After having met Raymond Weiss in person a few years ago at WBC and after having done a few initial interviews with him for the blog (Rostov ’41: Fritz on the Don from Multi-Man Publishing, Imperial Bayonets: Liberty for Lombardy 1859, Destroy All Monsters Operational Series (DAMOS) and most recently 2022: Ukraine from CSL), we have been impressed with his success to date with his new publishing company Conflict Simulations Limited and his very interesting design approach. Recently we reached out to him to get a look inside his new The Great Northern War game that is currently for sale on their website.

Grant: What is your new game The Great Northern War about?

Ray: The Great Northern War covers the conflict between Sweden and a coalition between Russia, Denmark, Poland and Saxony in the early 18th century. The conflict sparked once Charles XII of Sweden ascended to the throne – the fact that he was only 11 years of age inspired Sweden’s competitors in the Baltic (Sweden was much larger back then) to attempt to take back control of much of Pomerania, one of the most important trade hubs in the region. This proved, at least initially, to be a mistake as Charles proved to be extremely competent and quickly moved to get Denmark to surrender by decisively using the Swedish Navy to lay siege to Copenhagen. 

Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?

Ray: There are few other games on the subject that are approachable and easy to play – so I wanted to create something that would be able to introduce this conflict to others with a low rules overhead. Also creating this game was an adventure as I took the approach to utilize cards, wooden pieces and tiddlywinks. I really wanted to cover the topic and do something different.

Grant: What is your design goal with the game?

Ray: Recently I have been inspired to try and create games that aren’t strictly hex and counter simulations – so this was an attempt in doing that on top of trying to create a game which would be approachable for non-wargamers, as well as for fans of trick taking card games. 

Grant: What sources did you consult to get the historical details correct? What one must read source would you recommend?

Ray: The source I drew the most from was an old PC AGEOD game of the same name as well as the John Tiller game on the conflict as they often include extensive OOB information with and inside their products – other than that in my opinion the best English source on the conflict is Great Northern War Compendium by Stephen Kling, Jr – both are excellent sources on the conflict. 

Grant: What other designs influenced your approach to this subject?

Ray: Fred Serval’s A Very Civil Whist left a huge impression on me and fans of that game will probably recognize a few similarities between the two. Another game which inspired me to design this was the Histogame release Maria, however that was before I owned a copy of the game and was mostly intrigued by how the map looked and how the game looked while being played. Some mechanics inspired from Mark McLaughlin’s (forgetting the developers name) Card Conquest Series are included, such as combat procedures, deckbuilding incentives and hand size as a player resource. 

Grant: What does the phrase strategic hybrid card/wargame say about the game?

Ray: The phrase is meant to reflect that players must utilize several separate and distinct mechanics in order to basically have things go smoothly. Players playing the game like a strict wargame will probably be frustrated, as will those playing it just for trick-taking. 

Grant: What type of play experience does the game create?

Ray: Playtesters uniformly reported tense and anxious turns where players had to often prioritize what actions they could complete in a turn, there is a fair bit of uncertainty in that almost all game actions can be opposed by the other player in some way. The game has a distinctly tight and competitive flavor wherein either side can win through careful resource management and clever card play.

Grant: What is the anatomy of the cards used in the game?

Ray: The game utilizes a normal deck of cards, but there are namely 2 types of cards in the game. Normal cards in a player’s hand range from 2-10, and then all the face cards and jokers are Decision Cards, which can be bought by either player and then be used to break rules within the framework of the game, and/or get modifiers for manipulating hand size, movement or combat. Decision cards are open to each player and can be bought at any time with some exceptions for various cards which require other things to take place on the map first, such as controlling an objective.

Grant: What are the purposes of the cards suits?

Ray: The main driving mechanic of the game involves trick-taking, so a vale/suit which a player leads with whenever taking an action is more of a question of tactics. Additionally a “trump-suit” is randomly determined each round which makes every turn truly unique. 

Grant: What role do the Diplomatic Appeals and Anti-Swedish Track play in the game?

