New for 2023: Palace Coup!

Now available for download and print-and-play from Wargame Vault: PALACE COUP, a simple and fast game on the modern coup d’etat.

This game was inspired by two works: Coup d’etat, a Practical Handbook published by Edward Luttwak in 1968, which in turn inspired the making of the movie Power Play in 1978. David Hemmings and Peter O’ Toole played two Army officers plotting a coup in an imaginary country, Donald Pleasence fittingly played the head of the secret police, and Barry Morse played a civilian academic who advises the military. This game is a thorough revision of a game I designed in 1991 called, unoriginally, Power Play. In homage to the movie I have supplied an alternative set of Leader counters with images of these actors, and the cover sheet is a still image from the movie.

Same price as all BTR Games products in this line: $8.00 US funds!

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/421823/Palace-Coup

Ad copy:

Historically in the Third World, coups have changed more governments than elections since World War II. Most coups involve using part of the armed forces of a country to seize power from a ruler, though there is usually little overt conflict – the coup d’etat is generally a much less bloody way of seizing power than its distant cousin, the popular revolution.

In the game, two or more players act as the leaders of political or professional factions in a fictional country. Some players will be plotting, individually or severally, to effect a change in the existing government; they will be opposed by others who wish things to remain as they are.

The game is played in two phases: the Pre-coup Phase where players attempt to secure support for their faction and thwart the others; and the Coup Phase where both pro-government loyalist and rebel sides face off in direct combat.

Each game contains the following: one set of 40 counters, one Tactical Map, and these rules. You will also need one six-sided die, some bits of scrap paper for recording secret information, and one deck of ordinary playing cards (including Jokers).

Power Play was available only briefly from a DTP publisher, with lackluster components and limp promotion, over 20 years ago. I hope you will give this new and much improved BTR Games version a try!

[ETA: a Boardgamegeek entry for this game was approved with suspicious speed: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/377788/palace-coup ]

Free game: Putin’s War

(No longer quite as illustrated.)

From two Italian game designers, Riccardo Affinati and Mauro Faina: Putin’s War, a free print-and-play mini-game on the current invasion. I haven’t tried it yet myself but it appears to be a simpler game focusing on the kinetic part of things; reactions by foreign countries and so forth are largely randomized through the unknown nature of the Ukrainian opposition that appears as the Russian units enter each new area. 

Notable in that it recycles the map and oblast victory point values from my 2014 game Ukrainian Crisis. I suppose that is about all of that game that is salvageable and useful for the 2022 situation. Still, I don’t mind. 

PUTIN’S WAR – ENGLISH RULES   PDF file complete, 4 MB.

Surprisingly candid designer’s notes – bravo!

DESIGNER’S NOTES: 

The game system of this solitaire boardgame derives in its planning from the game “AFGHANISTAN 1979-1989” by Mauro Faina published in the magazine “Guerre e Guerrieri” (April 2022), while for the map the game “Ukranian Crisis ”by Brian Train (2014) and the cover is the work of Marco Longobardo. English translation by Ty Bomba.

Being an introductory boardgame, we avoided adding additional complexities and a large number of pieces, tables or accessories. The boardgame is distributed for free and privately, not for profit, but to spread the passion for simulations and military history. Studying wars to never make them, this is our watchword, while our thanks go to all those who will help us “test” the boardgame and spread the idea that those who do not play will never know how to be a excellent human being.

Last warning, you will not find a simpler solitaire military simulation than this, if you have problems in interpreting the rules, then forget about the world of boardgames and do not ask me for clarification, while feel free to modify or confuse the rules written according to your own. tastes. 

Riccardo Affinati

Strategist, 2000

Once upon a time, I edited Strategist, the monthly newsletter of the Strategy Gaming Society. Boardgamegeek.com says that “the American Wargaming Association (AWA) merged with the National Wargaming Alliance (NWA) in 1984. The combined organization was renamed the Strategy Gaming Society (SGS). The AWA’s newsletter was called “The American Wargamer“, issued from 1973 to November 1984. The NWA’s newsletter was called “Kriegsrat“, issued until November 1984. With the December 1984 issue, the combined publication became “Strategist”.

George Phillies, who is still quite active in wargaming, was a central figure in the Society from way back, but I think the Society has been defunct for quite a while now. Anyway, I took over the newsletter after John Kula had had it for a while and edited it for a year before concluding I just did not have the time or energy to keep it going the way I wanted it (I was then still in the process of recovering from getting run over by a car at the end of 1998).

