About Lombardy Studios

Meet the Creative Team behind Lombardy Studios

LOMBARDY STUDIOS publishes innovative history–themed books, games and other items, from products that make exploring history entertaining and fun to “hard-core” histories for in-depth research. LS was founded by Dana Lombardy, who has nearly 50 years experience in publishing. Click on Dana’s name to see his game, publication, and special project credits.

Check out our Products page, whether you are interested in a game to try historical “what-ifs” or are looking for the order of battle of the armies at Shiloh.

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Meet the LOMBARDY STUDIOS team

Apart from our fearless leader, Dana, these authors, designers, graphic artists and others make up our creative team.

Craig Robertson

A tech writer and former teacher, Craig met Dana while on the staff of CelestiCon, a San Francisco Bay Area game convention. Working with Bill Jaffe, Dana’s late stepson, he reorganized and edited the rules for Tide of Iron: Next Wave and other products for 1A Games. He wrote and developed the rules for the new War of the Worlds expansion cards (Martians!) for MacGowan and Lombardy’s The Great War card game. The Panzer 38(t) is one of Craig’s all-time favorite tanks and—like many Soviet field mice—he finds its wiring quite tasty.

Tom Rubalcava

A professional animator/filmmaker who teaches storyboard classes and worked on Gumby: The Movie and Howl, among other feature films and television shows. (See his listing on IMDB. ) Tom shot, edited, and produced several short videos for Dana and organizations Dana was associated with. Tom also illustrated a historical graphic booklet based on the Kickstarter video for MacGowan and Lombardy’s The Great War card game. Recipient of a Silver CLIO Award for his work in advertising, you may have seen his big bad wolf illustrations in the Symbicort commercial on television. His website is Trubalcava.com

Gerald D. Swick

Editor of the award-winning books Historic Photos of Theodore Roosevelt and D-Day 75th Anniversary A Millennials Guide, for eight years Gerald was web editor for ArmchairGeneral, HistoryNet, and other sites of the magazine publisher Weider History Group. In addition to his own West Virginia Histories book series he has written for America’s Civil War, American History, and Armchair General magazines as well as The Encyclopedia of World War Two: A Political, Social and Military History. A former marketing director for Steve Jackson Games and Dana’s friend and associate for over 35 years, Gerald is in charge of marketing and puns. His website is GeraldDSwick.com

 

Dan Zillion

For nearly 30 years Dan has worked as a professional and freelance graphic designer, as well as 10+ years in client relations. He’s worked on advertising for national brands and museums, sports teams and role-playing games.

For the past several years, Dan has been Dana’s go-to graphic artist and web admin person. He stepped in to handle the The Great War card game art after the initial artist dropped out of the project. Dan also worked with Dana on a special 100th anniversary project that included assembling numerous images and Dana’s text to create eight large 9-foot-by-9-foot banners on World War One that hung in the lobby of the San Francisco War Memorial Veterans Building in 2018. Visit his LinkedIn page.

People we hang out with

Dana’s professional contacts include some of the most celebrated artists, writers, and designers in the game and history fields. While dozens of talented people could be listed, here are a few of the ones he has worked with consistently over his long career who are involved in projects with LOMBARDY STUDIOS.

Rodger B. MacGowan

A member of the Origins/GAMA (Game Manufacturers Association) Hall of Fame, Rodger is a multiple award–winning graphic artist, magazine publisher and game developer. He was presented with the Blomgren-Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement at ConsimWorld Expo in 2004. He designed and founded Fire & Movement Magazine in 1976 and C3i Magazine in 1992.  He is Senior Vice-President and Art Director of GMT Games LLC, and President of RBM Studio LLC. For LOMBARDY STUDIOS his original illustrations appear in MacGowan and Lombardy’s The Great War™ card game. The list of projects he has worked on is longer than the credits for a Spielberg movie. You can see them on his website.

 

Keith Rocco

Keith is one of the most important historical artists working today. His career and work have been likened by curators and historians to those of the great genre artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from Meissonier, DeNeuville, and Detaille to Frederic Remington and Howard Pyle. His paintings can be found in both museum and private collections in America and abroad, where his art takes its place alongside the great historical artists of the past. Dana and Keith have worked together on numerous books and other publications since 1994. They are planning to release a new art book of Keith’s paintings and illustrations covering the French Army in the 1815 Waterloo campaign.

Scott Bowden

Scott was a key contributor to Dana’s Napoleon magazine and Napoleon Journal from 1996 to 2000. He is a 13-time award-winning author of 27 published titles connected to American and Napoleonic military history, including the critically-acclaimed Armies at Waterloo: A Detailed Analysis of the Armies That Fought History’s Greatest Battle (1983) and Robert E. Lee at War: The Mind and Method of a Great American Soldier (2017). Scott is also a miniatures game designer, noted for Stars N’ Bars (1985) Civil War rules and Empire (1975) Napoleonic rules. Scott and Dana are collaborating on new 1815 books.

Bill Jaffe

Dana’s stepson Bill ran the LOMBARDY STUDIOS warehouse until his untimely death in 2019. Bill was a partner with Dana in 1A Games, acting as its chief playtester and scenario designer on the Next Wave reboot of Fantasy Flight’s Tide of Iron series of boardgames. He is always with us in spirit.

 

 

John Hill

A brilliant, award-winning game designer and long-time member of the GAMA Hall of Fame, John is now rolling dice at the Great Game Table in the Beyond. We mention him here because he and Dana worked on many projects together during their 40-year friendship, including Dana’s role as developer for the award-winning Johnny Reb miniatures rules and graphic artist and developer for Jerusalem! and Battle for Hue board games that were published with Dana’s Conflict magazine in the 1970s. John and Dana worked together on several historical projects, including The First Battle of Bull Run battlefield guidebook.

A bio of John when he was Guest of Honor at Historicon 2010 says, “In the field of tactical wargame designs, few designers have had as much innovative impact as John Hill.” Best known for his groundbreaking 1977 boardgame design Squad Leader (voted Best Wargame of All Time by the readers of Campaign Magazine in 1980) and the Johnny Reb miniatures rules, he also created such memorable games as Bar Lev, Kasserine Pass, Overlord: The Normandy Campaign, and Verdun.

In the 1980s, John’s flair for innovative tactical simulation brought him to the attention of the Government’s Defense and Intelligence Communities, and for the next 16 years he worked for the government as a senior military analyst.

Dana says of him, “John was a gifted game designer who taught me how to balance historical authenticity with playability. It helped me be a better commercial game creator.”

John’s wonderfully warped sense of humor always made him fun to be around and his offbeat-but-insightful comments provided new perspectives on historic events. You can read a tribute written by Dana at the time of John’s passing here.

 

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