Board Wargames

By Mitch Reed

Recently the folks from Princeps Games in Serbia sent me a copy of their latest design, Freezing Inferno which covers the 1939-1940 Soviet-Finnish War.

I thought the topic of the game was unique and I am a big fan of their previous title, March on the Drina, which covers the Central Powers’ attack on Serbia during the Great War.

Recently I have been playing a lot of games from small European designers and am starting to love the work they do.

In 2020 a group of veteran game designers kicked off the initial Zenobia contest. This is a competition that mentors historical game designers who are underrepresented within the gaming community. Contestants will have a chance to state why they feel that their community needs a voice within the design space.

The contest had over 150 entries and culminated 11 months later with eight semi-finalists and selected Tyranny of Blood as the initial winner of the contest. The Zenobia II contest is now live, and designers have until 14 October to enter a design proposal. This year’s contest opens the gaming aperture with the inclusion of miniatures game designs.

By Mitche Reed

I hate to reveal my age, but I remember the US withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1975, I remember thinking as they pushed helicopters off the sides of US warships “Won’t they need those?”

Gaming the fall of the South is something that has always interested me; I have played Volko Ruhnke’s Fire in the Lake, Fall of Saigon expansion, but that is a COIN game and I wanted to play just the military aspect of the final act of the Vietnam Conflict. Luckily the designers from Nuts! Publishing has released Saigon 75 a game that covers the topic.

Today we have game designer Maurice Suckling on the show. We talk about his amazing game designs and his upcoming game Crisis 1914  A game about the series of events that lead to the Great War.

By Mitch Reed

I hope many of you can recall my article from the Connections Wargaming Conference in 2022 and the podcast from 2019 that spoke to this event. The 2023 event held at National War College in Washington DC was yet another for the record books and we here at NDNG were glad to attend in force as well as help sponsor the Dice-Breaker social event.

By Mitch Reed

Recently the folks from Draco Ideas contacted us about looking at some of their games. I have been a huge fan of Draco for some time. One of the first games I picked up from them was Normandy: The Beginning of the End and its solo expansion Alone in the Storm.

I also wrote about their amazing ancients game, Onus Traianus. The two games they sent us, Scope: UBoot and Frontier Wars quickly made it to my table to see what they were all about.

“Squad Leader is a watershed moment in war gaming, offering an unparalleled level of tactical depth and realism.” – Strategy & Tactics magazine.

By Patrick S. Baker

Introduction

Squad Leader was released in 1977 by Avalon Hill and holds a significant place in the history of board gaming. Squad Leader is, perhaps, the classic tactical war-game and also perhaps is as important to war-gaming history as Kriegsspiel.

Simply put, Squad Leader set the standard for the genre by introducing groundbreaking mechanics and providing an immersive gaming experience, giving the player a real sense of commanding troops on the battlefield.

Development

By Mitch Reed

In 2023 two Kickstarter projects came to the mountain bunker from two European companies and after getting them to the table I found that these games shared some DNA that all gamers would appreciate. These two titles appear to be board wargames when you first glance at them, however, they play a lot like miniatures games. Both are excellent titles to add to your collection.

By David Garvin

Way back in 1974, Australian John Edwards released a game that remains popular to this very day. That game? The Russian Campaign. It was eventually picked up by Avalon Hill and later the L2 Design Group, worked over by such game designers as Don Greenwood, Richard Hamblen and Tom Gregario.

And as of early January, 2023, an incredible 5th edition is up for P500 at GMT Games. The hobby is filled with several games depicting the war on the Eastern Front, from the monsters “Fire in the East” by the Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW) and “Guderian’s Blitzkrieg II“, to more simple games such as “Blitzkrieg to Moscow II“.

There are of course games that cover certain aspects of the war, such as “Death Ride Kursk: Grossdeutschland“, “Stalingrad ’42” and “Panzer Battles: 11th Panzer on the Chir River“. These games all range from the Strategic to the Tactical. Yet among them all, one stands head and shoulders above the rest: the Russian Campaign

By Mitch Reed

Twilight Struggle, which came out in 2005 is one of the most iconic and popular war games in our community, however, it is not a game that I would expose new gamers to or someone who wants to play a quick game.

This has now changed with Jason Matthews’ newest game, Twilight Struggle Red Sea: The Conflict in the Horn of Africa (TWRS), which is a great intro game to our hobby but also a game that you can finish in less than 40 minutes.