What's New

New Game Topic Feedback

Welcome! The following game topics are all contemporary design submissions that Accurate Simulations is considering for possible publication in 2026/27. Some of the following game topics are completed (or nearly completed) designs that are ready for development or playtesting, while some of the following game topics are drafts or simply proposals. Feedback for these submissions is intended to gauge interest in the topics themselves regardless of which designs are completed, drafts, or proposals, and regardless of intended components yet. We appreciate your feedback and welcome you to rate as few or as many of the following submissions as you prefer:

BASIC TACTICAL COMBAT SYSTEM

This innovative idea is meant to be an all-new and comprehensive tactical combat game system at the squad and the individual vehicle scale, but it will emphasize simple and intuitive mechanisms, but will be historically realistic renderings of actual units and weaponry to provide players an authentic tactical combat system without the complexity of other tactical systems. Essentially, this game concept is meant to be something similar to a simple Squad Leader, but more refined than what Squad Leader originally was. Indeed, the system would be initially published with a series of introductory scenarios and will be expanded to encompass numerous fronts and eventually eras...introducing additional nationalities, new vehicles, new forces, and even hypothetical engagments. The focus of the game's scale will be infantry, squad weapons, and vehicles to be played on geomorphic and scenario-specific maps.

THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR: EIGHT YEARS TO NOWHERE

This is the next game in the Desert Storm/Iraqi Freedom series, a game using the same scale and system to simulate the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980's, and so also at the division/brigade level. The design will be a precise recreation of the relative orders of battle of the Iran-Iraq conflict, and so the Iraqis will be initially better armed and equipped, and also have the advantage of airpower, but will eventually encounter stiffening Iranian resistance and eventually fanatic human wave assaults, and then potentially (depending on how the Iraqi player fares) powerful counterattacks that will ultimately allow the Iraqi side to employ chemical weapons, represented by chemical weapon chits that will function very similarly to the smart bomb chits that appear in the Iraqi Freedom game. Moreover, this game will include the Persian Gulf and feature the introduction of naval units and associated rules to simulate the engagements at sea, including incidents that may involve U.S. and other foreign naval assets (such as occurred when the U.S.S. Stark was hit by an Exocet missile, and when the U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian aircraft) and their associated consequences for both sides. But the game will not drag through eight years of war; instead, players will plan specific campaigns and when they will occur based upon "Stockpile Points"; thus, the game will actually emulate the offensives of the war after players have accumulated enough Stockpile Points for their offensives. Initially, the Iraqi player will have the advantage, but Iran's increasing Stockpile Points may ultimately give the Iranian player the initiative, and then it's up to the Iraqi player to hold on to his gains (if he can), or be forced to invade Kuwait if his victory threshold is too low at game's end.

DEFCON_1

DefCon_1 is a global aerial warfare game during the late 1950's that simulates a nuclear war before the advent of the ICBM. The design is World War Three during the atomic era that is based on a U.S. Department of Defense analysis that was recently declassified in 2014. Accordingly, this game is exceptionally accurate and features the entirety of common bomber and interceptor aircraft that were in service during the later 1950's. The map features a polar projection of the Earth from the perspective of NORAD; both players must manage their air defense network, their strategic strike capability, and even fleet assets to prevail during an all-out atomic exchange. However, players can never know exactly when World War III will begin, and so there is an "arms race" period that precedes the war. Players will build up, gain new technological advances, and prepare to survive a strategic bombing campaign and endeavor to win an unwinnable war. While historically accurate, this design is not complex, and playable in a day. Better yet, the game is exceptionally replayable because no two games will necessarily begin the same.

THE GREAT WAR

This is an area-movement game of the entire First World War in the European and North African theaters, a simple strategic-level bucket-o-dice system that allows combat in territories to be resolved quickly and therefore facilitates the completion of the entire war in a day or a weekend (depending on how many players will be playing). However, while combat is very simple, the variety of unit types for all countries is comprehensive, and is specifically tailored to a technology chart that is historically accurate and is the fulcrum of the war. There are battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, transports, zeppelins, fighters, bombers, infantry, cavalry, artillery, tanks, fortifications, even armored cars and pioneer troops. There are also units for dirigibles (beyond zeppelins), naval mines, rail guns, and trenches, all of these available by the year of their introduction as given by a realistic technology chart. However, technology is not acquired for free or even purchased, nor a die roll; players gain new technology only after battlefield successes, ensuring that the game compels the kind of headlong assaults that characterized the Great War (players can play defensively, but the other side will gain new technology for ever battlefield success they can achieve). Beyond this, the game has a historical political system to account for all of the nationalities in the game (British, French, German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Ottoman, Italian, Serb, U.S., and more), and this gives the game its total war dimension while being fast and simple to play. This is an easy game with a historically accurate framework, and unlike any World War One wargame before it.

