good friend and playtest team member Chris Baer. This scenario is titled “Offensive Counter Air” and features two big NATO deep strike raids going over the front and into southwestern East Germany. In Part 1 Chris and I both provided our thoughts as we went through the pre-game planning phases. Here in Part 2 we’ll discuss some of the action in the scenario itself.
An American platoon has setup an outpost in and around the St. Michel Church in sector 4. Two German platoons have been tasked with capturing this outpost and driving the American’s back.
“It’s a cruel, cruel world!” is all my friend Max told his 22 year old son, Bennett, in preparation for his first game of Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea. Bennett soon discovered and showed us just how cruel it could be, as in just one short evening all manner of calamities befell our empires, from multiple and repeated barbarian invasions to cataclysmic earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and floods of Biblical proportions – not to mention the Bronze Age version of The Black Death.
Yet we three survived these travails and more – including wars and the game’s card enabled catastrophes which we vengefully inflicted upon each other (“see, it really IS a cruel world!” was the oft repeated refrain) – with Bennett’s Phoenicians vying with his father’s Mycenaeans and my Egyptians for primacy in Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea.
As we have been playtesting Tank Duel: Enemy in the Crosshairs, the number one thing that players want to learn about is how the game works once the shells start flying. Tank Duel draws inspiration from games like Up Front, Panzer and Combat Commander, with an abstract movement system but detailed fire action resolution procedure which uses cards for multiple purposes. This article will give you some insight into what the fire action resolution procedure looks like, and how that information is spread out between the Battle Cards and Tank Boards.
