Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — Hollandspiele

Not to belabor the obvious, but running a games company takes work, and work takes time, and time is a finite resource. There are twenty four hours in a day (slightly less if we're being pedantic), and at least a handful of those need to be spent sleeping. Like most folks, I spend five days out of seven at work for at least eight hours, and like some folks, I spend an hour each morning and an hour each evening commuting from my home to my workplace. That leaves, on a weekday, a window of about four or five hours...

Detail of Plan 1919 map, map art by Ilya Kudriashov 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...

Hollandspiele is a new company dedicated to the publication of historically-based wargames in handsome and affordable boxed editions. You're probably asking, "Okay, so what makes you any different than any other wargames company popping up these days?" And, sure, that's a fair question, and it's one we've thought about for a long time. The answer is a bit... complicated. Because it's not like we went into this thinking up a sexy "hook" or gimmick that we can use to stand out for the sake of standing out. We didn't spend a whole lot of time trying to gin up a...