2022 Charles S. Roberts Awards Nominees and Final Ballot
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – The Board of Governors is pleased to announce the nominees for the 2022 Charles S. Roberts Awards for Excellence in Conflict Simulation Games (“CSR Awards”). We are very proud to have delivered an array of nominees which are all award-worthy, and outstanding examples of the art of conflict simulation design and production.
The newly-implemented CSR Awards Nomination process ran from January to May, 2023, and broadly, the Board is very pleased with the results, while identifying some clear needs for improvement and refinement in specific areas. After the completion of the 2022 Awards, the Board and other volunteers will be working to make those improvement, so they can be implemented for the 2023 Awards.
The public ballot to determine the winners will be open from June 1, 2023, through 11:59 PM EDT, June 30. After the ballot has closed, the final tabulation will be executed and the 2022 CSR Awards winners announced as soon as practicable thereafter. The 2022 inductees of the Clausewitz Hall of Fame will be announced at the same time. The public ballot is available HERE.
The CSR Awards would like to thank all those who participated in the 2022 Awards process, in particular the members of the Board of Governors, the participants in the Nominating Committee, and the jurists for the Clausewitz Hall of Fame.
For official announcements, please visit the CSR Awards website at https://charlessrobertsawards.com/. The full list of 2022 Nominees is also presented below.
Best Ancients Wargame
For a wargame set in the ancient period, including late antiquity, up to roughly 800 CE.
- 414 BC: Siege of Syracuse, Worthington Publishing, designer Dan Fournie
- Barbarians at the Gates, Compass Games, designer Kris Van Beurden
- Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! PSC Games, designer Paolo Mori
- Great Battles of Julius Caesar Deluxe Edition, GMT Games, designers Richard H. Berg and Mark Herman
- The Punic Wars, Bonsai Games, designer Yasushi Nakaguro
Best Medieval Wargame
For a wargame set in the medieval period, before the decisive use of gunpower, in the period roughly from 800-1500 CE.
- 1212: Navas de Tolosa, Draco Ideas, designer Pablo Sanz
- Almoravid, GMT Games, designer Volko Ruhnke
- Battles of Medieval Britain, self-published by designer Mike Lambo
- Breizh 1341, Shakos, designer Laurent Gary
- Saladin, Draco Ideas/Shakos, designer Denis Sauvage
Best Gunpowder Wargame
For a wargame set after the decisive use of gunpowder weapons including the renaissance and Age of Reason, but before the era of industrialization, in the period roughly 1500-1800 CE. Excludes Napoleonic topics.
- 1565: Siege of Malta, Worthington Publishing, designer Maurice Suckling
- Fire & Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683, Capstone Games, designer Robert DeLeskie
- Nagashino 1575 & Shizugatake 1583, Serious Historical Games, designer Phillipe Hardy
- No Peace Without Honor, Compass Games, designer David Meyler
- Wars of Religion, France 1562-1598, Fellowship of Simulations, designer Jerome Lefrancq
Best Early Modern Wargame
For a wargame set in the period between roughly 1800 and 1910, or during the Industrial Age. Excludes Napoleonic and American Civil War topics.
- Bloody Retribution: The Battle of Inkerman, Compass Games, designer Ty Bomba
- John Company Second Edition, Wehrlegig Games, designer Cole Wehrle
- Plains Indian Wars, GMT Games, designer John Poniske
- The Red Burnoose: Algeria 1857, Hit ‘Em With a Shoe, designers Roberta Taylor and Matt Shoemaker
- Votes for Women, Fort Circle Games, designer Tory Brown
Best Napoleonic Wargame
For a wargame set in the period 1789-1815, and treating topics related to the French Revolution or Napoleonic Wars.
- 1815 Scum of the Earth, Hall or Nothing Productions, designer Tristan Hall
- Bonaparte in the Quadrilateral, OSG, designer Kevin Zucker
- A Crowning Glory: Austerlitz 1805, Against the Odds, designer Ty Bomba
- Napoléon 1815, Shakos, designer Denis Sauvage
- Siege of Mantua, Hollandspiele, designer Amabel Holland
Best American Civil War Wargame
For a wargame set during the American Civil War, or dealing with its immediate causes or aftermath.
- Give Us Victories, Dissimula Edizioni, designer Sergio Schiavi
- Brothers at War: 1862, Compass Games, designer Christopher Moeller
- Border States, Shakos, designer Stéphane Brachet
- Into the Woods: The Battle of Shiloh, GMT Games, designer Richard Whitaker
- A Most Fearful Sacrifice, Flying Pig Games, designer Hermann Luttmann
Best Early 20th Century Wargame
For a wargame set between 1910, up to the beginning of World War II. Excludes World War II topics.
