SDHistCon Online Winter Quarters 2024

One of my board gaming resolutions for this year is to attend the right events – those that are really up my alley. In that spirit, I once more attended the San Diego Historical Games Convention (online)… with a slightly more active role than before.

News You Can Use: Spielworxx

Uli Blennemann from Spielworxx gave an update on what to expect from the company in the next year and beyond. Now you know that I am a big fan of Weimar (Matthias Cramer, Capstone Games/Skellig Games/Spielworxx), so of course I was hoping for some more exciting games… and I was not disappointed. Two games in particular interest me:

Angel’s Share (Scott Almes, Spielworxx) tasks its players to produce whisk(e)y profitably in either Scotland or Kentucky. If the spirit has had more time to mature in the barrels, it will fetch a higher price, but the skilled producer will also recognize when to take advantage of a low-supply market for selling high.

Dolcissima Vita (Giansimone Migoni, Spielworxx) is an economic game set in post-WWII Italy. Players compete to produce and sell consumer goods in a country which is rapidly changing with events – for example, the 1956 Winter Olympics (in Cortina d’Ampezzo) will increase demand for TV sets.

In case you are reading this from North America: Spielworxx has found a major North American partner and will cooperate with them on distributing games to the North American market on a regular basis. The official announcement will be made in late February or early March.

Oh, and I did get my Weimar news as well: After the Tabletop Simulator module for the game had just been released around a month ago, Uli confirmed that a (new) Tabletopia and a Vassal module would follow. The latter is out by now – great news, in my opinion! I just prefer the organized environment of Vassal to the more chaotic setups of the physics-based game engines.

Thought-Provoking Discussions

One of the best thing about SDHistCon is the all-star cast of board game designers it attracts. And what’s even better than one designer? – Several of them discussing games! In that spirit, I attended the panels on the Summit Award and on Wargaming Africa.

The Summit Award is given to the game which has broadened the hobby of historical gaming the most in a given year. Last year, Votes for Women (Tory Brown, Fort Circle) took the crown, edging out Fire & Stone (Robert DeLeskie, Capstone Games), John Company (2^nd edition) (Cole Wehrle, Wehrlegig), and Stonewall Uprising (Taylor Shuss, Publisher). I’ve played two and a half of the four (the first edition of John Company counting for half) and have found them intriguing gaming experiences, so of course I wanted to hear what the four designers had to say (hosted by Dan Bullock, himself a creator of fascinating historical games). A few things that I found interesting:

• Motivations for designing can converge on a similar position from different directions: Votes for Women is a celebration of the women’s suffrage movement, and Tory Brown hopes that it will inspire players to become involved in the struggles for justice we face today. On the other side, Robert DeLeskie was surprised to find how politicized the 1683 siege of Vienna was in some right-wing circles (as a presumed defense of Europe against Islam). Robert decided not to cede this event to those people and make a game close to history, defying this identitarian narrative. That’s not too far away from what Tory did – she’s obviously in favor of the women’s suffrage movement, but it was important to her to show both the suffragists and their opponents as people with flaws and a variety of motivations to do what they did.
• Sometimes, designers will be more exacting than players wish: Both Tory and Taylor Shuss reported that a certain number of their playtesters were uneasy about playing “the other side” – Opposition to the suffrage movement or The Man opposing gay rights. Yet both designers decided to maintain that as a playable role (even though you can play Votes for Women solo or cooperatively as the Suffragists), and they argue that playing this side can give you valuable political and personal insights.
• Both topics fuse in Cole Wehrle’s approach to John Company: Cole also wondered if making such a game about empire was not inappropriate – after all, players boldly grab for the riches of India with no concern for the wellbeing of the East India Company, let alone of India itself, only hoping to get themselves a nice estate, peerage, or at least a fancy hat when they return to England. Cole decided that this juxtaposition spoke for itself and made the game, and we’re all better off for it.

I also went to the panel on Wargaming Africa – as you know, I’ve written about African history every once in a while, especially on conflicts in which decolonization and the Cold War intersect. Jason Matthews (Twilight Struggle: Red Sea) discussed with Phil Kendall (of Angola fame), Yann de Villeneuve (of the upcoming A Fading Star, a COIN game set in Somalia), and Brian Train (of too many games to mention, but his most famous creation set in Africa is Colonial Twilight).

They talked about the genesis of their respective games (Phil Kendall, for one, was inspired by an article on the Angolan Civil War in Strategy & Tactics magazine), the low interest in designing or playing games set in Africa (Brian Train was the designer of both the first and the third game about the Algerian War of Independence – only one other game on the subject was published in the intervening 20 years), and the problems that games set in the present face (Brian Train cautioned the younger designers that while wargamers usually are very interested in history, they are just about as interested in current events as the average person, which is not very much). Bonus to the discussion: Yann de Villeneuve’s cat made an appearance on screen!

You can watch the full video here.

Yours Truly on Screen

In between the panels, I had a little event of my own: Andrew Bucholtz of the SDHistCon team interviewed me on my approach to writing about games and history. We chatted about how I started this blog, why it’s called the way it’s called, and why I often feature cards from CDGs in the articles before delving more deeply into some specific kinds of writing – AARs and the Leader Ratings.

You can watch the full video here:

Thanks to Andrew for the interview and to the SDHistCon team for the opportunity to talk about the things I love!

I had a great time at SDHistCon (again). It’s a wonderful way to get in touch with players and designers of (historical) games. Thanks to Harold Buchanan and his team for organizing it – and until next time!