Line of Fire: a fast Interview with Lee Brimmicombe-Wood

 

 

 

Mr Brimmicome-Wood didn't send through a photograph, so here's
a still of Christopher Plummer from The Battle of Britain (1969)
wearing a RCAF flight jacket. I'm sure the resemblance is striking.

I asked at the end of a recent post for readers to mention which GMT games they would most like to see reprinted. Almost immediately upon publishing, Lee Brimmicome-Wood’s Downtown: Air War Over Hanoi, 1965-1972 (GMT Games, 2004) was mentioned. This led to some further discussion elsewhere, and I realised something; speculation about a possible – or hoped-for – reprint of Downtown comes up in online conversations roughly every six months or so by my reconning.  

Now, I’m trying to spend less time on social media, but I happen to follow Mr Brimmicome-Wood’s posts on Facebook. I appreciate his mix of insight and humour on any number of subjects. So, after literal years of listening to the undirected supplications of wargamers for a Downtown reprint, I’d try going to the source and messaged him. Mr Brimmicome-Wood answered quickly and graciously. This led to another question, then another. Eventually, I sent him a couple of extra questions and a promise to knock the whole conversation into something like an interview. So, what follows is – hopefully – a logical narrative pieced together from random questions. I’ve kept a light editorial hand, and I’d like to thank Mr Brimmicome-Wood for his time, attention, and candour.

 

-----

 

AFG: Designers generally begin as players. I have a couple of questions; what were your formative gaming experiences, and, what led you into game design in the first place?

 

LBW: I guess I got into games at the arse-end of the 1970s. I loved board games in general, though the selection back then was fairly thin, along the lines of Formula 1 (Waddingtons, 1962, Risk (Parker Brothers, 1959), Admirals (Parker Brothers, 1972), and suchlike.

My brother subscribed to Airfix Magazine – the both of us having a love of plastic kits and soldiers and the like. I was already being pulled into the miniatures hobby by friends and schoolmates. However, the magazine ran intriguing adverts for SPI games, though I had no clue where to buy them. Then one day I ran into a selection of SPI titles in Hamley's toy store in London, and BANG! There went my pocket money for years to come.

Some of the appeal of the SPI titles was the graphic design and physical systems. Redmond Simonsen remains something of a god-like figure for me, and I'm still a sucker for that SPI 'look'. I mention this, as it was very influential for when I started to get into designing games.

Another huge influence on me was the Metagames titles for the late '70s, such as G.E.V. (Metagaming Concepts, 1978) or Olympica (Metagaming Concepts, 1978). There was something very punk about the DIY way they produced small game titles on a budget. Though their graphics were scrappier, I think that cheap-and-fast ethic inculcated the idea that anyone could do this. It set me up for later.

Later, in the early internet era, I gravitated into the circle of J.D. Webster, who had designed Air Superiority (Game Designers’ Workshop, 1987) for GDW in the '80s. Seeing him work further encouraged me to think about design. Particularly as we tinkered with and modded J.D.'s designs. Later, I was to work with Tony Valle on early iterations of the Birds of Prey (Ad Astra Games, 2008) air combat game.

I think the main hurdle to clear before my own design work was learning how to wrangle software graphics packages such as Freehand and Illustrator. Once I had those in hand, I was off to the races.

 

AFG: Your first published game was Downtown: Air War Over Hanoi, 1965-1972. The game went on to take the Charles S. Roberts Award for Best Modern Wargame, and the CSR Award for Best Graphics, and the James Dunnigan Award for Design Excellence. After that, you went on to design a string of highly regarded games; The Burning Blue: The Battle of Britain, 1940 (GMT Games, 2006 – built on the chassis of Downtown), Nightfighter: Air Warfare in the Night Skies of World War Two (GMT Games, 2011), and Bomber Command:The Night Raids (GMT Games, 2012), all flight-themed, but each bringing something new and different to the table. Can you discuss your design process; that is, how you approach each subject and how your design concepts evolve?

 

LBW: I often begin with imagining what the game looks like on the table, and then work back from there. Downtown was part-inspired by an old title named Rolling Thunder (Commando Wargames, 1979, which was truly an awful, near-unplayable game, but with intriguing components. What I designed was basically the game I wished Rolling Thunder had been.

