Another good Monthly Update email dropped earlier this week and it had a lot of good information for us rabid GMT Games Fans! I am always amazed at the number of games they have going through the design, development and art processes. This takes time and is I am sure very much a detail focused effort. I know that publishers try to make games to make money and it is incumbent on them to keep that train rolling to bring in the money. We then buy those games paying for them to be able to play and enjoy them. And I love that there is always something new and interesting to keep our eyes on from GM ..read more

I have really enjoyed my plays of several solitaire games designed by R. Ben Madison. He has a knack for including elements of the history into the gameplay while placing the events into the framework of his chosen system, which is usually the States of Siege Series…but not necessarily always. His newest offering is called Gift of the Nile: The Rise & Fall of Ancient Egypt from White Dog Games and is a solitaire only game that uses the States of Siege Series System and delves into Ancient Egypt and the rule of the Pharaohs covering over 30 dynasties starting with t ..read more

After having met Raymond Weiss in person a few years ago at WBC and after having done a few initial interviews with him for the blog (Rostov ’41: Fritz on the Don from Multi-Man Publishing, Imperial Bayonets: Liberty for Lombardy 1859, Destroy All Monsters Operational Series (DAMOS) and most recently 2022: Ukraine from CSL), we have been impressed with his success to date with his new publishing company Conflict Simulations Limited and his very interesting design approach. Recently we reached out to him to get a look inside his new The Great Northern War game that is curren ..read more

In this video, we played a game called Smash Marry Kill Wargames Edition as a follow-up to the first video that we did. Here, Grant gets a chance at revenge when he was able to choose 15 wargames that Alexander likes and put them on slips of paper, mix those up in a draw cup chit pull style and then pull 3 of them out at a time and Alexander had to answer the following questions: What game would you replay? What game would you redesign? What game would you resell? This is a bit of a different take for us but it was fun doing this. -Grant ..read more

In 2022, Draco Ideas ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for ONUS! Traianus, which is a skirmish battle game that covers the Roman Empire against her enemies in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The game is not a miniatures game but uses a similar style skirmish system but uses cardboard formation counters rather than plastic miniatures. It looks to be a very intriguing system. We posted an interview with the designer Luis Álvaro Hernández and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2022/03/16/interview-with-luis-alvaro-hernandez-designer-of-onus-traianus-from-draco-id ..read more

I love little games with a bit of kick! A few years ago, we came across a very cool little small box game called Tetrarchia 2nd Edition from Draco Ideas. This was a cooperative game dealing with 3rd century Roman rule and saw 1-4 players working together to save the empire from invading Barbarian armies. We enjoyed our experience with that game very much and recently I found out that the designer Miguel Marqués was working on a follow-up game using similar mechanics but that focused on the 2nd century Roman invasions of Hispania aptly named HISPANIA. Ahead of the Gamefound campaign, which is s ..read more

As I did with my Top 10 Wargames of 2023! list I am going to do the same with the Top 10 Solitaire Wargames/Games that I played that were published in 2023. I played a total of 15 new published solo games in 2023 so take this list with a grain of salt as I didn’t play all the titles released in 2023. The games that I played include the following: Archie’s War: The Battle for Guadalcanal from Worthington Publishing The Mog: Mogadishu 1993 from White Dog Games Endurance from Hollandspiele Mr. President from GMT Games Stalingrad: Advance to the Volga from Revolution Games Cruel Necessi ..read more

We have been following the exploits of a newer designer V.P.J. Arponen over the past several years since his very unique entry into the COIN Series called All Bridges Burning broke in 2019. Since that time, he has been working on his new game called Order & Opportunity, which was announced by GMT Games in February 2023 and takes a look at the post-Cold War world order set in the first decades of the 21st century with the major powers of the United States, Russia, China and the EU controlling the direction of the agenda. Since that time, we have hosted an ..read more

I have really enjoyed my plays of several solitaire games designed by R. Ben Madison. He has a knack for including elements of the history into the gameplay while placing the events into the framework of his chosen system, which is usually the States of Siege Series…but not necessarily always. His newest offering is called Gift of the Nile: The Rise & Fall of Ancient Egypt from White Dog Games and is a solitaire only game that uses the States of Siege Series System and delves into Ancient Egypt and the rule of the Pharaohs covering over 30 dynasties starting with t ..read more

If you are looking for a really well produced and beautiful game covering the French Revolution, you don’t need to look any further. 1793: Patriots & Traitors is a new offering from Sound of Drums and is simply gorgeous. The components appear to be top notch and the game looks very interesting as it is a Card Driven Game. We reached out to the designer Jason St.Just and he was more than willing to share about the design. If you are interested in 1793: Patriots & Traitors, you can late pledge the game on it’s Gamefound page at the following link: https://gamefound.com/en/proje ..read more