Ten years, countless lessons, and more than a few ‘logistical nightmares’ later, PHALANX is still standing. We are stubbornly, if slowly, making the games others deem too difficult, and we refuse to play it safe. Let’s have a look at that insane decade.
Ten years ago on June 14, I signed the papers and, — woof! — became a director of a new and shiny, UK-based company — PHALANX. In fact, the company had been registered earlier and was dormant for two years but if I took the registration date, my beautiful arc wouldn’t work.
This is the arc: on that same date, years earlier, Napoleon refused to be defeated at the fields of Marengo. Having lost an encounter with the Austrians in the morning, he was basically stubborn enough to wait for the arrival of Desaix. With his columns approaching, he is believed to have said: “We have lost the battle today, but we still have a chance to win another.” Maybe that’s not true but it sounds like a great story.
Funnily enough, by a total coincidence, I met my future wife on that same date, just 200+ years later. And to make it easier to remember, we wed — yes, you’re right, on June 14th too. In fact, the real reason for the wedding arrived a few years earlier and his name is Tytus.
Tytus was a very sneaky boy from the very start. He passed all the pre-natal medical tests flying and scored 9/10 on that funny hospital birth rating on his arrival. He faced a difficult future: our older son Ernest was already a very clever guy, bilingual, quick learning and probably talented too. Yet, Tytus played a trick that ensured we are happy with his smallest achievement to this day. He arrived with Down Syndrome.
This comes together with that blue badge, an object of envy of many, so it’s really not too bad. In Gibraltar, where we used to live at some point, we had another badge and we could fly via the border check leaving behind a multi-hour queue of frustrated drivers. That felt good and fair.
Yet, let’s go back to 2016. Tytus has just arrived and we have no idea how to cope, so I apply for a day of work from home, per week, with my then employer. They seem to understand. Not for long though as they withdraw the agreement 3 months later, probably believing that Down Syndrome is a temporary thing. But I am a Polish man, so I quickly hand them a thank you letter and with satisfaction observe my boss’ surprise when he learns I have a 3-month notice in the contract. I’ve got you sun-on-the-beach! He pays back in kind and makes me come to the office every day of those three months. A real man of principles.
So I am now facing unemployment. But I have a card upon my sleeve. Thanks to Mark Simonitch, I am holding a publication contract for his best selling game: Hannibal. This is my last straw that can keep me afloat. And that’s how PHALANX starts.
Long story short: I could paint the company formation as a clever “business plan” but the reality was quite different. I wanted to make Hannibal a game that would turn the tables and bring unprecedented quality to what was considered a rather complex (not really) wargame. What seemed easy, took almost two years to develop. It was a real struggle of epic proportions, Hannibal himself would probably be proud of (it’s easy to claim, he’s long dead).
So, it’s really amusing to read we are a “corporation”. Oh, boy, I wouldn’t really wish for it! Have you ever been at those boring, multi-hour meetings or calls dragging forever? They pay a lot at those companies — because it’s a really dumb job to do. I know that, I’ve been there. Making games is so much better, more fun and rewarding. Especially if you can get those corporate employees as your customers!
Hefty Hugh and Lanky Len would exclaim in excitement: We’ve hit on something really clever! We’ll keep on doing it forever. Yet my partner only smiled.
Because we were smarter than Hugh and Len, we started low, with a game that was quick to publish and generate trust: Germania Magna. We signed an existing game, pushed it to Kickstarter and within a few months delivered the product. The foundation has been laid for a larger flop. Come Hannibal & Hamilcar.
This one was easy. The previous publisher promised Hamilcar as a stand alone game. So, without really knowing what was inside, we did the same. Only later we saw that Hamilcar was nothing more than a Hannibal scenario. That stunk. I had to design a new game really quickly to be able to deliver the product. I read a few books and put together something that resembled a game and Hamilcar was born. He was ugly. I had to redesign it a few years later. Now the game plays well but has a bad history and is not available because you know what? I wanted metal minis! So we run another campaign and now we’re stuck as the minis take longer than expected. Yet, check the pic below to see they are a reality looming just over horizon.
