I’m appearing at SDHist Con Online 2023

SDHist Con Online 2023 Spring Deployment is a one-day online event coming this Saturday, March 18.

I’ll be giving a talk on the games I’ve done on modern urban combat at the operational level, both irregular and regular flavours… from Tupamaro to EXURB (don’t know what that last one is? Tune in and find out!)

[EDITED TO ADD:

SDHistcon urban 17 Mar 23

SDHistcon urban 11 mar 23

HERE ARE MY SLIDES AND SCRIPT. ]

[FURTHER EDITED TO ADD: HERE IS THE VIDEO GOOD LORD THERE IS ALMOST TWO HOURS OF IT….]

Registration link: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment

It’s $5.00 to attend but every event is free.

Link to the event, but be reminded there are dozens of other interesting panels and presentations too (just not at the same time as mine). https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/73

Overall event schedule, searchable: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule

Here are some I think would be interesting and intend to check out:

Talk on We Are Coming, Nineveh! out at last from NUTS! Publishing: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/58

Land and Freedom, an interesting new game on the Spanish Civil War (title of good Ken Loach movie too): https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/42

ZOIN, or zombie-inspired COIN system game about an outbreak in the northeastern US I guess… played out on Tabletop Simulator: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/59

More COIN, a presentation by Yann de Villeneuve on A Fading Star, the newest GMT COIN system game (volume 15 in the series!) about insurgency in modern Somalia: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/6

The very clever Vesa Arponen presents Order & Opportunity, his new game on the making of the post-Cold War new world order: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/9

Okay, this looks neat: Chicago ’68, a “tactical asymmetric game” by Yoni Goldstein on the famous police riot: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/16

And in case you wanted to find out all the secrets, “How To Design a Board Game”, a table featuring Joe Schmidt (GMT Designer and Developer), Alex Knight (Designer of Land and Freedom: The Spanish Revolution and Civil War), and Sebastian Bae (Research Analyst, Wargame Designer, and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University) where they spill the beans: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/52

And though the event is taking place in the Pacific time zone, there will be extended hours and events so our friends in the UK and EU don’t have to stay up late to attend!

I hope you will drop by and check it out.

Also, if you happen to live near Rhode Island, be advised that the weekend of August 18-20 will see SD Hist Con East, hosted by the US Naval War College in Newport RI – registration opens at the end of this SD Hist Con!
This promises to be a very special event: numbers are strictly limited by the host to 60 only – first come first served!
The lucky few will spend time touring some cool local historical sites from the American Revolution and WW2 (Battleships! Submarines!)
You can access the registration link at http://www.sdhist.com .

Winter Thunder: now available on Steam!

The computer version of Winter Thunder is now available on Steam for C$16.99.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2167010/WinterThunder

Now features both German and Allied AIs, and you can play hotseat as well.

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

 

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. 

Strike for Berlin: new alt-hist scenario for Ostplan 1919

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Here is something new-old for you: an even-more-alt-hist scenario for my alternate-history game Strike For Berlin.

In December 1918, a general revolt across “Greater Poland” (mostly the territory known as the Grand Duchy of Posen to the Germans and the Voivodeship of Poznan to the Poles) led to confused fighting between German regular and paramilitary Freikorps units and Polish insurgents and portions of the Polish National Army. A ceasefire imposed by the Entente in mid-February 1919 confirmed the Polish occupation of most of the area and contributed to the decision to award this and other areas to Poland under the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.

In history, the Germans were disadvantaged in the initial revolt because most of Germany was then in chaos and revolution, and trustworthy forces were needed to secure order and save the government in Berlin. But what if the November Revolution had been settled faster, or if the government was on a more secure footing generally, and decided to buck the Entente-imposed ceasefire and fight again for Greater Poland, while the Polish main effort was diverted to the east in Galicia?

This scenario uses the rules, counters and map for Strike for Berlin. The directions for this scenario are written as additions, changes or deletions to the original rules.

Wolfgang Hoepper helped immensely with OOB and other details for this scenario. Not least, he also wrote a comprehensive article on the German contemplation of carrying out just such a plan! (I have edited the article slightly for usage and vocabulary.)

We hope you try this out, and enjoy. 

