On November 30, 1993 John Vanore announced the formation of Spearhead Games. The new wargaming company is dedicated to producing thoroughly tested and developed wargames featuring high production values, historical validity and easy to learn games systems. Vanore brings several years experience, most recently with GMT Games, to the new enterprise. Spearhead Games' first release, slated for June 1994, is entitled Bodyguard-Overlord. BgOl will be a strategic-level simulation of the events surrounding the D-Day invasion designed by John Prados. Special emphasis will be placed on intelligence and deception actitvities prior to the Allied landings. BgOl makes extensive use of recently declassified files on ULTRA intelligence and the Plan Bodyguard deception campaign. BgOl will be the first wargame ever to incorporate these critical intelligence facts as part of its intrinsic system. Further work in progess includes an innovative American Civil War design by Peter Perla featuring at least two battles with multiple scenarios. A Pacific Island Battles game, centered on the Marianas campaign, by James P. Werbaneth is also in progress. Other games includes a Jack Radey Eastern Front design, Dien Bien Phu by Prados and a series of Seven Years War battles by Perla. Vanore stated that Spearhead Games intends to serve the existing base of the wargaming hobby while reaching out to the casual gamers as well. This approach will be carried out by publishing a wide variety of games emphasizing short, easy-to-comprehend rules and simple, but not simplistic game mechanics. Historical validity and accuracy will be the over-riding concern however in any Spearhead Games product. [If Spearhead Games delivers the sort of games it says it will develop , a critical gap will be filled in the hobby. There has long been a need for the sort of basic, easy to play games that were common in the mid-70's which seem to have been supplanted over the last two decades by unnecessarily complex manual games which are neither easy to learn nor fun to play. This also, in the editor's opinion, had lead to a reduction in the actual number of people playing games and a "graying" of the hobby. Enough polls by the game-in-a-magazine segment (i.e. Command and Strategy & Tactics) have shown that there is a much smaller number (and percentage) of younger gamers. In other words there is no continuity with the next generation. If you think I'm kidding -- try to teach a fourteen year old how to play and enjoy Arabian Nightmare, or Baton Rouge. And the basic question I ask is what 1990s game do you use to introduce wargaming to a friend? Odds are you'll pull out either Steve Jackson's Ogre, or SPI's old Napoleon at Waterloo or something similar. Spearhead Games might fill this gap as well as providing those of us who work and have other responsibilities -- i.e. the "casual" wargamer with something more to our liking. - Ed. ]. Back to Cry Havoc #5 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com