by Zachary Grant, 31 October 2024
The Armchair Dragoons recently had the opportunity to conduct an interview with the amazing artist, Nils Johansson. Nils kindly answered all of my questions and he shared some sample artwork to accompany his interview. So, without any further ado, let’s get to our interview
Let’s start by giving you an opportunity to introduce yourself to our readers. Please tell us a wee bit about yourself and how you got involved in creating artwork and graphic design for wargames.
Sure. I’m currently living in France, alternating between a family life in Paris and a house on the Northern seaboard where I’ve set up a workshop of sorts. My passport states that I’m 53 although it does feel a bit of an oddity. Raised in Sweden then constantly moving between countries in Europe as the family was following my father’s engineering assignments.
A stylist by affinity and by trade, I was working up to 2020 as a Visual director in the Fashion industry. Concretely, the owners of the company had me travel all over the world as a ‘missi dominici’, in effect a plenipotentiary ensuring brand consistency across teams and events while expanding a network of retail stores. Asia, in particular, was nothing short of a Gold Rush in the early aughties for most retail companies. In reality, a ‘Lawrence-in-the-desert’ scenario in which you are sent as a corporate kommissar while actually rooting for the locals’ ingenuity. I lived in Hong Kong most of my professional life before my recent relocation back to Europe.
Discovered gaming in my teens, nothing too hardcore; I was sufficiently hooked to play RPGs or double-blind wargame systems on a regular basis. The transition from High school to College brought up a new scene with a set of priorities and values that required a different mindset to navigate. In any case, gaming would be totally erased from my mind and forgotten over the next two decades. Fast forward to 2009, I’m traveling a lot, starting to read a lot of military history again and rather inadvertently stumbled upon the Boardgamegeek website. I looked up on a few releases and found myself playing then and again. At some point, I reached out to Paul Rohrbaugh (High Flying Dice Games) and helped, on and off, with graphics on the odd game: a way to channel specific creative urges as I could only do a game a year, at most, with the day job. This exercise proved over time to be so fulfilling and a true calling that I jumped ship when the opportunity presented itself and have never looked back since. It makes at least for interesting conversations when former colleagues stop by Paris during Fashion week.
Today, I work exclusively on providing graphics for wargame publishers with my ambit running across all components. Projects requiring the full package have the highest priority as I tend to see the map, counters, player aids etc as a cohesive whole in my artistic approach. Editing or rewriting rule books is also part of the creative process: depending on the state of mind, it’s either a form of procrastination (shelter and solace etc) or the therapeutic equivalent of clipping through 10 counter sheets. You’ll find me firmly standing on the European side of the design spectrum as I rely much more on illustrations, hand drawn elements and in blending various techniques and styles onto the playing board.
Not much happens besides map making: my trail running days are over at this point. A daily hike combined with a perpetual curiosity for understanding the inner workings of things keeps the pile of books at home at an all-time high. Wines and artisan cheeses are an art form and the cornerstone of lasting bonds.
I know you don’t like using normal tropes and imagery when designing artwork for a game. Can you please walk us through how you thought about and then created the art for different projects like SNAFU’s Operation Bøllebank and Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars, 1845-1872. How important is it to understand the intent of the game designer to create the artwork for a game?
To be fair, I was probably referring to the tropes and the layout conventions in use in the majority of the games that are released as wargames or as conflict simulations. A statement, not a criticism, that relates more to the question of what wargaming as a hobby means to me and what I look for when taking on projects.
My first interest is to inject more ‘History’ or, at least, to provide a set of visual cues grounded in period references for a given topic. The purpose here is not to be more ‘authentic’. I’m not all interested in replicas or in pasting tracks on top of a reproduction. I’m interested as an artist in studying and in picking up on those idiosyncrasies that define maps or historical time frames in our minds: colours, fonts, symbols and the iconography in general. As a corollary, I would try to push a different set of visual cues and re-frame the event depicted on the board using a different set of descriptions.
The third part of my work revolves around the layout of playing areas, the appearance or the role of player aids at specific moments during play. The board is always more than a functional layout of all the components necessary for play: it also reflects a vision of the subject-matter and of the context leading up to the events depicted.
Above all, it’s the capacity for a designer to seamlessly blend elements of geography, history, maths and other fields into powerful abstractions that I find compelling and will try to amplify.
