This was game which grew out of the political side of Master of Europe. The briefings were pretty well written so the thought came to mind of just doing the political game following the abdication of Napoleon. There’s absolutely no operational side of the game at all. One of a very small number of megagames which requires only a single person to run it. I’m pleased to say that it inspired Dave Boundy’s brilliant Washington Conference megagame. A pity there’s so few multi- party political discussions on big subjects which fit this type of game; if there were I do more lots of this style of game. Summing up the often complex political problems and background isn’t easy but it is very enjoyable and well worth the effort.

As it was clear that the teams would need to get together and co-ordinate periodically, I introduced the concept of a fixed ‘team time’ where players couldn’t interact with other teams and had to focus on reviewing their progress.

City of the Devil was my second medieval megagame, a sort-of follow-up to 2001's City of God. That game had focused on the Third Crusade and the politics of the Middle East, and left the European politics back home. This one aimed to do the reverse - the focus was on the European politics, and although there was potential for a Crusade to Palestine in the game - equivalent to the Fifth Crusade - it was a sideshow compared to what was happening elsewhere.

There were six main maps, each with a group of squabbling antagonists; The British Isles, France, Spain/Iberia (including the Moorish Almohad Empire of North Africa), the Holy Roman Empire - split into Germany and Italy, and the Aegean and surrounds; Greece, Byzantium and the Latin Empire (the result of the Fouth Crusade's conquest of Constantinople). There was also a Papal Team based in Rome. The game included the Albigensian Crusade in southern France, against the Cathar 'heretics'; the Reconquista struggle between the Spanish Kingdoms and the Moors; a civil war in the Holy Roman Empire between the Saxon and Sicilian claimants; King John of England's struggle with the Irish, Scots and his own barons, and his attempt to reconquer his lost lands in Normandy and Poitou. There was also a sub-game of finding, selling and trading and authenticating relics.

In general I think it just about worked, with some heroic defending by the Cathars before being overrun by the Crusaders, and the Hohenzollerns politically outmaneuvered by Otto of Saxony, allowing the latter to be crowned by the Pope as Holy Roman Emperor, but the English were a bit too united and the Spanish a little too lucky against the Moors, meaning that by the late game a number of Kings had settled things at home and were looking for new glories elsewhere, which eventually led to the overthrow of the French Kingdom. There were also issues I hadn't thought through with the combat system, and probably not enough players on the German and Italian teams.

The 19 th century and the vast amount of social, political and technological change is another big interest of mine and has been since ‘O’ level history at school. I first tried out a small game on the subject in 2000 and the game developed at intervals after that. It was one of those games where it was difficult to handle the amount of diplomatic activity with only one person per state and 4 or 5 other states to talk to and not wanting each turn to take an hour or more. In passing, this is how a number of my megagames have come about, 1494 is another example.

This was mainly Jim as I wasn’t well at the time. This started off as a conversation about a game in a Victorian setting, veered towards a superhero game and finally settled as a game set in the 1920s about gangs, rackets and a few ‘mystery men and women’ who would be able to choose whether to be heroes or not. Players represented various gangs, the police, ‘Feds’ the city mayor and council and those mysterious strangers. Along with a number of ‘eccentric’ scientists, each out to prove they were madder, sorry more brilliant, than the others regardless of the cost to human life and property damage. The ‘public outrage index’ went up as gang fights etc occurred and forced the police to act otherwise the ‘untouchables’ could arrive in force. A certain amount of co-operation thus had to be combined with the rivalry to avoid that outcome.

Somehow it was unsurprising how quickly megagamers fitted into an almost universally corrupt society. I might add that I still want to do a game in a Victorian setting and have a several rough designs as notes.

This sort of built on my 1494 game and looked at the relationships and rivalries between states across Europe, just at the time when Martin Luther was launching the reformation. So there was: dynastic struggle, religious strife, warfare, politics and birth, deaths & marriages. The time frame of four years per turn meant that I could cover some 24 years, a sufficient length of time in which players would grow older (and possibly die), get married and have children. So why not do it in a game. I drew out family trees for the prominent families of the period to the starting point of 1517 and allowed the players to arrange marriages for themselves and their relatives, marriages which resulted (in most cases) in children. And the players went for this in a big way.

