July 2025 Monthly Update from GMT Games – A Few New Non-Traditional Games and Reprints, Info about the Final Issue of C3i Magazine and Lots of Other Good Info!
Another month in the books and another Monthly Update Email from GMT Games. Always the highlight of my week and I always look forward to it hitting my inbox. This month, we got a lot of great information and several new games that are a bit out of the ordinary for GMT. I think that different is good and I am very much looking forward to learning more about these offerings.
There were 2 new P500 games offered this month including ARC – The Underworld, a small-unit tactical combat game set in an ahistorical Earth setting, and How the West Was Won, an economic simulation game set in the growing west of 1845-1890, both non-traditional games but interesting nonetheless, and there were 2 reprints offered in Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa 2nd Printing and Wargames According to Mark 2nd Printing.
And that wasn’t all though as there was plenty of other information shared including updates on GMT One products, development updates, shipping updates, upcoming future P500 additions and the usual gorgeous art samples!
First off though, Gene made an announcement about the upcoming C3i Magazine Nr. 38 from RBM Studio. As you know, the founder of the magazine Rodger B. MacGowan passed a few months ago and there was uncertainty about the status of RBM Studio and the issue that had been in the works for the past 8 months or so. C3i Magazine is such as treasure trove of wargaming goodness and I had been hopeful that it would still continue. Here are Gene’s words on the matter:
I’m going to begin this month’s newsletter not with a GMT-specific item but rather with one that honors and commemorates our late colleague and friend, hobby legend Rodger B. MacGowan. With the help of Mark Herman and several other friends of Rodger, his son Steven has compiled and edited the content of Rodger’s last magazine issue, the final chapter of a hobby legend— C3i Magazine Issue Nr. 38. This must-have issue is set to ship in August—a “summer blockbuster” for our hobby. It will be a limited print, collector’s edition sendoff—“Once they’re gone, they’re gone” one-time-only printing of this Commemorative Issue, so I want to put this news up front in today’s newsletter so you can all get your orders into RBM Studio while copies last. This issue is packed with great content—three games, numerous insightful articles, and many tributes to our friend and hobby luminary from those of us who were privileged to know and work beside him. Below are some details of the issue from our friends at C3i Magazine.
C3i Nr 38: Celebrating the Legacy of Rodger B. MacGowan. Rodger B. MacGowan’s final issue of C3i Magazine is now headed to the printer! This issue is packed with three full games, including Korea: The Fight Across the 38th by Trevor Bender, The Defense: The Siege of Cádiz (solitaire) by Daniel Hernández Iniesta, and Battle for Moscow by Frank Chadwick.
Feature Articles in this issue: Mark Herman’s Clio’s Corner; I, Designer on I, Napoleon by Ted Raicer, Prop Round on Coast Watchers by Volko Ruhnke, Jason Matthews on the Road to Warsaw, an interview with Gina Willis, and more.
C3i Nr38 also includes new expansion cards for Empire of the Sun December Variants and I, Napoleon Narrative Cards, as well as closing tributes and remembrances of Rodger’s 50-year legacy in the hobby. This issue contains Rodger’s Last Creations: His final layouts, graphics, and cover art. Order now and own a piece of wargaming history alongside his autobiography, The Art of Rodger B. MacGowan.
We have been big fans of RBM Studio and C3i Magazine over the years and very much look forward to getting our hands on this issue. We have done several interviews about the games appearing in the magazine including the following:
And the following video interview with Trevor Bender while attending SDHistCon last fall:
Operations Update – and Charge and Ship Schedule. GMT has made a ton of progress on getting their direct-from-the-printer shipping operations set up for the majority of their international customers. This had to be delayed for the first charge/ship date, but the good news is all of the games are in the warehouse now and will be able to be charged for both US and International customers on the same day, which is next Wednesday, July 30th. US orders will start shipping within a few days after the charge. International shipments will begin roughly 10-14 days after the charge.
Gene then shared the following further information about this process:
Here are some important details about modifications to our website and shipping operations for our international customers that we are implementing for this new direct-ship process. Please read this carefully (and check out the new Shipping Tables on our website for exact pricing details).
– Website Process Change. Beginning with this charge next Wednesday, our P500 pricing will only be good until a couple of days after we charge the games. So next week, after our Wednesday charge is complete, we will wait a couple days (to allow people whose cards were declined to use our secure online process to update and charge them) and then sometime late Friday or early Saturday, all six games will revert to retail pricing. ALSO, that change to retail pricing is the cutoff timing for games to be shipped direct from the printer. Any international orders for these six items that come in after we change the pricing from P500 pricing to retail pricing will be fulfilled from the US warehouse using the older shipping tables. This is because we have to send the ship lists from the charge ONE TIME to our international fulfillment partners as one group, and we can’t send them extra orders piecemeal later. So, PLEASE, if you want new games at the best prices, make your orders for these games as soon as possible but definitely before we change the price a couple days after we charge next Wednesday. And please make sure your Credit Card on file is up to date.
