In this series of articles, we will chronologically discover the epic of Napoleon in Egypt. In our first article, we followed the French from the moment they left their country throughout the Nile campaign, which allowed them to conquer an immense territory from Alexandria to Thebes via Cairo. The year now turns to 1799, and Bonaparte sets his sights to Syria (now Israel) to complete his conquest. This episode covers the second scenario of Napoleon in Egypt: The Syrian Anabasis.
Some time ago, a new game named Order & Opportunity: Making of the Post-Cold War World Order entered GMT Games’ P500 list. This is the fifth in a series of articles talking about different aspects of the game.
In this installment, we turn our attention from the thematic aspects of the game that have preoccupied us in the previous articles and consider now the game’s mechanics. We will review the various types of event cards in the game.
Recently, a number of short playthrough videos were posted on YouTube that can be a helpful companion to the present article at hand.
Hey all! Yes, believe it or not, the amazing Designer’s Notes for The Plum Island Horror game have mysteriously been missing for months. Suddenly vanishing from the possession of the GMT development team, they of course told me not to worry about it, as they had everything under control. Utter gaslighting nonsense! I found out later that they just didn’t want their wonderful “professional” rulebook to be clogged up by my “meaningless jibber-jabber”, as they so un-diplomatically put it. I suspected a Deep State cover up, of course, as this game and its historical research have unveiled one of the most heinous chapters in U.S. history. Alas, I have found my copy of these notes (hidden in my copy of the Funk & Wagnells New Standard Dictionary) and I now bring them to you in all their lyrical glory. I decided to let you read this before I release it to the major news networks and the airing of the special segment on Ancient Aliens that is dedicated to this event. And by the way, Ancient Alien experts say “yes!” when asked if there could be a UFO cause to these catastrophic occurrences on Plum Island. But you didn’t hear that from me.
Recently, a new game named Order & Opportunity: Making of the Post-Cold War World Order entered GMT Games’ P500 list. This is the fourth in a series of articles talking about different aspects of the game.
In this installment, we focus on the dimensions of the post-Cold War contest between Authoritarianism and Democracy.
From the profile page: Order & Opportunity is a 2 to 4 player game with a dedicated solitaire system about the making of the post-Cold War world order covering the first decades of the 21st century. In the game, the United States, Russia, China, and the European Union compete over the control of the agenda and ultimately over victory points in the dimensions of economic, political, cultural, and security power projection. Order & Opportunity combines card-driven, asymmetric game play to produce a topical and thematic historical game on a global scale. The game offers a distinctive and captivating play experience at every one of its player counts.
This article discusses German strategy in the forthcoming design, Battle Command: The Bulge. For an overview of the game, and the battle it represents, see the first article in the series: An Introduction to Battle Command: The Bulge. We also have an article on Allied strategy.
In this new series of articles, we will discover chronologically the epic of Napoleon in Egypt. We will divide this expedition into three parts, which correspond to the three shorter scenarios you’ll find in the actual game. Let’s start with THE CONQUEST!
The year is 1797. Napoleon Bonaparte returns from a year of campaigning in Italy, covered in glory. The French Directory, which then ruled Republican France, finds this general far too popular and begins to fear him. It is thus decided to send him to conquer Egypt! But why this adventure over 3,000 kilometers away from the homeland?
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I’ve always been a bit snarky about corporate mission statements and the like, but I’ve always appreciated the simple clarity of purpose in that commonly cited mission of the infantry. The Last Hundred Yards is a game that focuses specifically on closing with and destroying your enemies.
A motivated force in an improved defensive position is very hard to dislodge if they don’t want to go anywhere. Yes, you can blast them with artillery, encircle them, or just bypass them and that will work a lot of the time. But sometimes you really want the ground they are holding, and they will not leave unless personally escorted off the premises. The Last Hundred Yards series focuses on these latter types of engagements.
Recently, a new game named Order & Opportunity: Making of the Post-Cold War World Order entered GMT Games’ P500 list. This is the third in a series of articles about the game.
In this third article we’ll look at how to turn the post-ideological control of the media and other agendas, or Agenda Points, into a lasting legacy of Victory Points.
From the profile page: Order & Opportunity is a 2 to 4 player game with a dedicated solitaire system about the making of the post-Cold War world order covering the first decades of the 21st century. In the game, the United States, Russia, China, and the European Union compete over the control of the agenda and ultimately over victory points in the dimensions of economic, political, cultural, and security power projection. Order & Opportunity combines card-driven, asymmetric game play to produce a topical and thematic historical game on a global scale. The game offers a distinctive and captivating play experience at every one of its player counts.
For those of you who haven’t gotten into Mike Denson’s small-unit tactical game The Last Hundred Yards, there’s never been a better time to jump in. Not only is Volume I back in stock and shipping now, but Mike and his team just put together a stellar Basic Training guide that takes you through all the details of the system, and gets you playing quickly.
Whether you are new to tactical games or familiar with other tactical game systems, The Last Hundred Yards introduces innovative concepts like the Action-Reaction cycle and the Passage of Time, which the Basic Training guide explains step-by-step. Each mission introduces a few rules, which gets you playing the game and learning quickly. This programmed-instruction approach is accessible and incorporates feedback from players and the developers’ experience with the system to teach these concepts in the clearest possible way.
In addition to the guide, players who own Volume II or III will need to download a set of maps that are needed to play the included scenarios for players who own Volume II or Volume III; there are instructions in the guide to adapt the Volume III counters to the scenarios. We hope the Basic Training guide will get you playing The Last Hundred Yards quickly; there is so much to explore in the series, and much more to come.
You probably don’t have to be around our hobby long to know there are a lot of “Bulge” games. However, for those who haven’t seen or heard this – Bulge games depict a specific German counteroffensive fought on the Western Front in the winter of 1944, towards the end of WW2. The campaign was named the Battle of the Bulge because it produced a serious bend in Allied lines. It was fought in and around the same Ardennes region the Germans launched their famous blitzkrieg through in 1940, leading to the fall of France. As one of the major confrontations between the US and German Armies in WW2, it has attracted a lot of attention from designers.
The campaign began with the Germans on the strategic offensive, and the Allies sent reeling. The Germans aimed to knock out Allied supply dumps in Belgium, and dislocate Allied advances towards the Rhine river, and the industrial Rhineland – heart of Germany’s war effort – beyond. They were hampered by the weather (they began the attack on 16 December), unrealistic expectations from high command (particularly Hitler), and fierce resistance from the Americans. The offensive stalled, and then the British and Americans counterattacked, driving the Germans back.
