LITTLE WARS

One of my long-standing hobbies is wargaming - here are some links to other useful gaming places and to some home-made games, scenarios and variants I have cooked up over the years.

• The latest news.
• Gaming-related links.
• Free complete games (BATTLE OF SEATTLE, PARANOID DELUSIONS), and free scenarios and variants for other games.
• Complete games I have designed and where they have been reviewed.

The Latest News

24 April 2009
Well, a bit more of an update:

I came up with a title for what I had been calling The As-Yet-Unnamed Poland 1939 Game, as it enters the P500 process with Lock n' Load (http://www.locknloadgame.com/). I decided to call it Summer Lightning, as a tip of the hat towards the first "blitzkrieg" (lightning war) campaign and because it jived with Autumn Mist, my Bulge game that was the first to use the system. Now, Balkan Gambit also uses this same system, so no I'm thinking perhaps I should change the title to Fall of the Balkans. And the OCD in me thinks this means I have to design another game with "spring" in the title.

Greek Civil War and the Balkan game are putt-putting along, and will be out by the middle of the year I suppose - all other things being equal. The game publishing industry is not exactly recession-proof, but neither has it imploded - the $22 you would spend for a nice professionally printed copy of one of my games, which you would then own and could play forever, wouldn't get you two movie tickets and a popcorn to share these days. But the margins are never very wide, as with all things connected with publishing.

Green Beret has been returned to me. Todd of Cool Stuff Unlimited has not and will not be able to finish the art and produce it due to other and frankly more important commitments in a timely way, so I have arranged to bring it out through Fiery Dragon after the other two have come out. Maybe end of 2009, more likely 2010. I first designed this game in 1995; patience is indeed a virtue.

In early March I went to Orlando Florida to attend "Connections", an annual conference run by mostly Air Force folks that concentrates on professional gaming and support to the military. It was pretty interesting, I thought hard and talked hard for several days but I'm still afraid that much of what needs to be explored will have to go on a computer screen before anyone will look at it. Well, forget Visual BASIC, I am going to put a version of Virtualia together that can be played using VASSAL, a computer program that allows people to play the same game remotely in real time over the Internet. Looks good and versatile but I need time to figure it out - could not get it done in time to show at Orlando. Maybe at a future MORS conference - I won't be going to either the MORS symposium in June (not only classified, it's in Kansas) or the Consimworld Convention in Tempe (need to spend the $$$ repairing the sundeck of the new house). And Hugo Chavez had better stop being so nice to President Obama, or I won't have any pseudo-historical underpinning left for the game! I'll have to rewrite the scenario for someplace else, that's all.

Oh, and finally here is a sort of a reissue: Fiery Dragon will be printing up a limited quantity (100 to 150 copies) of Battle for China Deluxe, that will comprise the basic 1937-41 game and the expansions to allow play for 1942-45 (Pacific War), 1946-49 (Civil War), and 1937-49 (Campaign Game). Besides being able to have everything produced to the same graphic standards, this version of the game also includes a revised and harmonized set of rules that to me streamline the game significantly. I'll be making the combined rules and charts available as a free download after the game is published by Decision Games in October/November 2009, with some homemade extension maps, so anyone who wants to can make their own stat-of-the-art copy.

22 January 2009
I suppose I ought to check in here at least every year or so, but the last six months have been personally busy. But here is Vott Giffs, with new and old designs:

Konarmiya was published in September 2008.

I invoked the "no progress" clause of my agreement with Lock n' Load for Balkan Gambit, reclaimed the design, and it will now be published by Fiery Dragon some time in 2009.

Ditto for Greek Civil War, in fact they may come out at the same time and there is the possibility that it will have a decent sized (17x20") map.

However, Lock n' Load would not let me go without giving them another game, and I have done one up for them - it is another iteration of the Autumn Mist system, only this time taken to Poland in 1939. Haven't named it yet. LnL is playtesting it in-house but it seems to work fine - just have to tweak the victory conditions to make it a reasonable contest among players.

In the spring and summer of 2008 I worked on a counterinsurgency game I called Virtualia (should have checked out the name as this is also the title of a series of computer porn films), about a thinly disguised post-Chavez Venezuela. I took my Tupamaro game as a start, and plumped it up a lot, but the system still works and is pretty interesting. I will try and create a port of this to VASSAL or some other kind of computer-aided game playing software, and not try to recreate the wheel programming all kinds of things in Visual BASIC. Hope to get some Official Types interested in this as it is probably commercially unsaleable.

