Signal Games

Developers of SIGNAL, a WW2 collectible card game.

PC + physical card line
Follow our development journey here

🚫AI Art🚫

Artists: [email protected]

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

SIGNAL is a historical trading card game focused on the Axis powers: German, Italian, Japanese, and minor Axis personalities, units, and equipment. An Allied side is planned for a future expansion, but we wanted to do this side properly first.

We're a small independent studio working on this in the open. Physical cards are planned for a rollout in 2027 with the first core set, Blitzkrieg. The PC game is targeted for 2028.

Every piece of card art in Signal is commissioned from real working artists. No AI image generators used in the creation of our card art. Different cards get different artists and different styles depending on the subject matter.

Illustrators, if you work in historical, military, personality, or equipment art and would be interested in commissioned work, we'd love to hear from you.
[email protected]

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

The Type 95 'Ha-Go' was the most-produced Japanese tank of the war, with around 2,300 built between 1935 and 1943. Originally designed for cavalry use (speed over firepower), it was a three-man light tank with thin armour, a 37mm main gun, and an air-cooled diesel engine that proved ideal for the tropics where petrol designs overheated. At 7.4 tonnes it could ford rivers, slip through jungle that heavier tanks couldn't cross, and outpace foot infantry on bad roads.

The Ha-Go's defining theatre was the Malayan Peninsula in December 1941 and January 1942. The 1st, 6th, and 14th Tank Regiments, with around 211 tanks between them, led the Japanese advance on Singapore against British, Indian, and Australian forces who had been told the Malayan jungle was impassable to armour. By 1944, however, the 37mm gun could no longer penetrate the side of an M4 Sherman, and on the Pacific islands Ha-Gos were reduced to being dug in turret-deep as static pillboxes.

#SignalTCG #WW2History #PacificWar #IJA #WW2Tanks #ImperialJapan

#太平洋戦争 #日本陸軍 #旧日本軍 #ガルパン #大東亜戦争

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@heikihenken https://t.co/c1yVLtpQoh

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

The Macchi C.205 Veltro is widely regarded as the best Italian fighter of the Second World War to see meaningful production. Mario Castoldi developed it at Macchi Aeronautica as a re-engined version of his earlier C.202 Folgore, swapping the DB 601 engine of the Folgore for the more powerful licence-built Daimler-Benz DB 605 (built in Italy as the Fiat RA.1050 RC.58 Tifone), and upgrading the armament to a heavier loadout of two 20mm cannons and two 12.7mm machine guns. The result was a fast and deadly warplane, at around 640 km/h (400 mph), on roughly equal terms with the contemporary Spitfire and P-51 Mustang, which finally gave Italian pilots a weapon that could reliably break up Allied four-engine bomber formations. Production was painfully limited: only 262 were built in total, with output crippled by Allied bombing of Italian factories.

The Veltro entered front-line service in April 1943 with the 1° Stormo, flying from Pantelleria in defence of the last Axis convoys to Tunisia and the air over Sicily. After the September 1943 armistice split the Italian air force in two, the Veltro continued to serve with Mussolini's ANR (Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana) intercepting US heavy bomber raids over northern Italy until the end of the war. A handful of captured airframes were also flown operationally by Luftwaffe pilots of II./JG 77, the only German fighter Gruppe ever fully equipped with the type, for two months between October and December 1943. Italy's leading aces of the period flew the Veltro, including Adriano Visconti and Luigi Gorrini (the leading C.205 ace, who claimed 11 kills on the type during the defence of Rome in the summer of 1943). After the war, Egypt bought up the surviving airframes and operated them into the late 1940s.

In our illustration for the Veltro card, a Salo Republic C.205 bringing down a B-26 Marauder, somewhere over the Mediterranean

#SignalTCG #WW2History #TCG #WW2Aviation #Warbirds #RegiaAeronautica

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@DJPuppet5 @MarseilleH41515 The best Luftwaffe leadership would have been a combo of Walter Wever for doctrine and vision, and Erhard Milch for the production side. Goring, Udet and later Jeschonnek were just not up to it

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@VoicesofWW2 How many millions of Germans starved or suffered from malnutrition in the post war years I wonder?

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

The 9th Panzer Division was the Heer's Austrian division, formed on 3 January 1940 by reorganising the 4th Light Division, which had itself been raised in 1938 in Vienna by converting the motorised mobile division of the old Austrian Bundesheer after the Anschluss. Headquartered in Vienna, it kept its Austrian identity throughout the war, with Panzer Regiment 33 renamed "Prinz Eugen" in March 1943 to honour the Habsburg field marshal who broke the Ottomans at Belgrade in 1717.

