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A Leading Force in Game Design

Columbia Games is one of the hobby’s veteran game companies. Columbia Games has produced some of the highest rated wargames in the industry such as Hammer of the Scots and Julius Caesar. They are the pioneers of the block wargame genre, a system which has found even more popularity with newer wargamers over the past few years.

Columbia Games produce the legendary Fantasy Role Playing setting, Hârnworld. A fantasy setting which is still in strong circulation as more players find their way away from the high fantasy mainstream settings into a more realistic, gritty world. New material is regularly published and is available almost quarterly and at a great discount through the very affordable Hârnquest subscriptions.

Recently, Columbia Games has moved headlong into family games. The game The Last Spike has firmly stamped Columbia’s heavy footprint in the family game arena by reeling in one of the most prestigious awards in board gaming, the MENSA select award, (from MENSA, the high-IQ society).

Awards Won

Meet the Team

Tom Dalgliesh

Founder

Tom Dalgliesh was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1945. Tom is the sole owner of Columbia Games and a prolific designer of many wargames and fantasy role-playing materials.

Tom’s designs include Québec 1759, War of 1812, Napoléon, Slapshot, Bobby Lee, Victory, Pacific Victory, Wizard Kings, Gettysburg: Badges of Courage, and Liberty. He also co-designed Hammer of the Scots, Crusader Rex, Richard III, Shiloh, Borodino, Julius Caesar, Shenandoah, and Victory in Europe. Not forgetting a co-design credit for HârnWorld and HârnMaster, and “The Last Spike, a Euro-style railway building game.

Tom was chosen by vote as a “famous game designer” and featured as the king of clubs in Flying Buffalo’s 2014 Famous Game Designers Playing Card Deck.

Penny Dalgliesh

Founder

Penny Dalgliesh runs the office and shipping department for Columbia Games. She married Tom Dalgliesh on September 2, 1967, so 2017 is their Golden Anniversary. Amazing team!

Penny also helped to edit three different Hârn supplements by Columbia Games.

Grant Dalgliesh

Chief Executive Officer

Grant Dalgliesh was born in 1975 in Vancouver, BC Canada. He attended bilingual (English and French) school through High School. Grant was raised in/around games. He worked with his father Tom from an early age in the family business, Columbia Games and played all sorts of hobby games with family and friends. Grant moved to Washington State (USA) in 1994 and began full time work with Columbia Games. Grant now wears many hats for Columbia Games including game development and webmaster

James Eisert

Marketing & Media Manager

James is a graduate in Brigham Young University – Idaho for a communications degree and has been an avid gamer all of his life. A great combination for Columbia Games.

He has owned his own game store, Castle Archon, and was one of the first stores to price Magic the Gathering nationwide. He has traveled to all the major game conventions in America for both work and play.

In between owning his game store and earning his degree, he was a professional wrestler for five years.

Jennifer Deshaies

Director, Strategic Initiatives / Educational Coordinator

Jennifer, Grant‘s wife, brings a wealth of experience to Columbia Games after a successful 25-year career in education. Jennifer holds an English Degree, a Masters in Teaching, a Masters in History, and is a National Board Certified Teacher. As a teacher, administrator, and educational consultant, she has honed her communication, leadership, and curriculum development skills. Her expertise extends to writing, with published articles on Historylink.org and a teacher guide for the company’s game, The Last Spike.

Beyond her educational background, Jennifer’s experience in business ownership, accounting, travel, and event planning provides a well-rounded perspective that is invaluable to Columbia Games. She has a passion for travel and is an avid powerlifter. In her leisure time, Jennifer enjoys writing poetry, quilting, and cooking. She is excited to support Grant in growing Columbia Games and contributing to its future success.

Richard Luschek II

HârnWorld and Wargame Artist

After graduating from the University of Cincinnati with Bachelor’s degrees in both Biology and Fine Arts, Richard was fortunate to apprentice at the Paul Ingbretson Studio of Drawing and Painting located in Manchester, New Hampshire. Mr. Ingbretson is a living modern master of the Boston School tradition and studied under the late R. H. Ives Gammell. With a legacy passing through the Boston School to French Academic Painting, this rigorous training imparts a foundation of time-honored techniques that blend solid academic drawing with beautifully seen impressionistic color. Notable figures of the early Boston tradition include William McGregor Paxton (1869-1941), Joseph DeCamp (1858-1923), Frank W. Benson (1862-1951), and Edmund C. Tarbell (1862-1938).

Justin Thompson

Game Designer

Justin Thompson has a hearty history in the board gaming world. Foremost, he is the designer of Columbia Games’ boardgame, Julius Caesar. He is also the President, Founder, & CEO of the PrezCon Gaming convention located in Virginia for 25 years.