21 February 2008
Well, it has been another while hasn't it? Here's some news about what's been going on, with new and old designs:

New games:

• Balkan Gambit: The Allied invasions of the Balkans that weren't. One of the great what-ifs of World War 2 in the Mediterranean theatre, at least to Hitler and the German High Command, was the possibility of an Allied invasion of Greece or Yugoslavia. In history, the Allies did nothing of the kind until Operation MANNA, the liberation of Greece in late 1944 after the German garrison had already withdrawn into Yugoslavia. But the Allies knew the Germans perceived such invasions as a credible threat and created several strategic deception plans, leading the Germans to move or keep critical troop formations in northern Italy and the Balkans when they would have been much more useful somewhere else. The game comes with four scenarios:

  - Operation BOARDMAN: In summer 1943, the British 8th Army is sent to liberate Greece and Crete. This was a deception to cover Operations HUSKY and AVALANCHE, the historical invasions of Sicily and Salerno.

  - Operation ZEPPELIN: In summer 1944, the notional British 12th Army attacks Greece and Albania while the US 7th Army attacks in Dalmatia, in concert with Soviet amphibious operations against the coast of Rumania and Bulgaria. This plan was part of Operation BODYGUARD, the overall deception plan to disguise Operations OVERLORD and ANVIL (the invasions of northern and southern France).

  - Operation GELIGNITE: Actual plans were drawn up to send the British 8th Army across the Adriatic in late 1944 or early 1945 to cut off the final retreat of German Army Group F and forestall any further Soviet advances towards northern Italy. The plan was shelved due to shortages of troops and landing craft.

  - Operation SLIVA (PLUM): Between 1948 and 1955, the possibility of a Soviet invasion to bring Yugoslavia back into the Soviet orbit remained the largest factor in Yugoslavia's perception of external threat. This hypothetical scenario frames such an invasion as an intervention in support of pro-Soviet Yugoslavs, in the name of “fraternal assistance”.

  The games uses the Autumn Mist system of formation activations and combat matrix, at a larger scale: 1 week/turn; 30 km/hex; division/brigade; 17x30" map and 280 counters. Many "chrome" rules to cover the fragmented human, political and physical terrain of the area, for example the very varied set of combatants: several flavours of Allies (Americans, British, Bulgarians, Canadians, Greeks, Poles, Soviets and Yugoslavs) including two flavours of partisans, and varied Axis types (Bulgarians again, Germans of course, Croat-Serb-Slovene collaborators, miscellaneous SS nasties). Supposed to be in P500 with Lock n'Load but has languished unknown with them.

• Konarmiya: The prequel to Freikorps. This covers the summer of 1920, uses the same system and map scale as Freikorps, and the maps match so you can play one big struggle for North East Central Europe. More map (22x17" and runs from Warsaw to Kiev) and fewer counters (192). Features the Polish Legion, Polish National Army, the Konarmiya (Budenny’s Cavalry Army) of course, volunteer Hungarians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, Pilsudski, Trotsky, and the usual mayhem and chaos. Published in spring 2008 by Fiery Dragon.
• Greek Civil War: Only game yet designed on the 1947-49 civil war, which was actually the third and final act of a conflict that began in 1941. One of the few times a Communist-inspired insurgency was beaten by a Western government. Uses a hybrid of the Algeria and Shining Path systems: the situation combined aspects of the war in

Reissues and Retreads:

• In spring 2008, Fiery Dragon released updated versions of Arriba Espana, Battle for China, Autumn Mist and Algeria. They feature bigger and cardboard boxes (the tin boxes are a thing of the past), thicker counters and better die-cutting. Battle for China is also being made available in a "deluxe" version that includes the expansion kit.
• No movement on getting a French translation of Algeria together.
• A revised map-and-counter version of Green Beret is in playtesting and will be published by Cool Stuff Unlimited in 2008.
• Battle for China was chosen by reader feedback in late 2006 to be re-re-published in Strategy & Tactics magazine, slated for issue #260 (October 2009).This will be the basic 1937-41 game: the expansion kit is now available as a free download on Boardgamegeek here.
• Arriba Espana was chosen by publisher fiat to be in issue #8 of World at War magazine, a new Decision Games publication, expected to appear November 2009.
• East in Shreds Redux: a substantial updating and rework of the original variant for The China War, postulating a seven-way civil war in China in the near future. See below.

