Tag Archives: Congress of Vienna

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Congress of Vienna’s Optional Historical Rules 15.7 – 15.17

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Introduction by Fred Schachter, CoV Assistant Designer & Editor: Within the Congress of Vienna InsideGMT article, A “Congress of Vienna” GMT Production Process Status Report | Inside GMT blog, it was shared that due to space limitations, it would not be possible to include in the published game all Optional Rules, called OHR’s for “Optional Historical Rules”. 

That’s sadly understandable, but it’s like asking in optional game rule terms “Which of your children do you want to abandon?”  Fortunately, due to InsideGMT and the ability to post additional content such as Optional Rules on the GMT games website, where a host of material concerning CoV already resides: GMT Games – Congress of Vienna it doesn’t have to be! 

The published Congress of Vienna Rulebook will contain OHRs 15.1 through 15.5. Consequently, the other Optional Historical Rules, which limited Rulebook and Playbook space compelled exclusion from the printed game, are provided via InsideGMT.  This is the second installment.  It concludes this presentation.

But first, here’s an introduction to all Congress of Vienna Optional Historical Rules (OHRs):

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Congress of Vienna’s Optional Rule 15.6 for the Congress of Peace Issue

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Introduction by Fred Schacher, CoV Assistant Designer & Editor: Within the Congress of Vienna InsideGMT article, A “Congress of Vienna” GMT Production Process Status Report | Inside GMT blog, it was shared that due to Playbook space limitations it would not be possible to include in the published game all Optional Rules, called OHR’s for “Optional Historical Rules”. 

That’s sadly understandable, but it’s like asking in game rule terms “Which of your children do you want to abandon?”  Fortunately, due to InsideGMT and the ability to post additional content such as Optional Rules in the GMT game site, where a host of material concerning CoV already resides: GMT Games – Congress of Vienna it doesn’t have to be! 

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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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Congress of Vienna Detailed Example of Play– Part 2 of 2: The Government Phase, War Phase through End of Turn

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Introduction by Fred Schachter, Assistant Designer & Editor: As this article’s preceding Part 1 of 2 explained, what you have here is an excerpt from Congress of Vienna’s Playbook, it’s Section 16, which provides a detailed example of a turn’s play from the “Clash of Armies” scenario. It features Terry Leeds’ beautiful graphics for this upcoming P-500 game’s components.

For more, much more, regarding Congress of Vienna, see GMT’s site for the game at: GMT Games – Congress of Vienna. This includes a four turn After-Action Report of a full “Clash of Armies” scenario (albeit using an early CoV Vassal Module lacking Terry’s eye-catching game board graphics).

Now, without further ado, let’s resume the action with this Detailed Example of Play’s CoV Government Phase…

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Congress of Vienna Detailed Example of Play Part 1 of 2 – The Initial through Diplomacy Phase

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Introduction by Fred Schachter, Assistant Designer & Editor: What you have here is an excerpt from Congress of Vienna’s Playbook, it’s Section 16, which provides a detailed example of a turn’s play.  It features Terry Leeds’ beautiful graphics for this upcoming P-500 game’s components.

Since readers don’t have the game’s related Playbook content as background, a description of the overall scenario is provided below.  It should explain players respective motivations in the ensuing piece…

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Designing Congress of Vienna’s Solitaire Game, Part 2 of 2: The French Bot During the Government & War Phases

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Introduction: We explained in the previous article how CoV’s Solitaire Game’s Initial and Diplomacy Phases utilize Stuka Joe’s marvelous Card Driven Games’ Solo Method (CDGSM) adapted for Congress of Vienna: Designing the Congress of Vienna Solitaire Game, Part 1of 2: Diplomacy and The French Bot | Inside GMT blog.  In this article we continue this exposition with the Government and War Phases.

For a wealth of information and wide-range of InsideGMT articles, including the latest status of this game’s graphics development at the talented hands of Terry Leeds, see: GMT Games – Congress of Vienna     

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

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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!

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Congress of Vienna September 2022 Development Update: Latest Gameboard Narrative

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Since our last update of Congress of Vienna (CoV)’s components: specifically focusing on its gameboard; 0ur efforts were driven to provide Terry Leeds, our graphic designer, with the best raw material for him to do an excellent job taking our play test version and converting it into a “production worthy” piece of functional art adapted to the game’s mechanics.

