Today is Liberation Day in Italy, the 80th anniversary of the day in 1945 when the Partisans and ordinary people rose up in armed revolt and a general strike to overthrow the remnants of the Fascist government and the Nazi occupiers.
The picture above is from a commemorative event held at Polo del’ 900, an annex to the museum in Turin dedicated to the history of the Resistance where they put on the collective play of A Distant Plain in 2023. They are presenting From Strikes to Insurrection, a game about the Resistance movement in Turin designed by Mauro Mola, and which Giaime Alonge and Giuseppe Tamba plan to publish possibly this year… possibly together with my games Operation Canuck and Mastering Resistance!
Available for general view today: the presentation I made at Connections-Online two weeks ago on “Gaming-neglected Aspects of the Operational Environment”.
Adapted freely from the talk on this I gave at the TRADOC-G2 sponsored one-day event at Georgetown University in November 2024, which few in present company saw.
Hope you find it interesting!
Playlist of all Connections-Online 2025 presentations here:
Back in February I attended the Connections-North conference at CFB Kingston, which was a great if all too short event, and then travelled to Toronto to attend the Simulation Summit, another short event held at the Royal Canadian Military Institute and sponsored by Zeroes and Ones Inc..
My main contribution was helping to facilitate a rapid game design workshop, after which I was interviewed in the aptly named Sword Room for some of my thoughts on games and game design.
This is a short one, cut down from my usual river of prolixity, and I talk about asymmetry in games, my work on urban warfare, and give the origin story of Guerrilla Checkers.
(first, a pleasant image of three of my favourite people – Mark Herman, Charles Vasey and Harold Buchanan – having lunch together at Ziani, the very nice Italian restaurant in Chelsea where Charles and I have eaten)
You have probably already read this, but today GMT sent out an update concerning their reaction to the new tariff regime with respect to Chinese made products.
There is a lot in it, but it seems to me that GMT is doing some sensible things about the situation. Some highlights:
A sale on all their products for the next 60 days: 25% off. They badly need to build up their cash reserves as cash flow is the leading cause of death for small businesses… it certainly did for SPI.
Small tariff surcharges on products coming into the US now, more later. The ones being levied now are modest – no more than $2.10 per title – but were conceived of when the tariff was 10-20% not the ridiculous figure it is today (and which will be different next week, but anyway); still, there will be a surcharge.
They are figuring out a way to ship to non-US customers directly from China so as to dodge the tariffs (the US ones anyway). This will reduce the costs for these people by a LOT, and it might even become worthwhile for “game mules” to trek down to the US from Canada. Though if the border guard figures out that you are trying to flout tariffs when you claim that the eight copies of Cross Bronx Expressway in your luggage are for your personal use, you might just be “disappeared” (I know I should not joke about that but let’s laugh in the dark together for a moment).
Reducing warehouse holdings of games in the US as much as possible for now, in hopes that the situation will become more reasonable in time and import costs will come down.
There’s a lot more, especially about the impracticality of bringing quality board wargame production back to American shores, but that is what stuck out for me.
Elsewhere in the update, China’s War is marked as “at the printers” (in China) and the Distant Plain reprint is tentatively dated as Q4 – 2025 – though I would not count on that date, given all the other uncertainty swirling around.
Some of my wandering thoughts on the topic:
I acquire games in fits and starts, but I generally buy so few each year that tariffs won’t bite me much personally… I’m too busy making new games for companies to publish, but tariffs bite them much harder on their end of the equation and that’s what this is about.
It may yet happen that this nichey idiosyncratic hobby will survive. But the material industry that supported and distributed its intellectual products may not, and certainly will not in the manner it’s become accustomed to. People want big thick boxes, mounted maps, easy-punch counters in a million colours on thick cardboard, decks of cards with linen finish, plastic toys when they can get them… and they don’t want to pay very much for all that. Only one way to make that happen, and it’s stopping happening.
