THE LAST WORD With Chris Birch.

Co-founder of Modiphius

It was our move to the sleepy town of Kenilworth in the ‘80s that moved me far enough away from the Leamington wargame club in the pub behind the All Saints church to make it less practical for regular visits and so I turned to creations of my own devising. Collecting assorted castoff fantasy minis from friends, purchasing at bring and buys and discovering the risky joys of lead smelting on the kitchen stove with Prince August’s fantasy moulds I soon built a mismatched couple of armies of light and dark. They would regularly see often shockingly unbalanced battles play out with desperate last stands and other derring-do, ostensibly for the fun of ‘seeing what would happen’. Much as you might re-fight another unbalanced battle from history to see if you could turn the tables on the historical winner I loved to see if I could inject a different narrative into my games. The wizard had to convince the rag tag group of my finer Citadel hero miniatures to defend the village – even whilst the badly painted and not quite moulded properly orcs descended through the valley. But wait… if instead he rode to the tower on the hill, perhaps the more numerous knights could be convinced to join?

Being a lone gamer in a small town proved a bonus to life in Modiphius, the tabletop publisher I co-founded nine years ago with my wife Rita. I was forced to develop ideas for solo play and storytelling mechanics that have helped me push our teams to bigger ideas in our Elder Scrolls and Fallout releases and are serving as inspiration for other projects in the hopper. I remember creating a solo miniatures game around a graphic novel line called Alien Legion – think the French Foreign Legion meets Brothers in Arms with a dash of Star Wars. Randomly selected heroes each with different abilities had to contend with anything from individual soldiers to armoured vehicles drawn as random unit cards – sometimes to disastrous effect – but it was the story that evolved through the objectives and event cards that made this early game sing. Sometimes I’d lose and in losing an awesome story unfolded as my force desperately retreated from overwhelming odds, and other times claimed the day and all manner of awesome resources I’d trade in for later upgrades.

I won’t lie: I longed for the few periods my brother Alistair would come to stay so we could get some games in – playing against a friend and the banter about gaming was infinitely more fun. But I’m so glad I endured those days, they made me write and design, and try ideas and try them again until what I created was satisfying as a solo experience. It gave me the drive to create really great solo experiences, and above all find ways to make the story so much more important on the tabletop. Sure we all form a narrative in our heads in any of the wargames we play, but what if it really was more fun to lose the battle because you’d discover another secret about your past, or because it gave you access to something cool?

Something else I’ve discovered in recent years thanks to the ever increasing numbers of co-op boardgames is how much more fun it is to wargame with someone not against them, we’ve seen this growing in miniature games through the many adventure wargames like Rangers of Shadow Deep, Five Parsecs From Home, Elder Scrolls and Fallout and I’m embracing it with everything we are planning. I’m pushing the ‘adventure wargaming’ genre because I think players and companies all benefit from us exploring this new direction in miniature games, and let’s face it, solo wargaming was an untapped market before Covid – I think I know more gamers that don’t have enough time to play with their group thanks to home or work life than those who actually meet up. Plus it keeps people in the hobby: offer people a way to play with their toys no matter the circumstances maybe they’ll keep playing and collecting them.

Coming to terms with how solo mechanics can really change the game – from both a mechanical perspective but also for the player experience – has really opened up so many opportunities to think about narrative on the tabletop and how our story telling doesn’t need to be just in our heads but actually playing out right in front of our eyes.

Chris is co-founder and Chief creative Officer of Modiphius Entertainment, lives in London with Rita and 1d3 wild squirrels. ■

“I think players and companies all benefit from us exploring this new direction in miniature games, and let’s face it, solo wargaming was an untapped market before Covid... offer people a way to play with their toys no matter the circumstances maybe they’ll keep playing and collecting them.”