FORGED BY FIRE: A Napoleonic Grand Strategy Game

Forged by Fire is a 2–4 player grand-strategy wargame spanning the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars across 12 rounds. One side commands France and its alliance, while the other leads Britain and the Coalition powers. But these alliances are never set in stone.

Both sides compete for historically inspired victory points, which generate diplomatic power. This power can be used to negotiate armistices, forge alliances, or declare war on other major powers of the era, constantly reshaping the political landscape.

BUILT TO WORK WITH TWO PLAYERS

One of my key goals with Forged by Fire was to capture the massive military scale and unpredictable political landscape of the Napoleonic era without requiring five or six players to make diplomacy work.

Traditional diplomatic wargames often rely on each major power having its own player, creating memorable experiences but requiring a large, committed group.

Forged by Fire takes a different approach. France and Britain anchor their respective alliances, while other nations can shift allegiances throughout the game. This creates a strategic chess match—or sometimes a poker game—where military positioning, political influence, and bluffing all come into play. Unlike traditional alliance-based wargames, the opposing sides aren't fixed, and victory isn't simply a race to capture Paris or London.

1793: EUROPE ON THE EDGE

The game begins in 1793, just before the French victory at the Siege of Toulon. Revolutionary France is surrounded by enemies, plagued by internal rebellions, and facing a Coalition determined to crush it. Napoleon has yet to become Emperor, and much of what defines the Napoleonic Wars is still to come.

From there, players shape their own version of history.

France might dominate continental Europe—or be defeated before it gets the chance. Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, and other major powers may remain loyal to the Coalition, leave the war, or even join France. Rather than following a scripted history, the game recreates the military and political pressures of the era and leaves the outcome to the players.

Achieving historical objectives and major military victories, such as capturing enemy capitals or winning significant battles, generates Diplomacy Tokens. These can be saved or spent during the Diplomacy Phase at the beginning of each round to reshape alliances and influence the course of the war.

After 12 rounds, the alliance with the most Victory Points wins. The game features over 30 historically inspired objectives, each rooted in the real strategic ambitions of the era. Achieving an objective for the first time also awards a Diplomacy Token, which can be spent at the beginning of future rounds to influence the allegiances of major powers.

This means no two games are likely to unfold the same way.

Launch the Egyptian Campaign. Fight the Peninsular War. Use French diplomatic influence to bring Austria into your alliance and conquer Prussia. Build a powerful French navy to dominate the Mediterranean. Or align with Russia and challenge Britain in India.

My goal was to let history set the stage while giving players the freedom to write their own story. Rather than following a scripted timeline, Forged by Fire offers a wide range of historically grounded strategic ambitions, with diplomacy and military decisions determining how the era unfolds.

A MUCH BIGGER WAR

Although Europe is naturally the center of the game, the map extends far beyond it. North America, the Caribbean, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus and India are all part of the strategic picture, along with the sea routes connecting them.

Control major ports to receive additional income and shipbuilding capability. Establish naval blockades and protect important trade routes.

DIPLOMACY IS YOUR SHARPEST WEAPON

There is also a bluffing element to the system. Both sides can accumulate Diplomacy Tokens and may choose at times to save them for something bigger. An opponent sitting on a large reserve of political influence becomes a threat in itself. Where are they planning to use it? Which nation are they targeting? Are those armies massing near a neutral country because an alliance is coming—or because they want you to think one is?

That uncertainty is intentional. You win battles to gain political leverage. Political leverage changes the alliances. Those new alliances create opportunities to pursue entirely different objectives.

ARMIES ARE MORE THAN STACKS OF COUNTERS

I also wanted land combat to involve more decision-making than simply assembling the largest possible stack and rolling dice. Battles are divided between the Center and the Flank, and the composition of an army matters.

Infantry, artillery and cavalry each have different battlefield roles. Concentrating powerful cavalry forces on a flank may allow you to break through against the enemy center—but doing so can leave your own center weaker.

Artillery and infantry provide tremendous power in the center, while cavalry can create opportunities elsewhere on the battlefield.

Players therefore have to decide not only how large an army should be, but what that army should actually look like.

