Inspiration and intent in wargame design – Appendix: Survey responses, part 2

 

As part of the survey conducted for the article recently posted on A Fast Game, I sort permission to publish each designer’s response in a follow-up post. I didn’t anticipate the number of respondents, or the weight of text contributed (all up, around 37,000 words), so what had been envisaged as a single supplementary post will now be split over three posts. I encourage anyone interested in game design to read through these contributions. Some are brief, others quite long but all are worthwhile.

I have decided to present the collected data in alphabetical order by first name, in keeping with the taxonomy used by Boardgamegeek.com. This raises my librarian hackles, but it seemed to make sense while collating the data during analysis, and at this point I no longer possess the wherewithal re-format the entire set.

The respondents were asked to offer answers to two questions:

Question 1: What was your first wargame (or historical game) design; not necessarily your first published game – that you worked up to a point where it felt “done”?

Question 2: Why did you pick that topic or historical situation to make a game about?

In most instances, I have numbered the responses. Some respondents didn’t strictly follow the two-question format and answered in a more free-form manner. In these other cases I have dispensed with the question number schema.

For ease of reading, this appendix has been broken down into five parts. The other parts can be accessed using the links below:

Part 1    Part 3     Part 4    Part 5

-----

Clint Warren-Davey

Q1 The first game I designed to completion was Werwolf: Insurgency in Occupied Germany, 1945-48 (Legion Wargames, 2025). This was also the first of my games to be signed up with a publisher, Legion Wargames. I had wanted to make games since I was a child - I fell in love with Warhammer, Talisman and Axis and Allies. But the 2021 COVID lockdowns gave me the time to actually do it seriously. I had also recently been introduced to the COIN series (through Cuba Libre (GMT Games, 2013) and only just learnt about the Werwolf insurgency in Germany, so the timing was right. It was a real labour of love. I've play-tested it more than any of my other designs (40 times at least) and it remains one of my favourite games to play for fun.

Q2 The topic is a weird one. Alternate history, occupied Germany, 1945 to 1948. Basically, the idea is Hitler has seriously funded the Werwolf insurgency, the atomic bomb has been delayed and the occupation of Germany has turned into a guerrilla warfare quagmire like Vietnam or Afghanistan. Plus there is the incipient Cold War tensions between the Western Allies and the Soviets. I chose this topic because it's so weird and because it is a twist on the classic World War Two setting that simply hasn't been done before. In fact the setting got more interesting the more I fleshed it out. I settled on four factions - the Allies, the Soviets, the Werwolves (die-hard Nazi insurgents) and Edelweiss (anti-Nazi German insurgents who still want the occupiers gone). Each played totally differently. I also came up with a large deck of event cards, and figured out how the personalities and events from the time might fit into this different historical timeline. To put it simply, the game was a big project, but the setting was interesting enough to sustain my motivation for roughly two years of serious design work.

-----

Dan Bullock

Q1 No Motherland Without: North Korea in Crisis and Cold War (Compass Games, 2021) was my first project and my second publication.

Q2 As a historical CDG modeling a cold war, I had hoped it would have an easier time finding publication than other non-kinetic subjects for games that I had on my wishlist. This choice didn’t pave an easier path toward publication. Pitching a game about North Korea also highlighted a number of issues with the historical corner of the hobby, namely the lack of diversity in topics, the emphasis on American/Western European subject matter, and the scarcity of substantial development of published games in the historical corner of the hobby.

The only companies in 2016 to pitch were wargame publishers, and all wanted a Next War style game about an escalation of hostilities with DPRK. When I pitched to a very well-known wargame publisher, he reviewed my prototype and pointed at a portion of the game board that detailed defectors and elites within the country, remarking “Defectors? Who cares about that?”

My follow up design was a 2p game about the years leading up to the Islamic Revolution in Iran. [1979: Revolution in Iran (The Dietz Foundation, 2021)]. Because player roles were two different groups of Iranians, I didn’t bother pitching wargame companies again, opting instead to find alternative options in nonprofit publishers, university press, self-publication, and overseas publishers. It also led me to serve on the board for SD HistCon’s Summit Award, start my own publishing company, and to start a podcast interviewing designers of historical games exclusively.

-----

Dan Fournie

Q1 My first wargame design was First Airborne Task Force (listed on GMT 500 in 2020 and then published by Worthington as Drop Zone: Southern France (Worthington Publishing, 2025) as my 6th [published] game).

