We have played several games designed by Adam Starkweather in his Company Scale System (CSS). These games are really good solid chit draw systems that really puts some unknown in what groups of units can activate and even when they will activate. There are also events and if the chit cup runs dry before all of the units can activate due to the end round chit then you are just sore out of luck. You have to prepare for this inevitability and I love the concept of prioritizing your activations and making sure you activate what you absolutely have to before doing those units that would be beneficial to activate. Now Adam has created his own publishing company called Bring it on Games and they have announced their first pre-order game in a new system called Advanced Company Scale System Game One: Anzio: A Lost Opportunity. This is a huge wargame and includes 10 large maps, 20 counter sheets and tons and tons of charts, tables and player aids. This is a MONSTER wargame…no doubt about it but it looks really good. I reached out to Adam to see if he could provide us some additional insight into the game and he was more than willing to discuss with us.

If you are interested in Advanced Company Scale System Game One: Anzio: A Lost Opportunity, you can pre-order a copy for $350.00 from the Bring it on Games website at the following link: Shop — Bring it on Games

Grant: Adam welcome to our blog. First off please tell us a little about yourself. What are your hobbies? What’s your day job?

Adam: First off, my hearty thanks to The Players’ Aid crew for giving me the opportunity to introduce myself and tell you about my new adventure.

As my waistline will attest, my hobbies and interests are decidedly sedentary. I love watching basketball and baseball (go Knicks – had a great year). And several years ago, I decided to rekindle – ha! – my love of reading. For many years, for work, I read non-fiction. But now, every night before I crash, I read for fun for a half hour.  Currently, I’m reading both for work and for fun as I am journeying through Stephen King’s multiverse with a goal of making a game on it. I have an inside to get to King, and I’m hoping I can get him to glance at it and spark some interest. It will be decidedly war gamey in its presentation.

Believe it or not, for over 20 years, I have been blessed that wargame design has been my main gig and what I do for work. With over 50 titles that I’ve designed, developed, or project managed, it has been a productive period for me in the hobby.

Grant: What motivated you to break into game design? What have you enjoyed most about the experience thus far? What have you learned about design over the years?

Adam: A day I remember well. 3 friends and I were playing SPI’s Highway to the Reich, and it just fell apart while we were playing it. Things were happening that just didn’t make sense, and it wasn’t balanced. Once that suspension of disbelief is done, we wargamers just bail on a game. We thought we could do better. All four of us started making a Market-Garden game, but only I kept with it, and my first design The Devil’s Cauldron, was the result 7 years later. As for enjoying what I do, there are occasional hiccups, of course, but I have a dream job. I’m like a professional NBA player – doing something that is tons of fun, and I get paid to do it. I’m the luckiest man in the world.

As for what I’ve learned, of course, I’ve learned how to design – often under tremendous time pressure, but if I had to name one thing, it is knowing what I’m good at and when I need help. I’m great at coming up with new concepts and innovative mechanics, but I can’t research worth a damn nor do I have the patience to rewrite rules again and again. With my new company Bring it on Games, I have both the time and assets to attack my weaknesses and focus on what I do well – and love doing. I have dedicated researchers, dedicated rules editors, and dedicated playtesters. I finally have the time to do a game the right way.

Grant: What is your upcoming game ACSS Anzio about?

Adam: My first game for my new company is on the Battle of Anzio. It is at company level and at 500 meters a hex. It has two campaign games in the box – one for Operation Shingle (the landing and advance inward to the furious German counterattack) and Operation Buffalo – the final breakout and advance to Rome. The middle months in which a World War One type situation happened is not in the game. Two massive campaign games and some 20 smaller scenarios are included.

Grant: What does the subtitle “A Lost Opportunity” represent from the history?