The religious strife between protestants and catholics involved religious debates as well as politics and warfare. Some players could change their faith but most couldn’t. This aspect also built on the systems developed for Habsburg Ascendant.

The structure was also another example of why it’s difficult to define megagames: many players belonged to more than one ‘team. So a cardinal in France belonged to the French team and the Papal team. A German prince would be a part of the Holy Roman Empire team, the German Princes team and possibly the Luther or Calvinist teams.

This is undoubtedly my favourite of all the games I’ve designed as it covers so many aspects. Possibly I could do an alternative history version and shoe-horn in alchemy (weird science) and Cthulhu sub-games but that would be it!

This was mainly Bernie as I wasn’t well at the time. It had been 17 years since the last out of Dreams of Empire and fond memories of that game prompted us to take a new look at the subject for a complete re-design. So players had a variety of possible objectives, many but not all involving opposition to the French Revolution.

This was mainly Jim as I wasn’t well at the time. This started off as a conversation about a game in a Victorian setting, veered towards a superhero game and finally settled as a game set in the 1920s about gangs, rackets and a few ‘mystery men and women’ who would be able to choose whether to be heroes or not. Players represented various gangs, the police, ‘Feds’ the city mayor and council and those mysterious strangers. Along with a number of ‘eccentric’ scientists, each out to prove they were madder, sorry more brilliant, than the others regardless of the cost to human life and property damage. The ‘public outrage index’ went up as gang fights etc occurred and forced the police to act otherwise the ‘untouchables’ could arrive in force. A certain amount of co-operation thus had to be combined with the rivalry to avoid that outcome.

Somehow it was unsurprising how quickly megagamers fitted into an almost universally corrupt society. I might add that I still want to do a game in a Victorian setting and have a several rough designs as notes.

This was mainly Bernie as I wasn’t well at the time. It had been 17 years since the last out of Dreams of Empire and fond memories of that game prompted us to take a new look at the subject for a complete re-design. So players had a variety of possible objectives, many but not all involving opposition to the French Revolution.

This sort of built on my 1494 game and looked at the relationships and rivalries between states across Europe, just at the time when Martin Luther was launching the reformation. So there was: dynastic struggle, religious strife, warfare, politics and birth, deaths & marriages. The time frame of four years per turn meant that I could cover some 24 years, a sufficient length of time in which players would grow older (and possibly die), get married and have children. So why not do it in a game. I drew out family trees for the prominent families of the period to the starting point of 1517 and allowed the players to arrange marriages for themselves and their relatives, marriages which resulted (in most cases) in children. And the players went for this in a big way.

The religious strife between protestants and catholics involved religious debates as well as politics and warfare. Some players could change their faith but most couldn’t. This aspect also built on the systems developed for Habsburg Ascendant.

The structure was also another example of why it’s difficult to define megagames: many players belonged to more than one ‘team. So a cardinal in France belonged to the French team and the Papal team. A German prince would be a part of the Holy Roman Empire team, the German Princes team and possibly the Luther or Calvinist teams.

This is undoubtedly my favourite of all the games I’ve designed as it covers so many aspects. Possibly I could do an alternative history version and shoe-horn in alchemy (weird science) and Cthulhu sub-games but that would be it!

The game about the Somme 1916 by Jim Wallman, Andy Grainger and me, with a lot of development effort by Bernie Ganley and Mukul Patel. The original game was called Muck and Bullets. It was devised for year 9 at St. Olave's School as part of their studies of WW1, before they visited Flanders.

Jim wrote the rules and devised the game approach. I devised the map and produced briefings, OOB and carried out game production. Andy took the game and changed it to become a Megagame as part of the Megagame Makers series of games. He changed the name to "Price of Victory", which is part of a quote from Haig's final despatch. I took the game to Leeds and ran it there on a cut-down basis.

The game has two versions of the map. Players all have an A3 Map with Grid which shows the normal map features, including contour mapping (produced by my friend David Loyd from satellite height data) in shaded relief. The map does not, however, have the movement areas shown on it. The game play board has a simpler, cleaner, background without the contour mapping or the grid, but it shows the movement areas used by the game system. The maps were printed as A2 for most players, with A1 copies for senior commands. T he playing board was separated into 6 sections and printed so that the whole area was 8 metres square. Should you want to look at, or play with the CorelDraw(X3) file used to produce those maps, then please download the POV Map but please attribute me in any copy or derivative file.

