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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Merch: Wargame Swag

November 25, 2023 4 Comments

I don’t often shill things, but I did want to draw your attention to two items I got in the mail this week.

I never thought I’d actually make it onto a T-shirt!

These nifty items and many others are available from Lance Manion of “Wargame Swag”, as either a T-shirt ($20 unless you are enormous) or a poster ($18 flat, ha get it?). No website but here is a link to his catalogue of over 150 images.

https://www.facebook.com/download/264081589911291/Wargame%20Swag%209-8-23.pdf

It seems he can only do images of games that are out of print, or have very helpful publishers… hence you will find loads of loads of images of SPI games (Minuteman is one of my favourites, therefore I got one), among others: loads of Avalon Hill, Victory Games, West End Games, and some surprises. Quality of shirt is quite nice, printing is good too.

Contact him at [email protected].

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China’s War: near-final map art

May 29, 2023 9 Comments

chinas-war-final-board

I haven’t written much about China’s War lately, but here is something to look at – the near final map art!

Much heavier visual emphasis on the Lines of Communication because of their critical importance to the game, and the need to give pieces some space to unambiguously occupy them.

Chinese characters have been vetted with native speakers.

Next up for visuals will be finding illustrations for the Event Cards… then finishing off writing for the Playbook – I won’t be doing the tutorial or the solo system playthroughs but there will be Designer’s Notes, Faction Interaction Chart, Event Text and Background, Transliteration and Pronunciation Guide, and reading list, capped by a short piece on the war for historical background for people who don’t know anything about the war already.

Work is proceeding, at a dignified pace which suits me.

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Strike For Berlin: Chinese edition!

April 5, 2023 6 Comments

pic7440343

Several of my games originally published by Flying Pig/ Tiny Battles have also had Chinese-language editions, produced by arrangement with Banana Games (think they are in Tianjin).

Here is the Chinese edition of Strike For Berlin.

Looks nice except they misspelled my name on the box!

More broadly, for anyone who is interested I ran across this interesting summary of wargame shops, publishers game clubs and other resources across Asia, recent as of 2019.

https://legalalien.sakura.ne.jp/wiki/?Tabletop+Wargaming/A+Brief+Summary+of+Tabletop+Wargaming+in+Asia

And of course this leads one down a bit of a rabbit hole, where I found some panels of “Girl Genius Wargamer”, a manga drawn by Fraser Chang of Taiwan in 2014. Here is a short piece of his giving an introduction to the different forms and scales of board wargaming, featuring cartoon girls with large heads, odd coloured hair and short-skirted high school uniforms.

https://home.gamer.com.tw/creationDetail.php?sn=2634535

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Brief Border Wars 2: have a look at the maps and counters!

December 11, 2022 Leave a comment

pic7088560

 

Knut Grunitz, the artist for Brief Border Wars Volume 2, has uploaded the work he has done on the maps and counters for this quad game. 

Great work – go and have a look!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/371208/brief-border-wars-2/images

Meanwhile, we are about done with all the game files… all is arranged and in readiness for actual physical production, which will be some time in 2023. 

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Connections Online – Practical Game Design presentation on Youtube

April 12, 2021 Leave a comment

Just a quick one… here is the link to the event on Youtube.

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Civil Power: making your own scenarios

December 21, 2020 3 Comments

Untitled-1

Copies of Civil Power are starting to thud and rattle into mailboxes across the land.

https://www.consimsltd.com/products/civil-power in case you haven’t had a chance to order your copy yet!

I’ve mentioned this before, but from the beginning I purposely designed this to be a “sandbox” type of game, for people to experiment with new and revised scenarios, optional rules and so forth – there is also a points purchase system and force-package system so you can easily assemble opposing forces.
The game comes with two geomorphic squared maps of an imaginary urban area. Keeping in mind that each square is 20 metres across (~25 yards) or about the width of a street, you could take an image from Google Maps or something and make a squared map to suit your favourite location, with terrain interpretations informed by your knowledge of the area.
As an example, I made one such for the Legislative Assembly buildings in my capital city… took me a couple of minutes to do. (Yeah, it shows.) Though I hasten to add that while the front lawn has seen many demonstrations, they have all been fairly well mannered except one time in 1993 where protesters forced their way into the building, and broke a window (and a staff member was shoved to the ground and hurt their hip). A collection was taken up by the organizers to have the window fixed.
VicLeg 1

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Chile ’73: The Most Dangerous (War)game

April 11, 2018 Leave a comment

 

c73 tbp cover

Tiny Battles sends out a short piece on their experience of playing Chile ’73 after I handed it in… one of their playtesters was felled by a heart attack during play! He recovered, though.

In an interesting aside, the design of the game’s cover is based on the layout of El Mercurio, Santiago’s main daily newspaper. I like little arty touches like that.

(Web version at link below)

https://gem.godaddy.com/p/add90c?fe=1&pact=38341-144918937-10719805120-f5de019cec6b1b6615b5feaefcd657b3d7d67b13

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Europa font symbols

December 23, 2017 2 Comments

europa font symbols

(Copyright whatever copyright Europa magazine has or had.)

Just for general interest, here is a scan of a page from an old issue of Europa magazine (don’t know which one, but mid-90s I guess) showing the extent of unit type symbols the game system used at the time. I’m sure they are using more now.

I do not know if the Europa symbol font is still available from GR/D; I doubt it as I can find no references to it via Google. But this is the Internet, so I am sure someone will be along to correct me on the point soon.

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Now It Can Be Seen: Box art for Colonial Twilight

March 16, 2017 Leave a comment

Rodger MacGowan has finished the box art for Colonial Twilight!

And boy it looks good. The collage-of-images is a staple for many wargame covers, but it’s particularly interesting how Rodger has arranged these and used colours to imitate and fuse the structures of both the French and Algerian flags. And the green-and-black scheme really makes it pop.

I’m very pleased with this, another great cover by Rodger!

And now, this is the very last thing there is for me to look at and approve… so that’s it.

I think we’re done here, after more than two and a half years.

*sigh*

Look for this to appear in June or July!

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