Next (forever) war
As a customer who pledged on the GMT Games P500 in February 2021 for Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition—and am still waiting four-plus years later for delivery—this passage in the GMT Games May 22 Update caught my attention:
For roughly the past year (mainly because we knew we were going to need a non-China printer option for Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition once it finished development and art), Kai has been searching for a non-China printer that would work for us at the quantities, quality, and pricing that we need (remember, we have already committed to P500 pricing for our customers on scores of games, so our printer costs have to fit at least roughly in that window). The nearer-term need is for Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition, which we can’t print in China.
I admit I am not a rabid GMT Games fan and rely on the monthly updates to understand where the company is going. So hearing that Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition was unprintable in China and that GMT Games has known about this problem for over a year is news to me.
Searching
So, why is Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition not ready to be printed? According to GMT Games [emphasis in original], “For those of you asking about whether we can print in the US, well, we ARE looking—we just haven’t found a “great fit” partner stateside yet.” Later the same update says, “But we’d LOVE to find a US printer that could do both that job and also be able to handle at least some of our other lower print-run, non-series games.” Given Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition lists over 1,500 orders to date and is certainly a “series game” it is almost counter-intuitive that this is the game leading that search for a new printer…but apparently it is.
Which is where part of my confusion starts. As recently as the March 2025 update GMT Games reported that Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition was, “Going to the Printer Late March.” What printer was that? Apparently one was lined up but GMT Games ran into problems, as revealed in this passage of the May update:
See Kai’s Production Queue section later in the newsletter for more information, as she did just get a possible lead this week from a company that we might be able to use to get the NW: Taiwan game (and potentially more) manufactured here in the US. This search for US printing options that fit us is an ongoing pursuit.
Kai Jensen of GMT Games later explains:
I had a US printer I thought was going to be able to print Next War: Taiwan for us as their per unit cost was only double what we normally pay (for a US-based printer, that’s very low), but when I received the written quote I noted they hadn’t quoted for the punchboards as they are not able to handle them at all. Having to part out the production to two print shops raised the cost by an additional factor as we would need to have the punchboards shipped from one printer to the other for final assembly. The combined printing costs plus the additional shipping put us back into the range of 3-4 times our normal cost for a game of this size.
Politics, not $$
My interpretation of the May update of Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition is that tariff costs are not the primary production delay, but a now-open acknowledgment that the game cannot be printed in China. GMT does not share a reason, but given what is seen in the China book publishing ecosystem the printer likely is “self-electing” to not print the game to avoid any “misunderstanding” with the Chinese Communist Part (CCP) and avoid “entanglements” with the National Security Law. Can you blame the printer? No.
Before the May update the closest I see GMT Games coming to share on this issue is the February Update that featured the box back for Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition with “Made in the USA” in the lower right corner but no other explanation. Other recently released games like Fighting Formations: US 29th Infantry Division and Downfall: Conquest of the Third Reich 2nd Printing have “Made in China” (without any flag) in that same lower right corner.
As a customer waiting over four years for Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition to be printed I now have a better appreciation of the challenges GMT Games is facing to bring this game to fruition. While the tariff concerns are but the most recent impediment, and cost of printing is a strong driving factor, the issue that slowed delivery is the search for a non-China printer that is not fearful of censorship from the CCP.
[Good For Me But Not For Thee]
While at least one Chinese printer seems leery of printing Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition the CCP apparently is fine with War Drum Games in Shanghai printing and selling Joint All Domain Operation (JADO). On the surface both games appear very similar: both JADO and Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition look at near-future military operations on and around Taiwan. Both feature plenty of kit and rules to showcase modern military activities. A JADO land module wargame has a scale of 4 hour turns with 15 km (8.1 nm)/hex whereas Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition is 3.5 days per turn and 7.5 nm /hex. This practically means a 12-turn JADO scenario represents a mere 48-hours whereas a 10-turn Next War scenario represents a month of fighting. I personally categorize JADO as a grand tactical-scale wargame while Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition is more operational or campaign-scale.
