Designer Series: David Thompson - Rebels Against Rebellion
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Transcript
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Hey, I like your new RAV 4.
Thanks. Yours, too.
What does RAV stand for anyway?
To me, it's the remarkably advanced vehicle.
Really? To me, it's the runway approved vehicle for its amazing style.
What about remarkably adaptable vehicle because of its versatile cargo space?
Or really admired vehicle.
Oh, or really awesome vehicle. It really is the recreational activity vehicle. The stylish 2026 Toyota Rav 4 Limited. What's your RAV 4? Hey y'all. Welcome to Rolling Dice and Teching Names. This is a very special episode. In years past, we've had a lot of designers on our show, and I think it's always interesting to have designers come on, talk about the games, the process of designing games, etc. So, I'm kind of calling this like a designer series. We have a few people lined up coming up in the future, but to kick it off is one of our all-time favorite designers. We have are excited to have on the show, David Thompson. David, welcome to the show.
Oh, thanks for having me, guys. This is this is awesome. obviously a huge fan of you guys since I started playing games. So, this is really, really fun for me,
which I was surprised at, Tony.
Huh. Yeah, I'm really proud.
Now, if I remember correctly, David, you and I met, we were on our way to a Cabal meetup at Gen Con one time and Yeah. Yep. Yep. Okay.
That's right. Yeah. You, you guys, and the Secret Cabal were the first two podcasts I started listening to when I got into board game.
So, there you go, audience. You heard it
and we were the first podcast he stopped listening to. So we we we bookend
I made it like two episodes. It was amazing. Two great episodes.
Fair.
Now if for for those who listen to our show, uh we have a a name for David and his designing partner, one of his uh Trevor Benjamin. We call it the dynamic duo. We've always called you guys that because you've made so many great games. And if if I remember correctly, I think the first game that we played from you two, I believe was War Chest.
Yeah, that's probably right. Yeah, I think that's right. And to this day, Niroshima Hack and War Chest are my two favorite twoplayer abstract games. I think they're just both amazing.
Yeah. You know, we're we're super fortunate because um we're working finishing up a new War Chest expansion.
No.
And it's Yeah.
Is that like No, you don't want him to or no. It's like that's exciting, you know?
Yes. Got to check your mic levels, dude. Yelling into the mic. Hey,
see, when you yell into the mic, Tony, you don't get closer to it. You pull away.
I did pull away. Did you see me rock back in my E-Win uh championship chair? That's E-Win. Get your RDTN sponsorship 30% off. Sorry. Had to I was just messing around here, but no. Oh, that is awesome.
That's true. You can get 30% off.
You can get 30 using car code RDTN. You thought this was all about you, David, didn't you? So, so War Chess, remind me, how many expansions are there? cuz um I've got I think the base set plus one. Oh, he's looking back behind him.
This will be the this will be the fifth expansion. So, this fifth expansion.
Oh, I have lost count. Uhoh.
Nobility, Siege, Nightfall, Shock Tactics, and this will be called Champion.
Yeah. And you know, it's it's funny because it's not, you know, after the first couple of expansions, we weren't sure that there would be more. But what's interesting about Warchest is a lot of people think that um me and Trevor our most popular game is Undaunted, the Undaunted series, and it probably is, but it's really close with War Chest because War Chest is very, very popular internationally.
So there's huge like French, Chinese, uh South Korean, Russian audiences for it. And that international audience is a lot of the reasons that it's able to have, you know, follow-up expansions and stuff.
Oh man. And if I remember correctly, um, War Chest came out first, but you said you actually y'all had Undaunted design first, and the request was to have a simplified version where War Chest came from.
Yeah, that's right. So, Undaunted started way back in like 2014 or something. Um, and then I, you know, I started working on that and then Trevor worked with me. And in the years be between 2014 and 19 when it was eventually published, it was Trevor's idea to come up with a like super streamlined minimalist abstract version of Undaunted. And so, you know, people that may not instantly recognize, but they share a lot of obvious DN D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D once you've played them both, right?
Yeah. Yep. Okay. Exactly. Well, you're on the show for a game that's coming out on Kickstarter. Actually, when this uh we'll make sure this episode releases at the beginning or right as the Kickstarter is going on. It's from Flying Pig Games
and [clears throat] it's called Rebels Against Rebellion. Now, if you haven't seen anything about this, I'm not going to tell you about it. That's why we have David on the show. So David, you can come in with your story of what was the inspiration or what is the game about? Then from that go to the theme or the theme and the game play. You just you just start talking and then Tony and I will interrupt when we see fit.
Okay. I'm ready to interrupt right now. I see fit. Um cuz what one of the things for everybody, you can definitely go read.
Oh, he's not going to let him talk.
I'm not going to let him talk. No, because I got I got a lot of questions here. But one of the things I want people to understand if you're not familiar, you know, David finds these little niches in history.
All right,
and designs games around them. So I want to give the audience kind of a understanding of I don't know how his mind goes to these things, right? Because you could list off a bunch of your games, David, and you say this is this was a small slice
uh in history that you feel were was important that brings attention to it. Now let's talk about rebels against rebellion.
Yeah. Well, so yeah, I guess on that topic, you're right. I do I do love diving super super deep in a very niche, very focused topic, right? And as we talk about Rebels Against Rebellion, people that might not be familiar with my other games, they'll see it, right, as we as we discuss the topic. But, um, so Rebels Against Rebellion is is set during the American Civil War, right, which is not a topic that I ever really honestly thought I would design a game about. Um, it's it's not something that's interested me a lot. Usually when I when I'm thinking like military history, it's typically World War II, maybe French and Indian War. Another area that I'm really interested in, but not so much the American Civil War. But what I was seeing happening in like the war game space was a lot of discussion about the American Civil War. And it's almost always you're playing these strategic games. You know, you're commanding multiple armies or you're a general commanding a huge army. Um, and it's almost always sort of reducted down to like, you know, it's it's the Union versus the Confederacy and that's the story we're gonna tell, right? That's it.
