Category Archives: Developer Notes

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Battles for the Shenandoah: Developer’s Notes for the Death Valley Expansion Pack

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This coming August will mark the third anniversary of Death Valley’s publication. During the GMT Seminar at CSW-Expo 2019, six weeks or so before the game shipped to customers, I announced that designer Greg Laubach was working on a follow-up battle, Piedmont.

As time went on, those listening that evening might have wondered what had become of this mini-game on a single rather smallish Civil War battle.  The answer is that, just as Death Valley’s initial concept grew to encompass the Shenandoah’s big-name 1864 battles in addition to the 1862 battles, so the expansion pack grew to include McDowell, Second Winchester, and Cool Spring, yielding a total of nine scenarios or variants.

The expansion pack battles are not exactly household words, but interested readers can easily find accounts of them online.  Thus, this article will focus on the challenges each posed to the design and development process, detouring into history only as necessary for an understanding of those challenges.

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This Isn’t Even My Final Form: The Past, Present, and Future of the Final Crisis ‘System’

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In his 2018 release Fort Sumter, Mark Herman laid the foundations for what has now come to be known informally as the Final Crisis ‘system’ (although there is as-yet no official Final Crisis series). At the heart of the system is a mechanical and thematic emphasis on the escalation and build-up to a historic conflict, rather than the conventional resolution of a conflict that is the usual focus of wargames. The core ingredients of this two-player system include:

  • Playable spaces spread across several ‘Crisis Dimensions’ (four Dimensions of three spaces in each game so far).
  • Pivotal spaces in each Dimension that are often crucial to victory and became hotly contested focal points.
  • A ‘Crisis Track’ that limits available tokens or cubes, and punishes players for escalating the conflict.
  • Hidden objective cards that focus the players’ attention each round, and offer an additional advantage when scored.
  • Three regular rounds, during which cards are played either to place or remove cubes or trigger events (a fairly typical CDG mechanism), followed by a fourth ‘Final Crisis’ round in which players are limited to targeting specific spaces using cards they have saved from previous rounds.
  • Victory is determined by a tug-of-war victory point track, scored at the end of each round for controlling either objective spaces or whole dimensions (advancing too far on the crisis track can also trigger a victory point penalty).

The combination of the limited token pool and penalties for escalation does a great job of invoking the feeling of a mounting crisis, forcing both players into a game of brinkmanship as they seek to place exactly as many cubes as they think they need to, but no more than are necessary, as if you place too many cubes in one space you risk overcommitting and weakening your flexibility to respond elsewhere. Fort Sumter features only one additional special rule, a ‘Peace Commissioner’ that is typically placed by the player who has contributed less to escalating the crisis (or by event), and prevents either player from adding or removing cubes in one space. The game is otherwise extremely streamlined, taking less than half an hour to play, the ideal length for a ‘lunchtime’ session. 

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Diving Into the Woods: A Survey of the Battle Book

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Introduction

Each game in the GBACW series comes with a “Battle Book” featuring, among other things, special rules that seek to reflect the unique aspects of the battle(s) treated.  No one familiar with the Battle of Shiloh will be surprised to learn that Into the Woods’s Battle Book is chock-full of such rules.  In this article we explore them with the goal of showing how Dick Whitaker forged and shaped his design to evoke what happened near Pittsburg Landing early in April, 1862.

Part of the Sunken Road at Shiloh
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Laban! Chapter 9: The Scenarios in People Power

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If you’re a regular reader of this series, by now you know that People Power covers the political history of the Philippines post-Martial Law until the beginning of the Corazon Aquino administration. This 5-year period was full of activity and many pivotal moments, which are the focus of the scenarios in People Power. The main scenario covers the period after the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, while the extended scenario allows players to experience the full 5-year narrative of the fall of Marcos.

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Laban! Chapter 8: Hand Gestures in the People Power Revolution

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While every culture has its own methods of nonverbal communication, in the 1980s it was common to see Filipinos raise their hands to communicate their allegiance to one of the Presidential candidates: a “V” for Marcos, or an “L” for Corazon Acquino. While the Communist Party of the Philippines (the political arm of the New People’s Army) did not field a candidate in the 1986 election, supporters of the CPP/NPA used the ubiquitous raised fist to indicate their fidelity to communist ideals. These gestures were an essential part of the milieu of the Philippines in the 1980s, and People Power uses these gestures throughout the game. Therefore, it is important that we understand their origin and meaning.

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Inside GMT One: Evolving Trưng into Tây Sơn

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The development process for Fall of Saigon’s bots began way back with the development of the Trưng Bot Update Kit. Much of what Bruce Mansfield designed for Trưng eventually made its way into the Fall of Saigon bots, which we call Tây Sơn. The three Tây Sơn brothers united Vietnam in the 18th Century after a century-long civil war. While Tây Sơn owes a great deal to Trưng, there were distinct challenges involved in creating a bot for Fall of Saigon.The four main issues with designing Tây Sơn were: (a) new pieces, (b) the new 2-player scenario, (c) dealing with US Retreat vs War, and (d) ensuring the system works both with Trưng and with the original Fire in the Lake flowchart bots.

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Laban! Chapter 7: The Events in People Power

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While the dramatic events of the People Power Revolution are familiar to many people, far fewer know the events that led to the mass protests and to Marcos’ deposition. The event deck in People Power covers these lesser known events – the events of February 1986 are simulated via a different method – and they are no less dramatic. These events range from assassinations to nonviolent protests; from corrupt bargains to public works projects; from public trials of military figures to private paranoia that almost destroyed the NPA. This article looks at a few examples of events from People Power – note that all cards shown in this article are prototype art.

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Laban! Chapter 6: The Government in People Power

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As I mentioned in Chapter 1 of this series, getting the Government faction right in People Power was a big challenge. The main reason for that challenge was the narrative around the Marcos government. To some, Ferdinand Marcos was a hero, a champion of stability and democracy, and a strong leader fighting against those who would tear his country apart. To others, Marcos was a corrupt dictator, stealing from the people, denying free elections, and sparking the violence that characterized the First Quarter Storm and NPA insurgency.

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This is the Vietnam Game You’re Looking For, Part 2

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In part 1 of this series of articles, we looked at the components of this GMT Edition of a game often referred to as “brilliant” in terms of its ability to capture the essence of the Vietnam War. To follow that up, we’ll start looking at some of the systems in the game which make it both unique and help it evoke that feeling in its players. Then you can decide if this is the Vietnam game you’re looking for.

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Inside GMT One: Behind the Design of Tru’ng

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This month we wrapped up design work on the bots for Fall of Saigon, the upcoming expansion to Fire in the Lake. This seemed like a good moment to reflect on the journey that it took to get to this point and share some of the things we’ve learned along the way. This is definitely not the end of the road – more card-based COIN bots are coming – but it’s a good point for reflection. The card-based bot system used in Tru’ng does not originate with Fire in the Lake, but is an offshoot of Bruce’s work on Gandhi (the card based system in All Bridges Burning is unrelated to Tru’ng and Arjuna, and was developed by VPJ Arponen specifically for ABB). When Volko asked Bruce to make card-based bots for Fall of Saigon, we knew that we would have to evolve the system to accommodate the increased complexity in Fire in the Lake. After all, we couldn’t make bots that could play Fall of Saigon unless they could also play Fire in the Lake.