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.

 

 

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.

Line of Fire: a fast interview with Brian Train

 

 

 

Brian Train is one of those designers, like Mark Herman, Sebastian Bae and Clint Warren-Davey (I could go on – there is a big overlap), who have worked – in many cases currently work – in the complementary fields of “casual” or hobby wargaming and actual wargame and simulation development with military organisations. Mr Train’s specialty is broadly what gets classed these days as Small Wars (a short essay explaining the definition and scope of a Small War in real terms is available here), and specifically asymmetric warfare. He’s probably best known for his contributions to Volko Ruhnke’s COIN series, A Distant Plain: Insurgency in Afghanistan (GMT Games, 2013) and Colonial Twilight: The French-Algerian War,1954-62 (GMT Games, 2017) (probably my favourite COIN game, though to be fair, I haven’t got around to playing China’s War (GMT Games, 2025) yet), Brief Border Wars (Compass Games, 2020), and Brief Border Wars 2 from Compass Games. Mr Train also has his on electronic imprint, BTR Games, that offers a selection of eclectic PnP games for the craft-enabled.

Mr Train was kind enough to answer several impertinent questions with good grace and humour. What follows is a very lightly edited record of our correspondence.

 

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A Fast Game: What was your first wargame experience? Was it a commercial boardgame or something you experienced in your time serving [in the military]?

Brian Train: My first experiences of wargaming were as a younger teenager. I was playing Risk (Parker Brothers, 1959) and Battleship (Starex, 1931) and rolling marbles at toy soldiers like anyone else, but when I was twelve, I saw a copy of SPI’s game World War 3 (SPI, 1975) on the desk of my friend’s older brother. The missile launchers on the cover, the world map and the mushroom cloud counters had me curious!

Tactics II (BGG, courtesy of Deb J)

When I was 15 my favourite uncle sent me a copy of Tactics II (Avalon Hill, 1958) for Christmas, and I was off to the races – I don’t think my parents ever forgave him.

I never had a chance to see or use a wargame when I was in uniform, though we would play them in our off hours.

I remember on my machine gunner’s course we got a copy of Squad Leader (Avalon Hill, 1977) and set up one small force with plenty of machine guns sited on the map according to the principles of placement (using the beaten zone, interlocking fields of fire, firing from cover etc.) and ran a horde of Russian riflemen at it, that was fun.

 

AFG: You work in the professional wargaming and hobby wargaming spaces. you’ve talked about your professional work in your blog. How much does your professional wargaming work influence your commercial game design or vice versa? Does one tend to bring more to the dialogue than the other?

BT: I don’t often design to order, more often I will come up with something that I’m interested in and try to find a place for it.

I first got into contact with the professional wargaming world back in 2007 when someone in the Military Operations Research Society, a US organization, contacted me out of the blue to say that he had used a game I had designed on the Algerian War in 2000 – Algeria (Microgame Design Group, 2000) – as the mechanical basis for a game he had done on the Iraqi insurgency that was then in full swing, and would I like to attend a workshop they were holding on irregular warfare to see what he had done?

Algeria: Battle for Independence (Microgame Design Group, 2000, and One Small Step, 2016)  

I had never heard of this organization but I went with alacrity, and found that more than one person had been using my games as a basis for their own work. Verily, I was a bit of a name among a small number of analyst nerds!

We need to remember that this was the middle of the Iraq War and the wheels were really starting to come off in Afghanistan too, and the bloom was truly on the counterinsurgency rose with the recent publication of US Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, which drew heavily on the theories of David Galula.

At that time as well, only two civilian game designers were being really productive in that end of the spectrum of conflict, both historical and contemporary: Joe Miranda and me.

Anyhow, after that nice welcome I started to go to the annual “Connections” conferences* that began in the late 1990s at the instigation of Matt Caffrey (author of On Wargaming (Navy War College Press, 2019), a very good book on the history and prospects of the practice and available free at https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/newport-papers/43/) and were intended to build bridges between the civilian and professional military wargaming worlds. These continue today and have franchised into several other countries: the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia to begin with. 

The reason that Matt created this conference was precisely that civilian/ commercial/ hobby wargame designers did not labour under the same kinds of restrictions that professional designers did, and could bring some highly imaginative and illustrative work to the table.