– We will ship MOST, but NOT ALL of our international customer P500 orders direct from the printer, without the games having to go through our US warehouse and then back overseas. However, for some countries, we either do not have cost-effective and reliable international freight handlers from the printer, or in the case of Europe, we do not have non-EU direct-from-the printer freight providers at this time. So a small percentage of our international orders will still go through our offices in Hanford, as they always have. If you have your games shipped to an address in one of the countries on this list, your games will continue to ship through the US—at the same shipping rates we’ve had previously this year:
Countries shipping only through the US at this time: Bahrain, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Iceland, Israel, Kuwait, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates.
Note that we will NOT charge US tariffs on orders sent to the above “shipping only through the US” countries. It is not our international customers’ fault that we don’t have direct shipping options available in those countries, so we are shouldering those tariff costs.
– On our Shipping Table, there are new columns for NEW Friendly P500-Only shipping for Australia/New Zealand, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Asia/Pacific Rim, and you will see these new rates pop up in your shipping options when you order. Except for Canada (where we now charge Canadian sales tax separately on our website), all of these new “Friendly” shipments include pre-paid VAT/Taxes.
Note that each of these new rates is less expensive by 10-50% (at least for about 1-3 games or up to about 18 lbs, which is generally where the most savings is garnered) compared to our previous shipping costs due to shipping direct from the printer. Some countries, like Japan, show the highest savings due to their proximity to the printers in China. The others show smaller discounts compared to old rates, but all are cheaper due to not having to pass through the US before shipping back out to another country. And ALL of these shipments will avoid the US Tariff surcharge.
Note that these new shipping columns/rates are for international P500 orders ONLY, except the countries listed above that are shipped only from the US. Any in-stock orders will still use the older shipping tables because we don’t have any bulk overseas warehousing of our existing inventory. The vast majority of our stock is in our Hanford warehouse, and we don’t at this time have any way to fulfill international in-stock orders from anywhere else. We don’t foresee this changing anytime soon, as setting up a duplicate GMT warehouse operation overseas is a prohibitively expensive undertaking. So if you want our six new games at the best prices, get them BEFORE we change the P500 pricing late next week. All direct orders after the price changes will be at retail price and fulfilled from the US, not direct from China.
As you might know, a few weeks ago, the 2024 Charles S. Roberts Award Winners were announced by their board and there were multiple GMT games on that list. If you are interested, I also wrote a fully summary of these awards and provided my thoughts on the choices on the blog and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2025/06/26/2024-charles-s-roberts-award-winners-announced/
2024 Charles S. Roberts Award-Winners. GMT games or designers won 12 different CSR awards this year, one of our best showings ever! Congratulations to all the designers, developers, testers, artists, and marketing and support teams for the excellent GMT games listed below. And here’s are a few special shout outs to designers. First to Ted Raicer, whose I, Napoleon captured two awards for best Napoleonic Game and Best Solitaire or Cooperative game. Great job, Ted! Mark Herman also won two awards for his Rebel Fury – Best American Civil War Game and the prestigious James F. Dunnigan Award for Playability and Design. Next, to designer Carlos Diaz Narvaez, whose Tanto Montadesign garnered him the coveted Chad Jensen Memorial Breakthrough Designer Award as well as the award for Best Medieval Game. Awesome first GMT title, Carlos. Here’s to many more! And the biggest winners in this year’s awards were designers James M. Day and Fernando Sola Ramos, as their Panzer: North Africa walked away with THREE “Charlies,” including GAME OF THE YEAR! Congratulations, Jim and Fernando! And Congrats to all of the winners and nominees for this year’s awards! Here’s a list of the GMT winners, with links to their game pages on our website:
Charles S. Roberts Awards for games Released in 2024
Best Napoleonic Game:I, Napoleon. Designed by Ted Raicer, published by GMT Games.
Best American Civil War Game: Rebel Fury. Designed by Mark Herman, published by GMT Games.
Best World War II Game: Panzer North Africa. Designed by James M. Day and Fernando Sola Ramos, published by GMT Games.
Best Tactical Game: Panzer North Africa. Designed by James M. Day and Fernando Sola Ramos, published by GMT Games.
