Ep 181: David Thompson (Games Designer: Sniper Elite et al)

This episode I get my fan boy hat on and talk to a game designer who I have a great deal of excitement towards, Mr David Thompson. David designed two of the games that I have been setting about with reckless abandon over the last 5 or 6 months, Undaunted Normandy and Undaunted North Africa both WW2 skirmish games with deck management aspects. Although they dont contain minis out the box, conversion projects are easy and the game play is brilliant, in my opinion of course, and so it was great to talk to David about……Not undaunted. Undaunted deserves its own stand alone podcast which will come later but in this show I spoke to him about his personal journey and experience along with his current Kickstarter Campaign for his game Sniper Elite. I wont spoil the show by talking about all the details but in a nutshell it is a WW2 hidden movement espionage game where a sniper is sneaking about trying to evade the patrolling guards. 

You can find out more about it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rebellionunplugged/sniper-elite-the-board-game

It was fun talking to David and it was great to find him to be a really nice guy and a person I’d love to talk more to about his ethos, ideas, and insight. We talk about some of his design influences in the show and he comes across as accomplished and strong willed, an  example of this we didnt talk about during the show but a very active decision on his part to include a wide variety of ethnicities on the US forces artwork on Undaunted Normandy, something that didnt necessarily reflect the abstract unit mention in the game but certainly noted the sacrifice from a number of ethnic groups during that conflict. Strong positive decision making there in my opinion and not one to be overlooked. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the show, and if you like the sound of the Sniper Elite game then go check it out, I am a giddy kipper in anticipation of it and cant wait for the cat and mouse experience with my fellow nerds.