Similarly, Wing Leader started with the side views (themselves inspired by a Mike Spick article back in a mid-'70s Airfix Magazine about wargaming air combat in side-view). Then I worked back to what the game would be.

The advantage of being a designer/artist is that I can keep the totality of the game in my head at all times - both rules and physical systems. So, a lot is about juggling those and trying to prove them out.

 

AFG: Anytime a conversation between wargamers turns to what games they’d like to see get a reprint, Downtown always comes up, at least in the conversations I’m privy to. Speculation is rife and fingers have often been pointed. Could you please set the record straight on where a Downtown reprint stands?

 

LBW: When GMT and I previously discussed a reprint of Downtown, some years ago, progress foundered on a small but knotty production issue. It's probably something we might have been able to overcome, but it put a temporary stop on things.

And then I got sick, in a way that permanently took a lot out of me. I ran out of puff just around the time we were finishing up Wing Leader and I had to walk away from board wargames for a while. Doing more work on Downtown, trying to tie it and all the expansion material up into a reprint edition, started to look like substantial effort.

Then add to this a feeling that this is not the game I'd design today. Honestly, the original game has some serious flaws. I'd prefer to strip a lot out and make some substantial changes. After surgery it wouldn't be quite the same game again.

Anyway, I'm left with a sense of a project that feels just a bit too large to take on, given my health, and that also I'm being tempted away from this by other projects that are more interesting than a plain ol' retread.

So, I find myself stalled on Downtown, and it's honestly all about me, not GMT. They have been stand-up guys. Won't hear a word said against them. If you or anyone else wants to curse anyone, feel free to curse me.

 

AFG: Fair enough, but would you consider working with a developer, or handing the project over to somebody else and remain in a consulting role to see the project move forward? Anecdotally, there seems to be a pretty eager market for the game.

 

LBW: Please don't ask me that. The problem for me is that I would not be able to keep my hands off it. The project would suck me in. It's all-or-nothing; there's no halfway house.

As for the market, that's very sweet of people, but wouldn't they rather play a better game than some now-ancient kitchen-sink design? I think there's a superior title to be made on the subject. If I was to ever revisit Vietnam I'd rather make something new, that reflects decades of thinking on the subject, than kick out a golden oldie from when I was a nugget designer. 

One of my all-time favourite game covers; Wing Leader: Victories.
Courtesy of Dimitry (BGG).

AFG: You mentioned Wing Leader earlier. I was thinking about Jerry White talking about how Skies above the Reich (GMT Games, 2018) and Storm Above the Reich (GMT Games, 2021) were originally going to be a single game, but during development the game became just too large not to be broken into two titles. I suspected it might have come earlier with Wing Leader. Was Wing Leader conceived as a single game, then split into two parts, or were Wing Leader: Victories (GMT Games, 2015 and Wing Leader: Supremacy (GMT Games, 2016) developed as separate products from the get-go?

 

LBW: They were separate things from the start. When it became clear from a cursory spreadsheet of potential aircraft that a single product would not generate the scenarios I wanted, splitting the game into separate products by time period was the obvious step. That said, I had data cards on the full panoply of warplanes from an very early stage. I wish I'd just put more effort into testing the later era before shipping the first.

 

AFG: Your latest published game is Red Storm: The Air War Over Central Germany, 1987 (GMT Games, 2019). A reprint is currently available for preorder, along with a second expansion, Red Storm: Southern Flank (GMT Games, ~2027) (the first expansion, Red Storm: Baltic Approaches – The Air War Over the Baltic, 1987 (GMT Games, 2022) is still in print). Does Southern Flank mark the wrapping up of the series, or do you envisage visiting further contested zones?*

 

LBW: I have to correct you there. I've had nothing to do with the Red Storm series; that's the work of other hands. I don't even own a copy. I was involved in the very early stages of Elusive Victory (GMT Games, 2009), with Terry Simo, but then I disengaged to go do The Burning Blue. Since then other folks have carried that flame forward.

I think I'm on record as being concerned about these games. Downtown was very much conceived as a game of alpha strikes against an Integrated Air Defence System. The system was designed to do a very discrete job. When people tried to push it to show both sides launching strikes simultaneously, I had a bit of a 'whoa' response. I think that breaks the system somewhat and potentially leads to weirdness. I would not have designed that. I'd be interested to see what players think.