Q2 My father (who passed away in 1983) parachuted into France on 14 August 1944 as the FABTF spearheaded the "2nd D-Day" invasion (Operation Dragoon). In 1984, while serving as an infantry officer in Berlin, I travelled to Provence and walked his drop zone and the battlefields he fought on. I have researched his campaign for the past four decades, and it was the obvious choice for my first game. I worked on the game for over a decade, and the game mechanics of the final product are greatly changed from the original prototypes. The OB and understanding of the combat actions changed dramatically when I came across the US Army interrogation reports of many of the key German commanders.

-----

Dave LeLacheur

Q1 In my case it is the first one published: Blitz! A World in Conflict (Compass Games, 2015).  Having been a part of the Australian Design Group team (World in Flames family of game) for 35 years, I’ve long been trained in the idea that every design is subject to being updated and improved later on.  So I had not previously had “finishing” as a goal.  It was nice to get Blitz! done, and also have gotten done Lightning Strikes, which should be out next year via Compass Games.

Q2 The Blitz! project had begun at a time when we had young kids and I had much less gaming time than previously.  Playing a full game of World in Flames (Australian Design Group, 1985) is a fascinating and challenging gaming experience, and also one that will take 75-200 hours of your life.  That wasn’t happening, so I approached ADG owner Harry Rowland about creating a simpler version of WiF that was playable in <10 hours.  It took about 10 years to get it right and find a venue to publish, but eventually Bliitz! got to the finish line.

-----

David Gómez Relloso

Q1 My first design was Crusade and Revolution: The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (Compass Games, 2013). And it was also my first published title.

It took almost ten years from the time I started working on the game until it was released. At first I had no intention of publishing it. I simply wanted to create a game tailored to my tastes about a topic that interested me. Without any rush, it was a slow and meticulous process of study, development and, above all, many tests.

I played the game with friends and later presented it in many different conventions. I also sent playtest copies to clubs, obtaining valuable opinions and feedback. There came a point when I was satisfied with the game's final result. People asked me about publishing it, so I offered it to different companies. Multi-Man Publishing was interested and it entered the P500, but it did not achieved enough support.

Later Compass Games accepted my offer and, after several months of development, “Crusade and Revolution” was published. It was well-received and sold out, so in 2013 the second edition arrived, in which 4Dados collaborated with Compass Games to release an edition also in Spanish.

Now the game is out of stock. I recovered the rights and NAC Wargames showed interest in publishing a new edition, with a completely new art, both in English and Spanish. We are working on it and I expect that it will be released in 2027.

Q2 I was interested in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). I wanted to play that theme on the board, but at that time (around 2003), there wasn't a wargame that convinced me, or the older ones weren't available. So I decided to create my own game.

At that time, I was in love with Paths of Glory (GMT Games, 1999) and it seemed to me that its mechanics would fit very well with a conflict like the Spanish Civil War, more similar to the First World War than to the Second. I started by researching the topic by reading dozens of books. Then I moved on to the arduous task of design.

Having a game system helped me a lot, but achieving an accurate historical simulation and a balanced gameplay was laborious. I enjoyed the process, learned a lot, and was able to meet many wargaming enthusiasts, some of whom are now my friends.

-----

David Kershaw

Q1 Aged about 17 or 18, me and a friend designed Saxon Shore, a game about the struggle among the various successor states in Britain after the Romans left. It sort of works, if you lean heavily into the narrative!

Q2 Largely the theme was so compelling - my friend had a copy of some old chronicles written by monks (Peterborough Chronicles I think) which were so vague at times and often had utter nonsense in them, such as Dragon sightings, which were nonetheless very real to the people at the time. The game was based around this, hence the leaning heavily on the narrative elements which I have tried to continue in many of my games since.

-----

David Thompson

Q1 The first design I started on, though it wasn't the first published, was Undaunted: Normandy (Osprey Games, 2019). The design for it started in 2014, and the design work I felt was "completed" by 2015, but it wasn't published until 2019. In the meantime, I had other historical games publish first (Castle Itter (Dan Verssen Games, 2019), Pavlov's House, Dan Verssen Games, 2018)).

"Achtung! Scharfschütze!"

