We have a bumpercrop of great posts on wargaming posts for you here this week!

At the top of the heap is The Player’s Aid, weighing in with an exclusive interview with COIN Series creator Volko Ruhnke. If GMT going overboard with all these new COIN titles? Volko responds:

Calling a design “COIN Series” at this point implicitly promises something. To me, that something boils down to the payoff in investment in learning one of the earlier games and the delivery of a similar but far from identical play experience. So as long as a further COIN Series volume stays true to enough of the core engine that dedicated Series fans have learned and mastered, with enough twists to transport them to a different historical time and place, I’m happy to [continue “milking” the brand”].

Elsewhere in the Tough Questions Department, grognard.com asks Frank Chadwick if he’s lost his mind:

Grognard.com: Straight up, what are you thinking, making another monster-size WWII game after all this time? How will this be different from your previous opus, the Europa series? Inquiring wargamers want to know!

Frank Chadwick: What am I thinking? I’ll resist the urge to say “do it right,” for two reasons. First, lots of gamers still love Europa, and I do as well. ETO is not an attempt to “fix” Europa. Second, this is a different approach, and I like to think it’s different because I’ve learned a few things in the forty-some years since we started Drang Nach Osten.

Finally, Carl Fung at Board Game Geek asks if anyone else other there struggles with the inaccuracies involved in playing on geomorphic maps:

I’m curious what others think. Its unfortunate because I feel a bit turned off when playing on geomorphic maps even when being really interested in a system like Band of Brothers as I feel I’m not really fighting at Brecourt Manor. While I understand the multitude of these geomorphic maps can roughly translate to historical terrain, its still not the real thing.

That’s an easy one. Toolkit games are designed for maximum replayability. If realism takes the top priority, the game simply won’t come out as much, if at all. That hot new bulge game designed to get the terrain exactly right…? It’s awesome…. But it also solves a problem that a lot of gamers just don’t have. The play is the thing!

For more wargame reads, check out the full roundup below the break.

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PaxSims (Simulations)

• Tom Mouat joins PAXsims as associate editor (8/21/16)
• Connections 2016 conference report (8/19/16)
• US AWC: Wargaming in the classroom— panel discussion and demo games (8/15/16)
• Kaliningrad 2017 matrix game at the US Army War College (8/15/16)
• Simulation and gaming miscellany, 10 August 2016 (8/10/16)

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Inside GMT (GMT Games)

• Colonial Twilight: Pieces and Force Structure (8/23/16)
• The Pendragon Chronicles — Vol. 1 (8/20/16)
• Next War: India-Pakistan – Pakistani Strategic Choices, part 2 (8/18/16)
• Bayonets & Tomahawks, Volko Ruhnke and Barry Setser: A Perfect Collision at Stack Academie Montreal Last May (8/16/16)
• Next War: Poland Progress Update (8/14/16)
• Hitler’s Reich — The Reasons Why, and What the Cards Represent (8/11/16)

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Castalia House (Wargames)

• SCENARIO DESIGN: Wizard Kings and the Pillage Rule (8/19/16)
• WARGAME WEDNESDAY: Avalon Hill’s The Arab-Israeli Wars (8/17/16)

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Real and Simulated Wars (JC)

• Steel Beasts ProPE 4.0 Multiplayer Tomorrow at Dogs of War (8/23/16)
• Exciting New Developments at John Tiller Software (8/23/16)
• IL-2 Battle of Moscow (8/21/16)
• Scourge of War Quatre Bras – Friedrich von Specht’s Though Afternoon (8/19/16)
• Graviteam Tactics Fall Blau – Second Battle Video AAR (8/19/16)
• Team Weber – Steel Beasts ProPE 4.0 – AAR, Part 1 (8/16/16)
• Steel Beasts ProPE 4.0 – Downtown with BMP-2s (8/10/16)

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Ludic Futurism (Brian Train)

• Hollandspiele: making the counters for Scheldt Campaign. (8/23/16)
• New Post on InsideGMT: Colonial Twilight Force Pieces and Structure (8/23/16)
• Scheldt Campaign: Evolution of a Cover (8/19/16)
• Interview in C3i 29 (8/18/16)
• Scheldt Campaign: Designer’s notes for the 2nd edition (8/17/16)
• Scheldt Campaign, 2nd edition, now available from Hollandspiele! (8/16/16)
• Ukrainian Crisis (Kryzyz Ukrainski) Polish rules (8/12/16)
• Coming soon: The Scheldt Campaign, 2nd Edition (8/11/16)

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VASSAL (News)

• New Module – Machi Koro (Deluxe) (8/19/16)
• New Module – Tuf (8/17/16)
• New Module – Tactics (8/14/16)
• Update – BAOR v1.02 (8/12/16)
• New Module – Citadel of Blood (8/10/16)

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War in a Box (Warren Abox)

• Hero Time! (8/22/16)
• Quick Hit – Last Familiar (8/17/16)
• A Little Something From The Closet (8/15/16)
• Religion in Castle Meatgrinder (8/10/16)

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The Players Aid (Grant A. Kleinhenz)

• Gen Con 2016 Game Recap: 13 Days by Ultra Pro (8/23/16)
• Interview with COIN Series Creator & Designer Volko Ruhnke – Part I (8/22/16)
• Unboxing Columbia Games’ Richard III (8/22/16)
• Gen Con 2016 Game Recap: Robotech RPG Tactics by Palladium Books (8/21/16)
• Unboxing They Come Unseen by Osprey Games (8/20/16)
• Best 3 Games with…Co-Op! (8/20/16)
• Update on my GMT Games P500 Addiction Therapy – A Battle that I’m Not Winning (8/20/16)
• Interview with Andreas “ode.” Odendahl about a New Proposed Game of Exploration – Cooper’s Island (8/18/16)
• Gen Con 2016 Game Recap: Cry Havoc by Portal Games (8/17/16)
• Kickstarter – Out Last: Westbrooke, a first look. (8/17/16)