And, uh, I mean, you guys know this. I'm, you know, I'm from Savannah. I'm from Georgia. Uh, there was a lot of stories going on during the Civil War that are just never told, right? And one of those stories is all the loyalists in the South who fought uh, either they fought against the Confederacy or they fought with the reunion against the Confederacy in some in some way, shape, or form. And I thought about it and I said and I thought, you know, there's that's I don't know of a single game that tells that story. I mean, you don't really hear that story much of any there was a um Matthew McConna movie Free State of Jones that came out I don't know now maybe 10 years ago or something that is it it's a similar story uh though that movie takes a ton of creative license. So it might be an entertaining movie but it's not very accurate historically. Um, but that's one of the only like obvious things I can think of that's in a in a sort of a media, popular media that that tells the story of loyalists or at least people in the south fighting against Confederacy.
So, um, Flying Pig, uh, was owned by Mark Walker. He's one of the primary designers. He's the owner of the company. Well, a few years, so he and I, uh, became th friends through Herman Lutman, who I know you guys know Herman's games. Uh, and so the three of us would meet up at Origins. We'd go out, we'd have beers, and Mark Walker had asked me for a couple of years, hey, would you be interested in maybe designing a game for Flying Pig? And the fact is, I was just, as you guys know, I have a day job and I was super busy. I had a bunch of stuff on contract with deadlines. And so I couldn't really do it. Um, but his daughter, uh, Denver was taking over the company. Now, Denver's like the the nicest person you you've ever met, but she's also uh been with her dad working on the, you know, with the business since she was a little girl, right? Like helping him like pack boxes and stuff and she knows war games.
Um, so she knows her business. So anyway, I met with them at uh Origins a couple years ago and they asked again, hey, would you be interested in this? And I came with a proposal at that meeting because I knew that we that that topic would come up. And I said, "What if I designed a game about this story that Rebels Against Rebellion tells?" And so I pitched them this idea. Um, in East Tennessee, uh, well, let's take a step back. When the South was starting to secede, states from the South were starting to secede from from the Union, uh, Tennessee cast their vote. And originally, they voted not to secede. um the western part of Tennessee wanted to and the middle and eastern parts did not want to. And then Fort Sumpter happened and you started seeing public opinion in the south change and middle Tennessee swung. And so when they t the second when they had the second referendum, West and Middle Tennessee voted to secede and East Tennessee did not. And when I say they did not, they almost overwhelmingly did not. And one specific county in Appalachian East Tennessee named Scott County, their vote was like 520 or something like that to 19 not to secede. So I mean it was almost unanimous, right? Overwhelming. Um and so that county who said, "Hey, we don't want to s we don't want to leave the union. We want to stay with them." Um they were told by Tennessee, "Hey, you can't do that, right?" And the irony of course, hey, we can secede from the Union, but you cannot declare your independence from us.
And so the game rebels against rebellion. Obviously, the title is that's what it's referring to. Hey, these people of Scott County, Tennessee were rebelling against the rebellion, the Confederacy. And so the game, it's a two-player game. Uh, one player takes the role of the people of Scott County. So importantly on a foot stomp, not they're not the Union Army, right? These are people defending their home against the combined forces of secessionist gerillas like so pro-confederate gerillas who are not part of the confederacy technically and then the confederate states army. So the actual official army of the confederacy um they fought that battle those people of Scott County fought a battle to basically just stay you know keep their t town in together uh for about two years. And so the the end of the game is when Burnside comes through and liberates uh you know his that force comes through and liberates that part of Tennessee.
So what was the reason that the residents of Scott said, "No, no, we're good. We don't want to succeed."
Yeah, it's a good question. So it's a comp I mean anytime you delve into this uh it's a complicated answer, right? And you guys know this. I know Tony you know this. uh when I do my historical games. So not like you have undaunted which is I would call it like historically inspired right so it's very loosely you'll read like a half paragraph or paragraph or whatever and it sets this the scenario but if you look at my soliter my valiant defense games things like that they I often write like a 40page no joke historical companion book and so I've done that for this game right so I have my 40page you know historical book that goes with the game um and one of the sections is all about why they did not why East Tennessee general and Scott County did not want to s uh to to secede.
The super complex, but the bottom line is um the answer is slavery, but not for the reason that people might automatically think. So, it's not necessarily purely for ethical or moral reasons. It's because socioeconomically those people did not have slaves and that for their economically for them it was a bad thing to secede. Right? In that part of Appalachia, they wanted the connections to the Union. uh they didn't have slaves so it was just a bad deal. Now that's that's big hand small map overgeneralization. There were absolutely individuals within the county who were very much against slavery but those were individuals right as a as a sort of group they were it was primarily economic driven.
So in in the game what are you trying to recreate here? Are you recreating the skirmish that occurs and or are you trying to um what what theme? I hate to use the word theme because you know because that means I got to read flavor text, but what are you trying to do here?
Well, I mean so so what you want the players to feel you want the the Scott County player to feel overwhelmed, right? Hey, we are um I'll I'll delve into a little bit of backstory to kind of set the stage for the answer. So, uh these were just normal people for the most part. There were some volunteers or whatever, but they were really just normal people. They created what's called a home guard, which is essentially group of people not official military who were there literally to defend their homes. That home, those people that were in the home guard were for a period of about a month designated as a Union regiment and then the Confederacy came in, destroyed them, and they basically became guerilla fighters for the rest of the of the time. So there was like a one-mon period where there was a in almost a in name only union unit. Um the the player playing the Scott County people defending their their homes. They are fighting the sort of desperate guerilla war, right? They are not mustering large groups of troops. They are not fighting these the you know when you think about civil war battles, it's nothing like that. When there were battles in the town, right?
