Ludic Futurism
October 14, 2025 Leave a comment
I mentioned earlier that while I was in Turin, Mauro Mola (standing) interviewed me for his doctoral thesis and the day after we played his game “From Strikes to Insurrection”. Here’s a picture taken of us playing this interesting card-driven game!
Also, Nicolas Pensyres posted a link to the CHPM Instagram page with some fleeting and interesting looks at the doings at Wargame Connections Suisse 2025!
December 4, 2019 Leave a comment
Provisional cover art, by “seado3”
Comrades, the time has come to render aid.
Civil Power, my tactical “sandbox” game on civil unrest will be published by Conflict Simulations Ltd. next year but first it’s time for some concerted playtesting.
Kevin Conway has made up a Vassal module, and we are looking for people to take the game and its scenarios for a spin. If you want to get involved, here are the requirements:
I’ve been doing some more work on this game the last while, overhauling language and revising mechanics. This is one of the first games I designed (technically the second; my very first was in 1982, a very derivative game on the Pusan Perimeter) and I’ve written a lot of rules since then.
I’ve also been revising, dropping and adding scenarios: currently there are 13. Back in 1991/92 I was drawing them up based on newspaper headlines, so there are scenarios for things like the LA riots and one based on keeping Afrikaner neo-Nazis out of a hotel… but these are restive times we are in, so I have added 2019 Hong Kong and Caracas protest-counterprotest scenarios for 2019. It won’t be difficult for players to make their own.
April 11, 2018 Leave a comment
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)
December 18, 2017 2 Comments
Today (after several days of delay, stupid brokerage fees and why should I pay GST on something that was not made or sold in Canada, in fact was not sold at all, but given to me? Argh!) I got a copy of the prototype version of Nights of Fire, sent all the way from Hungary.
Here it is set up, ready for a game with Akito. He took the Soviets and ended up with a Grand Soviet Victory. Sabotage, I suspect sabotage….
The cards are nicely printed and finished, the counters thick with good die-cutting, the stickers stuck to the wooden blocks nicely… the only complaint I have is that there need to be some more changes made to the layout of the map: its total area is almost exactly twice that of the playtest map I made, yet my map makes far better use of the available space. Changes will be made.
Meanwhile, it was great to play a test game with these very nice pieces!
May 23, 2015 1 Comment
Chunk of new map, by Tim Allen.
Somehow I missed this… Victory Point games is looking for playtesters of their edition of Ukrainian Crisis, which they are calling Headline Ukraine. This was posted on May 4 so I don’t know if they have already found the four groups of two playtesters each they want for the game:
US residents only please (I’m guessing this is due to postage costs, not any innate need to snub other nations).
Brian
brtrain 
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