Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group

Preview – Bonnie Dundee – A Two Part Megagame

In Scotland the people that run megagames are very fond of lunch breaks, and I thought that I could lean into this and do a two part megagame that reprises two games I’ve previously run at CLWG with a bit of simplification to help them scale up. Bonnie Dundee was run as the highland campaigns […]

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Ten things I have learnt developing a megagame

I’ve been megagaming now for nearly nine years and a wargamer in some form or another for over 25, since I participated in a Warhammer club at school, where I played Space Marines. I have recently started to develop a megagame of my own that I plan to run next year (2027) and it has […]

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Two Brush Strokes [Onside]

Two Brush Strokes ( ) Two Brush Strokes was my Megagame of the Nanking decade in China. I started the game at the end of 1928 and ran 1 hour turns representing a year of real time, so we got to 1934 in the game. The title derives from a speech by J F Kennedy: […]

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Two Brush Strokes – Japanese Team development Session

Offside report by Jim Meeting 5 October 2024 Dave brought a prototype section of his upcoming ‘Two Brush Strokes’ china-themed megagame that related to the two player Japanese team. This issue for him was (If I understood it correctly) that Japanese policy in China in the late 1920 was to some degree ambivalent. Whilst there […]

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Lit By Another Sun Playtest/Design

Lit By Another Sun is the working title for a megagame that I intend to run in Scotland in 2025. It’s based on an early draft of a novel (titled Duke of Piraxis) and then worked up a bit with some mechanics based on ordinary playing cards. I’ve had one playtest with some of the […]

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Deeply Unhistorical – but maybe in a good way

A Very Personal View of Bernie Ganley’s The World Will Hold its Breath, Barbarossa Megagame on 3rd August 2024 by Andy Grainger Back in February Bernie Ganley asked me if I might help out as a Control Umpire at his The World Will Hold its Breath (WWHIB) Megagame slated for 3rd August at Anerley. Although […]

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The Bastard Comes Design session – the race for the Crown

I ran this at the October Conference, the latest in a very long line of design sessions for my much-delayed megagame of the events following the battle of Hastings in 1066. As many of you will have now done once or more, I cast the players as the heads of the Anglo-Saxon noble families meeting […]

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Report from V E Wellington Koo of the Chinese delegation

Washington Conference, 6th November 2021 – The Centenary Edition Offside report by Andy Grainger A major topic of the 1921 / 2021 Washington Conference was China. In 1911 the Imperial Chinese Government had been overthrown and replaced by a Parliamentary regime but the country is still very unstable. It is in everyone’s interest to restore […]

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Washington Conference Centennial Megagame [Onside]

This is an onside report on the Washington Conference Centennial megagame by Dave Boundy. Washington Conference Centennial Megagame I always find reports on my own game are difficult. The trouble is that I am so intent, during the day, on answering questions, sorting out problems, watching the clock for turn announcements, checking that people are […]

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Game Critique: Urban Nightmare: State of Chaos

by Deborah Southwell As part of a course on game design, I was asked to critique a game. I thought it may be of interest to other Military Muddlers. Urban Nightmare: State of Chaos (Game designer: Jim Wallman) is a megagame exploring how government and city authorities in the USA might respond to an emerging […]

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