Best New Edition of a Previously Published Game: France ’40: Second Edition. Designed by Mark Simonitch, published by GMT Games.
Best Political, Social, or Economic Game: Red Dust Rebellion. Designed by Jarrod Carmichael, published by GMT Games.
Best Solitaire or Cooperative Game: I, Napoleon. Designed by Ted Raicer, published by GMT Games.
Best Hypothetical Game: Next War: Iran. Designed by Mitchell Land, published by GMT Games.
The James F. Dunnigan Award for Playability and Design: Mark Herman (Rebel Fury)
The Chad Jensen Memorial Breakthrough Designer Award: Carlos Diaz Narvaez, for Tanto Monta.
The Charles S. Roberts Game of the Year: Panzer North Africa. Designed by James M. Day and Fernando Sola Ramos.
I want to offer my heart felt congratulations to both GMT Games and their designers who worked so hard to put out such great games! All of these designs were very deserving of the awards garnered and I look forward to the future to see what great games are upcoming! Also, all in all, I think that this year’s CSR Awards were the best in the past few years! This is somewhat of an impossible task and I think that they have gone about it with grace and form and have really chosen some fantastic games and folks who are deserving of recognition. Congratulations to the Board and to Gary Mengle for his leadership in this effort!
There also is a new product being offered by GMT in partnership with Eric Salyers and GripMat to help with keeping your ongoing games organized and neat and tidy as you play. Here is the information:
Get a Grip! A GripMat that is. Please fill out survey form linked below.
We have partnered with Eric Salyers and his team at GripMat to create playmats for our games. If you’ve ever been frustrated with having your terrain tiles shift while playing a game, from having cards slip around on the table as you place pieces on them, or from pieces moving when someone adds more pieces to a space, these mats are for you!
Printed on one side with rubber on the bottom and a patented grippy coating on the play surface, these mats hold your pieces in place. They are also available two-sided, and without the grippy coating if that is your preference.
Eric says:
We love board games. We have been gamers for decades now and created GripMats to address a need in locking down tiles, hexes, miniatures, and components to remove the frustration of so many of us. Our philosophy is one of toy makers, we spread the joy of our hobby and make mats that are not just beautiful; but functional as well. Having made mats for over 10 years now, we have tons of in-stock options for you to choose from to support the games you love – including soon: GMT Games. GMT makes fun, thoughtful, and thematic games, we thought we could lend a hand in making the gameplay more enjoyable for their fans. We hope to support old games, and new releases alike. Let us know what we can make for you!
We are looking to expand the new line of GMT Games GripMat game boards. If you are interested (or even just thinking about being interested) in getting your favorite games on playmats, please follow the link provided and complete the quick one-page survey and tell us what you would like. Thanks for you help with this exciting new product!
I always like to highlight this section of the Update as I know that many of you out there love to do playtesting. I want to let you know that we as the players of these games really do appreciate your efforts and would encourage you to do more. So sign up for those games that you might be interested in helping along in the development process.
On an ongoing basis, we’ll use this section to let you know which of our design teams currently need extra testers. If you are interested in helping out, please contact the team members for the game you are interested in at the links below. We greatly appreciate you helping us test our games and make them better! Thank you!
I, Napoleon: The Limits of Glory: We plan to begin playtesting in August using Tabletop Simulator. If you’re interested in participating, please visit our sign-up page.
Now onto the main event with the P500 offerings!
New P500’s
As mentioned above, there were 2 new P500 games offered this month including ARC – The Underworld, a small-unit tactical combat game set in an ahistorical Earth setting, and How the West Was Won, an economic simulation game set in the growing west of 1845-1890 and there were 2 reprints offered in Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa 2nd Printing and Wargames According to Mark 2nd Printing.
ARC – The Underworld
I am all for a new Sci-Fi focused game. There are not enough of them in my mind. I do love the Sci-Fi genre and have really very much enjoyed many of the games from GMT including Space Empires 4X and Talon. But a tactical level squad based game in the Sci-Fi space seems very interesting and I am very much excited about this new offering on the P500 called ARC – The Underworld.
From the game page, we read the following:
This is not the early 1930’s Untouchables vs. Chicago’s South Side Gang, but a squad-level, tactical game of Special Ops forces combatting an ancient race that clandestinely thrived underground, undetected…until now.
After erupting from the surface of a distant planet, one small fragment of rock orbited the Sun for 150 million years before colliding with the Earth eons ago. The alien organisms in the rock made a home on their new planet, evolving deep beneath the Earth’s surface and following a very different trajectory than the surface dwellers. After a catastrophic underground event destroyed their access to their main source elements, failing resources have forced them to venture openly to the surface.
