Thu, 13 November 2014
Been busy with life, gaming (Empires in Arms, The Korean War, La Grande Guerre and now The Third World War) and designing (Triumph of Chaos v2) the last few months. Hope have an episode posted before the holidays. Episode XXII (the epic July 4th lark) has been downloaded nearly 4k times; GDB now at 55k downloads in total. Thank you for your support!
Category:general
-- posted at: 10:28am CDT
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Sat, 26 July 2014
Just passed 50,000+ Downloads now for Guns, Dice, Butter. THANK YOU for your support! Hope to see some of you at World Board Gaming Championships in a few days. Hope to have a episode after WBC in August sometime.
Category:Plumbing
-- posted at: 6:42pm CDT
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Thu, 3 July 2014
Welcome to Episode XXII of Guns, Dice, Butter; a series of conversations (238+ minutes in this case, given, our 238th Fourth of July) with members of the wargaming tribe. O:05 Joe Balkoski: intro to gaming, SPI stories, Minuteman, War in the Ice, City Fight & Wacht Am Rhein, Operation Typhoon 0:33 Joe: Cover art to Patton’s Third Army, Redmon Simonsen, SPI Peak, Transition to Avalon Hill Classic, end day at SPI, 0:54 Joe: AH days, Victory Games, The Korean War 1:09 Joe: Great Campaigns of the American Civil War, Computer Gaming, post gaming, 29th Division, returning to the tribe
1:40 Nick Karp, Discussion of Desert Fox, games in the pipeline for Shenandoah Studio
2: 00 Mark Herman, Enrico Viglino, Marty Sample: “Perspective” overview, the game the Bermuda Triangle (and a discussion about the ability to control weather in the true spirit of what Richard Berg calls “playing a game from the god perspective”), Sim City, Integrated Poly/Mil Leadership, WiF/DoD, Kevin Zucker’s Napoleonic series of games, Berg’s Carthage & Rise of Roman Republic, Karp’s Vietnam 2: 20 Mark, Enrico, Marty: Enrico’s Scale & Scope rant, D&D, La Grand Guerre, Mark’s great story about John Glenn (yes, THAT John Glenn), Churchill’s bunker and mind, Unconditional Surrender, Supreme Commander, Days of Dis 2:42 Mark’s Churchill design goes to the Peloponnesian War, Lace Wars/Red Sash, games that give you orders: Musket & Pike, Hastings 1066, Men of Iron, Flowers or the Forest, playing Angicourt at SPI 3:03: Items that distract from “perspective”, tactical WWII games, disturbing swimsuit attire, Mark’s Rommel story (yes, THAT Rommel), Patton, reprint of Pacific War, new WBC location discussion
3:25 Salvatore Vasta: Discussion of his new design Unconditional Surrender
4:00 Guns, Dice, Butter wrap: gaming plate, shout outs
4:07 Remembering some of our dear gaming mates that have passed
4:13 Applenista
Guns, Dice, Butter, now with approximately 50,000 downloads, is available on iTunes, Boardgame Geek, Consimworld, elsewhere and the GDB website: http://gunsdicebutter.libsyn.com/
Items mentioned on the podcast: La Grande Guerre session report: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/16190004 The Korean War session report:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1191569 Liberty Roads session report: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1187618 Empires in Arms session report: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1170211 1st MN Historical Wargaming Society: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/guild/875 Wargamers paying it forward: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/174505 Lace Wars
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Mon, 30 June 2014
Joe Balkoski, designer of the outstanding series Great Campaigns of the American Civil War, the SPI monster the Atlantic Wall (plus a few others!) and the Victory Games classic The Korean War, will be our guest on episode XXII of Guns, Dice, Butter.
Nick Karp, another member of the SPI/Victory Games tribe (and designer of the fantastic BEAST called Vietnam), and now CFO at Shenandoah Studio, will discuss recently released Desert Fox and other items in the SS pipeline.
Also trying to slap together a panel on "Perspective: the position a player is asked to assume when playing a wargame: god? borg all controlling b*tch godess? A commander?" with the usual suspects (friends of Guns).
Hope to post in the next week or so.
Category:Episode Preview
-- posted at: 8:22am CDT
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Tue, 17 June 2014
Welcome to episode XXI of Guns, Dice, Butter.
