Back to Blighty

Nope, not this time.

On Saturday I’m leaving for London, to attend this year’s Connections-UK conference at King’s College London. I’ll be chairing a plenary session on “wargame design and analysis”, and participating in some other shenanigans!

Other than that, I am taking a couple of extra days to see friends and collaborators, and play some more games – I am taking Colonial Twilight, Caudillo, the Brief Border Wars quad, the Freikorps re-do (still haven’t decided on a name) and Nights of Fire for show and tell and test-driving.

Really looking forward to seeing London again! Hope the jet-lag isn’t as bad as last time.

Posting may be spotty as I will be working off a tablet and it’s hard to type on it. I’ll be home on the 13th. Be good, now….

A Distant Plain: P500 on 3rd printing launched!

GMT Games has launched a P500 for the THIRD printing of A Distant Plain!

This will be a straight reprint of the second printing, which I think had caught all the errata from the first.

If you get in on it now, you pay $54 instead of the regular price of $78!

http://www.gmtgames.com/p-656-a-distant-plain-3rd-printing.aspx

GMT update: corrected cards for Colonial Twilight

 

From GMT’s monthly newsletter, released today:

Colonial Twilight Card Issue Update

I’m happy to report that we have received the four-card replacement packs that fix the “missing and misnumbered cards” issue. We are shipping them out now – along with Fields of Fire and Enemy Coast Ahead: Doolittle P500 orders. They should all be shipped out by the end of this week. I’m very sorry for any inconvenience caused by the error in the decks. This should fix the issue.

Note also that we’ll now begin shipping copies of the game (with the updated cards inside) to distributors and retailers, and have removed the “Temporary Hold” on selling the game. So you should see Colonial Twilight showing up in your local game stores soon.

Courage, mes amis!

In a couple of weeks it will be as if it never happened.

Red Horde 1920: interview at The Players Aid blog

Grant Kleinheinz of The Players Aid blog interviewed me about Red Horde 1920. Pictures, and a silly anecdote too!

https://theplayersaid.com/2017/08/21/interview-with-brian-train-designer-of-red-horde-1920-from-tiny-battle-publishing

Meanwhile, Mark Walker liked the idea of a Freikorps revised to the same standard and I have spent the last week bashing that one into shape. I tested it on the weekend with Akito, and he found it interesting. It will be quite a bit different from the earlier version, yet more of the same.

 

Michel Boucher – 2017

Michel and me at Cangames, May 2017

My good friend Michel Boucher has died.

I first met Michel at BottosCon in 2010, after several years of corresponding and trading games over BGG. He playtested games with me, gave me lots of great constructive criticism and conversation, taught me to play Hearts and Minds and Les Poilus, translated some of my games into French, made VASSAL modules of my games, invited me to his home for dinner… A kind, intelligent, thoughtful guy.

I will miss Michel a lot.

Hollandspiele’s one year old!

Hollandspiele is one year old this week, after releasing SEVENTEEN titles in that time.

And they are having a sale on each and every one of them!

https://hollandspiele.com/collections/all

Tom Russell made a very nice blog post about the process of publishing their first game, The Scheldt Campaign, but it’s more about the design work of Brian Train, the guy who designed it. His games sound like something I’d probably be interested in.

https://hollandspiele.com/blogs/hollandazed-thoughts-ideas-and-miscellany/on-publishing-the-scheldt-campaign-by-tom-russell

I’ve been very happy in my dealings with Tom and Mary Russell, both before and after their founding of Hollandspiele, a little game company that could. And did. And does. They are honest and work hard and communicate and respect the designer’s work; these are all good things. I look forward to meeting them in person one day – they were supposed to come out to the CSW Expo in Tempe this year but poor Tom screwed up his back. Well, next year.

Meanwhile, nine bucks off each of Scheldt Campaign and Ukrainian Crisis!

Kevin Sharp plays Ukrainian Crisis, and likes it

Which about says it all, I suppose!

Pop over to his bigboardgaming.com site, and see his account of a complete and suspenseful game. Pictures, too!

http://bigboardgaming.com/ukrainian-crisis/

Some time earlier he also made a short video of his initial impressions:

http://bigboardgaming.com/ukraine-crisis-post-play-notes/

YPPA! YPPA! Red Horde 1920 is out now!

 

Tiny Battle Publishing has released Red Horde 1920, my drastic reworking of Konarmiya, my game from 10 years ago on the Russo-Polish War. New rules, new order of battle, new map, new counters – Papa’s got a brand new bag!

Special introductory price: $24.00, six bucks off the regular price of $30.00!

They also usually make a Print and Play version available for about $12.00, so you can save on postage by supplying your own paper.

https://tinybattlepublishing.com/products/red-horde-1920

The gates of Warsaw await you…

 

 

Colonial Twilight: VASSAL module now available!

image: Rodger MacGowan

Joel Toppen has finished his VASSAL module for Colonial Twilight!

http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Colonial_Twilight:_The_French-Algerian_War,_1954-62

Be sure to read the brief instructions at the page on how to do non-obvious but necessary things.

Thanks so much for your work Joel!