Asymmetric, 2-player, card-driven wargame. Beautifully presented. Streamlined, tense and very replayable. War, logistics and politics.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Freedom or Death!
about 5 years ago
– Thu, Mar 28, 2019 at 02:07:21 AM
Hello Everyone,
After the first day of the campaign we are in the middle of reaching the funding goal. Thank you very much for your support!
Please share the news about the campaign to your friends and fellow gamers. This will help us all to fund this game! :) The Greek media are already with us. ;) It's easy, please share / retweet these posts with your social media profiles:
We’ve been asked to show a sneak peek of the coming stretch goals. So, here they are!
As you can see, we are going to reward your activity here. Stay tuned! :)
Historical capsules
Similarly to our previous campaigns, the aim is not just to collect funds from backers, but also to keep them entertained and maybe even surprise sometimes with an interesting information of historical fact. The theme of the game is based on a real story, so we have asked Eric G.L. Pinzelli, Ph.D University of Provence, winner of French Defense Ministry’s 1998 Military History Award, to write a series of articles, which will make the, somewhat obscure story, more relevant and engaging. Let’s start, where the Greek uprising started: on a spring day, almost 200 hundred years ago…
On March 25, 1821, when the flag of the revolution was raised over the Monastery of Agia Lavra in the Peloponnese, the cry “Freedom or Death” became instantly the motto of the insurgents.
From its beginnings, the bloody revolt that tore Greece apart took a prominent place on the scale of Western concerns. Far from being considered as a distant affair between Greeks and Turks, this conflict was perceived as an event of considerable importance. From Lisbon to Stockholm, and from New York to Warsaw, it deeply moved contemporaries. Greece, of course, was not a country like any other: It was the place of origin, the very matrix of Western civilization.
Inspired by American and French revolutionary ideals, the insurgents immediately gained the sympathy of the intellectual circles of the continent. For the progressive artists of Paris, London, Warsaw or Rome, the Acropolis was free from its chains; democracy had recovered its ancient cradle!
From the eve of the conflict, Greece's war of independence against the Ottoman Empire largely inspired European Romanticism: poets, writers, musicians, painters, all celebrated the epic struggle. Public support in Europe applauded the uprising of Greek Christians against the Turks whom they thought as barbarians, uncivilized and destructive.
The liberals recognized in the struggle of the Greek people their own ideal of freedom. The Greek cause became the embodiment of all their causes: freedom of course, the right of peoples to self-determination, the struggle against misrule and the tyrannical oppression of a despotic and archaic monarchy.
There was a tide of sympathy for the insurgent Greeks in the public and in the newspapers. The most committed were called “philhellenes” and they organized themselves in committees all over Europe, but also in the U.S. Volunteers, a mix of young romantics and former soldiers of the Napoleonic wars, precipitated themselves in Greece ready to fight – and die - for the noble cause, while support committees sprang up all over the West to bring clothing, food and financial aid to the insurgents.
Finally the European youth found itself a new hero in whom they could identify: Landing on the shores of Greece in 1823 to support the Hellenic cause, Lord Byron relinquished his life a year later at Missolonghi, a city that had already become famous for the gallant resistance of the Greeks against repeated Turkish assaults. That tragic demise turned the English poet into a martyr, a legend! And it did not matter if it was a bad fever that took him away: For the romantics, Byron had died in battle, fallen on the field of honor.
Byron’s glorious fate and the heroic defense and sacrifice of the city's population in the third and last siege of Missolonghi (1825-1826) would finally force European great powers to intervene, turning the tide of war, giving Greece its independence in 1829. But none of this would have been possible without Missolonghi’s heroes.
Written by Eric G.L. Pinzelli
Thanks for reading. Keep the assault running!
PHALANX Team
LABOUR OF LOVE
about 5 years ago
– Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 01:28:24 PM
Hello Everyone,
In this update, I would like to tell you how I want to use the success of Hannibal and Hamilcar to help other game designers bring their projects to life.