0:00 Episode Preview
0:06 Don Greenwood: Don provides a preview of WBC (World Boardgaming Championships) 2014
0:36 Ted Raicer: Ted discusses his point of origin in the hobby/game design, Paths of Glory, Dark Valley, his recent iPad game collaboration with Shenandoah Studio, Drive on Moscow and his game pipeline.
1:41 John Alsen: John gives us an after action report for Consimworld Expo 2014 and tells us about the upcoming wargames demo’d at Monstercon.
2:23 Episode Wrap-up: Shout-outs, what’s on our gaming plate and other odds & ends.
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Fri, 13 June 2014
Just got the all the material completed for episode XXI: Greenwood (WBC 2014 preview), Raicer (Paths of Glory, Dark Valley and other topics), John Alsen (Consimworld Expo 2014 AAR). Hope to post in a week or so.
Category:Episode Preview
-- posted at: 2:07am CDT
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Mon, 28 April 2014
Who doesn’t love a good slave revolt? All hail Spartacus. War by other means; addressing the other 7 M’s of waging war... Was watching the most recent two episodes of Game of Thrones (DAMM good, almost as good as The Wire …and has the potential to equal The Wire, it if it (GoT) doesn’t go stupid - which, is always a possibility for a series) and I think the fog finally began to clear. Khaleesi {Daenerys Targaryen} (waring: spoiler alert) is on the move. She frees the most recent slave city by launching barrels of slave chains over the city walls. That, gets the slaves inside to a thinkin. And, puts into the city a fifth column. The rest is predictable – masters heads on pikes and what not. Khaleesi utilizes war by other means to take the city. Back to war by other means. Why the three guests on GDB Episode XX? The combo of the three guests answers the question: Herman: because he has the best ever strategic will model our hobby has produced with For the People Train: he knows something about modeling unconventional conflict Doughan: knows gaming, knows history, knows arbitraging risk. Strategic will, unconventional conflict and arbritraging risk (and uncertainty) are at the heart of war by other means - and hybrid wars. Something Mr.Herman and I discussed this week: winning the peace - something most of our games do not cover (other than the "They make a desert and call it peace approach" of our friends the Roman vis a vis Carthage) . Mark has a new game coming out sooner than later called Churchill which begins in 1943 (when Doughan said most WWII ETO games are already decided – the Germans only trying to manage the date when the bunker will fall … maybe push it by a month or two). Mark’s game is only about that – winning the peace; the combat is highly abstracted (similar to how the other 7 M’s of waging war is usually abstracted in our wargames). Churchill focusses more on the other 7 M's of combat (messge, media, mercs, money, mayhem, Mi5/Mi6 and Metterich (in this case).
It will be interesting to see if other designers pick up on this – more war by other means, less emphasis on combat. I do think it is a way to make wargames more accessible and broaden the audience. Time will tell. Of course, I still love playing the pure combat beasts (very recent example: It Never Snows), but always would rather play a one part war by other means/one part combat (ex: Empires in Arms) beast. Many of Berg's designs come to mind. We'll continue to dive into this topic over the next few Guns, Dice, Butter episodes. Related, I would also recommend Hybrid Warfare (by Williamson Murray and Peter Manoor). I've read two sections of the book so far - one on Rome's conquest of Germania (which caused me to pick up an old S&T game by the same name) and one on the American Revolutionary War. Very interesting coverage of each topic and a great peak into the other components of conflict that should be reflected in our strategic level wargames. Currently, I'm working on getting GDB Episode XXI put together. Have the three segments sorted. Will preview the episode when I've recorded each segment. Shooting for mid May publish date. And, even have a great designer lined up for episode XXII. So much for taking a break.