- 1914: Nach Paris, VUCA Simulations, designer Bertrand Munier
- Death of an Army, Ypres 1914, Revolution Games, designer Kerry Anderson
- Imperial Tide: The Great War, Compass Games, designer Gregory M. Smith
- Kaiserkrieg!, White Dog Games, designer Ben Madison
Best World War II Wargame
For a wargame treating World War II or related topics, in the period 1936-1945.
- Arracourt, Multi-Man Publishing, designer Carl Fung
- Barbarossa: Army Group Center Second Edition, GMT Games, designer Vance von Borries
- Enemy Action: Kharkov, Compass Games, designer John Butterfield
- Pacific War Second Edition, GMT Games, designer Mark Herman
- Undaunted: Stalingrad, Osprey Games, designers David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin
Best Modern Wargame
For a wargame dealing with a post-World War II, post-1945, Cold War (including the Korean and Vietnam conflicts), or Post-Cold War topic, up to the modern day.
- 2 Minutes to Midnight, Plague Island Games, designer Stuart Tonge
- Flashpoint: South China Sea, GMT Games, designer Harold Buchanan
- Resist!, Salt & Pepper Games, designers David Thompson, Roger Tankersley, and Trevor Benjamin
- Twilight Struggle: Red Sea, GMT Games, designer Jason Matthews
- Zurmat, Catastrophe Games, designer Tim Densham
Best Hypothetical Wargame
For a wargame with a topic that is contrafactual, contra-historical, alternate history or hypothetical, set in the past to immediate near future.
- Case Geld: The Axis Invasion of North America, 1945-46, Compass Games, designer Ty Bomba
- CO-OPS, Nuts! Publishing, designers Adrien Biciacci, Guillaume Prévost, and Quentin Rouyre
- Die Festung Hamburg, Thin Red Line Games, designer Fabrizio Vianello
- Spruance Leader, Dan Verssen Games, designer Dean Brown
- The Third World War Designer Signature Edition, Compass Games, designer Frank Chadwick
Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Wargame
For a wargame in a science fiction or fantasy setting.
- Ginormopod 2050 A.D.: Attack of the Giant Bug Monsters, Hollandspiele, designers Ryan Heilman and Dave Shaw
- The Long Road, Flying Pig Games, designer Mark H. Walker
- Nemo’s War: The Ultimate Edition, Victory Point Games, designers Christopher Taylor and Alan Emrich
- Wonderland’s War, Druid City Games/Skybound Games, designers Tim Eisner, Ben Eisner, and Ian Moss
- Xenos Rampant, Osprey Games, designers Daniel Mersey and Richard Cowen
Best Solitaire or Cooperative Wargame
For a wargame designed primarily to be played in a solitaire or cooperative mode.
- American Tank Ace, Compass Games, designer Gregory M. Smith
- Enemy Action: Kharkov, Compass Games, designer John Butterfield
- Lanzerath Ridge, Dan Verssen Games, designer David Thompson
- Resist!, Salt & Pepper Games, designers David Thompson, Roger Tankersley, and Trevor Benjamin
- Skies Above Britain, GMT Games, designers Jerry White and Gina Willis
Best Expansion for an Existing Wargame
For an expansion, supplement or add-on to an existing wargame, Stand-alone products are excluded.
- Battles For the Shenandoah, for Death Valley, GMT Games, designer Greg Laubach
- The Bulge Campaign, for Fields of Fire, GMT Games, designer Ben Hull
- Fall of Saigon, for Fire in the Lake, GMT Games, designers Mark Herman and Volko Ruhnke
- II Grass II Crown, for The Grass Crown, Hollandspiele, designer Amabel Holland
- Red Storm: Baltic Approaches, for Red Storm, GMT Games, designer Douglas Bush
Best Wargaming Magazine
For a wargame magazine, containing coverage of wargaming or otherwise specifically relevant to a wargame or wargames. This award is to recognize the quality of the magazine, and any included wargames should be judged separately in their appropriate categories.
- Against the Odds
- Strategy & Tactics
- Vae Victis
- War Diary
- World at War
The Redmond A. Simonsen Memorial Award for Outstanding Wargame Presentation
For a wargame that exhibits excellence in all aspects of wargame presentation, including the quality of the rules, packaging, art, components, physical systems design, playing surface, and visual interface.
- Almoravid: Reconquista and Riposte in Spain, 1085-1086, GMT Games
- Donnerschlag: Escape from Stalingrad, VUCA Simulations
- Fire & Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683, Capstone Games
- A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg, Flying Pig Games
- Undaunted: Stalingrad, Osprey Games
The James F. Dunnigan Award for Playability and Design
For the designer who has, through excellence of design, had the most positive impact on playability and elegance in wargaming.