Adam: It is likely for such a famous operation that most people reading this know that Anzio presented an opportunity to end the Italian Front with an aggressive approach to the battle.  Instead, the General in charge (Lucas) was tentative and did not advance with the aggression needed. In all my research, I have found that it wasn’t entirely his fault, but it wasn’t a time to be tentative. In the Campaign game, you can try and defeat the Germans with the hand you were historically dealt, or there is an alternative scenario (aptly called “Killer Whale”) where the restrictions on your aggressiveness are removed, and perhaps you can end the Italian battle in two weeks.

There were also missed opportunities in the second campaign in the box. The Allies went for the glory to capture Rome but allowed the Germans to retreat from the Gothic Line mostly intact. The war in Italy was allowed to continue, but again, it didn’t have to be that way. As with Operation Shingle, there is an alternative campaign game in which glory is set aside for a few weeks, and you as the Allies attempt to cut off the German forces and end the war in Italy.

“We were hurling a wild cat on the shore, but all we got was a beached whale.” -Winston Churchill

Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?

Adam: Why Anzio? As is often the case, the subject matter of a game is about work that has already been done.  Why start from scratch if months of work have already been done? My historian worked on a game for another designer several years ago and had a great Order of Battle for the game. There was plenty of game in the battle, so Anzio it became. Utah Beach is likely next up for my company as I’ve already made the Grand Tactical Series game on the battle. So I have a complete order of battle and map already made. After that, or before that, might be Salerno. A gamer has already made the game using another system, but the conversion would be easy enough. And of course, a game for ACSS will be on Market-Garden. I have already made a game at this scale.  Years of work have already been done. This also gives me time to start fresh on new topics like Omaha Beach or Gela – they become the game with work already done and join the conga line.

Grant: What is your design goal with the game?

Adam: Oh that’s easy. I want to finally be able to make the best company level game I can make. GTS was made when I was a novice and CSS was made when I was under tremendous time pressure. I have both the expertise and the time to do it right this time.

Grant: How have you modified the Company Scale System to become “Advanced”? 

Adam: I started work on this a few years back and called it ACSS. The name stuck with me, and I kept it. It keeps Eric Smith’s brilliant combat system and is a chit pull, but much has also been improved and changed. I think I answer much of the realism issues of both systems with ACSS.

I have the rules available online for anyone to read – simply go to rules and you can read it and see where we are at. 3-4 more edits still to go, but it is more complete than anything I’ve made before, even as it sits now.

As for new stuff and mechanics that my playtesters have said they’ve never seen in a game before – I have two standouts. Situational Awareness matters in this game as does an orders system that influences what and how you do things. They are in the above rules so I won’t go deeply into it – but it has a novel way of presenting Fog of War but still allows for solitaire play. There is much, much more that is new – but those two are mentioned by my playtesters the most.

Grant: What elements do you feel are most important to model from World War II and the Allied invasion of Italy?

Adam: I make wargames, so to me, the most important aspect is to get the history correct and honor those that fought and risked their lives to make a better world for me and my children to live. So the history has to be right and fully immersive. In addition, playing a game on a battle is a different, albeit as involved as reading a book on the battle – but it is also a game. It should have decisions and fun aspects in it to make it fun to play.

Grant: What sources did you consult for the historical details?

Adam: If you go to my website at https://bringitongames.com/, you’ll find everything you need to play an introductory scenario using my system – but if you have a look at the end of the scenario book you can download, you’ll see the extensive bibliography for the game. As an aside, over the last 25 or so years of game design, it is really interesting to see how the web has become indispensable in researching military topics.

Grant: What one must-read source would you recommend?

Adam: I asked this very question of my historian a few months ago.  He suggested:

Anzio 1944, The beleaguered beachhead, Osprey Publishing Campaign #155, Steven J. Zaloga, 2008, ISBN 978-1-84176-913-4

Although I’m partial to:

Fatal Decision, Anzio and the Battle for Rome, Carlo D’Este, 2008, ISBN 978-0-06-057649-3

A more involved read and perhaps not as great for wargamers as the Osprey volume, but I think the added effort is worth the trouble.

