Below is the fifth in a series of articles from The Boardgames Chronicle playing through the Belisarius campaign in Commands & Colors: Medieval. You can find the first four articles in the series here. Enjoy! -Rachel
I came to designer Gunnar Holmbäck’s The Weimar Republic with the resolve of a time traveller determined to change History, a resolve nurtured by a grandfather’s subscription to Berlin’s Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), German New Wave director Margarethe von Trotta’s film, Rosa Luxemburg (1986), the Weimar era novels of Alfred Doblin and, most recently, the German TV series, Babylon Berlin, set in the capital’s insurrectionist streets and licentious nightclubs.
When I first joined the ranks of The Weimar Republic’s play testers as faction leader of the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) aka the German Communist Party, that struggle was as close as my bookshelf and Rosa Luxemburg’s 1907 treatise, The Mass Strike, Political Parties and Trade Unions. By June of 1919 her corpse would float in Berlin’s Landwehr Canal. And so, I had my Victory Condition: to defeat by Revolution the reactionary paramilitaries or Freikorps, Luxemburg’s murderers unleashed by the fledgling Republic. Vicious realpolitik is the initial game state of The Weimar Republic, the board game.
Below is the fourth in a series of articles from The Boardgames Chronicle playing through the Belisarius campaign in Commands & Colors: Medieval. You can find the first three articles in the series here. Enjoy! -Rachel
Introduction: Designer Mark McLaughlin and I, unlike years past, no longer reside in the same area of the USA (a great disappointment to us both). I’ve lived about the country during my business career and now retired to a home in Charlotte, NC. Consequently, we try to get-together in-person at least annually and I recently journeyed to Mark’s place in New Hampshire to review gaming matters and Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East (ACME) in particular.
Mark and I played several ACME games during this visit: one-on-one, then the two of us versus NPC (which uses the game’s Solitaire System to control an AI civilization – the NPC almost defeated us both until we combined against it), and the topic of this article, an exciting and entertaining 4 player contest.
August 27, 1944: It was 7:40 AM and Captain Cole’s L Company of the 3rd Battalion found themselves on the outskirts of the small village of Allan in Southern France. The rest of the 3rd Battalion was still 5 miles back and just now passing through Bois des Mattes. L Company was all alone. Not having seen any sign of enemy activity, Captain Coles ordered a recon in force. As soon as they stepped off, they began receiving enemy small arms and mortar fire. A pit immediately formed in Cole’s stomach as he realized that L Company might have bitten off more than it could chew.
Mission Objective: Mission ends if at the end of any game turn the Americans control 10 Building Points [see MSR 1.0, Building Points] out of the possible 12 in Sector 11, or when either side exceeds its Casualty Differential Limit, or when the Final Score is ≥ 51.
Below is the third in a series of articles from The Boardgames Chronicle playing through the Belisarius campaign in Commands & Colors: Medieval. You can find the first two articles in the series here. Enjoy! -Rachel
Below is another great article from InsideGMT contributor The Boardgames Chronicle, this time with an after action report of the Falling Sky scenario, “The Great Revolt” (52 BC). Enjoy! -Rachel
Below is the second in a 3-part AAR series from Mark Miklos covering the Battles of the American Revolution tournament at WBC 2019. Part 1 can be found here. Enjoy!
Below is the first in a 3-part AAR series from Mark Miklos covering the Battles of the American Revolution tournament at WBC 2019. Enjoy!
The Father Todd Buzzsaw! That’s the overarching theme of this year’s tournament. Father Todd Carter, a friend of the BoAR series since 2013, has been steadily improving his game and this was his year as you will read.
A total of 24 players competed in this year’s tournament including three players new to the BoAR series; Curtiss Fyock, Joe Chacon and Steve Packwood as well as William Riggs who had lapsed to the inactive list on the AREA rating not having played since 2014. We were happy to welcome them all to our group. This year’s format included a Swiss elimination of 5 heats with the top-8 players advancing to a single elimination quarter final.