AFG: So, are you working on anything new at the moment?

LBW: "I thought I was out, but they dragged me back in for one last job."

Actually, it's more than one job. For some time now I've been involved with Bruce Maxwell's Air & Armor (Compass Games, 2024) operational WW3 game system. This is another of those classic games that I played a lot of in the '80s but has been given new life. My role here is somewhat reduced, mostly doing terrain analysis (i.e., the map layouts) for the expansion modules, along with a bunch of research and sundry design input. These include Air & Armor: V Corps (Compass Games, 2026_ which has only just shipped, and covers the classic Fulda Gap scenario. Interestingly, it vividly shows the problems the infantry-light US 3rd Armored Division would have had in the dense terrain of the so-called gap. Another expansion, Air & Armor: BAOR (Compass Games, ~2028 - no link available at this point), covers (British) I Corps, and is fascinating, given that the British are a very infantry-heavy force in some very diverse terrain. There's yet a third 'Air & Armor' project in the works that's unannounced, but very exciting, and in its own way quite eye-opening.

In addition to this I have also been collaborating with Sapper Studio on a recently-announced Falklands game, titled Razor's Edge (Sapper Studio, ~2027). I'm doing the graphics and physical systems for this, but have also contributed to the design, notably of the air system. The air war over the Falklands has some notable features about it, and my contribution is to show how the Argentine air arms were very much a weapon where you needed to keep your powder dry until the right moment. Going off half-cocked before the landings were located was a recipe for failure.

Okay, you have my attention now.

AFG: Last question; do you have a game or maybe a couple of games – yours or somebody else’s – that you find that you find yourself coming back to again and again, not necessarily a masterpiece of design, but one you really enjoy, or that scratches a gaming itch?

 

LBW: Hmm. StarForce: Alpha Centauri (SPI, 1974) is not just one of my earliest wargame purchases, but remains a classic for me. It's a rare space game that discards all that 'Pacific carrier battles in space' nonsense beloved of too many SF games, and also naturally incentivises englobing tactics in three dimensions. It was also 'woke' in 1975, so annoys all the usual suspects, which I regard as an enormous plus.

Speaking of games warranting reprints... Photo courtesy Charles Picard (BGG).

Then there's SPI's CityFight (SPI, 1979), which is a clumsy and overcomplex design on a really important subject. However, it tackles it earnestly, and with some really great design ideas. I'm still waiting for the definitive urban warfare game to emerge (no, Urban Operations (NUTS! Publishing, 2017) is not it), but CityFight has some good things going for it with its double-blind play. It was also co-designed by the gay icon 'Donnie the Punk'. Go look him up, he's a legend.

Finally, I have to mention John Butterfield's RAF: the Battle of Britain, 1940 (Decision Games, 2009). Now John is easily twice the designer I'll ever be. He's now had three bites at the Battle of Britain cherry, to my one, and they all have something interesting to say. The second edition of RAF was particularly interesting, because I sold John on an idea regarding the Stabilization Scheme which he adopted, and it works like gangbusters. RAF remains an elegant, superbly engineered titled on a favourite subject. I wish I was as good a designer as John.

* This was a case of lazy research on my part; Mr Brimmicome-Wood gets design credits for Red Storm and its expansions on Boardgamegeek.com, and I took that at face value. The box covers present the game being designed by Douglas Bush, with a credit for the system design given to LBW. BGG is not a tool of finesse, and I don't have a valid excuse for not looking further than the front page. I would like to apologise to Mr Bush for screwing this up in such a big way and diminishing his notable accomplishment with Red Storm.

 

 

State of Play: Commands & Colors: Napoleonics - Wagram, 4-5 July, 1809 (Part 1)

 

 

French advance repelled (Yay, Team!).

The Austrian Army expansion (GMT Games, 2013) for Commands & Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) offers twenty scenarios, split across two time periods. The first five present battles fought during the War of the Third Coalition (1805-06, although all of the battles presented occurred in ’05), and fifteen scenarios covering the War of the Fifth Coalition. Of these, Half of theme are shared across two battles; five battles make up some of the constituent parts of the Battle of Eggmühl (which I’ve written about recently), and the final three scenarios cover the Battle of Wagram. I this post we’ll look at the first two scenarios in the Wagram triptych.

