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Defiance Design Happy Hour: A Developer’s Perspective

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We intend to offer up our design notes regarding our simulation of the 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War, Defiance, beginning with Volume 1: Miracle on Dnipro: Kyiv & Chernihiv Campaign, from time to time. Given that we are designing a simulation regarding an ongoing conflict, it’s a first draft of history. Consequently, at least you’ll get some insight into why we got some items wrong 🙂

In our fourth article in this series, our developer, Bob Heinzmann, pipes up. As always, feel free to break out a beverage of your choice. We always include a recipe for a cocktail, mocktail, or appetizer at the end of each of our Defiance Design Happy Hour articles. This time, we go with a mean RED RAZ Martini.

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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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Panzer Expansion #4 Solitaire Scenario #46 Replay Part 2 — Turns 4-5

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Turn #4

Spotting

All the French Tanks can be seen. Most of the Germans can also be seen.

Command Phase

French Commands – The Tanks have Fire commands while the infantry, coming from off board, have Move commands.

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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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Five Manoeuvre Strategy Tips

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The relatively simple rules of Manoeuvre leave plenty of room for stratagem, despite the card-fueled bouts of dice-chucking. Sometimes the game feels like chess as you feint, counterattack, and reinforce on a tight map. And while combat may be subject to the whims of fortune, your movement across the map is almost always in your control. Thus, thoughtful movement of your pieces and careful hand management are crucial pillars of a successful strategy. Here are five strategy tips to try out in your next game.

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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”.

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Panzer Expansion #4 Solitaire Scenario #46 Replay Part 1 — Introduction and Turns 1-3

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Scenario #46 Replay

You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.”

Charles De Gaulle

Starting French Forces

Situation

On 18 May 1940, during the three-day struggle for Stonne, the B1-Bis “Eure” was commanded by Captain Pierre Billotte. He was also in command of the 1er Compagnie, 41e BCC. Although underpowered for its weight and somewhat prone to breakdown, the B1-Bis, nonetheless, had formidable armor for 1940. It was able to resist the majority German anti-tank fire, as the Germans discovered on that day.

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Firefight Friday #7: Scenario Design 1

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Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the sixth article, I wrote up an AAR based on our recorded playthrough of scenario 7, “To the Last Man, To the Last Cartridge”. This week we are shifting gears into the first in a multi-part series on the scenario design of Firefight Tactical. For this first article, since we will be covering the smaller first scenario, “Done with Sand”, I want to take a little bit of time to cover my scenario design philosophy for Firefight Tactical in general.