There’s no excuse to let a good wargame linger in
out-of-print limbo.
OK, there are plenty such excuses—rights disputes, cash
flow concerns, printing slots unavailability, actual lack of demand “out
there”—but eventually, good designs just won’t stay down. They can’t help but
show up for another round in the ring. Especially wargames, I suppose.
In
2019, GMT Games decided to reprint 10 of its more popular games (plus the Turn Zero mini-expansion to their
evergreen title, Twilight Struggle)
and none of them are light weights. The most accessible of the bunch is the
solitaire Navajo Wars, which is a
testament to the quality of the designs GMT decides to put out: even if they’re
monster games with 50-page rulebooks (I’m decidedly looking at you, Empire of the Sun), people are still
lining up for seconds.
Shall
we?
Originally published in 2013, Joel Toppen’s first
credit as a full-fledged designer took the solitaire world by storm. The theme
was original, the mechanics—including a really fun cardboard AI—were fresh and
new, and the game was a joyful challenge to play from start to finish. Toppen
would eventually give us a second opus for his First Nations series in Comancheria,
another solo conflict that has thus far devoured many of my evenings.
Navajo Wars is
the heartwarming story of simple folks who welcome with open arms group after
group of visitors from afar: first the Spanish, then the Mexicans, and finally
the Americans. Each foreign nation lovingly leaves its mark on the native
territory, until the Navajo opt for total annihilation amidst colored balloons
and three-tiered cakes.
This 2nd printing of Navajo Wars is identical to its predecessor, except it incorporates
all known errata. Oh, and the dice are prettier.
(You can read my actual review of the game here.)
Tied with our previous entry for the bragging rights
of “youngest reprint” on the list, The
Dark Valley first saw the light of day in 2013. Ted Raicer had stuffed
magazines with his games for years on end, until the box bug bit him—and he
hasn’t stopped since. We’ve since been treated to an onslaught of outstanding
designs, among those Clash of Giants (GMT,
2001), WWII: Barbarossa to Berlin
(GMT, 2002), Grand Illusion (GMT,
2004), The Great War in Europe, Deluxe
Edition (GMT, 2007), Case Yellow,
1940 (GMT, 2011), and The Dark Sands
(GMT, 2018). (GMT has one more Dark
game in the wings, The Dark Summer,
slated for later this year.)
So what’s The
Dark Valley about? Well, some decades ago, thirsty Germans decided to march
all the way to the Volga, found the water there too wet, and backed out so fast
they forgot to take their beloved 6th Army with them.
The deluxe edition feature thicker counters, more
player aids (with rules reference for faster carnage), and a mounted board with
new map art.
Of course, all known errata are incorporated into the
rulebook and new counters.
But wait, there’s more! The reverse side of the board
features the map to Raicer’s own Barbarossa
to Berlin, and the game comes with a full set of thick, luxurious counters
for Barbarossa to Berlin!
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| Double-sided map goodness |
It is currently impossible to buy the mounted map on
its own from GMT, but rest assured it’ll show up in the actual Barbarossa to Berlin reprint when it
reaches a sufficient number of “votes” on the P500 system.
Originally published
by GMT in 2012, this was the first expansion for Jim Krohn’s well loved 4X game.
Before that? Krohn had launched the successful Band of Brothers series (2011) for Worthington Publishing. Since
then? The man gave us the exciting space dogfight Talon (GMT, 2016) plus more expansions for all of his game systems.
To the quintessential
4X of the original game (eXplore, eXclaim, eXplode, and eX-wife), Close Encounters adds a bunch of other,
modular Xs that allow players to pimp their experience just the way they like
it.
The 2nd
printing is a straight reprint of the original version, albeit without the
“improved” Space Empires counter
sheets slipped in the 1st printing: those sheets can be found in the
reprint of Space Empires itself.
Alas, still no
mounted map—probably because Close
Encounters doesn’t come with a map in the first place.
Then jumps in a 10-year old, the precursor to what
would eventually become the celebrated COIN series of counter-insurgency games,
starting with Andean Abyss (GMT,
2012) and from there taking off towards as-of-yet unimagined horizons.
(Ruhnke’s new design, Nevsky—also published by GMT—is being sprinkled all over the world
as we speak. Time to go and learn a new system.)
But let’s not forget that Volko Ruhnke first designed
the award-winning Wilderness War
(published by GMT in 2001), before turning in his homework about angry people
with beards, threatening other angry people (sometimes with beards, but mostly
unkempt sideburns) using WMDs—Warnings of Mild Disappointment—regarding the
fact that some countries were not behaving the way they would like.
The fourth printing of Labyrinth is identical to the third printing; naturally, all known
errata are included here. Because every time you make a typo, the errorists
win.
My favorite game of all time was brought into this
world back in 2006, and was the brainchild of my friend Chad Jensen (who,
sadly, left us in 2019). Chad would go on to design a steady stream of games,
and not just in the wargaming arena: Combat
Commander: Mediterranean (GMT, 2007), Combat
Commander: Pacific (GMT, 2008), Dominant
Species (GMT, 2010), Fighting
Formations (GMT, 2011), Welcome to
Centerville (GMT, 2017), and quite a few more. Later this year, we should
receive a final gift from Chad, in the form of Dominant Species: Marine. I can’t wait to say hello again.
Sometime in the ‘40s, an angry mob decided they wanted
more space to hold tailgate parties and whatnot. The neighbors complained about
the noise, to no avail. They ended up calling the police, who showed up years
later (quite the traffic jams in those days) and gently set the whole thing
straight, accidentally nuking a country twice in the process.
