Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — wargame

Horse & Musket covers the development of musket warfare from Vienna in 1683 and Sedgemoor in 1685 to Appomattox in 1865 and Königgrätz in 1866. After the American Civil War and the triumph of Prussian tactics at Königgrätz, warfare moved from muzzle loaded weapons to breechloaders. Volume I, titled Dawn of an Era, covers the years 1683-1720, which saw the conversion from pikes and matchlocks to bayonets and flintlocks.  If all goes well there will be five other volumes, each covering the development of linear musket combat. "The Battle of Königgrätz, July 3, 1866", Christian Sell, Lithograph, 1866. In the...

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...

When we took over Horse & Musket: Dawn of an Era, it had a sort of cover already, which designer Sean Chick used to advertise it on BGG. It's a very nice painting, and one that evokes the period - in fact, we used it on the cover of the rulebook - but wasn't really our style; we're not "nice painting on the cover" sort of publishers. We don't mind incorporating period artwork or photos into our box cover designs, and we do that more often than not; we just don't want to let that artwork do all the heavy...

Running a wargames company can be hard work. It'd be great if all you had to do was publish great games, and then folks would buy them, but of course that isn't quite that simple. Folks need to know that the game exists, and they need to know that the game is great. The million dollar question is, how do you let them know that? A lot of our time and effort is spent grappling with this question, and occasionally we'll do a bit of "opposition research": we'll poke around and see what other wargames companies are up to. I...

So, over the last four entries in this series, I looked at some of the core ideas behind Optimates et Populares, as well as how I approached some of the design problems inherent in the topic. This time around, I'm going to look at each of the game's ten actions and how they work together. These actions are divided into three categories: Senate Actions, People of Rome Actions, and Law Actions. Restored Curia Julia, meeting house of the Roman senate Senate Actions Half of the game's Actions allow you to gain support for your ideology within the Senate. Support of...