Q2 I began playing board games around 2011, and I knew immediately that I wanted to try my hand at design. I was working on a few different game ideas in 2014, when I moved to Cambridge in the UK with my family. Our first vacation was to Normandy to visit the D-Day beaches. My maternal grandfather was part of the 30th Infantry Division, which landed on Omaha Beach a few days after D-Day. I knew when we were visiting Omaha Beach that I wanted to design a game to pay tribute to his memory, and that game would eventually go on to become Undaunted: Normandy.

-----

Didier Rouy

Q1 My first published game was Auerstaedt 1806 (Socomer Games, 1989), in 1989 per BGG, first of a series of games regiment-scale on Napoleonics called the Vive l'Empereur series. My eleventh game of the series will be published by Legion Wargames soon. The system has evolved over the years, but the basics are still the same, it got a little more complex but I added mostly clarifications and optional rules, as I prefer the players to play the core set of rules and add whatever they want. The system has been "locked" since the first game, but became final after, say, four or five games.

Q2 I make 100% of my games on the Napoleonic era, because this is what I know and like best. So much choice in battles, diversity of situations and armies, I made games from the smallest (Auerstaedt) to the biggest (Leipzig) battle, as I felt not limited by the size of the games once we created Pratzen Editions. Leipzig has 10 maps and 6 counter-sheets. At first, the choice of games were in the medium size, like Eckmühl, Hanau, with one or two maps, then they got bigger, because why make only small battles if you can make big ones :-) My incoming game will be Wagram, the second biggest battle of the era. I made games on other scales two, campaign level (the flight of the Eagle) and a tactical system (The eagle fights). Even a siege game (Danzig, part of the three battles in Germany set). The only part of Napoleonics I don't feel comfortable is the naval operations, there are good games already.

-----

Don Herndon

Q1 The short answer to question 1 is that No Peace Without Spain (Compass Games, 2011) was/is my one and only game design.

Q2 [The following is an extract from an article by Mr Hernrdon marking the tenth anniversary of the publication of NPWS in Paper Wars, Issue 103 (Compass Games, 2021). Thank you to Mike Anthony (@MeamderingMiike of YouTube fame) for his assistance sourcing the material].

How did it all start? Miniatures! Like many historical gamers, I've enjoyed both boardgaming and miniatures for many years. In the 1990s, I had the opportunity to Play War of Spanish Succession miniatures games in Charlotte, NC with Jim Brokaw and a great group of friends. Jim not only sculpted and painted his own line of 15mm miniatures (Editions Brokaw), but had custom-built a 12\x 6' contoured table, scratch built houses, trees, you name it. He'd written his own rules, which provided my first real exposure to the type of warfare practiced in the early 18th century - platoon versus volley fire, sword versus pistol-firing cavalry, and so forth. That positive experience led to the collection of a few books on the subject, which traveled with me to Atlanta, GA, where I still reside.

The next moment of inspiration came in 2003 when Phalanx Games published Age of Napoleon by Renaud Verlaque. It's a very innovative and entertaining design, and I was intrigued by its ability to simulate the entire Napoleonic Wars of 1805-1815 in a (long) single sitting while including politics, army reforms, tactical elements, etc. Looking at No Peace without Spain and Age of Napoleon side by side, you'd be hard-pressed to see any similarities, but the fact remains it showed me that a decade of war  with multiple factions could be made into a 2-player game that didn't take dozens of hours to play.

Finally, there was Ed Beach's Here I Stand, published by GMT Games in 2006. For one thing, I and thousands of players obviously based in BoardGamerGeek ratings consider it one of the best wargames ever made. And here you see a bit more genetic lineage for NPWS!, with it's colorful point-to-point map, generic strength points, army leaders, and simple multi-dice combat resolution.

That takes us to the mid-2000s, and I wanted to play a strategic/operational on the War of Spanish Succession but could find anything at the scale or level of complexity (low to medium) that I was looking for. So I s=decided to design one and grabbed my books. I honestly had no thought that it would lead to anything, much less be published, but I had a vague notion it could be used  as a miniatures campaign system for the local Atlanta gaming group.

-----

Enrico Acerbi

Q1 My first game design was Calatafimi 1860, a battle between Garibaldi’s troops and the Bourbons in Sicily. I chose it because I had found the exact order of battle and because I had already played some simple SPI games from the ’70s. It was just an experiment that I revisited in the latest issue of my fanzine, No Turkeys!

Q2 I basically chose that battle because it was an Italian battle and I am Italian, and because it was a period very similar to the American Civil War, so I could draw inspiration from the mechanics of US games.

