5 April 2024 ~
We’re joined this week by designer Darin Leviloff, who designed the first States of Siege game (Israeli Independence) and has since designed several more that have found new homes with other publishers.
You can always catch past episodes on the “podcast” tab of our site.
Ironically, the original game is the only of Darin’s current designs that isn’t back in print, although he does take a moment to explain why not. We also discuss Darin’s background in wargaming, how he stumbled into designing, and what’s on the drawing board.
You can read Brant’s Hapsburg Eclipse AAR here.
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Excellent and informative interview with Darin. Hosts were charming, informed, prepared and fun. Great job all round.
There is another option for re-releasing Israeli Independence — target the educational market, specifically, the Hebrew schools where it all started. These schools are always looking for educational products. Darin knows it works in that setting. I’ve asked teachers at Hebrew schools. Their response has been uniformly positive.
Build a prototype. Sell it into the market. Get pre-orders to guarantee your profit.
I would customize the package do you get multiple sets of components as a teaching package. I’d also ditch the counters and use wooden cubes fur the enemy fronts to cut unit costs and fatten margins.
No publisher will ever re-print this game for the regular commercial market. It was a miracle VPG picked it up when it did. Target the education market.
There was some discussion of playing the games in numeric order as the “historic game”. There has been some discussion of this on BGG. This approach results in very hard game.
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2758240/historical-setup-any-chance-to-win
It is also problematic if the Cheka Reorg resource comes into the game. Its use sees the Event Deck reshuffled and there goes your historic order.
The game is designed to be played in full revolutionary mode with the trigger events shuffling in the next set of Event cards.