The two kinds of gaming have very different purposes but at the bottom of things they both have to be workable games in the sense that they are interactive experiences bounded by some reality-based rules with the intention of discovering problems and generating useful discussion or narratives about those problems or conflicts.

I have had only a couple of occasions to design games that were first and foremost for use by a professional military organization: the Quick Urban Interactive Combat Kriegsspiel for the California Army National Guard (2022-24), and Northern Sentinel for the Canadian Armed Forces (2026).

A map of downtown Manilla (coloured template over arial photograph) for 
Quick Urban Interactive Combat Kriegsspiel (QUICK).  

In both cases I drew on my knowledge of the many other civilian/ commercial/ hobby wargames I had designed in the past, to give them something that was quick to teach and play and satisfied the learning objectives of the occasion.

So the short answer to your question would be, “Yeah, commercial > professional but it doesn’t matter much”.

 

AFG: A History professor once told me that you should always get at least three papers out of any single research project, your published games often turn into series, like the District Commander series from Hollandspiel, or more recently Brief Border Wars 2. You also have form for revisiting situations through the lens of different systems (e.g. Algeria: the Struggle for Independence,1954-1962 (One Small Step, 2016) and Colonial Twilight; or notably BCT Command: Kandahar (co-design - MCS Group, 2013), Kandahar (One Small Step, 2013) and District Commander: Kandahar (Hollandspiel, 2020)).

There’s a question coming. Do you go into a game building a design to fit a particular historical situation – let’s take Shining Path: the Struggle for Peru (BTR Games, 1997, One Small Step, 2014) as an example – and work it up into a playable game, release it, then look at other situations that could be modelled the same way, or have you already noticed the similarities between the Maoist insurgency in Peru, the Algerian war for independence, and Taliban insurgency in Kandahar province during the Afghanistan occupation, or do you look for situations with broad similarities that might be modelled in a similar fashion and work up from there?

BT: I’ve designed around 70 games over the last 30+ years. About half of them belong to one or another of seven distinct “families” or systems I have made, as a general approach to a particular type of conflict.

You mentioned Shining Path That is one of a system I call “4-box” and includes other games on the Algerian War, the Greek Civil War, the Cyprus Emergency and Kandahar in Afghanistan.

I have another called “Between the Wars” which revolves around armies operating with fragile morale and organization, using mostly infantry with small detachments of supporting arms (examples include Finnish Civil War (featured in Paper Wars, Issue 84 - Compass Games 2016). , Red Horde 1920 (Tiny Battle Publishing, 2017), Strike for Berlin (featured in Yaah magazine, No. 11 (Flying Pig Games, 2018), and War Plan Crimson (Tiny Battle Publishing, 2016). Even within each family, there are considerable variations depending on the circumstances of the conflict.

But about another half of my titles consist of games using systems I have never used before or since (though I have grabbed interesting bits out of them for use in other systems later). I like experimenting; it doesn’t always work, but then at least you know.

Where do all these games and systems come from? Again to answer your question briefly, “it’s some of each”.

Every system began as an individual game that had to fit the particular situation, and it was only later that the mechanics in one game would suggest themselves to another and then grow into a system.

Besides using a system to fit broadly similar conflicts (for example the two volumes of the Brief Border Wars system, a total of eight small games on the general conflict type) I’ve designed enough that I don’t like to bend or warp a game topic to fit a particular system just for the sake of consistency or speed.

If it doesn’t fit and doesn’t transmit the kind of emphasis I want I will try another system, or come up with something new that might grow into a system on its own.

As an example of this, you mentioned three of my games that take place in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan in 2009-10, same place and time but three very different treatments, mechanically and thematically. (Actually I have done four - the fourth was a complicated design with multiple factions that I put together for a university class in 2010 but never published.)

AFG: For someone coming to one of your system "families" for the first time, do they tend to be mechanically similar enough for knowledge of one to help with assimilation of the next, or are they each their own beast with just a shared skeleton? And, which games would make for easier on-ramps to these systems for someone coming from a traditional hex-and-counter background?

 

BT: Some of these families are more self-similar than others, it's true. Two that are quite explicitly this way are the Brief Border Wars and District Commander systems.

