We asked folks in the hobby what their biggest personal accomplishment was this past year.  Here’s what we got from them –

GrogHeads, 23 December 2017

Iain McNeil, Slitherine

That’s a tricky one as it depends if I use my business hat or my gamer hat. Battlestar Galactica Deadlock has been a huge project for us and is going really well on PC and just released on console, but from a personal point of view I love Field of Glory II. It’s not as commercial as BSG but I’m very pleased with how it has turned out and still enjoy playing when I get the time.

Stronghold Games

SURVIVING this year is my biggest accomplishment!  28 releases for a small company is rather astonishing.  And also moving operations for Stronghold Games (and my residence) to Florida made this year very challenging to say the least.

However, if that’s copping out, then I’ll go with Terraforming Mars.  While released in the latter half of 2016, the success of the game was truly realized in 2017.  Getting out two expansions in 2017, “Terraforming Mars: Hellas & Elysium” and “Terraforming Mars: Venus Next” (releasing on 12/31/17 worldwide!), solidified its stature as one of the most significant hobby game releases of all time.  Terraforming Mars is now ranked #6 (soon to be #5) on BoardGameGeek.com.

James Sterrett, Professional Wargamer

My son won the kid’s costume competition at Origins.  (I had basically nothing to do with that….  🙂  )

Alan Emrich, Victory Point Games

Preparing Frank Chadwick’s ETO vol I: Thunder in the East for its kickstarter release at the end of the year. This wargame is 5 years in the making and has turned out incredibly well (it is so much fun to play, I do so three times per week on evenings and weekends and it never ceases to fascinate me). We’ve launched a hub page for this project here

Hermann Luttman, game designer

My biggest personal accomplishment …. other than finally getting to meet Brant and the crew at Origins ….. was been the maturation and successful development of my Blind Swords system (both iterations of the system). The long slog of getting At Any Cost: Metz 1870 ready for GMT has at last ended and the final version looks amazing. Fingers are crossed that it plays as well as it looks!  This design is the Franco-Prussian War “branch” of the core Blind Sword system and was actually the initial conception of the system. Developing and evolving along a new but related path, Longstreet Attacks: The Second Day at Gettysburg (to be published by Revolution Games) seems to be the game I had hoped it would be – the preeminent entry in the ACW version of the system that may just break the series into the upper echelon of grognard fandom. The playtesters have loved it so far, with one calling it “the best wargame I have played in 10 years”. That’s about as encouraging as it can get! So my hopes and dreams for the Blind Swords series, and my associated “historical chaos” theory of game design, may very well have finally reached it pinnacle in 2017.

Brian Train, Game Designer (and theorist!)

Biggest personal accomplishment: seeing Colonial Twilight published, after nearly three years working on it. Other people seem to like it, too.

Ty Bomba, Game Designer

I made an agreement with HBG corporation — publisher of, among other titles, Amerika — to do a series of big-box 3D-pieces wargames (think of titles offered in the physical format of Axis & Allies, Fortress America, etc.). I’ve always wanted to work in this format, but never had the opportunity to do so prior to this. I’m really looking forward to it.

Paul Rohrbaugh, Game Designer / Publisher

Publishing Pierre Razoux’s Bloody Dawns.

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