Andy changed the original Muck and Bullets rules, but I have given the originals here as being simpler. There are also some short rules which are sufficient to run the game and which can be printed (double-sided) on a sheet of A4.

A second run for the end of the Roman Republic game, which started in 60BC and ran for about eight game years, covering in theory the time of the First Triumvirate - Caesar, Crassus and Pompey. The game was heavily influenced by the old Avalon Hill boardgame 'Republic of Rome', and was divided in two main sections - the internal Roman political game, which involved factions in the Senate vying for honours and commands, and the Provincial (map) game. Senators aimed to become Consuls and Praetors, and then get sent out to a lucrative Province governorship, where they could interact with barbarians or try to fleece the locals for more money. There were also several non-Roman powers played. The Egyptians had an internal politicking and backstabbing game involving the daughters of Ptolemy (including Cleopatra), scheming eunuchs and army commanders, and trying not to be absorbed by Rome - Egypt also provided most of Rome's grain, so that gave them leverage but also a reason for Rome to invade. The Parthian Empire was also played as a small team, as well as single players representing Nabatea, Dacia and a couple of other minor kingdoms. Barbarian incursions were run by Control.

For the second run, I tried to give the Parthians more of an internal game, with the ageing King dying on the first turn, leaving his two sons to squabble amongst themselves and their supporters for the throne. However, the internal squabble never materialised, and so the game essentially became a re-run of the first time, with the Parthians providing a strong threat that Rome had to get organised to deal with. Egypt did manage to stay free this time, though.

This was an opportunity to really build the political background into a Napoleonic campaign (yes, the Napoleonic period is a big interest of mine). With Europe united against Napoleon and his allies looking rather shaky, the end of the war was in view and it was time to start outlining the post-war settlement, re-drawing the boundaries on the map of Europe.

In the operational aspect of the game, armies manoeuvred across the map (which has hidden from players) with enemy positions only reported as contact was made. Similarly the exact positions of allied forces was only confirmed as contact made. There was clearly the possibility that Allied forces weren’t where you had been told they would be. Although vastly out- numbered, The French had the benefits of a unified command while the allies had the problem of co-ordinating the efforts of four different teams – always difficult in coalition warfare..

Napoleon’s allies, apart from their involvement in the fighting, had the delicate task of deciding whether they were going to jump ship and join the allies and, if they should decide to do so, when they should do it.

This sort of built on my 1494 game and looked at the relationships and rivalries between states across Europe, just at the time when Martin Luther was launching the reformation. So there was: dynastic struggle, religious strife, warfare, politics and birth, deaths & marriages. The time frame of four years per turn meant that I could cover some 24 years, a sufficient length of time in which players would grow older (and possibly die), get married and have children. So why not do it in a game. I drew out family trees for the prominent families of the period to the starting point of 1517 and allowed the players to arrange marriages for themselves and their relatives, marriages which resulted (in most cases) in children. And the players went for this in a big way.

The religious strife between protestants and catholics involved religious debates as well as politics and warfare. Some players could change their faith but most couldn’t. This aspect also built on the systems developed for Habsburg Ascendant.

The structure was also another example of why it’s difficult to define megagames: many players belonged to more than one ‘team. So a cardinal in France belonged to the French team and the Papal team. A German prince would be a part of the Holy Roman Empire team, the German Princes team and possibly the Luther or Calvinist teams.

This is undoubtedly my favourite of all the games I’ve designed as it covers so many aspects. Possibly I could do an alternative history version and shoe-horn in alchemy (weird science) and Cthulhu sub-games but that would be it!

This was essentially my 1494 game set in Jim’s fantasy world ‘Yendor’. We basically changed the names of countries and characters to fit into the background Jim had established in his Warlock Mountain and Yendor games.

This was an opportunity to really build the political background into a Napoleonic campaign (yes, the Napoleonic period is a big interest of mine). With Europe united against Napoleon and his allies looking rather shaky, the end of the war was in view and it was time to start outlining the post-war settlement, re-drawing the boundaries on the map of Europe.

