Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group

No married man, nor widow’s son [preview]

A game of the outbreak of the English Civil War The English Civil War has interested me since reading a Ladybird book at a very young age – this was obviously a balanced account of gallant cavaliers and villainous roundheads with puritans abolishing Christmas – talk about striking fear into young hearts! I suspect the […]

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War in Our Time [preview]

This is a session on a wild idea I had a while ago about a potential long-running World War 2-themed Alternate History game. I’ll be running a design session at the CLWG Conference. Background The idea came from an article in one of the “What if?” books in which the author argued that it would […]

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Rehearsal For Armageddon [preview]

In case anyone was actually planning to come to my session of a try-out Balkan Wars operational system, I have produced some notes which you might like to read beforehand (attached). They are also useful when shredded as Hamster-bedding… I can’t promise that I won’t change my mind and ‘tweak’ things a bit more before […]

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God’s sake Nelly, why didn’t you marry him? [preview]

We are coming over from the Netherlands for the CLWG Conference with at least 4 people and intend on filling one game design slot on the megagame “God’s sake Nelly, why didn’t you marry him?”. This was an operational (double blind) megagame on the Seven Days’ battle in the early American Civil War. As you […]

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Hill 70 – An Interactive Fiction Game

Over the summer I have been working on a computer game called Hill 70. I have done this so I learn it before I teach it. The game is an Interactive Fiction or Text Adventure Game. I have tested it several times and I think I have got rid of any bugs, hopefully. But I […]

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Remember, Kill Chain

Onside Review by Nick Luft Game Aim My aim was to design a game about the command, control and communications aspect of modern warfare, integrating near-real-time surveillance and intelligence with a live boots-on-the-ground operation. As I pondered my design I realised that this game would be well suited to being played using a computer to […]

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Cyber Ops: A Game by Lt Col T. Gwyddon ‘data’ Owen

Offside Review by Nick Luft Data visited CLWG to play test his game about Cyber Ops. Data is a Lieutenant Colonel in the USAF and is in the UK in a secondment post with the RAF. Data asked all the players to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) before taking part in this game. I […]

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1814 And All That – Pt6 – “I can explain, Sire…”

Yesterday saw what will probably be the final outing – at least in this form – of my bizarre design for the even more peculiar 1814 campaign in France. This was the ‘curtain down’ on the 20yr Napoleonic saga, fought with French forces which in total were only slightly larger than one of the corps […]

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A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese – Version 4

Yet another play test. Yet more disappointments. And yet still the lure of temptation; there is a good game here, a good idea. It’s just a poor execution. But let’s concentrate on the good points first. Event Cards The Event Cards were a new feature, and I think worked very well. I wrote them to […]

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CLWG Spring Conference 2017 – On & Offside notes

 Khalsa Ji! First Sikh War (1846) (Apologies about the late arrival of these notes – I only managed to send them in August…) Background After the fall of the Mughal empire and the later establishment of the Sikh Empire in the Punjab, the Khalsa was converted into a strong, multi-religious and multinational fighting force, the […]

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