DD: True story: Les Derniers Jours de la Grande Armee arrived last week. I opened it up and announced: "From the man who brought you Napoleon's Last Battles, a straightforward Waterloo game." The wife-unit replied: "When do we play?!" In your experience, what are customers reacting to best: the ease of play, the topic, or the designer?

KZ: According to the feedback we have received on this game so far, historical period came in highest. In complexity level Last Days is rated almost perfect, neither too simple nor too complex.

DD: Of course, Last Days uses the same core system as The Six Days of Glory and 1806. Beyond that, the NLB heritage is clear (for example, the command and reorganization rules). What do you think gives these games their lasting appeal? the "tried and true" effect?

KZ: The game has a very different feel than Last Battles: this is a new kind of game, which has the open, operational feel of Napoleon at Bay without the high complexity. To the basic NLB Command rules we have added Hidden Movement, Vedettes, the chit system for determining Movement Allowances, and several other rules. More importantly, the ground and time scale changes result in the very low counter density as in the operational level games, and this coupled with a faster maximum movement for infantry (depending upon the chit drawn) results in a game of maneuver, not of lining up a continuous front of units from one map-edge to another. The game doesn't play like Last Battles, although there is a core of familiar rules at the heart of Last Days.

DD: Game companies seem, more and more, to be acting as their competitors' keepers, so to speak. For example, Clash of Arms is handling OSG order fulfillment, and people can order OSG titles through The Gamers' consortium as well. What does this sort of cooperation say about the wargame market?

KZ: The three companies share many philosophies in common, not only in regard to business operations, but also in wanting to create a nerve center for the hobby. There is a lot of similarity in our approach to game design. There may be agreement among us that a new game from any of us is a good thing for all of us, because it stimulates interest and activity among our "commons."

DD: After the flush days of the early 90s (see also Dean's "The Great Game Glut of '92" in Ops 8), these are supposed to be lean times for board game publishers. MiH has scaled back its schedule (before joining forces with Critical Hit). The Gamers and CoA have done the math and moved to dropped their distributors. So what's it like reactivating OSG in this business climate?

KZ: The last straw was when several distributors closed up, or merged. We saw our distribution numbers fall below the break-even point. That means we need folks to find their way to the stores that continue to carry our products, or just to order direct mail themselves.

DD: What new topics or approaches interest you the most as a designer right now?

KZ: I have a great challenge in front of me. On the one hand, the devoted ones want to see ever-greater accuracy, new depths of insight, tearing away the layers of the onion to reveal the core truths. On the other hand, these truths are not capable of being experienced by merely reading the rules and looking at the components. And solitaire play is a one-sided experience. Besides, if the guys play solitaire, the hobby shrivels.

So I have to do two things: on the one hand, I have to pare down my designs to the essential themes, to keep the games playable; secondly, I have to keep the surface structures connected to the hidden depths. The meaning is compressed; a lot is written in a small space. You fill in the blanks. This demands a lot of our audience.

I have always used the companion study to provide the context for the rules, to try and indicate a lot of the connections. You can see what happens when I fail to produce a study. When OSG's third game, La Guerre de l'Empereur, came out, players' interpretations were all over the lot. They still are. But when I sat down to write the study for that game, the subject -- the whole Napoleonic Wars -- was simply too big. I remember quite clearly thinking, "Where do I begin?" Only now that I have seen the misinterpretation of the rules, of the rationale behind them, have I begun to see what issues I need to address. I am now at work on a 2nd Edition Rules Folder which will contain historical notes and designer's notes.

Available from OSG

The Last Days of the Grande Armee , The Waterloo campaign at the operational level using the system developed from 1806 and Six Days of Glory.

La Guerre de l'Empereur, This strategic game covers the era, from 1805 to 1815, for two to seven players. The area-movement map includes the whole stage for the Napoleonic drama, and the game system encompasses land and naval warfare, diplomacy, and economics.

1806, an operational look at the Jena-Auerstadt campaign using the system Kevin introduced in Six Days of Glory from CoA. Game scale is brigade and division-sized units, 1.1-mile hexes, and four game turns per day. The cavalry rules are a particular high point of the system.

Napoleon at Bay, the new edition of the classic OSG game from 1979. NAB now includes state-of-the-art graphics and thoroughly updated rules including vedettes and multi-round combat.