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Book & Game Pairings from Clio’s Board Games: The Rise of the Great Powers and Imperial Struggle

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Back to the book & game pairings to educate & entertain about a certain historical topic! Today, we’re looking at the power struggles of the 18th century with Britain and France occupying center stage, often called the Second Hundred Years’ War. Our book & game for this topic are The Rise of the Great Powers 1648—1815 (Derek McKay/H.M. Scott) and Imperial Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games).

Check out my previous Book & Game posts here:

Eastern Front: Russia’s War and No Retreat! The Russian Front

Reformation Era: Four Princes and Here I Stand

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Fields of Fire: The Bulge Campaign Mission #6 AAR (Part 1)

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Mission 6 – Attack on Schöneseiffen

2nd January 1945

The Fields of Fire Bulge campaign puts us back in the shoes of a company commander of the 9th Infantry. This time during the Battle of the Bulge. Ben Hull presents us with seven finely crafted missions (4 offensive and 3 defensive), and a handful of special rules to bring across just the right amount of flavor, all contained in a newly designed Mission Book which clearly presents the missions in a new format that is not afraid to take the space to explain things properly.

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Commands & Colors: Samurai Battles Session Report – Nagashino 1575 AD

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One more time I had occasion to play C&C Samurai Battles game as a series of a consecutive, geographically connected sets of scenarios. Today I am presenting one of the greatest tactical feats of Oda Nobunaga – a true genius of his times. With much smaller forces, using the clever strategy, he crushed so far unstoppable Samurai Cavalry army. All this in Nagashino 1575 AD – a 4 scenario mini-campaign, featuring:

  • main battle overview
  • central attack
  • right wing
  • left wing

It is really great to play an overview version, and then zoom on some aspects of this clash. Enjoy the picture-rich session report plus historical background!

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The Other Infernal Machine: The Tale of the Union Navy’s USS “Alligator” (formerly the “Submarine Propeller”) Part 4 – The Raid and its Aftermath: June 1862 – July 1862.

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Image is of a typical elevated railroad bridge in Virginia during the 1860’s. The R & P High Bridge was destroyed by Union artillery fire during the siege of Petersburg, 1864 – 1865] {Image courtesy of Library of Congress}

During his preparations for the Appomattox River Raid, the commander of the US Navy raiding force, Commodore John Rodgers had become concerned about the river route his task force would take. The primary target was the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad’s High Bridge over the Appomattox River at Petersburg, Virginia. Also targeted was the R & P’s bridge over Swift Creek. Destruction of one or both bridges would sever the Confederate capital of Richmond’s connection with the rest of the Confederacy.

Success of the River Raid, combined with a successful assault on the Confederate capital by Union General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac meant that the Civil War could be over within the year.

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Breaking The Line and Holding The Line in Commands & Colors: Ancients by BrentS — Part 3

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In the first two installments (you can check them here: Part 1 & Part 2) we explored strategy for the attacker breaking the line. In this final installment we will consider the role of the defender.

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Zheng He Playthrough with Geoffrey Engelstein — Part 4

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Welcome back to this playthrough of the first voyage of a campaign game of Zheng He! This is the fourth and final part. I won’t be explaining many rules here, so starting here might be a bit confusing. I’d recommend checking out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 to catch up on the voyage and brush up on the rules.

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Resolving Combat in Bear Trap’s Solitaire System

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When I began developing Bear Trap, it was already a tight and competitive two-player game, much like its spiritual ancestor Sekigahara. However, the designer P.R. Daniels had ambitions to go beyond this and include a solitaire mode that would allow a single player to enjoy the game by themself. Bear Trap is a block game with a lot of hidden information, which makes designing a solitaire mode quite challenging, but Paul has come up with some clever systems to facilitate this. In this article, I want to look closely at just one aspect of Bear Trap’s solitaire mode: how combat is resolved, which highlights several of the core design principles that underlie it. For an introduction to the combat system in Bear Trap, you can read Paul’s earlier InsideGMT article here.

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Pragmatism, Tension, and the Power of Cooperation in Mr. President

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I’ve gone to some lengths to try to keep Mr. President from reflecting a partisan point of view, as I have no interest in being part of any game that would further the deep divisions we already have in this country around party loyalties, personalities, and platforms. What I have tried to do is present you, the new President in game terms, with the reality that you have both a party affiliation and an opposing party to deal with. My problem-solving methods usually lean toward the pragmatic, so I tried to take the same approach with a game about the President, sometimes called the “Problem Solver in Chief.”

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Zheng He Playthrough with Geoffrey Engelstein Part 3

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A reminder of the situation at the end of Turn 5

Welcome back to our playthrough of the first voyage in Zheng He: Admiral of the Ming Fleet. This is part 3 of 4 and will make a lot more sense if you read parts 1 and 2 first.

We have played through the first five turns of the 22-turn voyage. I’m going into a lot of detail about the rules and my thought process, but during actual play, once you know the rules, each voyage takes about 30-45 minutes to complete.

We are located in Malacca and are running very low on cards in hand, so we will need to Resupply as our first order of business.