Category Archives: Designer Blogs

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Crisis: Britannia — Nero and Britain

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At the end of our previous installment, the defeated Briton leader, Caratacus, had been betrayed by the Brigantes, and handed over to Rome. However, the rebellious Silures do not seem to have been deterred by the loss of their leader, and continued to resist Roman occupation and engage in hit-and-run guerilla attacks on Roman forces. Such was the tribe’s resistance, that Scapula declared that they would be either exterminated or enslaved and forcibly removed from their lands. But again, this merely served to reinforce their resolve, and they continued to be a bothersome thorn in the side of the Roman Governor and to oppose Rome’s occupation throughout the Claudian period.

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Zheng He: Commanding Your Fleet

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Zheng He: Admiral of the Ming Voyages is a solitaire game that recreates the voyages of the Ming treasure fleets in the early 1400s. In the game you take the role of Zheng He, commanding the fleet as it sails the Indian Ocean, earning glory for the emperor, and keeping favor with the ministers of the court so the voyages can continue.

Your fleet is represented by a deck of 20 cards at the start of the campaign. Each card represents a specific type of ship that historically constituted the fleet: Equine, Patrol, Supply, Treasure, and Troop. Throughout the course of your campaign, you will have the opportunity to upgrade your ships, thus increasing the fleet’s capabilities to take on greater challenges. 

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Borikén: Diving Into the Game

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Borikén: The Taíno Resistance ended up being quite a big project to work on, especially in the early days of doing research. While I went through many references on the topic, the information was scarce, but many referenced one historical book that I ended up using as the backbone of the historical narrative of my design, and that was Agüeybaná: El Bravo by Jalil Sued Badillo. What was interesting about this book is that the author used the original historical texts as his sources in his analysis of the historical period, instead of referencing the historical narrative of Spanish historians of the 16th Century and afterwards. 

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Dalhousie’s Influence on the Indian Railways

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How did railroads begin in India?

Any account of the history of railroading in India must of course begin with James Andrew Broun-Ramsay, the 1st Marquess of Dalhousie Castle, referred to hereafter merely as “Lord Dalhousie.”[1] He served 8 years as the Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856 at the very end of the first century of British colonial occupation of the subcontinent (Battle of Plassey, 1757).

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The Other Infernal Machine: The Tale of the Union Navy’s “Submarine Propeller” Part 1 – The Development

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I propose to you a new arm of war, as formidable as it is economical.

Submarine navigation, which has been sometimes attempted, but as all know without results, owing to want of suitable opportunities, is now a problematical thing no more.”

(French nautical designer Brutus de Villeroi, in a letter to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.)

Though the “H.L. Hunley” is widely known as the first submarine to sink an enemy warship in combat, it was by no means the only submarine to come out of the American Civil War. The construction team headed by James McClintock and Baxter Watson who built the “Hunley” had already completed and tested two other designs for underwater vessels. Though there were other designs created and built south of the Mason-Line, they were by no means the only submersibles being built in North America in the 1860’s.

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Conquest: Britannia – Claudius and the Establishment of Roman Britain

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Rebellion: Britannia is a game about rebellions in Roman Britain, and concentrates largely on the Claudian period, which ran from 43CE to 69CE. Over the course of a quarter of a century, there were at least 5 major rebellions that the invading Roman forces had to deal with, including Boudicca’s revolt, which is certainly the most widely known.

After Julius Caesar’s initial expedition to Britain in 55BCE, almost an entire century would pass before Rome eventually chose to stage an invasion of the British Isles. Emperor Augustus considered an invasion, but failed Roman efforts to subdue the German tribes, and the disastrous defeat at Teutoburg in 9CE, led to him cautioning Rome to restrict its lands to those “within its present frontiers” (Tacitus, Annals, I.11),  advice which his successor, Tiberius, chose to follow. 

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Who Was Zheng He?

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Zheng He was born in 1371 in Yunnan Province. His given name was “Ma He,” indicative of his family’s Hui Muslim origins since “Ma” is the Chinese version of “Mohammad.” His father was a hajji, a Muslim who had made the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. Zheng He’s great-great-great-grandfather, Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, was a Persian governor of the province under the Mongolian Emperor Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty that ruled China from 1279 to 1368.

In 1381, when he was about 10 years old, Yunnan, the last Mongol hold in China, was conquered by Chinese forces led by generals of the Ming dynasty, which had overthrown the Yuan dynasty in 1368. The young Ma He was among the boys who were captured, and he was castrated and made a eunuch. Ma He was sent to Beiping (now Beijing) to serve in the household of 21-year-old Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan who later became the Yongle Emperor. Ma He distinguished himself as a junior officer, skilled in war and diplomacy, and soon became one of the prince’s closest confidants. In the 1390s, he served as a soldier, fighting on the northern frontier and participating in the Prince of Yan’s military campaigns against the Mongols.

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Building Track in 18 India

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In 18 India, plenty of track gets built, creating routes all over the map. One of the most fun aspects of 18XX gaming is engineering your routes for maximum revenue and efficiency, and 18 India seeks to enhance that experience to its fullest!

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“Rocks & Shoals”: Navigating Infernal Machine’s New Orleans Action Board — Part 2

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Part Two: Down River from Port Hudson to Baton Rouge

The USS “Hartford” exchanges gunfire with the Confederate ironclad CSS “Manassas” (right) and the unfinished ironclad “Louisiana” during the Passage of the Forts, April 23rd, 1862. At extreme left, Fort St. Philip can be glimpsed through the smoke and flame. {Courtesy Library of Congress}

Beginning April 16, 1862, the US Navy’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron under Flag Officer David Glasgow Farragut began a thunderous bombardment of the Confederate forts Jackson and St. Philip, guardians of the lower Mississippi River and the approaches to New Orleans, Louisiana. Seven nights later, on April 23, 1862, after a pitched river battle, Farragut‘s West Gulf Squadron steamed past the two forts.

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Borikén: Why Did I Make This Game?

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I have been designing games for 5 years. In that time, I have learned so much about the board game industry. One element of game design that instantly stood out to me and is thankfully being addressed by many publishers and designers is cultural appropriation in games. I remember how disappointed I was after my first play of Puerto Rico. While the game had so many interesting mechanics, the theme was not representative of what I knew my culture to be and greatly distracted me from the fun. While I didn’t know it at the time, my experience with Puerto Rico planted the desire in me to make a new game that shared a more holistic picture of my people.

Puerto Rico Cover, Originally Designed by Andreas Seyfarth and Published by Rio Grande Games

My first experience of designing a game set in a culture that wasn’t my own was with Holi: Festival of Colors. The design that became Holi was originally pitched to Floodgate Game with a completely different theme, but Floodgate had been wanting to do a game with this theme and when they pitched the idea to me I was onboard. However, I urged them to have cultural consultants involved, so that we could be sure to do right by the theme. As it turns out, that was their plan all along and ultimately they did a great job incorporating and representing the theme in my game.Throughout that process, I learned that spending the time and resources to get that right made the game better and that there’s so much benefit that it should be a no brainer for all games that use real world cultures as a theme to make sure they bring in cultural experts.

Holi: Festival of Colors Cover, Designed by Julio E. Nazario and Published by Floodgate Games