Take a look at the components of an SPI wargame from 50 years ago, it’s graphically modest but most of them were perfectly playable and challenging, and was printed in New York on offset presses without computers.
And its $12 price would be $71 today, applying inflation, so I think even with the tariffs added on nowadays we would still be getting a physically superior product (graphical coherence, playability and challenge still up for grabs though).
Anyway, of the sixty-odd BGG items where I’m credited with being the designer, over half (35) are available for cheap or free print-and-play, and always have been (or were made so once they were completely out-of-print, years ago even before the first tariff war with China).
Thanks to home computers and the PDF file, a print-and-play item with SPI-comparable graphics could be produced at home for printing costs (variable, limited only by your wallet, let’s say $5.00 for map and counter sheets from Kinko’s if you don’t do it yourself).
You also supply the production labour, which you could consider to be worth nothing or I note federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour (unchanged for the last 16 years, but consider it a priced opportunity cost).
And maybe the designer wants a couple of dollars as a reward for creating their intellectual property.
All up though, it’s a small fraction of the cost of the original product, and you do have pride of workmanship.
And I need hardly note that these titles are the ones on my BGG roster that have fewer than 50 owners each, so you’ve also joined an exclusive club.
People are also talking about crowdfunding as a way for publishers to not lose their shirt.
Only a few of my titles were ever made in China, or in large numbers (not sure about the magazine games or boxed games from Compass or LnL ).
Only one of those was ever subject to crowdfunding, a Kickstarter, and it cured me of ever wanting to be involved with one of those things from the publishing side other than as a horrified onlooker at the querolous, nasty, whiny, cheapskate, grasping demands of some of the backers.
In fairness, I have backed a number of KS games myself and always been happy, never been burned yet.
In the end though, I have never been in this to make money… I would have made far more money, hour for hour, if I’d spent all that time collecting aluminum cans.
So in the end I’m more like the chicken than the pig: both of us contribute to the breakfast, but the publisher’s stake in the enterprise is a bit more involving.
I don’t know how many Basque readers I have out there who don’t already know this, but friend of the blog Aitor Saiz Lasheras wrote me the other day to tell me that he and others had set up a wargames club at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, in support of the University offering a new program of Strategic Studies!
He also told me that members had prepared Spanish language translations of QUICK Junior and Sole Tunnels, and he had made Basque-language translations of Kashmir Crisis and Mastering Resistance: Orange Gobi.
These items join the other games of mine that he and others have worked so hard on to bring to a Spanish and Basque audience.
I hope the university succeeds with this department, and that perhaps my work might spark some interest or be helpful to students in future.
Don’t really want to engage in tiny parsing quibbles and bad-faith aesthetic criticisms for the next few months before anyone has a chance to actually play the game and see how it all comes together, but here we go….
Two spots of good news in the new GMT monthly update:
China’s War 1937-41 status is now At The Printer, with 1,791 pre-orders… you still have time to get yours at the discounted price of $55.00!
And, A Distant Plain is going in for a 4th printing, with 532 pre-orders so far! You can get one for the discounted price of $56.00.
In other news, Colonial Twilight is marked as “Out of Stock”. I doubt there will be a reprint as it took them nearly 8 years to reach this point. Hope you got one while the gettin’ was good.
There was also a sombre observance of the passing of Rodger MacGowan, one of the best cover artists for board wargames. He did two covers for my games, Distant Plain and Colonial Twilight and I loved both of them. I liked to contrast the cover he did for Labyrinth, featuring a US soldier striding confidently “out of the box” across a grayscale chessboard, with the cover for A Distant Plain, which shows a section of tired but determined troops heading “into the box” towards the hills in the distance. He had a remarkable sensitivity for these kinds of things.
“Bella Ciao” was a 19th century folk song that was later associated with the Italian Resistance movement in World War Two and is still sung in many languages as a song of resistance. It is easy to sing fast or slow, and the tune sticks in your mind.