Recently, a series of unexplained deaths and abductions, coupled with the total loss of communications from the small rural town of Crawford, prompted the ultra-secret Alien Response Command (ARC) to deploy an ARC-Light team to investigate immediately and, if necessary, control and contain the situation.
In the aftermath of the 1947 UFO Incidents at Roswell, New Mexico, and Maury Island, Washington, ARC was created as the covert component of the U.S. Air Force’s Project Sign. Followed by Project Grudge and the more well-known Project Blue Book, ARC continued as part of the Air Force until 1969, when the official programs were supposedly terminated.
As a quasi-independent force, answerable to only the highest levels of government, ARC operators are trained in black ops, concealment, containment, and unconventional warfare. Like the CIA’s Special Activities Center (SAC) Ground Branch, ARC Light and Heavy Teams are composed of Tier 1 operators drawn from various USSOCOM units, such as 1st SFOD-D (Delta, also known as the Unit) and DEVGRU (formerly known as SEAL Team Six). Within JSOC, these two units are commonly known as Task Force Green and Task Force Blue, respectively. True to their unique world, ARC operators are identified as Task Force Black in keeping with their unit motto, tenebris manet – Darkness Awaits.
They are experts in independent operations, small-unit tactics, close-quarters battle (CQB), and highly sophisticated man-portable weapon systems. Their ultra-quiet UH-60RK Blackhawk and MH-47G Chinook helicopters let them slip under the darkness, evaluating and responding to everything encountered.
Nearing Crawford, they discover a town that seems devoid of human presence. Instead, they find what initially appears to be “Off-Worlders” armed with simple weapons (knives, blades, and bows). However, it is quickly determined that they are dealing with a highly evolved society, a race of terrestrial aliens who call themselves the Rezex.
I know that this information is just a lot of backstory and narrative but I thought that it was important to share it. I will be honest. This game is a bit hard to get a read on from the information presented but here are the vital statistics about the game play that were shared:
ARC – The Underworld presents a unique gaming experience that combines the small-unit combat of tactical games:
Utilizes character blocks w/labels and counters
Card Assist gameplay with Action and Character cards
Two fully asymmetrical forces with different weapons, tactics, and strategies
Dynamic play with excellent replay value: 13 scenarios, playable individually or as a serial campaign game
Maps representing three distinctly different play areas with street level (the town of Crawford), sub-level 1 (the town’s sewers), and sub-level 2 (the Rezex’s lair)
Active Terrain
Action cards include unique Combat, Defense, Move, and Force types
Utilizes a polyhedral dice-comparison system to resolve combat and game activities
Here is a look at the picture of the board which definitely reinforces the tactical nature of the game and looks pretty good as well, even for a prototype.
I want to learn more about this game. I just don’t know that I know what it really is form this entry. I will plan to reach out to the designer Jim Day to get some more information.
The next offering on P500 doesn’t appear to be a wargame at all but is more an economic simulation game focused on building a profitable business in the West. And I am fine with that as the topic is intriguing and is definitely something different that I can get behind. The game is called How the West Was Won and is designed by veteran Ben Knight.
From the game page, we read the following:
The complex and rich history of the American West is often explored by writers and filmmakers. From the dime novel Westerns to the latest Spur Award winners, from the silent black-and-white one-reels to the recent mini-series sagas, there seems to be no end to stories set in the West. And that’s just how it’s depicted in fiction. The reason Western stories have always flourished is because the actual history provides such fertile ground from which fictional stories can grow. The West invited people from all over the world to come and reach for the stars, and it rewarded anyone who succeeded on that path.
How the West Was Won puts players into several businesses that were typically present in the American West during the years 1845-1890. You are all young entrepreneurs competing in an economy created to exploit seven different markets. Your goal is to become the richest person in town, and you accomplish this by competing with other players for the local resources and by hiring workers to perform actions that hinder competitors or contribute toward your own wealth. The game’s theme makes it easy to recruit new players, and the short set of rules makes it quick to learn and teach.
Number of Players: The game supports 1 to 4 players but plays best with 3 or 4 because the decisions made by players generate the most interactions and amusement.
Playing Time: Typical playing time is 90 minutes, and the game lasts 3 turns.
How It Plays: Gameplay involves a mix of worker placement and card-driven action. Each player starts with a boss and several workers. You place your workers into jobs of your choosing that are spread across seven separate “markets”: agriculture, freight, gold, wildlife, tribes, whiskey, and law. Each market has two job types, and those job types compete for the same market cards. For example, saloon keepers and temperance leaders compete for the whiskey cards, and farmers and ranchers compete for the agriculture cards. Within each of the 14 job types, workers line up in a queue, with the first worker in line getting activated before the next worker in line.