Generals are particularly important because they are the primary drivers of large-scale military operations and logistically supersede the movement values of the units they command.

Generals command the largest concentrations of troops, provide greater operational mobility, and can acquire Advanced Tactics that specialize them for different styles of warfare. Rifling, Corps System, Grand Battery, and Fieldworks are just a few of the options players can equip their Generals with.

Napoleon is naturally the most formidable General, starting with four free Advanced Tactics. But even the strongest commander needs the right army behind him—and the right positioning to make it count.

THE WAR AT SEA

Naval warfare operates on a smaller scale than the armies marching across Europe, but control of the seas can have enormous strategic consequences. Fleets protect overseas territories and trade routes, contest strategically important waters, transport armies and threaten enemy possessions far beyond Europe.

Britain in particular has reasons to think globally. A player focused exclusively on continental warfare may suddenly discover that their opponent has been accumulating Victory Points through overseas possessions, trade routes, ports or naval objectives. Britain’s navy is one of the key linchpins to Coalition success or failure in Forged by Fire.

This creates one of the dynamics I wanted most from the game: there should almost always be more desirable objectives than either alliance can realistically accomplish. Players have to decide where the war matters most.

NATIONAL SPECIAL ABILITIES

Adding historical flavor to this strategic sandbox was equally important. Britain's economic strength and global influence are represented through Special Abilities such as British Subsidies, Far East Trade, and even an Admiral Nelson unit. Most nations possess unique abilities, with France featuring the most, including Levée en Masse, and Napoleon, while the Spanish Revolts, Russian Winter, and many others are featured for other major powers.

Ultimately, Forged by Fire was designed to offer far more than one or two paths to victory. Dominate continental Europe, expand overseas, control the seas, dismantle enemy alliances through diplomacy, capture capitals, protect trade routes, or combine multiple strategies to achieve victory.

After two years of development and numerous playtests with overwhelmingly positive feedback, my goal is to take Forged by Fire beyond the prototype stage and bring it to gaming tables everywhere.

Help make Forged by Fire a reality—and get it onto your game shelf! Follow the Kickstarter pre-launch page using the link below to support the campaign.

Kickstart pre-launch:  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fxf/forged-by-fire-a-napoleonic-grand-strategy-game

Forged by Fire promo video:

 An Impossible War: The First Carlist War in the North, 1834 - 1838

by

Bellica 3rd Generation

 Much like the last review, but to any even greater extent, I needed to learn some history to get myself sufficiently grounded in the basics of the game. I assume you can play wargames without knowing anything about the history behind the game. However, that is something that is completely foreign to my way of thinking. So, here we have a game about the 1st Carlist War. This is a bit of history that is pretty far off the normal beaten path. They took place in the mid 19th century in Spain. The Bourbons, in 1700, brought the Salic Law with them to Spain. This was a French law that said that no woman could reign over France. You might remember it mostly from Shakespeare's play Henry V. It became the crux of the matter in this dynastic war. I will not get into the details, more on this later. You just need to know that it is a pretty much hidden part of European history. In actuality, more Spanish people died during these wars than in the years of the French attempted occupation of Spain known as Napoleon's Spanish Ulcer. I tried to read what I could find on this era of Spanish history, but English books about it are few and far between. However, the designer has given us an incredibly deep and expansive historical background as I have ever had the pleasure to read. So much for our beloved hobby being looked at as a complete waste of time and money. Take that, George Carlin and ponder on it (If you were not aware he did a whole skit on the insanity of our hobby, at least to him. It is a shame, for other than that I really liked him). Thank you, Bellica 3rd Generation and designer David Gómez Relloso for creating a game where I had to learn more history. I also have to apologize to both of them for the length of time it took me to create this look at their game. Below is what Bellica 3rd Generation has to say about the game:

"The First Carlist War was a civil war that ravaged Spain between 1833 and 1840. Upon the death of Ferdinand VII, using the succession conflict between his daughter Isabella and his brother Carlos as a pretext, supporters of liberalism clashed with defenders of tradition. Carlism gained its strongest foothold in Navarre, the Basque Provinces, and neighboring territories—the North—where the main campaigns, battles, and sieges took place.