Grant: What is the scale of the game? Force structure of units?

Adam: As with my other company level systems, ACSS is 500 meters a hex, mostly company level units, and each turn is 2 hours. It is a scale I’ve used for two decades and I’m comfortable at this level. In addition, I fell in love with this scale because it offers both tactical mechanics but you can play an entire battle (although you’ll need space and time of course).

The system uses a chit-draw method to activate units and this is at division level. You draw a chit and do things with an entire division and then move to the next chit.

Grant: What are the differences between the playable factions of the Allies and Axis powers?

Adam: At this level of company actions, the difference between the two armies is quite evident. The Germans have fantastic equipment but are brittle, while the Allies have so much firepower at their disposal. To show one example of what you can show at this scale: the Germans based their tactical dogma on their excellent MG 42 machine gun, while the Americans based their tactics on the excellent Garand rifle. They each operated differently – and I can show this at this scale. Many other aspects from more effective counter-battery fire to specialized tactics are also there. Check out the rulebook above and you’ll see.

Grant: What is the layout of the board?

Adam: Almost all monster games focus on the campaign game, and the scenarios are snippets of the larger campaign game. That is certainly true of my large games. For me at least, it was always a matter of speed. I could test scenarios while I tested the campaign game. My scenarios often started when the campaign game started.  There are a few exceptions to this where the scenarios are the primary game, and the campaign game is the added bonus. Games like Pacific War by Victory Games are like this. 

I, however, want to have both scenarios and the campaign games have equal importance. Each scenario has its own counter set and its own map. The map size goes from 8 1/2 inches for the introductory scenarios, to one map for the majority of intermediate and advanced scenarios, to two maps for a larger game experience. Finally, there are the two full campaign games, which each have 4 full-sized maps and two half maps – a total of 5 maps.  But there are some ten double-sided maps in the game (a total of 20 maps) – this is a map for each scenario and a campaign game map.

Grant: How are units activated? Why do you feel chit-pull is such an effective method?

Adam: I love chit-pull as a mechanic and have used it for decades. It has the advantage of being great for solo play. There is the drawback that if you have a lot of players, you might have to wait for your turn to come up – although there are ways around this that I talk about in the rulebook, I find the great advantage of board games over computer games is the social aspect of playing them.

Grant: What is the general Sequence of Play?

Adam: A great question. When I first open a game, there are two things I look at first. The Sequence of Play and the victory conditions. They tell me more about the general concepts behind the game than anything else. Of course, a far more complete Sequence of Play is in the rulebook that you can download, but the basic SoP that is used in the VASSAL module is:

But check out the rules for a much more exhaustive Sequence of Play.

As for victory conditions, I blatantly steal from great designers that have great victory conditions – in concept. Some designers just know how to make victory conditions that drive a game and allow for incredible excitement in play. There are some 21 scenarios in the game, and I use different types of victory conditions in each and every one. I did the same thing to a lesser degree in my Greatest Day game. But whatever type of game you like, I’ll have you covered in one or more of the scenarios and the campaign game.

As for how the basic mechanics work, I have a ton of examples in the game for you to have a read and see how things work. Check them out.

Grant: Tell me about Bring it on Games. How are you different from other game companies?

Adam: I changed The Players’ Aid’s last question to talk about this a bit. I take the slogan “A Game Company run by Gamers” seriously. As we have aged, what we expect from games has changed. The games are expensive, but while we all, hopefully, have more money now, we have less time and less patience. I used to love reading rules, but now it is like pulling teeth – it is painful to get into a game. This game and all that follow are about making the games convenient and easy to approach. It is expensive for sure for all of this added stuff that you haven’t seen before – but again, we have more money but less time. You’ll see things here that will make you wonder why all the companies don’t do this.

