Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — game design

Blucher at Waterloo, the French at Inkerman, the Eagles at the Black Gate: nothing turns the tide quite so dramatically as the timely arrival of reinforcements. There are some battles (and, depending on the decisiveness of the battle, some wars) that would have went very differently if said reinforcements arrived later, or sooner, or not at all. But reinforcements can pose a problem when it comes time to simulate those battles with cardboard squares and a paper map. If, for example, so-and-so arrived at such-and-such a time, which in game terms corresponds to Turn 6, then I know and you...

I've tried, with varying degrees of success and failure, to impart my love of wargaming to others. Sometimes it's an uphill battle. I've had folks who told me they weren't interested in war (but who started playing Call of Duty immediately after abandoning our game of Hammer of the Scots). I've had folks who weren't thrilled with the cardboard and paper. There have been surprisingly few people who have had problems with odds ratios, for all the hay that's been made about math anxiety. Extra little chrome rules don't pose much of a problem to experienced Eurogamers and tabletop RPG...

The Shot & Shell Battle Series originated because I had designed three previous games that had somewhat similar rulesets but at different scales, with different combat procedures and different ZOC rules and different activation mechanisms (an I-go-U-go for this one, chit pull for that one, activation roll for this guy over here). I couldn't really call those three previous games a "series", because for me as a gamer the appeal of a series is that you only need to learn the rules once, then you're off to the races. Having to learn each game separately, and if you happen to...

In designing wargames, I adhere to the importance of leadership in deciding battles. I do not mean that every contest rests with the generals. Certainly doctrine, technology, firepower, morale, terrain, weather, and numbers are all decisive. Yet, capable leaders are required to harness whatever advantages they have, and compensate for disadvantages. Starting in the 20th Century, the importance of generals somewhat waned as armies become more professional and scientific. Yet, who can doubt the importance of Erwin Rommel or William Halsey in their operations, or that of even Osama Bin Laden and Võ Nguyên Giáp? All of that said, leadership...

The Soo Line is my sixth train game design. In some ways, it's similar to the others - for example, it's the fourth in a row to use some variation of the "track leasing" mechanism I introduced in Trans-Siberian. But it's also the most aggressively weird of my choo-choo games, which is the primary reason why I didn't offer it  to Winsome and we decided to go the Hollandspiele route instead.  The core bit of weirdness is that there are only three railroads to invest in, and the majority shareholder makes all decisions for the railroad. The game seats three...