 

Wagram – 5 July 1809 (Gross-Enzersdorf)

Gross-Enzersdorf is a classic holding/delaying action; Napoleon had pulled a ruse on Archduke Charles, convincing the Austrian leader he intended to cross the Danube at the same point he had on his first incursion into the region, resulting in the Battle of Aspern-Essling (a month after Eggmuhl and about six weeks prior to Wagram, in which the French forces were repulsed and had to withdraw). In fact, Napoleon brought his troops across the river further downstream, transferring 150,000 men under the veil of night, meticulously executed logistical feat for the books.

From the scenario description: 

“When Charles realized he had been outflanked, he rapidly retreated to the Wagram position, leaving the VI Corps and the Advanced Guard to fight a delaying action. Taking up a defensive position around Gross-Enzersdorf, Nordmann’s Advance Guard began fortifying the village.”

While deploying the bulk of his army, Napoleon gave the task of clearing the march ahead to Massena’s IV Corps. It’s here we pick up the action, as the IV Corps light regiments begin there push toward Gross-Enzersdorf.

Set up at start.

I say this every time, but Gross-Enzersdorf is a tough scenario for the Austrians. It’s not a cakewalk for the French either, if they can push the enemy out of the town hexes and infiltrate their own troops, they can potentially nab two-thirds of the Victory Banners necessary for a win. In an earlier go at the scenario, T, again playing the French, lucked out with a Grand Maneuvre, and managed to place two French Light infantry units in the two vacant Gross-Enzersdorf hexes in the very first card play of the game, but that was one of those fluky card-things you get in Commands & Colors games. The town is lightly defended, with the bulk of the defending Austrian forces further back from the board latitude of the town, but the geography works against a coup de force, limiting the avenues for rushing advances.

To be honest, progress was slow and tedious. I tried to recreate a blow by blow of the play, but I nearly dozed off twice. So, dear reader, I will summarise the progress in a few board snaps and captions.

After two full turns of push and pull, the first banner fell to the Austrians. The whole
game would be like Max Weber’s description of the work of politics,
“The slow boring of hard boards.”

By round six the Austrians had taken a convincing lead (4-1; due to a quirk in the scenario
rules, I earned one of those Banners by playing a Scout card – this was the first time either
of us had won a banner by playing a Scut card in probably half-a-dozen plays-through of
Gross-Enzersdorf). Apart from not seriously attempting to take the town-hexes, T’s
overall operational strategy was solid, but whatever he had done to piss off the
dice-gods, they weren’t over it yet.

By round nine, T had nearly evened up the count, partly through grabbing a piece of
Gross-Enzersdorf and its accompanying temporary Banner.

At the end of round eleven it was still anyone’s game; the French had lost their foothold
 in Gross-Enzersdorf, but earned back that banner in the Austrian left, where there were
now dome low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking. One good attack could easily clean up
two banners for a French victory.

In all, the game took twelve full rounds to reach a conclusion. What could have been a swift French victory (assuming better die-roll results) turned into a slow, exhausting grind, coming own to the very last Banner. T should have been able to pull it off with his Assault Right Flank, with two chances at an elimination with his Light Cavalry attacking Mayer’s crippled Line infantry set on the baseline (roll of three dice, one retreat (ignored) and Mayer survived), and his other (leaderless) Cavalry attacking the remnants of an Austrian Foot battery holding the high ground on the Austrian Left (Combined Arms with a Foot Artillery unit for four dice, but no hits, then pushed back a space with a retreat result in the defending roll).

End state.

With my last play, I used an Attack Right Flank to finally put to rout (eliminate) the half-strength and unsupported Line hanging forward on the French Left, ending the battle (until the following day, at least). French progress delayed, the action was won, but the battle only prolonged until a couple of nights later, when we moved on to the McDonald’s Square scenario.

French orders played.

Austrian orders played.

-----

 

Wagram – 6 July 1809 (McDonald’s Square)

Some action on the Austrian Left (round three).