In the operational aspect of the game, armies manoeuvred across the map (which has hidden from players) with enemy positions only reported as contact was made. Similarly the exact positions of allied forces was only confirmed as contact made. There was clearly the possibility that Allied forces weren’t where you had been told they would be. Although vastly out- numbered, The French had the benefits of a unified command while the allies had the problem of co-ordinating the efforts of four different teams – always difficult in coalition warfare..

Napoleon’s allies, apart from their involvement in the fighting, had the delicate task of deciding whether they were going to jump ship and join the allies and, if they should decide to do so, when they should do it.

For a game set in the 1920s ‘warlord period’ in China this was a remarkably peaceful game. The map/combat control team were set for a busy time, a couple of them would move from map to map to help handle the workload and most had an extremely quiet day. Sometimes you just can’t get a small war (or ten) going to save your life. The almost universal approach was to achieve objectives by politics. Players were able to change faction once without penalty, twice meant you lost substantial support so there was a lot of thought before moving to another faction.

The game about the Somme 1916 by Jim Wallman, Andy Grainger and me, with a lot of development effort by Bernie Ganley and Mukul Patel. The original game was called Muck and Bullets. It was devised for year 9 at St. Olave's School as part of their studies of WW1, before they visited Flanders.

Jim wrote the rules and devised the game approach. I devised the map and produced briefings, OOB and carried out game production. Andy took the game and changed it to become a Megagame as part of the Megagame Makers series of games. He changed the name to "Price of Victory", which is part of a quote from Haig's final despatch. I took the game to Leeds and ran it there on a cut-down basis.

The game has two versions of the map. Players all have an A3 Map with Grid which shows the normal map features, including contour mapping (produced by my friend David Loyd from satellite height data) in shaded relief. The map does not, however, have the movement areas shown on it. The game play board has a simpler, cleaner, background without the contour mapping or the grid, but it shows the movement areas used by the game system. The maps were printed as A2 for most players, with A1 copies for senior commands. T he playing board was separated into 6 sections and printed so that the whole area was 8 metres square. Should you want to look at, or play with the CorelDraw(X3) file used to produce those maps, then please download the POV Map but please attribute me in any copy or derivative file.

Andy changed the original Muck and Bullets rules, but I have given the originals here as being simpler. There are also some short rules which are sufficient to run the game and which can be printed (double-sided) on a sheet of A4.

This was game which grew out of the political side of Master of Europe. The briefings were pretty well written so the thought came to mind of just doing the political game following the abdication of Napoleon. There’s absolutely no operational side of the game at all. One of a very small number of megagames which requires only a single person to run it. I’m pleased to say that it inspired Dave Boundy’s brilliant Washington Conference megagame. A pity there’s so few multi- party political discussions on big subjects which fit this type of game; if there were I do more lots of this style of game. Summing up the often complex political problems and background isn’t easy but it is very enjoyable and well worth the effort.

As it was clear that the teams would need to get together and co-ordinate periodically, I introduced the concept of a fixed ‘team time’ where players couldn’t interact with other teams and had to focus on reviewing their progress.

Richard, Jim and I all played and ran various Call of Cthulhu role playing games and a megagame on that topic looked an interesting challenge. It proved to be a very complex game as there was the problem that if a player was only involved in one ‘mystery’ then the game would potentially be over for them if the mystery was solved. We handled this by having an over-arching theme of cultists wishing to open up a portal to the immortal ‘old god’ (which they did, the only megagame I’m aware of in which the game ended with the world destroyed) and those opposed to them. Each player would also be involved in three mysteries so that they would remain involved in the game throughout. Players could, and did, also stumble into other mysteries to the confusion of themselves and others. The complexity then came from linking 40 odd players to three of about 20 plots. Fortunately, it was a quiet time at work. Given that the three of us had constructed the plots and characters, it was interesting how many obvious linkages and crossovers arose when we started to put them together. Yet another game I’d like to re-run and have been giving some serious thought to recently and thus only the handbook is available not the briefings.

