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.

 

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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.