Tom Braunlich is an American

customizable card game A collectible card game (CCG), also called a trading card game (TCG) among other names, is a type of card game that mixes strategic deck building elements with features of trading cards, introduced with ''Magic: The Gathering'' in 1993. Genera ...

(CCG) designer.

Career

Thomas Braunlich, son of Frank H. Braunlich Jr. and Phyllis Braunlich, is from

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

, and is a journalism graduate.Charm, Robert (March 29, 1983). "Chairmen of the board games: A Pente tournament held in Boston: Is it play or is it war?", ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

''. Braunlich and Rollie Tesh were world champions of ''

Pente Pente is an abstract strategy board game for two or more players, created in 1977 by Gary Gabrel. A member of the m,n,k game family, Pente stands out for its custodial capture mechanic, which allows players to "sandwich" pairs of stones and cap ...

'', a game originally published by

Parker Brothers Parker Brothers (known by Parker outside of North America) was an American toy and game manufacturer which in 1991 became a brand of Hasbro. More than 1,800 games were published under the Parker Brothers name since 1883. Among its products wer ...

, and later by

Decipher DECIPHER is a web-based resource and database of genomic variation data from analysis of patient DNA. It documents submicroscopic chromosome abnormalities ( microdeletions and duplications) and pathogenic sequence variants (single nucleotide ...

. In 1993, Braunlich and Tesh approached Decipher with their idea for a licensed collectible card game, the result of which they published as '' Star Trek: The Next Generation Customizable Card Game'' (1994). Tom Braunlich worked for

. He helped create the '' Star Wars Customizable Card Game'' which was Decipher's most monetarily successful CCG and their second-most successful game in terms of longevity. Braunlich is also a writer on games, including Pente and chess, and organizer of chess tournaments. Braunlich holds a USCF Life Master rating in chess. On numerous occasions Braunlich has served as the director for the Jerry Spann Memorial Tournament, also known as the Oklahoma Open tournament. Braunlich is also the author of ''Weather Knight: A World War II Biography of Frank H. Braunlich Jr''.

Publications

Scholastics and the Soul of Chess: Is Scholastic Chess Killing Tournament Chess, or Saving It?
(July 2004)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Braunlich, Tom American chess players American game designers Artists from Tulsa, Oklahoma Chess administrators Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people)