-----

Ernie Copley

Q1 My first wargame title was The War: Europe 1939-1945 (Compass Games, 2012). I had played Bruce Harper's A World at War (GMT Games, 2003) many times, and Advanced Third Reich (Avalon Hill, 1992) and Rise and Decline of the ThirdReich (Avalon Hill, 1974) before that. Bruce is a gifted designer, and AWAW is a fine game, IMHO. But I wanted put my own spin on a monster WWII strategic-level game. I wanted to see if I could do better. I leave it to gamers to decide whether I succeeded or not. In effect TW was what I wished the old Avalon Hill Rise and Decline of the Third Reich had evolved into.

Q2 The choice of topic was easy - I'd played big strategic games like Rise and Decline of the Third Reich since the 1970's. I was at that time my favorite genre. Since TW was published in 2012, followed by the The War: Europe 1939-1945 –Expansion Kit (Compass Games, 2017), and then The War: The Pacific1941-45 (Compass Games, 2021), I've pretty much done the big WWII design gig, although I don't rule out ever doing a TW Second Edition someday. Since 2020, I've focused on smaller games like my forthcoming Breakthrough Russia (Compass Games, 2025). All of my games so far are from Compass games. Stay tuned for more to come.

-----

Fabrizio Vianello

Q1 Being a self-publishing designer, my first design matches with my first published game: 1985: Under an Iron Sky (Thin Red Line Games, 2018).

Q2 There was actually no plan. My small wargame group had a fervid interest into the cold war, and played The Next War (SPI, full campaign mode, at least once every two years.

As the result was almost invariably a crushing Warsaw Pact victory, my main wargame buddy and I decided to develop an updated version, taking into account the changes in strategic situation, weapon systems, and military doctrine that happened from 1978 to 1985. The result was a much more balanced game, more centered on the air war, and with NATO having a serious chance of defeating the Warsaw Pact.

At the same time, we published a detailed blog about our current The Next War campaign, with a marked military style, lots of maps, and narrative accounts of specific events of the campaign.

The blog had an unexpected success, so I decided to self-publish our updated and renewed version of The Next War. As they say, the rest is history.

-----

Fernando Sola Ramos

Q1 My first published wargame was Panzer: Game Expansion Set, Nr 4 – France 1940 (GMT Games, 2019). Yes, I know, it’s not a wargame 'made from scratch', but rather an expansion of an existing game using a well-tested rule system.

However, I consider that, despite that 'shortcut', Panzer Expansion 4 represented the realization of a long series of modifications, playtests, studies, and searches that I started almost from the very moment I discovered wargames.

My first wargame was Panzer Leader, published by Avalon Hill in 1974. I bought it in 1993 after seeing it countless times on the shelf of the game and comic shop I used to visit in Alicante. Every time I went there, I would stare at that evocative and striking cover artwork, which drew me in like the sirens' song to Odysseus.

After saving up for a few months, I finally bought it. And what I discovered changed my life. Literally. I suppose your first wargame is also your gateway to a new world, and in my case, I entered through WWII tactical wargames. From that moment on, there was no turning back.

And of course, with Panzer Leader being an 'open' tactical wargame that allowed you to create your own scenarios and maps, once I played through all the official scenarios, the next logical step was to create my own. And that’s where it all began.

I started buying history books, drawing my own maps by hand, tweaking rules to make PL more realistic... In the end, I wound up with a set of house rules, hand-painted maps, and scenarios simulating more specific battles—perhaps less 'balanced', but far more historical. But of course, we are talking about the early 90s. All that work never left my house.

And from that point on, my personal quest for the perfect tactical wargame began. During that search, I got my hands on MBT, published by AH in 1989, which I bought in 1996. That game was a major qualitative leap forward compared to PL. The data cards, the armor data for each tank, the effects of each ammunition type... It was amazing! And of course, IDF (Avalon Hill, 1993) soon followed, which used the same system as MBT but was set during the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973. IDF featured units like the T-34/85, the SU-100, or the ISU-152. These were WWII models, allowing me to compare the in-game data with their real-world statistics. A new door was opening for me.

At that time, I was a cadet at the Academia General Militar (the Spanish Officer Academy), training to become an officer in the Spanish Army, and I had access to a wealth of documentation on tank armor and the ballistics of various guns and ammunition types. So, I set to work designing my own units using the MBT/IDF frame: Panther, Tiger I, Tiger II, PzKpfw IVH, IS-2, SU-85... I used graph paper to plot the penetration curves of the different types of ammunition of each gun at various ranges, and I created my own Data Cards with the equivalent armor for each tank, taking into account armor thickness and slope data at different angles. I ended up with a good number of units converted to the MBT/IDF format.

