Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — wargame

OPENING MOVES FOR "THE GRUNWALD SWORDS" (by Tom Russell)

OPENING MOVES FOR "THE GRUNWALD SWORDS" (by Tom Russell)

The original monument to the Battle of Grunwald was erected in Kraków for the battle's 500th anniversary. It was destroyed during WWII by the Germans and rebuilt in 1976. Broadly speaking, the Teutonic Player must absolutely protect the camp hexes in his rear at all costs. The Allied Player can win the game immediately if he takes possession of those hexes. The Allied Player's two Polish Wings have the best chance of grabbing it, mostly because they're the ones that are going to stay on the map during the entire game. Naturally, if the Teutonic Player is able to box...


(RE)MAKING SHIELDS & SWORDS, PART THREE: BEST HOOF FORWARD (by Tom Russell)

(RE)MAKING SHIELDS & SWORDS, PART THREE: BEST HOOF FORWARD (by Tom Russell)

Death of Ulrich von Jungingen, detail from "The Battle of Grunwald, Jan Matejko, 1878 Way back in 2013, I designed an ACW boxed game themed around the Seven Days Battles at Mark Walker's request. For various reasons it was decided in 2015 to break the game's five battles into five separate games for publication in Tiny Battle's folio line. The first game was the second battle to happen chronologically (Gaines's Mill), the second was the fourth (Glendale & White Oak Swamp), then the third (Savage's Station), then the first (Beaver Dam Creek). The reason why it didn't start with Beaver...


COUNTERFACTUAL - THE SCHELDT CAMPAIGN (by Tom Russell)

COUNTERFACTUAL - THE SCHELDT CAMPAIGN (by Tom Russell)

When Mary and I started talking about the feasibility of publishing games ourselves, one of the prime topics of discussion was how to keep down the costs of the artwork, while still paying our artists a rate that we felt was equitable and fair for their labor and talent - a tricky balance, to be sure. I know when I was developing pack-in games for Yaah! magazine that I had to adhere to a pretty strict art budget. One artist completed his work for a few hundred bucks at a hefty discount as a favor to me and to Mark....


COVER STORY: THE SCHELDT CAMPAIGN (by Tom Russell)

COVER STORY: THE SCHELDT CAMPAIGN (by Tom Russell)

It starts with color, and typography. Whenever I do a box cover, I tend to limit my palette to two or three very stark, bold, direct colors. For The Scheldt Campaign, I started with a bright, rich red (d8161e). This would be the color that dominated the canvas. I then decided to use white as my primary text color. It's clean and reads well on red, without the need for any outline, shading, or drop. I'm not afraid of using those elements when I need to, but I prefer to stay away from then when I can. It gives the...


DESIGNER'S NOTES: THE SCHELDT CAMPAIGN (by Brian Train)

DESIGNER'S NOTES: THE SCHELDT CAMPAIGN (by Brian Train)

      In his book The Complete Wargames Handbook, the noted wargame designer James F. Dunnigan had two basic rules for aspiring designers: Keep it simple. Plagiarize. Later he euphemized the second one as “use available techniques”, but still, these are words to live by. And once in a while a game system comes along so loaded with good ideas and potential directions it simply has to be used! Giving due credit to the original thinker, of course… we do stand on the shoulders of giants, and they all have names. In the particular case of The Scheldt Campaign,...