Māori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars, 1845-1872. Legion Wargames, 2018.
click images to enlarge
In spite of its publication date Māori Wars was long in the making and was in fact completed by increments over several years. The map itself had been largely formalized in the Spring, or Summer maybe, of 2013 and just after Randy Lein had handed over the play-testing material. Other components came much later. Between my day job and the peculiar vagaries of development, I only provided a partial set of counters with Randy completing the remaining work.
So this takes us essentially back to 2013. The first ‘real’ graphics job after a few desktop publishing (DTP) releases with Paul Rohrbaugh and my mind was still processing a few things around the hobby around those years. What was increasingly striking at the time was the disconnection between the intricate layers of meaning and intent behind any design, the expectations in terms of gaming value, learning experience and its translation into stunted or conventional visual forms: at the best of times, games used a reassuring, tidy layout of decorated placeholders and of relevant images. At the very worst, no matter the topic and the era covered, playing areas at the time looked like PowerPoint re-skins or glorified flow charts. So I decided to try and see if playing on a fully illustrated ‘period’ map could be a viable form without impacting functionality. A rather harmless exercise that landed me into trouble with the perennial gatekeepers.
I had actually been traveling quite a lot to Auckland and had seen the surrounding areas and landscapes. Research quickly crystallized around a few things: first, the engraving technique that I saw on maps for that particular time frame. The map is quite large so plonking down jarring textures all over the playing area was immediately out of the question. I was looking for something more organic. I didn’t have the pencil skills at the time so drawing terrain features by hand seemed totally out of reach. I needed a simpler solution that would get close enough to the engraving strokes. Spent a lot of time playing with brushes and realized that a combination of noisy dots and sets of strokes actually embraced quite naturally the terrain features underneath and helped emphasizing differences in relief. The final solution came from scanning my finger prints and from placing these at various angles of 45 degrees. That trick produced the natural period feel that I was aiming for.
The next step involved typography as I was really looking forward to playing with some of the more interesting idiosyncrasies of old maps, especially the peculiar way descriptions and text were laid out in cartouches, on book frontispiece etc. I still think to this day that striking, chunky ‘title’ blocks are essential for player immersion.
The final step involved transposing various game functions and the information contained in tedious player aids into period charts and lighter tables that would reinforce player immersion.
The map is entirely created from scratch, a stylistic composite of many cartographic surveys for that area throughout the 19th century. The main take away from this project came from meeting and from collaborating with Kim Kanger on this release. A lasting friendship to this day.
Operation Bøllebank. Snafu Design, 2024.
I felt ready to tackle modern warfare designs and was somehow vocal about it. The designer, Nicola Saggini, and myself were already in touch, both following each other on social media. We had exchanged a couple of times on game-related matters: older releases, graphical references, etc so the call from the publisher came as no surprise. It was, I think, always just a matter of time before Nicola would drum up a working prototype around this topic. Oscár, the publisher, knows me very well and gave the initial pitch the necessary mystique: a relief column of Leopard tanks advancing in the dark on a single road. Brothers-in-arms trapped in a remote mountain area. Heavy enemy fire from hidden or random locations. Solitaire design.
The research and first draft focused on three features: the first and easiest part, a topographic rendering. Access today to digital terrain models and geographic data repositories has never been as simple so there was no reason not to create a shaded relief map for that exact area. I think that’s something that comes across many of my more recent projects. Paper simulations should benefit from the most recent developments in cartographic renderings and in data visualization. Otherwise, I’d rather stick to clean SPI graphical conventions rather than using fuzzy textures, especially for mountains.
The second feature involved placing elements hinting at computer interfaces, screens, sensors etc. The map, for example, is built and colour-coded as if two information layers were sitting above the terrain, one layer on top of the other. The topmost layer in orange signifies that spaces and markings on the map are linked to the Bosnian-Serb forces. Underneath, a second information layer in blue to denote UN capabilities and functions.
The third crucial aspect that needed extensive testing was to substitute the initial point-to-point boxes as these were regulating many more game functions than just movement. Having spent time reading various NATO documents and action reports, I felt that Bøllebank required a separate layer of annotations, placeholders or technical shapes that would intuitively reflect the tactical warfare premices underpinning the design. I ended up using a mix of target-inspired frames and military symbology and this allowed us to solve quite a few things and to reinforce other aspects linked to player immersion.