The combat record is exceptionally wide-ranging. It was the only panzer division committed to the Battle of the Netherlands in May 1940, then fought through the Battle of France, served as the armoured vanguard of the 12th Army in the Balkans Campaign of April 1941 (overrunning Yugoslavia and Greece against British, Australian, and Greek defenders), and rolled into the Soviet Union from Romania as part of Army Group South in Operation Barbarossa. On the Eastern Front it fought through the Brody armoured battles, the Uman pocket, the Kiev encirclement (after transfer to Guderian's Panzer Group 2), and the Bryansk encirclement, capturing the town of Kursk itself on 2 November 1941.

The division's defining catastrophe came at the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. Operating in 47th Panzer Corps as part of Model's 9th Army on the northern shoulder of the salient, it lost 70 tanks to Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 ground-attack aircraft in one notorious twenty-minute engagement, and after advancing only 15 km it gave up its attempt to reach the city it had taken two years earlier. After covering the retreat to the Mius line, what was left of the division was pulled out to Nîmes in southern France in early 1944 to rebuild, absorbing the 155th Reserve Panzer Division and emerging with 31 Panzer IIIs, 74 Panzer IVs, 15 Panthers, and 20 assault guns. It went into action against the Allied breakout from Normandy that summer, escaped the Falaise pocket largely intact (one of the few panzer divisions that did), helped defend Aachen and the Siegfried Line, and was selected for the Ardennes Offensive in December 1944.

Its final action was the counter-attack on the captured Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen in March 1945, and what was left of it was destroyed in the Ruhr pocket the following month.

#SignalTCG #WW2History #PanzerDivision #WW2 #Barbarossa #BattleOfKursk

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@amantdelucy His intellectual side is often ignored. Among his contemporaries, he was probably the most well-read and most skilled writer of the lot, with Churchill and De Gaulle a close second.

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

The Macchi C.205 Veltro is widely regarded as the best Italian fighter of the Second World War to see meaningful production. Mario Castoldi developed it at Macchi Aeronautica as a re-engined version of his earlier C.202 Folgore, swapping the DB 601 engine of the Folgore for the more powerful licence-built Daimler-Benz DB 605 (built in Italy as the Fiat RA.1050 RC.58 Tifone), and upgrading the armament to a heavier loadout of two 20mm cannons and two 12.7mm machine guns. The result was a fast and deadly warplane, at around 640 km/h (400 mph), on roughly equal terms with the contemporary Spitfire and P-51 Mustang, which finally gave Italian pilots a weapon that could reliably break up Allied four-engine bomber formations. Production was painfully limited: only 262 were built in total, with output crippled by Allied bombing of Italian factories.

The Veltro entered front-line service in April 1943 with the 1° Stormo, flying from Pantelleria in defence of the last Axis convoys to Tunisia and the air over Sicily. After the September 1943 armistice split the Italian air force in two, the Veltro continued to serve with Mussolini's ANR (Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana) intercepting US heavy bomber raids over northern Italy until the end of the war. A handful of captured airframes were also flown operationally by Luftwaffe pilots of II./JG 77, the only German fighter Gruppe ever fully equipped with the type, for two months between October and December 1943. Italy's leading aces of the period flew the Veltro, including Adriano Visconti and Luigi Gorrini (the leading C.205 ace, who claimed 11 kills on the type during the defence of Rome in the summer of 1943). After the war, Egypt bought up the surviving airframes and operated them into the late 1940s.

In our illustration for the Veltro card, a Salo Republic C.205 bringing down a B-26 Marauder, somewhere over the Mediterranean

#SignalTCG #WW2History #TCG #WW2Aviation #Warbirds #RegiaAeronautica

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@avgvstvsczr @Littoria14 The Folgore, Arriete, Littoria and Trieste all performed superbly. It was mainly the under-equipped infantry divisions that struggled

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@Gafman334 @krautbursche @space_homer Correct. This is the last meeting between the two on the day of the assassination attempt

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

North Africa was overwhelmingly pro-Axis. Even in British controlled Egypt, everyone from King Farouk (who allegedly sent a letter to Hitler welcoming an invasion of Egypt) to his Prime Minister Ali Maher Pasha to anti-Royalists (like Sadat and Nasser) to the Muslim brotherhood and it's founder Hassan al Banna were all secretly hoping for an Axis victory in NA

When Rommel was pushing east across Libya in early 1942 and British fears of Egyptian pro-Axis sentiment were peaking, the British surrounded Farouk's Abdeen Palace with tanks and troops, and gave him an ultimatum to either appoint Britain's preferred candidate Mustafa al-Nahhas as PM or abdicate. King Farouk begrudgingly signed his agreement with the words "you will live to regret this, sir" to the British ambassador Lampson.