Also, I don’t want to be GMT or MMP. I want to make games. I won’t have a warehouse, so only orders will be printed. Once I go to press, the game will be out of print. I’ll also limit the total number of orders I will accept. I like making the games. I don’t want to spend my time with all the company stuff. Trust me when I tell you that the owners of all the game companies aren’t having as much fun in the hobby as you are – they are busy running a company, tracking inventory, and all that stuff. I don’t enjoy that very much. So I’ll give up selling games after they print and keep having fun.

I hope you’ll go to my website at www.bringitongames.com and download the sample rules and Vassal set – and see if it’s your thing. I’d love your support. You can also subscribe to my newsletter. And I apologize in advance if you, as more than a few gamers have said to me, “you’ve ruined GTS and CSS for me”.

If you have any questions or comments, you can reach me at:

Email: adam@bringitongames.com

Discord: https://discord.gg/tRSUe2Tr

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/843702163901347

BGG: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/470818/anzio-a-lost-opportunity

Comsimworld: https://talk.consimworld.com/WebX?14@@.1de55d9f/60

Thanks so much for your time in answering our questions Adam. I am very much looking forward to this system and wish you the best of luck in bringing it across the finish line. I have very much enjoyed my experience with the Company Scale System (Saipan: The Bloody Rock and The Enemy is at the Gates: Battle for Berlin, 1985 both from Compass Games) as well as the Grand Tactical Series (Devil’s Cauldron and Where Eagle’s Dare both from Multi-Man Publishing) and very much enjoy the feel of the game and the combat system.

If you are interested in Advanced Company Scale System Game One: Anzio: A Lost Opportunity, you can pre-order a copy for $350.00 from the Bring it on Games website at the following link: Shop — Bring it on Games

-Grant

The morning dawned early and I was up and ready to go by 8:30am. I had a muffin in my room and a trusty diet Mountain Dew for breakfast and we were on our way to the Winterberry Room to get going on our continued game of GTS.

We jumped right back into GTS Where Eagles Dare and The Devil’s Cauldron from MMP. I was assigned to command the area around Eindhoven/Best/Son and to eliminate the few pockets of German resistance remaining there and then move our armor north to cut off possible German reinforcements from the east. We jumped back in at the 1100 turn and played into the 1700 turn although I had to leave shortly after lunch to meet up with Gregory M. Smith. This system is just so solid and is really great fun.

And I also very much enjoy the deep historical immersion into the event and its incorporation of things like heroes and artillery parks as well as the gorgeous production values with amazing counters, a very detailed and beautiful board and the way it portrays company-level combat. I will say that there is a fairly steep learning curve and rules overhead and while I feel the combat system works it is very involved and bits can be forgotten. But it really is a solid operational level portrayal of WWII combat. I very much can’t wait to play it again in the future and we actually have the reprint of The Devil’s Cauldron on pre-order and I have heard it might be out by the end of the year. I need to find me a copy of Where Eagles Dare as well although I most likely will never get the full combined games together on the table at the same time.

After 14 hours of pushing counters, I am now a follower of this system and want to thank Joe and Matt, as well as my friend Mike Heckman, for teaching me.

After lunch I found my friend John Sy from the Philippines and said hello but he had a gift he had brought for me. It was Japanese occupation currency in the form of Philippine pesos from WWII. What a very cool and thoughtful gift and upon my return home I will be placing it in a frame and hanging it in my game room. Thanks John!

I then was able to meet up with my friend and fantastic designer Gregory M. Smith as well as Kevin McPartland to get a look at a few games that they are designing together, including Viking Dawn from Compass Games and Star Spangled Tide: The War of 1812 from Compass Games.

We first got a play in of Viking Dawn and had a great time with the game. It is a light, beer and pretzels style game based on the SPI Conquistadors designed by Richard Berg where players control 1 of 4 Viking clans and are trying to build longboats, train war bands, develop explorers and lead them to explore, settle, raid and conquer Europe from Russia in the east, to Iceland and Newfoundland in the west, the Mediterranean and parts of North Africa. When leaders die you must bury them with silver gaining VP’s or if you can’t afford it bury them with nothing and lose VP’s. The main mechanic is a press your luck exploration mechanic where you must roll for the destruction of your fleets based upon how far they have traveled that year. You might lose all of your ships or may get lucky and lose none, you can mitigate this be investing in the journeys with additional supplies and tech to ensure better offs but the dice are cruel and you might just lose not only your fleets but also the booty they have collected from raiding.