My second game, and this time I looked at the end of the Roman Republic. The game was heavily influenced by the old Avalon Hill boardgame 'Republic of Rome'. There were essentially two main sections - the internal Roman political game, which involved factions in the Senate vying for honours and commands, and the Provincial (map) game. Senators aimed to become Consuls and Praetors, and then get sent out to a lucrative Province governorship, where they could interact with barbarians or try to fleece the locals for more money. There were also several non-Roman powers played. The Egyptians had an internal politicking and backstabbing game involving the daughters of Ptolemy (including Cleopatra), scheming eunuchs and army commanders, and trying not to be absorbed by Rome - Egypt also provided most of Rome's grain, so that gave them leverage but also a reason for Rome to invade. The Parthian Empire was also played as a small team, as well as single players representing Nabatea, Dacia and a couple of other minor kingdoms. Barbarian incursions were run by Control.

The game went pretty well from my point of view, although the Parthians ended up being quite dangerous, so Roman internal politics were crimped by having to deal with a long and gruelling war with Parthia. A highlight however was Caesar, having been sent to 'deal with' the Egyptians, but only having been given one Legion, ie having been set up to fail, nevertheless storming the walls of Alexandria and imposing a Pax Romana among the squabbling dynasty.

Part of my interest in the 19 th century is revolution. In 1848 a wave of revolutions swept across Europe inspired by a desire for social reform and wider participation in government. So the players represented all sections of the government, royalty, aristocracy, middle class professionals, business and artisans. All were striving to fulfil their objectives with respect to maintaining or changing the status quo. Those playing the middle class also had the tricky job of ensuring that they participated in a widening of representation but of also excluding the more numerous lower classes. Another almost entirely political game and one I did as a megagame because a ‘club-sized game’ (say, 6 – 12 players) just didn’t allow for the representation of all the interests.

After Terry's 'Deus Vult' had tackled the First Crusade, I thought that the Third Crusade might make a similar subject for a megagame. The game began in 1189 after the fall of Jerusalem and the set-up involved the Europeans as three national teams - England, France and the Holy Roman Empire - preparing and then launching the crusade. In the meantime, the Sicilians, Italian maritime republics, Templars, Hospitallers and remains of the Kingdom of Jerusalem tried to stave off Saladin and his Empire, but there were complicating factors of the Byzantine and Seljuk Turk Empires as well, and of course the Assassins.

Bits of the game (combat, logistics) worked quite well, but there were the classic medieval megagame problems of not enough to do for the minor lords and not enough internal conflict in the Ayyubid team, which made life a bit too easy for Saladin. I also wrote far too much for the briefings, and a confusion over maps led to them having to be hand drawn and painted at the last minute, which added a hand-crafted, medieval look, but wasn't ideal from a looking professional point of view. A learning experience for me.

The Crusade failed to reconquer Jerusalem - indeed, Saladin extended his control over most of the Holy Land. However, the King of Sicily, after being captured, did end up as a Christian Guardian of Jerusalem on Saladin's behalf. Rob Cooper, who played King William The Good of Siciliy, told me that he found the True Cross (a counter in the game and key Crusade war objective to recover it) in his desk drawer many years later.

Inspired by Springtime for Hitler – if we could do the start of WWII then Bernie and I were convinced that we could do the start of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. There was quite a bit of political background so that while most opposed the French Revolution, they also had others things to occupy them such as partitioning Poland.

The game introduced, I think, the concept of having umpires (as the control team were referred to in those days) to handle the activities and responses of the very small countries which wouldn’t provide enough decisions and activity for a team of players.

The game was successful and we revised and ran it a number of times. A New Age Dawns was such a significant re-design that it is listed separately.

This game covered the start of the Thirty Years War in Europe, from 1618 onwards. As well as the usual dynastic, political and military struggles there was the added element of religion. By this time the Calvinists had split off from the main stream of Protestantism so there was a three-way struggle with Catholicism. In the first run of the game, players were rather to ready, despite their briefings making clear their hatred of the other religious alignments, too make deals. The solution to this came from a discussion in, appropriately, Prague (where the historical war had started). Players would gain or lose ‘god points’ by doing things that their god would approve / disapprove of. The relative standing were displayed on the ‘god chart’ which ran from a view of heaven down to the fiery depths of hell. Good or bad things happened to you depending on your relative proximity to each location. Great was the struggle to be nearest to heaven!

