Category Archives: Designer Blogs

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Congress of Vienna Quick Start Rules (Bi-Lingual: English & Spanish Versions!)

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Introduction by Congress of Vienna (CoV) Assistant Designer & Editor, Fred Schachter: My what a wonderful journey it’s been since, through circumstances best described as “karma”, I some years ago met CoV Designer Frank Esparrago through his daughter Ana who was furthering her finance education while working in Seattle and introduced us through a local game club I was affiliated with during my time residing in that fair city.  Members of that club, Metro Seattle Gamers (MSG), helped Frank playtest an early hand-made version of Congress of Vienna and while playing this fun and exciting game realized it had commercial possibilities (thanks Nathan & Scot!).

So that’s the genesis of how the Congress ofVienna commenced its road to publication.  If interested in learning more, here’s a link to an InsideGMT article conveying additional details: Congress of Vienna Designer’s Notes (Part 1 of 2) | Inside GMT blog.  It will also bring a reader to GMT’s site for the game which is replete with a host of CoV related pieces readers will hopefully find interesting, enlightening, and entertaining.

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Racing Season Never Ends in the Thunderverse

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Hi everyone, it’s been a long time since I have brought any news of the Thunder Alley Racing Series to you. As some of you know, we have been using some play testers for various components and add-ons to the game series. These include bringing new tracks, new expansions, and solo play to the collection. Carla & I have been toying with ideas, including some of those presented to us by the fantastic Richard Launius, to help make each of the games even better than they are now. These ideas consist of league play, new Racing Decks, new events, new teams, “build your own” cars, and even an entirely new game with a new style of racing. This is just sort of our update to you on what is going on with the Thunder Alley Racing Series this year and into the future.

First off are the tracks. We are making a range of new tracks. The exciting part is that each of these tracks are designed to be used with each game in the series. There will be a Thunder Alley friendly portion of the track, a Grand Prix extension, and an associated Apocalypse Road course complete with jumps and dirt on each track. This will allow for the tracks to be useful to any player no matter if they are only die-hard stock car racers or immersed in the entire series. Each track from here on in will have something for everyone. Some of these very roughly drawn sample tracks are shown below. Trust me, my primitive etchings are not close to the final product.

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The Four Factions of Hammer and Sickle

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The constellation of conflicts that consumed the former Russian Empire in the period 1918 to 1921 and beyond, known shorthand as the Russian Civil War (or the “Russian” Civil Wars by Jonathan Smele’s book of the same name), went far beyond a simple division of Reds. vs. Whites. 

As Smele emphasizes, the new Bolshevik state that Lenin and comrades had birthed in revolution the previous October was at war for survival against enemies both Left and Right, democratic and totalitarian, urban and rural, ruling class, bourgeoisie, and peasant, Russian and non-Russian, Christian, Muslim, and atheist, as well as foreign intervention forces from Russia’s former Great War allies, the British, French, Japanese, and Americans, among others. 

A two-player Reds vs. Whites duel cannot capture the complexity of this maelstrom in a holistic way, particularly when forces such as Petliura’s new Ukrainian state and the Makhnovist “Black Army” separately waged war against both Red and White armies for their own independent aims, using characteristically distinct strategies and tactics.

Hammer and Sickle expands the playing field of this 20th century-defining conflict by delineating four asymmetric factions, yet with an elegant ruleset that enables quick learning and fast play, so that the entire conflict is covered in 2-3 hours.

Let’s break down the four factions and their asymmetries.

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Thunderbolt Deluxe Edition: August 2024 Update

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The content for the Thunderbolt Deluxe package has been finalized  with the GMT Art Department  team engaged in finishing up the counters and finalizing the maps.

A few changes have been made to the Thunderbolt scenario line-up. Added are two scenarios commencing at key points during the long war:

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Imperial Eagles: Recreating Carrier Battles

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As a designer, I like to focus on why things happen in campaigns, operations, and battles.  In old school terms, I “design for cause.”  This tends to make my games more complex, but I hope players come away with a better understanding of why their game progressed the way it did beyond “he had better cards” or “the dice hate me.”

In World War II carrier battles, there were eight factors of significant importance in determining how attacks took place and their outcomes:  wind, weather, range, reconnaissance, CAP (Combat Air Patrol), coordination, targeting, and training – WWRRCCTT.  All are interdependent to some extent and have an impact in Imperial Eagles (at least in the Advanced Rules).

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Congress of Vienna Scenario Set-Up Maps with Associated Historical Backgrounds

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Introduction by Fred Schachter, Assistant Designer & Editor: As lamented within previous InsideGMT articles, the amount of Congress of Vienna material the Team generated for the game is too copious for inclusion within the to-be-published Playbook.  Hence, that content is being provided through InsideGMT pieces.

The Congress of Vienna Playbook contains all needed direction, in a list narrative form, for setting up each of the game’s five scenarios.  There are no concerns there! However, some gamers prefer a graphic approach in the form of Scenario Set Up Maps.  This article provides those Set-Up Maps.

For those interested in learning the historical background regarding each map, please access the link to their associated InsideGMT “Game as History” articles.  The following link provides a background, in terms of the Congress of Vienna game, for Turns 1 (March-April 1813) through 3 (June 1813):  A Historical Introduction to the Congress of Vienna Period Part 2 of 4: Napoleon Resurgent (Spring 1813) | Inside GMT blog. Once you’ve accessed this article, others of the series will become available through this GMT Game Site’s table of contents.

Hopefully, this material is informative to all readers interested in this fascinating historical period, the 1813-1814 resurgence and downfall of Napoleon and his French Empire and will complement the Congress of Vienna list narrative Scenario Set Ups provided with the published game.  Playbook Section cross-references are provided for each Scenario.