On the 6^th, Charles knew French superiority of numbers would win the day if something wasn’t done to equate the imbalance. Having repelled small probing attacks in the late afternoon of the 5^th, he took the bold step of attempting an envelopment attack on the fielded French army before Napoleon could bring his force up to full strength. Charles was a competent, even gifted military leader, but was let down by the Austrian army’s internal inertia and lack of good staff-work and reliable communications that undid his manoeuvre. The French, recognising the French (with their superior communications), responded with a radical manoeuvre, the mobile mega-square of numerous formations that could move practically as one.

McDonald’s Square gives the French player a potentially insurmountable advantage on the field. So long as the “square” (more of an ellipsis on the board) maintains cohesion, any movement order given to a single unit will activate all eight units.

This session brought out one of the things I really love about C&C Napoleonics; each scenario has a seemingly infinite capacity to surprise. McDonald’s Square has seven-banner victory threshold, not a high bar but a banner higher than Gross-Enzersdorf. Generally, playing the Austrians, there can be a tendency to turtle a little bit, to wait out the French until they come into range and try to thin their ranks with ranged fire before engaging in close combat. This is especially true in the 1809 scenarios, where the French almost always enjoy superiority of Leaders, overall unit numbers, and a larger hand-size. But the Austrians can’t afford to do that in this scenario. While in their (roughly) square formation, McDonald’s infantry command of eight Line units move as one. Any manoeuvre order that is given to move one of them can move all of them until the formation is broken. This manoeuvrability combined with, say, a Give Them Cold Steel order could be devastating for the Austrians, so there is an impetus to try to break up McDonald’s Square if possible, before it gets too close.

 

Set-up at start. McDonald's Square is clearly positioned straddling
the French Center and Left.

T began with an Assault Center order. Normally he would be able to order up to his hand-size in units (in this case, six) to deploy and engage if able. This brought Macdonald’s Square up a space, which put them in musket range of the Center defending line. Some desultory fire reduced two of my line units and ended his turn. I responded with a Recon in Force. This allowed me to bring to bear volleys on two of the frontmost units of McDonald’s Square, thinning their ranks but not breaking their discipline, and to bring my Cuirassiers up off the back-line on the Austrian Left into a position where they may be able to do some good.

No plan survives contact with the enemy, but T stuck to his, ordering a bayonet charge (which, in truth, if he had committed in the first round, would have probably been devastating to the defenders and may have shortened the game even further). The dice didn’t go so well for the French, with hits, but never enough to finish a unit. The Austrian return fire was withering, but just as inconclusive. I played a Bombard, firing into one of the depleted French Line (under the command of Lamarque), but too only a single block (in the confusion of battle, I forgot to manoeuvre my other battery up from the Austrian baseline to the hex between Süssenbrunn and the little copse on the Austrian Right). At the end of the second round, McDonald’s Square was in complete disarray and all four of the Austrian Grenadier units had been reduced – two to a single block – but still no banners had been exchanged. That would be rectified in the next round.

End round two. The Austrian lines are scattered, but so is McDonald's Square.
Still, no banners exchanged.

Round three opened with the French playing a Leadership card. This allows any units attached to a Leader to be activated and to fight with an additional die, either in Ranged Fire or Melee. In the resulting exchanges, the French finished off two of the depleted Grenadier units (though Prochaska escaped capture, retreating to the back-line Artillery battery) and reduced a third to a single block.

My impoverished hand offered only poor options for ordering units. Another Recon in Force served better than I had any right to expect, allowing me to take out two of T’s reduced Line units, and to capture Lamarque for a total of three banners, as well as seeing off an incursion on my left by an advancing French infantry unit, halving its strength and routing it (pushing it back a row with a Retreat result). My next card draw proved fateful, and would decide the game.

T's next – and as it happens, final -command was Forward. This allows two units in each section to advance and engage the enemy. T brought up four of his Cavalry squadrons from the back; none could engage in this turn, but I suspected he had a Cavalry charge in his hand which would have wreaked havoc across all three sectors and probably earned him the game. Two Infantry advanced on the French Right and Center, one of them taking out a third Grenadier unit for a third Austrian Banner.

Austrian Bayonet Charge, Ordered units circled in yellow, target units in red.

I replied with the card I’d picked up at the end of the third Round. Bayonet Charge doesn’t offer additional dice for attacks, but it does allow up to four units – regardless of their sector of origin – to move up to two spaces and still engage in melee combat. I had already made a provisional plan during T’s turn of which units I would bring to play. It may have gone badly, and I certainly didn’t think this one card would be the decider, but I thought O might gain a banner or two so I didn’t feel so embarrassed when the French overran the Austrian remnants in the next two rounds.

