Tom Thornsen (Prussia) and Bob Demaio (French) attempt to re-enact the Battle of Mars-la-Tour with the Full Battle Scenario “A Day of Battle”. To read Part 1, follow this link.
Category Archives: Playtest Reports
Three Presidents for the Price of One: Inside Mr. President (Pt 2)
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Welcome back to this series of peeks inside Mr. President!
When last we left our intrepid Tri-Presidents, we had finished the game setup and were ready to begin the game’s first six-month Round. If you missed that first article, check it out here before you read on. And please remember, this game is still in the testing phase, so all the images you see in the article are playtest images, not final art.
At Any Cost: Metz 1870 After Action Report – Battle of Mars-la-Tour
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Tom Thornsen (Prussia) and Bob Demaio (French) attempt to re-enact the Battle of Mars-la-Tour with the Full Battle Scenario “A Day of Battle”.
The Last Hundred Yards After Action Report, Mission 6.0 “Tiger in the Pen”
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Below is an After Action Report for The Last Hundred Yards Mission 6.0, “Tiger in the Pen”. Enjoy!
Red Storm Playtest AAR, Part 2
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The following is part 2 of an after action review of my most recent test game of Red Storm with my good friend and playtest team member Chris Baer. This scenario is titled “Offensive Counter Air” and features two big NATO deep strike raids going over the front and into southwestern East Germany. In Part 1 Chris and I both provided our thoughts as we went through the pre-game planning phases. Here in Part 2 we’ll discuss some of the action in the scenario itself.
Red Storm Playtest AAR, Part 1
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The following is an After Action Review of my most recent test game of Red Storm on a long Friday morning and afternoon with my good friend and playtest team member Chris Baer. This was a test of one of the bigger scenarios in Red Storm, “Offensive Counter Air”, which features two big NATO deep strike raids going over the front and into southwestern East Germany to hit Warsaw Pact airfields. I wanted to test one of the bigger scenarios to see how certain rules “scale up” to a very large scenario. In particular, I wanted to fully work out the SAM and Electronic Warfare rules, areas where the rules for Red Storm make some significant changes from earlier games in the series. Here in Part 1 of the AAR I’ll go through my pre-game planning from the NATO side of things, with Chris providing some insights into Warsaw Pact planning. In Part 2 I’ll show some images of the game with a bit of commentary on how things went.
Two Good Years Out of Seven: The View from Paris After a Game of The Seven Years War: Frederick’s Gamble
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Introduction by 7YW:FG Game Developer – Fred Schachter
Mark McLaughlin and my designer/developer partnership span a number of fine GMT games: but since my business career took me away from the Northeast; it’s been all too rare that I could visit with my friend Mark and enjoy a good fun time gaming. A recent trip to New York City, however, provided opportunity for a side trip to Mark’s home.
During this visit, I re-introduced Mark to Greg Ticer’s The Seven Years War: Frederick’s Gamble, which we last played a few Impulses of during WBC 2014 when GMT introduced us to Greg. As InsideGMT content for this game indicates; there’s been considerable progress and improvements made to this design since that WBC.
It was a genuine pleasure to share the latest iteration of 7YW:FG with Mark. Mark had such a grand gaming experience he was inspired to write this After Action Report for InsideGMT. I wrote the photo captions and the end game victory calculations. However, this article’s photos would be better appreciated if a reader references a copy of the 7YW:FG play test map. Enjoy!
B&T Warpath Chronicles #3: Action Tokens (now cards) Part 3 — Full Action Round Example: French & Indian Rampage, British Resilience
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“Bayonets & Tomahawks Biweekly” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically every two weeks. It features articles from the Bayonets & Tomahawks development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.
NOTE: The cards in the final product have replaced the Action tokens.
Issue #3: Action tokens PART 3 — Full Action Round Example: French & Indian Rampage, British Resilience.
The following play example focuses exclusively on how tokens are used in the Action Round. Movement, battles and other game mechanics will be explained elsewhere. I’ve minimized strategic insight for a clearer demonstration. The Action list featured in previous article is repeated at the end of this article for reference.
70 Minutes to Victory: A Hitler’s Reich Replay with The REAL Game Components
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Introduction: Readers may wish to reference other InsideGMT material regarding this fascinating upcoming P-500 listed game for background and explanation of game mechanics whose general appreciation is presumed by this post.
Finally, a long-awaited day has come… being able to play Hitler’s Reich: A Card Conquest System Game (Hitler’s Reich) with REAL components, using the map and cards created by artist Charles Kibler from my amateurish components used to date in many a Hitler’s Reich play test game. Along with these were GMT “wooden bits” similar to what could be provided with the published game.
Although there is still some prettying up of the game’s European Theater of Operations of World War II map to be done along with minor edits of the cards; the After Action Report (AAR) described by this InsideGMT post was this designer’s first playing of the game with their professionally rendered graphic components… the same components you could experience with Developer Fred Schachter at WBC 2016.
Silver Bayonet: Playtest Report
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Y’all may know Ralph’s work from other GMT titles such as Operation Dauntless, Blood & Roses, Infidel, and the soon-to-be-published Arquebus. He was a valuable member of the playtesting team, and, below, he describes his experience with the 25th Anniversary Edition of Silver Bayonet.
When I heard Mitchell Land was working with GMT to re-issue Silver Bayonet, I approached him about playtesting the game. I knew Mitch from his Next War series and like his ideas on modern war. Many years ago, I had played the original Silver Bayonet game. It is a good game with a few flaws that kept it from being a great game. As one of the first GMT games, the rules and scenarios were ambiguous at points. The lack of smaller advanced game scenarios kept me from playing anything but the standard game. I just couldn’t convince my opponent to play the 39 turn campaign so we could use all of the cool hidden movement rules and helicopters.