Rich with the fame from Hannibal and Hamilcar we agreed to publish U-Boot — a very cool game about German submarine warfare during WW2. So cool a subject that we had trouble finding a German publisher. Only when it turned out that the sales guys in the company are our secret backers they came to realise the game may sell. And they were right — the German market was our best! Yet the stressful production process resulted in a difficult relationship with the design studio, who decided they can do better themselves, so off they went with their next project. We wished them luck. U-Boot: Collector’s Edition was then crowdfunded, this time with the largest mini (to be) ever produced — a 90cm plastic model of the submarine. It is supposed to have all the lights (true) and whistles (not really) and is a real beast to make it right. But if the subs could walk, we could say it moves forward step by step. A comparison with sinking is not correct, mind you. Here is a pic of where we are.
Our third re-print is Nanty Narking. We were very naive and overproduced the original game in the first campaign and printed too many games for retail. So we had to find a way to sell that stock. The game is set in Victorian London of Dickens and Conan-Doyle and we must have been blind not to see an obvious way to make it desired. Cthulhu. Throw in a few monsters, add another mode of play and here we go — another successful campaign. Easy peasy. Yet there was a real cost to that. Just check what’s haunting us in dreams:
Ah, so these are the three most delayed campaigns so let me continue and give you a quick summary of our other and completed projects.
We operate on the unreasonable belief that certain games deserve to exist — usually the ones too ambitious, too difficult, or too obscure for anyone else to touch. Here is the curated history of our best ideas, our worst logistical nightmares, and everything in between.
Not everything we do needs to be a massive, multi-year crowdfunding campaign. Sometimes, we find a game that is just… good. So we fund it with a little help from our friends, skip the campaign drama, and put it out because it deserves to exist.
During the (last) pandemic, we chose to double down. We wanted to keep the jobs for our small team and the market demand was finally there! We increased print runs, banking on retail growth to fund payroll. Apparently, the logistics channels were not ready for our massive growth. We faced shipping cost spikes, customs barriers, and a sudden change in US distribution strategy that forced us to rebuild our overseas network from the ground up. What a nasty surprise it was. Just sick. The pandemic taught us that we are remarkably bad at predicting the future. We ‘doubled down’ — a fancy term for gambling with retail growth while the world was falling apart. It didn’t work. We blamed logistics and politicians for a while, but the reality is simpler: we were optimistic when we should have been cautious.
If you produce plastic in China and paper in Europe, the product that comes out is considered EU-made. We used to think it was smart. It wasn’t. It was just a complicated way to create more points of failure. When an army of Hannibal minis arrived on the train in numbers higher than the body count at Cannae, we were winning! It worked very well. Well, until it didn’t. When that model broke, we didn’t ‘pivot’ or ‘rebuild’ — we just accepted that we’d been over-complicating a simple process. We aren’t going back. However, the decision to keep the core game (a retail edition) separate from the minis was a good one, and we are going to stick to that — we can’t be wrong all the time.
We must admit to have a bad habit: we fall in love with our projects and then try to make them “better” by making them bigger. Coalitions, Purple Haze, and Sovereign: Bretwalda all grew beyond their original scope. We thought we were adding value; we were actually adding complexity. Lessons learned: Don’t get carried away by excitement. Expansions are nice, but they take development time we often don’t have.
It’s a good moment to illustrate how much development work actually goes into a project. Beyond the mechanical changes and countless playtests, you only need to look at the sheer size of the rulebooks to realize the scale of the effort. To put it in perspective: the Bretwalda rules (Polish version) as delivered by the designer were just over 24k characters. The final rulebook? Over 92 thousand characters.
We once thought shipping English and localized editions simultaneously was a good idea. It was a logistical catastrophe. A single file error in one language would delay the entire global run — a Bretwalda case. Going forward, we are treating translations as separate projects with entirely separate timelines. No more holding the English version hostage!
Therefore today at PHALANX, translation, DTP, and layout for non-English editions are treated as de facto separate projects. Localized editions receive their own timelines, entirely separate from the English print run, so that one language’s hurdle doesn’t derail the entire delivery.
Huang, our Reiner Knizia tile-laying game, was on schedule for Essen Spiel, until we decided to refine the miniatures one last time. We missed the window by two weeks. Was it the right call? Yes. Was it costly? Yes. Were we happy? Not really. Who is happy? The dragon mini lovers — they bought the deluxe add-on just for the sculpts. The game is fine if you like that sort of thing.