Category:general
-- posted at: 12:33am CDT
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Wed, 16 April 2014
Welcome to Guns, Dice, Butter: Episode XX April 16, 2014 On this episode of GDB: 0:00 Episode Intro and Preview 0:13 Eklund: Conversation with Phil Eklund, designer of High Frontier, Pax Porfiriana , Greenland , Luftschiff (Zeppelins!) and 26 other games covering the human (and pre-human) experience. 1:22 War by Other Means: Panel discussion with Jim Doughan, Mark Herman and Brian Train regarding the other “7 M’s” of warcraft {besides the 3 traditional "M's" of combat - machetes (irregular), machine guns (conventional) and missles(strategic)} that support the BIG “M” (morale) in making and waging war: message (casus belli – manufacturing it and maintaining it) , media, money, mercenaries (mercs/brownshirts/proxies/little green men), mayhem (attacks on opponents fabric of society), Mi5/Mi6 (spycraft) and Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich (Clausewitz's “have a good pen” – diplomacy – internal/external). 2:12 Conversation with Brian Train, regarding his recent DTP design Ukrainian Crisis game and other bits and bobs 2:36 Wrap up: What’s on my wargaming plate (using wargames in school), Eklund’s “Nature bats last”, B.H.Liddell Hart’s “Lenin had a vision of fundamental truth when he said the soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy.”, shout-outs and what not. Guns, Dice, Butter available on iTunes, Boardgamegeek (guild 1293), Consimworld (Consim Café folder), the GDB website and elsewhere on the web. GDB has approximately 10k listeners and well over 40k downloads. Thank you for your continued support!
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Tue, 15 April 2014
Episode XX of Guns, Dice, Butter will be published this week. On Episode XX: 1) Conversation with Phil Eklund, designer of High Frontier, Pax Porfiriana, Lufschiff among many others. 2) Panel discussion: War by Other Means: Mark Herman, Brian Train and Jim Doughan 3) Conversation with Brian Train regarding his DTP game regarding the Ukrainian Crisis ...and more.
Category:Episode Preview
-- posted at: 10:30am CDT
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Wed, 9 April 2014
Passed the 40,000 download mark for Guns, Dice, Butter yesterday. Thank you for your strong support! Recorded and mixed half of episode XX yesterday - hope to have the other segment completed this weekend. If so, should be able to post the next episode in the next two weeks.
Category:general
-- posted at: 10:11am CDT
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Fri, 4 April 2014
Welcome to Episode XIX: APR 4, 2014 of Guns, Dice, Butter: a series of conversations with members of the wargaming tribe 0:00 Introduction: Episode Preview 0:05 Discussion with Ben Hull, designer of the incredible Musket & Pike Series. Additionally, we talk about his series Fields of Fire and his soon to be published operational series titled Won by the Sword 1:35 Discussion First Minnesota Historical Wargaming Society (BGG guild 875) sparkplugs Lt. Jason and Gordo. We discuss the club and expanding the hobby. 2:43 Wrap up: On our wargaming desk, shout outs and Guns, Dice, Butter news.
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Sat, 29 March 2014
Have a long conversation with Ben Hull of Musket & Pike fame recorded; just have to mix it. And, need to get one other shorter segment. Won't be too long (real life work permitting).
Category:general
-- posted at: 8:00am CDT
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Wed, 19 February 2014
Hope to publish a new episode soon; have a couple of great game designers lined up. Thoughts and prayers with friends and family in Ukraine. Related, I've been blogging on the situation in Ukraine on my Triumph of Chaos board (in the between the wars folder) on Consimworld.
Category:general
-- posted at: 2:38pm CDT
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Tue, 11 February 2014
My podcast hosting service provided a link for a survey of demographic stats related to GDB: http://survey.libsyn.com/gunsdicebutter Of course, if you are interested, complete. If not, no prob. I'll post the results when they are made available. Also, I assume it will generate an email list for the show, which I can send out updates/files/etc to listeners.
Category:Plumbing
-- posted at: 1:32pm CDT
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Wed, 15 January 2014
Checked out a few stats for downloads of Guns, Dice, Butter (now near 40k). Image here shows the number of downloads for each episode in the first three days of episode being posted. Looks like GDB continuing to build a following. Thank you for your continued support! I'll post a survey on BGG (Boardgamegeek.com) in a few days for listeners to complete.
Category:Plumbing
-- posted at: 5:35pm CDT
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Mon, 13 January 2014
Welcome to Episode XVIII: JAN 13, 2014 of Guns, Dice, Butter: a series of conversations with members of the wargaming tribe 0:00 Introduction: Episode Preview 0:05 Discussion with Harry Rowland, designer of Empires in Arms and World in Flames, grand poobah of Australian Design Group 1:20 Discussion with J.R.Tracy and Jim Doughan regarding games published in 2013, wargaming experiences and various multi-player wargames 2:28 Wrap up: On our wargaming desk, shout outs and Guns, Dice, Butter news.
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