However, after my promotion to Lieutenant, my gaming time decreased drastically. And all those projects ended up tucked away in a drawer.

Despite my limited gaming time, my search continued. Panzer Grenadier (Avalanche Press, 1998), Advanced Squad Leader (Avalon Hill, 1985, Advanced Tobruk System, Lock ‘n Load.  Until 2012, when GMT published Panzer 2nd Edition. And when I bought it, read the rules, and analyzed it, I knew my search was over. I had found my perfect tactical wargame.

I bought the first three expansions, which rounded out the Eastern Front 1941-1945 and the Western Front in 1944-45. So, after playing the life out of it, I arrived right back at the same point as I did at the beginning with Panzer Leader: creating my own units and my own maps, but this time to simulate the France 1940 campaign.

Only this time, circumstances were different: the Internet made it possible to share information, discuss games... and talk to the designers. And this time, my work didn’t end up in a drawer. I got in touch with Jim Day, the designer of Panzer, and showed him what I had done. It was an instant connection.

Thanks to the guidance of Jim Day—who went from admired designer to mentor, and from mentor to friend—everything I had once done for myself in other games could now be done for my favorite tactical system, but this time for everyone. But my friend, designing for yourself is not the same as designing a commercial game.

With Jim’s guidance, I managed to transform all those ideas and situations in my head into a set of playable, balanced scenarios and new rules for this expansion, which eventually became Panzer: Game Expansion Set, Nr 4 – France 1940.

Q2 The France 1940 campaign is fascinating in numerous ways. Undoubtedly, the operational side is the most important and the most thoroughly studied. And it was precisely due to the impact and speed of the German victory in that campaign that the myth of the invincibility of German tanks was born.

But when you study the campaign more deeply and down to the tactical level, you realize that this supposed invincibility of the German tank was completely non-existent. In fact, most French tanks were technically superior to their German counterparts. So, what was it that allowed the Germans, at a tactical level, to defeat the French? This is where the magic of the command and control system in the Panzer game comes into play, because it was the use of radios, superior training, and much more highly developed combined arms tactics that allowed the Germans, tactically, to win battle after battle against an army that was better equipped—at least on paper.

And this is the fascinating fact about this campaign at a tactical level. Being able to, or attempting to, simulate this posed a real challenge. And doing so using the Panzer system, working hand-in-hand with its own designer, was, moreover, a dream come true.

The rest, as they say, is history.

-----

Francisco Gradaille

Q1 My first design was Cuius Regio (GMT Games, 2026), a game about the Thirty Years War. It’s focused on the military aspects of the war and the rest of the elements are abstracted. It’s a hex & counter game that can be seen as operational or as strategic. GMT accepted it quite fast and during its development is when I started other designs such as Plantagenet (GMT Games, 2023) or Onoda (Salt & Pepper Games, 2025).

Q2 It was a mix of two events. At the time I wasn’t a wargamer, I had just started taking a look at that kind of game. I was more focused on GMing role playing games with my friends. We were playing a long campaign that happened during the Thirty Years War and I had done a lot of research to make it as historical as possible, with schemes showing the movements of all armies and main characters of the war year by year and, sometimes, month by month or even day by day. I liked that period because it mixed a lot of military influence but also religion, politics and economy. And the main actors were fascinating.

I also had started listening to board gaming podcasts, and in one of them they did a long review of The Civil War (Victory Games, 1983), The U.S. Civil War (GMT Games, 2015), For the People (GMT Games, 1998) and Great Campaigns of the American Civil War. After listening to that, I thought that the manoeuvres during the Thirty Years War had some similarities, and I started searching for wargames that let me have that kind of experience in that period. As I didn’t find any, I decided to make one myself.

-----

Francisco Ronco

Q1 I have to divide my production between the older times, when I was a youngster and designed for playing with my friends and the “professional” period I am now developing. When I was 14 I had been playing wargames for more than five years and I decided to make my own designs. I designed six small format games about Little Big Horn, The Marne and other topics I now can’t remember. My first “serious” design was about the 30 Years War. They have never been published. My first professional design was Tomb for an Empire (Bellica Third Generation, 2008), about the war against Napoleon in the Iberian Peninsula from 1808 to 1814. It cost me ten years to finish the game.