DIRECTIVE 21

The long-awaited update to the classic Avalon Hill game "Stalingrad" (misnamed insofar as the game is actually the entire Eastern Front at the army level) with all new rules (including air rules) and updated graphics based upon John Cooper's updated map and unit art (with many thanks to John for his kind permission to use his beautiful artwork). But more than simply an update of "Stalingrad", this design is an entirely new system plus a completely overhauled order of battle for both sides. This game will begin with Operation Barbarossa and encompasses the entire Eastern Front (from E. Poland and Romania to the Caucasus). Moreover, the cartography has been meticulously researched such that every strategic location within the USSR (cities, forests, mountains, marshes, and even rail lines) has been verified according to historic map sources. The presentation of the game is a realistic simulation of the East Front during World War II, and yet remains simple and playable.

OVERLORD: SIX WEEKS TO BREAKOUT

This is the entire Normandy campaign using the Desert Storm/Iraqi Freedom combat system, encompassing the U.S. beaches to the British and Canadian beaches, comprising two large maps arrayed lengthwise (set up side by side) from the English Channel to just south of about Villers-Bocage. This is a division/brigade level game featuring all of the units of the D-Day landings of both sides, and the push into the Norman interior just before Operation Cobra. The game will be a total campaign game, but will also include scenarios for each of the landing beaches, and also will allow for some variation where the landing beaches are and where the airborne drops are (players are not necessarily restricted to airborne drops on the historic landing sites). Additionally, the game will include a full spectrum of specific air units (not just air points or factors) like in the Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom games, and even the German player will have a few historic air units available, as they existed historically and sortied into the Normandy area, an uncommon feature of most Normandy games. Best of all, the game will encompass the entire campaign up to just before Operation Cobra, and so be playable as a two-player, three-player, and even four-player game (U.S., British, German, Canadian), with an option to even divide commands for convention play (each command having its own victory objectives within the larger campaign), making this an easily-playable, manageable, but accurate and yet variable of any Normandy game yet printed.

WORLD WAR AT SEA

A global and mega version of the popular Avalon Hill game War at Sea and Victory in the Pacific that is more than simply two theaters during World War II, but is the entire globe throughout all of the Second World War. Additionally, this design is a comprehensive game that includes every major capital ship in all theaters from 1939 to 1945, and also includes the capital ships that were never historically constructed (for example, the Montana class battleship, German Z-plan battleships, the Japanese Shinano if it had not been completed as a fleet carrier, etc). What is more, this game design also features a simple land combat system that operates as a rudimentary sub-system throughout the game that gives ships a specific purpose pursuant to the larger war (in other words, naval engagements are not only for their own sake; rather, players will have specific purposes for their ships in the game to support the land war across the map). Beyond the scope of the overall game, the design itself is simple and easy to play, and yet every single ship has been researched and attributed with historically correct ratings to give players a naval wargame like no other.

THE GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN

This is a point-to-point strategic mini-game of the U.S. Civil War in Virginia and Maryland designed by Joseph Miranda, a simple and quick game to play out the war in Eastern Theater in 1863. The players must manage supply and then maneuver their forces through the various towns and passes, such as the Cumberland Gap, over rivers and across State borders in an attempt to assemble a superiority of force in key locations on the map. This is an army-level game that plays out the war in Virginia in a matter of an hour or two, accurate for its scale, and so something like a zoomed-in version of the game A House Divided, besides being more historically detailed (with accurate armies and units) and featuring a more involved combat system to replicate army-level operations.

THE LAST WAR

The Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany during the late 1980's, this fast-paced design utilizes the same simple combat system as Desert Storm: The Hundred Hour War. This hypothetical game simulates a Soviet invasion of Central Europe just before the end of the Cold War. The game map is the ideal scale of ten miles per hex that encompasses all of Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Austria. Like Desert Storm: The Hundred Hour War, the rules are easy and intuitive, yet the orders-of-battle have been thoroughly researched from archival sources that were declassified after the fall of the Soviet Union. The game presumes a conventional Soviet invasion of Western Europe, but the design also give players the option to consider using tactical nuclear weapons (with all of the potential consequences). Likewise, the Soviet player may employ chemical weapons that may be effective on the battlefield while also potentially escalatory. For both sides, battlefield successes will have specific benefits as strategic objectives (such as roads and bridges, cities and airbases, ports and Reforger sites, etc.) will affect the course of the war. The rules themselves are simple and straightforward such that the game can be played to completion in a matter of hours while presenting an equally realistic simulation of how a Warsaw Pact invasion would have been if it had actually occurred.

