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.

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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.