News from GMT

March 20, 2025 7 Comments

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.

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ADP at Origins

July 3, 2024 3 Comments

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A couple of years ago a young fellow named Matthew Denton wrote me about a card game he was working on concerning the Algerian War. He actually got some grant money from his college to work on it as a research project! He wanted some advice about prototyping and game design, and I answered at my usual unnecessary length… anyway, he made a very clever game called Insurgent Algeria, that is now available from Catastrophe Games via Blue Panther (Catastrophe is also bringing out a new edition of Civil Power one day):

https://catastrophegames.net/insurgent-algeria/

Matthew posted today about his experience at Origins. He had never been to a game convention before, and while Origins is a big one to break in on, he had an immersive time, including participating in one of the 8-player team games of A Distant Plain that Brant Guillory runs there (see here for details).

Have a read!

https://finbargames.substack.com/p/five-things-i-learned-at-origins?r=uja3b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

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Interview: Volko moves on

July 2, 2024 3 Comments

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Volko shows how it’s done… playing a prototype of A Distant Plain at his house, summer 2012.

https://boardgamewire.com/index.php/2024/06/28/its-probably-the-longest-road-of-any-game-design-ive-had-in-play-coin-series-designer-volko-ruhnke-talks-new-game-hunt-for-blackbeard-solving-the-hidden-information-conundrum-and-why-hes/

In this interview with Boardgamewire, Volko Ruhnke looks back on his 25 years of designing wargames, his original influences and where they took him, and where he is going now (much of the interview is about his new limited-intelligence designs Hunt For Blackbeard and Coastwatchers).

Volko is moving on from designing in the GMT COIN system that he created, and I think I am too, after China’s War 1937-41 and O Canada see the light of day.

Certainly, working with Volko on A Distant Plain will remain one of my best working experiences in this cockeyed pastime!

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After The Fall of Kabul

May 1, 2024 2 Comments

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In the journal Rethinking History: Professor Thomas Ambrosio at North Dakota State University has published an article on the relevance and reception of A Distant Plain in the period during and after the collapse of the Afghan government in 2021.

Here is the abstract of the article:

Boardgaming after the fall of Kabul: player and designer (re)engagement with a distant plain
Thomas Ambrosio

Received 09 Feb 2022, Accepted 29 Mar 2024, Published online: 28 Apr 2024
Cite this article https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2024.2339120

ABSTRACT
During summer 2021, the world watched the swift and, for some, surprising collapse of Afghanistan’s government. However, a Taliban victory was always a possibility for players of A Distant Plain (ADP), a boardgame about insurgency and counterinsurgency in post-9/11 Afghanistan. These events inspired many ADP players, and its designers, to (re)engage with the game, thus providing scholars with a unique opportunity to investigate in real time how historical practice occurs within the popular culture space. Utilizing primary sources, this article demonstrates that contemporary history games – those which depict current events or open-ended, unresolved periods, rather than ones designed to model what is seen as ‘settled’ history – are uniquely subject to external, out-of-game interventions which may prompt reevaluations of their assumptions and models, since players and designers are repeatedly challenged by changing circumstances to integrate new data into how they perceive and consume the historical representations found therein. These games are therefore exceptionally suited to engendering genuine and ongoing historical practice, through the use of evidence, argumentation and debate, retrospective reassessments, and counterfactual analysis. The broader discipline will greatly benefit from taking a more inclusive view of popular history by paying greater attention to historical games of this type.

The journal and article are available through Taylor and Francis Online, a site I don’t have access to but if you are connected with a post-secondary educational institution or a good library you might be able to access it.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642529.2024.2339120?src=

Thomas Ambrosio has written several other articles in the same vein, good to see this interpretation getting some air.

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Reviews, Italian style!

January 25, 2024 4 Comments

Brian Train: sistemi di giochi diversi per un War Game designer

Over on the website Giochi sul Nostro Tavolo (Games on our Table), Davide Clari gives his (positive) impressions of Operation Canuck, Mastering Resistance: Orange Gobi, and A Distant Plain.

It’s in Italian but the browser translator works fine.

I met Davide when I was in Turin and we did the public talk-and-play of A Distant Plain event. Davide also interviewed me about my history and thoughts concerning game design; it will run on a separate website later, and I will post notification of that.

Grazie mille per il tuo lavoro, Davide!

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I Giochi di Clio: Turin, 12 Settembre 2023

September 11, 2023 2 Comments

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script  Giochi di clio 20 aug 23

Script for short presentation on insurgency games and How They Are Different, using A Distant Plain as an example.

Followed by collective play of A Distant Plain!