Back of the Box

Tomás de Zumalacárregui organized the Carlist forces into an army capable of fighting the liberal government troops. Despite being outnumbered, he took advantage of his strengths and the enemy’s weaknesses to defeat them and consolidate his control over a region where the geography and popular support were in his favor.

The Carlist objective was to capture a city. They laid siege to several, but failed to take any, and Zumalacárregui died while besieging Bilbao in June 1835. Expeditions were sent to encourage uprisings in the rest of Spain, but the liberals relentlessly pursued them. Don Carlos himself led an expedition that reached the gates of Madrid in September 1837 but was unable to take the capital.

Some of each sides Stickers

At the end of 1836, Baldomero Espartero became commander-in-chief of the liberal army. Under his leadership, the troops improved their performance and carried out a relentless campaign to crush the enemy. Carlism was far from defeated, but its chances of winning the war had vanished, while internal divisions grew.

In August 1839, peace supporters laid down their arms with the Embrace of Vergara, while Don Carlos and those refusing to surrender crossed the border into France. In the Maestrazgo and Catalonia, the Carlists would not be defeated until July 1840.

An Impossible War is a game about the decisive years of the First Carlist War in the North. Infantry and cavalry are represented by blocks, which introduce fog of war into operations. There are also artillery counters (field and mountain artillery) and logistics units (supply trains and backpacks).

One of the Cards

The main map is a point-to-point board covering the northern theater of operations: Navarre, the Basque Country, and surrounding areas of La Rioja, Burgos, and Cantabria. In addition to provincial capitals, major towns and other localities are shown, along with primary and secondary routes of communication. There is also a smaller map of the rest of peninsular Spain, showing the regions affected by the Carlist uprising and allowing expeditions being launched from the North.

Each turn, players compete for initiative and carry out a variable number of actions. There is also a card deck for each side, including historical, operational, and tactical events. The cards add background and unpredictability to the game, helping make each session different. This is NOT a card-driven game, but one assisted by cards.

Northern piece of the Map

An Impossible War simulates the historical conflict, which featured numerous skirmishes, few major battles, and significant siege warfare. It is an asymmetric game in which each side has strengths and weaknesses. Players must exploit their advantages and mitigate their disadvantages to achieve victory.

The Carlist player must make use of superior mobility and unit quality to consolidate territory, wear down the enemy, and threaten cities. The Liberal player must contain and suppress the insurrection; they have more troops, but of lower quality and plagued by logistical nightmares. Additionally, they must quell uprisings and chase down Carlist expeditions across the rest of Spain.

Game Contents:

1 Main map (Northern map)

1 Regional map of the rest of Spain

1 Battlefield board

1 Rulebook

1 Playbook

2 Player aid sheets

73 wooden blocks (48 blue, 25 red)

1 sheet of 18 mm stickers

2 punchboards with 18 mm tokens

72 cards (36 Liberal, 36 Carlist)

10 artillery tokens (wooden)

4 six-sided dice

2 cloth bags

ALL GAME COMPONENTS ARE IN ENGLISH"

 As usual, I want to take a look at the game's components first. We will start with the map. It is a mounted map that uses point to point movement. The map is of Northern Spain, including a good amount of the Basque country. Wargamers who have read and/or played games about the 20th Century Spanish Civil War will be very familiar with the territory shown on the map. The map has a good number of the tables etc. that you will need for play. In a novel approach both sides of the map have the Sequence of Play listed. 

Battle Board

 The Rulebook is 31 pages long. It is in full color and is in a two-column format. The type is nice and large. It also has a liberal amount of play examples. The Playbook has 46 pages of excellent information and gaming goodness. It comes with 12 pages of different play examples! It starts with the scenario setups. Then it continues with Rules Clarifications (this is a nice touch that usually waits for the errata to be issued). Next up, we have the Card Clarifications, and then there is a section on Optional Rules. These are listed as either helping one side or the other. The section on all of the different Play Examples is next. These are of Combats, Skirmish, Battle, and Assault. There is a Historical Background and Historical Notes on the Cards. Next comes, the excellent history of the First Carlist War in the North. Then we have the Design Notes and even a section on Advice for New Players. 