So there there's like like you would expect from you know civil war battles in the south there battles called the battle for the bacon you know and battle of no business and like all kind of crazy little battles. We're talking like 20 guys on each side. These are tiny battles, right? And so to to create those skirmishes, um, we knew that we had to have a very asymmetric game, asymmetric feeling game where one side is playing gorilla forces and the other side is playing a mixture of gorillas and regular much larger gu regular units. And so on the counter side, you have the Confederate player who, and I use that term to include both the Confederate army and the gorillas fighting with them. They're controlling these overwhelmingly strong uh Confederate units that have the ability to come in and smash the the people around. But the problem with with it is um they're being attacked by the North all over the place, right? If you know anything about the history of the Civil War in that area, there's a lot of fighting going on and the the Confederacy can't allow their big units to just sit in little old Scott County and keep the peace. So, what happened historically and what'll happen in the game is you have these big strong Confederate units. They'll come in and they can't stay. They have to go. They have to leave. And so, the Confederate player and they also have to maintain supply. Now, I don't want people eyes to sort of like glaze and like, oh god, this is very simple. You know, just basically a very simple rule about when you can use your card and when you can't, but um that's a from a gameplay
uh sort of challenge perspective, that's a that's a difficult challenge for the Confederate player. So, this is a deck builder. You're managing your deck and you're you're going out and you're grabbing these Confederate units, but when they come up, you better be able to maintain supply when you need them, right? Otherwise, they're just dead units that are inefficient. And so, both sides have really different um tensions about how they have to manage the the actions, the guerilla fight on one side and the maintaining supply and the sort of uh requirements out of outside of Scott County on the other side. So, is this similar to um Undaunted as far as the deck building where there are tokens on the board that represent units or people and the cards are what drive those tokens?
So, the game it's most similar to from a how you execute most of the core actions is Awe Acres of Snow. Have you guys played it?
A lot.
I've always wanted to and never got my hands on a copy. So, so A Few Acres of Snow was one of the first games I played when I started gaming. Um, it's it's probably the single most influential game to me that I've I've played. And anybody that's listening to this and claims Halifax Hammer, just be quiet because you don't like this there's this whole thing about the Halifax Hammer and people won't play the game because of this possibility. And it's like, man, just just don't read about it and I promise it won't be an issue. But um so when I was thinking I was I was playing I have a a local neighbor here who I do most of my gaming with. I have two two guys that I live that live local to me. One of them's name is Tommy and he I introduced him to Fukers of Snow and then we proceeded to play it and play it and play it. It just we I mean we would be nights we'd play it three times in a row back to back to back and so uh this was we were heavy into playing it during this conceptualization period for Rebels Against Rebellion. And I was trying to think, how am I going to model guerilla warfare? And what fukers of snow does, it is a deck builder and you add units, military units to your deck. And so your your opponent just knows your presence somewhere. They don't know what your military strength is. Now in a futures of snow, you get into these long sieges and stuff like that. And and rebels against rebellion doesn't have anything like that. But what I liked about it was you just you have a token on the board and it's not mapped to the cards like Undaunted. is just hey we there is presence in this location. That's all you know. You don't know how strong it is etc.
The cards in your hand are the is an abstract representation of the forces you happen to have available to you in that area. Now your opponent doesn't know that, right? And so that's what models the guerilla conflict is the fog of war of I know he's present there but I don't really know what the full capabilities are. Now, that there's nothing stopping the the the uh Scott County player because they have literally they're not presenting any extra information beyond that. On the flip side, for the Confederates, their gorillas are are true. They can operate anywhere, but going back to those Confederate army uh cards, you they might be in your hand, but you can only use them if you can trace back a supply to where they came from. So, the the Scott County player can say, "Well, I'm going to attack this location. I can see the board state. and I could tell that they can't trace supply back. So, I can safely attack this and I know that the Confederate ars won't be able to defend it. And so, that's all of that sort of like supply and fog of war and, you know, presence and guerilla conflict.
All of that is handled elegantly through this idea of, you know, abstract representation of some unknown number of of troops being present.
I always like to know how do I win? I'm sorry. It's just how I think about games when I hear about them.
But um you know, am I wiping someone out? What what are we trying to do here? If I'm the Scott County player, am I going to try to beat them back and just survive versus the Confederates coming in and gorillas coming in and just basically, you know, rams sacking everything?
Yeah, good question. So, it is it is an area control game. Okay. So what happens at the beginning of it uh just like just like historically it was the people of Scott County in Scott County there no were no Confederate presence etc. So at the beginning of the game the the Scott County player is present in six locations and every place you're present in you have a card that matches that location. Playing that lo that card allows you to do actions associated with that location. It also gives you victory points for every location you're in. So, at the beginning of the game, and it's not one victory point per location. Sometimes it's more, it's two or three, depending on how important the location is. So, at the beginning of the game, the Scott County player has six locations under their control and 11 victory points. The Confederate player has zero. They have zero place under control and they have zero points. The game ends based on the amount there's a supply of food and the game is triggered when that food supply is is exhausted.
And pretty much every action in the game you take costs food. Now, so why is food the resource in the game that triggers this? It is essentially the clock, the game clock. Because the best uh historical records we have of this period come from after the war when people, the local people, the local farmers especially filed grievances and claims for compensation to the government because both sides were absolutely ravaging the land during this. And so food is the resource that drove this conflict.
And when the food is done, it is basically an abstract representation of the fact that both sides have now ravaged and pillaged this place to the point where it's almost nothing left, right? And so that triggers the endgame. There's a period once that endgame trigger uh fires, as soon as the last food is taken, you have to be the player who has the most victory points at the start of your turn. So what it does is it triggers this period of sudden death. And so if I get ahead on my turn, that does that's not enough to win. I have to keep stay ahead until my next turn. And so you have the seessaw effect. And the game is very finely balanced. So you have this like sort of back and forth in this period of sudden death. And it goes until the last of the sort of like sudden death supply of food is taken.
And if nobody wins, it ends in a draw. And that draw is a representation of the fact that you've collectively just basically destroyed the town, right? There's the the county. There's nothing left worth fighting for.
And when it comes to conflict resolution, is that done through dice?