Other Interesting Bits:

• I alluded below to how Algeria was being used by some folks in and near the Pentagon as a model for counterinsurgency warfare. In December 2007, I attended a workshop of the Military Operations Research Society on "International Perspectives in Irregular Warfare". One of the four working groups played a game, a slightly modified version of the Algeria game system with a new fictional scenario (a civil insurrection in a South Pacific island group, rife with Gilligan's Island references), and I made a presentation on Tupamaro and its follow-on designs to the "Counterterrorism" working group.

15 November 2006

• War Plan Crimson was released by Fiery Dragon just in time for me to take copies down to the MonsterCon convention in early June 2006. Not too many takers there, but there was a certain amount of press coverage here and abroad, thanks to some sympathetic journalists.
Algeria has excited some interest too, as a potential model for gaming the current Iraqi insurgency. Not quite the model I'd choose but I still think it's a good game, though - am working on getting a French translation of it published, as that war is still a very taboo subject over there.
• I designed a new game Paranoid Delusions, for the Third Microgame Design Contest (these things seem to come every four years), available for free download (see above).

4 May 2005

• Freikorps was released in May, I got a case of samples. Interesting cover art and the counters, while still thin, are die-cut, not perforated! This makes a big difference to some people. Interim website showing what is in the Little Tin Box is here: http://www.ottographicdesign.com/fiery/freikorps.htm. You can also see what the other games look like if you poke around.
• Unfortunately, I will not be going to the convention in Phoenix, nor to another big one in Los Angeles to which I had been invited. There's just too much going on right now in Real Life. Next year.

6 October 2004 Well, it's been a while.

• Autumn Mist arrived in May, just before I went down to Phoenix for MonsterCon 4.0, a very nice and proper gaming convention. I enjoyed myself greatly and found I even had a reputation to precede me. I even participated in a designer's roundtable on games about the Battle of the Bulge, a special theme of the convention.
• Battle for China arrived towards the end of September, and I am told Freikorps will be out by the end of the year. Right now we are discussing which ones to do next - I am thinking a double package of Civil Power and Battle of Seattle. The rules for both games are fairly short and the maps are small, so why not.
• Unfortunately, I must also report that the Microgame Design Group is closing down. See here. Kerry Anderson is going to school for his PhD in Meteorology, and the MDG has had a good run of eight years and thirty-odd (or should that be thrity odd) titles. I am sorry to see this go, as I knew I always had an outlet for my wonky ideas, but it was perhaps time for a change.

22 April 2004
On Monday I got a big heavy box in the mail, containing 20 copies of Arriba Espana. It has been published by Fiery Dragon Productions, a publishing outfit in Toronto that mostly does role-playing games material. The company will be bringing out four of my games in 2004, they did a very good job on the graphics and production. Perforated counters on thin card. The games are even packaged in small tin boxes, a first for this kind of thing. I'm quite proud of the way they look.

10 December 2002:

• Over the period of my recent convalescence, in response to an opportunity to get several of my games published in Spanish, I designed a division-level game on the Battle of the Bulge called Herbstnebel (one of the original codenames for the German offensive). This apparent departure from my usual habit of covering obscure topics (note: where I use the term obscure, I mean "obscure to Americans, who carry on most of the board wargaming in the world and are the largest buyers of my products") was occasioned by this opportunity, which has since fallen through, but it was the right vehicle for me to test a simple system for corps-level operations incorporating some new old ideas that I had had in the back of my mind for some time. The game is in playtesting right now, and when it's working I will see about designing a Manchuria 1945 game using the system, the obscure venue (see above note; though this campaign was the last of World War II, it was the third largest and saw truly remarkable applications of the operational art of war, as well as providing signal lessons in supporting large-scale operations at the end of tenuous logistical systems) that I had planned for it all along. I intend for both games to come out through Microgame Design Group.
• Meanwhile, Red Guard has finally been published by Schutze Games, complete with die-cut counters! I haven't seen the actual product yet but it's exciting. Not much popular reaction to it, and I don't expect much owing to the obscurity of the topic (again, see above note: the Chinese Cultural Revolution was perhaps the largest, most wrenching and difficult to understand political and mass event of the 20th Century).
• Oh, and Operation Whirlwind was released in September 2002. It has excited some interest from people who have played it. By the way, can you spot the graphic boo-boo on the cover? It's there for a reason....