It’s a very fun and lite take on this chaotic time in history and I very much enjoyed it. The game is nearly complete and should be printing and ready for shipping in early 2027. I think that this one is a perfect convention game and is sure to see more plays on my table.

We then shot a video with both designers together and then broke off with just Greg to talk about 6 of his other in-design projects. These included the following Korean Tide (next entry in the Tide Series covering the Korean War 1940-1953), Rifle Platoon (tactical level squad based solitaire game using the American Tank Ace Series), Project Z (what if bombing game where Japan won at Midway and began to run bombing operations against the United States mainland and Australia similar to Amerika Bomber), Western Desert Ace (solitaire Ace Series game focused in North Africa), B-52D Linebacker II (solitaire Vietnam War bombing game in 1972) and then finally a scoop on a joint design from Kevin McPartland and Greg Smith called Star Spangled Tide. It was a great discussion and I’m very much looking forward to all of these games.

To end the video, Greg spoiled his upcoming Lone Banner game which is a 1-4 player dungeon crawler set in the fantasy world of Kalar from Burning Banners from Compass Games. This one is going to be fun and I got a look at the characters, spells and weapons and also saw the dungeon tiles that will be laid out as players move through the dungeon encountering traps, monsters and bosses to fight. This looks great but it is a ways off as Greg said he has only been designing it for a month or so.

I then got to play the new The Great Hunger from Compass Games with designer Kevin McPartland. In The Great Hunger players represent families of tenant farmers and field hands. At first, when the potatoes are plentiful your clan will grow, using the events on the top half of cards to help your family expand across the map moving into counties, working on estates and in factories. When the potatoes blight arrives, you’ll use the events on the bottom half to save as many as you can, finding them aid or employment in Ireland, or scrambling to ports to secure passage to America. 

The game is a very light Euro style game of survival and is well done as it’s rooted in history and teaches about the struggles of the Irish. I am glad to have played the final production copy as I got to play a prototype copy a few years ago at WBC. This one will catch some heat from people for it’s dark topic and will just not be for everyone but it has something to teach about history and I have Irish ancestry and am interested as to what happened to cause my ancestors to leave their home to come to America.

One final thing I want to show you is the lineup of games that GMT has staged in the main gaming area. These are all of their newest arrivals and they are just gorgeous. I’m most interested in Coast Watchers designed by Volko Ruhnke and The Weimar Republic designed by Gunnar Holmbäck.

That was it for Day 3 and I’m off to bed with an early start tomorrow with a few games on the docket including World Order from Hegemonic Games Project and Coalitions: Realpolitik from PHALANX.

See you tomorrow night!

-Grant

Day 2 dawned early with me getting up at 6:20am due to the sunlight beaming into our window as we had not carefully drawn the blinds together tightly. We got ready and left the room fur breakfast and arrived in the Winterberry Room at 8:30 ready to dive into the Grand Tactical Series.

As we approached the table, I was absolutely blown away by the size and scale of it and the multiple boards laid out on it with plexiglass and secured with binder clips and tape. The boards combined measure 17’ of wargaming good and include The Devil’s Cauldron: The Battles for Arnhem and Nijmegen and Where Eagles Dare: The Battle for Hell’s Highway from Multi-Man Publishing.

The game state is actually a continuation of a game that started at WBC last year. Joe and Matt took pictures of the game board and also of each of the formations and their position from last year’s game and had set it up in that state to play over the next week.

Here is a look at those carefully taken pictures. Such detail and care given to the game. How am I not going to love this experience?

