The Putsch and the Bomb

Over at the Rockymountainnavy blog, the writer (I’ve been reading his blog for a long while but still don’t know his name) posts that he has acquired a copy of Colonial Twilight, and is looking forward to playing it! I’m glad to hear that, he has enjoyed other designs of mine he has played in the past.

In his post he also draws attention to a research paper he found detailing an incident that took place during the April 1961 putsch against de Gaulle: a nuclear device prepared for testing at the Reggane site (wayyy off to the south of the game map) was detonated during the events of the coup. The author explores the various interpretations of why and how the test took place, and whether there was any question of the rebellious generals being able to seize the device and use it (symbolically or in reality) against the government. The answer in this case is either “no” or “maybe, but so what”, but it does provide an interesting base for other questions about the role of nuclear weapons in contentious situations between a nation’s military and civilian powers.

https://rockymountainnavy.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/wargame-for-train-coups-nukes-colonial-twilight-the-french-algerian-war-1954-62-gmtgames-2017/

Of course, nothing like this is reflected in the game, except for the Coup d’etat card (#66) and a reference to the nuclear Force de Frappe in the NATO card (#16) – which was another piece in the complicated game de Gaulle was playing to impress his vision of France on its armed forces.

RMN also mentions the upcoming release of District Commander Maracas by Hollandspiele – they have announced that it and the Binh Dinh module will be released in 2019, followed by the Algeria and Afghanistan modules in 2020.

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Colonial Twilight: a bot for the FLNbot

BGG user Curt Sellmer has created a program that automatically implements the FLNbot that Vesa Arponen made for Colonial Twilight. He says it handles the details of ‘bot decisionmaking, and is similar to a program he created for the expansion to Volko Ruhnke’s Labyrinth game,  Labyrinth: The Awakening: 2010-?

It supports the the Short, Medium and Full scenarios.

It will run on a MacOS terminal, a Linux terminal and the Windows console as long as the Java JVM is installed and the path to the ‘java’ executable program is referenced in your PATH environment variable.

For more information and to download the built package, go here: https://github.com/sellmerfud/coltwi

Scroll down until you see section heading: “Downloading the package”. In that section is a link to the “built package” which is a zip file.

Finally, here is the discussion thread on BGG where he introduces the program, and where players (that’s you, cousin) will discuss questions and problems, when encountered.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2095115/software-runs-fln-bot

Thank you for your work Curt!

 

Review of Colonial Twilight in Nerdly

http://www.nerdly.co.uk/2018/10/03/colonial-twilight-the-french-algerian-war-board-game-review/

A very nice review of Colonial Twilight by Matthew Small at Nerdly, a British site that seems to review a bit of everything under the sun.

Thanks Matthew!

 

Colonial Twilight in Warsaw!

A Distant Plain in Warsaw!

Last year Piotr Bambot, a teacher who uses games in his classrooms and sometimes engages with members of the Polish military for their professional development, reported on his use of A Distant Plain with a group of officers and senior NCOs from the three main services.

Recently he did much the same thing with a similar group, using Colonial Twilight. He ran three games at the same time, each game was played with teams of five or six.

Piotr gives initial instruction. Apparently the head-grabbing went away after a while.

Piotr said that many of the participants, some of whom had had several Afghanistan tours, appreciated the mechanics used to mimic insurgent actions. That’s always good to hear.

 

Thanks so much Piotr, and I am glad to hear that they found the games useful!

Piotr thoughtfully provided a photo listing the ranks of the players, so you can get an idea of the the intended audience.

Colonial Twilight nominated for IGA!

Colonial Twilight has been nominated for a 2018 International Gamers Award, in the “General Strategy – 2 player” category!

http://www.internationalgamersawards.net

GMT Games tweeted the news, with the additional information that of over 300 games they have published, fewer than a dozen have been nominated for an IGA. Only one has ever won, and that one was Twilight Struggle.

However, one of the other nominations, and the next most wargamelike, is 13 Days: the Cuban Missile Crisis, so that one’s going to win for sure. That one, or Fog of Love, which also looks quite interesting.

But it’s nice to be named.

[EDIT: the winner was Codenames Duet, some kind of guessing game.]

Tactical Practical plays Colonial Twilight

Over at his Tactical Practical blog, Chris Davis starts in on a play of Colonial Twilight where he consciously applies the principle of “clear, hold and build” which was introduced in French counterinsurgency doctrine at the time of the Algerian War and found further expression in American doctrine for Iraq and Afghanistan, as in Field Manual 3-24.

https://americanprideweb.wordpress.com/2018/03/26/revolt-of-the-wretched-reflections-of-colonial-twilight-part-1/

I did write on this a bit in the Designer’s Notes to the game. We’ll see how he does, and I will post links to his further posts here.

https://americanprideweb.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/revolt-of-the-wretched-propaganda-round-1/

First Propaganda Round, of the full scenario. Early play of the Casbah card let the FLN seize Algiers for a moment, but he got some traction in the countryside by building up Support and will soon move on the FLN stronghold in Tizi Ouzu.

https://americanprideweb.wordpress.com/2018/04/11/revolt-of-the-wretched-propaganda-round-2/

Second Propaganda Round. The FLN fights for the cities and builds up strength quickly, but a timely play of Mobilization allows the Government to engage the guerrillas and knock them back down. They’re on the offensive now, but how long can they keep it up?

https://americanprideweb.wordpress.com/2018/04/25/revolt-of-the-wretched-propaganda-round-3

Third Propaganda Round: Government Victory declared, so game over, man. The French Army pursues the remnants of the FLN while securing its rear area with police and auxiliary forces. Have a look at the map at the link: he has used the Government Bases to full effect, providing more Resources to the military; kept the France Track down to a dull roar; and grouped his Troops effectively. He also eliminated enough Guerrillas in Rounds 2 and 3 to attrit the FLN significantly.

Well done!

Colonial Twilight: review, yong zhongwen

Across the ocean, Mike Yuan of Taipei writes his impression of Colonial Twilight:

https://13foxtrot.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/ct01/

Unfortunately, I do not speak any Chinese and the machine translation is not very good…

Back to the front, compared to the four people may continue to soy sauce this situation, a little look you will find that in the CT, continuous action often occurs, so players will not only have a flexible schedule, but also make a good To be full, the ability to effect very strong.  At the same time the goal of action is also simplified; So I line up the skateboard machine to not finished thinking immediately turn to me, how do I use this opportunity?

But I think I get the gist of it – he was not entirely happy nor unhappy with the game.

• He found the two-player mechanics interesting, and that they mitigated some of his frustrations with the 4-player mechanics and stabbery in the other COIN system games published so far.
• Some of the Event Cards are quite strong (e.g. Napalm) while others are uninteresting or indeterminate in effect (he cites the “many” +/-1d6 cards in the deck – there are 6 that effect either side equally, of 60). Of this he says, “This is indeed Brian Train’s style, enhance the player’s sense of dilemma, sense of historical experience; in Chinese is called: ‘unlucky in rotten peach’ (「在爛桃中挑顆不爛的」)”. I liked that.
• His impression is that the game is unbalanced against the Government; I think he played the Short scenario, twice, for this review so that is perhaps understandable.

Perhaps next time I should soy sauce my skateboard machine. Internet translation has a long way to go!