The dynamic positioning of the units enhanced the dash-into-the-night dimension of the game and the uncertainties, the risks that come with moving your units towards the next position: you don’t have an immediate all-knowing vision and distances to specific objectives aren’t as obvious as simply counting the number of spaces in-between. If anything, the absence of recognizable spaces was immediately ominous and pushed players into a different mindset than just having to push counters on a Game-of-the-Goose track. The reasons behind design choices aren’t always easy to explain or to articulate precisely. It just felt right for the topic at hand. Perhaps also an unconscious drive to keep the design anchored on the ‘simulation’ side of things.
Just a few months before Bøllebank, I had in fact worked on another point-to-point design where I had come up with a different way to denote relations and links between spaces. Didn’t manage to convince the designer but hey-ho, I just went back to the drawing board and came up with truck loads of alternatives in the same vein, all lovingly crafted. No matter the solution proposed, I always felt a reluctance and the same answer was also given: ‘Yes, it’s probably a better way but we need to keep colour-coded circles/squares with thick strokes”. All this just to hear, months into the creative process, that the main reason for keeping those jarring point-to-point spaces was that the most popular wargame was using these. Don’t remember what reason I came up with, Ebola or Meningitis but that was the end of my involvement.
The appearance of the map for Bøllebank evolved quite a bit over time: the first draft was a topographic rendering with light, natural colours that come with that type of map. Both the publisher and designer convinced me to shift colours towards darker tones and to set up a colour scheme that would better highlight the conditions and the nature of combat in the game. Time will tell but they probably made the right call. My hesitation came more from the fact that I was working on the same solution on other projects so it felt like a repeat.
With most of the art done, the final stretch in the development of the game involved long hours discussing and defining the terminology to be used for the map and in the rulebook. With the approach previously described, we couldn’t just apply generic or, in this particular instance, static references to ‘areas’, ‘spaces’ or ‘locations’ for example, as movement and the mechanisms involved asked for a different reference frame to really make sense: we poured through the NATO reference material again and settled for notions that would better highlight the dynamics unfolding on the map.
Once game terms had been validated, we made a final pass at the various markings on the map.
In my case and with my approach to wargame graphics, understanding the intent of the designer is fundamental. I’m dependent on the designer’s efforts in explaining the key mechanisms and effects happening during play. A first pitch goes a long way to start the initial impulse of the creative process and more importantly, in preparing alternate takes around her/his ideas. Later on, there’s always a second round of exchanges that relates entirely to the tempo or emphasis to be given to components at specific moments: which player aids are important at start or mid-play, how often do you look up that table or use that marker? etc.
If, for whatever reason the information on hand is limited you just need to be very clear with expectations and specify up front that the result will always be an autonomous vision of the topic defined by the game. Meaning that, more often than not I will conjure up a board and bring it in unexpected directions.
With my work visible to all on BGG, casting mistakes are exceedingly rare as publishers know their target audience. The difference today is that we have a vibrant scene in which a steady influx of new designers and players allows for the healthy co-existence of all sorts of history games, wargames etc on a wider range of topics and treatments.
How important is storying telling when you create artwork for a wargame? How do you go about creating these stories? What is the biggest challenge of repackaging written information into a graphical representation? How do you playtest your graphical design decisions?
Ok. Well, I’m always using the same example to talk about my creative process but I think it works well: if I list 6 numbers at random, they’ll stay just that – random. They wouldn’t mean anything as you wouldn’t be able to relate to them in any way. If I go on to say that the numbers are the winning combination for the National lottery, you suddenly create all sorts of affects and associations in people’s minds that makes this set of numbers eventful and meaningful. You’ve created a context and changed the description of something that provided an emotional response.
If it helps, you can also think about film music or about the stage sets you see in theater plays. Your first task is to set a tone: dark and gloomy or hopeful and uplifting and you look in addition for shifts in tone to frame the descriptions happening on the screen or in our specific case, on the board.
Going back to my first example, I will look for and define those descriptions, those visual units or visual triggers if you prefer, that will not only support basic game functions but also help with player immersion into any given historical topic.
