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Hi everyone!
As Rachel and I follow what so many of you are playing and saying about our games on Consimworld, BGG, and various social media outlets, it's great to see that so many of you are finding so much enjoyment from our recently-released games. We have more good ones coming in the 4th quarter, so hopefully we're going to provide you with even more gaming fun before the year is out.
Usually, when I send out this monthly update, I have my finger on the pulse of most of the cool stuff happening at GMT, and am in a good position to share some of that info with all of you. This month, though, I find myself in the position of being a little behind the curve on GMT operations. The reason is I just got home from a couple weeks off (and off the grid) to go away and work on my health for a bit, eating better, exercising a lot, and hiking in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. It was a much-needed break, and I came home feeling great! But I'm still catching up on what's been going on at GMT, so this month's update will be a little lighter on the "What's Happening Inside GMT" front. This week's goal is to get you this update. Then next week I'll get back up to spend on where we are on the new systems integration front, then hopefully the following week I'll get some time to work on Mr. President a bit before I demo it at the October Weekend at the Warehouse.
I know from listening to your feedback that there are some of you who don't care that much about all the InsideGMT stuff herein, though, and mostly read these updates just to see what's new on the P500 list. Well, you guys will be happy to know that we do have FOUR new P500 game additions to announce this time! It's a "wargamers, rejoice!" month this time, as we have a bunch of tactical and operational wargame coolness that is ready to add to the line. Here's a brief look (click the links to get to the P500 pages for more details and to order):
4CMBG: MBT Expansion #3: Yes, designer Jim Day has added Canadians to the MBT family of expansions! I'm pretty sure that this means two things to our beloved gaming brothers to the North: that a) they can now die happy, and b) the MBT series is now perfect and complete in every way, lacking nothing! :-)
A Time for Trumpets: The Battle of the Bulge, December 1944:
This is the long-awaited battalion-level monster game on the Battle of the Bulge, designed by Bruno Sinigaglio and tested by a crackerjack team of veteran wargamers. Over the past couple of years, Mark Simonitch has been giving me enthusiastic updates on this one's progress, and now it's ready for P500! As you might imagine, anything that excites Mark gets my attention. I've seen this being tested at Consimworld Expo, but haven't yet had the pleasure of playing it myself. But I can't wait. To borrow a phrase from Nicky Palmer, with five maps and twelve countersheets, this one looks "large and luscious!"
Death Valley: Battles for the Shenandoah: Over the years, I must have been asked a thousand times at conventions and in seminars "Are you guys ever going to do a Great Battles of the American Civil War game on 'Stonewall in the Valley'?" Well, my friends, the time has come! Using series designer Richard Berg's award-winning GBACW system, Designer Greg Laubach brings us not one, not two, but SIX battles (with numerous scenarios) from the Shenandoah Campaigns in both 1862 and 1864. We've been waiting a long time for this one!
Saint-Omer to Saint Crispin: Tactical Battles of the Hundred Years War: Designer Mike Nagel takes us back to 15th century to explore 18(!!!!) battles of the Hundred Years War! Using a refined version of his
Sun of York design (and including a mounted mapboard), Mike immerses us in the leaders, weapons, and tactics of the period, while we
experience the struggles at
Creçy, Poitiers, Agincourt, and more in a card-based, low-complexity, quick-playing format.
OK, that's the big P500 news. Now let's get to the rest of this month's update.
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Four Combat Commander Reprints
I've added four
Combat Commander series games and Battle Packs to the P500 Reprint List this month. All of these are straight reprints of the previous versions, with any errata corrected. The items are:
Including these four new additions, we now have SIX
Combat Commander items on the P500 Reprint list, and we'd like to start planning for a mid-2018 mass reprint of most or all of them. But we need larger order numbers to make that happen. So please, if you'd like to own any of these games or modules from one of our most popular series of games, place a P500 order soon so we can get these back in stock. Thanks!
