Today I have a great pleasure to host on The Boardgames Chronicle blog once again David Thompson. This time we talk about Undaunted 2200: Revolution – the seventh title in the Undaunted series and the grand finale of the story which started in Callisto. Enjoy!
To immediately jump to the Game Pre-Order Page follow the below link:
PS. If you would like to catch up on my earlier conversations with David about the Undaunted 2200 universe, check below:
Michal: Hi David and welcome back to The Boardgames Chronicle blog! As a prolific author of such great game series like Undaunted, Valiant Defense, and General Orders, you are probably known to most of the wargaming enthusiasts by now. But for those who are new to the hobby, please tell us a little about yourself. What do you do for a living, what games do you play? Also, what is your role in the design and publication of Undaunted 2200: Revolution?
David: Thanks for having me back, Michal. I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, playing D&D and other roleplaying games, and came to the modern hobby around 2012. I started designing in earnest in 2014 after I moved to England and joined the Cambridge chapter of Playtest UK, which is also where I met Trevor Benjamin (the co-designer for Undaunted 2200: Revolution). I now live in Dayton, Ohio with my wife and our three kids.
On Revolution specifically, I am co-designer alongside Trevor, same as always. We create these games from the ground up, so pretty much everything in the design was collaborative. Once we were done with the design work, we passed it over to the fine folks at Osprey for development.
Michal: Revolution is already the seventh Undaunted title you have designed, and the second set in the 2200 universe. What made you come back to the 2200 setting so soon after Callisto? Where did the idea for this particular story come from?
David: We plan out our schedule with Osprey years in advance. The idea of Revolution dates back to when we first conceptualized Callisto (and Line of Fire: Burnt Moon). They were always envisioned as a sort of trilogy, where we started the story of the Breakers and Lunar Frontier Authority (the major factions in the games) in Callisto and conclude them in Revolution. Revolution is the massive climax to everything that was built up in Callisto and Burnt Moon.
Michal: For this installment you are once again co-designing with Trevor Benjamin. How did the work between the two of you look this time around, and what does Trevor bring to Revolution?
David: Trevor and I have been doing this together long enough now that we have got a real shorthand. What he brings, more than anything, is rigor, an eye towards streamlining and development. He is relentless about pressure-testing a rule until it cannot be misread, balance testing, etc. In some ways Revolution is mechanically the most complex Undaunted we have built – combined air and ground combat, a branching campaign, etc. But at the same time we were able to achieve an incredible level of elegance thanks to Trevor’s constant eye towards approachability.
Michal: Let us set the stage for our Readers. The game takes us to the year 2205, five years into a conflict between the Lunar Frontier Authority, the Breakers resistance movement, and the Galilean Federation. Can you tell us a bit more about the fiction and how the 2200 universe has evolved since Callisto?
David: That is right. It follows the story that began in Callisto and continued in Burnt Moon. We pick things up at the RareMetal Ventures mining facility out in the Asteroid Belt. Five years into the war between the LFA and the Breakers, and RareMetal, a scientific outfit contracted by the LFA to extract rare-earth metals for weapons manufacturing, has actually thrown in with the Breakers.
In the opening scenario, the Breakers and RareMetal have gotten their hands on a trio of prototype mechs (the Autolycus, a neural-linked collective) the LFA had fitted with an experimental autonomous system. Just as they are squaring things away, the LFA shows up and the shooting starts. From there the story fans outward across the system, which is really the whole point of Revolution. Callisto was one moon, but this is a solar-system spanning war.
Michal: What are the key components of the game? I understand we once again have Roland MacDonald on illustrations, which is wonderful news for fans of Callisto.
David: Roland is back, yes, and I could not be happier about it. His work on Callisto set the visual language for this universe, and he has continued that with Revolution. I think it is the most beautiful of all the Undaunted games – just wait until you see the six gorgeous boards that come with the game, each focused on a unique locale.
On components, this is a huge package: three double-sided game boards covering locations like Earth, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, Callisto, the Moon, and a Space Station, plus a stack of board tiles you overlay to reconfigure terrain scenario to scenario. There is over one hundred cards (combat cards and command cards, as folks familiar with Undaunted would expect), combat counters for both ground units and ships, transport cargo cards, and lots more.
Michal: Probably the most intriguing novelty I have read about Revolution is the integration of aerial and ground combat. Can you walk us through how this works mechanically? How do players manage forces operating in two dimensions at once without overloading the elegant Undaunted core?
David: This was the single hardest design problem on the project, honestly. The board uses a hex grid, and ground units can move and target freely in any direction, no facing involved. Folks who are familiar with Undaunted will be right at home with this because Undaunted has always effectively used a hex layout (even if it is obfuscated by offset square tiles or irregular-shaped spaces as was the case in Callisto). The only time we have used a hex grid in the past was with Battle of Britain. That is important because the hex grid is critical for aerial combat. And that is why we brought it back.
Aerospace units in Revolution have facing, they move forward along that facing between one and however many spaces their card allows, and they fire along virtual lines radiating out from their nose, called firing lines. So an aerospace unit’s whole tactical picture is about where it is pointed. The thing that keeps it from overwhelming the core loop is that both unit types use the same gameplay system. You are still just playing a card and choosing an action.