We already had some knowledge of what Terry Leeds was professionally like. His “Imperial Struggle” work is prominently displayed in my collection of games as a wonder that I find difficult to play, but whose graphics complement the design and made it easier for me to enjoy this well-envisioned game.

Furthermore, for Congress of Vienna, Terry depicted many of the game elements (cards and map board) with a series of different figures, a variety of indicia, so color blind players can play CoV in a much more intuitive way.  This proved a success, which pleasantly surprised us, because honestly it was a situation which we had not thought of when we initially designed the basic components of the game for its first prototypes!

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Congress of Vienna’s Tactical Battle Matrix Option Part 2 of 2 – An Example of Battle

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Introduction by Congress of Vienna Designer – Frank Esparrago: This detailed example of play shows how battles in CoV unfold. Due to a different historical period and military perspective; these use a system more complex than Churchill’s. This battle system, whose basics are well-described by a fine and entertaining video by two of our talented play testers ( How to Resolve Battle in Congress of Vienna: An Animated Voice-Over PowerPoint | Inside GMT blog) receives a layer of richness for generating additional influence in how battle is resolved. This is accomplished through introducing Tactical Chits to generate a new modifier for determining a potential battle victor.

This article is based on this piece’s previous installment – A Congress of Vienna Option: Adding Tactical Flavor to Battles (A Tactical Battle Matrix) by Frank Esparrago & David Schoellhamer: A Congress of Vienna Option: Adding Tactical Flavor to Battles (A Tactical Battle Matrix) Part 1 of 2 | Inside GMT blog .This optional Tactical Battle Matrix rule is based on the tactical battle matrixes of the excellent Avalon Hill games 1776 and War and Peace published in the distant years of 1974 and 1980 respectively. However, playing with this optional rule does increase the amount of time needed for battle resolution. What is clear is that the CoV Tactical Battle Matrix does add an additional element of fun, uncertainty, tactical flavor, and “fog of war” to resolving battles. It does this by presenting simple choices regarding the general tactics an army could use.

Additional background regarding Congress of Vienna should help readers best apprecite this optional offering. For that, please reference GMT Games – Congress of Vienna . Now back to our exposition!

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Congress of Vienna November 2021 Development Update: Gameboard Narrative

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During the last six months we continued adjusting Congress of Vienna (CoV)’s components to try to make them as functional as possible. This effort included minor corrections to the rules: for example, when a rule was moved from being an optional rule to becoming a standard one or vice versa.

This always seems a problem when you carry out a game’s extensive playtest program with participants contributing many ideas and feedback regarding rule development as well as victory conditions. What’s gratifying is that through it all, the core design/development team takes a considered approached to weighing the merits of all this much appreciated input; and in the case of this November 2021 update, we’ll focus on the latest Congress of Vienna map and its rule references upon the gameboard.

This means we’ll share game board modifications made since the last published overview concerning the map as play testing proceeds. New Readers about Congress of Vienna, or those needing reminders of what this upcoming GMT P-500 listed game is about, may benefit through obtaining background regarding this game through the material deposited herein: GMT Games – Congress of Vienna and to learn more of the optional rules specifically mentioned within this update kindly reference War or Diplomacy? The Struggle Between the Wargamer vs Eurogamer Soul in the Design and Development of Congress of Vienna | Inside GMT blog

With this article, we present the latest gameboard which incorporates a variety of aids intended to facilitate play of both the Standard Game and its Optional Historical Rules for players with a grognard soul (these were referred to in previous versions as “Wargame Flavor Rules”).

As with the prior posted April ’21 update, we do not have this latest gameboard extensively in-person tested since most playtesting is conducted by Vassal for self-protection measures against COVID-19 . This results in our testing teams having representatives from Europe, the States, as well as a recent addition from the Philippines (what wonderful and talented multi-national group I’m privileged to have!). We incorporated modifications from Vassal play testers who found help them helpful to avoid needing to take time to reference, or perhaps overlook, certain key rules during play of an exciting and fun game of Congress of Vienna.