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Michal: Hi David, hi Liz, and welcome to The Boardgames Chronicle blog! Liz – this is your first appearance on the blog, so let us start with you: could you please tell us a little about yourself? What do you do for a living, what games do you play, and how did Beyond Solitaire come about? And David – for those new to the hobby, please remind us of your background as well. What is each of your roles in the design and publication of Night Witches?

Liz: Hi everyone! I’m Liz Davidson, and I am the creative director at Leder Games. When we started work on Night Witches, though, I was a high school Latin teacher who did not expect my life to take this particular turn. My big hobby was solo gaming, so I started a YouTube channel called Beyond Solitaire, then a podcast of the same name, then one thing led to another and I ended up working on games full time.

David: Thanks so much, Michal, always great to be here. For those who don’t know me, game design is my passion and I spend as much time on it as my family and work allow. I tend to focus on historical strategy games that blend Euro and wargame sensibilities. For Night Witches, Liz and I co-designed and developed the game together.

Michal: Liz, if I am not mistaken, this is your first designed board game. How did the transition from being one of the most respected voices in solo-wargaming coverage to being a designer feel, and what did you find most surprising about sitting on the other side of the table? And David – how did the two of you end up working together on this particular project?

Liz: I would say the transition felt “normal” because I did not expect it to impact my life so dramatically. I initially said I would never be a designer, just a reviewer, but as David and I became better friends, we joked about making a game together. Then we decided to do it for real. After David brought up the Night Witches, I did some historical reading about them and thought they were so cool that I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t know what would come of this project, or that I would end up as a professional game designer–I just wanted to make something cool with one of my best friends.

David: Liz and I became friends through the wargaming and solo gaming community, and at some point the jokes about making a game together turned into an actual conversation. I brought up the Night Witches as a subject. It’s the kind of obscure, underrepresented historical topic I’m always drawn to, and once Liz started reading about them, she was hooked. From there it wasn’t really a question of whether we’d do it, just a question of how. I think the thing that made collaboration natural is that Liz and I approach design from complementary angles.

Michal: Now, as for the game itself – what historical events inspired Night Witches? For readers who may not be familiar, can you tell us a bit about the 588th Night Bomber Regiment and the women who flew those harassment missions against the Wehrmacht in their Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes?

Liz: What I admire the most about the Night Witches is that they were volunteers who wanted to serve their country, and they committed to it night after night, sortie after sortie, for years. We made the board game version of being a Night Witch very exciting. But when I think about how these women were up all night, flying the same route repeatedly in the dark, trying to stay alert because getting spotted was deadly, I realize they must have been exhausted–and I admire their dedication.

David: What struck me most when I first started researching the Night Witches was the sheer audacity of what they were doing. Flying a canvas biplane originally designed for crop dusting, in the dark, with no parachutes, on hundreds of sorties against Wehrmacht positions. The history is extraordinary.

Michal: There is already a well-known Night Witches tabletop RPG by Jason Morningstar covering the same subject. Was there any conversation about the shared name, and – more importantly – how does your board game approach the topic differently?

Liz: There has been a recorded podcast conversation about this! For Episode 121 of the Beyond Solitaire podcast, we had Jason on to talk about the Night Witches together. I think the world of Jason and his work, and he was very gracious about us sharing the name. In fact, we’re including a flyer for the Bully Pulpit RPG in our game boxes to cross-promote.

David: I’ll just add that Jason couldn’t have been more gracious about the whole thing. His RPG and our board game are doing very different things: different medium, different goals, different experience. So I never felt like we were treading on each other’s work. The cross-promotion with Bully Pulpit is something I’m genuinely pleased about. If someone plays our game and then picks up Jason’s RPG to explore the human stories more deeply, that’s a win.

Michal: What are the key components of the game? Fort Circle is known across the hobby for their distinctive and beautiful production values – The Shores of Tripoli and Votes for Women have set quite a high bar. What can players expect in the box this time, and who is handling the art and graphic design?

Liz: We are very excited about the physical production of the game. Ian O’Toole did a great job with the graphics, and as you would expect, the components are going to be top quality.

David: Ian O’Toole was a natural choice for this. His graphic design work is some of the best in the hobby, and Fort Circle has built a reputation on top-tier production. Beyond the visual side, the physical components are designed to support the core loop cleanly. We wanted everything to feel purposeful, with no components that exist just to fill a box.

Michal: From what I have seen, the visual treatment of Night Witches really leans into the atmosphere – the night skies, the Po-2 biplanes, the period look of the Eastern Front. How closely did the two of you work with the art team, and how important was it to you that the graphics carry some of the emotional weight of the story?