It's done through cards. So in your hand, you will have a mixture of location cards, which are what you use to play actions, and unit cards, which are what you use to uh conduct combat. Now, you'll start with a couple of very weak unit cards, but you can use the locations to recruit or bolster new units, and those units are what were historically linked to those locations, right? So, you'll have these famous gorillas that were from an area and f, you know, famous relatively speaking, right? Obviously, the people of the area know who these people are. Um, but you would play the card and you would pay the food cost and you would add that unit to your to your deck. That's how the Confederate player gets these super powerful Confederate cards. And that's one other thing I should mention. If I'm playing a location, a Confederate location outside of Scott County, and I play that card, and I add this big powerful, you know, infantry regiment card to my deck. I've just signaled to the Union player, hey, you better watch out. I just added the super powerful card, but it has to come up this road.
So, that's another way that the game is is flagging the sort of like conventional warfare where you would have the the Scott County players would have um insight into the fact that this big armies marching down the road, right? Whereas you don't get any of that from, you know, the flip side where you're just fighting the the gorillas.
Speaking of the cards, uh so I've been looking at some previews and the display and everything. The art in this game is absolutely amazing. Uh so tell us about the art of the game.
Yeah, so um there's the illustrator is Quantia who people should know because he's got to be I mean he's definitely one of the top board game artists obviously artist objective but I mean I think his work is amazing and a lot of other people do too. Um the graphic the design is done by um uh Gina Roupert and so um it's unbelievable. I mean you know I've I've had the fortune over the years of working with Roland McDonald the artist for Undaunted uh Eno Tulle obviously doing Night Witches. So like some of the great artists in my opinion in board gaming. And I think that the quantise cover for Rebels Against Rebellion is probably the the my favorite cover of any game I've worked on. I mean, it's just I think it's just absolutely stunning and it tells exactly this. You know, when we talked about the art brief, it was like, hey, this is not your, you know, your your typical Civil War game. This is the people of the town defending it or the county defending it from, you know, the Confederate army.
And I think that's important to point out. You know, you already stated this at the beginning. This is not one of these big civil war. I mean, Marty and I just recently replayed Lincoln, you know, and it was like, oh, this big, grandiose, boiled down, simple Civil War game. Here, it's, you know, it's skirmishing. I'll admit, you take the history of it. You write your book. That's great. Thank you. I loved reading books, you know, Postman. Um, and I have to go back and refresh my memory on the other ones you've done. But it's here is a a battle that's not about just decimating people, right? Or getting full control and changing history. That's not what we're doing here. Or at least that's what I'm taking away from what you're telling me.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's important like we all know about all the the Civil War generals, right? We know that. We as kids we knew that, right? But what we don't know are the stories of these individual people, right? And so, uh, the thing that I I think is I'm most excited about or proud of is telling the stories of the individual people because in some of these locations in Scott County, um, you'll get the location card, but then you have the ability to do what's called improving the location, which is basically just establishing a stronger presence there. And you get to actually add the people who were from those locations. And so, I'll, if you guys will indulge me, I'll tell a little story and it's an exemplar of the kind of stuff in the game. though it was one of the first actions by the Confederate army uh even before this the county had declared its independence there was a family where uh the father of the fa family was what's called a pilot so in in that period a pilot would be a person who's he was sneaking people up to Kentucky so they could safely join the Union army right and so and he was also anti against slavery and the Confederacy knew that and they sent um soldiers from a unit to go down to this guy's house and basically find him and bring him back. So, they get there and he's gone, but his family is still there. And these Confederate soldiers go into the house and they start roughing up his daughters. And one of the daughters, her name was uh Julia Markham. She's like 16 years old. Um she gets an axe and she just starts fighting back and he winds
up bayonetting her in the eye and shooting off some of her fingers, but she killed him, right? and she was one of the only I think there's like two women I I think that's right that actually got a um like a military pension or stipend after the Civil War for her actions. Uh and so the game she's in the game, right? And so like those stories are able to be told about real normal everyday people just kind of fighting to defend, you know, their homes. [clears throat]
So is she the person that's on the cover?
She's not. So we didn't depict No, we didn't actually depict because she didn't use a gun. she would use the axe. She is in the she is in the game. There's a card for her in the game, but she's not the person on the cover. And we just kind of wanted the cover to be this abstract representation of just the people of the county, not necessarily a specific person.
Yeah. And the cover's got the pictures of them, you know, ransacking and pillaging and looting and all that fun stuff. But I mean, my gosh, so she went all Lizzy Bordon on this guy, but yet you made me cringe. Bayonette in the eye. Dang.
Yeah.
Yeah. So that that's that's cool that uh each, you know, each of the cards and everything locations tell their own story, which another thing I appreciate about the graphic design. I'm looking at the cards right now. I love the minimalist stuff that's on the card that's actually the actions and stuff that you need to play the game, but most of the card is the art and it just pops so hard. We're talking uh borderto-border art, which I've always love. I love borderless cards. everything that you need to know in my weak old eyes. I can see the icons clearly, but there's still enough space to enjoy these individual pieces of art that are on each of the card.
Yeah. Yeah. Gina did an awesome job on the on the graphic design um throughout the whole product. And I mean, obviously, you know, as you said, give give Quantra as much real estate as you can to operate because we want to see as much of his art as possible.
Yeah. and and we're looking at the Kickstarter. So, I'm just I won't throw this out here because I always Marty and I always appreciate, you know, great iconography. So, I'm looking at this card. I think it's called Warberg that's on the Kickstarter. And let me guess, I see a a wheat symbol. So, I guess if I play this card, not knowing anything about the I'm going to gain a food.
That's right. Yep.
The next icon is a circle with an arrow. I'm going to assume that's move a troop or something. Yep.
And the next one is a plus with a card. add a card.
That's right. Good job.
We even did rule book.
It's all done.
And then the other cards have slashes with them. So, you gotta probably spend food or spend something to get the uh or whatever. I can't I can't read it because to Marty's point, I would need to expand my uh Google Chrome up to 300% to possibly view that and then it gets blurry. But not only the card, but the game board itself. The the map is I love uh the map showing like the topography. Yeah. Uh for those who don't know, this would be in the Appalachins.