21 August 2002:

• I have been informed that Operation Whirlwind has won the 2002 Microgame Design Contest, hands down! Hurrah for me!
• In other news, Canadian wargamer Bruce McFarlane has designed an expansion kit for War Plan Crimson called "The Maple Leaf Forever". It involves a spoiling attack during the immediate run-up to a game of WPC, involving veteran WW I cavalrymen on horses, tankettes the Canadian Army never had, and armored buses full of Canadian infantrymen disguised as hockey players. Like WPC, this variant was also inspired by an actual war plan called "Defence Scheme No. 1" drawn up in the 1920s. Jeez, what staff officers with time on their hands will get up to, eh?
• I also see that I failed to mention that this spring my Green Beret, my card game on the situation in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, 1964-5, has finally been published by Simulations Workshop. Sales are reportedly not brisk but there were a few people waiting for this one.
• And finally, Red Guard, my game on the Chinese Cultural Revolution, is about to come out Real Soon Now from Schutze Games. We just have to finish up the graphics. It may even have diecut counters, we'll see. Peter Schutze has also expressed an interest in my 1848 game, so that would place my entire oeuvre in print.
• Friend John Kula has designed a Petrograd 1917 game and I gave him a bit of help on it, so I think I've scratched that creative itch. I might come back to it later, but not right now. Casting about for a new idea, I am thinking perhaps the Greek Civil War using the Algeria system. It might work.
• Well, la-di-freakin'-dah... anyway, it has been a good year for designing, but unfortunately not for article writing. Have to get back to that.

27 June 2002:
Another new game, submitted to the 2002 Microgame Design Contest and to come out in August from Microgame Design Group. It's called OPERATION WHIRLWIND. It is a historical game on street battles between Hungarian rebels and Soviet invaders in November 1956. Area movement map of downtown Budapest, 140 backprinted counters, 8 hours per turn, roughly platoon to regiment scale. A tense contest, at least in terms of player victory. Optional forces include Special Forces teams and the 101st Airborne Division, jumping into battle! I've been chewing on this idea for some time, as you'll see by scrolling down the page, but it was the imminent deadline of May Day for the design contest that set me to finally carrying out the project.

From the beginning, I had planned to include an abstract Political Game. In the Political Game, the Hungarian player (representing the new revolutionary government, committed to political reform) attempts to reduce or eliminate the domination of Hungary by the Soviet Union diplomatically. My reading showed me that this was the only way for the Hungarian player to win a real (i.e. bloodless) victory, through securing some kind of "separate but equal" status inside the Warsaw Pact for his country - something similar to that enjoyed by Yugoslavia. This was not an impossible goal, but if and when negotiations failed, Nagy could try to win a moral victory of sorts in the Military Game by fighting the Soviet Army in the streets of Budapest, and the stances of the players in the Political Game at the point where the Soviet player intervened militarily would set up the conditions of the Military Game.

However, the abstract nature of the political game was the sticking point - I did develop a way to do it, but it seemed too abstract and gamey and so I have shelved it for his game. I might resurrect the idea for use in another design.

1 February 2002:
I've whipped up a quick variant for my Somalia game postulating a quick American strike into that unhappy land later in 2002, looking to uproot Al-Qaeda elements there. At the end of 2001, it really looked as if Somalia was next on the list, though investigations have not supported the rumours, which looked good. Anyway, try it out if you happen to have the game: Operation Sword o' Dubya!

22 January 2002:
Short update - over the Christmas holidays I received my sample copies of both War Plan Crimson and Battle for China, in #42 of Japanese Command. They both look pretty darn good! War Plan Crimson is raising a few eyebrows on ConsimWorld, if only because of the zaniness of the subject. Command did a beautiful job on the graphics for Battle for China - one 16x24" map and two 16x12" half-maps, 400 diecut backprinted counters, separate rules booklet with nice illustrations, wrapped up in a glossy 84 page magazine. I suppose this is as good as it gets... we'll see if we can't arrange more of the same.

Rash promise: if you go to the trouble of paying 3,780 yen for the magazine (well, more than that since that's the domestic price, even so that is over US$32) and its spiffy components, contact me and I will send you the English-language rules and charts you need to play.

Pensees en passant: kind of stalled on my other game projects. I have decided to rethink Red Guard once more; it's not quite there yet.

13 July 2001: Well, a few things have happened.

Big in Japan: In June I was approached by the editor of the Japanese edition of Command magazine (actually it's a separate magazine, the title is used under license but the two publications have gone different paths), on the strength I guess of a very positive full-page review that appeared in their March/April issue. Would I be interested in licensing them to produce a Japanese language version of Battle for China plus expansion kit for publication in the Jan/Feb 2002 issue of the magazine? Hell yes. They will redo the maps and the game will have diecut counters too! So this is my first semi-professional sale, and another example of a DTP game making it out of the Xerox-and-shirt-cardboard ranks, at least in Japan. I retain the copyright so the game is still available in English through Microgame Design Group. Another nice review of Pusan Perimeter appeared recently in Games Journal, another Japanese-language magazine, and perhaps there will be more to follow. Board wargaming is even more of a minority hobby in Japane than it is in the USA: Japanese Command has a circulation of about 1,000 copies, no more. But otaku are otaku, and they will not be denied, and that makes my pathetic little ego happy.

