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Defiance Design Happy Hour: Modeling the Combat of 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War

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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 third  article in this series, we discuss how we model combat during the initial six weeks of the 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War. We’ll begin with a brief review of the Charles S Roberts classic CRT. Then, we take a look at CRTs in France 1944 and Flashpoint Golan, examining  the combat resolution system lineage of Defiance.  For a deeper dive into CRTs, check out Issue 36 of C3i: Mark Herman’s Clio’s Corner, Nr. 13 –  “Wargame CRTs or How to Resolve Chaos”.

As usual, we ramble on. So, 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 the surprise early hit of 2024: the Shagroni (a shake on the classic Negroni).

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Firefight Friday #6: Nowhere to Run

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Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week in the fifth article we covered the major checks that occur in a game of Firefight Tactical. In doing so we finally finished talking about the core game mechanics, and in celebration we will do something entirely different this week. Firefight Tactical’s lead developer, Peter Evans, and I recorded a playthrough of the game’s Cherbourg scenario, “To the Last Man, To the Last Cartridge.” Peter played as the Americans, while I played as the German defenders. You can watch the video HERE. For this week’s article I will be writing up an AAR from that session for your enjoyment (hopefully). Please note as I am describing direction in the write up that my perspective is from the north looking south. Let’s get started.

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A Play Session of Hannibal’s Revenge

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Introduction by Hannibal’s Revenge: A Card Conquest System Game Co-Designer,  Fred Schachter: To begin, readers have hopefully, by now, checked out the tantalizing glimpse of this game’s graphics created by the talent-extremis Mark Mahaffey.  His fine initial work, with assistance of Co-Developer Jason Carr, of Hannibal Revenge game components can be viewed via this link or above: January 18, 2024 Update from GMT: New P500s, Art Samples, Production Update, a Free Download, and More!! (mailchi.mp).

What a difference these are from the Mark McLaughlin hand-drafted Hannibal’s Revenge play test version shared by this article.

But now, onto the main event!

Robert Baynosa and I met, virtually that is, through his being an enthusiastic fan of the first game of the Card Conquest System, Hitler’s Reich.  Robert so enjoyed playing Hitler’s Reich that he was inspired to create a solitaire version variant for it which was shared through an InsideGMT article: Playing Hitler’s Reich Solo: A Suggested Variant | Inside GMT blog .

 When Robert learned of Designer Mark McLaughlin and I working on the next game of the series, Hannibal’s Revenge GMT Games – Hannibal’s Revenge, he enthusiastically volunteered to help play-test it.  To that end, I emailed him the necessary files to print-out and build his own physical copy of the game which is referenced and shown within this article.  As the photos show, Robert created an attractive and functional copy of Hannibal’s Revenge… well done!

To provide readers an idea of how Hannibal’s Revenge plays, by describing but a portion of an overall 90 minute game between himself and his gaming buddy EC Baltazar, here’s Robert’s illustrated report.  If unfamiliar with the Card Conquest System, it may be helpful reviewing GMT’s Hitler’s Reich site’s contents , – GMT Games – Hitler’s Reich; as it contains the latest rules and a host of related material.  With that, Robert, take it away! 

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Firefight Friday #5: Check the Rules

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Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week in the fourth article we looked at the core squad types and their functions. This week we will round out the core mechanisms and look at how checks work. This will be superficially familiar to many, but I promise there are some fun wrinkles in there.

Many actions in Firefight Tactical will come down to a dice roll. While some of these specific actions have their own small deviations, they primarily relate to five basic checks. These are Fire Checks, Morale Checks, Rally Checks, Bog Checks, and Melee Checks.

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Firefight Friday #4: Variety of Infantry

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Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week in the third article we discussed the battle grid and terrain in Firefight Tactical. At this point we have looked at most of the essentials of how the game works, so let’s start talking about the fun stuff that is built on top of the game’s engine. Specifically, this week we are talking about the five core squad types of Firefight Tactical, how they differ, and how they should optimally be used.

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The Guerrilla Generation: Resisting Reagan Campaign Scenario

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After covering the four individual games in The Guerrilla Generation in the previous articles of this series, it is now time to discuss the multipack’s campaign scenario: Resisting Reagan. I think campaign scenarios that link at least some of the games together is an essential part of each multipack, allowing designers to show broader connections between conflicts and also encouraging players to experience them in a comparative manner. The second reason is particularly important, as one of the main advantages of multipacks is to enable players to make comparisons of the different approaches to insurgency and counterinsurgency across the four conflicts included in each pack. The first multipack’s campaign scenario, The British Way’s End of Empire, had players go through each game in succession across the British Empire, with Campaign Events and Colonial Policies bringing in the broader strategic level of Britain’s retreat from empire. When picking the topic of the second multipack, I wanted to choose one that would allow for a completely different approach to a linked campaign.

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A “Congress of Vienna” GMT Production Process Status Report

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Introduction by Fred Schachter – Congress of Vienna (CoV), Assistant Designer & Editor: What a wonderful and pleasurable journey it’s been in this “labor of love” regarding Designer Frank Esparrago’s Congress of Vienna game. Previous InsideGMT articles were devoted to various aspects of the game (see: GMT Games – Congress of Vienna); but with this piece Frank focuses on the game’s production status as of January 2024 in elaboration of what was shared by the 1/18/24 GMT January Monthly Update: January 18, 2024 Update from GMT: New P500s, Art Samples, Production Update, a Free Download, and More!! (mailchi.mp). So, take it away Frank!

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Defiance Design Happy Hour: Modeling the Political Dimension of 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War

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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 2nd article in this series, we discuss how we capture the political dynamics related to the 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War in our simulation of the conflict. We’ll begin with a survey of how politics gets reflected in a few of our favorite wargames, before moving on to Defiance. Feel free to break out a beverage of your choice.

We’ll also include a recipe for a cocktail, mocktail, or appetizer at the end of each of our Defiance Design Happy Hour articles.

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Firefight Friday #3: Dynamic Battlefields

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Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the second article, we discussed the action menus on counters and the interaction between those options and the dice draft. We’ve now covered the core engine of the game, but are missing one very large piece of the puzzle. This week we will be talking about the battle grid (basically the map), terrain, and Fog of War.

When first designing Firefight Tactical there were several things I was looking to reimagine about the tactical genre, and the top of that list was the maps. Don’t get me wrong; I love my tactical maps. In fact, as I am writing this, I have a huge binder of my starter kit style ASL maps on my immediate left. At the same time, I have some big problems with the status quo of tactical game maps.

Firstly, they don’t handle FoW very well. Really in most games FoW begins and ends with the enemy’s position and does not extend to the battlefield itself. Instead, the officer in command (you) has such godlike reconnaissance of the field that you have the precise location of every single feature perfectly mapped out. My other perennial gripe with them is that there is such little dynamism represented in the battlefield. Obviously in reality the field itself does not change, but the soldier’s perspective of the field is constantly changing. Seemingly irrelevant terrain features can become tremendously significant simply due to the enemy repositioning.

Both issues are addressed by way of Firefight Tactical’s battle grid. Let’s begin by discussing the battle grid as part of scenario setup.