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Sneak Peeks at the Twilight Struggle Collector’s Edition

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Founder, GMT Games

Hi everyone!

We are now under a month away from shipping the Twilight Struggle Collector’s Edition to our Kickstarter backers.  I had an advance copy of the CE sent to me so I could take some pictures to give you guys a peek at it in advance.

My daughter Rachel and I spent this morning sleeving cards and stickering the reminder blocks, then she took a bunch of pictures which we put into a couple of collages for you guys to enjoy! Hopefully, for you KS backers, this will give you a taste of what you’ll be getting when we ship the Collector’s Editions next month.

For those of you who didn’t back the Kickstarter CE but want a copy, we’ll be making an announcement late this month (once we have them in the warehouse and know exactly how many we have left to sell) with the details of when we will make any additional Collector’s Editions we have (after shipping the Kickstarter rewards) available for sale.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these sneak peeks!

Gene

TS CE Pic1

TS CE Pic2

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Post-Publication Musings on Churchill

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mark-herman1Well, Churchill has finally hit the market and I am very pleased with the production values and the initial reception. Only time will tell if this one becomes a cross-over design, but I could not be happier with how it came out.

I was at the World Boardgaming Championships (WBC) in its farewell to Lancaster PA, and I never saw less than four ongoing games of Churchill being played in open gaming. A new phenomena for me was in most cases there were at least one if not two females playing in each session (three person game). This is the one game that I have done out of over sixty that my wife will play, so it hopefully will be a more accessible game to the most important part of the human race.

For those who have not followed my earlier blog posts, I wanted folks to experience a different narrative of World War II. Don’t get me wrong, I am a sucker for Third Reich and the multitude of big picture strategy games on the war, but I have “been there, done that” and I have over 50 games in that category. Churchill’s genesis was based on his World War II memoirs and his big picture perspective. I wanted to sit in the big chair and win a global war, not drive tank divisions across Europe.

Churchill Map

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Churchill Strategy Primer #2: Defeating the Axis

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Iron&Oakbn1(RBM)

Now that the game has begun to get into people’s hands and is getting some initial plays,  I thought I would continue my series of Churchill strategy primers. My goal is to accelerate our collective understanding of the art of the possible in Churchill, although I continue to discover new tactics as I continue to play with friends and family.

In case you missed it here is a link to my first strategy primer in InsideGMT.

Churchill Strategy & Tactics Tips

The main theme of this strategy post is the intersection of victory conditions and forcing Axis surrender.

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Illusions of Glory: A Play Balance Challenge

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C&CNapoleonicsbn1(RBM)

Genesis of a First-Time Game Designer:

My interest in wargame design began when I was a playtester at SPI’s legendary “Skonkworks” in Manhattan.  Perhaps I’m dating myself, but I recall those days with great nostalgia.  I was bitten by the designer bug there, and wanted to create my own game.

Career, marriage, and raising a family caused me to shelve that desire (although it was never forgotten).  I was then approached by my good friend and neighbor, Brad Stock, who designed the well-received CDG “Pursuit of Glory” with his son Brian. Brad had proposed a WW1 Eastern Front game to GMT based on the “Paths of Glory” and ”Pursuit of Glory” systems.  However, he accepted a full-time college teaching job and was no longer able to design this game.  Brian was also unavailable.  They asked me, with GMT’s permission, to get it done.

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THE ROUND TOPS – Hammerin’ Sickles in Action (Part 1)

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    Designer, At Any Cost and Hammerin' Sickles

    HS Image 1PART 1: – Introduction and First Game Turn

    Hammerin’ Sickles: Longstreet Attacks at Gettysburg recently “made the cut” on the GMT P500 and Fred and I are very thankful for the support from the gaming community. We thought it would be a good time to give a brief run-through of the game and show how a typical game flows. The tutorial scenario – “The Round Tops” – depicting the fight for both Big and Little Round Tops is a compact, quick-playing vehicle to help demonstrate the Blind Swords system in general and Hammerin’ Sickles in particular.

    First, let’s do a brief overview of how the system works. Blind Swords is a chit-pull mechanic system with some interesting twists. Before each turn, players will “load” the chit-pull cup with Division Activation Chits (one for each Division involved in the game), some Event Chits (more on those later), a Fog-of-War Chit (which will generate forced random moves and leader casualties), a Fortunes-of-War Chit (which will cancel the next chit drawn from the cup) and the CIC Chits (which allow the player to select any Brigade to activate in his army, even for a second time). In the longer scenarios, there is also a Lull in the Battle Chit which will speed play and simulates the forces becoming tired and hesitant as the battlefield has evolved into a chaotic, smoky and unmanageably-tangled landscape. All these chits are placed into the same cup and drawn by either player.

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    Dark Sands – Compass Scenario AAR, Part 4 (and final)

    by

    Iron&Oakbn1(RBM)

    Click on the following to read the three previous installments of this article: Part I, Part II, Part III.

    Chit 7 British Reinforcements.