Then there’s this additional constant in my approach in which I’m trying to re-frame and revisit the idea we have of any given period. A lot of games covering, for example the Vietnam War, seem to reuse the same visual elements that in fact originated much later in the 1990s whereas I would look for cues in period material, magazine covers etc. As explained in another interview, I tend to push back against an ‘official’ history or an authoritative discourse around events. Does it all really break down to this one iconic image? I find it more interesting to look for little details around events that we had forgotten or hadn’t noticed at first; impressions, patterns, peripheral figures that linger in the background of our memories and to bring these back to the foreground.
The aim would be to set up a context in which these alternate descriptions would create all sorts of new and interesting connections to an event or a historical topic during play.
Just remember Ennio Morricone’s score for ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. You can emphasize particular sounds to go beyond conventions and provide something else entirely to enhance the general feel of a story. Same for stage sets: there are numerous examples of unexpected stage directions that have changed the way we experience operas or theater plays forever. It doesn’t change the premises of the main story. It adds another dimension and taps into additional emotions creating in your mind associations you hadn’t expected.
Also, story-telling in games is not unidimensional: you can work on giving the playing area a general outlook while making sure that the appearance and look of player aids, counters or specific tracks will make sense later on during play. I actually couldn’t care less about first impressions or if counter sheets look good unpunched. Components are designed and tested for mid-play moments and assume that players will have familiarized themselves or feel confident with rules and the component mix. The need to spell out ‘Suppressed’ in font-size 6 on 5/8 inch markers never made much sense to me, especially when those markers are to be placed in a stack at very specific moments during play. A visible column of smoke peeking out from the edges of a stack of counters will probably prove to be more intuitive as the focus of players is on the larger picture of the game unfolding. It’s these suggestive, oblique and always indirect aspects that support the narrative that I look out for when playing or designing components.
Many won’t care about this and that’s perfectly fine, I’m the first to acknowledge that some of my solutions are something of an acquired taste. A lucid self-appraisal would probably state that I design components as I would want to play them myself on any given topic.
It’s an editing process with lots of trials and errors. The only challenge to the creation of new graphical representations is time on your hands and player habits.
Beyond my own convictions and insights, I leave the appreciation of graphical design decisions up to play-testers and parse through the feedback given. Improvements are then made based on many considerations: requests that ask for more ‘gloss’ or pretty tank silhouettes “just because other games are using it” ain’t never going to happen.
With the Battle Card Series you are entering the realm of game designer. What prompted this new area of creativity? Is it challenging to do the game design and art design at the same time, or is it easier? Do you think it is more challenging to design games and artwork for smaller games or for larger games?
Timing in this matter was a factor as much as anything else. If I recall, David and myself were loosely corresponding on ideas and topics when the announcement for a gaming jam , ‘Postcards from the Front’, made the rounds on social media around the end-of-year holidays. We just jumped at the opportunity and quickly knocked out a draft on the basis of a few assumptions.
I suspect many of us in the wargaming community have a stash in which we keep all sorts of drafts, notes, ideas for potential designs. More than any other gaming communities it seems, with the exception perhaps of the RPG scene. Many help to develop games or to extend their life in various capacities. Some have several prototypes patiently crafted over the years, so the passage over at some point to the designer seat doesn’t seem that much of a stretch. It’s the Pact, isn’t it? There’s always this lingering and compelling promise in our hobby of moving on to the next step in your wargaming journey. With time, you can almost see the center as you jump from one circle to another then —invariably, reality comes crashing down.
David is a professional game designer with skills honed over many years. I only came to understand what that really meant when I saw his input and methods in developing a viable, fun and interesting gaming experience. I knew what the game had to look like and what players had to take away at specific moments from playing the game, but there’s a world of difference between ideas, a few insights and their concrete implementation into meaningful game abstractions. I can but only wonder at Mark Herman’s gargantuan output.
I can’t speak for others but it seems considerably easier to design a game with graphical specifications already in mind. You just have a greater range of options in mind, costs and printing specifications included, to better emphasize the abstractions and the mechanics behind your design. In any case, you’re not locked or forced into re-using existing design formats. The opposite is also true with the majority of designers wanting their game to stay within parameters that have been set by other games or that have a proven record. To each his own.