Southern piece of the Map

 We have two nice thick cardstock player aids. The first is a map of all of Spain to show how the Carlist Uprising is playing out in the rest of the country. The second is the actual battlefield map or board. There are also two large three-page foldout player aids made of flexible cardstock. One is for the Liberal player and one for the Carlist. The type on these is the same large size that are in the Playbook and Rulebook. The cards come next. There is a deck for both players. These are the normal size and thickness of most other game cards. The backs of the deck both have a nice painting of cavalry on them. The front of the cards has a scene or picture of the personality mentioned. These are well done black and white drawings. The rest of the card has the information used in playing them. The type size is large enough to not need to read them with a squint. Even though it is a block game, it comes with a good number of counters. These come with pre-rounded corners. However, for those who care about such things, there are nibs on the side of the counters. The blocks are all the same with no 'flashing' on any of them like you used to find on some game blocks. The game I received had already been used, so I do not know how easy the blocks are to sticker or to release the counters from their sprue. I will say that whoever stickered the blocks was an artist and I have some games that I need their help with.

Strategic map

 The game components definitely pass muster. It states proudly that the game was produced in Spain. This game is an excellent example of Spanish craftmanship.

 This is one of those games where playing each side is completely different than playing the other. For most games the forces involved are pretty much complimentary on each side. This is one of the games where playing each side is a learning experience. If you have played a few games where one side looks to have all of the cards of the deck stacked on one side, then this game will be easier to learn and understand. This is for the most part a guerilla war and the Spanish have been practicing it since before Roman times. Napoleon should have read up on the Iberian history. 

 The Liberals are behind Isabella and the Carlists support, guess who, Carlos. Take the name Liberal with a grain of salt here. They are only named that compared to the Carlists and not other European Liberals. The Carlists are ensconced in a small part of northern Spain. Your job as the Carlist faction, if you choose to accept it, is to keep the Carlist movement alive. To do this you have a small territory and limited resources. Your greatest asset is the actual physical territory that you occupy. It is the perfect area for a guerilla war. The population is also firmly behind you and supplies you with much better recruits. The Liberals have more of everything compared to the Carlist meager resources. However, their forces are the ones that will have to both attack and defend themselves in a hostile environment. This is from the Playbook: "The Carlist player has the initiative for the first three years, and the ability to do double turns." Logistics play a major role when playing the Liberals. You will find out, just like the French, that a large army starves and a small army is defeated. You do start with a few fortresses in the Carlist stronghold, but the main issue is, can you keep control of them? Other European powers were also involved with the Carlist Wars. France and England sent troops to the conflict. The French Foreign Legion saw service in Spain.

 The game is not that hard to learn. This is in part to a very well-done English translation. The objectives and the rules themselves make sense. However, there are a lot of moving parts to the machine. Both sides have their advantages and disadvantages, and the cards only add to the tense play. I absolutely love wargames that try to be as historical as possible, even if that means that playability must take somewhat of a hit to achieve it. I was never able to find enough different sources to compare gameplay to the historical reality, at least in the amount that I like to look at before playing a game. To that extent I was able to, though the game seems to be a very good historical examination of the realities of the war. I believe that this is a great game for historical wargamers and especially for grognards who do not want to play the 150th take on Waterloo.

 Thank you, Bellica 3d Generation for allowing me to review this game. Thank you also for allowing me to use some pictures from your site. I must apologize once again for the amount of time it took to post this review.

Robert Peterson

An Impossible War: The First Carlist War in the North, 1834 - 1838

Bellica 3rd Generation

 Interview with Carl Paradis designer of Battle Commander and more

 I have the pleasure of interrogating, sorry, interviewing Carl Paradis about his latest efforts and wargaming and design in general.

 1.Now that we have you safely strapped into the chair, I hope the straps are not too tight yet. As you can see, we have a very well-appointed dungeon. We have thumbscrews, heated pincers, a new rack, and the equipment for strappado. It is unfortunate that the Iron Maiden and the Pear of Anguish are actually newer fakes. We try to be as historically accurate here as possible. So, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got trapped into the money pit that is wargaming. Or will we be forced to use the 'Comfy Chair' on you?

