Category Archives: Designer Blogs

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Hannibal’s Revenge Or… If Hannibal’s good enough for Denzel Washington, who are we to say nay?

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by Mark G. McLaughlin (with Fred Schachter)

Does the gaming community need another Hannibal game?  The answer is “why not?” or, more simply an empathic “yes!”: just as it is to the question of a new Gettysburg, Pacific Theater WWII or another Waterloo game (such as Mark Herman’s latest forays into those topics) or of a new upcoming movie on the subject. (Note that Denzel Washington’s Hannibal will be on Netflix later this year.)

Hannibal featuring Victor Mature

Just as Denzel Washington is taking on a role made famous by screen legend Victor Mature and (more recently) by Star Trek’s Alexander Siddiq, among others, so did we also make the decision to cross the Alps into Ancient Italy to confront the power of Rome.

Hannibal featuring Alexander Siddig

We are big fans of previous Hannibal games, including that designed by our mutual friend and GMT colleague Mark Simonitch.  This is a game recently updated as Hannibal and Hamilcar. By the way, Simonitch’s game is the basis for a miniatures’ campaign Mark McLaughlin is involved with.  Battles among the group are resolved using several different sets of miniatures rules – most recently “To the Strongest.” Incidentally, Mark is not Hannibal in this game but has the role of his younger brother, Hasdrubal, and he lost – if barely –in his first outing on the field).

But we digress…

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Firefight Friday #12: Scenario Design 6

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Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the eleventh article, I talked about the fifth scenario, “Purple Heart Lane”. This got us into artillery and multi-deck scenarios. All this pales in comparison to this week though, where we only have one thing to cover before our scenario: Armor. Almost every scenario from here on out will feature vehicles in some capacity so they will be important to understand.

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Infernal Machine: The Inventor’s Vade Mecum (Nautica ed.) Part 9 — Power! Power! Wonder-working Power!

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By Ed Ostermeyer (Master Engineer – Grade 2)

Ah, good day to you once more, young Inventor.

I am happy to see you once again.

And you have brought your copy of the Inventor’s Vade Mecum with you.

May I see it, please?

Hmmm, I notice it is now a very worn and much-thumbed work.

I am proud of your diligence.

What benefit is a book of knowledge if you don’t use it from time to time, eh?

However, there have been several updates since this copy was printed.

The section on Power has received significant editing.

Oh, good.

I see that there are still unused endpapers in your Vade Mecum that you can use for note-taking.

Let’s make an update to your edition on the subject of Power, shall we?

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Firefight Friday #11: Scenario Design 5

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Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the tenth article, I talked about the fourth scenario, “About Last Night”. We looked at exciting new mechanics introduced by that scenario, like mortars and snipers. This week we will be moving on to one of my favorite scenarios, “Purple Heart Lane.” Purple Heart Lane is our Carentan scenario, and it adds a couple more new mechanics: multi-deck scenarios and off board artillery.

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Firefight Friday #10: Scenario Design 4

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Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week in the ninth article I talked about the third scenario, “Shot in the Dark”. I covered a couple of new concepts like reinforcements and night combat, neither of which are too different from what we have seen before. Well, buckle up, because this week we are jumping into “About Last Night”. Scenario 4 adds a few interesting new experiences to the game: multi-front scenario entry, snipers, and mortars. Multi-front scenario entry is pretty simple to understand, but let’s talk about snipers and mortars a little bit first and after we will jump into the details of “About Last Night.”

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Is A Gest of Robin Hood a COIN Game?

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Joe and Fred meet for the first time

In the early days of 2020, as most of us were in confinement because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself diving deep into Volko’s COIN series. My journey into the COIN system began somewhat by accident. I had played a couple of games, only with two players, and hadn’t enjoyed the experience. But as I discovered a new Discord server dedicated to the series, full of young and fun players, I finally wrapped my head around the genius of Volko’s system. There was a lot of enthusiasm and creative energy in this online space, and we all had a lot of time on our hands. One of the people that struck me the most was Joe Dewhurst. I tried and thoroughly enjoyed the early version of his prototype of The Pure Land. You might say it was love at first sight.

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Three Days of Gettysburg Deluxe Edition – Designer Update

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Three Days of Gettysburg Deluxe Edition’s design is picking up pace and is now moving through both alpha and beta testing of the current scenarios.

These include the traditional first-day battle. However, multiple scenarios have different starting times for the whole July 1st fight. The first scenario begins at 7 AM and is designed with the optional Skirmisher rules to cover the small unit fighting and maneuvering before the Union infantry arrive. While the original 3DoG first-day scenario was fun and exciting with a slow-moving Southern infantry division facing a nimble but smaller Union cavalry force, it had little to do with the actual history of the morning fight before Reynold’s Union infantry arrived. The typical competitive play focused on the threat of cavalry charges against the flanks of the Rebel force and had no resemblance to the fighting early on that July day.

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Firefight Friday #9: Scenario Design 3

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Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week in the eighth article I talked about the second scenario, “Between the Reich and a Hard Place”. To do that, we had to cover the basics of support weapons. Now as we move on this week we will look at the third scenario, “A Shot in the Dark”. This scenario is a demonstration of two new concepts in the game: night combat, and reinforcements.

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RevCon 2024 After Action Report

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RevCon 2024 Command Central

It was a good year! Thirty-six individuals competed across a spectrum of five Revolutionary War games at RevCon during Prezcon in Charlottesville, Virginia last week.

As always, players either played in only a single favorite game, in multiple games, or they competed in all five games in pursuit of the coveted “George Washington Award” for excellence in American Revolutionary War gaming. This year’s “George,” as we affectionately call the plaque, was once again provided by friend of the series Tim Miller with Miller EG Designs. We are grateful to Tim for his generosity.

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Firefight Friday #8: Scenario Design 2

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Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the seventh article, I talked about my approach to scenario design, then about the history, design, and surface level strategies for the first scenario, “Done with Sand”. This week I will be doing the same thing, covering the second scenario “Between the Reich and a Hard Place”.