I thought one of the best ideas SPI came up with was the “Quadrigame” concept of a set of basic rules framed to model a particular set or type of conflicts, or historical period, with smaller sets of rules exclusive to each battle to show its peculiarities. These were not very complex games, but there is still an advantage to laying out the core concepts and mechanisms in a base set of rules people can learn, then as they explore the other games in the system there remains only a bit left to learn to reflect the particular circumstances of each situation.

The basic rules were usually four pages long and each set of exclusive rules another 2-3 pages, including tables.

They published 16 Quads between 1975 and 1979, for a total of 64 games ranging from Alexander’s Siege of Tyre (SPI, 1978) to a still-hypothetical Second Korean War (SPI, 1977).

I wrote an article [about] another 45 or so that were proposed in S&T or MOVES feedback sections, but were never published (at least not quite in the form they were proposed). So, I wanted to try the idea of publishing a quad of my own, with four games in one box, and Compass Games bit on that hook... twice!

The game system was inspired by how well The Little War (Hollandspiele, 2017) seemed to work. This was a game I designed in 2015-16 on the short but spirited one-week border war between Slovakia and Hungary in March 1939. Hollandspiele published it as part of a two-fer with Ukrainian Crisis in 2017.

The game system seemed to offer some potential to model other somewhat similar conflicts in a simple way, so I chose four short border wars (from many possibilities!) and got to work.

BBW II cover (BGG, courtesy of Jenar Oldic).

The first quad [Brief Border Wars (Compass Games,2020)] was modern wars: The Soccer War (1969), Turkish invasion of Cyprus (1974), Third Indochina War (1979) and the Second Lebanon War (2006). It was quite popular; people liked the short rules format and short playing time.

So Compass wanted another volume, and the second quad (Compass Games, 2025) was pre-1945 titles: Second Balkan War (1913), The Seven Day War (Teschen, 1919), the Nomonhan Incident (1939) and the Italo-Greek War (1940).

These games would be a good introductory path, but where the SPI Quadrigames were always hex and counter these are area-movement games with a card-driven system that models the chaotic, stop and start nature of these conflicts between not very good or prepared armies. This tends to trip up a few players who have a lot of experience with standard hex-and-counter fare, and sometimes they have to do a little bit of unlearning to shake out the ideas and rules they are porting over in their head... I see quite a bit of this, even with the COIN system games; the hobby has a lot of unwritten mental habits, implicit understandings and conventional wisdom.

Unprovoked Chinese aggression along the Vietnamese border (Brief Border Wars).

It seems I often do something and then insist on trying it again, but backwards... so with the District Commander series of games from Hollandspiele, there is a set of core rules and a further set of exclusive rules for each game.

But these were published as four separate games, one each in a box... mostly because I took my time designing each one, because Hollandspiele is a very small company that could not afford to put four modules in one box, and I didn't want to wait to reach the magic number of four before publishing.

The District Commander series has a longer history than Brief Border Wars. I started working on it in 2012, it had evolved out of  an unpublished but rather ornate game I did in 2010 called Kandahar I (the fourth, unpublished one I mentioned) that was in turn inspired by another unpublished game from 2008, called Virtualia, that was an amplification of many of the mechanics in my Tupamaro (BTR Games, 1996) game from 1995, and even some bits and pieces from Green Beret (1996-2015, in different versions). So my ideas might evolve, but my lack of talent for clever titles stays pretty much constant.

At first I had the vague idea that this could be a simple manual game I could give to the professional military, who could use it in classes to cover the “Clear and Hold” concept contained in US Army counterinsurgency doctrine (later it became “Clear, Hold and Build”) with no need for any technical gizmos more advanced than a glue stick.

But it was a silly notion.

Professional military people are usually far too busy and time-starved to indulge in anything like this – even if many of them do realize the value of manual games over computer ones… even if you get rid of the dice that make it seem a trivial exercise to some senior officers… even if you split it into basic, intermediate and advanced versions, etc. And by the time Hollandspiele published the first module in 2019, counterinsurgency was no longer top of mind for the military anyway.

DC Kandahar cover (BGG, courtesy of the publisher).

