Hans and Carl take over the Nakatomi Plaza

This blog is to discuss game designs that Carl Fung been working on: insight, information, and updates on The Gamers' line of products from MMP. I am managing BCS, LOB, OCS, SCS, and TCS and honchoing the first two series. This blog is dedicated to Dean Essig, mentor and friend.

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Multi-Man Publishing 2024 Production Forecast (Plus my monologuing.. but a little less so this year)

Posted by Carl Fung

06 Feb 2024

Carl Fung

(calvinboy24)

United States
Riverside
Connecticut

Pete B. released the Multi-Man Publishing 2024 Production Forecast. Here it is in full. I'll provide my comments as usual where applicable in red.

ASL
- Marco Polo Bridge HASL will go on preorder;
- Slaughter at Ponyri HASL will go on preorder;
- Doomed Battalions reprint will go on preorder;
- A Spanish Civil War package will go on preorder;
- Burma Action Pack will go on preorder;
- Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont, a follow-on HASL to DZ:SME will go on preorder;
- Solitaire ASL module reprint will go on preorder.

ASLSK
- The Starter Kit version of the Marco Polo Bridge HASL will go on preorder;
- ASLSK Magazine (see ‘Periodicals’);

OCS
- Forgotten Battles will go on preorder this year;
- OCS Luzon magazine, and OCS Sicily magazine will both be released this year.

Line of Battle
- Work will continue on The Wilderness. What this means is that everything is being done to get LOB No Turning Back ready for pre-order. The game completed playtesting some time back. Dean was hard at work on finalizing LOB series rules v3.0 when he suffered his stroke. It should be a matter of completing off the series rules, verifying everything, and looking to finalize the components. It's not straightforward, trust me on this.

GTS
- GTS Utah will be released; We are still working on getting GTS Utah ready to send to the printers. This is a big, expensive game, and we’re giving it our usual care and attention to make sure it’s the best it can be before we release it. We’re aiming for 2nd quarter 2024;
- GTS The Devil’s Cauldron will be upgraded to v2.0 rules; Joe Chacon has offered to upgrade The Devil’s Cauldron to the v2.0 rules. We know that customers have been asking for this upgrade, so we’re putting the TDC release on hold while the rules upgrade is done. The plan is to have a workable demo game later this year and then playtest the changes. Apologies to those who have been waiting for TDC, but we think the additional time will be well worth it.

Board Game: The Greatest Day: Utah Beach

Board Game: The Devil's Cauldron: The Battles for Arnhem and Nijmegen

GCACW
- Thunder on the Mississippi, a new game on the Vicksburg campaign, will go on preorder;

IGS
- Crown & Crescent will be printed.

Non-series Games
- Shifting Sands reprint will go on preorder;
- Ken Dunn’s 3-player Sicily CDG will go on preorder.

Periodicals
- ASL Journal 15 will go on preorder;
- An ASL Starter Kit magazine will go on preorder.

OK, and as I've already seen comments online... "No SCS No BCS? No TCS?"

Basically, where's all The Gamers' stuff?

As stated earlier, Dean having a stroke is a big deal and will take a long time for him to recover as well as any potential side effects. Hence the correlation to delivery scheduling for The Gamers' line of products less OCS and LOB.

OCS is under the steady hand of Chip Saltsman as honcho/developer who has a long runway of game designs and a good corps of playtesters. Dean was seeing the overall project through and doing the final artwork. Forgotten Battles and Luzon were well underway and the next set of OCS games are continuing.

I already covered Line of Battle above.

For SCS, the design Last Victory in Russia on the 3rd Battle of Kharkov is being playtested the last I heard. Lee Forester is a veteran honcho/developer of SCS, as seen as what he can do with Rostov '41 and North Africa.

For BCS, if you're wondering why the Kalach/Chir isn't on preorder, then you haven't been reading this blog... It's still a ways off. Getting Kalach to fit the history while still being a challenge for both players is still a work in progress. Plus much more playtesting is needed for the Chir campaign. I mean, Valley of Tears was released in October 2023 and wrapped up in the middle of 2023. One can't expect a new BCS design just to pop out like on a conveyor belt. Arracourt has the shortest playtesting, and that still took 6 months. We're barely into 2024 and Kalach/Chir is a meatier game than Arracourt (but less than Panzers Last Stand or VoT).

So the mantra of "Patience" that I stated in my first post of 2024 holds. And I must stress it. Dean's situation threw us all for a loop but we are managing as best we can with him as he recovers.

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Multi-Man Publishing 2024 Production Forecast (Plus my monologuing.. but a little less so this year)

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