By Ed Ostermeyer (Master Engineer – Grade 2) Again, I bid you a good day, my young prodigy. Thank you for meeting me in this out-of-the-way location. Our talk today requires restraint and privacy between colleagues. We will speak of shifting loyalties. As you may have gathered, the life of a Confederate Inventor and Entrepreneur is anything but a sedate one.  Not only are you in need of both funds and employees on what seems to be almost a seasonal basis, but there’s that pesky business of the Civil War taking place elsewhere in the country, causing your best-laid plans to vanish like a ..read more

Back to the Frontlines Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week I took a bit of a breather to recover from GMT’s Weekend at the Warehouse. This week we are starting on the home stretch of scenarios going into the core box. We begin with “Panzer in the Pocket”, our Falaise Pocket scenario. This is our first scenario with infantry guns, so we will cover that first and then get on with the scenario work up. Let’s jump right in. Time to Break Out the Big Guns Infantry guns in Firefight Tactical are very simple, and as such this will be a short section. They are effectively a support ..read more

By Ed Ostermeyer (Master Engineer – Grade 2) Young Inventor! It is good to see you once again. Have you been applying what the two of us discussed in our last conversation? Well done. I am pleased with your diligence, both in study and application of what you are learning. Today, our topic involves one of the forces of nature: water’s current. Though direct control of it is beyond the scope of your, umm, project, you can learn to anticipate, prepare for and deal with its effects upon said project. Known as “current,” the flow of water is judged by direction and by speed of outside forces upon ..read more

Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. This is going to be a very brief article this week, but I wanted to both give myself a moment to recuperate (ran a LOT of demos over the last week) and also talk about how Firefight Tactical was received at GMT this month. So Many Wonderful People I want to start by saying thanks to all the people who came by to say “hi.” Some people wanted to see Firefight Tactical in action, but I also had a lot of people who had played with me in the past come by just to check in. It was awesome to show people how the game has been evolving. Nothing k ..read more

This overview provides historical perspectives on the KPD playable faction in The Weimar Republic, as well as some insight as to how the faction functions in gameplay terms. Future posts will highlight the other playable factions and the game’s general mechanics in a more detailed manner. For an overview on the NSDAP faction, be sure to check out my earlier post on that faction. KPD headquarters in Berlin, 1920s Introduction Born from the ashes of the ultra-radical Spartacus movement and building on the legacy of its recently murdered leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the Kommunisti ..read more

Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the fourteenth article, I talked about the eighth scenario, “Hedgerow Highway”. This scenario saw the first of a series of much larger battle grids and plenty of combined arms action. This week we are continuing that trend with our Mortain scenario, “To Hill with Them”. This scenario also makes heavy usage of the elevation rules that we covered last week. There aren’t any new rules to look at this week, so let’s jump right in. Defiant Stand After the capture of St. Lo, General Omar Bradley’s Operation Cobra saw the breakout of American forces i ..read more

Introduction by Hannibal’s Revenge Co-Designer, Fred Schachter: While the GMT Team continues its efforts to make production-ready Hannibal’s Revenge, the next game of the Card Conquest System series, play testing progresses. While this is underway, readers may find of interest this report of a Hannibal’s Revenge playtest game between Robert Baynosa and his buddy Marlon Ilagan. This is an “After Action Report” which focuses on particular aspects of the game.  It is Robert’s second InsideGMT Hannibal’s Revenge article.  For his first report see: A Play Session of Hannibal’s Revenge ..read more

Introduction by Fred Schacher, CoV Assistant Designer & Editor: Within the Congress of Vienna InsideGMT article, A “Congress of Vienna” GMT Production Process Status Report | Inside GMT blog, it was shared that due to Playbook space limitations it would not be possible to include in the published game all Optional Rules, called OHR’s for “Optional Historical Rules”.  That’s sadly understandable, but it’s like asking in game rule terms “Which of your children do you want to abandon?”  Fortunately, due to InsideGMT and the ability to post additional content such as Optional Rules ..read more

Below you will find another fantastic article from Clio’s Board Games, this time discussing Protestant player strategy in Here I Stand. You can also find this article on Clio’s blog. The previous articles in this series can be found here, here, and here. Enjoy! -Rachel I haven’t done a strategy post in over a year! But I know you like them, so there will be more of them over the next months. Today, we’re returning to a mainstay: Here I Stand (Ed Beach, GMT Games) is one of my favorite games ever – if not my favorite game of all. (I should really do one of those T ..read more

Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the twelfth article, I talked about the sixth scenario, “Bloody Gulch”. This involved a rules dump on vehicles. Now that we have covered all of that, virtually all the game’s core rules have been covered. We can instead start jumping straight into the scenarios. This week we are talking about “To the Last Man, to the Last Cartridge”, our Cherbourg scenario. A Hopeless Defense As American forces moved up from the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, they completely isolated the German occupied port city of Cherbourg. German Lieutenant General Karl-Wi ..read more