Reader, the dice gods smiled down upon the field of battle, and many French were routed that day. I worked across the field, right to left. The intact Austrian Line formation closest to Süssenbrunn attacked Broussier’s reduced Line infantry, clearing them from the field, though Broussier himself evaded capture.

End state.

The most brazen attack was committed by the remnants of the Grenadier regiment that had been forced to retreat sell back from the fighting. Keen to earn back their honour, they attacked Lamarque’s reduced regiment, vanquishing their rivals and capturing Lamarque and his staff (for two more banners). The third banner came with another fresh Austrian Line unit pushing up into the mouth of the of the IV Corps combined battery, taking out a half-strength French Line unit that had already been bested once that day. The final move was a bloodied Grenadier regiment under D’Asper, mounting the short rise to face their opponents further along the crest. Blows were exchanged, and the result in that quarter remained undecided, but that was of no consequence.  With the annihilation of three formations and the capture of General Lamarque (who, in this alternate timeline, would not proceed to lead ten thousand troops to put down the Royalist uprising in Vendée), the Austrians carried the day, the French retreating to regroup and contemplate trying their luck elsewhere.

Orders played (French left).

The Commands & Colors system often rewards good tactics and keeping an eye on the prize. T’s tactics were generally solid in this game, but he was too enchanted with McDonald’s oversized formation to realise his other options. He could have used his Cavalry to take all three villages, which would have scored him three easy Victory Banners. He may have had trouble keeping those, but that would have given me more to think about and taken my focus off the Center. But sometimes it just comes down to. Literally, the turn of a card. Even at one Banner ahead, I felt like it would be a clear French victory in sixth or seventh round, until I picked up that Bayonet Charge and saw the possibilities. This is why I’m so fond of this system, and the Napoleonics flavour in particular.

Line of Fire: a fast Interview with Nadir Elfarra

 

Dawn's Early Light: The War of 1812. Still my favourite CDG.

Nadir Elfarra is a prolific graphic designer in the wargaming apace, with over a hundred art credits on Bordgamegeek.com. I first became cogniscant of his work in David McDonough’s Dawn’s Early Light: The War of 1812 (Compass Games, 2020) – while not the prettiest map I’ve ever come across (Nicolas Roblin’s map for This War Without an Enemy (NUTS! Publishing, 2020) takes that gong, but I’d definitely put the Dawn’s Early Light board in my top five , every visual element in that game helps immerse the players in the era and the situation of the conflict. After that, I began seeing Mr Elfarra's work everywhere, it seemed, particularly in Compass and Decision Games releases. 

I possess an abiding interest in visual arts and art history (readers may have picked this up from my extended discourses on some game covers), and I have a growing curiosity over how a game’s artwork impacts the playability of a game, using an often purely visual medium to convey information crucial to play or to understanding of a particular historical situation of course of events. I took the opportunity to reach out to Mr Elfarra and quiz him about his career in wargames and the state of the Art of our shared hobby.

-----

A Fast Game: Thanks for agreeing to an interview. Can you tell us a little about your path to becoming a professional artist and how you came to work in the wargame sector?

 

Nadir Elfarra: I studied architecture at university so the art / drawing we all do as kids got “upgraded” through that program.  Even though I didn’t stay in the architecture industry, I maintained some competency with graphics programs of the day (mostly Adobe Illustrator).  I have been playing war-games since I was 10-12 years old, with most of that being Squad Leader (Avalon Hill, 1975) / Advanced Squad Leader (Avalon Hill, 1985).  The Southern California ASL club was very active in design and playtesting, so we were often creating art for those projects. 

When Avalon Hill announced they would no longer be supporting ASL, the independent development of ASL products took off.  My first “professional” project was as publisher (art and layout) for Brian Abela’s Baraque de Fraiture: Parker’s Crossroads (Front Line Productions, 1996) design (a scenario pack with an historical map, first published independently, then republished by Critical Hit). 

Front Line Productions' release of Baraque de Fraiture, courtesy of Karl Deckard (BGG).

