The Guns of Gettysburg is designed to have simple rules and fast play, while at the same time reflecting the historical limitations of the actual conflict. The game's rules are refined somewhat from its predecessors but overall reflect the same fast play as its predecessors.
Players are able to play single day scenarios or the full three day battle.
For more details, Mercury Games' Nesbitt and Richard Diosi talk about their wargame history and publication plans for The Guns of Gettysburg in episode X of the Guns, Dice, Butter podcast.
• U.S. publisher Alderac Entertainment Group has released details of Smash Up: Awesome Level 9000, an expansion for its shufflebuilding game Smash Up that's due out March 2013. In addition to include eight new bases, Smash Up: Awesome Level 9000 features four new factions:
-----• Ghosts – Unlike in just about every card game in history, Ghosts benefit from having fewer cards in your hand. Can you be immaterial?
-----• Steampunks – Can't leave a good base alone? The Steampunks will add new abilities to bases to help your strategies.
-----• Bear Cavalry – What's scary? A bear. What's really scary? A cossack riding a bear! Bear Cavalry will use fear to drive opposing minions to other bases.
• Eagle Games plans to Railways of Great Britain in 2013, with this Railways of the World expansion being a replacement for the out-of-print Railways of England and Wales expansion that includes only the game board, railroad operations cards, and rules, but not the advanced game rules and share system from that earlier title.
• TricTrac.net notes that French publisher Jactalea will release a new version of Seiji Kanai's small card game R, which was available at Spiel 2012 in a short-run edition in English. I'm not sure which languages will be included in the Jactalea version, but its recent titles such as Okiya and Docker have included rules in English, French and German.
• Mere months after introducing Archipelago, designer/publisher Christophe Boelinger has released Archipelago: Solo Expansion through his own company, Ludically. Here's what you'll find in this tiny box:
Archipelago: Solo Expansion includes 27 scenarios with different conditions and objectives and with you, the solo player, taking the part of characters such as Christopher Columbus, Robinson Crusoe, and the pirate Bluebeard. The playing time varies from 20 to 90 minutes depending on the scenario, and your score in the scenario – gold, silver, bronze, revolt – will depend on the number of rounds you took to achieve the objective.