There are 12 rounds in each game of Rebellion: Britannia – unless an automatic loss condition for Rome is triggered (she has 2+ Forts and 6+ Settlements burnt at the same time, or has all 4 Legions destroyed) in which case the game ends immediately.
At the beginning of each round the top card of the Events deck is revealed. Each card has two or three effects, and each of these effects modulate play in a variety of possible ways, either for the turn, or for the remainder of the game:
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.
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.
In this article in our series previewing Downfall, we continue our typical game to show a range of orders and activities that might occur, such as strategic warfare, event triggers, intra-Axis conflict, weather and partisan warfare.
At the end of Preview 3, the Western Faction’s Initiative Marker occupied the lowest-numbered space on the Initiative Track so they will conduct the next Action Round.
The core design of Bear Trap is now done, and the two-player game is polished. So, in today’s article I thought I’d share some comments on my experience designing Bear Trap.
I first thought of creating a game about the Soviet-Afghan War while teaching Military Ethics at university in 2013. I was drawn to the topic because of my interest in the Cold War. But there’s a lot of other interesting things going on in this conflict, beyond being a feature of the Cold War.
The Soviets used a fighting force designed for an anticipated European conflict. The Soviets had visions of a quick war which didn’t align with the realities they would face over the decade long struggle. They weren’t up for the task they would face in Afghanistan. They were ill-suited to deal with under-trained freedom fighters wanting to repel foreign invaders through a widespread insurgency. As the war dragged on, in many ways, the Soviets effectively committed a sunken cost fallacy. While these might be oversimplifications here, these factors—and the narratives around Soviet tanks streaming across the border, the desertions, and the terror wrought by Soviet airstrikes—pulled me in and engaged my interest. But even for those not explicitly interested in the Soviet-Afghan War, Bear Trap—as a learning tool—can act as a lens through which they can learn more about aspects of history that have helped shape, or have been informed by, other things that that they are interested in.
Twilight Struggle has long been the game that I most wanted to find a satisfying way to play solo. The game rewards knowing your hand intimately, and guessing what’s in your opponent’s hand as well. Because the game is so tactical in determining the order and timing of card play, it is a difficult game to play solo. So when Jason Matthews asked me if I would help design the Solo Opponent for Twilight Struggle: Red Sea I jumped at the opportunity to solve these really hard problems.
In last week’s blog post, I discussed the Bank of New York and the strategic flexibility is adds to 18EUS. In this final blog post, let’s talk about one of my favorite parts, the private companies. I had so much fun with the design of the private companies of 18EUS. The auction mechanism draws from 1822, as does the generality that the private companies hold no intrinsic value, mostly pay a modest income when held by the player, and confer upon the owning company special abilities. 18EUS private companies diverge from there.
In last week’s blog post, I discussed the games and people that inspired me to make 18EUS. As part of that, I mentioned that one of the key new elements of 18EUS is the Bank of New York, which allows players to either take elective personal loans or invest in the Bank if they do not hold loans. I wanted to explore a space where players had access to more capital in stock rounds, like in 1817 with short-selling, with a different, unique mechanism. Some have pointed out that the 18EUS “loans,” which both charge interest and increase in principle, do not behave like loans in a technical sense, but rather like stock shorts. Indeed, the main design inspiration here was to create a “friendlier” method of short-selling that would appeal to a wider audience.
Greetings again, ladies and gentlemen, and boys and girls of all ages! After having been flooded by hundreds of thousands of emails and posts requesting more information about this game (well, that’s a rough estimate … maybe it was just Harvey from East Northport who wrote me, but I can’t remember just now), I had to succumb and return from my self-imposed exile and provide another eye-opening and inspiring article to this blog.
As you may or may not have seen, the big breaking news is that the game board for The Plum Island Horror has been completed. I can attest to its historical accuracy, and I commend Terry Leeds and the team for producing such a wonderfully detailed and realistic depiction of the island just moments before the horrific events on October 24th of a year that we are unable to reveal for legal reasons.
My interest in strategy board games started early when my grandfather taught me chess at six years old. In high school I enjoyed playing on custom-designed Risk maps with my friends, and in college I discovered Settlers of Catan. Next was enjoying the plethora of modern Euro games. I moved to Grand Haven, Michigan in 2018 and started attending Thursday-night gaming at a local game store in Zeeland where I was introduced to 18xx in 2019. I was hooked after my first play of 1846.
Favorite titles of our group included 1846, 1862, 1822 and 1822MX. 18USA was polarizing – it was Mark’s favorite title, and everyone liked the randomized setup, but some did not like the shorting mechanic or extended length of the game. During setup of an 18USA game, Bill remarked, “Someone needs to make a game on the 18USA map without the shorting.” Around the same time, I listened to an 18xx podcast that had a segment on “Things you wish to see in an 18xx game,” and they talked about personal, elective loans. It became clear to me that elective loans could easily replace shorting. I adopted the “Sure, why not?” attitude and went about creating 18EUS.