Ray: Instead of leading a trick to take a Basic Action, players can discard one of the cards in their hand with the same suit on the track and with an equal or higher value in order to move their pawn towards the next box on the right on the track. As it progresses, players gain access to more powerful hand cards (the 10 cards do not start in players hands, but are earned during play), it can open up the usage of various Decision Cards and it can trigger foreign intervention in the case of the Ottoman Empire. 

Grant: What area does the board cover?

Ray: The entire theater of war is covered, Denmark, Germany, all of modern day Ukraine and much of European Russia. The map is navigated through point to point movement. 

Grant: Who is the artist? How has their work affected the feel and experience of the game?

Ray: Ilya Kudriashov did the art for the game, who apart from living in the region was extremely familiar with the period and proved helpful in terms of figuring out what the Ottoman order of battle would have been. 

Grant: How does combat work in the design?

Ray: Combat is similar to Mark McLaughlin’s Hitler’s War from GMT Games and the old card game war, in that player’s simultaneously choose and reveal a card from their hand to each other, they then roll 2d6 applying relevant modifiers – subtracting the defender’s result from the attackers. The differential in the combat result will determine both the effect of combat and the length of any retreat if necessary. 

Grant: What different units do players have access to?

Ray: All units are represented as leaders with thick 15mm wooden discs. Supply depots are depicted with thinner discs, pawns are used for tracks and counters are used for control markers. 

Grant: How do sieges work?

Ray: There is a siege procedure wherein a Leaders Command Value as well as the presence of other leaders comes into play. Players must roll equal to or under the modified Command Value with a d6, just eliminating units from an area is not enough to control an objective, it must be sieged. 

Grant: What are the purpose of Leaders?

Ray: Leaders are essentially abstractions of the command and control capacity of the formation, manpower is more or less abstracted by card play related to combat and hand-size. 

Grant: How is victory achieved?

Ray: There are several ways to win – but the most easily accessible is to force an automatic victory by reducing your opponent’s hand size to 0, absent that outcome, victory is judged at the end of 6 turns through the control of objectives, in the event of a tie there are numerous tie-breakers with the last tiebreaker being the player who last won a trick. 

Grant: What are some general strategies for each side?

Ray: Tactics used in most trick taking, deception and point to point wargames will translate to The Great Northern War. For example, there is a Planning Trick Phase where players have a small opportunity to improve their hand of cards before the meat of a turn. Having a Trump Suit introduces numerous considerations when it comes to taking actions during a turn. Overall, a sandbox approach is taken in order to give the players a level of freedom and expression in how they choose to play the game.

Grant: What do you feel the game design excels at?

Ray: This is kind of a fraught question for me to answer as the designer – but I’ll go as far as to say that in testing, the game did really well with non-wargamers, and many testers enjoyed playing the game with their non-wargamer friends as a way to sort of ease them into more complex wargaming. It uses a number of modern and streamlined mechanics that focus on player engagement with little to no downtime. 

Grant: What are your future plans for the system?

Ray: As of now I don’t have any, however depending on how well the game does that could change – right now I’m focused on finishing the pre-orders.

Grant: What other designs are you currently working on?

Ray: DAMOS North Africa takes up the majority of my time but other than that, the next entry in the Imperial Bayonets Series on Solferino is coming up next followed by Earth As Their Memorial, a game on the Peloponnesian War. With all of that said, I constantly come up with random ideas that sometimes will turn into a game if decent enough, as was the case with Prigozhin’s March of Justice. I’ve been recently fascinated by political intrigue during the French Second Empire, the German Peasants War of 1525, John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry and Phillip II of Macedon have all sparked my interest lately and games on any of those subjects or others can always randomly show up sometimes. 

Thanks for the opportunity to talk about the game Grant! If I can answer any one’s questions please go ahead and ask.

If you are interested in The Great Northern War, you can order a copy for $59.99 from the Conflict Simulations Limited website at the following link: https://www.consimsltd.com/products/the-great-northern-war-pre-order

-Grant