Playtester call: Civil Power

Provisional cover art, by “seado3”

Comrades, the time has come to render aid.

Civil Power, my tactical “sandbox” game on civil unrest will be published by Conflict Simulations Ltd. next year but first it’s time for some concerted playtesting.

Kevin Conway has made up a Vassal module, and we are looking for people to take the game and its scenarios for a spin. If you want to get involved, here are the requirements:

• Have Vassal on your machine, and know how to use it.
• Know what Basecamp3 is and how to use it, or have rudimentary experience with some similar web-based project management software (mostly leaving messages and downloading files).
• Email rweiss@consimsltd.com to get onto the site.
• Don’t be a flake. I appreciate your time and help; let’s make it worthwhile.

I’ve been doing some more work on this game the last while, overhauling language and revising mechanics. This is one of the first games I designed (technically the second; my very first was in 1982, a very derivative game on the Pusan Perimeter) and I’ve written a lot of rules since then.

I’ve also been revising, dropping and adding scenarios: currently there are 13.  Back in 1991/92 I was drawing them up based on newspaper headlines, so there are scenarios for things like the LA riots and one based on keeping Afrikaner neo-Nazis out of a hotel… but these are restive times we are in, so I have added 2019 Hong Kong and Caracas protest-counterprotest scenarios for 2019. It won’t be difficult for players to make their own.

Chile ’73: The Most Dangerous (War)game

 

Tiny Battles sends out a short piece on their experience of playing Chile ’73 after I handed it in… one of their playtesters was felled by a heart attack during play! He recovered, though.

In an interesting aside, the design of the game’s cover is based on the layout of El Mercurio, Santiago’s main daily newspaper. I like little arty touches like that.

(Web version at link below)

https://gem.godaddy.com/p/add90c?fe=1&pact=38341-144918937-10719805120-f5de019cec6b1b6615b5feaefcd657b3d7d67b13

Nights of Fire, more prototype components

Today (after several days of delay, stupid brokerage fees and why should I pay GST on something that was not made or sold in Canada, in fact was not sold at all, but given to me? Argh!) I got a copy of the prototype version of Nights of Fire, sent all the way from Hungary.

Here it is set up, ready for a game with Akito. He took the Soviets and ended up with a Grand Soviet Victory. Sabotage, I suspect sabotage….

The cards are nicely printed and finished, the counters thick with good die-cutting, the stickers stuck to the wooden blocks nicely… the only complaint I have is that there need to be some more changes made to the layout of the map: its total area is almost exactly twice that of the playtest map I made, yet my map makes far better use of the available space. Changes will be made.

Meanwhile, it was great to play a test game with these very nice pieces!

Playtesters wanted for Victory Point Games edition of Ukrainian Crisis

Chunk of new map, by Tim Allen.

Somehow I missed this… Victory Point games is looking for playtesters of their edition of Ukrainian Crisis, which they are calling Headline Ukraine. This was posted on May 4 so I don’t know if they have already found the four groups of two playtesters each they want for the game:

http://www.victorypointgames.com/news/playtesters-wanted-headline-ukraine/

US residents only please (I’m guessing this is due to postage costs, not any innate need to snub other nations).

Brian