    The British Turn 4 Reinforcements include 3 brigades as normal arrivals. And the 6th Australian Div as an exchange for the 4th Indian Division. Indicated by the black box around both the arriving and withdrawing units.

    The 3 arriving brigades may land at any port, up to stacking limits. They choose to land at Bardia where they may stack with the Garrison. Number 1.

    Units that are arriving as part of an exchange may directly replace any units of the division they are being exchanged for. In this case the three brigades of the 6th Australian change places with the 3 brigades of the 4th Indian brigade. Number 2.

    The 4th Indian are withdrawing, indicated by the red box around their image on the Reinforcement Track. They are placed on the Reinforcement track on the next turn where their image appears. Follow the blue arrow from Number 2. The green box around the image indicates that this is (or will be) a returning unit. If there is no future turn to place them on, place them on the red-boxed images on the current turn to indicate that they were withdrawn and will not be returning.

    Note that two of the 4th Indian Brigades was reduced, but the arriving unit was full strength. Arriving units always arrive at full strength, regardless of their state when withdrawn. Moral of the story, always lead with units that about to be withdrawn. When they return, they will be a full strength.

    Figure 19 British Reinforcements

    Figure 19 British Reinforcements

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    Solitaire System for Fields of Despair, Part III

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    C&CNapoleonicsbn1(RBM)

    Here are links to the first two articles in this series: Part I   Part II

    Welcome back to the overview of the solitaire system for Fields of Despair: France 1914-1918.  A huge thank you goes out to everyone who has helped us get across the 500 order mark.  The development team and I are thrilled and humbled at the same time.  Now on to the game…

    This article focuses solely on how the game’s AI plays the Central Powers against you.  As is custom, I should note that all of the components, art, etc you’ll see are play test and a work in progress.  Below is a prime example.  The Central Powers side of the Solitaire Play Aid walks you through the Central Powers action phase.  I’ll refer back to it as I go.

    1 Player-Aid-Central-Side

    Central Powers Solitaire Play Aid

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    Churchill Strategy and Tactics Tips

    by

    Iron&Oakbn1(RBM)

    mark-herman1The ship has arrived in Oakland and WBC is just around the corner, so 1200+ Churchill games will soon be arriving at front doors around the world. I just completed my next Clio’s corner #6 for c3i magazine that covers many aspects of design theory through the lens of Churchill. Unfortunately, the magazine will not hit the market until after your games have arrived, so I thought it would be useful to write a short strategy primer to improve everyone’s first experience with the game.

    First here are a few important tactical tips. If someone appears to have come up with an unstoppable strategy, take a deep breath and consider the following:

    1. Take their stuff away: Each player has a limited amount of production, and each player has a Directed offensive issue plus inCHL-US-22-nf the case of the US and UK production issues. For example, if the UK were to have the other two players control their Directed offensive and production issue, the British would have one production marker out of four that they could control. The same is true for the other two sides. So, if any player seems to be driving the game and looks unstoppable, the other two players need to get these issues on the table and neuter whatever the third player is doing by taking their stuff.

    2. Playing order matters: Each side has a national characteristic. The British capability is the Imperial Staff that adds one to the value of its staff card played during the Agenda segment. This means that if Churchill always plays a five card they will go last in the conference. This will seem to be an overpowered capability unless you know how to deal with it.

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    Stonewall’s Sword: Revolution Games

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    Stonewall_Horizontal_Banner

    Although this blog is generally focused on GMT Games’ designers and our products, I do occasionally make an exception, especially for our designers who have game designs produced with other companies. In this instance, designer Hermann Luttmann, who has both Hammerin’ Sickles and At Any Cost on our P500 list – both the beginning of series’ that we’re very excited about, produced a Civil War game on the Battle of Cedar Mountain with Revolution games. That game, Stonewall’s Sword,  uses essentially the same system as that used in both of our upcoming games/series’.

    I had also met Roger, who runs Revolution Games, at a GMT Weekend at the Warehouse a couple years back, and was impressed with his vision for what they are doing at Revolution as well as his attention to detail. So, given their release of a game using a system that will be used in our two upcoming titles, that I would really like to help both Hermann and Roger sell their game,  and that Stonewall’s Sword offers you guys a very inexpensive way to try out the system to help you decide whether Hammerin’ Sickles and At Any Cost will be your cup of tea, I thought this might be an appropriate time and place to give Roger and Stonewall’s Sword an introduction to our customers. I hope you like Roger’s article, and his description of the game system. If so, I’d encourage you to support these guys by going over to the Revolution Games website and picking up a copy of Stonewall’s Sword. – Gene

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    Empire of the Sun Solitaire Game Tutorial

    by Mark Herman

    Several of you have asked me if we could include some links here to the more popular and useful videos on our GMT Games YouTube channel. WordPress allows us to do this, so I’ll do my best to include some video links in InsideGMT from time to time.

    For you Empire of the Sun players, the new 2.0 version released this summer comes with a built-in solitaire opponent. In this video, designer Mark Herman gives you a walkthrough of the Solitaire opponent. Enjoy!

    Gene

    EotS 2 Cover