Every player also receives a hand of market cards each game turn. The market cards activate the workers, one card-play at a time. Everyone’s cards must be played, but there are fewer cards in hand than there are workers in jobs, so not every worker will be activated. The person who plays a card decides which side of the market to activate (for example, farming or ranching). Jockeying for a better position in a job queue increases a worker’s chance of activation when that side of the market is chosen. Furthermore, the cards in your hand may or may not include the markets where you have workers, so you must depend on cards other players play—and when—just as they may benefit from cards you must play.
The sequence of card plays combined with the arrangement of workers in each job line determines who gathers resources or earns money. There are five types of goods in the economy: food, horses, hides, tools, and wood. The more items you gather of a given commodity, the higher price-per-item you get when you sell that good. But diversifying your business across multiple job types improves your end game score. Furthermore, you might use some goods as capital investment when you hire new workers, else you must pay the maximum cost for that investment.
I am very much interested in this concept and how it will play out. It seems pretty straightforward and I look forward to learning more about the game as it develops. I think that my gaming group would enjoy this one!
Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa 2nd Printing
We all love Twilight Struggle….and if you say you don’t, you really do but just want to be different or are a contrarian! The game is phenomenal and has done very well for GMT Games with 8 Printings as well as the Turn Zero Expansion and now a series of smaller geographically focused spin off games starting with Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa. Twilight Struggle: Red Sea deals with just two regions located in the Horn of Africa including Africa and the Middle East. The game uses the familiar Twilight Struggle formula of Cards with both Events and Operations Points that can be used by players to perform Coups, do Realignment Rolls or place Influence in an effort to gain control of the most Countries in the Regions to score Victory Points and win the game. The game is fast, furious and only lasts 2 hands of cards (unless you choose to play the special 3 Turn variant) so there isn’t a lot of time to mess around and players must be focused on what they are trying to accomplish. The best thing about the game is that it plays in 45 minutes as compared to 3-4 hours for Twilight Struggle.
From the game page, we read the following:
Twilight Struggle: Red Sea – Conflict in the Horn of Africa is a two-player, stand-alone, card-driven game that builds on the award-winning Twilight Struggle. The year is 1974, and the Soviet Union and the United States have been locked in a life-or-death struggle across the globe. As so often happened during the Cold War, a relatively obscure region of the world suddenly took center stage. Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, a bedrock U.S. ally in Africa, had grown old and increasingly dictatorial. In 1974, a group of young Marxist officers staged a coup and took hold of the the reins of power. This revolutionary leadership sparked a chain of events that upset the regional balance of power and unleashed all the familiar elements of Cold War competition in the Horn of Africa.
Twilight Struggle: Red Sea asks players to once more answer the summons of the trumpets and bear the burden of a twilight struggle, this time centered around East Africa, the Arabian Gulf, and the vital sea lanes stretching between them. Twilight Struggle: Red Sea is an addition to GMT’s Lunchtime Series and packs deep decision-making into a time frame that allows players to get in a quick game or explore different strategies several times in one session. With a more limited scope and much shorter playtime, Twilight Struggle: Red Sea is the perfect way to introduce new players to the Twilight Struggle system. And yet, this game maintains all the tension, decision making, and theme of the original classic.
As an added bonus for a longer game, cards from Twilight Struggle can be integrated in TS: Red Sea and players can add new decisions and Cold War events to their games of Twilight Struggle by incorporating cards from TS: Red Sea.
I have written a series of Action Point posts on the game describing different aspects and how the game differs from its predecessor and you can read those at the following links:
One final note about this 2nd Printing edition. GMT One has updated the Solitaire Suitability rating for this game to a 9. The game will ship with full solitaire playability in the form of a solo bot created by Jason Carr.
I know that Mark Herman is a very talented designer and has a great ability to communicate in writing his thoughts and ideas about wargaming. He has written dozens of articles for wargaming publications including C3i Magazine and these are also very interesting and helpful. So it is not really all that surprising that Mark wrote a full book and it was offered on P500 last year. The book is called Wargames According to Mark and in my humble opinion is a must read! They are now doing a 2nd Printing of the book as it is sold out so now is your chance.
From the P500 page, we read the following:
Mark Herman’s book is back on our P500 list now for a 2nd Printing! As many of you know, Mark Herman is a giant in the wargaming hobby. Over his long and distinguished career as a game designer, Mark designed signature games for SPI, Victory Games, and with us here at GMT. Mark learned his craft beside Jim Dunnigan and so many talented designers at SPI before later running the company that created so many of my favorite games ever, Victory Games.