And it's Appalachins, not Appalachian or Appalachian. It's Appalachin.
Is it pecan or peon?
That one's debatable, but it's Appalachin. All right. Um so anyway, the the topography on the map just looks amazing. It's it's one of those things that we all love GMT games, but we all know there's a lot of GMT games that could be so enhanced and make a better experience just by what's on the board. And to me, this board just pops. This m I love maps and this map just looks amazing.
Yeah. You know, when when we were working on it, um I created the prototype by going and just getting like map foundation data and putting the locations where they really are if they're in Scott County. Now, the ones outside the the Confederate starting locations outside of Scott County are sort of like handwave, like, hey, they're in that direction, but the the actual places you're playing in Scott County are all in their actual correct locations. And I gave that map to tow, and I said exactly what you did, Marty, because here's the deal.
The the the fact that um these battles were occurring with 20 people is because guys were having to go down a creek to find, you know, a dude's house to attack him because of the topography. The top topography of that part of extreme northeastern Tennessee is no joke. I mean, it is super hilly, you know, mountainous, basically, super wooded. And I'll give you an example, a real world example. So, when I was researching this game, um, there's just not much on it, right? Published literature. So, I was researching it. I would find these references to to books and I went to Ohio's I went to my local uh library and Ohio has an extremely good interl loan system and even they couldn't get these books that I was I was reading about
and so I went I found I got some contact information for the historic society for Scott County and I reached out to them and um
they were basically like yeah those those are books in name only those are like uh PDFs that we print out that a person local person wrote. And so I ended up having to go down to Scott County to do some of the research. And I met with them and it was awesome. I spent a day with the historic society and got all the primary sources that I couldn't otherwise get. But on my trip down there, I wanted to visit all of the places that were battles that occur in the game that can't occur in the game. And um I asked a guy about one of the battles. It was it's called a Battle of No Business, and it's on this little creek called No Business Creek. And I said, "Hey, can can we go out there or how can I get out there?" And the guy told me, he's like, "We can go here." And he gave me a location and we would need to park and then we need to hike about 3 hours to get to that location,
right? That's the only there is no way to get there otherwise, right? So, we're talking extremely and that's today. That's modern day, right? So, we're talking extremely remote stuff um in the game trying to represent that. And and the one of the ways the game does that is when you are attacking a location, you can attack along a road, you can attack along a creek, or you can attack along a trail. And these were basically like Native American game trails that the that the local people had kind of taken over as their their trails. And so,
um, that restricts how many cards you can attack with. And what's happening there is it's it's abstracting like if you're attacking over the road, you could attack with a bunch of people, right? You can marshall a big group. And if we're tacking along a creek, you know, smaller, but still a decent size. But if you're attacking along a little trail, we're not bringing a hundred dudes, right? We're bringing probably 10 people with us. So, it's very limited. And you cannot use those big Confederate army units along creeks and along uh trails,
right? So, the game, that's how the game models this sort of restrictive nature to make sure that you're doing things that are sort of consistent with history without having a whole bunch of rules about it.
Okay. Well, do you have any line of sight rules because you I understand obstructions and things, but are these also line of sights or
No, because No, because once you have a battle, you're in the you're in the location, right? You're just these big forces sort of abstractly fighting about in within the location.
That's you know that's important because you know a lot of times oh you look at this corner of this hex and there's no hex's on this board y'all. So when you go look at it but hey that's good to know that about this line of sight.
Yeah it's what I mean it's what's called a pointto-oint map right? So, it's you've got these critical locations that are connected via whatever road or or whatever, but u each location represents like a a a like a town or a village or a homestead.
Also, looking here on the Kickstarter, there's a there's a timeline. So, I guess this this whole thing with Scott County looks like it started like in ' 61, ended in ' 64. It's interesting that um Andrew Johnson who was uh against secession um came and spoke in Scott County it looks like in uh 1861 before that attack on the Markham home.
That's right. Yeah. So he obviously famously against secession and I mean this goes back to the whole being in East Tennessee, right? So he was trying to shore up support for um you know trying to speak up and in that point trying to raise awareness for the vote that was coming up in Tennessee.
I notice on the timeline here you don't reference 1986.
That was interesting. Tell us about what happened 1986. This is wild.
Go ahead, David. You you research this. You're better off than I am. I just read it on Wikipedia.
Yes. Yeah. Okay. So Okay. So I said that you know we'll go back to the beginning. So, Tennessee declares independence. Scott County declares its independence from Tennessee. Now, what actually there's there's a little bit of uh uncertainty about exactly what happened from a timeline perspective because a lot of the county records were were burned. And so, that it's it's not exactly clear when they declare their independence, but they did officially declare independence from from Tennessee. They fought this conflict. It was not until what was it 86 or 96? I forget 8686. So in 1986
they the county said okay we're going to rejoin the US
right so it rejoined the Tennessee and the United States. Now nobody ever recognized their independence. So, it kind of was in name only, but uh but I thought it was great and and if you go back and look, they actually did cast a vote, the county commissioners or whatever they and I I mean it was unanimous, but it's funny to think that somebody might have voted against rejoining the US and
and just looking at it, I'm pulling off of a co-pilot here. It said that officials staged a symbolic ceremony basically welcoming
Scott County back into Tennessee, which is really wild. Yep.
It's also really interesting too that the county kind of kept its identity forever. It was like its own little thing. I was reading like starting with uh Grant that county now those who don't know in the south was heavily Democratic and voting for president stuff until like the late 1900s. That is weird to say late 1900s anyway [clears throat] until the late 1900s. But Scott, every president that ran, they voted for the Republican except once. So they stood with that they were with with Lincoln, they were with Grant and they stayed with that party until until now while the rest of the South was still heavily Democratic during the time. So I thought that was interesting that even after the Civil War, they had their own little identity that they never got rid of.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I mean and and to be honest with you, that's it is like sort of exacerbated in Scott County, but East Tennessee in general is is is like that. And I mean a lot of Appalachia is like that, right? you know, we you look at West Virginia, right? So, so similar stories were happening all over the place there. And it's not it's not limited just to Scott County, right? Oh, there were there were things similar things happening Alabama and Georgia, but not to the same extent as what we saw with Scott County, especially not to the same extent in terms of like actual conflicts occurring.
