![]() ![]() What such games can do is offer a broad perspective of some of the key decisions leaders faced. With convenience comes too much compromise in the simulation space. I’m going to go out on a limb here having immersed myself in compact war games for several months now and say… no. While the hundreds of hours play time for The Campaign for North Africa or Vietnam 1965-75 may take this to the extreme, can boiling the experience down to under an hour with a handful of components and a few pages of rules ever really provide that historical learning experience? To get there requires the game to provide some fidelity to the complexities of the military or political conflict being simulated, even allowing for a generous helping of abstraction. We play war games not just for fun but also for the historical simulation, to replay ‘what ifs’. ![]() Long the domain of lighter euro, thematic and party games, squeezing a historical conflict simulation into a smaller box with very manageable playtime is increasingly attracting the interest of wargaming publishers. Hold the date for now - and keep a look out on the websites and social media channels of Cardboard Emperors and Second Chance Games for more announcements. We want this to become one of Europe’s biggest and best conventions for war and strategy board gamers! We aim to run a range of events at PunchedCON, including demos and play-tests, tournaments, and prize draws. We are talking with a hotel in the Midlands with a very large conference space and hope to finalise the details shortly. ![]() Our provision date for the inaugural event is 13th to 15th of May 2022. You can make a donation here.įinally, and saving the most exciting news until last, Punched is teaming up with Second Chance Games, the top retailer of war games in the UK, to establish PunchedCON, an annual UK war and strategy board gaming convention. Also, any reader donation towards my hosting and production costs is very welcome, however small. If you would like to advertise in future issues please let me know. To that end you may notice I’ve managed to attract a bit of advertising in this issue. The magazine is currently neither quite a blog, nor a ‘proper’ magazine. Thanks also to Ciotog Creative for the artwork for this issue.Īs ever, I very much welcome any feedback on how we can improve our magazine. All the contributors work for free, and they put in a lot of time and effort to help me with the magazine. My thanks to Riccardo, Charles Vasey, Paul Williams, Scott Moore for their contributions. And of course we have in-depth and shorter reviews of games that I believe you will find interesting. We also interview Florent Coupeau to find out more about what’s happening with his games company Nuts! Publishing, a purveyor of some beautiful war games, and feature a very interesting historical overview from Riccardo Masini on the political life of Napoleon and the games you can pick up that simulate that. To that end, the theme this issue is compact war games - from Table Battles and 13 Days to five of the best from compact game masters Bonsai Games, by the end of this issue you’ll have no excuse not to have a decent, quick-playing game to hand just when required. Wargame publishers are cottoning on to this, and the volume quality of compact games being released is on a positive upwards trend. Whenever I leave my flat to go gaming I always ensure I take a couple of compact games with me, they can often be more enjoyable to play than the bigger games they accompany. On to issue #3 of the thoroughly modern Punched magazine. It wasn’t in anyway modern in terms of graphic design, layout, or accessibility (probably a factor in it’s demise), but it sure produced some good games, and will be missed. Worth it though, I believe, for when something like World War Africa comes along. The flip side is the games typically have much less time spent on design, play-testing and production, which can result in a fair number of duds and/or mountains of errata. Also importantly for me given the lack of shelf space in my stuffy London flat, I can fit five magazine zip lock games in the space that one larger production takes up. ![]() They often cover the less beaten path, and by their nature tend to be less complex and of lower counter density than big box games (a good thing, in my mind). I’m becoming ever more interested in magazine wargames. As someone who really enjoys modern conflict simulations I was a happy subscriber, and indeed my favourite wargame so far of this year - World War Africa - was released early this year in MW, and is reviewed in this issue of Punched. It’s a sad period for wargame magazines with the news that Modern War magazine - a sister publication to the more famous Strategy & Tactics - has now ceased publication. ![]()
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