Category Archives: Kickstarter

General Staff: Black Powder Battle Designer Bundle on Steam

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The General Staff: Black Powder Designer Bundle store on Steam. Click on image to go directly to the Steam store.

I am very pleased to announce that the Steam store for General Staff: Black Powder Battle Designer Bundle is now up and active. More importantly, if you are an early backer, you should have received your Steam key to download it by now. If you are an early backer and have not received an email with your Steam key, please contact me directly.

Some important things to know:

The Battle Designer Bundle does not include the actual game! The game is a different install package and, hopefully, will be in beta in the next month or two. If you are an early backer and received a Steam key for the Battle Designer Bundle you will also receive a second Steam key, when available, for the actual game and you will be welcome to participate in beta testing, too.

The Battle Designer Bundle includes everything you need to create your own armies, maps and scenarios for use in the actual game. The Battle Designer Bundle includes the Army Editor, the Map Editor and the Scenario Editor. The Map Editor supports a digitizing tablet (if you’re lucky enough to have one and the talent to use one, I don’t).

I need your suggestions for a battle that I can use to create video tutorials for the Army, Map and Scenario Editors. If you have suggestions, please contact me directly. However, it’s important to remember that I need a good Order of Battle (OOB) table that includes unit strengths. I also need a good quality map that is at least 1155 x 805 pixels (resolution). If it’s an old battle map, I need somebody to take the time to remove the units from the map. For example, here’s the original map of Antietam from the Library of Congress:

Map of the battle of Antietam from the Library of Congress. Willcox, William H. Map of the battlefield of Antietam. [Philada., Lith. of P. S. Duval & Son, 1862] Map. Click to enlarge.

And here it is after I cleaned it up, removed the units and rotated it 90 degrees:

The Antietam map after I removed all the units, cleaned it up, lightened it and rotated it 90 degrees. Click to enlarge.

I’m looking forward to receiving your scenario suggestions and creating the video tutorials. The tutorials will be posted here and on our YouTube channel.

 

The Coffee Mugs Have Arrived!

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Boxes of the General Staff coffee mugs with two different Kriegsspiel engravings have just arrived! We still need to run out and get bubble wrap and packaging materials but we should begin shipping these beauties out early next week (we just got hit with another blizzard).

General Staff coffee mugs with 19th century Kriegsspiel engravings! Click to enlarge.

A big thank-you to Kelly who dealt with the suppliers, shipping and everything!

How can anybody ever think of playing a wargame without one of these beauties to hold your beverage of choice?

325%!

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The Kickstarter campaign is over and we’re still in shock. Wow! I can’t thank you, the backers, enough! Literally, I couldn’t have done it without you. General Staff was 325% funded which is a wonderful vote of confidence. Again, thank you very much.

So, what’s going to happen next?

We’re going to write a one-click installation package for the Army Editor and the Scenario Editor.

We’re going to make a major change in the Map Editor so it will run on lower resolution (usually older laptops) monitors. And then write an installation package for it, too.

We are going to have to make some changes to the various data files, too. Once this is done we’ll send out an email with the URL to start downloading and installing these three utility programs.

I have to order a whole lot of coffee mugs printed with the logo and a couple of great 19th century Kriegsspiel engravings.

And then we have to mail out a whole lot of coffee mugs.

I anticipate that those who are interested can start beta testing the utility programs (Army Editor, Map Editor and Scenario Editor) in February. With any luck beta testing the actual General Staff game will begin in March.

Again, thank you so very much,

– Ezra

 

General Staff Kickstarter is 200% Funded!

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Thank you so much for your support of our Kickstarter campaign. We just went over $10,000 and that means that we have reached 200% of our funding goal! We also hit our second Stretch Goal; the AI Adjutant:

Click on “Ask the Adjutant” to get the AI’s take on your situation. Links to stable web resources. “Your line is at risk of envelopment. This did not turn out well for Scipio Africanus at Cannae.” Optional graphic display of calculations, geometry, hierarchical classification system, etc. This was suggested by Rob Hansen, an old friend from grad school – and I think this is brilliant.

Do you have a suggestion for our next Stretch Funding goal at $12,500? Please write to me if you have comments or suggestions.

There are still 20 days left in the Kickstarter campaign.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1366362068/general-staff-game-of-military-tactics-and-wargami/description