WWI Variant

The War to End All Wars 3rd Edition Board Game Released!

March 9th, 2007. The Guild of Blades Publishing Group is happy to announce the release of the Third Edition for its flagship World War I strategy board game, The War to End All Wars. An Empires of History game. First released in early 1998 The War to End All Wars quickly became the best selling strategic level game providing a broad theater play of the WWI conflict the world over. Since its release The War to End All Wars has gone through a number of evolutions, including two boxed sets and an human moderated multi player online game. The Guild of Blades has taken nine years of customer feedback and refinements to completely redesign the War to End All Wars so that we could offer the ultimate strategy board game for World War I.

The War to End All Wars 3rd Edition is a massive upgrade over its previous edition and contains a newly designed and digitally rendered game map that is 50% larger than its predecessors. The game map is now 21" x 49.5" and comes laminated with new mountain and rivers features added to it. The game rules have been rewritten and upgraded to make the game easier to lean and to add a whole host of new diplomatic options for the nations to utilize. Submarine rules have been simplified and convoy of trade resources have become more important to better simulate the conflict at sea. Most impressive has been a complete change over in the style of units provided with the game, which now includes over 1700 full color large format game counters, the majority die cut for ease of use. A 32 page rule booklet, 11 nation reference sheets, 3 game charts and a D10 round off the contents of The War to End All Wars 3rd Edition. An amazing game and all for the same low price of its previous editions at just $34.95.

Visit us online for further information on The War to End All Wars 3rd Edition. You can see box artwork, view the game map, see samples of the game units, read the entire 32 page rules set in HTML format and view/download all of the game charts and nation sheets. Join us online at: http://www.guildofblades.com/wwi.php.

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Founded in 1994 the Guild of Blades Publishing Group is a leading adventure games publisher supporting games in print, digital PDF game downloads and its Empires of History Online Gaming Network of multi player online games. Its notable brands are the Empires of History line of strategy board games, Overlords: Fantasy Battlescape Wargame, Button Wars Spaceship Combat Game, Heroes Forever Role Playing Game and Worlds of Heroes & Tyrants. For further information on the Guild of Blades visit http://www.guildofblades.com . For further information on the Empires of History Online Gaming Network visit games sites http://www.1483online.com and http://www.thermopylae-online.com .

Guild of Blades Publishing Group
409 Amesbury Dr
Davison, MI 48423
810-625-3000
http://www.guildofblades
dowrie@guildofblades.com

Did you get the printer fixed yet?<<

We’ve replaced both black and white and color machines since I last spoke to you about it. We now laminate our game maps too. As for the game units to WWI (and most of our games now, as we upgrade them) have had the units printed on traditional offset presses onto chipboard stock and die cut. They look great with some great artwork. You can see samples of them at:
http://www.guildofblades.com/wwicore.php

The Guild of Blades has enjoyed years with a core following of gamers who have appreciated good playing games that were well designed and available at affordable prices (aka, lower than most of our competitors). In the case of the new War to End All Wars 3rd Edition I dare you to find a game with more than 1300+ die cut counters and 1700+ total counters that retails for just $34.95 or less.

fancy professional business lexicon than actually making and playtesting games<<

I’m not familiar with that usage, but if it means we spend a great deal of time managing and running our business, then yes, yes we do. That is what is required to run a professional publishing business in the gaming industry. Just a fact of life. As for the play testing of our games, that has always been a core feature that has helped us to develop a solid customer base and allowed us to grow. We maintain two regular outside play test groups and have done so for years, just to double check on our already vigorous internal testing. With perhaps one exception, that has served us very well over the years and led to a whole bunch of well balanced games that play well.

As a small company the physical production value of our games has not always been the highest; we’ve produced games with a realistic business investment vs expected return on that investment and in quantities that made sense for the market we were selling into. Thats just good business and its why 13 years after we began, we do this for a healthy living and and STILL HERE providing games to the public when so many before us have fallen. Every step of the way we have taken small steps to improve the physical quality of our games, always keeping in mind the lower selling price vs the gaming content we planned to pack into it. This latest evolution of our games, with the laminated game maps and the nice full color die cut chipboard pieces has been by far our largest leap forward in this. Though it surely won’t be our last.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

We’ve never produced an actual WWII game excepting for the micro game that came bundled with the first and only issue of the Empires of History Magazine. That was a Stalingrad game. We’re going to re-release that game as a stand alone game using the new style game units and cleaned up rules under our Compact Game line. The newer evolution of that line took the games to full color maps and full color units on chipboard (but still cut outs) and the price got bumped from $4.95 to $7.95. So far we’ve release Jutland, Ramesses’ War and Fallen Blackhawk: Somailia in this style as well as upgrading the Barbary Coast War, Beyond Hadrian’s Wall and the Battle of Thermopylae. The Battle of Stalingrad will soon join it.

We’ve been working with our Empires of History: WWII game for a couple of years now but it hasn’t left internal play testing yet. Still needs some more balancing. A game that big and involved takes a long time to get right.

On the space front we have a couple ideas in the works. We’ve recently put a bid in on a fairly significant sci fi property and if we can hammer that out, that’ll become a line of space board games done under the same game play style of our Empires of History game line, but with more stats and rules emphasis on the ships.

If the license doesn’t pan out we eventually plan to put out the Empires & Overlords space setting as a stand alone board game. That is the space setting that is tied to Button Wars but the primary game will be playable as a strategy board game and will not require any button wars pieces. It will have a secondary option of being used as a Button Wars campaign gaming map too. This game will have ship development tech, ships, fighters and mecha. It will also have a variety of ground troops. The game will come with a variety of planetoid templates…maybe as many as 20 of them. Each major “homeworld” planet with significant population will hence be its own zone world map that can be fought over. Homeworld defenses, both orbital and planet-side can be used. Ultimately a good sized fleet should be able to pound a planet and its people to oblivion from space, but it may take a few turns and otherwise tie down the fleet. And if you toast everything from space there is nothing less to conquer and hence no economic benefit. Should prove to be an interesting game. We have a preliminary map for the game on the Button Wars web pages already, though it was drafted a few years ago, so don’t take it for being the final map.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com