Q2 Preindustrial warfare has a special appeal to me. That doesn’t mean I do not like or play other periods – my designs cover from the First Punic War to the Second World War – but XVIII and XIX Centuries warfare is the one a like most, before the machines took their place on the battlefield.

-----

Fred Schwarz

Q1 My first and only design so far is Air & Armor: V Corps (Compass Games, 2026).

Q2 I was the developer for the first game of the series, Air & Armor: Würzburg (Compass Games, 2024).  I told the designer of the game that we should do the next game covering the V Corps sector and told me to do so.  My motivation was that I was in the US 3rd Armored Division, which was in V Corps,  from 1986-89 and commanded a mechanized infantry company equipped with Bradley Infantry Fighting vehicles. So, I wanted to play out the 'what might have been" battle that I could have fought in.

-----

Frédéric Aubert

Q1 I designed my first wargame nearly 50 years ago, in 1977. It was actually an adaptation of JP Defieux’s wargame, Napoleon at Austerlitz but simulating the Battle of Waterloo. I created the map, the counters, the player aids, and the rules, and built a prototype. All that remained was to print, promote, and distribute it...

Q2 One of my first bedside books was 20 Years of Glory with the Emperor by J.R. Coignet. I have always loved the battles of the First Empire and the 18th century, with their magnificent uniforms and epic moments.

-----

Frédéric Bey

Q1 The first wargame I designed, back in 1992, was Bellum Gallicum (Cassus Belli, 1992), a game focused on the Gallic Wars. It featured an original system for managing Gallic rebellions: each year, in one of the major regions of independent Gaul, a tribe would attempt to launch a revolt and be joined by a varying number of other tribes in the fight against the Roman legions. Caesar, for his part, could always count on at least one friendly tribe to keep his army supplied and provide auxiliaries.

As the Gallic player, your challenge was to spread the revolt across as many tribes and regions as possible before the Roman pacification campaign could succeed. The big idea was to create a grand campaign game covering the entire war — a conflict “unlike any other” — with one scenario per year. It pitted two very different opponents against each other, each with their own contrasting strengths and weaknesses.

Bellum Gallicum was a very detailed game — probably too detailed — which is why I eventually released a revised and modernized version twenty years later, in 2012.

Q2 I’ve always been fascinated by Julius Caesar, one of the most compelling historical figures and military leaders of all time. As a Frenchman, ancient Gaul is a subject that particularly resonates with me. We benefit from a wealth of historical studies and rich archaeological evidence, which makes it possible to create a convincing and well-grounded historical simulation.

-----

Frederic Delstanches

Q1 My first design (if you don’t include the dozen of small attempts I made in my youth at adapting miniature games to hex and counters) was the first edition of 1811: Albuera (Tactical Workshop, 2020).

Q2 It was created because I wanted to improve and streamline on game series like “La bataille” (CoA) or “Jours de gloire” (Hexasim). I first recreated the counters to make the design more accurate with respect to the troops uniforms. Then created a new command system to make the simulation more realistic. The made a new map based on updated historical studies and finally updated the order of battle. In the end, an attempt at improvement on an existing design ended up with a new game and a new game system.

-----

Gene Billingsley

Q1 My first historical game design was Silver Bayonet (GMT Games, 1990), about the 30+ day operations and battles west of Pleiku in 1965.

Q2 I read a book, Pleiku by J.D. Coleman, that fired my imagination and made me want to learn more about what happened in the epic struggle between the US 1st Air Cavalry and the 33rd, 66th, and 320th Regiments of the North Vietnamese Army (PAVN). The US Air Cavalry, using helicopters en masse for the first time in battle, was employing new operational concepts and tactics involving speed and vertical envelopment to find, fix, and defeat a much larger enemy force. The North Vietnamese were also having to adapt their own operations day by day in the face of new enemy tactics.

You can pre-order a reprint of the 25th Anniversary edition of Silver Bayonets
over on GMT's P500 page. 

The fascinating story of how these forces searched, met, surprised, fought, retreated, and evolved their tactics influenced both sides for many future years of conflict in Vietnam. I found it so compelling - and this was well before We Were Soldiers Once, and Young was published, that I wanted an interactive game that would let me - and hopefully many others explore the topic through the medium of a boardgame. So I created completely new design systems to try to handle the unique aspects of this historic operation and give players that "you are there" immersion into the Central Highlands of the Republic of Vietnam in 1965.

