Posted on

18EUS: The Bank of New York

by

In last week’s blog post, I discussed the games and people that inspired me to make 18EUS. As part of that, I mentioned that one of the key new elements of 18EUS is the Bank of New York, which allows players to either take elective personal loans or invest in the Bank if they do not hold loans.  I wanted to explore a space where players had access to more capital in stock rounds, like in 1817 with short-selling, with a different, unique mechanism.  Some have pointed out that the 18EUS “loans,” which both charge interest and increase in principle, do not behave like loans in a technical sense, but rather like stock shorts.  Indeed, the main design inspiration here was to create a “friendlier” method of short-selling that would appeal to a wider audience.  

Posted on

WELCOME TO PLUM ISLAND (or … A Brief Tour of a Soon-To-Be Hellscape)!

by

Greetings again, ladies and gentlemen, and boys and girls of all ages! After having been flooded by hundreds of thousands of emails and posts requesting more information about this game (well, that’s a rough estimate … maybe it was just Harvey from East Northport who wrote me, but I can’t remember just now), I had to succumb and return from my self-imposed exile and provide another eye-opening and inspiring article to this blog. 

As you may or may not have seen, the big breaking news is that the game board for The Plum Island Horror has been completed. I can attest to its historical accuracy, and I commend Terry Leeds and the team for producing such a wonderfully detailed and realistic depiction of the island just moments before the horrific events on October 24th of a year that we are unable to reveal for legal reasons. 

Posted on

18EUS’s Origin Story

by

My interest in strategy board games started early when my grandfather taught me chess at six years old. In high school I enjoyed playing on custom-designed Risk maps with my friends, and in college I discovered Settlers of Catan.  Next was enjoying the plethora of modern Euro games.  I moved to Grand Haven, Michigan in 2018 and started attending Thursday-night gaming at a local game store in Zeeland where I was introduced to 18xx in 2019. I was hooked after my first play of 1846.

Favorite titles of our group included 1846, 1862, 1822 and 1822MX. 18USA was polarizing – it was Mark’s favorite title, and everyone liked the randomized setup, but some did not like the shorting mechanic or extended length of the game.  During setup of an 18USA game, Bill remarked, “Someone needs to make a game on the 18USA map without the shorting.”  Around the same time, I listened to an 18xx podcast that had a segment on “Things you wish to see in an 18xx game,” and they talked about personal, elective loans.  It became clear to me that elective loans could easily replace shorting.  I adopted the “Sure, why not?” attitude and went about creating 18EUS.

Posted on

Great Battles of Julius Caesar Deluxe Edition Session Report — Bibracte (58 BC)

by

I am finding the Great Battles of History as a very well suited system for a solitaire play. It is pretty straightforward to lead both sides, with some randomized elements – like trumping opponent leaders – which has to be taken care of. The actual fight, maneuvers and orders in many cases are evident and does not need a deeper system / flowchart / decision matrix. You can take them all by yourself.

Posted on

A Mediterranean Diversion: Napoleon in Egypt – Full Turn Example of Play (Part 3)

by

Note: Art shown is from the game prototype and not final.

In our previous Inside GMT article, the French took Control of Cairo and started Besieging two more Mamluk Spaces. Meanwhile, the Allied Player recruited a sizable force in Thebes for a potential counterattack. Ibrahim Bey is still 8 Spaces away from Bonaparte though so the French have time to brace for impact. They will thus seize this opportunity to Assault Meniet with a low-AP card. CDG fans all know that sooner or later, we need to pick a moment to play these weak cards!

Posted on

Infernal Machine Bibliography

by

19 November 2022

Good afternoon, everyone.

Ed Ostermeyer here.

Several readers have requested information on the works I’ve used in the design of “Infernal Machine: Dawn of Submarine Warfare.

Herewith is my bibliography (current as of 19 November 2022) for the game, alphabetized and annotated for your use.

Comments and remarks are my own opinions on the indicated text’s usefulness, ease of same, and value as a source.