LOL! Oh, I’m not scared, at all, I think… +20 years in wargame design has me pretty much inured to most bad happenstances that could befall me; that and my +35 years in Engineering… Bring in the pain! C’est la guerre!

As for Dungeons, I started as an AD&D Dungeon Master in 1977, so I might have a trick or two, or more, that I can teach you amateurs!

2.There now, just breathe and we will continue. Your designs seem to cover a large swath of history. Is there any era of history that you enjoy the most?

Sure, but be careful what you ask for, gentle sir: my “Dragon Breath” spell always needs to be practiced now and then; DM professionalism and all that.

BUT, excellent question: I definitely enjoy WW2 a lot, as it’s part of my family’s history. Still, my favorite period is Napoleonic, bar none. I also like Naval and Air Warfare games; albeit for the latter that are not that many designs published, but this is rapidly changing. In fact, most of the other periods also interest me in a way or other, like for my recent American Civil War interest. They are all so fascinating! The only exception would probably be modern-era conflicts: hits too close to home, I guess.

3.Here you go, just take a sip of water before we turn the rack one more tiny little crank. Please tell us more about your new game Battle Commander.

Thanks for the water, it’s a little bit stale, but hey, way better than some vintages I tasted. Care to add a bit of lemon to it, please? Or Vampire blood? Always good for complexion. As for your rack: surprisingly comfortable I say, was more than reading some badly informed gamers’ reviews about my designs for sure!

Battle Commander? So much to tell! And you have already said lots already. Let’s just say that I started the project by accident, at the demand of a publisher, and it was supposed to je just a tiny mini-game with just one battle (Marengo) but Napoleonic's being my favorite topic it quickly ballooned out of proportion and became a series, and I have to find a new editor: Sounds of Drums happily obliged. So, this will be, hopefully, a huge series of black-powder era battle games, each featuring a dozen battles or so. Painted-on wood blocks, event cards, no dice, mounted boards, 3D player mats, all super deluxe, the works! It’s all in chronological order for the Napoleonic series. Check it all on BoardGameGeek, where I’m very active, and on Sound of Drums’ website. 

4.Can we force you, pardon the expression, to discuss any additional games in the Battle Commander line? 

I’m now doing the Napoleonic wars in chronological order. Napoleon’s 1st and 2nd Italian campaign battles were covered in Vol I, with an expansion pack added, and a second expansion coming later this year. Volume II is almost ready, and will feature Battles of the Second and Third coalitions; so the Pyramids, Austerlitz, Novi, etc… Then the Fourth coalition1806-1807 battles for Vol III, like Iena Auerstadt, Eylau, Friedland. Then in Vol IV we’ll travel to the Spanish Peninsula, where the Emperor’s English foes will make a splash appearance. 

Ah yes: I’ll soon start some Volumes for the American Civil War, with lots of expansions. The first will cover an eclectic mix of fights, like First Bull Run, Pea Ridge, Antietam, South Mountain, and many others. The rules will be simpler than the Napoleonic series, as I need less “special Stuff” to make it all work correctly. If customers answer the call, we can soldier on to other epochs, like the 30 years wars, American Independence etc. We’ll see soon enough!

5. Thank you so much and I hope that this experience was as engaging for you as it was for me. Do you have anything else to add?

Well, first a big thanks for looking at my little games! I’m a player first, game designer second, and I make designs I want to play. If other gamers like what I do, so much the better (plus it gets me published!). I push for playability, historical pageantry and realism, always with the best possible game components.

If I may, some parting words of advice:

“To be a good soldier* you need: heart of a lion, the feet of an hare, and the appetite of an ant.” Napoléon 

* or a good game designer. LOL!

Vive l’Empereur!

Carl Paradis

Québec Canada

 Thank you, Sir! For the informative answers!

Battle Commander

While you are there, please take a look at the other great games Sound of Drums Games has to offer.

Sound of Drums

German Aircraft Weaponry

Machine Guns, Cannon and Aerial Artillery in Luftwaffe Service 1939 - 1945

by

Tim Heath

 

 Just like many books that I have been receiving from Casemate Publishers to review, this book can be accused of lying in its title. In actuality the first three chapters are about aerial weaponry in the First World War and the intervening years. This is in fact a very good thing and gives the reader a background in German aerial weaponry that can then be followed through the rest of the book. In fact, the book gives the whole story behind even the weaponry that was designed outside of Germany before and during the Second World War. 

