| Chihuahuas on My Mind
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
August 2010
After designing hundreds of scenarios for our Panzer Grenadier game series, Infantry Attacks: The Chihuahua Incident had a very familiar feel in some ways, and very different in others.
It's been a decade since we launched a new game series: Rome at War, which debuted in 2000 with the first edition of Hannibal at Bay. In those days we did not have Daily Content, and our web presence could most charitably be described as "primitive," with product pages mostly consisting of the same text and graphics found on the back of the game boxes. We didn't even have a webstore.
Infantry Attacks can't really be described as totally new series, since it is heavily based on Panzer Grenadier and is meant to appeal to fans of the World War II version. But it does give us the opportunity to do at least a few of the marketing aspects we've talked about for the older series in terms of "if only we had the chance to do it over."
Even so, we don't have the total freedom to launch the series as we'd like. The idea to launch sister series to Panzer Grenadier is a fairly old one, but for a variety of reasons (some good, some not very good) we stalled and delayed doing so for much too long. Our marketing guru, Lys Fulda, was very keen for a sister series placed in a more recent era that could cover both the Vietnam War and the Arab-Israeli conflicts. I didn't really want to work on that for my own reasons, but I was very interested in taking the concept to the First World War and had intended to do so from the very earliest stages of work on Panzer Grenadier. But the marketing assessment from Lys came back as "lukewarm" and that was enough to keep it out of the main line of games.
That probably would have killed the series right there — I've learned the hard way to heed Lys' opinions, and she does not yield on game publishing decisions just to make the designer feel better about himself no matter how many years-long internet tantrums he throws. At the time, though, we had a program we called "Classic Wargames," under which we would put prospective game topics up for a "vote" of customers, who would pledge to pre-order the game when we declared it a "winner."
For marketing reasons, Classic Wargames needed to be games we wouldn't normally produce, either because they were very large or covered an unusual topic. These were for hard-core historical wargamers; we'd maintain our regular line of games as well without any "voting" procedure. To make the system work, the Classic Wargames wouldn't be available to our usual distribution chain. And since we'd be cutting them out of these products, the Classic selections needed to be games they wouldn't want to carry anyway.
That put $200 products like Second World War at Sea: Leyte Gulf and Alamein onto the list due to their sheer size. It put projects like Tiger of Malaya and Red Desert on there because they would never have gotten the Fulda "hot" label attached to them. And it put Infantry Attacks: Empires End on the list as well, for both size and second-tier topic.
As originally conceived, the game would cover the entire Eastern Front in 1914, with the German, Austro-Hungarian and Imperial Russian armies all present. It would be very large, with many pieces, mapboards and scenarios. Launching a series out of the Classic Wargames program seemed a little risky to me, but I decided to go forward with it and Lys had no objection.
Many times I toyed with the idea of adding another Infantry Attacks game to the regular product line. This would be a much smaller game, and would probably have been a $29.99 game focused on U.S. Marine Corps actions in 1918, titled Devil Dogs. I did the basic research and sketched out the game scenarios I wanted, but it never took flight — mostly because I already have too many games on my desk needing to be finished and published.
Once we canceled Classic Wargames, we were stuck with the $100 version of Infantry Attacks, and so we split it into two manageable pieces. We're well behind in production of boxed games, and adding another to the schedule is not in the cards right now. So to serve as in introductory module, we hit on the downloadable Chihuahua Incident. I wanted it to cover something completely different, that we would not be putting in a boxed game down the line. It shouldn't feel like we'd just chopped a piece out of another product. I think we managed that; we're not likely to return to the Mexican frontier any time soon.
We've already heard from some fans who wish it was a complete boxed product with die-cut counters, but that's not its purpose. We couldn't hope to sell a game based on Mexicans and Americans fighting it out in a handful of scenarios in the midst of the Chihuahuan desert. But it does serve nicely for a little free gift for our Gold Club members, our most fanatic fans who're also the most likely to recruit new players for the system.
So what does it have?
There are 165 playing pieces, including troops, weapons, leaders and markers. They come as .pdf files, and you'll need to cut them out and mount them if you want to try out the scenarios.
There's one map, a very large file. You can download it and print it out, unless you already own Panzer Grenadier: Road to Berlin. It's identical to Map #19 from that game, so there's no need to make another if you already have it on your game shelf.
Rules are the Pre-Release Edition, put together just for this game. They don't include rules sections for things that don't appear in The Chihuahua Incident, like mortars or infantry guns.
And then there are the scenarios. There's one historical scenario, based on the Battle of Carrizal. Neither side told a wholly believable tale about the encounter, and so the scenario uses what seem to be the largest possible force levels for each side. There are three more scenarios intended to display various aspects of the Infantry Attacks system. Titled Infantry Assault, Cavalry Battle and Counterattack, that's pretty much what each involves.
With our bread-and-butter series aging, we'll be launching one or two new ones in each of the next couple of years. While we'll be cutting back severely on the number of downloadable products we'll offer for sale, the preview download of a new series will be part of future plans if The Chihuahua Incident is well-received. Let us know how you like it.
This piece originally appeared in December
2009.
The Chihuahua Incident is FREE to Gold Club members. Click here to join today!
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