Monthly Archives: January 2023

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A Fading Star #1: The Somali Civil War

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The Somali Civil War is an ongoing, now three-decades-long outburst of violence that has displaced millions and killed thousands. The international public knows about this conflict primarily through news headlines generated by the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident and its eponymous 2001 Hollywood movie depiction. However, the global media otherwise paid little attention to the state of affairs following the 1995 UN withdrawal from a still war-torn Somalia. A Fading Star explores the real climax of the conflict from 2007 to 2014, which foreshadowed many aspects of modern counterinsurgencies, including the rise of the Islamic State, the importance of regional state and non-state actors, and the increasing use of social media as a recruitment tool. This series of articles will provide an overview of the game and its four factions, beginning here with the background context that led to the birth of the infamous Al-Shabaab jihadist group in South-Central Somalia. 

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Rebellion: Britannia, Indigenous British Culture

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There’s another systemic layer to the game we haven’t really discussed in the blogs before now, at least not in any detail, which is a source of potential Victory Points (VPs).

This element concerns indigenous British culture. It’s a later addition to the design and something we are still exploring in development. Early playtesting exposed the possibility that we weren’t giving the British factions enough interesting opportunities to earn early VPs. We also had a concern that we weren’t representing enough of indigenous British culture within the design – there was some reference to the destruction of it through the rise in British Tension as a result of Roman buildings and roads – ‘Romanizing’ the British landscape and scarring and irretrievably altering it – but no real reference to its growth or sustenance. These were omissions we sought to address through a new system. This system would incentivize a more pliant approach to Rome and discourage military resistance. British factions would now have a reason to focus on non-military actions, and to therefore highlight other strands of their cultural identity within the framework of the game. It would theoretically be possible to win without ever fighting, but through careful management of cards to secure hegemonies in trade, agricultural production, the generation of crafts, the protection and development of ceremonial sites and customs. But this system would need to have a light design footprint – meaning it would be easy to learn and to integrate into the existing game.

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Inferno – Replay and Tutorial by Christophe Correia, Part 1

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Below you will find Part 1 in an Inferno Replay and Tutorial series from Cristophe Correia originally published on The Boardgames Chronicle blog. Enjoy! -Rachel

Volko Ruhnke’s Levy & Campaign series from GMT Games presents medieval warfare at the operational level in various settings. Volume I, Nevsky, is set on the 13th-Century Baltic frontier with Novgorodan Russia. Volume II, Almoravid, took us to 11th-Century Spain and the Reconquista conflict among Christians and Muslims—you can read Michal’s first impressions and session reports of that volume on The Boardgames Chronicle here. Soon to be released, Volume III, Inferno, will travel to 13th-Century Italy.

Levy & Campaign volumes share core systems simulating medieval Levy of armies by individual great Lords and lesser Vassals, equipping of those armies with transport such as Carts and special Capabilities such as crossbowmen, trebuchets, or stonecutters, to name a few. For each Campaign, players then form stacks of Command cards to preset the order that Lords will March, Forage, Siege, and so on. Logistics loom large, as Provender must be gathered and moved to Feed Troops in the field or suffer curtailed Lords’ Service and Disband.

But each volume in the series features widely different geographic, cultural, and political settings, each with twists on the core rules to help bring out these differences. Inferno concerns fighting between the Guelph and Ghibelline political factions in the well-to-do and densely populated Tuscany of the mid-1200s. You can here all about this setting from Volko directly in this video.