Ostplan scen

Ostplan 1919 article BRT edits

 

Connections Online: Showcase 2022

Wednesday 19 October 2022: a one-day, all-day Connections Online project showcase for professional/practitioner game design. Each presentation will run 90-120 minutes and focus on a single use case of a game designed or adapted to professional military/ national security usage, including deep dives into the objectives/purposes, designs, mechanics, execution, and lessons learned from both the preparation and conduct of the games.

The event will be a single 12-hour event, with no overlapping presentations, broadcast over Youtube for people who register. All or most presentations will be made available to the public after review.

Here is the schedule:

 Schedule (all times EDT)

1100	MAJ Dan Warner	Decisive Operations
1300	UKFC	Take That Hill / (urban ops)
1500	Eric Price & James Sterrett / SAMS	Root at SAMS
1700	Roger Mason	TBA
1900	Andrew Olson / Matthew Kirchman	Malign / A Splendid Failure
2100	Brian Train	QUICK

I will be giving a talk on the QUICK game, of course, and how it was designed and used at the 40th Infantry Division’s Urban Warfare Planners Course in July 2022. I’ll be at or near the end of the queue of presentations because of time zones: I am on the West Coast and need to get home after work to make the presentation.

Other presenters include two students from the Georgetown University Wargaming Society (Matt Kirchman on A Splendid Failure (Reconstruction in post-ACW US) and Andrew Olson on the Malign wargame design); Command and General Staff College student Dan Hauser on Decisive Operations and incorporating that game into the curriculum there; SAMS instructor Eric Price and the inestimable James Sterrett on integrating ROOT into professional military curricula; and a presentation of the UK Fight Club training game Take That Hill. Not sure what Roger Mason will be talking about but he’s always interesting to listen to.

Registration starts tomorrow (September 29). There is an event charge of $3 to cover their IT costs. Go here: https://tabletop.events/conventions/connections-online-showcase-2022

Hope to see you there!

[EDITED TO ADD]

Here is the link to the page with links to all the presentations made that day… some very interesting topics!

Connections Online Showcase 2022

Winter Thunder: computer version now available!

(screenshot from the beginning of Turn 1… German LXVII Corps prepares to jump off)

https://bruinbeargames.itch.io/winterthunder

From the mind of Casey Bruyn, of Bruinbear Games, comes a computerized version of Winter Thunder, my game on the Battle of the Bulge!

Windows only.

Hot-seat mode where you play both sides, or there is an AI for the German side… next release will feature an AI for the Allied side.

Available on itch.io for a minimum price of $10.00.

Apparently it will be available on Steam in the near future too, and will have that Allied A.I.

Check it out!

[ETA: here is a 27 minute video where Karl Muller of SmartWargames takes it for a spin…

Algeria: Tabletop Simulator module produced!

Stewart Schofield, currently of New Zealand, has gone to the considerable trouble of creating a Tabletop Simulator module for Algeria: War of Independence (the Microgame Design Group/ Fiery Dragon edition, not the One Small Step edition).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2853226660

This joins the limited number of TTS modules available for my game designs.

Thanks Stewart!

Brief Border Wars: Volume II now available for pre-order!

I did a Compass Games broadcast with John Kranz tonight.

Big announcement: volume II of Brief Border Wars is now available for pre-order from Compass Games!

Get it now for the “pay later” price of $54.00!

I talk about the game for about 30 minutes on the video above, and the ad copy at the link below will tell you more and show you the maps, counters and cover artwork, very ably done by Knut Grunitz.

Brief Border Wars 2 (Pay Later)

The four games in Volume II are:

1913: Second Balkan War
The division of lands given up by the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First Balkan War was soon the subject of squabbles between the allied nations that had defeated the Empire. Bulgaria decided to grab as much of this territory as it could by a surprise attack on June 30, 1913 against Serbia and Greece. The offensive by their more powerful army soon petered out due to poor logistical depth and bad coordination, then in mid-July Romanian and Ottoman forces crossed Bulgaria’s borders. This made Bulgaria sue for peace but if the Bulgarian player has seized enough territory and made significant diplomatic assurances, they will have a better position in the negotiations.