So, here you go: 

Posted on

Interview with Jim Krohn, Designer of Space Empires: All Good Things

by

A couple of months ago, I sat down to a web call with Space Empires designer Jim Krohn to talk about his game series and the final expansion for it that is currently on the P500, All Good Things. Despite a name that might indicate a touch of bittersweet, Jim is not sorry to bring this game arc to a close; he’s more excited about “completing the system” and finishing up a project that started in the ‘90s. He acknowledges that some fans may be a little more sorry to see the content well dry up, but says “this will have all of the rest of my best material. I have more material that I could use, but honestly, it’s just not as good.” Before getting to the specifics of that “best material”, here’s a quick recap of the Space Empires: 4X system. It is a hex ‘n counter space wargame, featuring space exploration, empire expansion, resource exploitation, and, of course, extermination of your opponent. These are the four “X’s” from the title. The base game comes with the map, tons of ship counters, a massive tech tree, and lots of fun things to discover. The Close Ecounters expansion packs in more counters and variable player powers, among other things, while Replicators added a new type of playable empire that can also be used as a foe in solo and cooperative games.

Posted on

Designing the Congress of Vienna Solitaire Game, Part 1of 2: Diplomacy and The French Bot

by

Introduction #1 from Congress of Vienna Assistant Designer & Editor Fred Schachter: I’ve had the fun and pleasure of helping Designer Frank Esparrago on his journey, now our journey, to bringing his labor of love CoV game vision from dream into reality.

This GMT P-500 game is now undergoing a wonderful transformation from playtest into production graphics thanks to the talents of Terry Leeds.  For the latest status of Terry’s efforts and a host of Congress of Vienna game material see: GMT Games – Congress of Vienna .

But for all the content readers will find within GMT’s site for the game; there’ll be a dearth of current material relevant to Congress of Vienna’s Solitaire Version and Bots.  Those rules and Bots are to the credit of CoV Team members: initially Jim Gutt and David Illanes and more recently David Schoellhamer, who is architect of those Bots’ latest rendition.  Well done guys!

With that, I’ll turn further introductory honors to Frank…

Introduction #2 From Congress of Vienna designer Frank Esparrago: Previous InsideGMT articles explain how the CoV Team agreed to offer a version for solitaire play. However, Developer Dick Sauer and I did not have sufficient experience to address this creative task fully and properly. Our first approach was to consider emulating the Churchill game’s Bots. Alas, they were too simplistic for a CoV solitaire game which needed to deliver the kind of interesting, uncertain, fun to play gaming elements we sought and, above all, to put pressure on a human player and make attaining victory an entertaining challenge.

Consequently, we increased our development team with new members having experience in designing a solitaire game. As Fred mentioned, these CoV solo game developers were Jim Gutt and David Illanes.  They created the game’s inaugural French Bot. Their tenacity, highly critical minds, detailed knowledge of the Congress of Vienna  game system, as well as game design orthodoxy in general; allowed them to build a series of summary tables (in Excel or Word). This enabled me to convert those guidelines into suitable Flowcharts or rules which can be easily understood by future players.

In Spain, both myself and Ignacio Badal commenced efforts to create a 2-player CoV version. This would have similar concepts to what Jim and his United States team derived. We had to change a few game mechanics of this highly interactive multiplayer game to make it into a viable 2-player contest!

Once those design concepts were fixed; we realized if we created a good 2-player Congress of Vienna game; designing a derivative solo game could be easier than by advancing directly from 4-players to just a single “human” player! That worked out to be a good intermediary step.  Serendipity!

Posted on

Fleeing Down the Nile: Napoleon in Egypt – Full Turn Example of Play (Part 2)

by

Note: Art shown is from the game prototype and not final.

In our previous Inside GMT article, the just-landed French force led by Napoleon rushed across the desert to surprise the Mamluk army. The French general eventually won the Battle of the Pyramids and sent Murad Bey reeling south of Cairo. Now, the Allied Player gets a chance to respond with their own card play.