Years later I met a local ASL player who spent a lot of time solo-playing, and he had a number of homemade counters for aide-memoire purposes (he left his in-progress games set up for long periods of time). I knew I could do a better job on those homemade counters, so I made some for him.  He suggested that I speak to a friend of his who worked for Decision Games at that time, and they decided to give me a chance on counter-art for some of their magazine games. That led to a long-standing relationship with DG that continues to this day, however it’s been exclusively counter art for them.

I subsequently reached out to some other game companies to see if there was interest in bringing me on for more counter art. I got a few nibbles, then Compass Games agreed to have me work on a magazine game for them. In their case, however, it was required that I create all of the art, not merely the counters.  That led to a map-and-counters for the first game, and subsequently maps, counters, charts, rulebook, box art, etc. from then on.  Other companies have used a cafeteria approach with my work - picking and choosing which tasks I’m assigned on their projects, while other artists handle the rest. 

 

AFG: When you take on a game commission, how does it work? Does the publisher have a clear brief for what they are looking for, or are you given more of a free hand in the approach, or does it vary from project to project? How closely do you work with the game’s designer on things like the presentation style?

 

NE: In my case it always starts with the publisher reaching out to see if I am available for a project.  Generally speaking, the designer has created a play-test version of their game and I use those materials for the initial inspiration since they reflected the designer’s thinking / aspirations. The next step is typically a sample of art to ensure everyone is on the same page before serious hours are invested in creating art.  This process has been successful to date with there rarely being any complete do-overs.  It should be noted that my art is geared towards war-games rather than Euro style games which tend to be far more complex in terms of art - some of those are well above my skill set.

AFG:  Your work has covered a pretty diverse range of historical periods and scales of conflict, from (Imperium Romanum (Decision Games, 2019)) to the near future (Putin Moves South (Decision Games, 2018), but much of your work has been on World War II-era projects. Do you have a particular period or periods you enjoy or prefer to work with, or do you prefer to mix it up? Also, do you have a scale of game you refer to work in?

NE: The industry is focused heavily on WW2 and later eras of conflict, so naturally that’s where a lot of the art is focused, too. It doesn’t hurt that my own areas of interest in military history largely align with that.  That focus enables me to remain accurate (something very important to me) in the depictions I use, etc. I feel like it’s a value-add proposition for designers that I know enough of the history to avoid mistakes that their players would notice. When it comes to other eras (e.g., Imperium Romanum) I try to do a lot of research to ensure accuracy but must then rely on the designer and/or their play-testers as a final check that I’ve gotten it right.

So, to answer your question more directly, personally I prefer WW2 to Vietnam and at the lower tactical scale, but that’s not from an art perspective, it’s just my area of historical interest. In terms of art, I wouldn’t exclude any eras - it’s whatever the publisher would like me to work on (e.g., I recently completed a project for Compass Games set in ancient Rome*).

 

Countersheet for Balkans 1944 - World at War #81 (Decision Games, 2022),
courtesy of Robert "Smitty" Smith (BGG). 

AFG: Wargaming isn’t a very large industry. It seems like there may be thirty or forty artists doing most of the heavy lifting for maybe 80% of the publishers (with a few of them doing double-duty as designers as well), but at the same time there are some amazing artists coming in from outside the field doing really good work.

I guess there are a couple of questions here. Do you think it’s a good thing for the hobby for journeyman artists to dabble in wargames? And could you point to some wargame artists, past or present, that have had an influence on your craft?

 

NE: I certainly see no problem with people engaging in creating art for the war-gaming community, whether for fun or for profit. After all, that’s precisely how I started and transitioned.  In the last few years, the development of AI has opened the field up to many more people, but with some backlash from the community who don’t want to see human artists replaced by AI.  We’ll have to see how that shakes out. In that vein, I have only used AI on one project and that was for some background images on a couple of charts, not primary artwork. Even in that case I adjusted the art, so it was a mix of human+AI.

In terms of artists whose work I find inspirational, I would point to Craig Grando (Against the Odds) who sadly seems to have stepped away from the industry, Iván Cáceres who has since moved from print to digital games, Nicolás Eskubi who has done so much great work for Multi-Man Publishing (MMP), and Nils Johansson who is probably at the pinnacle of war-game art right now. Obviously, all of our art grew out of that inspired by earlier generations of artists such as SPI’s Redmond Simonsen.

