Winter Thunder: video review and playthrough

Over at The Diagonal Move, Neil Bunker introduces Winter Thunder’s components and mechanisms, and plays through some of the game to illustrate.

Nice!

Winter Thunder: coming to Steam!

Screenshot from website.

Casey Bruyn is making a version of Winter Thunder, complete with Artificial Intelligence, that will play on Steam! Game is also playable 2-player “hot seat”, if you like. Due out the end of 2020!

He has already worked on Krim, a 1990s Ty Bomba game on the Crimean campaign that was in an early issue of Command magazine.

http://www.bruinbeargames.com/#winterthunder

Summer Lightning and Winter Thunder: video reviews by Marco Arnaudo

Marco must be a shut-in these days too!

He has posted a nice balanced review of Winter Thunder.

Marco has previous experience of this chit-pull system, from his nice review of Summer Lightning from 2011:

Tiny Battles -25% sale

Tiny Battle Publishing is having a sale!

From now (actually, yesterday) until Tuesday November 27th, all in-stock, games in the Tiny Battle Publishing inventory are 25% off.

So this means:

• Chile ’73: $25.00   $18.75
• Red Horde 1920: $34.00   $25.50
• War Plan Crimson: $30.00   $22.50
• Winter Thunder: $27.00   $20.25

The PDF versions of these games, available form Wargame Vault, are also marked down, so they are around $10-12 each.

Now, I tootle my own horn here a lot but I’d also like to draw another Tiny Battle game to your attention: Battle for Ramadi by Jay Ward. This is a small game, no bigger than most of the TBP folio games (83 counters, 11×17″ map), on the battle to retake this Iraqi city from ISIS forces at the end of December 2015. It’s designed to be played solitaire, and it’s a good quick simple game on the high points and considerations of kinetic urban combat. I saw an early version of this on Jay’s website ( Off to CSW Expo 2016… meanwhile, Ramadi.) and I’m glad to see that he has had it published. And now it’s also 25% off; $19.50 marked down from $26.00!

https://tinybattlepublishing.com/products/ramadi

The Other 9/11, +45

This September 11 marks the 45th anniversary of the coup d’etat which unseated (and killed) Salvador Allende and installed a 17-year military dictatorship under Pinochet.

Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive

Democracy Now!’s coverage of the coup

Tiny Battle has this one on sale right now: $20.00 for physical form, only $10.00 for the PnP version!

Buy Here

Chile ’73: necessary errata file and expanded sequence of play

Chile ’73: errata, supplements, replacements

“Gang aft agley.” Getting a bit tired of this, though…

Regrettably, there were a number of production errors and unsolicited additions and changes to the rules and components of Chile ’73. Most of them are rather minor on their own but taken all together, detract quite a bit from what people seem to think is an interesting design.

Tiny Battle has moved to address and correct most of these errors, and remove the changes (which only introduced further confusion in the game) in the print-and-play version available at wargamevault.com. But when I received my physical designer copies after they were mailed to me on April 20, they still contained all of the errata that I had brought to Tiny Battle’s attention as soon as I saw the first PnP version, on March 3.

Tiny Battle will do something about this; they usually do. So far they have emailed what buyers of the physical version they had addresses for with a link to get a free copy of the PnP version, so they can print out the corrected rules and assemble the corrected counters for themselves.

Not everyone is going to want to, or be able to, do this, and there are other customers out there who would never have received that link at all. Which means I am going to be answering errata questions about this game that may or may not have been addressed, for some time. It all counts as “game support” but I would really rather be doing other things, like making new games, instead of answering for or about someone else’s mistakes.

So, here is the file for all the Chile ’73 errata that I have found or have been brought to my attention, as well as some clarifications.

Consolidated Errata for CHILE 73 10jan

(as of January 10, 2020)

Also, here is an expanded sequence of play to use as a player aid to prompt you through the game – something I included in my submission but which they couldn’t fit into the rules booklet.

CL73 expanded sequence 20mar

Oh, and some final points, if you do make a set of the PnP counters:

In the game I submitted, all of the unit Control Chits were the same colour on the back. I just left them white. This was so that when you drew them out of the Control Pool no one could tell what Faction of unit (Civilian, Paramilitary or Military) you were picking and choosing – just that when you took one in and discarded an Infiltrate chit at the same time, the unit you took was not of your faction or you did not have the faction leader (or you could just have been faking people out).

This gave more depth to the pre-Coup phase, so people would have more incentive to play Investigate chits on other players, or trying to make deals with others to sound them out for what faction they were. Colouring the backs of the unit Control Chits by their faction (which TBP’s artist did for some reason) removes that mystery, and makes it obvious pretty quickly who is what faction…

Again, like the other counter errata, this does not make the game unplayable. But those of you who are making up your counters with the free PnP download might want to make this change when you are pasting up the counters.

Also, it would be a good idea to print the counters out at a smaller size than 1″ square, and print the map out larger if you can. TBP’s doubling the area of each counter (from 5/8″ to 1″) but leaving the map at 11×17″ results in several map areas where only one stack of units can comfortably fit.

Here is a set of counters that I made that both make the above correction and are adequately sized: please download them and print them out.

Chile73ctrs11

Chile ’73: review at Paxsims

Over at the redoubtable Paxsims blog, Rex Brynen and students try Chile ’73 and find they like it!