- Hermann Luttmann
- Volko Ruhnke
The Charles S. Roberts Memorial Award
For the new designer or design team whose first or second game was released in the Awards Year, who best exemplifies emerging excellence in wargame design, and who has not previously received this Award.
- Dean Brown, for Spruance Leader
- Patrick Gebhardt, for Donnerschlag
- Richard Whitaker, for Into the Woods
Wargame of the Year
For the wargame that best exhibits the highest standards of excellence in design and execution. Reprints and reissues are not eligible for this Award.
- Almoravid: Reconquista and Riposte in Spain 1085-1086
- Into the Woods: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862
- A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg
- Napoléon 1815
- Undaunted: Stalingrad
16 Comments
[…] Once again, we have a Charles S. Roberts Award Nominee! […]
Thank you ! I am very proud to see my game in the list !
Great list indeed. I shall ponder and then vote. thank all of you for the hard work in putting this together!
It’s a shame that the nomination for best wargame art & cover has been eliminated.
I understand that it has been replaced by The Redmond A. Simonsen Memorial Award for Outstanding Wargame Presentation, but reading the description, 90% of the voters will do it for the best components to the detriment of art.
We may revisit that decision in the future. Meanwhile, we dropped categories that were not functioning as intended. We are also not convinced you are right about that last part. We’ll see when results are in.
I agree – too bad this category has been eliminated. It was the one category anyone could vote on, regardless of whether they’ve played any of the games. Never mind that Roger MacGowan would usually win. 😉
I do agree with the elimination of some of the other categories of years past.
Actually, I find this listing of wargames to be very slim with the amount that has come out since the last time of 2021. Where are the small games, such as the post card games? Or even the smaller publishers who have brought out fine games in all categories?
And this one – “Votes for Women, Fort Circle Games”? Honestly. how is that even a wargame, unless the women leading their movement are armed to the teeth with six shooters or double-ought frying pans? Or even “John Company” Second Edition, Wehrlegig Games, which is self described as a business game on Wehrlegig Games web page.
Honestly, this is CSRA listing for 2022 is a joke.
Non value-added categories, like postcard games, were dropped, along with categories that were simply not working. I’d love to hear which “smaller publishers who have brought out fine games in all categories” we missed; if we have blind spots we definitely want to address them.
There may be a statement about certain nominees which a rather small number of people appear to have issues with. Very briefly, however, the nominations were determined by the Nominating Committee. Both Votes for Women and John Company are conflict simulations, and thus were determined to qualify. Both, incidentally, also contain (abstract) military or war elements.
“smaller publishers who have brought out fine games” – “Time of Wars: Eastern Europe 1590 – 1660” from Strategemata, Poland.
This game MUST BE in “Best Gunpowder Wargame” category. Of course I’m not impartial, but how many multiplayer, card driven games were published in 2022?
Hello,
I have a few questions about the process in which the CSR board decides on what games qualifies for the awards. I’d like to better understand the processes involved in which the games were selected.
1. What is the definition the CSR board uses to define what is a conflict simulation? Is it posted on your site, and can you provide a link?
2. Is there a difference between conflict simulation and wargame? Or are they identical in terms of how the CSR board defines them?
3. Could you list an example (doesn’t have to include the game title) of a game challenged under Section II, Paragraph 3 that was nominated and state the reasons why it was accepted or rejected? A single example would be fine, I just want to better understand the process and reasoning.
Thanks
Ken
Valid questions. I’ll answer in the order you present.
1) The working definition is in Charter under section II.3. You’ll see that this definition is neither terribly specific or at all airtight. But that’s the fundamental problem: nobody has yet come up with a definition of either of these terms that satisfies everybody or that you can’t punch game-sized holes in with minimal effort. Realizing that we were not going to definitively solve this decades-old argument was a key stop along the road to establishing a thing that we can actually make work.
2) I say there is – but I don’t presume to speak for everyone, and certainly not for every board or committee member. Recognize, however, that these things are simply never binary — solely this and not that — but lie on some spectrum. Another key insight was that different people are going to draw the line between wargame and non-wargame conflict simulation in different places. Given this, who gets to make the decision about where a given game falls on that spectrum right now, when we have to make the decision? The method we landed on was setting up a committee to make the calls. (There may be some statement in the next few days giving more details.)
