GAME NOTES FOR ITALIAN CAMPAIGN & EAGLE DAY
promo piece by Laurence Rusiecki

     ITALIAN CAMPAIGN was designed with the concept of creating a playable game covering the entire Sicilian and Italian campaigns. The first consideration was the true nature of the campaign. Once the Italians had surrendered, Italy became a sideshow with the main event upcoming the following year in the Normandy invasion. Therefore, victory in the game depends on a "Victory Points" system. The less resources in shipping and troops which a player must devote to achieving success, the better chances he has to win. Playability was achieved by reducing the length of the game to monthly turns and using double impulse movement. Unlike Avalon Hill's ANZIO, you won't get combat fatigue by playing ITALIAN CAMPAIGN. However, Italy is still a hard nut to crack. Geography and time considerations give the Germans a good chance to win a strategic victory by decisively delaying the Allied advance and forcing them to use more resources than they can afford.
     EAGLE DAY covers the August through September 1940 time period of the Battle of Britain. This was the critical period in which the fate of England was decided. If the Luftwaffe had inflicted enough damage to the RAF's airfields during this time, the conditions for invading Britain would have been met. Inflicting sufficient damage to RAF's airfields is the focal point for the German player in EAGLE DAY. The British, for their part, must use their fighters judiciously. They must concentrate on inflicting losses to the the Germans, particularly the bomber units, without taking heavy losses themselves. EAGLE DAY was only the second game to cover the Battle of Britain. Part of my reason for choosing this subject was to create a playable, yet challenging game to cover the battle.

     Laurence Rusiecki is the designer of EAGLE DAY and ITALIAN CAMPAIGN.

THE MATERIAL WORLD IT'S ALWAYS BEEN
promo piece by Kent Mitchell

In a fit of passion, we did a new take on a very old game.

     Several years ago, my friend, Alexis Papahadjopoulos and I decided to make a boardgame. We'd been making rules and prototypes for boardgames, role playing games, and live action games for fifteen years before that-but this time we stuck with it from initial concept to final product and ended up with a complete, marketed boardgame, MATERIAL WORLD, and a game company, Strange Magic Games.
     When we started, we knew MATERIAL WORLD should be a game in which players competed for the world's most valued treasures, such as gold, spices, fine rugs and ancient artifacts. What we didn't know was how the contest would be engaged. Would strategic domination of the territories of the planet (and thus the treasure-producing regions) be the order of the day, or would players compete by trading to acquire treasures? Would game play revolve around dice throws, card play, or tactical deployment on the playing board? What would the balance be between these modes?
     In an early version we tried a combination of board and cards-no dice involved. The way a player gained access to treasures was by forming alliances with power brokers in various parts of the world. One could, for example, use the card of the Pirate Lord of Tripoli to acquire access to the trade routes into North Africa. Without a relationship with the Pirate Lord, one would have a much harder time getting African artifacts, ivory, and gold out of Africa via the Mediterranean.
     It soon became clear to us, however, that the trade routes themselves would be the central vehicle of the game. Building a trade route from France to treasures as far afield as the spices of the East Indies and the gold on the far side of the Peruvian Andes became the players' primary challenge. Although a player had to be watchful lest another player wrest treasures and trade routes and even homelands away by force, warfare was not the only order of the day. An empire with too much military would tend to fall behind in the development of trade routes and in the ability to acquire treasures itself.
     Thus was formed the original version of MATERIAL WORLD, which is detailed in the full game rules. The main body of these rules is 8 pages long, and takes about 1 1/2 to 2 hours to fully learn. Realizing that many game groups like to start playing a game the same day they open the box, we next created a simpler set of rules called MATERIAL WORLD: PIRATES & EXPLORERS VERSION. The main body of these rules is less than half as long as the original rules. In fact, within PIRATES & EXPLORERS VERSION we also

include a Quick Start Demo that is less than one full-sized page long. This is the way to play MATERIAL WORLD within ten minutes of taking it out of the box.
     Players may now choose between MATERIAL WORLD as a strategic game of permanent trade routes and economic development that takes place over several centuries, or as a tactical game of cat-and-mouse, in which individual explorers trek over hostile lands and seas, grab treasures, and struggle to bring them safely home to their capital city.
     In all versions of MATERIAL WORLD, the goal is the same: gather treasures from the world into your homeland. In the original version, these treasures are gathered via Trade Routes: physical chains of playing pieces extending outwards from each player's homeland. The Trade Routes are built from timber, found in various countries. The timber is used to build the boats for ocean trade and to set up depots for the camel caravans that carry trade by land. So, in the original version of MATERIAL WORLD, a player not only gathers treasures, but builds trade routes to do so, and not only builds trade routes, but seeks out natural resources in order to build them.
     And what about the labor to cut the timber to build the boats and the trading outposts? A player also must maintain a population that both builds things and...eats! So, each player gathers food (wheat) from various lands to feed the people who build the boats, and so on. In the end, one is building an empire that must sustain (1) itself, (2) its expansion, (3) its defense and (4) the development of technologies to extend 1 through 3 - just so it can finally go out and get those treasures!
     The quick way to get into this game is to play the PIRATES & EXPLORERS VERSION first. In MATERIAL WORLD: PIRATES & EXPLORERS VERSION, players send their emissaries, Explorers, out into the world as individual units. There are no trade routes, only trading agents. The Explorers sail their little clipper ships all the way to the far sides of dark continents, then disembark and brave jungles or deserts to find the precious treasures. The trick isn't getting to the treasure, it's getting back home safely. Many a time I've seen a treasure carried one or two spaces back across Asia towards Europe, only to be dropped in the wasteland after a raiding party intercepts the hopeful trader. (If two equal-sized parties fight, both are destroyed. Combat involves no dice.)
     These rules may be completely learned in forty-five minutes (And that includes Piracy and Colonization). But it gets even easier. To get going right away, you can play the Quick Start Demo in the PIRATES & EXPLORERS rulebook. In ten minutes you are on your way to the Spice Islands for a full game on one page's worth of rules. Hey, it's the order of the day-nobody wants to sit for the better part of an hour reading and pondering before they play. And this ten minute version contains the kernel of the entire game. It's fully playable.
     Enjoy. We've made MATERIAL WORLD available through Boulder Games at a lower price so that more people will get a chance to play it. If enough people rave about this game, we'll make both another version of it (maybe with some of those little wooden blocks from the German games, maybe not) and put out an entirely new game as well. We appreciate your support and are always interested in your comments.

     Kent Mitchell, co-owner of Strange Magic Game Design, is a writer and game designer by night, a web producer and property manager by day (Or maybe it's the other way around. Yes, that's it, the sinister midnight web producer, out planting hedge bushes by moonlight.)

CONFEDERATE RAILS
Railroading during The American Civil War

promo piece by Richard Berg

     CONFEDERATE RAILS is one of the longest-awaited train arrivals in gaming history. It is also the most unusual rail game on the market, with more railroading problems and historical detail than ever seen in this hobby niche. As such, it provides a unique opportunity to both rail gamers and historical gamers.
     CONRAILS is not a complex or difficult game. The rules are short (ten pages), there are scenarios of varying length, and you'll find that the game quickly becomes one where you engage the situation, not the rules. CONRAILS is best played multi-player (from 3 to 5), although it can be undertaken by two player.
     In CONRAILS players try to make money by picking up and delivering various goods. However, unlike most rail games, there is not only no line building, but the network is shrinking as the war progresses. The player who wins is he who is best at using the bad circumstances (mostly the war) to his advantage.

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