This fourth printing of Combat Commander: Europe is identical to the previous one. Which is
to say, awesome.
Empire of the
Sun first appeared in 2005 when Mark Herman, feeling like
making his life more complicated, took his card-driven engine and applied it to
a proper hex-and-counter game (as opposed to the point-to-point movement of all
previous CDGs). And the rest is cardboard history.
Back in the mid ‘40s, getting a pizza delivered
somewhere in the Pacific was no easy feat, what with a majority of carriers
otherwise occupied with aircraft of all sorts. Most infuriating of all were the
Japanese Zeroes—fast planes with a huge pepperoni logo stamped on their
fuselages—buzzing around, reminding Americans that they weren’t getting any.
Strong language was used, shots were eventually fired, and now we need a
52-page rulebook to untangle that sorry mess.
This 2nd printing of the 2nd
edition (still with me?) shows up with a double-deep box containing everything
the 1st printing of the 2nd edition did, plus a few
minute adjustments to the rules, scenarios and charts. Most notably, it ships
with Erasmus v2, an improved solo bot that learned a few tricks from its Pericles older brother.
Want some icing on that cake? Have some of the South
Pacific scenario, first published in C3i Magazine.
Mark Simonitch had this one first published back in
2003, the second of his (now) extensive series of Place ‘XX games, all published by GMT and which include Ukraine ’43 (2000), Normandy ’44 (2010), France
’40 (2013), Holland ’44 (2017), Stalingrad ’42 (2019). Amongst his
numerous other designs stands one exceptional title and a favorite of mine, Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage (Avalon Hill,
1996). It was the very first wargame I ever bought, based solely on the cover
and the description on the back—could I
pick ‘em or what? I had the great pleasure of meeting the man (as charming as
you would expect) a couple of years back, and I had him sign the board of my
first edition Hannibal. Yes, I still
play it. I just experience an extra jolt of joy when I look at the board.
It all started innocently enough as an Easter egg hunt
through the woods of Belgium. There were suddenly a lot more hunters than
anyone had anticipated. Before long, it became obvious that the eggs would run
out before the bullets did, and nobody was one bit happy about it. When Patton
broke through with a relief force, he mentioned something about omelet and
broken eggs.
The box contains a multitude of small changes
throughout the game—you can actually download the new rulebook from GMT’s
website and see a complete list of those changes.
Mounted maps do exist, but they have to be bought
separately, and sadly won’t fit with the rest of the material in the
regular-depth box.
(Many German troops had to provide their own winter
clothing. Shut up.)
First released in 1999—that’s 20 years ago, kids—Cataphract is one of many collaborations between Mark Herman
(vaguely alluded to elsewhere in this review) and the late Richard Berg
(designer of the mythical The Campaign
for North Africa (SPI, 1979) and Blackbeard
(Avalon Hill, 1991 and GMT, 2008) among many, many other games).
Cataphract
stands as volume VIII in the Great Battles of History series, and
it retells the exploits involved in the re-conquest of the Western Roman Umpire
under the leadership of Justinian. Heavy cavalry roamed the field and dared
someone—anyone—to try and stop them at third base, before they made it all the
way home and swept the umpire off his feet. Literally.
The 2nd printing incorporates all known
errata, and features the Battles of the Utus River (447 CE) and the Catalaunian
Fields (451 CE) from the original Attila
Scourge of God module.
For his second appearance on this list, designer Ted
Raicer offers a true classic, the justly famous Paths of Glory—originally unleashed onto the unsuspecting public in
1999, but more recently reprinted in 2015.
So what’s the game about?
Some Ferdinand dude got shot in Sarajevo on a tranquil
day back in 1914. (The assailant later claimed that the gun had gone off by
accident, although how the man came to be half inside Ferdinand’s car and with
a gun pointed at the illustrious passenger’s neck was never explained to
anyone’s satisfaction.) Then all hell broke loose: European powers grabbed
decks of cards and scattered cardboard counters all over the place. And let me
tell you, those counters crawled through blood and guts (and the occasional
ill-maintained trench complex) to bring about victory for their respective
nations. Want to know how it ended? Just play the game.
This deluxe
edition includes 20 optional cards and optional counters from the PoG Player’s Guide (yes, yes, the one
from 2002). It also features a new mounted board printed on both sides: one
with the original, classic graphics, and the other with a brand spanking new
map!
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| Old and new |
Just make sure you guard your supply line, for the love of God.
Last but not least, we have the 2nd
printing of SPQR Deluxe Edition, once
again from the Richard Berg and Mark Herman dream team. SPQR is our oldest game on the list: it was first published back in
1992, and quickly became one of the games you simply had to play if you were a serious wargamer. (Me? I learned the
whole GBoH system with this edition of SPQR.
I’m completely hooked. Was I a real wargamer before? Jury’s still out.)
As volume II of the Great Battles of History series, SPQR (Something Popular, Quixotic and Rad)
highlights the “figures of speech” duels that used to pit dungeon dorks against
each other during the dark ages known as the ‘80s. A whole variety of weapons
were put to good use, including the hyperbole, the oxymoron, the alliteration
(feared on account of its long reach) and the much dreaded synecdoche.
This 2nd printing of the deluxe edition is
identical to the original deluxe edition—well, almost, since the new box also
holds the Barbarian module, along
with updated rules graphics.
Please note that all of the updated rulebooks
can be freely downloaded from the GMT website.
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