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Update on New Rules and Player Aid Card for The US Civil War
I just checked with Tony, and these are expected in the warehouse in about two-three weeks. So we plan to ship them out in our 2nd batch of October shipments, roughly October 25th.
You can still order at the P500 price if you'd like a set (we've printing a couple hundred extra). Here's the link.
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Designer-Created YouTube Tutorials
There are a couple of terrific designer-created YouTube tutorials that have come to my attention this month. I thought you guys might want to check them out:
For any of you designers who create similar "how to" videos for your games, please send me a link and I'll make sure I get the info out to all our customers in the monthly update.
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The Player's Aid Interview with Plains Indian Wars Designer John Poniske
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Blank Countersheets Available Now
For you guys who like to design your own games or extra counters, we now have several sizes of white blank countersheets available on the Parts and Accessories Page of our website. They're $3 per sheet, plus shipping. Links are below:
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This Month in InsideGMT!
Here are links to this month's new InsideGMT articles:
And, in case you missed them, here are links to our previous month's InsideGMT articles:
As always, I invite you guys to head over to
www.insidegmt.com, check out the articles, leave us your comments, and tell us what else you'd like to see us do to make
InsideGMT even better!
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San Diego Historical Games Convention - November 10-12, 2017
Harold Buchanan is hosting the 3rd Annual San Diego Historical Games Convention this coming November 10-12.
The venue is again the 5,200 square foot Shriner's Hall in sunny San Diego, CA.
The Theme for this year's Con will be
The Great War.
As usual, there'll be many scheduled events and plenty of room and time for open gaming.
As if three days of gaming in a terrific venue isn't cool enough, this year's special guest will be Volko Ruhnke. So come meet Volko and join us for a ton of gaming fun in San Diego - where it's 70 degrees in November! Registration is limited to 150 gamers, so reserve your spot soon. For more information and to register for the event, please visit the
convention website
.
For those of you looking to participate in specific games or pre-release demos, please check the convention schedule. Of particular GMT relevance are:
I encourage you guys to come out to San Diego in November and play some games with us!
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GMT Weekend at the Warehouse - October 5-8, 2017
Come join us at the Fall, 2017 GMT Weekend at the Warehouse!
For those new to the event, this is mostly an open gaming event, although we do hav
e tournaments from time to time. We expect about 100 gamers to attend, and space is limited, so please get your reservation in to the office ladies (call, chat, or email) as soon as possible.
There are several hotels within a few miles of our offices. The closest one, The Sequoia Inn
, blocks rooms for our attendees at special rates. The hotel's reservation # is 559-582-0339. Tell them you want the "GMT Group Block"
rate. They have already blocked rooms for us for Oct
ober, so feel free to go ahead and make reservations whenever you are ready.
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Keep up with GMT O
nline
Virtually every day, we announce new information or show off upcoming products or give you a peek under the hood of our new designs in our various online sites and forums. For you guys looking to keep up with us online, here's where you can find us. Drop in and start a conversation!
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That's it for the news bytes from me for this time.
Here's what you'll find in the rest of today's update:
- Charge and Shipping Update
- Production Outlook
- P500s
- Project Updates and Sample Art
- P500 Reprint Update
- Website File Additions
Thanks, as always, for your support of GMT Games!
Enjoy the games!
Gene
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Charging and Shipping Schedule
Shipping
We are currently shipping the following items:
I just spoke with Elizabeth at the warehouse this morning, and she expects us to be finished shipping all of these items to P500 orderers by the middle of next week (roughly Sept. 27).
Our next P500 shipment will a few days after our Fall Weekend at the Warehouse (roughly October 11-12), for the following items:
Then around October 25 or so, we'll ship these two items:
Charging
We will begin charging next week (September 25-29) for the first batch of October P500 shipments:
American Revolution Tri-Pack (7 lbs)
Then about mid-October, we'll charge for:
For you guys calculating shipping charges for these games, I've included the weights we're using for shipping in parenthesis after each game title.