This was all 20 years in the past, and in the interests of oh I don’t know future ludic archaeologists I am putting up those dozen issues, in PDF form, on the Resources page (converted cheaply from their original MS Publisher format, so there might be an oopsy or two somewhere). They give you 3 GB of space here at WordPress and I am not using much of it so far. Game Links and Resources

Here is an index to the contents, nothing really remarkable except that I did publish a few simple games in its pages: Attrition, War Fair, Wolf Pack and Zulu Spears by Lloyd Krassner; Battle of Seattle by me; and the first appearance of Waterloo 20 by Joe Miranda. Another funny thing I ran was a series of “Military Movie Star” bios where I wrote about the star’s service career and the war/action movies they were in later. Did you know James Mason was a pacifist and conscientious objector in World War Two?

STRATEGIST index for 2000

BTR Games available through Wargame Vault

I am making my whole line of “BTR Games” products available for PnP on Wargame Vault.

To produce these games, I would go to the copy shop to have small batches of counter sticker sheets, maps etc. made up. But I’ve been working from home since March 2020 and can’t get near any copy shops, and it is not worth trying to print all this at home, so I have run out of components for most titles. I can’t print 11×17″ maps at home anyway. This also saves any delay in my having to organize a trip to the post office (which was also proving occasionally difficult).

The real value, though, from the customer’s point of view is that they can order Brian Train products drunk at 3 am, as most online purchases are made, and get them right away.

https://www.wargamevault.com/browse/pub/18373/BTR-Games

When things begin to stabilize and I return to my office, I do plan to have physical versions of the games available again for people who do not want to go the PnP route.

BTR Games: suspending sales

NOTICE:

I have been working from home since March, 2020 and do not have the access to copy/print shops I did when I was at my downtown office.

I have run out of at least some components for most of the games and am suspending sales of the physical versions until I can resupply.

I guess I should also look into making PnP versions of these available from wargamevault.com, but really they would be the same files as available from me personally.  The main difference would be you could order them drunk at 3 am, like most online purchases, and get them right away. 

 

District Commander Maracas: now available at Wargamevault!

Now available, as a watermarked PDF for Twelve Yankee Smackers:

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/303989/District-Commander-Maracas

By the way, here are other items of mine that are available for print and play from Wargamevault, with their current prices:

https://www.wargamevault.com/browse.php?author=Brian%20Train

Hollandspiele

• The Scheldt Campaign ($12)
• District Commander Maracas ($12)
• Ukrainian Crisis and The Little War ($12)

Lock n Load

• Summer Lightning (second edition) ($20)

Tiny Battle Publishing

• Chile 73 ($10)
• Red Horde 1920 ($12)
• War Plan Crimson ($12)
• Winter Thunder ($12)

New game: Kashmir Crisis

Image © Nathaniel Brunt, 2014. “The view towards the India/Pakistan border from the Sadhna Pass, Kupwara. The border between the two countries, known as the ‘Line of Control’, is one of the most militarized regions in the world.”

Not long ago Nathaniel Brunt, a researcher and photographer doing postgraduate work at Ryerson Polytechnic University, contacted me about the “Game Design as Journalism” presentation I made last year at the Connections-UK conference.

Nathaniel is a gamer and has spent years travelling and taking photographs in the Kashmir Region. He suggested that perhaps we could put together a simple game, in this “gamer-citizen journalism” vein, to let people find out a bit more about the current crisis in Kashmir.

So, we did.  And in that same vein, we offer it to you for free print-and-play.

Kashmir Crisis is a quite simple card-based game for two players. It takes about 15 minutes to play. You need to print out the rules and player aid card, and optionally the player mat to help keep things organized – you also need a deck of ordinary playing cards, with one Joker.

During each game turn, players will begin by revealing the Event Card that will be in effect during that turn. Then, both players will receive a number of cards from a deck of ordinary playing cards, and play them onto Diplomatic, Information or Military Fronts (or keep them in a Reserve, for a later turn). After this, players will compare the totals of cards played to see if one player will score Victory Points on a given Front, and whether one or both players will lose cards and Victory Points.