THE U-BOAT CAMPAIGN (SOLITAIRE)

Here is the Battle of the Atlantic from the perspective of the BdU, a strategic-level presentation of the entire war in the Atlantic Ocean that simulates the campaign to disrupt the convoy routes to and from Britain, the Mediterranean, and the Arctic Route to the U.S.S.R.). This is not an especially complex game (sixteen pages of rules), but operationally very realistic insofar as the player must assign the U-Boats that he receives each year to the various historic convoy routes on the map (Q.R., W.H.X, U.G., H.X., etc, etc, etc.), though each convoy route is provided with a specific chart to determine various factors that will affect each U-Boat assigned to that route, such as weather, rain, swell, time of year, convoy composition, types of ships in the convoy, escorts present (or not), proximity to Allied airbases, and so forth. Each shipping lane is different, and so the primary convoy routes are the most heavily escorted and most difficult to interdict, but the subsidiary convoy routes aren't likely to yield much tonnage to be sunk. The player's goal is the sink enough tonnage to starve the Allied war effort while not losing too many U-boats (which are never all on station, as many will require provisioning and repair throughout the game). However, the challenge becomes more difficult as the war goes on, although each game year will provide the player with newer and more advanced U-Boats, and so how he manages them determines his chances for success, yet much depends on what kinds of convoys he encounters, the current weather that time of year, the sea state, and how many enemy capital ships he may have an opportunity to sink. This is a historically accurate game with a thoroughly researched order-of-battle of every actual U-boat that was deployed in the Atlantic (and all types of U-Boats). How many U-Boats will survive and how much they will affect the Allied war effort is the nexus of the design.

STALINGRAD SOLITAIRE

This solitaire design is a city-fight across an area-movement map of Stalingrad that challenges the player to assault and then invest the eponymous city. The game system generates random Soviet units from among the Soviet forces that were historically present during the Battle of Stalingrad, and the German player must configure his assaults and maneuver his units into a labyrinth of streets and buildings against tenacious Soviet resistance. The map itself is a detailed rendition of Stalingrad with all of the famous landmarks that typified the fighting such as Pavlov's House, Mamayev Hill, the Barrikady Works, and more. Moreover, the terrain will become "rubbled" as German units assault each block, thereby causing the urban warfare to become exponentially more difficult as the fighting continues. This is an easy and a quick-playing game that is meant to be played and completed in a few hours. In addition, the design can be played as a two-player game insofar as each player may take command of a separate contingent of the assaulting force (playing either cooperatively or competitively to capture most of the city). In either case, this game was designed to be generally unwinnable, and thus the chances of success depend upon tenacity, cleverness, and luck!

WHEN PARIS WENT DARK

A new kind of game, up to six players assume the role of individual French civilians during the German occupation of Paris from 1940 until 1944. This design is a personal-adventure game that puts players in the role of a common Parisian citizen after the German army occupies the city. Each player must cope with the challenges of survival in occupied Paris (rendered as an urban map of the city). The decks regulate the occurrences of Random Events for each year of the game, and therefore players must react shrewdly to countless incidents that evoke the conditions within Paris under German control. Most of the first events are merely difficulties such as curfews, rationings, interrogations, etc., but some events are opportunities to join the Parisian "underground" or assist the French "resistance". But, the Random Events of the next game year become ever more difficult, and thus players must figure out how to manage their own character's activities on the map to survive and avoid being arrested (or worse). These challenges compound each year, and therefore players will discover that each year's new deck is more perilous and less opportunistic. But, players will usually have opportunities to interact with others to survive by trading resources, sharing info, working together, and helping each other avoid becoming discovered. However...players must always be wary because they never know if someone in their midst is a collaborator!

PEARL HARBOR SOLITAIRE

This simple design simulates variations of the Pearl Harbor attack whereby the player commands Japanese aircraft assigned to attack Oahu. The game is at the operational level, but the Japanese player will not know which ships will be present at Pearl Harbor when his bombers arrive, or where each of the ships will be berthed. The alert status of Pearl Harbor could also be different if, for example, the Opana Radar Site does not mistake the inbound strike to be B-17s as occurred historically, and other such variations. Similarly, there is a possibility that one or more U.S. aircraft carriers are in port when the attack commences, and even a possibility that some of the U.S. ships may already be underway when the Japanese naval-air arrive. This design also permits the possibility of the fabled "Third Strike" against Pearl Harbor, and a possibility that Japanese bombers may be able to attack the oil tanks facility on the island (that historically was untouched by the attack). All of these diverse outcomes affect a 'Pacific War Outcome' matrix at the game's end to determine if the player's attack on Pearl Harbor substantially alters the course of the war in the Pacific Theater.

Title