This was game which grew out of the political side of Master of Europe. The briefings were pretty well written so the thought came to mind of just doing the political game following the abdication of Napoleon. There’s absolutely no operational side of the game at all. One of a very small number of megagames which requires only a single person to run it. I’m pleased to say that it inspired Dave Boundy’s brilliant Washington Conference megagame. A pity there’s so few multi- party political discussions on big subjects which fit this type of game; if there were I do more lots of this style of game. Summing up the often complex political problems and background isn’t easy but it is very enjoyable and well worth the effort.

As it was clear that the teams would need to get together and co-ordinate periodically, I introduced the concept of a fixed ‘team time’ where players couldn’t interact with other teams and had to focus on reviewing their progress.

This covered the period at the start of the English Civil War. At that time we used a school as a venue which had three halls. So the map tables, one for each county, were spread over the three halls and that helped reproduce the localist nature of much of the struggle, If you were in Durham you didn’t concern yourself over much at what was happening in Hampshire if you had to go down to two flights of stairs to find out. It was otherwise a fairly wargame style design I’d do very differently now.

Oh, look, it’s another game with a political background providing reasons for conflict! I’ve long been deeply interested in the renaissance period and the French invasion of the Italian states Page 2 of 7(there wasn’t a unified ‘Italy’ then). It provides an interesting dynamic of a group of states in an uneasy piece but with tensions building that then have to respond to the appearance of a third party. All the Italian states teams had an internal game which could give rise to varying and changeable responses to the French intervention.

A particularly interesting aspect that arose during the first run of the game was the desire by players to explore the glories of the renaissance in terms of painting and buildings which would build the prestige of the state and particular players. I was happy to run with this and various ‘artworks’ and paper buildings soon decorated team tables. For the second run of the game I bought several old art books and separated the pages to produce suitable props for the game (this was, of course, pre-internet. It’s the only time in my life I’ve ‘vandalised’ a book and it took some willpower to actually do!). This cultural aspect has since been a theme in many of my games (megagames and ‘club-sized’ games) and is one that proves popular.

This covered the period at the start of the English Civil War. At that time we used a school as a venue which had three halls. So the map tables, one for each county, were spread over the three halls and that helped reproduce the localist nature of much of the struggle, If you were in Durham you didn’t concern yourself over much at what was happening in Hampshire if you had to go down to two flights of stairs to find out. It was otherwise a fairly wargame style design I’d do very differently now.

After the success of Dreams of Empire, there seemed an opportunity to do a similar game in the mid 18th century. I didn’t want to do the Seven Years War as it’s mainly Frederick the Great versus pretty well everyone else so I chose an earlier setting when they were several succession crisis to provide an opening setting and reasons why a state might or might not get involved. So, as became standard for me, there’s a strong political setting from which conflict could, and often obligingly does, arise. A game and setting I’ve thought about returning to.

Oh, look, it’s another game with a political background providing reasons for conflict! I’ve long been deeply interested in the renaissance period and the French invasion of the Italian states Page 2 of 7(there wasn’t a unified ‘Italy’ then). It provides an interesting dynamic of a group of states in an uneasy piece but with tensions building that then have to respond to the appearance of a third party. All the Italian states teams had an internal game which could give rise to varying and changeable responses to the French intervention.

A particularly interesting aspect that arose during the first run of the game was the desire by players to explore the glories of the renaissance in terms of painting and buildings which would build the prestige of the state and particular players. I was happy to run with this and various ‘artworks’ and paper buildings soon decorated team tables. For the second run of the game I bought several old art books and separated the pages to produce suitable props for the game (this was, of course, pre-internet. It’s the only time in my life I’ve ‘vandalised’ a book and it took some willpower to actually do!). This cultural aspect has since been a theme in many of my games (megagames and ‘club-sized’ games) and is one that proves popular.

After the success of Dreams of Empire, there seemed an opportunity to do a similar game in the mid 18th century. I didn’t want to do the Seven Years War as it’s mainly Frederick the Great versus pretty well everyone else so I chose an earlier setting when they were several succession crisis to provide an opening setting and reasons why a state might or might not get involved. So, as became standard for me, there’s a strong political setting from which conflict could, and often obligingly does, arise. A game and setting I’ve thought about returning to.