 The reader is introduced to machine guns first and then is shown all of the experimental weapons of this type. There are even comparisons between the Allied weapons and the German ones. Next, we are shown the larger caliber auto-cannon weapons. The author takes us through the first tentative steps to get these larger caliber weapons in airplanes. Then we are shown the ultimate types of these weapons used in the war. Of course, we are also shown the various dead ends that designers took on the way. The book also has information on both the Italian and Japanese use of this type of weaponry. The next stop on our journey is to the land of actual cannon sizes that would be used on the ground battlefields by soldiers. These would be calibers of 50 millimeters and more, with warheads that had so much recoil that drastic measures had to be taken to deal with it and the actual weapons weight. 

 On the way through we are shown Schräge Musik (Jazz Music), and its application in various night fighters (these would be cannon placed at an angle firing diagonally upward toward the bottom of a bomber). We also see the rebirth of the Ju-87 in its G configuration as a tank killer.

 The book also has a good number of photos of the actual weaponry and the effects it had on Allied planes etc. However, we are presented with six photos that, in my opinion, may not have been needed to be reproduced in its pages. These photos are essentially autopsy photos of the effects of the weaponry on human bodies. Yes, many books feature pictures of dead soldiers and some of them quite shocking. I do not remember ever seeing photos like these in a military history book. Maybe it is a good thing that we see the actual results of warfare. That is a question above my pay grade.

 Thank you, Casemate Publishers for allowing me to review another fine book from your stable, and also thank you to Pen & Sword for publishing the book.

  

Robert Peterson

Book: German Aircraft Weaponry

Author: Tim Heath

Publisher: Pen & Sword

Distributor: Casemate Publishers

 The Great Anglo-Boer War

by

Cadet Games

 This is from Cadet Games KickStarter page about this new game that will be starting its campaign soon. Here is what they have to say:

"Thank You to all of our Cadet Games Backers for making our last five projects successful!  "They Were Soldiers & Dak To / Hill 875", "Nguyen Hue '72 - The 1972 Easter Offensive in Vietnam", "Linebacker II", "A&A Arnhem '44" and "A&A Blitzkrieg '40" are all challenging players on tabletops from Kansas to Singapore, Sweden to New Zealand - and everywhere in between!  None of this is ever possible without YOU...so, Thank You All Again!

Our latest project is the culmination of a fascination that began in the old library stacks at New Mexico Military Institute back in 1984.  Long before West Point or Army Special Ops, our designer, as a young cadet, ran across a large book with the famous picture of the hundreds of British dead choking their shallow trench on Spion Kop in Natal from Jan 1900.  It looked like something from WWI, but it wasn't - this was 1900?

What war was this?  Just what enemy had humbled the great British Empire in such stunning fashion - and where in the world was Natal?  That book, and dozens more over 40+ years now, have provided the groundwork for a Grand-Strategy Tabletop hex-and-counter contest that we at Cadet believe will be THE definitive game of The Great Anglo-Boer War.  And what a war it was!  We at Cadet believe the Boer War was the most significant of all the Victorian campaigns and certainly the most important conflict to inform tactical, operational and strategic lessons in the profession of arms before WWI.  

There are only a handful of wargames on the topic - Incredible, really.  Many are only "magazine-type" games from long ago. The best yet made (in our opinion) isn't even available as its own game - but only included (almost as a secret) in the same box - as the "flip side" of "The Defense of Rorke's Drift" from the old 3W (you can still get a copy from Decision Games).  It was this significantly under-developed and errata-riddled 3W effort from back in 1991 that we took much of our design framework from.  We studied the two different Miranda designs, the Strategmata games, the ATO game, all the latest from Geoff Noble and Godfrey Bailey (Legion), and even a few files from the old "age of rifles" computer simulation from SSI (super old).  We did a serious and detailed study of all "professional production-level" Boer War titles produced to date, and what we created is a Boer War grand-strategic-level simulation that honors the significance of the contest to both 19th and 20th century military history - and to the study of the art of war.  Seriously, this is a really impressive game.  We are very proud to bring this design to the community.