 

AFG: You’re also an accomplished game designer yourself. Can you tell us about your Advanced Squad Leader scenario design projects? Have you done any other design work you can talk about? Also, when working on something with a decades-long visual legacy, like ASL, how important do you think it is for an artist to have an affinity with the subject of the product? Is it harder or easier to work with an established property with a recognisable visual style?

 

NE: I can’t help but think in game terms when I read military history, so whenever I’m reading (or listening) to a book, I find myself thinking how I would create that setting or event in a board game.  As such there are dozens of half-baked designs on my laptop or buried in my desk somewhere, from man-to-man to ASL-scale to MMP’s Grand-Tactical-Scale (about as large a scale as I consider).

Edson's Ridge, mid-play on VASSAL. As well as his artistic work, Mr Elfarra has
  four design credits listed on BGG.

As noted above, the first ASL project I worked on was Brian Abela’s design, but concurrently with that I worked on my own projects with the Edson's Ridge HASL included in MMP’s Operation Watchtower (MMP, 2003) being the one that got published. I’ve mentioned an interest in accuracy and one thing that illustrates that in the Edson’s Ridge project is the map.  Common examples of maps in official histories show then USMC’s left flank holding more firmly than the right, but the terrain depicted in those sources leaves one wondering why. Through correspondence with a veteran of Guadalcanal who was working as a volunteer at the USMC’s museum in Quantico, I obtained a post-war hand-drawn map that was used to help the Japanese locate their MIA war dead.  That map, made with the luxury of time and not under combat conditions, showed the steep ridge line hidden beneath the jungle canopy extending to the USMC left flank. The USMC positions shown on most maps match the ridge exactly, though the ridge isn’t shown, explaining why the Japanese had so much more trouble there.  To my knowledge, my map is the only game map that accurately depicts that ridgeline.

I try to bring that kind of accuracy to all of my projects when I can. For example, the Arnhem expansion for Compass Games’ Combat! series has what I would contend is the most accurate map of the bridgehead yet seen on a game map. It was the result of many, many hours sourcing photographs from the obvious military aerials to family photos from genealogy websites or Facebook-based Dutch historical societies, to postcards, etc. Luckily, I was able to convince the designer to let me write an “urban combat” Line-of-Sight rule which enabled me to avoid shoe-horning the art into the confines of a hex grid, letting the players experience the terrain as close to reality was at that time (sadly that battlefield was obliterated by Allied bombing after the battle, so nothing of the original buildings remains today).

Croix de Guerre "in the wild" - courtesy of Fabio Aliprandi (BGG).

ASL in particular has that established visual style you describe which can be limiting at times, particularly when you see where graphic art software can take things now. It was state-of-the art at its time, but is well behind now. The problem is that the people playing the game (me included) are happy enough with it and don’t necessarily want to see it change. Despite that I applaud those people who have stretched the look - from Niko Eskubi’s HASL map for Singling Campaign [Operations, Issue 1, (MMP, 2008)] to Le Franc Tireur [#10]’s Fox Hill map (artist unknown). 

When creating the map for Dan Dolan’s Dinant HASL (featured in the recently rereleased Croix de Guerre (MMP, 2020)) or Andrew Hershey’s Trials of Task for Faith HASL (Le Franc-Tireur. 2025) I used slightly different textures while trying to keep the core visual elements in line with the established ASL palette.  Both seem to have been reasonably well received. In that sense, having an affinity for the existing art is important, but shouldn’t be limiting - the issue is to not create new styles that confuse players causing them to have difficulty playing the game.

A portion of the Dinant Campaign map from Croix de Guerre. courtesy of Uli (BGG). 

AFG: One last question. I ask everyone some variation of this, but if you had to pack up your game collection for an extended duration – say, moving to a different state or something – what game or games would you keep to hand to play when the opportunity arose?

NE: I suspect that, while I no longer play it regularly, my choice would be ASL since I’ve played it so long and it, as a game engine, offers so much variety - you never need replay anything - there is always a new scenario or map, etc. to keep it fresh.

 

* That would be Gregory Smith’s Gladiators: Blood and Glory (Compass Games, ~2026). When speaking on a recent Compass Town Hall about the game, Mr Smith mentioned how much he appreciated working with Mr Elfarra.