| Away with the Red God
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2010
Over the past few years, I have come to a new appreciation of Brian Knipple as friend and spiritual adviser; I get plenty of business advice but he's made it his mission to remind me of the things that really matter. But I always knew that, despite his engineer's mind, he had a twisted sense of humor. And so he titled one of his games, "Red God of War."
 Red God of War is a "real wargame" — with hexes and counters and attack factors and defense factors and a combat results table. There's an old guard of wargamers who really like this type of game, but we took our focus off them many years ago. We've always wanted to serve this market in at least a limited capacity, however, because many of the same people also turn out to really like our naval games and Panzer Grenadier.
Anyway, Brian designed a game on the Soviet Operation Mars, a failed offensive that took place near Moscow just before the successful Stalingrad campaign. Lys Fulda, marketing goddess, insists that a good title equals strong sales, and results prove this to be true. The title should be short, easily pronounced, and recognizably reflect on the topic (in other words, not some lengthy quote from a poem or politician, or a chapter title out of a book). "Red God of War" is perfect in those respects, with a nod to the strong feelings of some for "real wargames."
 Not everyone has taken to the title; when we first moved into our Alabama warehouse last year, the pallet containing Red God of War was visible through our loading door, passed every day by dozens if not hundreds of people streaming into the world-famous Irondale Cafe [links to: http://www.irondalecafe.com] (the Fried Green Tomatoes place from the well-known chick flick). Sometimes they look in and ask questions.
"So that's a game you've titled ‘Red God of War'? You took the Lord's name in vain for a game title?"
"Well, it refers to the Roman god Mars."
"Are you a Christian?"
"I'm a Roman Catholic."
"Then son, I will pray for your soul."
 Red God of War has a better title but uses the same game system as Bitter Victory, Alsace '45 and Gazala 1942, and the out-of-print America Triumphant. Brian actually designed it before he did those, and it sat around untouched for a couple of years before I asked him to get it ready for production.
The developer for this one was wargame legend J.R. "Dick" Jarvinen, with Doug McNair serving as rules editor in his first assignment after returning to work here. They did a fine job, producing a very tight set of rules and meeting a very short deadline. Shannon Brown, then the staff artist here, did the map — using a wrinkled woolen blanket as the background texture. It's understated but contrasts with the playing pieces very nicely, and we liked it enough that it forms one of the rotating backgrounds of our website's front page.
 Shannon did the playing pieces as well, and they're a very nice set. Unfortunately they printed much darker than he intended, and we eventually had to issue a downloadable set of Soviet brigades for those who had a hard time picking out their little symbols.
Terry Moore Strickland crafted the box, and it's a wonderful design. It looks like an old book, wrapped with twine, and features a heart-rending photo of a little boy taking his father to war and the Red Army's official notice of the same man having been killed in action. I thought long and hard about not using them, but rationalized that no one else was going to know that the document and photo had any relation to one another.
It plays like the best sort of traditional wargame: Both sides have the opportunity to attack, there's a desperate struggle that may or may not be redeemed by the timely arrival of reinforcements. It's a very solid game design and good game; it was not a really good product choice.
 Sales figures were OK but not great, nothing on the order of our naval games or Panzer Grenadier titles. Games of this sort have an audience, but it's not an audience we've cultivated nearly enough. We can't quite stamp Panzer Grenadier on the side of a potato and sell thousands overnight, but the reality's not that far off. We market our games as series, and sell them as "the new Great War at Sea game" rather than "Pacific Crossroads." A stand-alone hex-and-counter game doesn't get that sort of push from its sisters.
And so, with supplies of Red God of War finally reaching their end, it's time to bid goodbye and sell off the remaining copies. From now until Aug. 11, the direct-order price drops from $29.99 to just $10. Yes, you still have to pay shipping for it (UPS does not care how much the game costs) but we do have Flat Rate Shipping and Buy Two, Get a Third Free is in force for the month of July.
After Aug. 11, we'll destroy any remaining copies. We probably won't have to; we didn't need to burn Alamein or Tiger of Malaya, which we sold off earlier this year. We will if necessary, to reinforce the point that there's no time to wait to get it later, and $10 is the lowest price it will receive.
Will we ever do real wargames again? We're committed to make two more from the old Classic Wargames program, and both are getting ready for production. We also have a fairly large array of them lined up for our new Games in a Book product line, which doesn't need the series push behind it (actually it does, but it gets a very similar effect as part of the book series). We're just not likely to do any more boxed games in this same format.
Get your copy of Red God of War while it's still available! |