Originally we started with something that abstractly looked at the 30 year insurgency in Kashmir, but soon decided to focus on events subsequent to the February 2019 suicide bomber attack at Pulwama. We still plan on doing a more detailed game that looks at different periods/campaigns within the insurgency; it might work well as a module in the District Commander series. Nathaniel and I are going to explore this in the next while.

So, here are the files – I hope you will give this a try, and try to enjoy it in the spirit in which it is offered. [edited to add: the “1sep” rules and “13nov” player aid card now available have an additional optional rule with an alternate, “sudden death” victory option; they replace the “28aug” version]

kc-rules-1sep19 rules

kc-pac-13nov19  player aid card

kc play mat 22aug19 play mat for cards

KC Narrative Prompts narrative prompts sheet

A word on the “narrative prompts”: this game involves placing cards representing resources on different Fronts during play. This abstractly shows the scale of effort a country is investing in obtaining a favourable result in that sphere of activity. For example, the Diplomatic Front concerns a country’s efforts to get international support and assistance for its viewpoint or to condemn its adversary’s, or to pursue legal and economic threats and harassment against the enemy. “Information” is perhaps a somewhat more nebulous concept, relating to message dominance and ability to control the narrative on the conflict. Finally, the “Military” Front is a more straightforward application of covert and overt military forces and assistance to pursue insurgent/ counterinsurgent warfare, or to prepare for large-scale conventional conflict.

Some players will recognize this concept from my pol-mil game Ukrainian Crisis. Others will have no idea what’s going on, what playing a “5” represents, and why a “5” is better than a “3” but not as good as a “7”. To give them a bit of a verbal prompt in building the story of the unfolding of the conflict together (which is the goal of playing a game with another person), we include a sheet of adjectives, verbs and nouns that might help someone describe or imagine what they are doing in the game.

PS: if anyone’s moved to comment, you can do that here, or the game now has an entry on Boardgamegeek.com (approved almost suspiciously fast, too).

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/287786/kashmir-crisis

Political Boardgames; Italian Rumbles

Interesting artifact of the Spanish Civil War: Anarchist paper cut-out soldiers.

http://organisemagazine.org.uk/2019/07/23/the-boardgame-is-political-rbg/

Organise! magazine in the UK has published a short piece on radicalism and conflict in board games. Games cited include Monopoly, Class Struggle, Corteo! and RIOT! Cast the First Stone.

• Monopoly (not The Landlord’s Game) is an example of how fangs get pulled, and has become a silly set-collection game
• Class Struggle is dull (sorry, but it is) and out of print
• Corteo! is interesting but long out of print and was only ever available in Italian
• RIOT! is a newer game (2015), available from noboardgames, an Italian outfit (but rules in English are available)

RIOT! is interesting in that it is a 2-4 player game, with up to four factions: Autonomists, Anarchists, Nationalists and Police. Game mechanics revolve around movement and combat in the streets of a district of a fictional city, with the various goals of occupying buildings (for the Autonomists and Anarchists), confronting the protester forces (for the police) or accomplishing a secret goal (for the Nationalists). There is a good amount of asymmetry between players, with different player powers.

I got a copy with minimal trouble from the UK some time ago, but shipping is expensive. At the end of 2018 noboardgames made a print and play version of RIOT! available on Boardgamegeek, and Organise! magazine will publish a version of it in its next printed issue. I recommend it to your attention.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/177356/riot-cast-first-stone

Other boardgames I would recommend on the theme are:

• Bloc by bloc: The Insurrection Game (now in 2nd edition, very nice) https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/190247/bloc-bloc-insurrection-game
• Rise Up https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/210425/rise-game-people-and-power
• Battle of Seattle, of course Free Games!

Funny thing about that last one: I just went to the noboardgames website and found that they had put up Battle of Seattle on their own PnP section in October 2018!

https://noboardgames.com/2018/10/12/printplay-section/

They didn’t ask but no worries, the game is meant to be out there and it’s already been “copylefted” by some other radical sites. I don’t mind, since they left my name on it and did not alter the files at all. Oh, not only that, they have a link to a Spanish-language translation of the rules, which I was not aware existed.

Other games available at the section are their own RIOT! and Suffragetto, an interesting artifact.

