Video Review: A Distant Plain

 

Reporting in from Buckeye Game Fest, Grant Kleinheinz and other friends of The Player’s Aid talk about their experience of a longish game of A Distant Plain. Not just a post-mortem; very nice commentary and musing through the various actions and combinations available to all sides!

Thanks, fellows.

District Commander Maracas: interview at The Players Aid

https://theplayersaid.com/2019/07/22/interview-with-brian-train-designer-of-district-commander-maracas-from-hollandspiele/

The doughty (now that I’ve looked it up, I’m confident that’s a good word) Grant Kleinheinz over at The Players Aid has published an interview with me about District Commander: Maracas, the first of four modules in the District Commander series to come from Hollandspiele.

Grant says this is the eighth interview I’ve had with him, and I believe it!

(Why wouldn’t I? Well, perhaps I should – these days I’m feeling rather like Hank Kimball from Green Acres.)

It’s quite long – over 7,000 words – but it tells you most everything you might want to know about the system itself, and the changes rung on it for the Maracas module, which covers the action in a made-up large city (the capital of Virtualia, reeling in the aftermath of the sudden departure from power of the charismatic strongman Jesus Shaves).

Hollandspiele will bring the game out in probably late August; I’m not sure of the price at this point. But in the meantime, you can still score a free print-and-play copy here, if you want a closer look at the rules and mechanics of play.

Free Games!

Strike For Berlin: interview at The Players Aid

Happy April!

Over at the Players Aid blog, Grant Klenheinz has an interview with me all about Strike for Berlin, the redesign of Freikorps that is appearing in issue #11 of Yaah! magazine… which is now at the printer’s, and will be out later this month.

https://theplayersaid.com/2018/04/03/interview-with-brian-train-designer-of-strike-for-berlin-appearing-in-yaah-magazine-issue-11-from-flying-pig-games/

Still available for pre-order at $35 for the physical product ($3 off the regular price), and $15 for the PnP version ($4 off the regular price)!

https://flyingpiggames.com/products/yaah-magazine-issue-11

Nights of Fire: quite long interview at The Players Aid

Over at the Players Aid blog, Grant Kleinheinz has posted a very long interview I did with him on Nights of Fire.

https://theplayersaid.com/2018/02/19/interview-with-brian-train-co-designer-of-nights-of-fire-battle-for-budapest-from-mighty-boards-coming-to-kickstarter-soon/

Lots of details on how the game came to be, history of the situation, changes during design, detailed look at the structure of the game’s sequence of play and components.

Coming to Kickstarter Real Soon Now!

Thanks Grant!

Nights of Fire: unboxing video

 

Grant Kleinheinz has made an unboxing video for a prototype copy of Nights of Fire!

I sent him this copy after I had looked it over, so it is the same as the one pictured in this blog earlier… but now you can get a close up look at the components.

The art is pretty close to the final versions. There will be some adjustments to the layout of the board.

https://theplayersaid.com/2018/02/10/unboxing-a-prototype-copy-of-nights-of-fire-battle-for-budapest-from-mighty-boards-coming-soon-to-kickstarter

Grant hadn’t learned to play the game when he made this video, so his guesses as to what the components, icons etc. stand for are amusing! However, Grant and Alexander did later make a video of them playing a game, along with their observations and thoughts, and it will be posted in a week or two. Looking forward to that (spoiler: he liked it!).

I have also finished writing a very long interview with Grant about the game, and he will be posting that to his website in due course.

Thanks as always Grant!

The Player’s Aid: Best 3 Games with… Designer Brian Train!

 

Oh my. I really did not expect this.

Grant Kleinheinz has written a really nice post about three of my designs he’s had the most fun with:

• Winter Thunder
• Binh Dinh ’69
• Colonial Twilight

I’m touched by this, and happy that he’s enjoyed my work enough to write such nice things about it. Thank you Grant!

Go have a look….

https://theplayersaid.com/2018/01/05/best-3-games-with-designer-brian-train/

Wargames for Christmas (via Players Aid)

Over at the Players Aid blog, Grant Kleinheinz presents his annual list of ten interesting and innovative wargames released this year to give (or hope to get) for Christmas.

Colonial Twilight is on the list, and Red Horde 1920 gets an honourable stocking-stuffer mention!

Other games on the list that I’ve tried include GMT’s Time of Crisis and Hollandspiele’s Supply Lines of the American Revolution, a very interesting work by Tom Russell.

https://theplayersaid.com/2017/11/22/10-wargames-to-buy-your-wargamer-for-christmas-2017-edition/

Last year’s list ( Xmas Xhopping List)   had The Scheldt Campaign on it, so I must be dong something Grant likes!