Note: Art shown is from the game prototype and not final.
In our previous Inside GMT article, the French took Control of Cairo and started Besieging two more Mamluk Spaces. Meanwhile, the Allied Player recruited a sizable force in Thebes for a potential counterattack. Ibrahim Bey is still 8 Spaces away from Bonaparte though so the French have time to brace for impact. They will thus seize this opportunity to Assault Meniet with a low-AP card. CDG fans all know that sooner or later, we need to pick a moment to play these weak cards!
A couple of months ago, I sat down to a web call with Space Empires designer Jim Krohn to talk about his game series and the final expansion for it that is currently on the P500, All Good Things. Despite a name that might indicate a touch of bittersweet, Jim is not sorry to bring this game arc to a close; he’s more excited about “completing the system” and finishing up a project that started in the ‘90s. He acknowledges that some fans may be a little more sorry to see the content well dry up, but says “this will have all of the rest of my best material. I have more material that I could use, but honestly, it’s just not as good.” Before getting to the specifics of that “best material”, here’s a quick recap of the Space Empires: 4X system. It is a hex ‘n counter space wargame, featuring space exploration, empire expansion, resource exploitation, and, of course, extermination of your opponent. These are the four “X’s” from the title. The base game comes with the map, tons of ship counters, a massive tech tree, and lots of fun things to discover. The Close Ecounters expansion packs in more counters and variable player powers, among other things, while Replicators added a new type of playable empire that can also be used as a foe in solo and cooperative games.
Introduction #1 from Congress of Vienna Assistant Designer & Editor Fred Schachter: I’ve had the fun and pleasure of helping Designer Frank Esparrago on his journey, now our journey, to bringing his labor of love CoV game vision from dream into reality.
This GMT P-500 game is now undergoing a wonderful transformation from playtest into production graphics thanks to the talents of Terry Leeds. For the latest status of Terry’s efforts and a host of Congress of Vienna game material see:GMT Games – Congress of Vienna .
But for all the content readers will find within GMT’s site for the game; there’ll be a dearth of current material relevant to Congress of Vienna’s Solitaire Version and Bots. Those rules and Bots are to the credit of CoV Team members: initially Jim Gutt and David Illanes and more recently David Schoellhamer, who is architect of those Bots’ latest rendition. Well done guys!
With that, I’ll turn further introductory honors to Frank…
Introduction #2 From Congress of Vienna designer Frank Esparrago: Previous InsideGMT articles explain how the CoV Team agreed to offer a version for solitaire play. However, Developer Dick Sauer and I did not have sufficient experience to address this creative task fully and properly. Our first approach was to consider emulating the Churchill game’s Bots. Alas, they were too simplistic for a CoV solitaire game which needed to deliver the kind of interesting, uncertain, fun to play gaming elements we sought and, above all, to put pressure on a human player and make attaining victory an entertaining challenge.
Consequently, we increased our development team with new members having experience in designing a solitaire game. As Fred mentioned, these CoV solo game developers were Jim Gutt and David Illanes. They created the game’s inaugural French Bot. Their tenacity, highly critical minds, detailed knowledge of the Congress of Vienna game system, as well as game design orthodoxy in general; allowed them to build a series of summary tables (in Excel or Word). This enabled me to convert those guidelines into suitable Flowcharts or rules which can be easily understood by future players.
In Spain, both myself and Ignacio Badal commenced efforts to create a 2-player CoV version. This would have similar concepts to what Jim and his United States team derived. We had to change a few game mechanics of this highly interactive multiplayer game to make it into a viable 2-player contest!
Once those design concepts were fixed; we realized if we created a good 2-player Congress of Vienna game; designing a derivative solo game could be easier than by advancing directly from 4-players to just a single “human” player! That worked out to be a good intermediary step. Serendipity!
Note: Art shown is from the game prototype and not final.
In our previous Inside GMT article, the just-landed French force led by Napoleon rushed across the desert to surprise the Mamluk army. The French general eventually won the Battle of the Pyramids and sent Murad Bey reeling south of Cairo. Now, the Allied Player gets a chance to respond with their own card play.
This article from Alan Ray is Part 3 in a 3 part guide to playing SPQR. If you would like to read Parts 1 and 2 first, you can find those here and here.
I told you all in the last customer update that I’d give you about a week’s notice before GMT’s Yearly Sale, so here it is! I wanted to let you all know roughly a week in advance so that you have time to plan your purchases. Here are the details of the sale:
SALE FOR P500 CUSTOMERS!! This sale is our “thank you” to all of you customers who use our P500 system. By using our P500 system, you help us have plenty of cash flow to keep printing our games while also letting us know which games you want the most. This sale is for P500 supporters who have had P500 items shipped from August 2021 (when we had our last sale) until the end of October 2022. We greatly appreciate your support, and this sale is our way of saying, “Thanks!” So, if you’ve received P500 items from us between August 1, 2021, and October 31, 2022, you will get 50% off in-stock GMT games and accessories (as well as games from SOME of our third-party vendors—see the list below for details).
Euro Friendly Shipping! Our friends at Second Chance Games and UGG have agreed to handle our UK and EU orders in the same manner they do for our P500 orders! This means that those of you in Europe WILL be able to get your sales items shipped out at a lower price that includes shipping, VAT, and fees. Just be sure to choose the “Euro-friendly” shipping option (which includes us pre-paying VAT) when you place your order (this is crucial—if you don’t choose the Euro-friendly method, the games will ship out individually at regular (higher) shipping prices, and you’ll have to pay VAT and possibly fees).
I want to say a special thanks to our friends at Second Chance Games and UGG for making it possible for us to provide these savings to our European customers!
Sale Details Sale Duration: 5:00 am (Pacific Time) November 15th to 11:59 pm (Pacific Time) November 21st, 2022.
