Take Aim Designs

08/10/2026

Final German positions in the current playtest. Victory was secured on Turn 9, the final game turn. German morale had been shaken since Turn 8. A successful bloody fields die roll (had to roll high) to capture a contested Doullens avoided a potentially risky combat, and a final assault on Frevent had the good fortune to run into a fairly weak British defense - but then only won the combat 12:10. One feature of this game is that the Germans have a lot of units, making single unit "probing" attacks possible.

08/10/2026

Some adjustments to the right side of playtest map. German reinforcements are placed directly on the map, with the turn of entry printed there. I just discovered the random events chart is from an earlier version of the game so that needs to be updated (doh).

Playtesting has concluded on my company's end. It is time to send the playtest kit to Revolution Games for evalutaion/additional playtesting. I believe we have successfully made the step up to operational scale, which opens new possibilities beside simply the city siege topics.

07/24/2026

The playtest of Operation Michael has reached a stage where I think it is ready to hand off to co-publisher Revolution Games. There was a real question of whether or not the system could make the transition from single city sieges (Stalingrad, Manila, Berlin) to a larger scale. I believe it works well and it keeps the series from getting predictable or stale. The ideas employed in this one have given me food for thought for other operational level campaigns and even, possibly, something at the strategic level. We can always return to single city siege topics at some time in the future.

This month: finish playtest, finish the example of play and historical summary in the rulebook, write the game summary to go on the back of the box.

Pictured: Turn 7 after precombat phases. Victory is being sought in the 17t Army sector. He'll have to capture the three "black star" areas to win.

07/16/2026

For Berlin fans a documentary on the breakout of Germany's 9th Army.

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07/13/2026

Trial counter layout for the revealed British counters in the solitiare Operational Michael game. By relocating the combat strength from the lower right to the upper right it creates enough room to use a consistent font size at the bottom. Images are from British wartime publications that are in the public domain.

07/04/2026

We will be dedicating Operation Michael to Judd Vance (airjudden at Board Game Geek) who I just found out has passed away. He talked to me about his stuggles with cancer as recently as April 26 and he seemed to be fighting the good fight. Judd was a supporter of my designs through thick and thin for close to fifteen years. Print reviews, video unboxings. His review of Patton's Vanguard is at the Revolution Games website. Did not think this would be the news barely two months later. 😢

06/23/2026

Some elven years after publication TAD's second release has gone out of print. I doubt their will be a reprinting. It was a good run with origins in a request from the Ernie Pyle museum for a game to sell in their gift shop.

06/20/2026

Playtesting of solitaire Operation Michael continues. Here, in the middle of Turn 3, we see 18th Army has gained some ground.

06/20/2026

Distributor Revolution Games has announced that the third printing of solitiare Stalingrad is in the warehouse and is now available for purchase - huzzah!

E-Store for Revolution Games

06/04/2026

Did you know Take Aim Designs has also published books of a historical nature? Here is an h-net review of the translation of the book Reporting on the Kennedy Assassination by the Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=50278