1919: The Seven-Day War
The Duchy of Teschen (Cieszyn in Polish) was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the war. The two new countries of Czechoslovakia and Poland both laid claim to the territory on historic and ethnic grounds; more urgently, both countries desperately needed the land because of its large coal deposits and valuable mines, as well as the important iron and steel works at Trinec. On January 23, 1919, Czechoslovakia invaded to seize control of as much of the region as they could to stop Poland’s efforts to claim sovereignty over it. After seven days of fighting, the Entente nations forced a ceasefire and the two antagonists signed an agreement establishing a border at the Olza River, dividing the city of Cieszyn.

1939: The Nomonhan Incident
Also called the Battle of Khalkin Gol, this border clash between Japanese and Soviet forces in a remote part of the Mongolian grasslands had an impact on the development of the Second World War in the Pacific all out of proportion to the numbers involved. The game covers the early to mid-July 1939 period, the only time frame in which the Japanese Army could have succeeded in overpowering the local Soviet forces and establishing their claim to the zone between the Soviet claimed boundary and the Halha River. The attack provoked extensive reinforcements for the Soviet 57th Corps and their counteroffensive in August under the command of General Georgi Zhukov discouraged the Japanese Empire from contemplating further attacks on Mongolia or the USSR.

1940: The Italo-Greek War
This game covers the first two months of the Italian invasion of Greece in the fall and winter of 1940. Hardly anything went right for the Italians; chaotic logistics and poor communication nullified their great advantage in men and machines and their offensive was halted and then thrown back into Albania by the determined Greek forces. Could you have done better than Mussolini?

Consim Game Jam #2: 19-21 August 2022

(everything starts with a prototype)

http://consimgamejam.com/

Consim Game Jam is a so-far-annual event where small groups of people from all over the world get together to create a wargame prototype, from start to finish, in 72 hours!

The last one was in October 2021 and the given theme was “Recycle an existing COIN game”. That is, using the physical components of a published GMT COIN system game, create a new design. This event shook 15 submissions out of the Idea Tree, and they are impressive in their variety and imagination.

http://consimgamejam.com/edition-1-submissions/

Now, the next one is scheduled for the weekend of August 19-21, 2022!

Theme hasn’t been announced yet, as far as I can find.

Go to the link at the top of the post, and/or register at this link to get further details.

http://consimgamejam.com/register/

I won’t be in this one, but I cannot wait to hear the theme and see what comes of this second exercise.

2022-02 Urban Operations Planner Course

(photo: Jayson Geroux)

I’ve spent the last week attending the second serial of the Urban Operations Planners Course, run by the 40th Infantry Division (California Army National Guard) and held at Joint Force Training Base Los Alamitos. And what an interesting week it was!

A solid week of really great lectures and exercises on urban warfare, featuring people like COL John Spencer of the Modern War Institute’s Urban Warfare Project, Stuart Lyle of the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Dr. Jacob Stoil of the School of Advanced Military Studies, and MAJ Jayson Geroux of the Royal Canadian Regiment. I met a lot of really interesting students as well – most were Americans but there were also  students from the Australian, British, Chilean, Dutch, and German armies.

Unfortunately soon after I arrived at the Base I developed a bad summer cold that also turned into laryngitis… fortunately my voice recovered just in time, for the last day was a “learn by doing” exercise featuring group play of the Quick Urban Integrated Combat Kriegsspiel or QUICK, designed by yours truly… I’ve been working on it since last December.

It landed very very well; the 40 students seemed really engaged by it. Also, about 20 remote students played online at the same time, using a VASSAL module produced by Curt Pangracs at the Command General and Staff College.

(Of course people got to use their Military Pointing Skills!)

This was the first time I had the opportunity to teach a game, any game, to a large group of people, many of whom were non-gamers. Fortunately I had a set of great facilitators including faculty from the Joint Special Operations University, Stuart Lyle and students and instructors of the course. It never would have worked without them!

The QUICK now joins the range of free print-and-play games I offer on this website; it’s available to everyone – files are on this separate page: The QUICK Page

However, be aware that I will soon be making some small changes and revisions to the game rules and charts due to feedback and comments from the students.

Me and BGEN Robert Wooldridge, Deputy Commander of 40ID, sponsor of the course and avid wargamer himself.