To avoid any delays in your game shipment, please make sure you've updated your charge cards on our website before we charge. If you use the "Pay by Check" P500 option, please send your checks in by the above dates. Thanks!
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Tentative Production Schedule
Here's our most current Tentative Production Schedule from Tony and Mark.
Games with a ** following their entry are currently at the printer (we're a little more certain about scheduling on these).
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Approx. October 12, 2017
Approx. October 25, 2017
November, 2017
1st Quarter, 2018
#= Although at least one of these is going to be "ready" sooner, John has decided to achieve some operational and cost synergies by printing all three games together in 2018.
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P500s
We have four new P500 additions this time. It's a tactical and operational bonanza this time - a nice mix of types and treatments from four talented designers. We have a new modern tactical expansion module for
MBT, a monster operational-level game on the Battle of the Bulge, six battles
ala "Stonewall in the Valley" for the
GBACW series, and a tactical battle game featuring 18 battles from the Hundred Years War!
For more info about, or to order each title, just click the banners or links below to go to the P500 page for each game.
4CMBG: MBT Expansion #3
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Project Updates and Sample Art
Sneak Peeks:
Here's a peek at eight of the final cards for Hitler's Reich, courtesy of Charlie Kibler:
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Design Updates:
Hey Gene! I'm glad you were able to relax and get re-energized! It was well-deserved.
I just got this e-mail from one of my
At Any Cost playtesters (Matt Ward) and I think it would make a great update piece:
"I just wanted to send a quick note about At Any Cost. I believe that Daniel Rouleau mentioned that we were testing the campaign game. This isn't a direct response to that, as I believe that Daniel has provided our combined input. This is a note of thanks as I have found the system to be compelling. Daniel and I have done quite a number of development efforts over the past several years and, at times, they can be drudgery, especially if the systems are derivative. AAC feels fresh and provides a compelling narrative. I looked forward to each of our sessions, not only to help tighten up the campaign game but also because I was having fun with the game. Game play is absorbing as each chit pull presents the players with complex choices. Playtesting and development can be some of the least exciting parts of our hobby. AAC bucked that trend.
Since I play in several groups with games that usually span 2-5 weeks to complete I have become very aware of those games that have "it". I find myself rethinking moves that I have made and planning moves that I will make for the games that are compelling. AAC certainly did that! Heck I was having so much fun playing I had to pull myself out of "play" mode to think about what development comments I had!
Thank you for such a gem!"
Matt Ward
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The first copy (pictured above) has arrived on this side of the Pacific! Others will get to GMT early in October. Just in time for the true 500th Anniversary of Reformation Day. - Ed
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A few tweaks left to the war outputs, and the continuous event balancing, and more playtesting... that's the remaining design work!
After that, there'll be some historical review and map checking, and lots of rules editing and example writing (I'm aiming to have examples of most rules in action as well as an extended example of play; this may cause the rulebook to look a little scarier, but I think it's worth it for clarity!). Imperial Struggle will be making an appearance at GMT's Weekend at the Warehouse in October, and I look forward to the attendees' reactions and comments! - Ananda
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I'm rewriting the air rules right now; it just wasn't as fun or realistic as it should be with the original TBFN system in the Sicily context. I'm also making the map more user-friendly as far as setup goes, as there are a lot of German and Italian units to place at start.
Below is a .jpg of the updated map.
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Thanks to a collaboration with Frederic Aubert, I have been able to solve the problem of how to portray the French land forces, and in particular the 1,600 French Marines, that were part of Comte d'Estaing's forces at Newport. As a reminder, volume 9 in my BoAR Series, The Battle of Rhode Island, will include this "what-if" scenario in which we model what might have happened if the Franco-American plan to attack Newport had not been interrupted by the arrival of a British fleet and the Great Storm that followed. Now that I have the French information, I can complete the counter manifest. - Mark
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So, this week I delivered Wing Leader: Blitz to GMT. It's now in the hands of the production gods as to what slots it gets for printing. However, we probably won't be seeing it until the new year, so be patient.
