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By Patrick S. Barker

Civilization: The Board Game (1980)

– The Game of the Heroic Age

The first Civilization board game was created by Francis Tresham, a former British Royal Air Force radio instructor. Tresham first thought of the idea for the game while browsing a historical atlas at his base library. The idea was further sparked by Tresham’s experience playing strategy games like Risk and Diplomacy. Tresham found playing Diplomacy to be rather averse and thought to design a game that stressed winning through cultural and technological progress rather than military force.

Tresham’s game begins with the appearance of early farmers circa 8,000 BCE (approximately 4000 years before the start of recorded history) and ended with the rise of Rome in 250 BCE. Players controlled various real civilizations from around the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.  As the turns and time passed, the players’ starting settlements grew and expanded into neighboring areas and generated additional resources. Designed for between two to seven players, the game could take up to eight hours to complete.

Big treat for you in this episode. We talk to some of the staff at the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies and talk about how they use wargaming in professional military education.

By Mitch Reed

I once again accepted the invite from Sebastian Bae to playtest his wargaming student’s final projects at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis Maryland. As with my last time doing this I was very impressed with the games the students developed over the course of a semester and feel that some of the projects they had on display were good enough for the commercial market.

By Tom Gall

The Wargaming Company makers of Et Sans Résultat (perhaps better known as ESR) have started to update and release their line of campaign books. The first in the refreshed line is To Assure My Dynasty, . These new campaign books are collectively called Series 3 to set them apart from past volumes.

With the book in your hands, the very first thing you’ll notice is, it’s a hardback. The prior series were spiral-bound volumes. Definitely a noticeable increase in quality but what about the content?

The campaign guide is 184 pages, all in full color. The book is broken up into several sections, first giving you a bit of background about the peninsular war, the countries, armies, and personalities involved in the conflict.

The next section covers how to use the book, with guidance on the size of the table, players, how to set up the maps, working with rosters, and how to handle scenarios that last for an extended period of time. After that is the campaign, 13 historical battles broken up into two logical parts. Last but not least is an extensive guide to the army uniforms each unit wore.

By Mitch Reed

Many of you know that I am a huge fan of Great War gaming, and this month we have some great new games being released or in the works that gamers should take note of.

I find the history of the Great War fascinating and I have always wondered why it is not more popular and prominent in our hobby. I think some of these new games may change some minds over the next few months.

By Tom “Chairborne” Mullane

I conducted some of my first large scale terrain experiments earlier last year while building a series of terrain display boards for my 15mm FOW armies.  The basic elements I used were pretty effective and I had plans to make some more this winter and spring.

War gamers rejoice! In this episode we sit down with Mark Walker, a game designer who has published some of the best games that you should be playing like 65′ Squad Level Combat in Vietnam.

by Tom Burgess

With the release of the “Version 4” Fate of a Nation, my friend Charles Christy and I were excited to get our Arab and Israeli forces back on the table. We went with 75 points for the points level because my entire Israeli force only comes out to 73 points in the new book!

My force was based around an AMX-13 company. This force has to be the worst Israeli formation. The AMX-13 is a flimsy tank that was retired after the 1967 war and has no business facing Charles’ 1973 force.

The worst part is that the formation only includes a maximum of three AMX-13 platoons and nothing else! Each platoon of four tanks coast only 8 points and the HQ just 4 points for two tanks. A full formation cost only 28 point total, but with front armor 4 it won’t take much to get this formation into poor spirits.