The smaller the game the more you can look at the larger picture and think of all the aspects that will enhance play or will provide for a different gaming experience. For those out there interested in concepts or in understanding our mental drives, wargames, whether small or large, are ‘desiring machines’ that will inspire powerful spatial and mental dynamics. Its value as a simulation will clearly be limited but you’re in fact already looking to achieve something else with smaller templates. On the other end, the obvious trap is wanting to cram in all sorts of convoluted mechanics and unnecessary details when the challenge of smaller footprint designs lies elsewhere. Whether generating interesting narratives or introducing players to an historical event, it’s a wonderfully stimulating exercise in story telling and, in my case, with a minimum of visual clues. Think of John Ford and his capacity to anchor the immensity of the Western sky to a cactus or to the post of a corral.
Those annoyed at the lack of substance or of value as a simulation in micro games for example are somehow missing the point of the exercise.
As for working on large games, I’m afraid there’s nothing fundamentally new to say here as these involve more stakeholders as well as conflicting interests that take time, sometimes years, to resolve. Play-testing sessions move to the front and center of the development process and require parsing through a constant stream of feedback, evaluating possible iterations and anticipating changes down the road. The main challenge here for any artist is to keep your head above the sandbags and to set up your work files to produce deliverables on demand while retaining creative control.
It’s as much a question of personal affinity for a type of work process as being lucid on your capacity to keep the momentum going for very long periods. I tend to move quickly between ideas to then settle for a permanent fix that will take into account various dependencies between components. ‘Breakthroughs’ are moments in which you’ve convinced yourself that everything makes sense when using a particular solution. It’s definitely more frustrating having to go back re-doing things at random, especially when you’re already implementing graphics for other parts of the game. Large games implies a lead or a person in charge setting up a process in which friction is reduced for all parties involved.
We can actually expand this question by a little as there’s something to be said on the importance, both for the artist and for the design team, of correctly identifying graphical needs for a project. By that I mean understanding the nature of the project and the criteria underlying the publishing venture in order to avoid impossible expectations and major headaches. Some ventures simply call for graphic design services that can be listed and eventually priced upfront according to market standards. Other projects will provide the artist with a thoroughly tested, validated product and require, as a feature, to bring the design in unexpected directions. In between you’ll find all sorts of (ad)ventures where the artist is indefinitely on call without a clear end-state and with all sorts of unspoken issues that creep over time. What do you invoice (if ever…) after years and years of corrections, changes, drafts?
Fundamentally, three very different calls to be made before selecting and onboarding any creative person to a project. This part is not necessarily clear in the minds of designers, developers, play-testing teams and budding artists.
As an artist, you need to know, beyond the size or scope of the project, where your preferences lie and your own motivation in producing content.
You’ve been creating artwork for wargames from many different historical periods since 2001. Is there an historical period you haven’t done the artwork for that you would like to?
To be fair, my involvement with map projects is as much the result of serendipity as the result of discovering new techniques at specific times and in wanting to try these out. When inspired by an interesting graphical approach or idea, I will most certainly look out for the corresponding project to carry it out.
So far, I’ve not yet worked on any game set during the American Civil War which is something of a heresy considering the collection of games set in that period at home. I did noodle in my spare time with one or two obscure ACW titles but these haven’t been released or shared on BGG yet.
I’ve recently worked on a Napoleonic game so that’s less of an itch nowadays.
I’m not despairing to get my hands on a solid Eastern front project, one that would allow me to finally give all the necessary pathos to a ‘Kesselschlacht’ for example. It’s more for the sake of completion as I cut my teeth, as many from my generation, on many games on that very particular topic. Not interested though in monster games and I gladly leave three-mappers to those more patient artists out there in our community.
Chinese history seems rather underrepresented in our hobby besides a few old magazine games. Gaming projects either set during the Ming-Qing transition, for example, or that would give an interesting or dramatic account of the magnitude of the Taiping Rebellion would allow me to work with absolutely stunning visual references for that period. Similarly, the French foray into Indochina at the end of the 19th century would make for an interesting campaign or a set of small battles.
With possibly more free time on my hands, I want to continue with graphical redos of older titles and reaffirm my unbounded love for this wonderful hobby. I think of Lou Coatney’s many designs for example that are continuously being posted on BGG: I had completed ‘Norge Angrepet’ a few years ago but all files were lost with a hard-drive. And as many other artists will undoubtedly tell you, one never works twice on previous ideas or looks back at old projects.