Organized by and through Istituto piemontese per la storia della Resistenza e della società contemporanea ‘Giorgio Agosti’ and two professors at the University of Turin, Giaime Alonge and Riccardo Fassone.

It is the first of a series of four talks; other designers include Paolo Mori, Andrea Angiolino and Glauco Babini.

Grazie mille for creating this event and for hosting me to do it!

https://www.istoreto.it/event/i-giochi-di-clio-brian-train-a-distant-plain-counterinsurgency-in-afghanistan/

And here is the Facebook post they made after the event, with some nice photos:

https://www.facebook.com/istoreto?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZVH98vtee5-ih14lgZdyBPaoQfFBs5su9Q8EUdNflOQPnZ7aDPrF0ilpG1T3peLQq4RhymvtP8jjY2BupQWBplj8Giyys2KAXtSkzGMKmyf6fZuYH-Tk6HK5za7_WCRyoimXVfOPbEd5kSdn56SqFwycVtaqO9_Gcf16ZXgLIdc3qfimmEAVWKbRV1ip2haE8JJ9A1mcC9oqFpS3V2kZS2N&__tn__=-UC%2CP-R

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Hitting the road again

July 31, 2023 Leave a comment

headthames

In a few weeks I will be crossing the pond again, for the first time since 2018.

I will be in London for a few days in late August/early September to visit step-family and meet some gaming folks, including hanging out with the Class Wargames crowd… they will be arranging a play of Civil Power using Dr. Richard Barbrook’s plus-size demonstration set!

Then to Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, for the Connections-UK conference. I’ll be speaking on a panel about urban warfare and wargames, that is, mainly about the QUICK and some more about the other games that I have designed adjacent to the topic since then (EXURB, 91 DSSB Staff Game, Scaleable Urban Simulation, and SubtLE). There will also be a game fair to show these off.

Then to Turin, for two events connected with the University of Turin and ISTORETO (“Istituto piemontese per la storia della Resistenza e della società contemporanea ‘Giorgio Agosti’”). First is a public event where I will be talking about A Distant Plain and relating it to other games, followed by group play of the game (see notice below). It is the first in a series of four weekly events, the other game designers invited are Paolo Mori (Blitzkrieg! World War Two in 20 Minutes, which is actually a really neat game), Andrea Angiolilo (Wings of Glory) and Glauco Babini/ Chiara Asti (Repubblica Ribelle, a new co-operative game about creating and defending a Partisan republican zone in occupied Italy).

The next day I will be talking to a class of Games Studies students at the University about “Analog Newsgames” (you know the story here, I have found some interesting examples of these from Italian media of the 1980s for illustration as well).

Turin is a city with a very deep history of popular resistance, so there are some places I want to visit connected with the themes of anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi resistance during the war, and the disturbances during the Years of Lead.

I’ve never been to Italy before so I’m really excited! I was invited through the kind offices of Professors Giaime Alonge and Riccardo Fassone, from the Department of Humanities at the University of Turin. Thanks to them for the chance of a lifetime!

I giochi di Clio – BRIAN TRAIN  A Distant Plain: Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan 1^ incontro

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Review: A Distant Plain

July 5, 2022 Leave a comment

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It’s been a while since I’ve seen a review of A Distant Plain – I got my early designer’s copy of the game almost exactly nine years ago – but here is a good short review by someone meeting it for the first time, and their thoughts on playing a game on this subject.

https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/first-impressions-a-distant-plain

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A Distant Plain: 4th printing in the offing!

November 29, 2021 2 Comments

pic1733403_md

GMT Games has recently announced a new P500 for a FOURTH printing of A Distant Plain!

This 4th printing is identical to the 3rd printing, and incorporates all known errata. 

You can get your copy at the P500 price of just $56.00 here: 

https://www.gmtgames.com/p-961-a-distant-plain-4th-printing.aspx

No telling how long it will take for enough orders to accumulate for them to pull the trigger, but I will say I am very pleased to see this. 

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Podcast: History and Games Lab, episode #12

October 1, 2021 4 Comments

Recently I sat down with Eduard Gafton, of the History and Games Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh, to talk about many things – we talk about the origins of some of my game designs and how I got into game design, and focus on Brief Border Wars and the issues involved in designing games on sensitive and controversial topics (A Distant Plain gets a look in, of course).

A great podcast and some very good questions came up!

I’m in very good company on this podcast… earlier guests in the series include Cole Wehrle, Tomislav Cipcic, Volko Ruhnke and Lewis Pulsipher.

https://player.fm/series/history-games-lab-podcast-university-of-edinburgh

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