Wargaming is our oldest and most demanding form: the attempt to render historical conflict with enough fidelity that the game teaches what the history struggled to record. Cold Alchemy wargames are built for serious players, educators, and those who believe the past has lessons that only play can unlock.
We do not build wargames to celebrate conflict. We build them to make the costs of conflict legible — to render the fog, friction, and terrible arithmetic of organised violence in a form that can be examined, discussed, and remembered.
Each title begins with an operational question drawn from the historical record. The mechanics are built backwards from that question: what decision did the commander face? What information did they have? What were the consequences of delay? The game is the answer.
June 1944 saw the greatest military offensive of the Second World War — not in Normandy, but along a 700-kilometre front in Byelorussia, where Soviet Operation Bagration destroyed Army Group Centre in eight weeks. Iron Meridian puts both players inside this crucible.
Playing at the corps-to-army level, Iron Meridian models supply, air support allocation, and the critical German command paralysis induced by deception operations. The Soviet player must exploit momentum before the front reconsolidates. The German player must choose what to sacrifice.
Designed with input from operational historians at two universities. Includes a full designer's commentary on the historical decisions modelled by each mechanic.
Register InterestThree years of conflict. Thirty-seven thousand American dead. An armistice, not a peace treaty. Cold Front '53 models the Korean War as the proto-type Cold War confrontation it actually was — a fight conducted under the shadow of nuclear weapons, complicated by UN coalition politics, Chinese intervention, and MacArthur's insubordination.
A card-driven wargame in the tradition of the CDG genre, but with a political track that runs parallel to the military map. Armistice negotiations are a mechanic, not a coda. Players must manage the peace as carefully as the war.
Follow DevelopmentA tactical wargame of counter-insurgency operations, modelling engagements from Vietnam, Malaya, and Algeria. The conventional player commands superior firepower and logistics. The irregular player commands information, population, and time.
The winning condition for the conventional side is not military — it is political. Force alone cannot secure a population that has chosen the other side. Every mechanically successful combat operation must be weighed against its effect on the political track. This is the alchemy of insurgency: the transformation of tactical victory into strategic defeat.
Suitable for classroom use. Accompanied by a facilitator's guide with primary source discussion questions.
Enquire Design Notes