Beginning in 1991, he brought his design talents to GMT, often paired with his dear friend, Richard Berg. For over 30 years now of working with our teams, Mark has continually pushed the creative envelope in the wargame and strategy game spaces to create a succession of fun, ground-breaking, and award-winning designs like For the People, The Great Battles of Alexander and SPQR (and the entire Great Battles of HistorySeries), Empire of the Sun, Churchill, and Fire in the Lake (with Volko).
Mark is so much more than a designer to me. He is my friend. And he’s someone who has been hugely influential to me in the learning and growing process of running a wargame company over these 34 years. Often, even today, when I have a difficult decision to make, I’ll give Mark a call and ask for his counsel. His sage advice is always more than worth my time.
All that to say this: when someone as talented, experienced, and accomplished in our industry as Mark Herman writes a book about game design that tells stories about his experiences over a 45+ year career in our industry, that’s a book I’m going to read. When that author then asks me if GMT would publish it with him, there’s just no way I am going to say no. So, I’m thrilled that today we are adding a book to our P500 list for the first time! It’s so fitting, because of the many ways that his presence, talents, and leadership advice have graced GMT over the years, that our first-ever P500 book should be from Mark Herman.
One of the features that I have always enjoyed about these Monthly Updates has been the New P500’s on the Horizon segment where Gene Billingsley shares a few very cryptic comments about an upcoming project and we are supposed to somehow decipher his meaning from these “clues”.
Here is a brief tease for P500 additions lining up in the coming months. This month’s ARC – The Underworld was teased last month as “Something tactical and very cool from Jim Day.” And How the West Was Won was previewed back in May as “An Old West-themed strategy game from Ben Knight.” Note that this is not a comprehensive list (nor will I preview EVERY game we have planned), so I will switch these up a bit from month to month. Over the coming 1-6 months, I anticipate that we will add:
Something new for Next War players – no idea but sounds good.
A new Fighting Formations product – yes please. We have finally experienced Fighting Formations and very much enjoyed it.
A new game in a popular Ancients-themed series – could this be Mark Herman and Mark Simonitch’s collaboration?
A new game set in Ancient Rome – I have nothing
A terrible effort! Not sure I got any correct. Just don’t have any info at this time.
Charging & Shipping
The following information for Charging and Shipping was copied directly from the Update:
Next Charge/Shipment: We’ll charge BOTH US and international customers next Wednesday, July 30th. US shipping will begin within a few days after charging. International shipments will begin 10-14 days after charging. This charge will be for the following six items:
That is just a ton of good looking games coming our way! The month of August is going to be fantastic.
Production Outlook
Also we got the following production update from Kai Jensen:
The production schedule… what can I say? It changes. For example, we had seven items lined up to go to the printer for July. Two slipped (The Hunters and Silent Victory), two are now at the printer (see bold items at the printer below), and the last three (Infernal Machine and the two Mr. President items) are looking good for end of month or possibly early August. And we got an unexpected addition to At the Printer – the new printing of A Distant Plain. August and September are both PACKED with games set to wrap up and go to print.
I know it’s frustrating to see a game you have on pre-order either not heading to art or, worse yet, sliding backwards on the schedule. But I want to keep this list realistic, and the reality is that things do change and sometimes—due mostly to team members’ real-life non-GMT challenges—games that we thought were heading towards production get delayed. So there you go.
The good news is that we DO have a lot of games currently scheduled to head to the printer before the end of this year. This rate is helping us to chip away at the P500 backlog as we are printing games faster than they are being added to P500 these days. Reducing the number of games on P500 is part of our strategy to shorten the elapsed time between a game being announced on P500 and when it heads to the printer. It’s been a wacky year for production so far, but we are making headway on our goals. I will take that small win for what it is and keep pushing to improve the production operations in those areas that are under our control. – Kai
As is usually the case, I wanted to share last all of the great sample art that has been shared as a part of the update on various games as they run up to production.
The first item they shared was the Box Back for the upcoming Unconditional Surrender! Western Campaigns designed by Salvatore Vasta. This game is a smaller, geographically, bite sized look at the fighting in the European Theater on the Western Front. This is basically USE light and you should remember that when taking a look at the game.
Next we were treated to the final cover for the Small BoAR Series inaugural game called The Battle of Cowpens. Love the green and the font is just classic. I wish this were a bit more creative but it is in line with the other games in the series.