The example of the Battle Cards shows that it’s possible to work with different templates and footprints; I’m increasingly of the mind that it’s not necessarily the topic that will set things in motion and get me inspired as much as finding an interesting way to represent historical events or game mechanics using a broader range of printing formats and physical component options. A design that would revolve around the concept of ‘fog of war’ using map tiles or that would ask for sections to be placed at cardinal directions as play unfolds would certainly get me worked up to a frenzy, much more than the umpteenth take on Austerlitz or Bull Run using a classic format. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited seeing new releases but if you’re going to dedicate yourself and wrap all your thoughts around a project over twelve months, you might as well look for something a little off the beaten track.
Who are current or past artists or graphic designers who influence your work? In this humble interviewer’s opinion, the artwork and graphic design in many wargames is improving with each passing year. Are there current artists and graphic designers you particularly like or you think we should being pay attention to?
I’m constantly operating under two very different sets of influences. On one hand, discoveries made over the course of many years, and that relate to visual arts in general. In parallel, a very personal and subjective appreciation for some artists in particular that were not only instrumental in my own wargaming journey but that also continue to influence my design choices when working on projects. I’m also a passionate movie buff but that particular source of influences alone would derail the whole thread.
Dutch and Swiss graphic design provided me with a system of thought pointedly aimed at innovation and experimentation, particularly around the use of colours and typography. Bauhaus, Modernism, German expressionism remain a constant source of inspiration and a starting point for any type of map work. Typography and older type specimens remain the object of particular awe for their capacity to instantly evoke time frames and conjure up specific associations to past events. I’m convinced that a better use of typefaces and custom icons would supersede any obligation for photographic references or bland images as a selling point.
I’m also the product of the 1980s culture in all its glory and flaws so graphic novels, and dedicated comic book magazines, especially in France (Métal Hurlant, Collectif Bazooka, Vécu, À Suivre), were major vehicles for innovative storytelling. One can never highlight enough the deep influence Hugo Pratt, Jean Giraud, Francois Bourgeon or Tardi had in the visual counterculture in the early 80s in Europe. In that same vein, the graphic design of Étienne Robial is a significant milestone in my formative years.
By extension and, around that same period, the incredible illustrations of Angus McBride (Iron Crown Enterprises and Osprey publishing) stood out: his unrivaled use of striking colours and grim, almost riotous expressions fleshed out his many character portrayals and made specific episodes of history more relatable. Somehow, the youthful sense of epic that permeates his work still resonates with me.
Redmond A. Simonson has his bust on a marble column. A stern reminder of some of my more fraudulent attempts when working on maps.
Rodger McGowan’s incredible legacy and prolific output is there for all to see.
John Kula’s cover for ‘La Regia Marina’ (Simulations Canada) remains a personal favorite over the years. But then again, I’m partial to the use of those marvelous Letraset transfer sheets and to the mixed media solutions that were emblematic of the nascent years of our hobby. In my book, those few stylised strokes beat any pseudo-realistic silliness or the need for a more detailed rendering.
As a European wargamer, I find it impossible to not mention the impact of Enea Riboldi’s cover illustrations for International Games.
Rick Barber, Terry Leeds, Charles Kibler have given me many hours of intense study and joy with their detailed maps.
Lee Brimmicombe-Wood was in my opinion the first to truly break the mold and bring wargame graphics to the next level after many humdrum years. A model of rigour for technical graphics when applied to detailed simulations combined with the right imagery for his topic of choice. See ‘Nightfighter’ and ‘Bomber Command’. ‘Angola’ was also an outlier in the releases of those years.
A particular mention for Craig Grando’s consistent and innovative output while head of graphics for ‘Against the Odds’ magazine: his capacity to resume any given topic into highly evocative and stylised visual cues remains light years ahead of its time and never ceases to amaze me. I never understood the controversy surrounding his work: his solutions were never going to upend or threaten the graphical foundations in place. If anything, it just revealed the darker, insecure, more toxic corner that is present in any hobby and drew me away from ever participating again in discussion forums.
Nicolás Eskubi remains a mystery man and the object of a profound respect.
I still consider the graphical output of the short-lived ‘Battles Magazine’ with Olivier Revenu at the helm to be one of the most inspiring attempts of recent years to bridge various gaming practices and to keep the hobby alive. A pure act of derring-do and of unrepentant piracy. Very French. I’m also reminded of Donald Pleasence’s line in ‘The Eagle Has Landed’: “It made the Charge of the Light Brigade look like a sensible military exercise”.
