Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group

What is a good game designer? A CLWG Hive-Mind Response

Bees in a hive

Last week, Jim Wallman posed a question to the CLWG Hive-Mind: What, in your opinion, are the three (or four) top characteristics of a good game designer?What did the Hive-Mind decide? Contributors: Dave Boundy (DB), Rex Brynen (RB), Brian Cameron (BC), Nick Luft (NL), Peter Merritt (PM), John Rutherford (JR), Deborah Southwell (DS) A GOOD […]

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Jubilation T Cawnpone’s Art of War (and Survival)

Modelling Idiocy in the ACW [preview] For many years now I have been fascinated with the difficulties of modelling in a fun, challenging manner some of the total losers of history, rather than the usual suspects on the (much shorter) genius list – you know, good old ‘Unfortunate Mack’ (1805), any Frenchman in 1940, English/Russian […]

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CLWG (2018) Autumn Conference Session Report #4

Napoleonic Divisional Management Game (by Peter Merritt) This session was originally inspired to fill the blank page of things on offer…. However, on the day I was surprised to find that (a) I had an audience, and (b) they were all from our wonderful associates based in the Netherlands! After some initial chatting, I began […]

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Conference (2018) Report #3 – TGFC – Too Good For Children?

The Art of Steal- Err, Adapting Classic Toys For Wargaming An occasional series on raiding the toy cupboard for wargming ideas (or future Christmas presents, if they’ve not got it already!) #1 – Snakes & Ladders as siege simulator Some considerable time ago now I was looking at the problem of a systemic game process […]

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Conference (2018) Onside Report #2 – Balkan Wars OpSys

Rehearsal For Armageddon – The Balkan Wars Further attempts at a megagame operational system (by Peter Merritt) The intention of this session was to present the latest in my series of attempts to get a fast-to-play, easily understood system which would form the ‘third leg’ of my design for a – possible – megagame of […]

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American Civil War Megagame [offside]

This session was hosted by a contingent of our friends from Europe (while we have any left) at the 2018 CLWG Conference. They had already run a game based on the ‘Seven Days Battles’ on the Virginian Peninsular in 1862. [Campaign note – The enormous Union Army of the Potomac had been rebuilt and (re?)trained […]

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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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