Maybe GMT Games is unwilling to change certain parts of Next War: Taiwan 2nd Edition to make it acceptable for publication in China. For instance, in addition to the Taiwan flag on the cover I see the use of “Republic of China” on the box back—the CCP almost certainly views both as a no-go under the One China Principle and any Chinese printer likely views it as dangerous to their future if they accept such work. I certainly welcome GMT Games to be clear on this point but, acknowledging a need to preserve business relations to bring other games to print, I do not realistically expect them to openly acknowledge such.
But one can wish.
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Rocky Mountain Navy Gamer 
All wargames in China are actually in a legally gray area. NW: Taiwan was initially available for purchase online which did not attract attention, including the flag on the cover until it appeared in the news in 2019. All the medias eagerly hyped the work, Chinese media portrayed it as a US hostile act signaling an impending war and Taiwanese media repeatedly featured this game being played by Americans as a significant symbol of military alliance in various news reports. It ended up on the blacklist. Yes, it’s 100% the CENSORSHIP, but the small-scale underground hobby and the public hype for military purposes are two different things. That’s why JADO is still have the printer but NW:Taiwan not.
Here’s the original news:
https://warontherocks.com/2019/04/how-does-the-next-great-power-conflict-play-out-lessons-from-a-wargame/
So the 1st edition printer no longer exists or wants an unreasonable price? They also said that due to the information on the counters that the tolerances were too high for the ‘US printers’ to handle.
They have had a number of internal issues with artists leaving, project issues, and others reducing workload comittments, as well as mis management in a number of areas [i.e. VAT, non industry standard salaries etc]. The tariff issue has laid these flaws bare. The fat happy margin days are no longer covering the issues I guess.
I hope they get their house in order and sort things out.
First, thank you for not suggesting that a Chinese printer should simply do whatever their foreign customer wants them to do, come what consequences may. No businessman is going to risk his entire business over something a weird, nichey, and politically iffy as this.
Second, thank you for not suggesting that an American printer could do anywhere near as quality a job as GMT has been getting from their Chinese printer, for anything like the scale they’ve been producing and the price they’ve been paying (and are committed to seek from their customers)….not only that, as Kai allows above, the talent and machinery to do some things may simply not exist. We’ve read enough anecdotes and scanned enough numbers to establish this as fact.
It’s not possible at this late date to go back and drop any objectionable pieces of art or text without incurring significant extra delays. In this particular case, that may not even make any difference: from the Chinese point of view the thesis of the game is the United States and other countries intervening militarily to prevent re-establishing control of Taiwan, a rebel province of the People’s Republic of China and that’s not acceptable.
GMT vs. War Drum: The Communist Party of China is large and powerful but it is not omnipotent, and laws are not always enforced (that’s as true here as there). Undoubtedly it is easier for whoever runs War Drum, on the ground in Shanghai, to navigate whatever maze needs to be navigated.
The issue of quality and price of American printers is interesting in light of other admissions from GMT Games that the P500 prices have in effect “locked in” what they can afford to pay a printer. If the only alternatives to Chinese printers are 2-4x the manufacturing price, when does GMT Games raise that P500 price? As GAMA explains it (and assuming I understand what GAMA is saying at https://irp.cdn-website.com/2b6905d0/files/uploaded/TTGDA_and_GAMA_Guide_to_Tariffs-0beda82f.pdf) then the 2-4x manufacturing cost increase likely wipes out any profit so to stay afloat the MSRP must go up by some amount. THAT is the day GMT Games is almost certainly trying to avoid but one I see as inevitable.
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So what I foresee is a polarization, a pulling apart of analog wargames’ production and their price brackets: a $150-250+ bracket for things like whatever Volume XXII of the GMT COIN system will be about, and a $15-20 bargain bin of PDF or low-end DTP items by new and unknown designers, or known designers slumming so they can get the weirder phantoms out of their head (this was and is my career path, not even counting the dozen-plus games you can get from me for free). And not much in between, for it’s not economic.