Designer Joel Toppen is well known among our customers for his outstanding solitaire designs Navajo Wars and Comancheria, as well as his amazing work in creating so many of the VASSAL modules for our games. Recently, Joel took a break to actually play someone else’s game, and in the process gave all of us players a gift, in the form of a bunch of short video clips that combine to create an AAR of his play of the advanced game (with some optional rules) of Next War: Poland. It’s not often that we get to see the advanced campaign laid out in all its glory, much less get a thoughtful video overview of strategy and processes by someone with Joel’s understanding of games and systems. And given that this is a theatre of potential war that is of great interest to many on both sides of the Atlantic right now, we thought you all would enjoy getting a look at how Joel’s game played out.

Note that the videos below all link to Joel’s Twitter account (follow him!), but we wanted to archive them all here on InsideGMT, in order, so that you could all access them easily whenever you pull out your Next War: Poland to play on your game table.

With many thanks to Joel for creating such an excellent group of videos to help us all understand both the game and the current and potential situation in Eastern Europe and the Baltic, we heartily present and endorse these videos, which we will present in several parts (grouped to cover a turn or two at a time). We hope they bring you much enjoyment and instruction as you learn and enjoy your game. – Gene