Michal: I am a big fan of the Mechs introduced in Callisto – they are powerful but demand careful hand management. Are they returning in Revolution, and if so, how have they evolved? And how do the new fighters compare as a unit type (which are hinted on the Publisher site in game overview)?
David: Mechs are absolutely back, but the scale of Revolution shifted us away from the way mechs are portrayed in the game. In Callisto, the action was zoomed in to the skirmish level. A single mech consisted of five cards, each representing a person. In Revolution the action zooms out much further, so that each combat counter on the board represents a group of mechs, and each card abstractly ties to the effectiveness of a single mech.
Fighters, by contrast, are all about that facing-and-firing-line system I just described – fast, maneuverable, but committed to a direction once they move, so positioning them well takes real forethought.
Michal: Revolution supports both 2 and 4 players. You have already explored team play in Callisto, so this is not entirely new territory for the franchise. What does the 4-player experience look like in Revolution, and what did you take from earlier team-play designs?
David: I love team games, and playing Undaunted with four players is my favorite way to play. We originally introduced the idea way back in Undaunted: Reinforcements, which expanded Normandy and North Africa to four players. And as you said, Callisto came with the ability to play with four players in the box. The same is true for Revolution.
In the four-player game, you and your partner each control one of your side’s two forces. One of you starts as commander, determined by who holds the Captain or Supervisor command card, and the commander draws a bigger hand, is the only one who bids for initiative, and always acts first on your side each round. When that command card gets placed into your discard pile, the responsibility passes to your partner. As commander you can also spend your own cards to fuel your partner’s hand or deck directly, through the Bolster and Command actions.
Michal: The branching, four-scenario narrative arcs sound like a real evolution of the campaign structure we saw in Stalingrad. How does the branching actually work, and how replayable is the campaign once a player has finished one path?
David: It is very much in the spirit of what we did with Stalingrad‘s branching campaign, but compressed. We wanted something you could genuinely finish in a single sitting rather than multiple sessions. You play through a scenario, and how that battle shakes out determines which scenario you move on to next, so no two campaign playthroughs necessarily hit the same four battles in the same order. New factions get folded in as the campaign progresses too, which keeps the later scenarios feeling different from where you started, even mechanically.
And because Revolution‘s fifteen scenarios can all be played individually outside the campaign as quick standalone battles, there is a lot of replay value even for someone who has already seen a campaign through to the end. Allowing players to enjoy the scenarios as standalone experiences is something we learned from feedback from Stalingrad.
Michal: How do players determine victory in Revolution? Are the win conditions symmetrical for both sides, or is there asymmetry between the Lunar Frontier Authority and the Breakers?
David: Every scenario sets its own victory point target, and the moment either side hits it, the game ends immediately. The two main ways to score are controlling objectives on the board and routing your opponent’s units in combat. Individual scenarios can layer additional scenario-specific scoring on top of that. As for symmetry, the core scoring framework is often (but not always) the same for both sides in any given scenario, but because each scenario’s setup, objectives, and starting forces are unique, the LFA and the Breakers rarely feel like they are playing a mirror match.
Michal: Looking at Undaunted 2200: Revolution as a whole – what makes this game unique, both within the wider Undaunted franchise and as a standalone experience? In particular, how would you describe the step from the historical Undaunted titles to the 2200 line for someone still on the fence?
David: Within the franchise, it is probably the most ambitious thing we have built. It combines the traditional ground combat of most Undaunteds with aerial combat similar to what was in Battle of Britain, it brings back the legacy-style campaign of Stalingrad (though in a much more condensed and playable format), and introduces a ton of variety with the faction elements that can join either side. In many ways, it is a sort of “greatest hits” or all our favorite gameplay elements of the Undaunted system.
As a standalone experience, I think what makes it unique is how much tactical texture comes from the two domains (air and ground) being so critically integrated. For someone who has only played the historical Undaunted games and is on the fence about 2200: the deck-driven heart of the gameplay is the same DNA you already know from Normandy or Stalingrad. What is different is the setting has allowed us the creative liberty to really push the boundaries of what is possible with the game.
Michal: The game is announced for release in October 2026 via Osprey Games. Where can players interested in Revolution find more information and preorder the game?
David: Osprey’s product page has the full rundown and is where you will want to preorder, and BoardGameGeek has the game listed with more details and discussion as well. We will also be showing it off in person at SPIEL Essen.
Michal: The inevitable question all fans of your games – including me – would like to ask: what are David Thompson’s future design plans? Both in the Undaunted universe and beyond, short-term and longer-term?
David: There is no shortage on the horizon. Beyond Revolution, I have got Night Witches coming with Liz Davidson for Fort Circle Games, two new Sniper Elite expansions with Roger Tankersley for Rebellion Unplugged, Flintlock! – a Seven Years’ War and French and Indian War game built on Paolo Mori’s Blitzkrieg! system also designed with Roger for Floodgate Games, and For the Gods! with Trevor and Brett J. Gilbert for Mighty Boards. As for the Undaunted universe, I will just say that we are not done yet!
Michal: Thank you very much for the interview, David! Any last word you would like to add?
David: Thank you, Michal! As always it has been great chatting with you.