Keep’em Rolling to the Rhine: Our beacon. We kept the scope tight, controlled, and focused. It delivered smoothly and provided actual support after launch. We returned to our roots and hopefully re-discovered the formula for a quick publication. Assuming we can control our impulses to make things “bigger.”
In the early years we worked hard to break into the US market. We secured a deal with distributors and almost celebrated with a Michelin-star dinner… only to learn next year at GAMA Expo that the deal was about to collapse. We had two weeks to save the situation, so we hit the road, talked to retailers, and came back with enough intel to set up our own warehouse and distribution in the USA. Our games are now available through Bridge and GTS Distribution.
With help from our friends Jason Matthews and Kevin Bertram at Fort Circle, we also set up a US-based company so we could finally sell on Amazon. It sounded simple. Of course, we took the scenic route and ran straight into trademark issues — apparently “Phalanx” isn’t the ideal brand name in the US. We’re still working on it. Worst case? We rebrand. Who really cares about the name PHALANX anyway?
The good news is that, as you read this, our container has just been unloaded in Houston. Whether this becomes the big step forward we’ve been hoping for remains to be seen, but at least there’s movement. Below is the list we have in stock in the USA. Grab them while you can — before a flood, a storm, or something else happens.
We know many of you in the US are wary of expensive shipping from Europe. That’s exactly why we brought the games to you. Now it’s your turn — you buy the games, and we get more breathing space. Ain’t that beautiful? Here’s the link to our store: https://gamefound.com/projects/phalanx/phalanx-store?refcode=W3EOIuIhbEW1puXvOvqO6A
If you look back at our catalog, you’ll notice a pattern: we have a chronic, perhaps even masochistic, tendency to find debut designers and shove them into the deep end. We don’t just want to publish safe, guaranteed hits from established names. We want projects that make people ask, “Who is this?”
We’ve spent the last decade acting as a springboard for first-time designers like Bartosz Pluta, Artur Salwarowski, Wei-Cheng Cheng, Bernard Grzybowski, Andy Rourke or Lew Sołowiej. We don’t do it because it’s easy — it’s actually the opposite. It requires months of additional development, sleepless nights, and constant arguments about rulebooks. But we do it because if we aren’t taking risks on new talent, we aren’t doing the job we set out to do.
That is why our next campaign is Shogun. It’s a debut project that we’ve decided to throw our weight behind. We believe in the design, and we invested a lot of time and effort (read: money) into its development to prove it deserves a place on your shelf. It’s risky, it’s going to be a lot of work, and it’s arguably not the “smartest” business decision we could make — but it’s the Phalanx way.
We’re launching the campaign soon (check here). I can hear the collective eye-rolling from here. “Wait, you’re launching something new while the other projects are still not delivered?”
It’s a fair point. Our track record isn’t a straight line, and I’m sure you’re tired of “soon” being the most popular word in our vocabulary. But here’s the reality: we truly are a small house that makes specific, difficult games that — frankly — no one else wants to touch. If we stop launching new projects, the engine stops. We are launching this one because the design is too good to ignore, and we think it belongs on your shelf.
We aren’t asking for blind faith — we’ve used up our quota of that. We’re asking for a vote. If the project is funded, we build it. If it doesn’t, we learn our lesson and stop trying to push the boundaries of scope. The ball is in your court. If you want us to keep making these “weird” games, you know what to do. If you think we’ve reached our limit, I completely understand.
We’ve cut our operating costs — not because we’re strategic geniuses, but because pretending to be a big corporation was getting expensive. We are now running two parallel tracks. Track A is for the “old debt” — the projects we’re dragging across the finish line from pre-2025. Track B is the “fast track” — new titles that actually pay the bills. We’re essentially trying to outrun our own history while keeping the lights on. It’s not elegant, but it’s the only way forward.
Lords of Heaven:
We are thrilled to announce that the game is just now entering the shipping phase. The games were produced and are ready for pickup at the printers. The shipment from China should begin in upcoming weeks.
Bretwalda:
We are preparing for the production of the second English print run of the game. Along with it, the production of all the highly anticipated localized language versions will be completed. Most importantly — the localized versions will receive a full update. All the problematic issues noted by players in the first print run have been addressed and corrected. This means that backers will receive an even better, fully refined game matching the standard of the second print run.
