Made the cut!

On Saturday I got news that A Distant Plain had passed the point of 500 pre-orders!

I knew it would make it, just a question of when. (Actually, up to 512 as I write.)

The next steps will be sorting out game art, components, and working it into GMT Games’ production queue… and of course the continuing playtesting and development, which is proceeding apace. From the comments and questions I have seen it seems that we are past the “this doesn’t work, change it” stage and into the “what does this really mean, how do I do XYZ best” stage, which is a good sign. Still, it might be a year or more until this actually thuds onto doorsteps.

I will be conducting further playtests at this year’s BottosCon, 2-4 November, at the perfectly adequate Compass Point Inn in acceptable Surrey.

Finnish Civil War picked up by Compass Games

FINNISH CIVIL WAR is a free “print-and-play” wargame of the civil conflict in Finland in the early months of 1918. I designed it in late 2009 and posted it to my webpage for free download. It was the first game to be published on this war.

The game is for two players, one representing the elected government of the recently independent state (the White player) and the other the perhaps-irresistible forces of proletarian revolution (the Red Player). I designed it in two versions:
1) a company/battalion scale one with 280 counters and uses a system heavily modified from my previously published games Freikorps, Konarmiya and War Plan Crimson; and
2) a brigade scale one that has 50 counters and an even more heavily modified system.

Both versions use the same map (hex grid of southern Finland, at 12 map miles/ 20 km per hex). Special units and chromy bits include: variable-strength Red and White Guard units; Armored Trains; the spring thaw that occurred midway through the war; peace negotiations, German intervention and Russian withdrawal (including the Future Guilt Clause!); General Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim; German Tactical Agility; White guerrillas; and the Swedish Talent Agency.

As I said, it was available for free download at my personal gaming-devoted webpage (http://www.islandnet.com/~ltmurnau/text/gamescen.htm), but  I  just concluded an agreement with Compass Games for them to publish this game in issue #82 of Paper Wars magazine, due to appear in late 2013 or early 2014. Compass Games has requested that the free version of the game be taken down. Both versions of the game will appear in the magazine.

So, you’ll have to wait for a year or so, but Compass Games does some really great graphics – you’ll have a nice looking game with die-cut counters and a decent-sized map.

Meanwhile, Battle of Seattle, Paranoid Delusions, and Guerrilla Checkers remain available for free at the above page, as well as variants and scenarios for other wargames.