Take Aim Designs

News: third printing of solitiare Stalingrad: Advance to the Volga is being loaded and shipped. The container ship should arrive on the US west coast in about five to six weeks.

Praise for Berlin: The Fall of the Reich, 1945 over at Board Game Geek:

"The third installment in the series. I find it richer than the previous ones, because victory no longer depends on conquering almost the entire map, but on capturing two areas (the Chancellery and the Reichstag) and breaking German morale . . . . This, combined with the Stalin Approval gauge depleting too quickly, creates intense tension, forcing you to choose between taking risks and playing it safe."

"This is by in my opinion the best game in the 3 game series. Each game Stalingrad, Manila and now Berlin all are excellent however, each one has improved upon the others in subtle ways. This one I think may a little easier to win than Manila. Nevertheless, each of the games shine in their own unique way. The rules are extremely well written and the game can be played to finish in about 2 hours. I really appreciate all the charts being on the game board."

"Great new volume in this series, more variety in opposing forces is a big plus!"

Area Movement Games - Attempt at a Geneaology.

Group One: The Avalon Hill Games published between 1981 and 1991. The scale increased with each of the four games, which pleased some and bothered others. The final two games have the "Sunset die roll" mechanism which made them very tense to play because turn length became unpredictable.

Group Two: In the years after Avalon Hill ceased publishing a number of games more or less directly related to the four Avalon Hill games were published: Spearhead Games published games on Antietam and Gettysburg (the former was playtested by AH); Moments in History published a WWI/Cambrai game; and MMP published my Market-Garden game (which had been under contract with AH and is largely the same as Breakout: Normandy).

Group Three: All the other games I published with MMP, Against the Odds Magazine; Battles Magazine, and my own company Take Aim Designs between 2007 and 2017, all of which continued to use the Sundet die roll mechanism. Against the Odds also published Storm over Taierzhuang, Utmost Savagery (solitaire Peleliu), and Lilliburero, all area movement games.

Group Four: The "Storm Over . . . " games published by MMP which includes Stalingrad, Dien Bien Phu, and Jerusalem. As I recall all these games include cards, which differentiates them from the other groups.

Group Five: I replaced the Sunset die roll with the Momentum die roll for games on Chancellorsville, WW2 Arras, and the American reconquest of Corregidor. I had planned to continue designing more two-player games using this (imo better) mechanism but have been sidetracked by the next group . . .

Group Six: Influenced by Utmost Savagery, the adaptation of the area movement system to a solitaire format which has, to date, covered Stalingrad, Manila, Aachen, and Berlin. Stalingrad sold out its first print run in nine months, its second print run in eleven months, and is going to be reprinted for a third time in mid-2026. The other titles have sold nearly as well. Given that level of popularity I suspect I'll be designing in this group for quite some time.