The latest from GMT Games are The Kaiser’s Pirates and Dead of Winter. The Kaiser’s Pirates is a World War I card game where each player controls both British merchant ships and German commerce raiders. It’s said to work really well as a solitaire game, with an extra deck of cards used to imitate the actions of a phantom player. Dead of Winter is part of the Great Battles of the American Civil War series and recreates the Battle of Murfreesboro/Battle of Stone’s River. This one’s a hex-and-counter game with chit-pull play sequence and 10 scenarios.

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Grind from Privateer Press, scheduled for release in October, will be an “extreme combat sports board game for two players”.

Players play armed and deadly robots trying to push a spiked ball down the other player’s throat. Or goal. Whatever. The official website will be launched on July 3.

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I need to level set with anyone – I’m a huge Battletech geek. I love nearly everything about this game – the fluff, the rules, the strategy, the art – you name it, I’m in love with it. So imagine my surprise when I found out that Catalyst Games Labs had released Strategic Operations at Origins! Now imagine my disappointment when I discovered that they had sold out by the time I got there… Regardless, I got a chance to look through the book and talk with the guys at Catalyst Games about the new release.

So what had me so excited about this new release? Easy:

• Reworked aerotech (both outer space and in-atmosphere rules)
• New campaign rules and options for extended operations, including salvaging, repairs and contracts
• Battleforce!

Yeah, that’s right. Battleforce – the large scale version of Battletech that never quite became as popular as its big brother. Battleforce is essentially Battletech’s version of Epic (the large scale version of 40K with 15mm miniatures). There are a ton of rules for running large scale Battleforce games in this book. I mentioned that I was surprised to see so much love for some of the older elements of Battletech that hadn’t received this level of attention in decades and they told me that it was an easy decision for them – its a set of great ideas that they felt could be updated and brought to a new audience in a way that got people excited. When asked about smaller scale miniatures (the old Battleforce used wargame style chits), the CLG didn’t have any hard information, but they knew that Iron Wind Metals had been playing around with some ideas in this space (I’ll be the guy on his knees begging later today). Strategic Operations is a massive book (at least 400 pages) retailing for $50 US and will be available more broadly later this year.

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If you live near Amherst, MA, you might consider joining the Pioneer Valley Gamer Collective.

The Collective is a non-profit that operates a game store called Worlds Apart Games. WAG is like any other game store, with games, dice, etc, as well as place to play games, but it’s worker managed and worker owned. They also make themselves available to do game outreach, non-profit fund raising, education, and so on.

Anyone can join to get discounts and a say in what goes on.

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BattleTech 2nd and 3rd edition box sets were illustrated with a popular collection of anime licenses – Warhammer, Marauder, BattleMaster, Phoenix Hawk and so on. These were retired in 1996.

Randall Bills, Managing Developer of Catalyst Game Labs says that he’s finally managed to reacquire the rights to these lines of illustration and they will be returning on upcoming and future Battletech products. I’m guessing that this also means that Battletech rights are securely in CGL’s hands at the moment, although I don’t recall hearing that.

You can see a preview of the book “BattleTech: 25 Years of Art and Fiction” at source (above link).

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Warrior Elite is releasing an expansion for its game War of Edadh from last year. The expansion, The Art of Conflict, adds conflict cards and secondary terrain, and some additional elements.

War of Edadh is a card game that plays more like a tactical fantasy war game.

(anyone know what the heck that is in the picture?)

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Foundry, the British miniatures company, has released a new book for Napoleonic battles. Full color and over 200 pages, Napoleon covers both the combat side—including rules for pontoon bridges, grand battery fire, ground conditions, setting fire to buildings, friendly fire, and ambulances—as well as the army assembly side—with articles on historical uniforms, unit composition, painting, and other aspects.

[Hat Tip]

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War game publisher Khyber Pass Games is disbanding but some of its games under development will be taken up by a new company, Legion Wargames. Like its predecessor, Legion intends to focus on previously unexplored military conflicts, and as now seems to be standard practice in the field, will have a preorder system designed to influence which games are produced. The first on the company’s schedule is Ici, c’est la France!, a game about the Algerian War of Independence.

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The National World War II museum in New Orleans runs occasional war game events as educational programs. On August 21-23, the museum will hold the third annual Heat of Battle war game convention among the exhibits in the galleries. The games to be played include miniatures, hex-and-counter games, and other board games, such as Flames of War, Memoir ‘44, and Battle of the Bulge. Attendees will also be able to take advantage of several other special museum benefits. Registration for the convention includes admission to the “June 1944″ special exhibit and the “Behind the Lines” tour of the museum’s vault. The tour allows participants to actually handle non-public artifacts and explore a Sherman tank.

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Many summer camps advertise that they have board or card games, but then they waste your kid’s time with fresh air and exercise.

This post is probably a little late, but here are a few alternatives to keep your kid’s mind agile and his skin pale and pasty:

• USA Chess has a large list of Chess summer camps all around the US.
• The American Go Association runs a few Go summer camps in the US.
• Here’s a Scrabble summer camp in India.
• CCG summer camp workshop in Indianapolis.
• Role Play Workshop in Oakland. The Green Man LARP camp (one of many LARP summer camps, I believe). And some other sort of RPG summer camp.
• A civil war miniatures war games summer camp. And a bunch of miniature war game summer courses, including fantasy and historical, at the David Brainerd Christian School.

Poker summer camps? In 2006 a guy in British Columbia floated the idea but it was nixed by the Solicitor General.

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