Unlike Brief Border Wars, this is a more complex system with a topic and treatment not often seen: operational (campaign) level counterinsurgency, where many games are strategic in scale (like GMT COIN system games) or tactical (Boots on the Ground (Worthington Publishing, 2010), etc.). The two sides have asymmetric menus of operations, force structures, methods and objectives and games are quite open-ended in terms of time.

It's also diceless: each player holds a hand of Chance Chits that influence operations when played. These chits will be expended during play as players perform (or defend against) certain Missions. Note that while chits initially are drawn randomly, the chits you play during the turn are selected deliberately.

It’s like being able to choose many of your die rolls in advance; the randomness comes from the initial random selection at the beginning of the turn, and the decisions made by each player because of the unequal ratings of the chits for different types of activity... you might want to play a chit that is not good for one particular situation, in order to save a better one for a different situation later.

Again, these are area-movement maps and action in the game consists of task forces moving about activating and conducting operations, to score points according to a scheme that is dictated to you by your senior commanders and keeps changing during the game.

There are also sub-systems for intelligence and a lot of optional rules for the core rues as well as the exclusive rules, so there can be a lot of variation in play.

A couple of the games also feature autonomous factions like Non-State Militia and organized criminals. Foreign forces are also included, they are more effective militarily but can be difficult politically, and sometimes also act autonomously.

All of this adds up to something not quite usual and different even from the COIN system, which is unfamiliar enough to many. But the system has proven quite flexible, and I continue to work on modules that use it... so one might like it, if one liked that sort of thing to begin with.

If you want to find out, I still offer the first module Maracas, about counterinsurgency inside a large city for free print and play (Vassal modules are out there too).

 

AFG: You’ve designed dozens of games and game systems, and you’ve come up with your share of innovations in wargaming over the years. Is there a game or a mechanism by another designer that you’d put up on a pedestal, something you’d point to and say “Now, that’s what I call quite good!”?

BT: Without a doubt, James F. Dunnigan is my favourite wargame designer.

The highlight of my wargame design career was in 2012 when I sat next to him at a panel discussion at a Connections conference and he said, “I like what you’re doing”.

Squeeee!

He is well known for two great notions:

“There are two overarching rules for game design. They are: Keep It Simple; and Plagiarize.” (he also said, “use available techniques” when he wanted to be a bit more euphemistic).

and;

“If you can play them, you can design them.”

He designed or developed many of the wargames that I consider Damn Clever: Berlin ’85 (featured in Strategy & Tactics, issue 79 (SPI, 1980), Canadian Civil War (SPI, 1977), Lost Battles (SPI, 1971), Minuteman: the Second American Revolution (SPI, 1976), NATO Division Commander (SPI, 1980), Plot to Assassinate Hitler (), Russian Civil War (SPI, 1976), Year of the Rat (SPI, 1972).

What do these all have in common?

They all point out that he was never afraid to experiment – well, he had little choice but to try new things since SPI was the first really adventurous wargame publishing company but he pushed that to the hilt.

 

AFG: One last question - Paranoid Delusions (BTR Games, 2006) – what’s with that?!

The Spanish-language cover of Paranoid Delusions (BGG, courtesy of THE MAVERICK).

BT: Hah! That was something I spun up for one of the Microgame Design Contests that used to be run on Boardgamegeek but I don’t think are continuing, at least not under that name (to be fair, I haven’t looked either).

It was the 2006 contest and there were only two entries: mine and Nemo’s War (Victory Point Games, 2009) by Chris Taylor. We called it a tie at the time, but while my game languished, Chris has had several expanded and improved editions of his!

Paranoid Delusions counter mix (BGG, Courtesy of Federico Galeotti).

I used to do mail art and was into ‘zine culture back in the 80s and was familiar with conspiracy culture and other forms of “high weirdness” before the Internet, [and] I also read my share of Thomas Pynchon.

I wanted to have some kind of free-form game where you could get away with attacking yourself, for the sake of the greater goal of solving the mystery to unlock the world and what was happening in it.

Nowadays of course this kind of stuff is so bog-standard and pervasive it’s barely funny anymore – if indeed it ever was.

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I wanted to thank Mr Train again for his time and sharing so much of what goes on under the hood of wargame design. If you've enjoyed or got something out of this interview, do yourself a favour and subscribe to Mr Train's blog.

* For more information on the international network of Connections conferences, you should check out Rex Brynen's PAXsims blog.