People are wondering, well, how many people can this uh game play? It looks like you have a solo mode, two player,
and it lasts, it says on Kickstart, 60 minutes. Is that legit?
Yeah, 60 minutes. So 60 minutes. Uh I mean maybe slightly longer the first time you play it, but uh probably not. I mean I I've played multiple games and twoour sessions easily. Um uh so yeah, it is a two-player game. However, there is a solo mode, but in the solo mode, you can only play as the Scott County player, right? Which is I just thought that was that was sort of fitting that we would probably only want the player playing Scott County since that's the really what the game is the story of the game is telling. Um, so you play solo is and and I'm really really happy with the solo mode. Uh, it feels like playing the game. So I think it's not one of these like kind of, you know, tacked-on solo modes that are different or whatever. It's it it really does give you a lot of the same uh feeling as the as the two-player game. But yeah, probably about uh probably about 60 minutes and it's the typical complexity that Trevor and I design at, right? So probably a little over a two, probably 2.2 25 on the BGD scale.
Yeah. But here's the thing about your games. Okay. You say, "Well, that's that's a lower complexity,
but they're very strategic and very tactical."
Oh, yeah.
See, and that's that's the games I appreciate. Tony and I just uh released an episode uh where we review Container. I don't know if you've ever played Container. That to me that game is brilliant because the actions are so stupidly simple. Create a container, ship a container, that's it.
But playing the game is extremely thinky. and you and Trevor do a good job of doing the same thing. I don't want to have to spend two hours trying to understand how the rules work. I just want to play, but then give me an engaging game. And the dynamic duo does a great job of doing that.
Well, thank you.
And and I don't want to spend, you know, okay, going back to the back of the book. Okay, what does this icon mean?
Right.
It's a card game. I should be able to interpret everything I need on the card. And you do a great job with that. And I'm looking forward to this game doing the same thing. Now I am curious. What's the difference between light the light bread and the dark bread here? Is it white wheat? What is that?
I kind of I I I probably described it a little bit poorly. So the the light color food is the food is there's 40 food and you use that as the re the clock for the game.
As soon as the last light color food is taken, it triggers sudden death and then you have that 10 dark colored food as the period of sudden death to play in.
Okay, that's what it was representing. I was wondering if that was it. All right. I I know you said it was very similar or to your point of access and not access and allies
a few acres of snow from the from the in a few acres of snow the the critical thing is you play a location card to execute an action with that location and that's the thing that we I mean rebels against rebellion does that exact thing you play the location card to say hey like you had referenced Wartberg right so it's a location but the confederate controlled outside of you would play it and you would say with Wartberg I'm going to take this one action and that's the thing that's that's uh similar to Fectors with Snow
but in your mind I understand where you're relating it to but what about for everybody who follows David Thompson games you know what's it closest to in your mind for your
Yeah I mean Undaunted would be the closest because it's you know it is a deck builder you are managing you're doing so the like kind of like what Marty said the game tries to do a lot without any rules overhead and So, let me give you an example of what I mean by that. At the beginning of the game, I said the Scott County player starts with six locations and they also have two units and they're very weak units, military units that you could, you know, what you fight with. So, you've only got a deck of eight cards and you're going to play a hand of five. So, you're going to see a ton of your I mean, you know, the majority of your deck you're going to see in your first hand. Every single time you add a new location, you're adding a new card. Because as soon as you go into a location, you place a marker there to say, "Hey, I'm present there." And you add a card. Well, if you think about it, the more locations you control, the less efficient your deck is. So, the game has its natural tension just like you would in the real world. If I spread out my forces across a big area, it becomes immediately difficult, much more difficult to manage man and control over those forces, right? And that's what the game models extremely well. So it is a t tension between well of course I want to take more places because that's how I get victory points but I'm going to add all these cards to my deck. And now when I really need a certain location or I really need units to come up
now I've got a 20 card deck, you know, a 20 card deck. And so um that's like the critical tension in the game is that is is that piece of managing your deck through that tension.
Can you call your deck? Well, your opponent can call your deck for you just like they do in Inda. So, if somebody there's only one copy of each location. So, if your opponent if the opponent removes you from a location, you will lose the card and nobody will have it. If they come in, they take it, they will take the card.
So, it's it's whatever you want to call that deck destruction. You know, it's the exact same sort of idea as Undaunted in that regard is now you can't really callull a card, but there are, like I mentioned before, you can improve a location, which means, hey, you know, I'm I'm in this little town of this little uh homestead of Buffalo, but I want to get Julia Markham like we talked about earlier. That's a better version, and it replaces the card. So, it's a one to one replacement. So, you're able to add that card. It's a better card without actually adding to your deck. So you're not making it, you know, less efficient.
So is there a price on the game yet? By the time this comes out, the Kickstarter will
Yeah. I don't know what it is. This is this is the the the funny thing about being a designer. I have no idea. I don't even want to guess. So yeah, the Kickstarter will be out. So whatever Flying Pig says it is.
So I am curious. You know, everybody's like, "Oh, what about the add-ons, the add-ons, add-ons?" That's not you, right, man? That's Flying Pig. Let them have
Well, no. That's So here's what I will tell you about that. Um, I I don't You guys probably know this. If not, um, hopefully it's clear. We don't design I don't design extra content that has not been designed when a crowdfunding campaign h happens, right? Like if there's ever going to be gameplay stuff in a game that's going to be a crowdfunded game, I will have designed it before or we the team, whoever I'm co-designing with, in this case Trevor, will have designed it before it happens because we never want to [clears throat] be put in the the position of like
adding extra content for the sake of content. So I don't think Flying Pig has any plans to do any extra anything at all, but if they did, it would be like not gameplay related stuff. Oh, so you mean like not a huge neoprene mat or bread that looks like full breads and and
actual bread? It comes with real bread. Comes with a loaf of
bread. It's got a relief map. We got a relief map showing the various angles of the mountainatches.
Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah.
We can make it a legacy game. It comes with one loaf of bread. You can play the game one time and that's it.
Oh, that's great. Unreal. So, how long is this? Do you know how long the Kickstarter is going to run?
Three minutes.
So,
any any questions about the design? I'm your guy. Otherwise, I have no idea. No, I think it's
I will I will say this in the show notes, we will have a uh link to the Kickstarter. Obviously, I'm sure if you go out to BGG, that link will be out there, too. I know that Denver has been posting a lot of stuff on social media, uh which is where I've I've seen about a lot of this stuff. though. Is there anything about this game that we need to know that we haven't heard yet?
Oh gosh. I I mean, I don't I think we've we we've talked about the game. I can't imagine that we've missed anything that's super important. My hope for this game is that um it finds an audience with people outside of the typical, you know, American Civil War uh fans, right? I I I mean I I think there's going to be a lot of ACW or American Civil War gamers who are not interested in it because of the topic and because of the type of game it is. And that's totally fine. But I'm hopeful I'm hopeful that it will find a place and it will open up, you know, um the story of these people, right? That's and we've talked about that before, but that's the thing that I'm most excited about and hopeful for.
Yeah. And I think there have been some other companies that have done a great job. force circle games is one that comes to mind who who brings these topics and stuff that maybe other people there's a there's a stigma with GMT games right it's like oh it's a GMT game not not interested so I think it's cool seeing uh especially when the production is so good like this done here done with some four circle games it's kind of eye-catching it's oh that's interesting what is that about you know I know you're a fan for boats for women yeah you know it's one of those things a lot of People might know, eh, I'm not interested in that theme, but it's like, oh, it looks cool. Then you hear some good stuff about it and it looks great on the table. I'll give it a shot. Yeah.
So, I would think this is going to be the same thing just by the art and everything. It looks like it may grab you.
Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Certainly quiz art invites an audience that otherwise not might not be interested. Right.
Right. Right. Exactly.
All right. Before we get out here, I do have one last question. Not about this game. So, I've always picked at you about this. So, where's the dynamic duo's version of a Midway game? I'm counting on you, David.
I need Midway.
Oh, yeah.
Come on. With your design skills, y'all's disg Oh, look. Look how he's person. He's holding back something, Tony. I think he's holding back something.
I don't know. I mean, who knows? Who knows? Who knows what what's coming coming later. I don't know.
I mean, I am looking over your accolades here on BGG and I'm not seeing a title that I missed. I mean, I know By Stealth and Sea. I know what that one's about. I know what Europe Divided's about. I know what Soldiers in Postman's Uniforms about. I mean, I I I know these things, but I don't see Midway or the the strategic uh importance of Midway. I haven't seen that one yet.
That would be fun.
That would be a fun one to work on.
It is really interesting that you don't see a lot of Pacific theater stuff. It is Everything is so Europe focused.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, um you guys played Undaunted Kalisto and and you know, we have uh Revolution coming out at Gen Con. Well, I guess technically is is at like spiel, but it will be at Gen Con early. Um the only thing I mean I will say is who knows the future of Osprey because that's uncertain right now. But certainly the game that the the game that people have asked for by far the most is a Pacific Undaunted. So,
for what that's worth,
I think I asked for you the very first time I met you. I asked for
You did. You did. I owe [snorts] you.
What can you talk about? What else is in the hopper that you can talk about? It seems like you have a lot of stuff going on.
Yeah. So, this is a busy year. Um, uh, so we've talked about, you know, the new war chest expansion. We mentioned briefly or I mentioned briefly in passing, I can't remember exactly what we were talking about at the time, but Night Witches, right, which is a design with Liz Davidson about um women uh night bomber pilots during World War II, Soviet night bomber pilots during World War II. Um that game is with Fort Circle. That's on pre-order now. Uh and
I know that Kevin, the owner of Fort Circle, he wants to have it out before the end of the year. So, I mean, all the all the files are pretty much done. So hopefully, you know, that'll happen. Uh Liz and I just had our first code. So this is interesting. Night Witches was our first co-design together, but the first design that we did together that's released, published first, Queen of Spies, just came out.
So that's with Salt and Pepper. Um and that just shipped to backers. So that was super exciting.
Uh we talked about Undaunted Revolution. Roger and I have a couple of Sniper Elite expansions that are releasing. I think I know they'll be at Gen Con. That's super That's super cool because we haven't been able to play with Sniper Elite in a couple of years. So, that was fun to be able to go back and do some new
new content for that. I guess this year I think Flint lock will release. So, Flintlock is me and Roger doing our Seven Years Warfrench and Indians War version of Palo Mor's Blitzkrieg, which Roger and I are massive fans of that game. And so, it was super super fun and exciting to be able to take. So, it's a it is a two-player French and Indian War sort of version, if you will, of Blitzkrieg and a two-player Seven Years War of Blitzkrieg, and you can play them together to have a fourplayer team experience, which is super fun.
Paul Moa has become one of those designers that I've also love. Like, if his name's on something, I really want to try it. And these these these 20-minute games he came up with, I just fell in love with. So, when I heard that you were uh working with him on on this, I was super excited. And and plus, I just want to say the the cover of this game pops hard, too. Yeah. That is such a good cover.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's awesome. I'm super excited about it. Um we've had it in work for years because it was originally with PSC, who's the publisher that originally did Blitzcrie, right? And then they were bought by Floodgate and so now it's with Floodgate. So, it's taken a long time to get here. Um, but yeah, I I I can't wait. That'll be awesome. Um, and then the last game is uh a game called For the Gods that's coming out with Mighty Boards and uh that was co-designed with Trevor, Trevor Benjamin, but also Trevor when he's not working with me, he works with Brett Gilbert. And so this is a game that the three of us worked on together. So that's a very different kind of game for me. It's a sort of an abstract area control game that does some interesting stuff with back building.