“Elbows Up” is the hockey-related slogan used by people right now as a mark of resistance and standing up to the threats, large and small, levelled by the United States government against Canada. So I thought I would add to the number of songs being written right now that use the expression, via my own free translation and revision of this Italian anti-fascist anthem… I’m a better game designer than lyricist I’m sure, but I really like the original song.
Lyrics:
Elbows Up (free translation and revision of Bella Ciao)
One fine morning, I woke up early Elbows up! Elbows up! Elbows up, up up! One fine morning, I woke up early To find invaders at my door
Oh freedom fighters, please take me with you Elbows up! Elbows up! Elbows up, up up! Oh freedom fighters, please take me with you I’m not afraid anymore
And if I die, I’ll die among you Elbows up! Elbows up! Elbows up, up up! So bury me upon the hillside, In the shadow of the maple leaves.
Show all the people, the people passing, Elbows up! Elbows up! Elbows up, up up! Show all the people, the people passing, And they’ll say, ‘what beautiful maple leaves.'”
The leaves remember the fallen fighters Elbows up! Elbows up! Elbows up, up up! The leaves remember the fallen fighters Who died for freedom and victory.
I found this old instrumental version of the song on Youtube that will give you the tune, which starts about 15 seconds in.
I found another instrumental version that uses a synthesizer and builds nicely but is a bit longer and repeats once.
This article appeared in the Tyee yesterday, suggesting a Canadian Civil Defence Corps based partly on the Swedish model.
The practical suggestions in it, built around training, community preparedness and personal responsibility:
Universal civil defence training: Every Canadian should receive basic training in first aid, emergency preparedness and cybersecurity. This would be mandatory for Grade 12 students and newcomers, with local, in-person and online options for all adults.
Optional defence skills track: Similar to the Swedish approach, tens of thousands of Canadians could receive additional firearms training, tactical first aid, search-and-rescue skills and survival techniques — not to militarize society, but to ensure that we can take care of ourselves.
Reserve forces expansion: We must add at least 20,000 reservists to ensure we have a force ready to respond to crises — military or otherwise — aligning us more closely with NATO norms and attainable given our population.
Cyber-resilience training: Every Canadian should be able to recognize and defend against cyberthreats, disinformation campaigns and economic coercion. Germany has invested in tackling disinformation by training its population in media literacy, foreign influence detection and digital resilience — Canada must do the same.
National youth service program: The existing Canadian Service Corps is far too limited with only a few thousand young Canadians participating each year. We should dramatically expand national service opportunities, offering paid programs in trades, emergency management and infrastructure resilience, allowing young Canadians to develop valuable skills and experience other parts of the country while actively contributing to national security.
Arctic protection and Indigenous leadership: As global powers eye the Arctic, Canada must train more Indigenous rangers and local defence units to safeguard the North. Inuit and other Indigenous communities must be at the centre of Arctic security planning, ensuring they have the resources to defend their land and way of life.
I was thinking about this very thing last night. Some very good suggestions here.
The Reserves have to be drastically expanded, counter to the regular pattern with countries our reserves have been smaller than the regular forces for a long time and I can’t think why except for reasons of economy. However, the Reserves cannot simply be retasked with civil defence duties… back in the 1950s they tried this, it was called “National Survival” or something like that and recruitment plummeted.
However, other parts of it would take longer to stand up, because I think our sense of community and civic contribution has been drastically eroded over the years… except in times of crisis, when we are as generous and helpful and practical as any but we have to think and prepare in advance of crises… and there will be many of them, many and varied. I’ll be the first to admit that among our faults are distraction and complacency, they are quite common to humanity after all.
One of the comments to the article above, in response to someone making the obvious and hyperbolic comment “you can’t snap your fingers and have a million trained soldiers appear” and carping about the cost and time, was the motto “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”
I’d like to see this happen, even some of it… because half a loaf is better than the crumbly wet cracker we might be left with by events.
brtrain 
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