Liz: We specifically asked for that moody look and I am delighted with it. I think that in a game like this, the graphics are a major part of setting the tone for the game and encouraging player immersion. Our first note in the dev doc for Night Witches talks about wanting players to feel cold, lonely, and uncertain as they fly over unknown terrain, and I think the graphics capture this feeling. Ian’s input also led to some cool little design changes, like using a stopwatch to track recovery time during missions.

David: Liz led more on the creative direction side of this, and I was happy to follow her instincts. She had a very clear vision for the tone from early on. The stopwatch Liz mentioned is a great example of Ian pushing us toward something more thematically evocative than what we’d originally spec’d, and he was right to do it.

Michal: Another thing I am very curious about is the scenario structure. How does Night Witches approach that question? Do players progress through a campaign of missions with unfolding narrative, or is each scenario more self-contained?

Liz: The scenarios are built to be flexible–they can either be played in order, or you can set up to play a specific scenario as a one-off. There are also going to be blank maps at the back of the scenario book so that you can create your own challenges. I’m really hoping people will take advantage of that so I can try a few!

David: The flexibility Liz described was something we were both committed to from early in the design. I’ve played a lot of campaigns that overstay their welcome, where the commitment required to finish them is a barrier to ever getting started. We wanted Night Witches to be completable. The scenarios are designed so that individual missions have enough internal stakes to be satisfying on their own, while also building toward a larger arc when played in sequence.

Michal: Can you elaborate a little about the core game mechanics? How does a typical mission play out, and how does the game capture the very particular feel of small, slow, wooden-and-canvas biplanes flying repeated night sorties over sleeping German troops – relying on stealth and repetition rather than firepower?

Liz: The core game mechanisms are meant to cover a couple of key things–one is that you don’t know what you’re flying over on the first sortie, so you are pulling tokens from a bag to map out the ground beneath you. Sometimes you’ll get yourself into some crazy situations! You’re also pulling from a separate bag–the success bag–to determine whether you evade fire and successfully bomb targets. You know the contents of that bag, so it’s up to you to manage your luck by determining how many tokens to pull when performing a check.

David: To add to what Liz described: the dual-bag system is really the heart of the design. Both bags interact in ways that create emergent stories, which is exactly what I want from this kind of game. The design challenge was making those two systems feel integrated, and I think we got there.

Michal: Night Witches is, as I understand, primarily a solo and cooperative experience. Solo and co-op designs have become enormously popular in recent years, and Liz of course knows that space better than almost anyone. How did you approach the solo and co-op modes, and what did each of you bring to making them sing?

Liz: This game basically plays the same way whether you do it solo or co-op, except that in solo a single person controls both planes. One thing I’m particularly proud of in this game is that David and I indulged ourselves and eliminated downtime by cutting out enemy turns. There is no AI in this game, there are no bots–it’s always your turn, and you’re always managing something for yourself. A solo player’s dream!

David: My background with solo design goes back to Pavlov’s House and Castle Itter, so I had strong convictions coming in. The thing I care most about in solo design is making sure the player always feels like they’re doing something. Liz and I share that conviction completely, which is probably why the decision to cut a traditional AI felt obvious once we talked through it. Everything in Night Witches is an active decision the player makes.

Michal: One thing which always comes through in games on this topic is the human story – the sisterhood of the regiment, the sexism and institutional resistance they had to overcome, the sheer attrition. To what extent does Night Witches engage with that human dimension, and how do you balance it with the operational side?

Liz: We made a conscious choice to focus on the more operational aspects of this game, and we did so because we felt it lined up with the way the Night Witches themselves wanted to be remembered. Our historical consultant, Reina Pennington, emphasizes that these women wanted to be respected as pilots and wanted to be seen primarily as people who were amazing at their work during wartime. So that is what I wanted to give them. Frankly, I get it.

David: I think Liz’s instinct here was correct, and I fully supported it. The framing of our historical consultant Reina Pennington, that these women wanted to be remembered as pilots and as professionals, was something that clarified the design for me. My approach to historical game design has always been to let the history set the terms. These women were extraordinarily capable people doing an extraordinary job. The game should reflect that. If the historical record earns them operational respect, then an operational focus is the most honest kind of tribute we can pay.

Michal: How do players determine victory in Night Witches? Is there a campaign-level objective, mission-by-mission scoring, or something more narrative in spirit?

