Blog Archives
sThere is always a bit of a learning curve on the better tabletop game designs out there. But if you try to play things on instinct, you will invariably miss the sort of rules were engineered specifically to address issues that emerged from the early drafts of the game. How many times I’ve played a […]
The design notes for the classic TSR game Divine Right contain yet another data point regarding the literary inspirations of game designers during the late seventies: In the interim, we discovered the Chaosium game of White Bear, Red Moon. This game was something new in our experience – a game of heroic fantasy…. There was […]
WARGAME WEDNESDAY: The Player’s Aid interviews Marc Gouyon-Rety
Wednesday , 27, July 2016 Wargames Leave a commentIf you haven’t been following The Player’s Aid over the past month, you’re really missing out. In addition to digging in to a number of games I haven’t even seen before, they have an excellent interview with Marc Gouyon-Rety, the designer of the upcoming Pendragon. Up until now the COIN series entries from GMT Games […]
I am probably going to make myself rather unpopular with this opinion, but I don’t really care for Panzer Leader. Avalon Hill’s Panzer series, beginning with PanzerBlitz, going on to Panzer Leader and eventually even being adapted to more recent tank warfare with The Arab Israeli War, is considered one of the pinnacles of tactical […]
DevGame has announced that the classic TSR fantasy wargame, Divine Right, is now being developed as a computer game. That may or may not be of interest to readers of this blog, but what will almost certainly be of interest is the last paragraph of the post. Castalia House also acquired the right to produce […]
Guest Post by Bill Morgal: Designer John Poniske Brings History to Life
Monday , 11, July 2016 Wargames Leave a commentHistory’s Voice in Gaming John Poniske, Game Designer by Bill Morgal “I’m John Poniske.” The words came from a lanky, crewcut man with a salt and pepper beard sitting across the gaming table from my son and I. His open outstretched hand was not the first thing I really noticed about the man. Nor was […]
As I mentioned in several of my previous articles, notably Complex Interactions and Roles and Rolls , Wargames are typically played and supported by educated and rigorous people. In this article, I wish to point out that this is far deeper in origin than a simply complicated hobby: This draw is inherent to wargaming, certainly, […]
Guest Post by Warren Abox: Wargaming For Wargamers Who Don’t Have Time To Wargame
Monday , 27, June 2016 Wargames 6 CommentsThe golden age of wargaming is any age where you’ve got enough time to wargame. For those with overloaded by a combination of careers, kids, houses, church obligations, and unconscionable commutes, that golden age is certainly not in the present. While those priorities may make it impossible to get your wargame fix via a long […]
When I was little, one of my favorite wargames was Lewis Pulsipher’s Britannia. In it, players play out the successive waves of invaders conquering the Isle of Great Britain, starting with the Roman conquest and concluding with the Battle of Hastings. Tribes are divvied up between four players in such a way that they will […]
WARGAME WEDNESDAY: The Hunted, Frederick’s Gamble, and Falling Sky
Wednesday , 15, June 2016 Wargames Leave a commentIn wargaming news this week, the big surprise is that there is even more on the way for fans of The Hunters. The game was already enough of a hit that it merited a sequel that moved the action to the Pacific where American submarine captains could take their chances in duels with Japanese subs– […]
As discussed in some of my previous Elements of Wargaming installments here on the blog, Wargames are designed to be faithful enough to war and real-world experience to be useful in a real-world scenario. I recently was directed to a further proof of this, in an article discussing the resurgence of Wargaming in the US […]
WARGAME WEDNESDAY: The Euro Gamer’s Guide to Learning GMT’s COIN Series
Wednesday , 1, June 2016 Wargames 4 CommentsThe top game blog post of the past couple of weeks is, without a doubt, The 5 Worst Mistakes I’ve Made when Learning COIN over at Ludobits. Now… I’m biased because this is on a topic I’ve struggled to articulate previously. But really… check it out: Now what happens when you first sit down at a COIN table with […]