News from GMT
March 23, 2023 4 Comments
Today saw the monthly GMT Games update newsletter, with tidings of developments on all game projects and – most keenly anticipated by all – announcements of new items up for P500.
Two of these are notable:
A new four-pack of games on Latin American insurgencies by Stephen Rangazas, using a slightly encomplexified iteration of the cut-to-its-core COIN system he used in the first four-pack, The British Way. This one has games on the Tupamaros (1968), El Salvador (1979), Nicaragua (1979) and Shining Path (1980). You can play the El Salvador and Nicaragua games simultaneously side-by-side in the “Resisting Reagan” scenario.
More here: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1032-the-guerrilla-generation.aspx
This one is a continental-scale game on the European revolutions of 1848, using a an area control system that was featured in 1989: Dawn of Freedom and Twilight Struggle, two perennial GMT best sellers. The designer is Jules Felisaz, whose name I do not recognize and does not show up on Boardgamegeek so this must be his first published design.
More here: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1033-1848-the-springtime-of-nations.aspx
I designed a game on the Tupamaros in 1995, a game on the Shining Path in 1996, and a continental scale 1848-revolutions game in 1997. As far as I could tell these were the first designs on these conflicts.
So of course I am excited to see the second designs on all these conflicts coming out, over 25 years later!
Yes, I signed up for these, certainly….
About brtrain
brtrain 
Hi Brian. Really glad to hear you’re excited to 1848: The Springtime of Nations. I hadn’t realised you had a design on the topic before. And yes, it is Jules’ first design 🙂 His bgg page is in the queue!
Peter
Thanks Peter!
I designed my 1848 game back in 1997 as an act of creative procrastination.
I was writing an article on the 1848 revolutions for Strategy and Tactics magazine and got writer’s block, so I designed this game as a way of re-organizing and classifying the reading and research I had done, into a game model.
(Also because writing is just as hard work as game designing or harder, so maybe it was a kind of avoidance behaviour!)
It sat in my list of games I had completed but never sought formal publication – in 1997 I was still in the DTP ghetto, and so I made up individual copies to give to people who read my list of designs and were curious.
In 2015 when I started BTR Games (my own DTP imprint for designs of mine that otherwise would be out of print or unavailable) I made up copies of the game in advance, and actually sold some… even more now that the games are available through WargameVault.
My game accommodates up to 4 players but is simpler and more abstract than Jules’ design, of course.
It remains the only design I have done on anything happening before 1913.
Just a week ago at SDHistCon, I was chatting about games on the 1848 revolutions… and said that your 1997 game was the only one to cover the subject on a continental scale. Glad to see it’s getting company!
Well, as I said it only took about 25 years to get it a friend.
Wargaming has some big blind spots, still.