Tag Archives: OSS
The Tuesday Interview – Ty Bomba
Longtime industry veteran Ty Bomba gives us the low-down on his upcoming projects ~
Brant Guillory, 31 January 2017
You’ve certainly been around wargaming for a while. At last check, your designer page on BGG goes about 4575454646386 pages deep. Of all the games you’ve worked on as a designer or developer, which one sticks out as one that just immediately ‘clicked’ as a smooth design, and what’s one that took some serious wrestling to get it into shape to get published?
To answer the last part of that question first, I tend to have trouble with naval designs unless the assignment allows me to use an evolution of the old-AH War at Sea system. I don’t know why that is. As to design projects that “immediately clicked,” that happened the first time for me with Dynamo: Dunkirk 1940, which I did for World Wide Wargames back in the early 1980s. Since then it’s happened a lot – so often I couldn’t enumerate all of them. As a matter of fact, it’s happening right now, as I’m working on volume three of my “Putin’s Wars Series” – Putin’s Silk Road War: The Coming Sino-Russian Conflict for Central Asia – for One Small Step Games. My feeling is, if you have a creative occupation and that kind of thing isn’t happening for you a lot, you need to ask yourself if you’re in the right career field.
GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #85
GARPA! Special Weekend Edition ~
Invierno Cubano: Castro’s Counterinsurgency, 1959-1965 (GMT Games)
p500 $19, MSRP $28 (not there yet)
An expansion for Cuba Libre, Invierno Cubano expands Cuba Libre to focus on Castro’s initial time in charge, as he consolidated power through his own counterinsurgency. Factions include Casto’s forces, the rich landowners threatened by the socialist revolution, the escapees to the US that want to strike back at the new government, and Batista’s holdouts hoping to take the country back. It’s almost like a whole new game on the same map. Wade ashore at GMT’s p500 site to get your order in!
GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #52
It’s the last GARPA of the Summer, so here’s your holiday weekend bundle of goodness!
Clockwork Wars (Eagle Games)
$50k of $25k goal, Ends 3 September 2014
Steam-powered warfare? Check. Fantasy races? Check. Tanks? Hells, yeah! Fight for control of a modular mapboard, in a 4X-ish game of conquest that mixes and matches magic and steampunk technology. One nice touch are map tiles that can be used on an artistic side, or purely-functional “giant symbol” side not unlike the strategic hex-view in Civ5. It’s an Eagle Games production, so you know that it’ll be over-the-top gorgeous, barely fit on a ping-pong table, be a ton of fun to play, and go out of print in about 11 seconds. So truck on over to the site for the campaign, and plunk down your pledge, and maybe throw a few extra coins in for the expansions, which look equally cool and will not doubt be gone in a hot minute on the open market.