Next we got a look at a few pieces from Coast Watchers designed by Volko Ruhnke. The first was the final rule book cover and then we got a look at a few cards. I do love the color choices on the card backs and the image. Just clean and attractive!
We recently executed a new round of Playtesting on Away Team and are in the process of analyzing the results. The most recent test included changes from our first rounds of playtesting, but we extended the test to cover systems 1-4. The word-of-mouth responses from players on the most recent adjustments was largely positive, so we’re optimistic. After we look at the results, we’ll make decisions on next steps and then conduct another round of testing that adds systems 5-7, completing the campaign. We hope to wrap up by Fall and move into full production mode. Thanks to everyone who assisted up in this round of Playtesting! – David
This month we’ve kicked off solitaire testing for Bear Trap, which is the last thing we need to do before proceeding with final art and layout. This has been a challenging solitaire system to design, as Bear Trap is a complex game with a lot of hidden information, but between me and Paul I think we’ve put together something pretty solid. At the same time we’re continuing to work with Marc Rodrigue on the map, cards, stickers, and other components, so we should hopefully be almost done with the main game materials by the time the solitaire materials are ready for layout. – Joe
Nils Johansson has just completed some final adjustments to the map, cards, and counters, and we are currently reviewing the layout of the booklets and player aid, so I am pleased to say that Baltic Empires is very close to done! The next step will be a final round of proofreading before we send the files to the printer, hopefully some time in the next couple of months. Thank you for your patience, and I can’t wait for you all to finally receive this game before too long! – Brian
As I write this we are preparing to send all the Calixto materials out to our proofreading team, so by the time you read it we should be just about ready to send it to the printer! It’s been a long road, certainly much longer than any of us anticipated, and not least due to the surprisingly large challenge of designing a non-player system for a game as (relatively) small as Cuba Libre. Partly this has to do with the nature of the Jacquard non-player system, which as I have tried to emphasize before is really a custom job for each COIN game it is applied to, with relatively little transferability between games. However, another large element of the challenge is that in such a small game every little action matters so much more than it would in a larger game, so there is much less margin for error when it comes to misplays by the non-player factions. This has been an interesting aspect of the design process that now seems obvious in hindsight but wasn’t clear to us when we began working on Calixto. Anyway, it’s done now, and we’re looking forward to getting it into your hands so that you can enjoy the fruits of our hard labors! – Joe
Final development of Coast Watchers is nearly a wrap, and art is well along.
DEVELOPMENT: Test and tuning of the 2-player game and Allied Solitaire are complete. We are running additional tests of Japanese Solitaire (which is a step more complicated system than Allied Solitaire), mainly to see if we can squeeze a bit better performance out of the Allied “bot” across the 13 main Situations. Also, we are currently testing the 3-Situation Campaign games that will appear in the Playbook, with a “version 2.0” now in test and, to my eye, showing good initial results.
ART: Completed are game board; cover; blocks; counters; Allied & Japanese Mission & Asset cards (4 decks total); main player aid foldout; 2x play mats; 8x double-sided Situation sheets. In proofing is the Rules of Play booklet, 44 pages (rich in illustrations and examples). Yet to get final art done are the “Debrief” scoring sheet; 2x Solitaire card decks; Solitaire foldout; Solitaire Instructions booklet (28 pages); Playbook (thick and full of maps, exact page count to be determined); and box back. Estimate is several weeks to get all those done.
This design naturally received a good amount of test and demonstration over the year before it went on P500. Mechanics, components, main scenarios (“Situations”), play aids, and a skeletal version of the rules of play for 2 players are composed and working to general satisfaction. We have both physical test sets and a Tabletop Simulator module by Peter Wagner in action. A fuller version of the rules booklet—explanatory text and other such connective tissue—is in draft.
The next big junction in Drachen development will come as Coast Watchers gets put to bed from a development and art point of view later this year. At that point, we’ll have a Discord server dedicated to Drachen development and hope to attract a broader group of volunteers to take playtest forward.
Along with such test and development, some design tasks remain: finishing 1-player learning scenario, creating the solitaire instructions for the main Situations, deciding on whether and how a campaign system to link Situations might make sense, and composing tutorial and historical background materials for a playbook. Thank you for your interest in the Recon series and for your support! – Volko
We teased some images of the work-in-progress Pure Land map a few months ago, and since then I’ve been carrying out some physical tests to ensure everything is functioning correctly. Nils and I still have a few more tweaks to make, but I hope to be able to share the full map with you soon, maybe in next month’s newsletter. We are also gearing to start working on the cards, counters, and other components, and I’ll be working on finalizing the non-player system in parallel to this. I’m very excited to be approaching the finish line, and I can’t wait to get this one done! – Joe
Over the past couple of months we’ve been working with Matthew Wallhead on the design and layout of the Guerrilla Generation cards, and we are pleased to finally be able to share some of these with you today. We faced a couple of unique challenges finding suitable images for these cards, and the “newspaper headline” format is intended to accommodate some cards without images for this reason. Before sharing some of the cards I would like to say a little more about these challenges and how we responded to them.