Both later Egyptian presidents Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdul Nasser were part of the young officer scene whose pro-Axis sympathies were openly known, and they were waiting and hoping for Rommel's victory to make a move. Sadat in particular has written in his own memoirs about his extensive cooperation with Abwehr agents in Cairo. His circle was preparing the terms for a deal with the Axis to join the war against Britain, on the condition that Egypt be granted full sovereignty once the war was over.

Even when Rommel was defeated in the second battle of El Alamein and Egypt was secured for the Allies, Egypt still refused to declare war on Germany until Feb 1945 (by then the war was effectively over and Egypt needed to declare by 1 March to qualify as a founding member of the United Nations). That same day, the Prime Minister Ahmad Maher Pasha, who had just declared war on Germany, was assassinated by Mahmoud Issawi, a young pro-German lawyer from the Green Shirts movement.

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@Littoria14 The best time to do this was after the conquest of Ethiopia. His support was sky high and the public would have accepted radical changes, but instead he elevated the Savoy's even more!

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

Also the heroic resistance in Italian East Africa after it's fall to the British was very impressive indeed, and is something that not a lot of people, even history nerds, are aware of. The role of anti-Axis partisans is always played up in ww2, but you never hear how Italians, with barely any supplies continued on a valiant effort in East Africa until the armistice in 43.

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@8sOYx1pi5p3082 https://t.co/LMB0PjP2uS

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

'Divine Wind' command card art

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@DiegoGrandi82 Hope you like our version 🫡

https://t.co/LMB0PjP2uS

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

'Divine Wind' command card art

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@MichalKus3 Panzer 3 ALWAYS

https://t.co/Czz2UDtBuU

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

The Panzerkampfwagen III Ausf. L (Panzer III-L) was produced from June 1942 until mid-1943 with around 653 built. The L is the variant where the Pz III finally caught up to what it was being asked to do. The earlier short-barrel guns couldn't deal with the Soviet T-34 frontal armour at any meaningful range, so the L got the long 5cm KwK 39 L/60, and most production runs carried 20mm of spaced armor bolted onto the gun mantlet for extra protection from frontal hits. It was the workhorse of German armor through the southern push of Operation Blau toward Stalingrad in 1942, and through the desert war up to El Alamein in October that same year.

The art style traces back to Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth in southern California in the late 1950s. Roth took the hot rod and stuck a cartoon monster behind the wheel, then printed it on t-shirts and decals at his shop in Maywood. He invented the whole visual language of halftone dot textures borrowed from cheap newsprint reproduction, hard black inkwork, limited bold-color palette built for screen printing, and a gleeful disrespect for whatever serious mechanical subject he happened to be drawing. Rat Fink is the most famous result. The style ran through underground comix in the 70s and lives today in lowbrow art, skate poster work, and Kustom Kulture. Artists like Dirty Donny Gillies and Coop carry it forward now, doing band posters and car culture pieces in the same idiom.

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@akkaigunntaisyo Speedy Heinz <3

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@Bento_1942 Is this your work? 👏

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

@schrondonowitz Does it reference Mers el Kebir at all?

[Signal Games @Signal_Games_]

HOHENSTAUFEN!

A first look at one of our Waffen SS card illustrations, this one is for the 9th SS Panzer division 'Hohenstaufen'.

Hohenstaufen was raised in early 1943 from a mix of Reich Labour Service draftees and a cadre of veteran officers and NCOs transferred in, named after the medieval Hohenstaufen dynasty of Holy Roman Emperors, and upgraded from Panzergrenadier to a full Panzer division in October 1943.

Its first combat came in the East in April 1944, when 2nd SS Panzer Corps (Hohenstaufen and the 10th SS "Frundsberg") was rushed to relieve the encircled 1st Panzer Army at Kamenets-Podolsky in Ukraine. By late June 1944 it was in Normandy, counterattacking the British during Operation Epsom on the high ground south-west of Caen. The troops in the illustration are wearing Erbsenmuster pea-dot camouflage and the M43 field cap, and the weapons on the ground, MP40, StG 44, MG42, Kar 98k, are the standard late-war Waffen-SS Panzergrenadier loadout.

Hohenstaufen's defining moment came in September 1944. The division was refitting near Arnhem when Operation Market Garden dropped the British 1st Airborne onto its doorstep, and it became the principal force that destroyed them. Walter Harzer's Kampfgruppen broke Frost's 2nd Parachute Battalion at the road bridge, then ground down the rest of 1st Airborne in the Oosterbeek perimeter until the British withdrawal across the Rhine on the night of 25 September. From there Hohenstaufen went to the Ardennes in December 1944 with the 6th SS Panzer Army for the Bulge, then to Hungary in March 1945 for the failed Lake Balaton offensive, before surrendering to American forces in Austria in May 1945.

#WW2History #TCG #ww2 #Arnhem