Liz: It is possible to lose Night Witches by killing off all available crews, but otherwise the question isn’t whether you won, but how well you did. You can earn objective points throughout the game, and the goal is to get as many of them as possible. I will also warn you: The better you’re doing, the harder the game gets. Good luck out there!

David: I’ll add that the escalating difficulty as you improve is something I’m proud of mechanically. It’s a design principle I’ve returned to in other games (I first explored it in By Stealth and Sea): the idea that success should generate new challenges rather than just accelerating toward a finish line. In Night Witches, the better you perform, the more you’re asked to give. I think that’s true to the historical experience, and it also means the game stays engaging across multiple plays rather than becoming a solved puzzle.

Michal: Now, as for Night Witches itself, what makes this game unique? What would you like to call out for readers on the fence?

Liz: Night Witches is very much its own game, and it reflects several things that David and I both love and want to see more of, particularly in solo/co-op games. The bag management system involves some luck, but also leaves you plenty of choices. There is a campaign, but it’s short enough that you can actually complete it–or you can just play one-off missions. The way the scenario book is set up makes it a breeze to set up for a new game, and there is a player aid built right in to help you if you’ve been away from the game for a while. So Night Witches is a historically evocative game, and I’m proud of that, but it’s also a game that asks for a reasonable amount of your time. We know from personal experience what it’s like to feel overwhelmed by solo gaming options, so we put a lot of thought into player experience across all fronts while working on this game.

David: For me, Night Witches represents a kind of game I’ve wanted to make for a long time, something that takes solo and co-op design seriously as a first-class experience, not as an afterthought added after the competitive mode was done. Liz’s expertise in that space pushed the design in directions I wouldn’t have reached on my own. Add to that the subject matter, which is genuinely remarkable history that deserves more attention, Fort Circle’s production values, and a scenario structure that respects your time. I think we built something that earns its place on a shelf.

Michal: Fort Circle Games, under Kevin Bertram’s stewardship, has built a wonderful reputation for thoughtful historical games that punch well above their weight in both production and in the stories they tell. What has it been like working with Kevin and the Fort Circle team on this project, and how did the game find its home there?

Liz: Working with Kevin has been great because he gives us a lot of leeway to make the game we want to make, but he also 100% supports us and wants to ensure that we are making something truly excellent in terms of gameplay and production. We chose to work with Fort Circle because we knew Kevin would be committed to giving Night Witches everything it needs in terms of marketing, art and graphics, and production values.

David: There’s not much more I can add to what Liz said. Kevin is a class act. The kind of publisher that every designer would want to work with. Truly one of the best in the business.

Michal: The game is announced for release in late 2026 via Fort Circle Games. Where can players interested in Night Witches find more information and preorder the game?

Liz: You can learn more about Night Witches–and preorder your own copy–on the Fort Circle website.

Michal: Looking into the future – Liz, any further design work on the horizon after Night Witches? And David – the inevitable question your fans always ask: what are your future design plans, short-term and longer-term?

Liz: There is so much design work on the horizon! David’s and my second game, Queen of Spies, is shipping right now, and I’ve currently got a game on GMT’s P500, a co-design with my good friend Paul Wright. It’s called Foxes & Lions, and it’s a Here I Stand series game set during the Italian Wars. So if you want to bring out your inner Machiavelli, I’ve got something for you. I also have a number of other irons in the fire, including a few projects with David.

David: 2026 is an unusually full year for me. In addition to Night Witches, I have For the Gods! (with Trevor and Brett Gilbert, Mighty Boards), Flintlock! (with Roger Tankersley, Floodgate Games), War Chest: Shock Tactics (with Trevor, AEG), Undaunted 2200: Revolution (with Trevor, Osprey), and Moytura (with Trevor, Bitewing Games) all on the docket, plus two Sniper Elite expansions with Roger (Rebellion Unplugged). Longer term, I’ve started research on my first American Civil War design (Rebels Against Rebellion, with Trevor and Flying Pig) as well as a solo/cooperative WW2 squad-level game called Fifth Platoon (designed with Non-Breaking Space and to be published by Fort Circle). And Liz mentioned a few projects we have together. Lots to be excited about!

Michal: Thank you very much for the interview, David and Liz! Any last word either of you would like to add?

Liz: Thanks for inviting us to talk about Night Witches! We can’t wait for people to be playing it at last.

David: Thanks, Michal. It’s always a pleasure. We can’t wait for Night Witches to finally be in people’s hands. It’s been a long road and the game is something Liz and I are really proud of.

Thanks!