In more recent years, I tend to look up to artists and graphic designers in our community who manage to express their skills across all components. In that regard, and despite the distances or the obligations that seem to conspire in keeping us apart most of the time, Mark Mahaffey, Iván Caceres, Domhnall Hegarty, Pablo Bazerque continue to inspire me and to rekindle a sense of purpose. Hopefully, others will join our community.
In an interview with Mark Johnson from Wargames To Go, you mentioned you returned solo wargaming in 2009. What prompted you to return to the hobby? What do you like about solitaire play?
Happenstance. I was at the time looking at producing instructional material and visual guidelines that would help streamline activities and the decision making process when preparing store openings. The existing training material for my field of work was too simplistic or largely aiming at Department store environments. While browsing around for ideas and solutions that aimed at explaining and at structuring processes, I suddenly remembered specific aspects of my wargaming years. Rulebooks in particular: sequences of play, the need for step instructions etc. Search after search lead me to the Boardgamegeek website and I just fell back into the fold as I discovered newer releases and very active discussion forums at the time. Incidentally, I did end up producing instructional material that served the company for the next decade or so.
Solitaire play came as a necessity, my only option in fact while on the road most of the time and in-between last-minute assignments. It’s only later on that I also realized that my crippling bouts of self-awareness on top of being shy in the extreme made playing face-to-face, groups or, for that matter, any social interaction a rather challenging, not to say painful affair for both sides. Video calls are draining. Any gaming convention requires careful months of preparations for me to attend. I’ve always preferred to work within the structure of a privileged dialogue, within the shorthand that such dialogue tends to build so at this point in time, collaborations and map projects are my way of reaching out to find persons inspired by the same abstractions or that will gladly take up a correspondence to explore gaming ideas.
I’m a solitaire player by default, not by choice. And to be fair, my interest again for historical gaming is mainly inspired by understanding the ideas, the mechanics and the designer’s intent when choosing to model or highlight specific aspects of an event. I’m probably missing out on certain player dynamics or the fun and raucous competitive side of things.
Things are evolving though: the vibrant space around ‘Homo Ludens’ and the genuine altruism at play there will probably be the largest factor in getting me to sit again at the table with others.
You are the artist for the latest two Valiant Defense series, Lanzerath Ridge and Guadalcanal: The Battle for Henderson Field. How did you get involved in these two games? Was that a happy coincidence, or was it intentional to be involved?
This is another very good example of serendipity as mentioned earlier. David Thompson, the creator of the Valiant Defense series reached out for a possible collaboration on a few releases. If I recall correctly, David had seen the art done on Paul Rohrbaugh’s Old Northwest series (High Flying Dice Games) and was more than happy in giving me total freedom to come up with a new look and feel.
The scale of the series was also perfect in the sense that I’m always on the lookout for projects that would allow for depicting battlefield scenes using new angles and to experiment, for example, with perspective views. A match in heaven in many ways, not to mention David’s intuitive grasp of the importance of graphics alongside game mechanics in providing a memorable tabletop experience. I’m usually extremely careful with showing drafts or in filtering any work in progress as this invariably leads to misdirections over time or stalls the process around anecdotical details at very early stages. In this rare instance, the opposite happened as David tailored his input to each new version of the map and kept a flow of really interesting ideas to help build the final components. With the essential defined and agreed upon, I could just focus on the final art rendering and on the details that would give the map its wintery aspect.
The next installment in the series, Guadalcanal, took the series one step further as players will need to handle the resolution of events and to allocate resources in four sectors simultaneously. I needed 4 different viewpoints of the Island but at that point in the process, I felt sufficiently confident with the design constraints behind perspective views. The challenge revolved more in finding a way around the generic green splashes of jungle foliage that we see in most designs set in the Pacific and to re-emphasize the nature of combat on Guadalcanal and the fighting-in-the-dark dimension depicted by the game.
Finally, most CDGs will represent unit types with one illustration, usually a static pose shared across the card deck. Here again, I spent more of my time finding a viable solution that would support the narrative during play and ended up showing small night scenes and ‘vignettes’ of combatants making their way towards fighting areas, with each card showing a different situation and a different number of units. It’s my indirect way of pointing back at the legacy of Ambush and ASL in generating outstanding gaming narratives.
Thank you Nils for your amazing interview!
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