Monthly Archives: July 2022

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The Other Infernal Machine: The Tale of the Union Navy’s USS “Alligator” (formerly the “Submarine Propeller”) Part 4 – The Raid and its Aftermath: June 1862 – July 1862.

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Image is of a typical elevated railroad bridge in Virginia during the 1860’s. The R & P High Bridge was destroyed by Union artillery fire during the siege of Petersburg, 1864 – 1865] {Image courtesy of Library of Congress}

During his preparations for the Appomattox River Raid, the commander of the US Navy raiding force, Commodore John Rodgers had become concerned about the river route his task force would take. The primary target was the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad’s High Bridge over the Appomattox River at Petersburg, Virginia. Also targeted was the R & P’s bridge over Swift Creek. Destruction of one or both bridges would sever the Confederate capital of Richmond’s connection with the rest of the Confederacy.

Success of the River Raid, combined with a successful assault on the Confederate capital by Union General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac meant that the Civil War could be over within the year.

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Breaking The Line and Holding The Line in Commands & Colors: Ancients by BrentS — Part 3

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In the first two installments (you can check them here: Part 1 & Part 2) we explored strategy for the attacker breaking the line. In this final installment we will consider the role of the defender.

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Zheng He Playthrough with Geoffrey Engelstein — Part 4

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Welcome back to this playthrough of the first voyage of a campaign game of Zheng He! This is the fourth and final part. I won’t be explaining many rules here, so starting here might be a bit confusing. I’d recommend checking out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 to catch up on the voyage and brush up on the rules.

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Resolving Combat in Bear Trap’s Solitaire System

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When I began developing Bear Trap, it was already a tight and competitive two-player game, much like its spiritual ancestor Sekigahara. However, the designer P.R. Daniels had ambitions to go beyond this and include a solitaire mode that would allow a single player to enjoy the game by themself. Bear Trap is a block game with a lot of hidden information, which makes designing a solitaire mode quite challenging, but Paul has come up with some clever systems to facilitate this. In this article, I want to look closely at just one aspect of Bear Trap’s solitaire mode: how combat is resolved, which highlights several of the core design principles that underlie it. For an introduction to the combat system in Bear Trap, you can read Paul’s earlier InsideGMT article here.

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Pragmatism, Tension, and the Power of Cooperation in Mr. President

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I’ve gone to some lengths to try to keep Mr. President from reflecting a partisan point of view, as I have no interest in being part of any game that would further the deep divisions we already have in this country around party loyalties, personalities, and platforms. What I have tried to do is present you, the new President in game terms, with the reality that you have both a party affiliation and an opposing party to deal with. My problem-solving methods usually lean toward the pragmatic, so I tried to take the same approach with a game about the President, sometimes called the “Problem Solver in Chief.”

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Zheng He Playthrough with Geoffrey Engelstein Part 3

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A reminder of the situation at the end of Turn 5

Welcome back to our playthrough of the first voyage in Zheng He: Admiral of the Ming Fleet. This is part 3 of 4 and will make a lot more sense if you read parts 1 and 2 first.

We have played through the first five turns of the 22-turn voyage. I’m going into a lot of detail about the rules and my thought process, but during actual play, once you know the rules, each voyage takes about 30-45 minutes to complete.

We are located in Malacca and are running very low on cards in hand, so we will need to Resupply as our first order of business.

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The Other Infernal Machine: The Tale of the Union Navy’s “Submarine Propeller” Part 3 – The Appomattox River Raid: June 26-28, 1862

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Strangling the Rebel Capital

Rebel battery position on Drewry’s Bluff defending Richmond from US Navy attacks from the James River. Image taken in 1865. {courtesy the National Archives}

Ever since the Union navy had retaken Norfolk, Virginia, Union gunboats had been prowling the James River to within seven miles of the Confederacy’s capital city of Richmond. 

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Rebellion: Britannia Playthrough with Daniel Burt (Video)

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In this week’s blog, we take a step away from the history and dive right into the game itself. Daniel Burt takes us through a playthrough of Rebellion: Britannia in its prototype form on Tabletop Simulator, walking us through the sequence of play, key concepts, and some of the strategies the different factions may explore.

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Zheng He Playthrough with Geoffrey Engelstein Part 2

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This is the second of a four-part playthrough of a voyage from Zheng He. The prior article covered the basic rules of the game, setup, and the first turn. We had just arrived in the port of Champa, in modern-day Vietnam.