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Who Was Zheng He?

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Zheng He was born in 1371 in Yunnan Province. His given name was “Ma He,” indicative of his family’s Hui Muslim origins since “Ma” is the Chinese version of “Mohammad.” His father was a hajji, a Muslim who had made the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. Zheng He’s great-great-great-grandfather, Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, was a Persian governor of the province under the Mongolian Emperor Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty that ruled China from 1279 to 1368.

In 1381, when he was about 10 years old, Yunnan, the last Mongol hold in China, was conquered by Chinese forces led by generals of the Ming dynasty, which had overthrown the Yuan dynasty in 1368. The young Ma He was among the boys who were captured, and he was castrated and made a eunuch. Ma He was sent to Beiping (now Beijing) to serve in the household of 21-year-old Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan who later became the Yongle Emperor. Ma He distinguished himself as a junior officer, skilled in war and diplomacy, and soon became one of the prince’s closest confidants. In the 1390s, he served as a soldier, fighting on the northern frontier and participating in the Prince of Yan’s military campaigns against the Mongols.

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Building Track in 18 India

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In 18 India, plenty of track gets built, creating routes all over the map. One of the most fun aspects of 18XX gaming is engineering your routes for maximum revenue and efficiency, and 18 India seeks to enhance that experience to its fullest!

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“Rocks & Shoals”: Navigating Infernal Machine’s New Orleans Action Board — Part 2

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Part Two: Down River from Port Hudson to Baton Rouge

The USS “Hartford” exchanges gunfire with the Confederate ironclad CSS “Manassas” (right) and the unfinished ironclad “Louisiana” during the Passage of the Forts, April 23rd, 1862. At extreme left, Fort St. Philip can be glimpsed through the smoke and flame. {Courtesy Library of Congress}

Beginning April 16, 1862, the US Navy’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron under Flag Officer David Glasgow Farragut began a thunderous bombardment of the Confederate forts Jackson and St. Philip, guardians of the lower Mississippi River and the approaches to New Orleans, Louisiana. Seven nights later, on April 23, 1862, after a pitched river battle, Farragut‘s West Gulf Squadron steamed past the two forts.

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Arquebus Replay: The Battle of Ceresole — Part 2

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The Spanish player activates Madruzzo’s (Blue) wing.

Spanish Note – I want to get the battle started so I’ll move my center wing closer.

Ed. Note – For the first few moves we will show the units moving one at a time so we can show how the Missile fire works (BTW shouldn’t it really be referred to as “Ranged Fire” instead of missile fire?).

As the -1 PK unit moves adjacent to the French line, the SB unit (which is highlighted) will do Reaction Fire which happens when a unit enters one of its front two hexes.

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Borikén: Why Did I Make This Game?

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I have been designing games for 5 years. In that time, I have learned so much about the board game industry. One element of game design that instantly stood out to me and is thankfully being addressed by many publishers and designers is cultural appropriation in games. I remember how disappointed I was after my first play of Puerto Rico. While the game had so many interesting mechanics, the theme was not representative of what I knew my culture to be and greatly distracted me from the fun. While I didn’t know it at the time, my experience with Puerto Rico planted the desire in me to make a new game that shared a more holistic picture of my people.

Puerto Rico Cover, Originally Designed by Andreas Seyfarth and Published by Rio Grande Games

My first experience of designing a game set in a culture that wasn’t my own was with Holi: Festival of Colors. The design that became Holi was originally pitched to Floodgate Game with a completely different theme, but Floodgate had been wanting to do a game with this theme and when they pitched the idea to me I was onboard. However, I urged them to have cultural consultants involved, so that we could be sure to do right by the theme. As it turns out, that was their plan all along and ultimately they did a great job incorporating and representing the theme in my game.Throughout that process, I learned that spending the time and resources to get that right made the game better and that there’s so much benefit that it should be a no brainer for all games that use real world cultures as a theme to make sure they bring in cultural experts.