-----

Geoffrey Phipps

Q1 When I was 11 I used to design games based on the Stratego system, but with air, land, and naval units with a WW2 theme. I made them by hand. They "worked." I restored the rules to the 3rd edition of La Bataille because their ambiguity frustrated my gaming group. I did not do any more real design until Gallipoli.

My first serious game that I pushed to completion was Gallipoli 1915, Churchill's Greatest Gamble which GMT published.

Q2 Because of the history. I am Australian and Gallipoli is a national religion. I have Mons on pre-order because I thought that the BEF in WW1 would interest people. I chose Belleau Wood 1918 (currently in development) because it is the battle that founded the modern marine corps, and I expect it to therefore sell well in the US.

-----

Gilbert Collins

Q1 My first published design was Mr.Madison’s War: The incredible war of 1812 (GMT Games, 2012). I worked on that game for about seven years prior to 2012 which was the bicentennial of the war and it was quite glad to see it released just in time for that event. It is the title that I'm most proud of.

Q2 I became interested in the war of 1812 when I worked as a guide as a summer job at the "Chrysler Farm Battlefield Park" in Ontario on the Shores of this great St. Lawrence River. I am a resident of Ontario and for us, it is the great war or campaign, or we defended ourselves against invading Americans. For a Canadian, the war of 1812 is the war on the Canadian front since that is what mattered most to us. The battle of Baltimore, the burning of Washington, even the battle of New Orleans, which occurred after the end of the war are all just sideshows to us? Most of those campaigns were undertaken to take the pressure off of Canada.

-----

Gina Willis

Q1 My first wargame design happened in the late 1980s. I was playing a lot of the SPI Great Battles of the American Civil War series at that time, and I learned that I had a cousin on the Union side who had been killed in action at the Battle of Atlanta.

I didn't know of any existing wargames on that battle. Right around then, I read the first Wargame Design book that was published by the SPI staff. That book really excited me for the way it pulled back the curtain on how wargames in that era got conceived, researched, maps and art were made, and how development and playtesting worked. Suddenly, designing a game seemed like something I could do if I just followed that "cookbook" step by step.

The result was "Rebel Yell," a handmade, tactical-scale game on the July 22 Atlanta battle that was a labor of love -- and that turned out to be fiddly, slow, virtually unplayable and never published.

But this story has a happy ending: Last year, I decided that Hermann Luttmann's Blind Swords system offered an ideal platform to do a *playable* Atlanta game on a tactical scale. Thus was born Nothing But Victory: Battles for Atlanta, July 21-22, 1864 (Revolution Games, ~2027), which is in final art and development now at Revolution Games. You might see it on a playtest table this month at Consimworld Expo, and publication is tentatively expected in the first quarter of 2027.

Q2 My cousin's service led me to read everything I could about Atlanta. The more I read, the more I realized what an interesting and important battle it was. Also, many aspects also made it attractive from a gaming standpoint: A battered underdog Rebel army making a surprise night march and flank attack more ambitious than anything Stonewall Jackson attempted in Virginia; The only battlefield death of a Union Army commander in the war (James McPherson); a Union army that falters and nearly panics, only to be rallied by McPherson's newly promoted successor (John Logan) for an incredible and decisive counterattack that wins the day.

While you're waiting for Nothing But Victory to come out, may I direct you to Ms WiIllis's first published game, A Glorious Chance (Legion Wargames, 

As if that isn't enough, my KIA cousin happened to be in arguably the most elite Union regiment on the field that day: the 66th Illinois Western Sharpshooters. Cousin Charlie Webster and his comrades all carried Henry Repeating Rifles, which they used then and many other times in the Atlanta Campaign to devastating effect. By coincidence, the hill where they deployed at noon on July 22 happened to be near the very spot where a Confederate corps came screaming out of a treeline moments later, to hurl itself against the army's exposed left flank. I believe Charlie fell in that opening phase of the battle. But later in the afternoon, the 66th Illinois was also the tip of the spear in Logan's counterattack to repel a breakthrough in the 15th Corps line. Their recapture of the DeGress Battery of 20lb Parrot guns at the Railroad Cut is the famous pivotal moment in the battle that's depicted in the Atlanta Cyclorama painting at the Atlanta History Center.

-----