I’m not sure I would ever use it to teach about Latin American history. It is, however, a terrific design with very different pre- and post-phase phases, and it does get at the uncertainties and strategic considerations characteristics of successful and unsuccessful military takeovers.

https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2018/05/01/review-chile-73

“As you know, Bob,” Chile 73 is a historically-themed version of my multi-player, hidden-agenda and -information game Palace Coup, which is itself an extensive re-do of Power Play, one of the very first games I designed… back in 1991. But the basic concept of very different pre-coup and coup phases was there from the beginning. And it joins the very small group of games that deal with the coup d’etat:

https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/gaming-military-coups/

Rex is certainly right, I would not ever use this to teach about Latin American history either. Almost all coups are very unbalanced affairs, by design, and succeed or fail in a matter of hours.

In Chile 73 game terms the actual coup of 9/11/73 in Santiago would see about a dozen Army units including at least one Tactical air unit,  plus one or two Paramilitary units, sitting in different objective areas while Allende and the GAP (his personal bodyguard) are in the Palace. Whoosh, one big attack backed up by the Tac air and the defenders are eliminated.  This  doesn’t make much of a game, which is why we try to make something interesting of the pre-coup phase.

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

Chile ’73: first review!

Over at SP’s Projects Blog, “Pete” (I don’t know his name but he comments here frequently) writes about his purchase and play-through of a PnP copy of Chile ’73 with his friend Paul.

He enjoyed himself quite a bit!

Thanks Pete!

https://spprojectblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/chile-73/

By the way, the game now has a Boardgamegeek.com entry so you can see some pictures and see what other Geeklists and things it is involved in.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/247195/chile-73

One thing I have posted over there already, and make available here now, is a one-page expanded sequence of play that summarizes the rules. Help yourself:

CL73 expanded sequence 8mar

Chile ’73 – Out Now!

image: Tiny Battle Publishing

SURPRISE!

Like a column of trucks and jeeps arriving in the middle of the night, disgorging teams of infantry who fan out and begin arresting Cabinet ministers, my latest game Chile ’73 is upon us!

From Tiny Battle Publishing, in the familiar folio format, comes my latest game (though I had designed it some time ago) on “the other 9/11” … the coup d’etat of September 11, 1973 that overthrew Salvador Allende and established Augusto Pinochet as the leader of the military junta that would rule Chile for a generation.

The ad copy by TBP’s imaginative writers runs thusly:

Coup d’etats are a messy business. Far from carefully orchestrated military precision, when various factions of a populace overthrow a government (especially when they did so before the age of internet), operations are strung together in secrecy, with limited communication between even likeminded factions. Veteran game designer Brian Train’s brand new thriller of a game, Chile ’73, brings the secrecy, the suspense, and then the all-out battle of the coup to your game table. In the first portion of the game, two to four players plot secretly to carry out their own plans to gain or maintain rule of Chile, plotting and scrambling to position their forces to best advantage. Once the coup begins, the entire game shifts to open warfare. Loyalties are revealed, and players battle to the finish.

Civilian and paramilitary units face off against military ground forces, aided by tactical air units and transport aircraft. Do you have what it takes to elevate your cause to supremacy?

Chile ’73 includes:

44 Big, Beautiful, Glossy 1″ Unit Counters
43 Control Chits
18 Action Chits
One Colorful 18″ x 12″ Map
One 12-Page Full-Color Rulebook
One Handy Tactical Plastic Zippered Bag
Game Designer: Brian Train
Game Art: Jose Ramon Faura
Players: Two to Four
Duration: 45 to 90 Minutes
Complexity: Medium-Low

Anyway, here’s the important part: the link to buy!

https://tinybattlepublishing.com/products/chile-73

(physical product, $19.99 – down from $22.99)

http://www.wargamevault.com/product/235664/Chile-73

(Print and Play version, $6.99 – down from $8.99)

[ETA] The game now has a BGG entry, too:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/247195/chile-73

 

Close-up of map and counters. image: Tiny Battle Publishing

The map and counter art is by Jose Ramon Faura, who also did the art for my games Ukrainian Crisis and The Little War.  Definitely a cut above what I handed in to TBP.

Also, when I originally submitted the game it had 88 counters, to use half of the 176-counter 5/8″ countersheet die TBP often uses. But when the company people played it they thought it would benefit from their larger 1″ counter die. The way that die is laid out let them add seven extra units to the mix, so the game is playable by an even greater number of players – you really aren’t limited to four, technically there is no upper limit and the more the merrier (but there are still only 43 units to command).

This game uses a drastic revision and redevelopment of the system used in one of my first game designs, Power Play from 1991. I’ve always been interested in coups d’etat as a subject for wargames, and it’s a topic that has been touched on only rarely. See this post I wrote for Rex Brynen’s blog Paxsims on the genre:

https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/gaming-military-coups/

My original inspiration for the original game was the 1978 film Power Play, featuring Peter O’Toole, David Hemmings and some familiar faces from Canadian movies and TV as officers plotting a coup in an unnamed country. Donald Pleasence fittingly played the head of the secret police.

Yeah, I should have picked a better title for my original game… but Chile ’73  is the game I said I was planning to design in the final paragraph of that Paxsims  article, featuring multiplayer play, hidden information, and hidden agendas… and now you can have it.