TRIVMPH
TRIVMPH (or Triumph, if you prefer the modern spelling) was a textbook case of scope creep. You asked for highly detailed architectural miniatures and hand-painted artwork (strictly sans AI). The hardest work began the day the campaign ended, and we are not taking shortcuts. We have been deep in the “factory feedback loop,” which consists mostly of back-and-forth sending of files and samples to make sure the 3D files translate into plastic as perfect as it could be.
The Amphitheatre, Temple Theatre, Port, Forum, and Baths have just left on the operating table; we’ve been fixing missing columns, correcting structural flaws, and ensuring the roof lines don’t look like melted wax. It’s slow, tedious work, but if you want the “monumental” aesthetic we sold you, this is the only way to get it. I was able to see the corrected samples at the UKGE but Valdemar ran away with them. We still have the release in the books for Essen Spiel. Keep your fingers crossed!
U-BOOT: Collector’s Edition
We could have just reprinted the original game. Instead, we opted for a Collector’s Edition — because apparently, we enjoy doing things the hard way. This project combines physical components with a digital app, creating a hybrid environment that is twice as prone to technical failure.
The app has been reinstated to both platforms and now contains the mission editor. So why don’t you go and create some missions for the public while we do the job behind the curtain and work on the model? HERE are the links for the app.
There are two games on our preorder list at the moment. No pressure — we’ll produce them anyway — but if you want to secure a copy early, now’s the time: 1943: Race to Rabaul and Tora Tora Tora! We’re aiming to fast-track both for pickup at Essen Spiel.
If you want to help us keep making these weird, ambitious games, here’s the quickest way to do it right now:
We might have lost the first battle but are up for another one.
Thank you for reaching so far. Goodbye and good luck!
Jaro
We’re happy to announce that Saga: Vikings vs Anglo-Saxons is now available for preorder. Saga is a fast paced two player strategy game set during the Viking invasions of England. Take command of either the raiding Vikings or the defending Anglo-Saxons and fight for control of the island through clever positioning, timing, and tactical decision […]
On the Wild West frontier, no one asks who you are.What matters is what you do. Dust in the Wind is a cooperative adventure game about choices that leave a mark. You are drifters roaming the endless plains of 1870s America. You might become a legend, an outlaw… or vanish like dust in the wind. […]
Japan has no ruler.And that’s exactly why everyone reaches for the throne. Five clans. One map. No mercy. In Shōgun, every decision comes back like a blade, sometimes immediately, sometimes several turns later. War, diplomacy, betrayal, and those moments when you know you made the right move… just one turn too late. In Shōgun, you […]
The Pacific is vast.Your options are not. In Race to Rabaul, every step forward stretches something thin, supply lines, patience, time. The Allies are pushing across islands and jungle. Japan is pulling back, resisting, trying to make every advance cost more than it’s worth. This is not a game about winning battles.It’s a game about […]
The entire Pacific War, compressed into 90 minutes!Two players. Ten rounds. No breathing room. From the very first turn, Tora Tora Tora makes one thing clear: there is never enough of anything.Every move, every attack, every attempt to rebuild costs resources. And no matter which side you’re on, you always have less than you want. […]
Over the past few months, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to find a better way to handle shipping to the United States. It hasn’t been simple, the logistics, customs, and changing trade rules between the US, China, and other countries all play a big part in how your games get to you. After […]
We’re excited to share that our latest titles — A Very Civil Whist and 1920: Nest of Eagles — are now on their way to port. This marks the final stage before unloading and delivery to our warehouses. The games are expected to arrive in early October. Shortly after, we’ll begin the fulfillment process, packing […]
History’s most ferocious rivalry — now in your hands! PUNICA: Rome vs Carthage is a fast, head-to-head strategy game that puts two players in command of ancient superpowers battling for dominance of the Mediterranean. Rome’s relentless legions face off against the cunning warriors of Carthage and its legendary general, Hannibal. Through clever card play, calculated […]
The campaign will launch right after the summer, and it’s packed with exclusive content available only during the Gamefound campaign. Early followers will also get access to a special bonus item, so now’s the time to hit that Follow button! The game recently had its first public demo, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive: players […]
We’re happy to share some great news: the English copies of Purple Haze: Born to Kill have now been collected from the manufacturer, and the shipping process is officially underway. Below, you’ll find photos from the loading stage. From here, the games are headed to the port and will continue on to our distribution warehouses. […]