If you know the Great Boer War and have been wanting to wargame it- then this is the one you have been hoping someone would make.  If you are curious about the war, you will likely get the "bite" and will then become someone who learns about the war because of this simulation.  It is a fascinating bit of history - both for the profession of arms and for the world.  The Boer War started as the first of the 20th century conventional wars (BOTH SIDES used bolt-action magazine rifles, Maxim machine guns, modern breech-loading artillery, trenches, barbed wire, smokeless powder, automatic rapid-fire cannons, telephone/telegraph communications, and more) - but after the first year it morphed into the first modern guerrilla conflict, foreshadowing many more to come in the 20th century (and also many parallels to both the American Revolution and the Vietnam War).  

I will add here that we at Cadet know this topic is not likely the most anticipated or "profitable" idea for our next design.  But we just love military history.  And wargames.  And it's about time someone made this.  We sincerely hope you will support this one.

About the game - As already mentioned, we took much inspiration from the old 3W game from 1991, and the player familiar with that design will see many of those same key design choices in our game (odds are pretty good though, that most don't know that game even exists).

Some players disliked the 3W game’s off-map Arrow/Wheel unit strength accounting system by leader – but we loved it.  Leaders on both sides were consistently in command of columns of widely varying strength from month to month during both the conventional and guerrilla phases of the war, and the system Erich Faust and Lew Fisher came up with to manage this dynamic was brilliant.  Also, any realistic simulation of the war couldn’t use a traditional “step loss” dynamic to accurately portray the relatively small number of losses for both sides in a typical engagement, but here again – the off-map "number wheels" worked perfectly. The leader-specific initiative rating system, though hardly revolutionary in wargame design, was also particularly useful to model the Boer War – ultimately representing far more than simply a leader’s tendency to move or attack, but also his relative command influence for scarcity of resources, typical Victorian Officer rivalries, orders and communications variables, bad intelligence and other typical "frictions" in the conduct of war.  Again, those two designers had some very good ideas for this particular conflict, and we took notice.

For our design, we wanted a more granular scale of both movement and combat than any other strategic-level Boer War game yet published.  Rayne Kruger, in chapter 23 of his “Good-Bye Dolly Gray” pointed out that, perhaps more than any other Boer advantage, the Empire was fighting “a war against space.”  We ended up having two 22x34 map sections at 9 miles/hex to pull this off.  A large game on the table – but very typically “Cadet.”  As it goes here, bigger is better.  More hexes = more realism.

Scenarios - the game is designed with 3 scenarios: The Conventional War (from starting positions after Oct 1899 through Dec 1900) - 14 Turns; The Guerrilla War (from October 1900 through June 1902 - or perhaps ending earlier, depending on events); and the Grand Campaign (the whole war - from starting positions after Oct 1899 through June 1902 or earlier - depending on events).  The Conventional War will be super-interesting for those who are keen on the main pitched battles of the war (Colenso, Spion Kop, Magersfontein, Stormberg, Paardeberg, Tugela Heights, etc.) while the Guerrilla War scenario will appeal to those who know that part of the conflict (Nooitgedacht, Bakenlaagte, Elands River Poort, the multiple invasions of the Cape, the Magaliesberg escapes, Tweebosch, Botha's Natal invasion, etc.). 

The full campaign is THE ULTIMATE BOER WAR EXPERIENCE - from the first desperate siege defenses of 1899 to the treaty of Vereeniging (or maybe not?) - and everything tactical and otherwise in between.  Battles, blockhouses, farm-burnings, evasions, escapes, raids, concentration camps, sieges, drives, armoured trains, 1-pdr automatic "pom-poms", surrenders, entrenchments, typhoid, barbed-wire, native spies, night marches, supply wagons and more.  If it was part of the real Boer war - it is in the game.  Again, if you know about the war - this is the one you've been hoping someone would make, and if you are learning about it - this IS THE GAME for that.

 Please take a look at all the other games they have to offer below.

The Great Anglo-Boer War KS Page

Cadet Games