New free game: Maracas

      

[EDITED 9 SEPTEMBER 2019:  Now that Hollandspiele has formally published the Maracas module, I am pulling this one off the free print-and-play wagon. But I want people to try the system if they want to, so I will substitute another of the three remaining modules, and keep it up until such time as it is also published by Hollandspiele.  Check the Free Games page: Free Games!]

Maracas is one of the four games I’ve designed so far that uses the District Commander diceless, operational-level counterinsurgency system.

It takes place in Maracas, the fictional megacity capital of the equally fictitious nation of Virtualia (which was also the locale for my game Caudillo).

I am making it available for free print-and-play download as an example of

a) the District Commander system itself; and

b) an introductory game on asymmetrical warfare in a modern large city.

I intend to do more of this kind of thing. I’ve been interested in urban combat for a long time (Tupamaro was one of my first game designs) and I think this is a crucially important topic for present-day and near-future wargame work. There’s certainly going to be a certain amount of the real thing soon enough.

Game components consist of:

• System rules (a bit long and chatty but they introduce concepts and many variations) DC RB
• Exclusive rules (a lot shorter but they introduce some changes and extra units)
• Player aids and charts
• Set of standard counters (176 x 5/8″): infrastructure, chance chits, intelligence chits, insurgent units and assets DC system counters 4july
• Set of exclusive counters (88 x 5/8″): Government/Foreign units and assets, extra insurgent, intelligence pieces
• Area movement map (made to be printed out at 17×22″)

The counters are made to be printed out at 5/8″ and the map at 17×22″, but if your eyes are young and strong and your fingers nimble go ahead and print them out smaller. Or if you’re half-blind and near-palsied like me, print them out on 1″ foamcore and as big a map as you can find.

Permission is granted to downloaders to make a copy for their own personal use, under the usual Creative Commons Licence adopted for this website.

NOTICE:

All material on this website, including all its subsidiary pages, that is written by me is made available through a Creative Commons license.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

This game, and up to three or more other modules in the system (so far Algeria 1959, Vietnam 1969, Afghanistan 2009, Maracas 2019), will be released over the next year or two by Hollandspiele.

I hope you will give it a try.

Thanks!

Caudillo now available for free PnP

Cover by John Kula. His last published work.

Several times over the past few years I have mentioned Caudillo (pronounced “caw-DEE-yo“), a 2-5 player card game I designed three years ago on power politics in the fictional Latin American country of Virtualia, after the departure from power of its strongman leader Jesus Shaves (pronounced “hay-sus sha-bezz“).

The game was of course about a thinly-disguised post-Chavez Venezuela (though in 2013 it wasn’t post-Chavez yet), and just to drive it home, its original title was Dios o Federacion, a takeoff on “Dios y Federacion”, the national motto of Venezuela.

I liked working on this game because there is a constant tension within it between competition and cooperation. As players vie to create the largest and most durable personal power base, the card deck delivers more and more crises that players must deal with collectively, or the country will collapse. There are coups, too!

sample Group cards

sample Crisis cards

Anyway, I do not think that there will be any time soon that I could find this game a properly professional publisher, with 90 pieces of original card art and high-class production to match. And Venezuela looks as if it is really about to implode, with rampant inflation, riots, political intrigue and so on.

So, as my Christmas present to you all, I am now making the files for Caudillo available for free download and print-and-play (PnP).

The free PnP version consists of 90 cards, 230 counters, and the usual rules and play aids. You print ’em, you cut ’em, you stick ’em or sleeve ’em.

And, just for fun, I will also be making a limited number of hand-made copies of the game for sale too, through BTR Games. Besides the rules and play aids, this version has:

• 90 cards printed on coloured cardstock and hand-cut;
• 120 die-cut, pre-punched counters;
• 120 small coloured wooden cubes;
• nice cover art by John Kula. His last published work.

Price is $50 US, which includes postage. If you want one of these, let me know at brian.train@gmail.com; I take (and prefer) Paypal.

Here are the files for the free version:

caudillo-pnp-crisis-cards (Crisis cards and Scoring Round cards)

caudillo-pnp-group-cards (Group cards, Personality cards, Sequence of Play reminders)

caudillo-ctrs-pnp191216 (counters)

caudrls-124 (rules and play aid)

caud-pnp-assembly-notes (notes on how to print and assemble the cards and counters)

I hope you will enjoy this game, in either format.

Feliz Navidad!

PS: the game now has a Boardgamegeek entry: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/216686/caudillo