Justin is also a very competitive player and has attended every World Boardgaming Championship since 1991. He has won numerous World Championships titles including, but not limited to;

World Championship in Kingmaker (3 times)
World Championship in Shogun/Samurai Swords (2 times)
World Championship in Atlantic Storm

Justin is also a professional Salesperson (30 years experience) with over $21 Million Dollars sold of Floor-covering and a Army Veteran serving under Ronald Reagan 1983-1987.

Jerry Taylor

Game Designer

Jerry Taylor has co-designed three of Columbia Games wargames, Hammer of the Scots, Crusader Rex, and Richard III.

Jerry Taylor is currently the President of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank that works to change public policy through direct engagement in the policymaking process. Prior to founding the Center in 2014, Jerry has spent 23 years at the Cato Institute, serving as Vice President during his time there. Jerry Taylor attended the University of Iowa as a political science major.

Zsuzsanna Molnár

HTML Web Designer

Zsuzsanna Molnár was born in Hungary.

Her interest in acting and art led her to tabletop roleplaying, and developing the country’s first roleplaying-gamer search engine.

She graduated as an English-Music teacher, got license to teach as Cisco Networking and Cybersecurity instructor, but always enjoyed photography, image editing, building websites as well. She’s singing in a rock band, being player/storyteller of RPG campaigns, and always up to something creative.

Kerry Mould

HârnWorld Writer

Kerry Mould fell in love with Hârn in the mid-1980s with the release of Cities of Hârn. He began writing Hârnic fan fiction (fanon) in 2001 and has released over 60 fanon articles to date, including The Earl’s Progress and the Friends, Foes and Followers series. He was invited to contribute to CGI’s update and expansion of Kingdom of Kaldor in 2004. Since then, he has been a member of the group of freelancers known as the HârnWriters. Kerry has led a number of major projects for HârnWriters, including Selvos Castle, Silver Way, Guthe Bridge, Kingdom of Azadmere, Azadmere City, Zerhun, and the adventure On The Edge. He has also been a contributor to many other team projects over the last 19 years.

After a 20-year military career that saw him deployed overseas, including six months in East Timor and a year in Syria working for the United Nations, Kerry retired from the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) in 2009 at the rank of Major. He currently works as a Senior Project Manager for Defence Construction Canada (DCC) and is responsible for supporting several large cross-Canada infrastructure projects for the RCAF and Army. Kerry is married; his partner John is a Registered Nurse. The couple and their black lab, Lincoln, live on a rural property on the outskirts of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Joe Adams

HârnWorld Writer

Joe Adams found Hârn in 1987 when he saw an advertisement for Hârnworld in Dragon Magazine. Since then, his fanon releases have included the Fethael Hundred setting and the Knights of Kaldor adventures. He has freelanced for Columbia Games on various projects since the late 1990s. He has led a number of projects, such as Kingdom of Orbaal, Kingdom of Chybisa, the Laranian orders, and all but one of Hârn’s trade route articles. He has also contributed to many more articles and is the current Dread Editor of the Thonahexus fanzine.

In real life, Joe retired from the US Army as a Colonel after a 26 year career that included tours as an instructor at the US Military Academy, a project officer for NATO, and the Chief Information Officer for the National Defense University. He spent some time creating a cyber security startup and running his own business before returning to academia. He is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech.

Jonathan Davidson

HârnWorld Writer

By the lucky fact an entrepreneur owned a transatlantic airline and a London games shop, Jonathan Davidson happened on HârnWorld on the “fell off the back of a plane” shelf around 1983. It made a refreshing change from the high fantasy Level-20 hack-n-slash being played at the time. Thankfullym most of the fanon he wrote has been lost to the mists of time. He has been writing for CGI publication since the end of the last century. One of his first major contributions was HârnManor. He has had a bit of a focus on the cold north recently, leading articles on Menglana, Rogna and its thranaals, and Lokis, as well as contributing to Menglana’s settlements. He also loves Melderyn having led articles about Cherifir, Karveth, Laket and one of the many contributors to the Kingdom module and Thay. His interest in ways of making a living is evident with articles on fishing, glassworking, hunting, innkeeping, ostlers, teamsters and weaponcrafting.

In real life, if there is such a thing, Jonathan started out in geotechnical engineering, GIS and 3D modelling, but soon progressed to software engineering and a long career in IT operations and governance. He currently works in the UK for a car manufacturer, responsible for IT compliance. Outside work he is interested in nature, birdwatching, and mapping stuff.

A Leading Force in Game Design

Awards Won

MENSA Society Select Award

International Gamers Award

James F. Dunnigan Award (Origins)

Games Magazine "Top 100 Games of the Year"

Charles S. Roberts Award (Origins)

Charles S. Roberts Award (Origins)

Meet the Team

Tom Dalgliesh

Penny Dalgliesh

Grant Dalgliesh

James Eisert

Jennifer Deshaies

Richard Luschek II

Justin Thompson

Jerry Taylor

Zsuzsanna Molnár

Kerry Mould

Joe Adams

Jonathan Davidson