Do-over: I've also gone back and done revisions to two of my earlier games, Red Guard and Tupamaro. These were two designs I liked but the systems just didn't seem to work out. I made a substantial revision to Red Guard in getting rid of the map and cleaned a lot of grit out of Tupamaro, as well as tightening up the rules language. I think I will also include short articles I've written on the Cultural Revolution and the Tupamaro movement with the games, as was done with Shining Path, due to the obscurity of the subjects (to Americans, at any rate).

New ideas, stupid moves: Other projects I have hatched in the last 2-3 months include an attempt at designing a four-player Barbarossa game where the players are in limited competition with each other, still too much of a numbers-and-hexes wargame so no chance of using those cute little "German game" wood and plastic components. I'm stalled or to too busy to with mundane things to make much progress with the Petrograd 1917 and Budapest 1956 games. But they'll come when they're ready.

14 March 2001:
Gee, it's been a while but I have stayed busy. Algeria came out in December 2000, and we have, as always, had positive feedback, as well as confirmation from a couple of French gamers that this is the first strategic simulation game on the war ever designed in any language. I was also struck with the idea of doing a hypothetical US-invades-Canada-1930s game in February, and it came together very quickly (one good thing about these alt-hist games is that you don't have to be too anal-retentive about the Order of Battle). See below for details.

I didn't have much time in 2000 to do much else besides Algeria, since I was busy editing Strategist, the monthly zine of the now-defunct Strategy Gaming Society. It was fun but one year was enough. If you want to see what it looked like, go to Magweb and some back issues ought to be on display.

So what should I do in 2001? Here are some ideas I've been thinking about for games, normally to be done to Microgame Design Group physical standards:

• WINTER PALACE - a card game on the situation in Petrograd in 1917, between the Tsar's abdication and someone (not necessarily the Bolsheviks) getting a grip on power
• EOKA - British vs. Greek Cypriot terrorists, 1955-6
• ALAS HELLAS - the Greek Civil War, using the Algeria system (please help me think of a better title!)
• ???

30 August 00:
The Microgame Co-op has been forced to change its name. Basically, the Alberta provincial government (the Co-op is based in Edmonton) has legislation concerning the use of the term "co-operative" or derivatives thereof: Kerry could have continued using the name but only if we got things together like a ten member board of directors, annual general meetings, bylaws, registered status, and hefty and expensive tax-related changes. The game wasn't worth the candle so we renamed our organization the Microgame Design Group (MDG). Perhaps not the most titillating name (there were many suggestions) but this shouldn't get us in any more trouble. Too bad we had to give up on five years of name recognition, though.

10 August 00:
Reorganized this page with anchors as it was getting a bit long to scroll down.

31 July 2000:
Peter Schutze of Schutze Games in Australia has just released full-colour DTP versions of four of my designs! The lucky four are Power Play, Pusan Perimeter, Somalia, and Tupamaro. The treatment he has given these closely resembles Microgame Design Group's- you are getting a quality item for not much outlay. Prices are variable: US$5-7 including airmail postage to anywhere in the world. He also takes credit cards. These are the first four offerings from Schutze Games, but Peter will be putting out more designs by other people later. GO THERE NOW and check it out! Schutze Games

30 July 00:
posted Desert Leader and Steppe Leader, two comprehensive variants for the Panzerblitz/Panzer Leader/ Arab-Israeli Wars series of games, to cover the war in the desert 1940-43 and on the Manchurian steppe.

1 June 00:
Posted Battle of Seattle on the site for free download.

Gaming Links

Simulacrum

Irreverent and quarterly magazine for board wargame collectors and other obsessives. Edited by big buddy John Kula. I have written more reviews for this periodical than I have grasping members.

The Maverick's Classic Microgame Museum

Nice commentary on the Microgame fad of the 1980s, the precursor of DTP, and a good gallery of covers.

Microgame HQ

More stuff on Microgames. Some good links, too.

Web-Grognards

Probably the best all-around resource for gaming links, errata, sources, etc..

Gamer Cadre

The home page of Joe Miranda, game designer and editor of Strategy & Tactics magazine.

Consimworld.com

A good place for discussions on many gaming topics, news, contacts and more.

Hey! Lemme outta here, you warmonger!