19 November 2022
Good afternoon, everyone.
Ed Ostermeyer here.
Several readers have requested information on the works I’ve used in the design of “Infernal Machine: Dawn of Submarine Warfare.
Herewith is my bibliography (current as of 19 November 2022) for the game, alphabetized and annotated for your use.
Comments and remarks are my own opinions on the indicated text’s usefulness, ease of same, and value as a source.
So, here you go:
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!
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.
News of the CSS “Squib” torpedo boat’s semi-success in its attack on the Union Navy’s Squadron anchored at Hampton Roads, Virginia met with enthusiastic response from the Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory.
In our first article we introduced the design features of Chad Jensen’s strategic game on the three years that ended World War II in Europe. Now we will zoom into the mechanics of Orders, Action Cards and Combat by walking through a typical game opening. The Soviet faction begins the game with the initiative and so will go first.
Shown here is a portion of the map, with the initial set up reflecting the situation on the eastern front in November 1942. Red units are Soviets. All other units are the German and Axis-Allied nations making up the OKH faction.
The years 1863 and 1864 were a busy time for Southern inventors interested in creating a weapon that would give the Confederacy parity of a sort with the much larger and more numerous naval vessels of the United States Navy.
Undoubtedly, when inventors such as Charleston’s Dr. St. Julien Ravenel and Theodore Stoney created their CSS “David” torpedo boat, it was thoughts in equal part of both profit and patriotism that guided their minds and hands.
Printers are whirring away on Levy & Campaign Volume III Inferno! Here Volko shares a gander at an advance copy in action on his game table.
With my proof copy in hand, I set up for the world’s first-ever session of Inferno on a finished set – Scenario B “In Far Vendetta”, the second of six scenarios in the box.
We are quite proud that Rebellion: Britannia can be played solo and, in our opinion, quite well. Some designs have solo playability enmeshed in them from the outset, and some have it built into them later. In this case, the solo mode was developed in step with the design as a whole. (Maurice: I personally have a strong tendency to do this – it helps me design/test rapidly in the early stages when everything is still in flux.)
Players can still choose to be any of the four factions: Rome, Silures, Brigantes, or Iceni, and the game system ‘runs’ an opposing faction. If players choose to play as Rome they will have a different kind of game depending on their selected opposing faction, given the various different British tribe asymmetries. If players choose to be one of the British tribes Rome must be selected as the AI faction used in the game – they’re the big dog in this fight so they need to be present. In fact, if players so choose they can add multiple factions into their game, including playing with all four factions, three of them run by the game system. We’ve not yet tried it, but in theory, the game could even play itself, playing all four factions together through its simple AI system – although it would need a willing human to mechanically turn cards, comply with instructions and move pieces (no such human is provided with the game).
While shipbuilding concerns and machine works like the Park & Lyons Machine Shop in Mobile, Alabama were busy creating an underwater terror known colloquially as a “fishboat,” there were others whose trip to fame and riches lay along a different path.
One such person was Dr. St. Julien Ravenel of Charleston, SC. Ravenel was a scion of Charleston’s well-known Ravenel family. A physician by avocation, Ravenel also taught at the local medical school, being Demonstrator of Anatomy. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Ravenel enlisted as an Army private, participating as such in the siege of Fort Sumter. Within a year’s time, his skill as a physician found him quickly promoted as an officer. Ravenel was then tapped for the position as Director of the Confederate Hospital, in the South Carolina state capital of Columbia.
