Little Wars FM

Today on Little Wars FM we're joined by Gary Blevins of Board Game Nation [https://www.youtube.com/boardgamenation]. Last year Gary produced a viral YouTube sensation with his multi-part video series recapping the 2023 Axis & Allies World Championship. Not only did he film and edit a series, he played in the championship and advanced to the finals. Did he win? We won't spoil the ending, but we will spoil the topic of today's podcast!  Gary discusses the challenges of presenting board game recaps in a compelling, edited format. The format of his series inspired our own first foray into board games on Little Wars TV--our popular Shogun episode. So join us for a fantastic discussion about board games, YouTube, and how to keep viewers hooked! Our thanks again to Gary for joining us. Check out his channel, subscribe, and go get addicted to his Axis & Allies World Championship Series [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMu2lpi84ZaiUkC5v19Rp1Rr2s3_P1V4l].

For our club-versus-club Thermopylae wargame against Mark's Game Room, we used Men of Bronze as the rules for our land battle. Today, the author joins Little Wars FM for an in-depth discussion. Eric Farrington is the author of multiple game systems and he talks to Greg about his past and future projects. Eric also reflects on working with Osprey Games as a publisher and how their development process works. You can follow Eric's wargaming hobby updates on his blog, Blood & Spectacles [https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/], where he is extremely active. As a reminder, you can also visit us at Little Wars TV [https://www.littlewarstv.com/free-stuff.html] for access to our modified quick reference sheet for Men of Bronze, where we adapted the original rules for mass battle combat. You can find that PDF on our "Free Stuff" page under the Thermopylae episode notes. Our thanks to Eric Farrington for coming on the podcast to talk about his wargame design process!

Greg talks to author and game designer Mark Backhouse about a 2013 article written in WSS Magazine called "Hail Agrippa." That article is freely available here [https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/en-us/blogs/wss_online/issue-66-hail-agrippa], from WSS. A decade ago, Mark turned to Warlord Games' "Hail Caesar" rules when seeking out a mass battle, ancient naval system. With a few modifications, he turned the popular land-battle system into a trireme-smashing, quinquereme good time! In this interview, Mark talks about how he modified an existing game and what philosophy he brings to projects like this. He also discusses his own rule development and what he's working on next! Mark is very active posting wargaming content to social media [https://twitter.com/markbackhouse29] and is also a prolific author in Wargames, Soldiers, & Strategy [https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/en-us/pages/wss-magazine]. You can find more "Hail Agrippa" coverage in the latest summer issue of the magazine, where Mark & Greg co-authored a 6-part ancient naval campaign for the Philippi Campaign.  We hope you enjoy Episode #51 of Little Wars FM! And if you missed our Actium wargame on YouTube, be sure to visit Little Wars TV and watch the tabletop game. Did Antony and Cleopatra rewrite history? You'll find out!

Little Wars FM officially turns 50! Our Patreon fans voted on the topic for our 50th podcast, and here it is. Miles and Ed chat with the International Kriegsspiel Society [https://kriegsspiel.org/] about all things Kriegsspiel. They'll go into the origins of the game, which was first released in 1824 by a Prussian staff officer, and track the evolution of the rules since the 1800s. Today, members of the society run Kriegsspiel events online. This enables players from around the world to join, as well as providing modern tools for fog of war and limited communication. If you want to see a short recap of an event that Miles and Ed both played, there's a YouTube AAR available [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yk8_37CkSw]. The IKS YouTube channel also has much longer videos, like this complete playthrough [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHz8G2hrx_A] of Perryville (it's well over 2 hours long). We've talked about the possibility of filming a Kriegsspiel for the channel one day. Is that something you'd find interesting? There are no miniatures or gorgeous 3D terrain...it's just maps and blocks! But the fog of war element makes these events exciting every time. Have you played in a Kriegsspiel-style game in person or online? And are you interested in joining one of the IKS events sometime? If so, we'll leave a link to those fine folks right here [https://kriegsspiel.org/contact/]! We hope you enjoy episode #50 of Little Wars FM!

Plenty of miniature games for air combat exist--Check Your Six and Wings of Glory are played in our club--but they do have their limitations. Something both of those rule sets share in common (along with most others) is that they are dogfighting games. As a player, you control a plane. Maybe two or three at most. You're in the cockpit trying to out-turn, out-dive, and out-maneuver your opponents in the sky.  Today, we're joined by Mark and Carl of Mark's Game Room [https://www.youtube.com/@MarksGameRoom] to talk about a new air combat miniature game with a very different spin. Their new game, Fire in the Sky, doesn't have a few planes zipping around--it features dozens of fighters flying as entire squadrons. This is a much higher level scope than your typical miniature game. Greg sits down with Mark and Carl to discuss air combat on the tabletop and some of the innate challenges of gaming dynamic dogfights in miniature. We hope you enjoy the discussion about all things air combat! There's even a bit of chatter about the new Masters of the Air series on Apple Plus. What do each of these guys think of the series? Stick around and find out.