Inspired by Springtime for Hitler – if we could do the start of WWII then Bernie and I were convinced that we could do the start of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. There was quite a bit of political background so that while most opposed the French Revolution, they also had others things to occupy them such as partitioning Poland.

The game introduced, I think, the concept of having umpires (as the control team were referred to in those days) to handle the activities and responses of the very small countries which wouldn’t provide enough decisions and activity for a team of players.

The game was successful and we revised and ran it a number of times. A New Age Dawns was such a significant re-design that it is listed separately.

Based on the eponymous novel by Robert Heinlein. The players split between the troopers and the allies. In the first half of the game the troopers got to enjoy themselves shooting up a fairly defenceless alien planet. In the second, the alien players were now the rather more fearsome bugs and took their revenge. An intriguing stage of the design came when we analysed the deployment described in the book and realised two things: that a battalion was deployed across an area approximately the size of Scotland and that troopers were deadly either at about 5km when they fired off a mini-nuke or close up. But between that they had no effective weapon. It certainly posed an interesting tactical problem for the trooper players. The bug movements were kept hidden from the troopers to give the feeling of ‘they could be anywhere’. A rare venture into SF for me, odd given I’ve read SF since I was very young and possibly played one of the first SF figure based wargamers.

This was an opportunity to really build the political background into a Napoleonic campaign (yes, the Napoleonic period is a big interest of mine). With Europe united against Napoleon and his allies looking rather shaky, the end of the war was in view and it was time to start outlining the post-war settlement, re-drawing the boundaries on the map of Europe.

In the operational aspect of the game, armies manoeuvred across the map (which has hidden from players) with enemy positions only reported as contact was made. Similarly the exact positions of allied forces was only confirmed as contact made. There was clearly the possibility that Allied forces weren’t where you had been told they would be. Although vastly out- numbered, The French had the benefits of a unified command while the allies had the problem of co-ordinating the efforts of four different teams – always difficult in coalition warfare..

Napoleon’s allies, apart from their involvement in the fighting, had the delicate task of deciding whether they were going to jump ship and join the allies and, if they should decide to do so, when they should do it.

This was an opportunity to really build the political background into a Napoleonic campaign (yes, the Napoleonic period is a big interest of mine). With Europe united against Napoleon and his allies looking rather shaky, the end of the war was in view and it was time to start outlining the post-war settlement, re-drawing the boundaries on the map of Europe.

In the operational aspect of the game, armies manoeuvred across the map (which has hidden from players) with enemy positions only reported as contact was made. Similarly the exact positions of allied forces was only confirmed as contact made. There was clearly the possibility that Allied forces weren’t where you had been told they would be. Although vastly out- numbered, The French had the benefits of a unified command while the allies had the problem of co-ordinating the efforts of four different teams – always difficult in coalition warfare..

Napoleon’s allies, apart from their involvement in the fighting, had the delicate task of deciding whether they were going to jump ship and join the allies and, if they should decide to do so, when they should do it.

Inspired by Springtime for Hitler – if we could do the start of WWII then Bernie and I were convinced that we could do the start of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. There was quite a bit of political background so that while most opposed the French Revolution, they also had others things to occupy them such as partitioning Poland.

The game introduced, I think, the concept of having umpires (as the control team were referred to in those days) to handle the activities and responses of the very small countries which wouldn’t provide enough decisions and activity for a team of players.

The game was successful and we revised and ran it a number of times. A New Age Dawns was such a significant re-design that it is listed separately.

Inspired by Springtime for Hitler – if we could do the start of WWII then Bernie and I were convinced that we could do the start of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. There was quite a bit of political background so that while most opposed the French Revolution, they also had others things to occupy them such as partitioning Poland.

The game introduced, I think, the concept of having umpires (as the control team were referred to in those days) to handle the activities and responses of the very small countries which wouldn’t provide enough decisions and activity for a team of players.

The game was successful and we revised and ran it a number of times. A New Age Dawns was such a significant re-design that it is listed separately.

My involvement in this was a surprise to me. Jim, the driving force of the game, popped round to to discuss the concept and drop off a copy of Alistair Horne’s Fall of France. A shrewd move as Jim knew WWII wasn’t really my period but also knew I liked politics in games. So I ended up writing political briefings for the games.