Sale Discount: 50% off all IN-STOCK GMT products, except for the new CHARIOTEER and SKIES ABOVE BRITAIN. 50% off on many third-party games, expansions, magazines, or accessories (but not Hexasim and Vae Victis/Cerrigo products).
Who is Eligible for the sale? Any customer to whom we shipped P500 items from August 1, 2021, through October 31, 2022. It doesn’t matter when you ordered the items—only that you used P500 to order them and that they were shipped between August 1, 2021, and October 31, 2022.To help you know which P500 games make you eligible for the sale, here’s a list of P500 games we shipped between August 1, 2021, through October 31, 2022 (excluding the two currently-shipping P500 games):
1848 Australia Absolute War Almoravid Barbarossa: Army Group Center, 2nd Edition Battle Line, 11th Printing Battles for the Shenandoah, A Death Valley Expansion CDG Solo System Churchill, 3rd Printing Commands & Colors: Ancients, 7th Printing Conquest and Consequence Cuba Libre, 4th Printing Empire of the Sun, 4th Printing Fall of Saigon Fields of Fire: The Bulge Campaign Fire in the Lake, 3rd Printing Flashpoint: South China Sea Great Battles of Julius Caesar, Deluxe Edition Into the Woods MBT, 2nd Printing Musket & Pike Dual Pack Normandy ’44, 3rd Printing Norway, 1940: A PQ-17 Expansion Pacific War Panzer, 3rd Printing Panzer Expansion 1, 2nd Printing Panzer Expansion 2, 2nd Printing Panzer Expansion 3, 2nd Printing Plains Indian Wars Red Flag Over Paris Red Storm: Baltic Approaches Salerno ’43 Stalingrad ’42 Expansion SpaceCorp, 2nd Printing Tank Duel Expansion 1: North Africa Tank Duel Tank Pack #1 The Last Hundred Yards: Mission Pack #1 The Last Hundred Yards: Solomon Islands The US Civil War, 2nd Printing This Accursed Civil War, 2nd Printing Triumph and Tragedy, 3rd Printing Twilight Struggle Deluxe Edition, 8th Printing Vietnam, 1965-1975 Wing Leader Supremacy, 1943-1945, 2nd Edition
If you are unsure which of these items were shipped to you in 2021/2022, you can check your account on our website by logging in and then clicking “My Account” (at top right on any page of our website). Once you’re into your account, click the “Order History” tab on the left side of the page, and that will show you all of your recent orders/shipments.
Sale Quantity Limit:For each game that was delivered to you via our P500 program since August 1, 2021, you can order one in-stock item at 50% off. The only upper limit to how many games you can order is the number of games you received via P500 during that period.Example: If you received only one game via P500 between August 1, 2021, and October 31, 2022, you are eligible to order ONE in-stock item at 50% off in this sale. If you received 10 P500 games in that August 1, 2021, to October 31, 2022, window, you would be eligible to order up to 10 items in this sale.
Which items you can buy at 50% off Sale Price:
1. Any In-Stock GMT Game EXCEPT the two new P500 games that just started shipping this week (CHARIOTEER and SKIES ABOVE BRITAIN).
2. Any game, magazine, or accessory from any of our third-party vendors EXCEPT for Hexasim and Vae Victis/Cerrigo products.
3. You can also purchase Accessories as one of your “items”—Mounted Maps, Card Decks, or Miscellaneous Parts—if you run out of games you want to get at a discount. Note: We’ve done quite a few really nice Mounted Maps for a variety of games over the past few years. All of these that are still in stock are eligible for the sale. Here’s your chance to get some nice mounted maps at half price!
4. All Items on our Specials Page. Please remember that you absolutely CAN use the games on the Specials Page as part of these 50% off orders if you wish. These items are AMAZING values because you get to use your 50% off the already great “On Sale For” prices on this page! So check out the Specials Page and get some great deals! While They Last: These sale prices last for each offered game until it is sold out or until the sale ends on November 21, 2021, at 11:59 pm Pacific Time. We expect numerous games to sell out during the sale. When you try to add a game to your cart and get a message that the order exceeds quantity remaining in stock, it’s sold out. Please choose other games. We’ll do our best to update these with sold out notifications on their thumbnails and by moving them out of the in-stock category as quickly as possible during the sale to avoid confusion.
How to Get the Sale Price: Go to our website and prepare your order from eligible games (see above, in “Items you can buy at 50% off Sale Price”). Then, when you checkout, use the following code to get 50% off per item: GMTSale2022
NOTE: Please DO NOT combine Sale items on the same order as a P500 order. This makes it much more difficult for our office and warehouse folks to process.
Please Remember:
The sale begins on Tuesday, November 15th at 5:00 am Pacific Time and runs through 11:59 pm Pacific Time on November 21st.
Use discount code GMTSale2022 when you checkout with your sale orders in order to get the 50% discount.
Please DO NOT combine Sale and new P500 order items on one order. THANKS!
Feel free to use your shopping cart on our website between now and the start of the sale to build your sale order list. Then you’ll be able to order quickly once the sale begins next Tuesday.
While technical “wizards” like Dr. St. Julien Ravenel and Theodore Stoney were creating the CSS “David” torpedo boat as the Confederacy’s response to the US Navy’s overwhelming superiority on the nation’s rivers and oceans, the Union wizards were not idle in that field, either.
In Downfall Preview 2 the Soviet faction began the game by playing their “Operation Uranus” action card to resolve a free attack order. Since doing so had no initiative cost, the Soviets retain the initiative and may now select a Soviet order marker. As previously stated, the Soviet Partisan Warfare order and STAVKA order are available on the Action Track, as is the Attack order in the Soviet Planning Box.
