Designer Blogs

Darkness Visible: The “Dark” System and The Dark Summer: Normandy 1944 (Part One)

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The Dark Valley: The East Front Campaign 1941-45, was titled after a Winston Churchill quote to Joseph Stalin, referring to “the dark valley” of the war. More or less as a joke, I promised when The Dark Valley was published that any future games using a variation of the rules system for TDV would include […]

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Designer Blogs

Plains Indian Wars Turn by Turn: Setup and First Draw Round

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Welcome to the Great Plains of the American West. Back East a Civil War rages, but those who look beyond the war see a transcontinental railroad and settler expansion all the way to the Rockies. Across the wide Mississippi, Native Plains tribes brace for a war of their own against the white invaders. In this

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After Action Report, Designer Blogs, Playtest Reports

Wing Leader: Eagles – The New Aircraft, Part 3

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In Parts 1 and 2 we looked at the new German, Japanese, Soviet and American aircraft appearing in Wing Leader: Eagles. It’s great to see a mixture of late-war curios and hot-rods finally make it into the game. However, there are two more nations–one a surprise entry in a World War 2 game–that contribute data

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Designer Blogs

Wing Leader: Eagles – The New Aircraft, Part 2

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In Part 1, we looked at the some of the new German and Japanese aircraft appearing in Wing Leader: Eagles. Some of these were second-stringers in the air war, but played a major part in some really interesting battles. The Allies also have a bunch of new aeroplanes ready for the fray, which we look

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Designer Blogs

The Gandhi Chronicles: Issue #1 — The Myths of Nonviolence

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Many people around the world live in countries that have been directly affected by nonviolent struggles. Nonviolence has a long and successful track record of creating political change around the world; recent studies have shown it to be twice as effective at achieving its goals than violent resistance. In the 20th century, nonviolent campaigns have

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Designer Blogs

Mounted Troops in Death Valley

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Weapons and tactics tend to evolve over the course of longer wars. The American Civil War was no exception. The two years elapsing between the 1862 and 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaigns witnessed changes in both regards. Death Valley‘s design seeks to reflect those changes. In previous articles, I described the way the game handles late

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Designer Blogs

Wing Leader: Eagles – The New Aircraft, Part 1

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Certain tactical games have always scratched the collector’s itch. It’s not enough to play with the ships/tanks/planes in the game you have, you have to have the expansions, you gotta catch ’em all! Wing Leader was designed to both irritate and salve that itch, and in Wing Leader: Eagles, we expand upon the late war kit

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Designer Blogs

Open Order Formation in Death Valley:  Simulating 1864-Style Skirmish Lines

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My previous article described how the Army of Northern Virginia’s sharpshooter battalions provided Death Valley with a way to level the playing field between the Union and Confederate forces that fought the Shenandoah battles of 1864. A second late-war tactical innovation offered us yet another solution to the problem of mismatched armies: “Open Order” formation,

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Designer Blogs

The Price of Speed: Movement Events in Apocalypse Road

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As I have mentioned before, Events in Apocalypse Road are handled differently than in Thunder Alley or Grand Prix. Waiting for everyone to move all their cars didn’t seem to be exciting enough, and resolving an event after every car was too much and too chaotic. What Carla & I settled on is an occurrence

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Designer Blogs

Sharpshooters in Death Valley

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Almost at the start of Death Valley‘s design work we realized the difficulty of approaching its 1864 battles using only the chrome featured in previous games in the GBACW series. By 1864 southern leaders faced a growing manpower crisis, while the north supplied an increasing number of its units with repeating rifles and carbines. The

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Designer Blogs
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