Oh, cool. Doubt definitely be looking forward to that one too. Yeah, just looking at it now like tactical area majority game.
Yep. Yep. Super fun is extremely the visually stunning because you're stacking these tower pieces. So there are the pieces you have in your bag um and you pull them out and you're playing them and you're stacking them on the board and the board I think I don't know if this is a Kickstarter exclusive or who whatever but the it's a double layer board where the second layer is the islands. So it gives like an island like a physical relief to the island.
It looks amazing. So I'm I'm
Yeah, I'm very excited about a lot of things.
Yeah,
a lot of stuff going on.
So you got uh let's see all that coming out this year. Can you you got anything that you can actively talk about that you're designing?
Uh it's always like a haze in terms of what I can talk about.
Sure.
Sure.
Is there anything you can talk about for your job? I know it's double secret.
No, no, no. No, I know the answer to that. Nothing Nothing I can talk about there. Um, I mean, I'll just say that like, you know, Trevor and I have some things going on.
I I don't know that I can talk about any of it.
Yeah, I guess not. I guess not.
Then we just get to have you back on next year at some point then.
Liz, well, one thing that we can talk about is Liz and I are doing a game for um I really didn't talk about my codeesign partners too much. We talked about Trevor because we did um uh the game that we're talking about, Rebels Against Rebellion together, but I also partner with Roger Tankersley. We talked about some of the games and then Liz Davidson, right? So she uh Beyond Solitire podcast and she's the creative director at Leader. Um so she and I uh did Queen of Spies and and Night Witches. We've got a game coming out at this SD Histon, which is a con convention in San Diego November night market. And so it's like an indie, you know, you you can only make between 20 and 50 copies of the game. And so we're doing a fun little uh civil war game about the first Minnesota. So she lives in Minnesota.
Now our leader leader games is and it's it's the actions of that unit, First Minnesota on the second and third days of Gettysburg. So an extremely zoomed in view. Um that they lost I think the highest percentage of casualties of any unit. Uh they were almost decimated and they had two really major actions. One was a charge they conducted on the second day and then they were on the sort of receiving end of Pickicket's charge on the third day.
And so they were at what's called the high water mark of the Confederate advance on the third day of Gettysburg. So, just a little indie game that we're making and I think I mean it's so indie that I think my daughter's making the map for us. Like it's pretty, you know, and it'll be cheap and fun and so that's the one thing I know I can talk about.
Okay.
Nice. Nice. What's a game before we hop out of here? What's a game recently that you've played for the first time or new game to you that's not one of yours that you've really enjoyed?
So, I don't play games a lot, but I can talk I can answer the question as long as it have to be a new game because I'm definitely not cult of the new guy. Um, have you guys, you probably haven't because it's hard to get. Palo Mor's Battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars. Have you guys heard of that?
No.
So, Paulo, so Paulo and I have been I we're friends, you know, I'm a huge like you are you guys are I'm a huge fan of his work.
We maybe are collaborating on a design now in the future. Maybe.
Um, so anyway, he started his own publishing company, which is awesome because it lets him do what he wants to do. So he created this game called Battlefield of the Napoleonic Wars. The problem is it's it costs like $60 and then it costs like $60 to ship it here. And so it was extremely expensive and he ran out of the first print almost immediately. So um so I probably shouldn't talk about it because it's hard to get though I think he is doing a new printing soon. So that was one thing. Um Aari I was introduced to last year for the first time and it's probably my new favorite game that I you know to me. So like if people know Han or China or Web of Power, it's it's all of those, but it's called Aari. Came out about five years ago, and it's a just an absolutely like minimalist area control game that's unbelievably good. Uh and then lastly, don't be offended when I tell you guys this. I'm going to reveal something to you. I played Strike for the first time not not long ago.
It took me years and years and years of never playing Strike, not being in a tournament, but um uh I played it somewhere. I can't remember where, and I was like, "Oh my god, this is brilliant." And so my family plays it non-stop.
Yeah. So,
I mean, it it is exactly what it is, and it does a good job at being what it is. Dice in a bowl game.
It's amazing.
All right. Well, if anybody wants to keep up with you and what you're doing and everything like that, where can people follow you or you got newsletters or anything? and let us know how we can uh stay in touch with all your upcoming projects.
Yeah. So, the two ways to get in touch with me easily are on board gamegeeek if you just go and geekmail me. That's one way because I'm um vigilant about maintaining my geek mail. And then uh probably Blue Sky in terms of social media is the place I'm most active. So, if you just search for me on Blue Sky, you'll you'll find me. You could just message me there.
All right, David, it has been a pleasure. Oh yeah, I should ask before we're done. So you may not know this is the designer. So we have the Kickstarter coming out. Do you have any d idea when they're looking to ship this Kickstarter? Is this a 2027 thing?
I think that I mean I think that everything is done. All of the files are done. 100% done, right? So the only thing I mean obviously the Kickstarter will run its course and they will print it. The files have to be sent to the printer. I mean, there is a world in which it's extremely late 26. If I was a betting person, I would think early 27 would be when it actually ships.
Okay. No. Well, that's good. You know, sometimes Kickstarters are like years down the road. So, we we know we're 8 to 10 months at the worst.
Flying Pig does a really good job of fulfillment and all the everything is done for this one, right? Except literally sending the stuff to the printer. So, I don't there should not be any sort of like long delays on it.
Perfect.
Famous last words, I know, but
All right, everybody. That is Rebels Against Rebellion, currently on Kickstarter. If you don't happen to get it on Kickstarter, I'm sure it will be available uh once it comes out in retail from Flying Pig Games, designed by David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin. David, it has been too long, but we got to make sure it's not that long again when we have you back on the show, my friend.
Yep. Absolutely. It was a great fun day.
Hey y'all and thanks for checking out this designer series. We'll have some more in the future, so make sure to stay tuned. Stay up to date with all of our episodes and shenanigans by following us on X Instagram or join us on Discord. All which you can find over on our website roll dicistnames.com.