Although the conflicts in El Salvador and Nicaragua are extensively well-documented, most of the available images were taken by photojournalists who have retained the rights to them, in contrast to (for example) the Vietnam War, where the many images captured by US military photographers are typically in the public domain. Given our available budget, this limited our options somewhat, but I did make the decision to personally finance the use of a set of images from the excellent Richard Cross collection: https://digital-library.csun.edu/bradley-center-photographs/richard-cross. Richard Cross spent several years documenting the civil wars in Central America, capturing many evocative and intimate images of combatants from all sides, before tragically dying in 1983 after his car struck a land mine in Honduras. We won’t be sharing any of the cards using these images until we have finalized the rights to them, but we think that they will offer a distinctive and powerful perspective on the conflicts.
In contrast to El Salvador and Nicaragua, the conflicts in Peru and Uruguay are relatively poorly documented, especially in Uruguay where the Tupamaros systematically destroyed all photographs of themselves before they went underground (and of course were careful not to be photographed after this). For Peru we made do with what we could find, leaving only around ten cards without images (out of 40 total cards). For Uruguay we instead decided to embrace the lack of images, making this a positive feature of the game by using the additional space on the cards for a novel “Breaking News” mechanism, which is an additional effect that triggers at the end of each round if neither player manages to block it. You can see a couple of these effects at the bottom of the two Uruguay cards we’ve selected to share with you.
We’re now getting close to finishing the game(s), and we can’t wait to share more with you in some future newsletters! – Stephen
I will end this post by sharing our recent content on the blog and YouTube Channel for GMT Games products including reviews/interviews/unboxing videos:
Unboxing Video for The Battle for NormandyDeluxe Edition:
Thank you for reading along this month. Please let me know what caught your interest from the update and what GMT Games products that you have been enjoying lately.
6 thoughts on “July 2025 Monthly Update from GMT Games – A Few New Non-Traditional Games and Reprints, Info about the Final Issue of C3i Magazine and Lots of Other Good Info!”
I look forward to your comments on the update as much as I do the update itself!
I know Rodger’s son was going to get the last issue of C3i out despite the fire and his dad’s passing. Any idea if he’s going to continue publishing it going forward?
I hope Rodger’s family finds a path to continuing what Rodger started with c3i. The issues that I do own are quality productions. I met the man once at the swag table at a GMT Weekend 9 or 10 years ago. We only exchanged a few sentences, but he seemed a kind person and not the least bit pretentious despite his standing in the business. May he rest in eternal peace.
I believe the “At least” and “Probably also” games (e.g. China’s War) to be charged are for August, Grant, not July (which is what it looks like here).
Like you I love Sci-Fi games (SE4x!) but there is not enough information yet for ARC – The Underworld, though I do enjoy tactical games very much; going to be a good couple of years with Microverse, Echo from the Dark, and Away Team.
I am excited for Cowpens to see what they do with the “new” system, and USE will be here soon!
You might also convince me to go in on Firefight Tactical. I enjoyed the interview with Sam London and his energy.
The Players' Aid 
I look forward to your comments on the update as much as I do the update itself!
I know Rodger’s son was going to get the last issue of C3i out despite the fire and his dad’s passing. Any idea if he’s going to continue publishing it going forward?
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I am not privy to any info about their plans. I sure hope so but we shall see.
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I hope Rodger’s family finds a path to continuing what Rodger started with c3i. The issues that I do own are quality productions. I met the man once at the swag table at a GMT Weekend 9 or 10 years ago. We only exchanged a few sentences, but he seemed a kind person and not the least bit pretentious despite his standing in the business. May he rest in eternal peace.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I believe the “At least” and “Probably also” games (e.g. China’s War) to be charged are for August, Grant, not July (which is what it looks like here).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Like you I love Sci-Fi games (SE4x!) but there is not enough information yet for ARC – The Underworld, though I do enjoy tactical games very much; going to be a good couple of years with Microverse, Echo from the Dark, and Away Team.
I am excited for Cowpens to see what they do with the “new” system, and USE will be here soon!
You might also convince me to go in on Firefight Tactical. I enjoyed the interview with Sam London and his energy.
Cheers!
LikeLiked by 1 person