Hi Folks,

Work continues on the next Line of Departure. Right now, I'm working on an analysis of SPI's Great Battles of the American Civil War game on the Battle of Monocacy, Drive on Washington. This will be joining reviews of Jack Greene's Togo, from the final tranche of Turning Point Simulations titles, The Day of Waterloo.

The elephant in the room of course is COVID-19. As someone approaching the literal drop dead age, and with a couple of preexisting medical conditions, I am…

I have some Line of Departure news. As you might have noticed, I published an issue in the spring, and have been working on the next one ever since. Issue 83 is a work in active progress, and currently I'm working on a second review for it, this one on Jack W Greene's Togo. The one on The Day of Waterloo, from Against the Odds, is already done and ready to insert.

2018 was a terrible year for a lot of reasons, including and especially getting anything done on Line of Departure.…

I have some news for Line of Departure subscribers especially. Unfortunately it's not good. Today I got a bad diagnosis at a doctor's office, and my driving will be curtailed for the foreseeable future. No, it's not a DUI, nor is it connected with substance abuse. It's my heart, and it's been malfunctioning in a frightening manner. I have to get on the schedule with my invasive cardiologist, yes that's a…

I'm still working three jobs at the moment, teaching at two, and consulting for another company.  So unemployment isn't giving me more time, far from it.

What's giving me extra time is that I keep on getting sentenced to Facebook Jail.  I got a day before, for posting a meme of a cat that looked like Hitler, then after my suspension was lifted, they decided that there was nothing wrong with it.  I was also suspended for a day, for a cartoon that made fun of the Ku Klux Klan.  This…

Line of Departure Issue 82 (Spring 2019) is now available for purchase.  The articles include a review of Forgotten Legions (Compass Games), along with analysis of Oil War (SPI), Acre (Decision Games), Ring of Fire (Moments in History), along with Tobruk (Avalon Hill).  To read the Bully Pulpit editorial and see the full table of contents,…

I'm currently in Raleigh NC at my mom's house, visiting for another few days.  Last week, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Brant Guillory for his GrogCast podcast on his GrogHeads site, covering disparate topics including my game design work, game development, and how it all overlaps with my college-level teaching.  This was all conducted in the gaming area of…

The newest issue of Line of Departure is now available for purchase.  Its lead review is of No Middle Ground from Against the Odds, followed by analysis of Age of Empires II HD from Steam, Guilford (GMT), and the venerable Avalon Hill game PanzerBlitz.

To read the full table of contents, and the issue's Bully Pulpit editorial,…

I just got back from the Post Office, and dropping of the last copies of Issue 80 to go out to the subscribers.  Here is the article list:

ISIS and the New Modern: A Review of Islamic State: Libya War

by Jim Werbaneth



Islamic State: Syria: A Preview

by Javier Romero



Insurgency Among the Stars: Simulating Revolutionary War in Freedom in the…

The eightieth issue of Line of Departure is being printed right now.  The lead review is of Javier Romero's Islamic State: Libya War, and he contributes a preview of his upcoming Islamic State:Syria too. 

Next, there's an article that I wanted to write for a long time.  It is an analysis of Freedom in the Galaxy as a game of insurgency and counterinsurgency, a model of revolution as understood in the real world but placed in a science fiction milieu.  Another article covers strategy…

Does anyone want to take an online course on the Civil War, starting on May 22, and last ten weeks, through La Roche College? I'm the professor, and the textbook is James McPherson's Battlecry of Freedom. There would be no paper, and the grading is on ten discussion boards and two exams. To get the three college credits, you'd have to register at La Roche College as a student. It might be possible too to do so as an auditor, without going for the credits. I've taught this twice before…

The popular "Backwards Subscription" offer is back, this with eight recent magazines, Issues 71 through 78.   These cover a wide range of games, with topics from the ancient world to the far future, and scaled from microtactical to grand strategic.

Read more about them here:

Comprehensive Article List

And order…

As I've been talking about for a while, prices for Line of Departure went up today, for the first time in about eight years.  Now, if you look inside copies of some of the TPS games, you'll find a subscription flyer for the magazine, with the old prices of $22.00 per year for American and Canadian subscribers, and $27.50 for those elsewhere in the world.



As a special offer, I'm going to honor those prices for TPS gamers only, through April 2017.  If you have one of those flyers,…

For the benefit of teachers and especially students, I just set up a page with links to all the academic papers I wrote for my last venture into graduate school. These are still on the Line of Departure Online Features Articles page, but for the sake of convenience, they are all now organized in one…

Issue 79, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Line of Departure, is now on the market.  This is also the third in the magazine's history to have the theme of Americans at War.  This issue contains the following articles:

Return to the Third World War: A Review of the GMT Games Edition of MBT

Fictional Battles, Fictional Game: Battalion-Level Battles of World War III,…

No, this is not a political post, not really.

Tonight, I sat on a panel with six other voters recruited by Trib Total Media, the publisher of the old Pittsburgh Tribune Review and currently the Valley News Dispatch and Greensburg Tribune Review, at the Media Innovation Center of Point Park University in Downtown Pittsburgh.  My perspective wasn't as a professor of political science, but one of a group of typical voters.  One guy was a business owner who voted for Trump, three were…

As I work on Line of Departure Issue 78, I have come to the difficult decision that due to rising printing and postage costs, I'm going to have to raise prices.  This is the first increase since 2008, and I hope that it is the last one for quite some time.  Here are the new prices, effective March 1:



Four-Issue Subscription to the United States and Canada: $30.00

Four-Issue Subscription to Everywhere Else in the World: $38.00

Individual Issues to the United States and…

I just updated the Line of Departure Online Features site.  The major part of it involves the latest addition, an academic article that I wrote about a year ago on the logistical foundations of the Union offensive in Virginia in 1864.  As I note on the site, this is probably going to be the last historical piece I write…

Officially, this was conferred last month, but the diploma only arrived today.  My course concentration was World War II, but with an elective each on command and leadership in the Civil War, and on the American Revolution.  Interestingly, the latter was taught mainly from the British perspective, which was both interesting and refreshing.  I did not write a…