3) I would like to not step on Board or committee toes by speaking for anyone else; I can only therefore explain my reasoning and report the committee’s final votes, as reflected in the nominees. That said, mine was the biggest hand assembling the new Charter, so a lot of my feelings are put to work there. In detail, though:
a) By far the most common reason a game was determined to be ineligible was year of release. This was not always easy to determine, but we were able to pool the collective knowledge of the committee to arrive at determinations we felt secure in.
b) There is a disconnect between the language in the Charter proper and in the Category definitions (not technically part of the Charter because we wanted the flexibility to make minor adjustments without necessarily requiring Charter changes). This is, bluntly, just sloppiness on our part, but it wasn’t noticed at the time, and we’ll be looking to harmonize for the next Awards year.
c) Again with the response to your point #2 in mind, one of the things that was useful to us was precedent. In reviewing past awards, we saw a pretty large number of games who were either nominated or who won which were considered controversial at the time because some deemed them to be “not wargames” using whatever definition suited them at the time. Some of these, like East Front and For the People, seem ludicrous today… but literally last week I saw someone proclaim online that block games, games without hex maps, and CDGs could never possibly be wargames. Such a narrow definition of what a wargame is seems incredibly out of touch with the vast majority of people who actually play these types of games.
d) So there’s some fuss (honestly, less than we expected) about a couple of nominated games being “not wargames”. Maybe this is right… and my own instinct is to sympathize with that position. But they are conflict simulations, which is a somewhat (but not infinitely) broader category. The CSR mission is explicitly to recognize excellence in conflict simulations, of which “wargames” is perhaps a large subset. I note that this is not new, nor does it represent any change from previous practice or policy except in that we now have a charter that provides us with some guidance, and some mechanisms with which to execute the process and actually make decisions. Nor are any of the mentioned games “less wargamey” than that good chunk of previous nominees and winners.
e) Now, in harmonizing the tension between the charter and category boundaries, we don’t yet have an answer, as we have been focused on this year’s awards and are only now starting to have the continuous improvement conversations. Maybe we add categories for “Best Non-Military Conflict Simulation” and “Best War-Themed Non-Simulation”, but that’s just me talking at this point, and I can see a variety of problems with the idea. Maybe we drop “wargame” from the category definitions, but that opens up different, possibly larger problems. So the way forward is not straight, and we’re going to have to figure it out.
Hello,
Thank you for responding to my questions, I appreciate the time you took to answer them. I only wanted to understand the process.
From what you have stated and answers to other questions by you, I do have one suggestion.
Create a clear, concise definition of what is a “wargame” and what is a “conflict simulation”.
I get it that everyone has their own definitions and that no matter what you come up with there will be those who complain. But since you can’t please everyone, you can at least be clear about what the board uses as its guideline for what games qualify.
– Have every board member write out a 50 word or less definition for each and submit them to you.
– Combine the similar elements in each submission into a single 50 word or less definition.
– Have a discussion with the board and put that definition to a vote.
– If it passes, great. If it does not pass, amend the definition according to the dissention and vote again until you have something the majority agrees with. Then publish both definitions for everyone to see.
If the board cannot do that, then you need a new board. Conciseness, clarity, and transparency should be at the forefront of what boards do for their constituents. And since the CSR board is handing out awards, clarity as to what qualifies should be at the forefront of what the board does.
Keep in mind that when people disagree and vent their anger, that is a good thing. It means that people care about the awards, the process, and how issues are resolved. It’s when people don’t disagree that the awards are in trouble. Because it means that they no longer care.
Thanks
Ken
Thank you; I’m flattered to see my game on here.
I do not think the “game of the year” category at the end is wise. This will likely influence voters in the individual eras (since the panel has already told voters that those 5 games are the best).
I will also note that you have more “era categories” than I have games from 2022, and at least one of the games I bought (and thought good) did not even make the nomination cut. Alas, I do not think I am knowledgeable enough to even cast a ballot.
Honestly, I don’t understand what the nomination criteria is but it seems totally incomprehensible to me, you see nominations that even games that are not wargames and many others were oblivious that simply making an honest comparison, the result is even more gruesome, how can it be that Race for Bastogne (MMP) neither art nor WW2 wargame is nominated and there are others, I prefer not to say so as not to miss anyone, that they are sounding infinitely worse.
The current CSRs are a shock of what was.
I am of the same opinion as Andy, this CSRA listing for 2022 is a bad joke.
The Nomination criteria are listed on the Charter page. A limited number of nominations in each category are available; after a lot of conversation about the merits of the various games, the Nominating Committee voted on the various candidates. The nominees you see are the top results from that vote.
There is no “art” category. The various presentation categories have been consolidated into the singular The Redmond A. Simonsen Memorial Award for Outstanding Wargame Presentation. The individual art categories were simply not functioning as constructed, but bringing them back in a workable way is something we intend to work on.
I am curious which nominees you feel were “oblivious”; I am less confused about those you feel are “not wargames”, since there has been other feedback to that effect, but providing us with concrete feedback would be more helpful than merely condemning the whole effort as “a bad joke”.