There were a total of 6 of us playing the game and we were loosely assigned a few formations to be in charge of. Actually we were told we were in command and were to make plans and then discuss those with the CIC’s to get approval and then execute that plan. A lot of autonomy and ability to go about it individually.

Over the span of 10 hours we played and finished the 0700 and 0800 turns for September 19th. This system is very fun and crunchy but also involved. When attacks are made there is very structured procedure but that isn’t overly complex. Company bonus checks initiate the action and the player will have to roll less than or equal to their troop quality number to gain a +2 to their combat value. Typically this troop quality ranges from a high of 7 to as low as 2 for artillery. Once completed, this bonus is added to their combat factor and then is reduced for the terrain defensive bonus and any defense shown in the enemy counter. Typically you are targeting following under a 7 for good units and a 2 for lesser units. Sometimes these modifiers make it so only a roll of a 0 on a d10 will hit. A 0 is not a 10 in this game. But there is always a chance. Hits are then referred to the CRT which uses the rolled value to refer to the type of Fire to determine results. Types of Fire include indirect, HE or small arms and results include a Cohesion Hit, with multiple Cohesion Hits leading to step losses, step losses of 1, elimination or suppression. There is also limited opportunity fire and assaults that require a bravery/morale checks. At first it seemed over the top but once I picked it up was really fairly simple.

Activation is chit pull and works very well. A formation activating gets to do something with each unit but then can spend Command Points to take additional moves or attacks. Just a very solid system that reminds me a lot of the Company Scale System also designed by Adam Starkweather. The system focuses heavily on how well division and regimental HQ’s can coordinate their sub-units and handle combat stress. I liked it very much and look forward to playing a few more hours tomorrow before moving into some other games.

I also wanted to show off the ingenuity and commitment of these Grognards and their setup for GTS.

First off the lighting. They have light poles that provide above the board light which makes a huge difference in visibility of the game and its counters.

They also have magnetized the chits and when they are drawn are posted on a board for all to see who has activated and who is up. There are chits drawn early but that are hidden on the board to allow for the next player to begins planning to speed game play.

The table they use is also custom made and is modular to fit the various games in the series. The bases are sturdy and they appear to be solid but are assembled quickly.

They use 1/4” thick plexi that is quite thick and has somewhat of a magnifying effect. It is very well done and made playing the game more enjoyable.

While playing, there was another nearby big in-design East Front wargame being played by Antony Birkett, Chip Saltsman and Curtis Baer. If you didn’t know, all 3 have been involved with, designing and developing several volumes in the Operational Combat Series from MMP. Tony has designed several volumes including The Third Winter, The Forgotten Battles and Crimea.

The system is called the Operational Warfare System and its first game is called After Stalingrad designed by Antony Birkett. Think modern mechanics being brought to the Operational Combat System in Tony’s words.

The system is focused on maneuver and command and control and uses HQ’s with different amounts of Action Points used to activate units. The game play is back and forth and interactive and it was said there is little downtime. They hope to use this system to tell the study of other WWII battles in North Africa, the Mediterranean and Western Fronts, as well as the tried and true East Front.

The fame has been in designer and development over the past 6 months and is being made ready due extensive play testing. They are currently shopping the design to publishers and hope that it is published in 2027.

I was able to shoot a 15 minute interview with these guys and had some really good discussions about their goals with the game and the system highlights.

I also met at different times of the day several fans of the channel. I met 2 first time attendees this year who both watch our videos named Jason and Bill who were both class acts.

This is probably a bit personal but Bill told me that our videos helped during a time when his now deceased wife was sick and he was in a dark place. That was very touching to me and I appreciated that we somehow assisted him through that difficult time.

That was it for Day 2 and I’m actually going to get to bed tonight by 10:30pm. Tomorrow, we have more GTS and I also sit down with my friends Gregory M. Smith and Kevin McPartland to look at their projects and play some games. Both of them are providing us with a “scoop” and I’m excited about what I might get to show you.

See you tomorrow!

-Grant