Holi: Festival of Colors Cover, Designed by Julio E. Nazario and Published by Floodgate Games
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The First Stirrings of Rebellion: Britannia

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In October 2020 Fred Serval (designer of GMT’s Red Flag Over Paris, and A Gest of Robin Hood) organized a ConSim Game Jam sponsored by GMT.  Participants had 3 days to make a game. As participants, we had to use a pre-existing GMT COIN game at its core and make something new from it. We weren’t able to use any more wood pieces than were boxed with the original game. We  were, however, permitted to apply stickers to the board, or to any of those wood pieces, and were able to add any amount of cardboard tokens and decks of cards  we might want. Initial discussions focussed on geographical milieu, and narrowed our choices down to India (Gandhi), France (Falling Sky), and Great Britain (Pendragon), and the latter won out. So from  Morgane Gouyon-Rety’s Pendragon: The Fall of Roman Britain (2017) we  derived a game called Boudica’s Revolt.

The logo of the Boudica’s Revolt ConSIM submission
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The Battle of Piedmont: A Narrative AAR for the “1300 Start” Scenario from Battles for the Shenandoah — Part 1

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Part 1 – through the end of the 1400 turn

Introduction. I compiled this after action report using designer Greg Laubach’s Cyberboard gamebox, as the gamebox features images of the final components rather than the playtest components.

The “1300 Start” scenario begins with the two forces fully deployed, just before the Union launched its attack.  It therefore omits the morning cavalry battle and the long march forward for both sides’ infantry.  In an attempt to render the at-start situation more transparent, however, the section following this introduction provides some background.

As is true of my previous AARs, I avoid GBACW terminology unless needed to clarify a given game event.  However, I’ve inserted “Game Interludes” where explanations of game mechanics might shed some light on the course of play.  Hoping to bring to life at least some of the men who fought at Piedmont, I’ve also embellished the narrative with anecdotes, conversations, and interior monologues, most of which are invented (but plausible).

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Arquebus Replay: The Battle of Ceresole — Part 1

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All is lost, save Honor.

Francis I

Situation

The Battle of Ceresole was an encounter between a French army and the combined forces of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire during the Italian War of 1542–46. The lengthy engagement took place on 11 April 1544, outside the village of Ceresole d’Alba in the Piedmont region of Italy; the French, under François de Bourbon, Count of Enghien, defeated the Spanish-Imperial army of Alfonso d’Avalos d’Aquino, Mar-quis del Vasto. Despite having inflicted substantial casualties on the Imperial troops, the French subsequently failed to exploit their victory by taking Milan.

Enghien and d’Avalos had arranged their armies along two parallel ridges; because of the topography of the battlefield, many of the individual actions of the battle were uncoordinated with one another. The battle opened with several hours of skirmishing between opposing bands of arquebusiers and an ineffectual artillery exchange, after which d’Avalos ordered a general advance. In the center, Imperial Landsknechts clashed with French and Swiss infantry, with both sides suffering terrific casualties. In the southern part of the battlefield, Italian infantry in Imperial service were harried by French cavalry attacks and withdrew after learning that the troops of the Imperial center had been defeated. In the north, meanwhile, the French infantry line crumbled, and Enghien led a series of ineffectual and costly cavalry charges against Spanish and German infantry before the latter were forced to surrender by the arrival of the victorious Swiss and French infantry from the center.

Ceresole was one of the few pitched battles during the latter half of the Italian Wars. Known among military historians chiefly for the “great slaughter” that occurred when columns of intermingled arquebusiers and Pikemen met in the center, it also demonstrates the continuing role of traditional heavy cavalry on a battlefield.

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Cross Bronx Expressway: Losing and Seeing The Bronx

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Shortly after finishing the third installment of this series about the tactility of the pieces, I took some time to capture a multihand playthrough of my physical prototype. Let me tell you a secret. I lost. In fact I lost in the first decade, three times in a row. Granted, this was the “Bronx is Burning” scenario which is hands down the hardest one in the game, but the fact of the matter is it took me four tries to get out of the first Decade, which is what you’ll see in this playthrough.

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Breaking The Line and Holding The Line in Commands & Colors: Ancients by BrentS — Part 1

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There are many important elements that contribute to the outcome of an Ancients battle. Skirmishing, cavalry manoeuvres, feint and ruse, move and countermove, all play their part in the integrated coordination of arms that leads to success on the battlefield and a good commander must be skilled in all of them. But as in real ancient warfare, the decisive moment on which the battle hinges is invariably the bloody clash of the main infantry lines. Marathon, Plataea, Cannae, Leuctra, Chaeronea and many more, battles that were turning points in history, all decided at the sticky end of the conflict, close and personal, spear and sword against armour and shield.