It was in Essen, in October 2016. Almost three years ago but I still remember that meeting very well. We have just published our first Kickstarter game: Germania Magna and the works were very well advanced on Hannibal and Hamilcar, with the campaign planned for the following spring.
You may not know or remember that it took me 10 years to secure publishing contract for Hannibal. Rome vs Carthage. Originally I wanted to publish Hannibal II, as the rights to the original game were at Hasbro, beyond my reach. I convinced Mark Simonitch to work on the project only to learn that another company got ahold of the rights. That was a horrible blow to our plans and it took years to build the position we had almost at hand.
Ten years later, one night I wrote to Mark. In fact, in despair, and hoping the game publication could be my life changer. Mark replied within 10 minutes. Yes, you can have it - he wrote. I was overwhelmed. It was my ultimate reward! My Holy Grail game was to be published by my own company. What a story to tell!
Mark and Jaro
The signing of the Hannibal contract was a light in my personal dark tunnel, which began with the arrival of my second child, Tytus, who was born with Down Syndrome. To us parents, uncertainty, anxiety and fear was enormous. Tytus required a lot of attention and patience. That in turn meant issues at my day work, where my manager decided not to allow me flexible working hours despite the situation I was facing. No, his name is not worth a mention.
However, once I got the contract for Hannibal, I decided to get even and have quit my day job in the gambling industry, betting on the success of PHALANX. Well, in fact, I didn’t have much of a choice. Today, it is still quite a distance to go to be able to fully support my family just working for a game publisher but we are getting there and hopefully with the help of such great community as created by our customers and partners, one day we will.
That day in Essen I learned, well known Greek designer requested a meeting with us. The unusual was, it was the first time in the history of our small company, that someone recognized on the market really wanted to meet us. And not the other way around, to which we grew accustomed. For example, we have been long looking for the publisher of 1944 Race to the Rhine until decided to invest our own resources in the test print run of a game, which turned out to be quite a success (by the way, it's sequel, Race to Moscow, is coming to Kickstarter sometime in May/June 2019). This time, the tables turned and there, I am meeting a guy, who has an impressive list of already published games. And he brings his little box to tell me there is some great game inside, which needs publication.
The man was on fire. He told me the story behind the game with such passion I started to visualize how to approach the subject. And the subject was, so to say, difficult. Even for a history buff like me, Greek War of Independence wasn't something really thrilling. Nothing on my top interest list. When Vangelis mentioned Dos de Mayo, I thought, well, I wish Messolongi was so well known as that Spanish uprising against Napoleon. It wasn't. And here lies a problem we had to face.
That aside though, I really saw the game was his labour of love. And a thought struck me, that I should pay back what I owe to the community due to the fact, Hannibal was trusted to us for publication. I really wanted to help someone to have a dream fulfilled. So, I grabbed the box and decided that I will, if the game itself is good. I took a while to play it but once I did, I knew we will make every effort to publish it.
Vangelis and Jaro next to Freedom! prototype
So, here we are, with our fifth Kickstarer project. In the meantime Germania Magna, Hannibal and Hamilcar were delivered, U-boot is in delivery and Nanty Narking on the way to the printing house. The time has come to help Vangelis Bagiartakis see his dream come true.
May I please ask you to join us in this effort? I promise, you'd be really glad with the product. There is a real game there, the art is fantastic and we’ve made it as easy to learn and play as it was possible.
Else, because we’ve invested a lot of resources into developing the game and accompanying material (prototypes for the reviewers, videos etc) we are very tight on the marketing budget left for the classical way of promotion and buying ads.
Please spread the word, both in your gaming circles as well as in social media even if the game is not for you. That’s the only way we can get the word out there really. Thank you for all your help.
Jaro
Post Scriptum
March 21st was Down Syndrome awareness day. So please let me take this opportunity to tell you, that Down Syndrome is basically a genetic error called trisomy 21, which basically means three chromosomes 21 instead of two. As such, people with Down Syndrome suffer from learning disabilities and require support throughout their whole lives as they are unable to live independently. Apart from that, they are full of joy, very loving and straightforward individual organically incapable of evil. Angels on Earth.