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Enemy of My Enemy: Arab Revolt

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This is the first in a series of InsideGMT articles for the new Enemy of My Enemy expansion for the first COIN multipack, The British Way. Joe and I are extremely pleased with the positive reception of the first printing of The British Way which sold out from GMT last November. After seeing a ton of reviews, after action reports, and game award nominations for The British Way, we wanted to offer even more content for those enjoying the game or those looking forward to the reprint. The Enemy of My Enemy expansion offers three new ways of expanding the base game’s content: a new Arab Revolt (1936-1939) game using the Palestine map, a new Japanese Occupation (1942-1945) game using the Malaya map, and new rules and components for an advanced variant for each of the conflicts depicted in the base game: Palestine (1945-1947), Malaya (1948-1960), Kenya (1952-1956), and Cyprus (1955-1959). We’ll cover each of the parts of the expansion in a separate InsideGMT article. Today’s article is focused on the new Arab Revolt game.

The British Way: Arab Revolt addresses a major issue with the base game’s depiction of Palestine. In the original British Way: Palestine, which covers the 1945-1947 struggle between Jewish terrorist groups and British counterinsurgency forces, the Palestinian Arab community is not directly referenced in the game. As the introduction to the rulebook notes, the game “does not directly model the wider political struggles between the British, Jewish Agency, and Arab political groups, or the civil war that began in November 1947”. By focusing on a narrow period of time and British counterinsurgency tactics against the major armed opposition of that time, armed Jewish groups, the game could not adequately depict the Palestinian Arab community’s less confrontational stance against British rule during that period. However, that raises the question, why was the larger Arab community not more focused on resisting British rule between 1945-1947?

The answer is that members of the Palestinian Arab community launched a massive revolt against British rule between 1936-1939 that ended with equally massive British repression and major concessions, including a new limitation on Jewish immigration introduced by the 1939 White Paper. That same limitation motivated the Jewish armed groups to violently resist British rule during the 1945-1947 period. In other words, one cannot understand the Palestinian Arab community’s exhaustion in the 1940s without exploring the Arab Revolt (1936-1939), nor why Jewish groups such as Haganah cooperated with the British during that revolt but then opposed them in 1945. Therefore, rather than simply tossing in a few token events into the base game, I knew from the start I wanted to design an entire game on the preceding conflict to help provide more nuanced context to the “absence” of Palestinians from the narrowly focused 1945-1947 Palestine game.

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Carmen Triumphale: To The Ancient World

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Along with my friends, Johan and Chris, I have been playing the scenarios in The Ancient World: Rise of the Roman Republic and The Ancient World: Carthage pretty much every Wednesday night since December 2023. At first, we just wanted to take the system for a spin as Johan spoke highly of it, but it has since turned into a grand adventure.

Our first play of the 1st Punic War scenario from Carthage ended with a Carthaginian victory. We had so much fun with that play, we immediately reset and went back to it again. This time the Romans prevailed. It was also around this time that, since we had been asking so many questions of the developer, Alan Ray, we formally signed on to the playtest team.

Since that time, we’ve played every scenario in both Rise of the Roman Republic and Carthage (except the Mercenary War – that’s coming) at least once and a few of them twice. It still hasn’t gotten old. Playtesting can sometimes be work; this doesn’t feel like it.

What is it that’s so engaging about this system that we keep returning to it?

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Conquest & Consequence versus Triumph & Tragedy

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If you’re a Triumph & Tragedy (T&T) fan, you’ve probably heard that Conquest and Consequence (CnC) is more complicated than T&T, and not as “clean”. Well, that’s a high bar, and IMO here’s why:

• It’s a sequel. Sequels usually require extra rules to take a system that was custom-designed for one situation and adapt it to a new situation.

• To maintain T&T‘s 3-sided dynamic, the “Soviet” Faction (Siberian Russia plus the Chinese communists) is added to the basic US-Japan confrontation. The Soviets are a latent military power that must play a patient “long game” combining solid defense with the nurturing of civilian political organization (“Partisans”) that in time will assume sufficient military power to win more than its share of games. Some do not enjoy this role, some do; it’s a personality thing.

• New elements including Partisans, the Chinese Civil War, and Island warfare do add additional complexity to the system.

• Diplomacy is a popular aspect of the system, but because war historically broke out earlier in China than it did in Europe, less Diplomacy typically occurs.

• Play Balance had to be reset. Although the original version actually boosted Japan’s historical capabilities for game purposes, many gamers were unhappy with Japan’s prospects. A modified v1.1 was released, incorporating balance tweaks to give Japan a better chance. New players must realize that Time is not Japan’s friend, and play accordingly: the clock is running.

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Leader Personalities in Banish the Snakes

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Banish the Snakes is now available for pre-order! You can find more info or pre-order on the P500 page here.

Saint Patrick Card

A good historic simulation game will always tell a story; for Banish the Snakes, that is mostly accomplished through interaction with the Saints that appear in the game. St. Patrick is the best known of these Saints. Players direct the actions taken by these historic people – both men and women – and their successes and failures drive the game’s narrative.

The historic sources available for this time period is sparce. We have some good information about the dozen historic Saints in the game, and some others who did not make the “cut” to be included. And we have good information about the general social structure in Ireland during this time period. But we have only spotty information on individual political leaders from this era. Neil of the Nine Hostages is the most notable – and has the best sobriquet! And there is Benignus of Armagh, whose chieftain father features in a story about Patrick. They both have their own cards in the game. But for the most part, the chiefs, kings, and even high kings of the era remain anonymous.