This week I also assembled nine candidate scenarios for the second (late war) expansion. One of them even has Mosquitos! This scenario recreates the botched attack on Gossen by the Banff and Dallachy strike wings. We'll see how it comes out as a scenario when we come to test it.
At this stage we are just evaluating content rather than beginning test. It's a time to create scenarios and evaluate them for interest, variety and what gaps we might have in inventory. For example I'm still searching for a good scenario to feature the Ki-44 and nothing has come up yet that is suitable for publishing in the expansion. To give you an idea of how tricksy things can get, I could potentially feature Ki-44s in a new scenario on the Palembang raids, but that doesn't work for the expansion, as it requires aircraft (TBF Avengers) from Wing Leader: Victories, and I'm trying to restrict the expansion so that it works for players who only own Supremacy.
I keep coming back to this theme, again and again, that ADC content depends on the scenarios we build, rather than the other way around. This last week has really illustrated the truth of that.
Take the difficulties I'm having with two bomber types. It's been hard to make scenarios for Tu-2s. When I came to look at the big iconic raids they were involved in, such as Konigsberg and Berlin, it became plain that these took place in conditions of air supremacy and the bombers were not in any real danger from interceptors. As Gordon Christie put it to me this week, Soviet long-range aviation appears only to have been let out of the glass case when conditions were favourable. So my hopes of matching up Tu-2s against late-war Luftwaffe kit, such as Fw 190D-9s, were dashed. I looked at other possible theatres and campaigns. I even dug into the invasion of Manchuria, where Tu-2s operated, only do discover that JAAF ops were feeble and nothing seems to have occurred. The loss totals for Tu-2s in 1945 are telling: the VVS only lost two of them. However, I managed to scrape together enough information on Tu-2 raids during Operation Bagration to be able to fabricate a scenario, and this is the candidate we now have. Without that, we really have no justification to support the ADC for the expansion.
I'm now wrestling with whether I can get Lancasters into the expansion. As you know, Lancs were released for day raiding in the final months of the war, when they were operating in conditions of near-supremacy. That makes building scenarios for them difficult, because of the lack of encounters with interceptors. There are a small number of engagements with Me 262s, but this highlights a different problem. That problem is that Me 262 scenarios are hard to make work as scenarios. We discovered during the making of Supremacy that jet scenarios tend to be over in two game turns, as the 262s zip in, do a pass on the bombers, and then run away. If escorts get anywhere near it becomes a dice-off as to whether the jets can avoid dogfights. Basically, our game model is TOO historical. It turned out that the only way we could make the jet scenarios interesting was to build engagements around mixed engagements of jet and piston-engined aircraft. And my problem with the Lancasters is that by the very late stages of the war, there were very few piston-engined ops against Western Allied Strategic bombing. All the fuel was going to the Eastern Front and the ultimate battles with the Soviets. So I'm kinda scuppered when it comes to Lancaster scenarios. I can build a scenario but I'm finding it hard to make a GOOD one (note the emphasis). And so it's possible that we may have to drop these from the ADC list.
These kind of considerations are why I put out a call for help with scenarios. If we can't make a scenario featuring your favourite 'plane, it likely won't be going in the second expansion. - Lee
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P500 Reprint News and Tracking
Here's the current status of all the games on our P500 reprint list - with current order totals and a +/- order growth since last month. Note that we've added four Combat Commander items this month.
Please help us determine what to print by pre-ordering any of these that interest you. Thanks for your help!
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New Game Support Files, Vassal Modules, New Reviews, Interviews, and Sneak Peeks
Here are new support files we've added to our website since our last update. Enjoy!
Game Support:
Reviews:
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Sincerely,
Your Friends at GMT Games
www.gmtgames.com
Toll Free Order and Support Line: 800-523-6111
E-mail: gmtoffice@gmtgames.com |
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