The Gamers

The Gamers was a designer and publisher of board wargames that, over the course of 20 years, won over a dozen Charles S. Roberts Awards.

History

The Gamers was founded in 1988 by game designer and artist Dean Essig in Homer, Illinois. Instead of designing a new game system for each game, Essig decided that The Gamers would produce a number of games, but categorized into different series. The games in each series would use a common set of rules. Each game within the series would also have a subset of rules to deal with situations unique to that battle.

The company's games received good critical reception, and won a total of 14 Charles S. Roberts Awards.

The Gamers was bought by Multi-Man Publishing in 2001. Multi-Man continued to use the services of Essig as game designer until his death in 2024. Multi-Man publishes new materials for the original Gamers series as well as new games and new game series.

Series

The Gamers produced games in seven different series:

• Civil War Brigade (CWB): American Civil War battles at the brigade level.
• Regimental Sub-System Series / Line of Battle (RSS/LoB): American Civil War battles at the regimental level.
• Tactical Combat Series (TCS): 20th-century platoon level battles.
• Operational Combat Series (OCS): 20th-century battles at battalion and division levels.
• Standard Combat Series (SCS): General system that allows simulation of a wide range of battles.
• Napoleonic Brigade Series (NBS): Brigade-level battles during the Napoleonic Wars.
• Battalion Combat Series (BCS): 20th-century battles at the battalion level.

(One game, Circus Minimus, was not categorized. A new category, Modern Tactical Combat, was announced but no games were ever published for it.)

Homercon

Homercon, a convention for The Gamers games, was held each September in Homer from 1990 until 2012.

List of games

Civil War Brigade Series

Regimental Sub-System Series / Line of Battle

Tactical Combat Series

Operational Combat Series

Standard Combat System

Napoleonic Brigade Series

Battalion Combat Series

Uncategorized

External links

• Rules, errata, etc. for all of The Gamers games
• Producers of current The Gamers products and brand owner of older games