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A Gaming Life
Combat Commander Europe – #21 Saint Agatha
Sometimes history repeats itself from game to game, though not always to the same effect.
Sometimes you surpass that historical result instead of being pummeled by it again!
What am I talking about?
Combat Commander, of course.
Let me explain, after welcoming you to another adventure from the Combat Commander ladder, that monthly tournament of chaotic warfare administered by the resolute Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame.
And he is famous!
I heard he is going to be getting his own late-night show soon…
Anyway, a few months ago on the ladder, I had a disastrous game where I rarely saw a Recover card to rally my broken troops, and three #@%!% times, the Recover card I did see happened to be randomly discarded due to events.
The other night, my July game had something similar happen, though maybe the effect wasn’t as devastating this time?
You be the judge.
July’s scenario is from the Mediterranean expansion and has an Italian blocking force in northern Sicily facing off against aggressive American attackers who are trying to mop up the German forces that have already retreated from the area.
Leaving their Italian “friends” behind.
My opponent for this month’s game was a relative newcomer to the ladder, Jake S.
Here’s the setup for our game.
(Don’t forget you can click on a picture to blow it up).
The Italians (Teal – Me) set up first 8 hexes deep from the top edge.
One of the special rules is that they can keep up to 4 units (and their weapons) back, placing them on the 2 space of the Time Track (meaning they would come onto the board after the first Time trigger).
When they do, they can be placed in any setup hex with at least one cover (which I think I forgot the cover part for one of them when I brought them out!).
I decided to keep three squads and one of my two leaders back.
The Americans have a lot of machine guns, so I set up the rest of my guys so that only a few were exposed on the hills above the farm, and definitely not my big leader (he was covering the left side of the board).
The Italian mortar was set up to be able to hopefully do something before succumbing to firepower.
Another special rule is that the three 7-firepower mines (all mines are 7-firepower in this scenario) can be set up after the Americans do.
The Americans (Green – Jake) set up last 2 hexes deep from the bottom of the board.
Jake chose to set up mostly on the right side to try and power his way through the Italian screen squads I had placed over there.
I placed my mines to make getting through the woods and moving through cover and onto the heights difficult.
The other special rule is that all Hidden Wire cards for the Italians are actually Hidden Mines, and that one of the Hidden Mines cards starts in the Italian hand already.
Which is good, because I only saw one other one throughout the rest of the game!
Another big thing to take notice of is that all Exit points were doubled, so getting units off the board could be very lucrative.
With that done, we started.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Hidden Information
The title of this post is obviously about hidden information in games and not hidden information about me, because I am an open book!
Just…don’t open that door over there, please.
And ignore the sounds coming from behind it.
Thank you.
Anyway, many games have some information that is hidden from other players and the debate always becomes: should that information be hidden or available to everybody?
Of course, I’m not talking about secret role games, or those games where everybody has a secret goal they are trying to achieve.
I’m talking about games where resources are hidden.
Whenever this topic comes up in our group, the inevitable first (or early, anyway) thing mentioned is money in Power Grid.
According to the rules of the game, how much money each player has is actually hidden information.
If you’ve watched people collect money and spend it, you could track it.
But apparently one of the ideas behind the game is you don’t know whether your opponent is going to be able to afford placing in that city before you do, or how much they are going to be able to spend on that power plant during the auction phase.
Which actually made me stop and think as I was typing that.
Auction games often have hidden money, because knowing how much money other players have may affect how much you’re willing to bid on something.
Like Modern Art, all of your money is hidden for exactly that reason.
So maybe that’s why money is hidden in Power Grid?
Some would say that hidden money in a game like Power Grid just slows the game down where it’s already slow because people are savagely min-maxing their final couple of turns, trying to decide which cities to build in for maximum profit.
In this case, I think hidden money for auctions is less important than open money to increase the game speed just a little.
But what about in other games?
If it’s trackable, should it be hidden?
Read MoreBGG Top Games – 3801 – 3900
As we go deeper into the Boardgame Geek game rankings, it’s almost like going deep, deep underwater.
Sometimes there’s something truly beautiful down here, like some full-coloured coral in bloom that is just an amazing sight.
And sometimes you get a few rocks.
Last week was a few (badly-shaped) rocks.
This week?
At least the rocks aren’t misshapen!
And there are a few more of them.
I’m still enjoying the discussions caused by these posts, though even that’s getting a bit thinner (that could be because last week really kind of sucked, or so I’ve been told).
As long as I’ve played or own a game in the century, I’m still going!
I might even keep going if the games themselves sound interesting, even if I don’t own or haven’t played any of them.
This week’s list can be found here, and it’s not a bad one this week, though nothing really stands out.
Keep in mind that if you come to this post in the future, the game you came searching for may not be here anymore.
Especially if you’re looking for that game that just came out and so it’s on the list now, but by the time you’re searching, it’s hit #1.
Here are my numbers for this week: 5 games played and 4 owned or previously-owned (one of the owned I haven’t played).
Lots to talk about so let’s get started!
Read MoreKeep Quiet or You’re Dead – Final Girl – Don’t Make a Sound Review
The Final Girl series of solo horror games has had a bunch of different kinds of artwork in its various feature films, but they’ve all been similar in some fashion.
You can tell they’re be different artists, but you can also tell that they’re Final Girl art.
The latest feature film that I’ve played, Don’t Make a Sound, changes that a bit.
It’s almost like an animated film cell artwork than previous films have been.
It also fits the rustic tone of the setting and stands out as some of the most distinctive in the collection.
That’s a compliment!
Don’t Make a Sound is part of the Series 3 feature films and was designed by Katia Howatson.
The artist in question is K. Lynn Smith.
It was published by Van Ryder Games in 2025.
With a setting based on the movie Tremors (a very small desert town in the canyons and valleys of the American Southwest) and noise-based blind monster based on A Quiet Place, this entire film is tense from beginning to end.
Not only are you dealing with the Eyeless, but if you’re playing in Utopia, you’re dealing with Sand Snakes!
Combined, that can really ruin your day.
Let’s talk about the Eyeless creature first because it’s eyeing me menacingly…
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Are We All Required to Like the Same Games?
Taking a break from the Boardgame Geek thread that has been inspiring these posts the last couple of weeks, because I saw something else that sparked a desire to rant a little bit.
Not that these posts should be rants, but sometimes they might be.
It’s still on Boardgame Geek, so those of you who are getting sick of these might want me to stay away from there for a while.
Invariably when reading a game’s forum on BGG, somebody will eventually post something like this.
“This game has such a sterling reputation. When I played it, I was bored out of my mind. Tell me why this is so good.”
Sure, this kind of post will bring a bunch of people out of the woodwork sharing the praises of whatever game we’re talking about, and that discussion can be fun.
Or somebody will post a negative review of a game in the forum where there are (usually) nothing but fans of the game (if you don’t like the game, why would you be subscribing to the forum?).
And then be surprised at the negative reaction to that post, though some people are actually nice about it and say “everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but I completely disagree.”
However, somebody will always end up being the voice of reason.
“We don’t all have to like the same game. If you don’t like this one, play something else.”
It’s like the Voice of God singing out of the Heavens…but people still end up debating the whole thing anyway.
Read MoreBGG Top Games – 3701 – 3800
Some of these “top BGG Games” posts are a little lean on games that I’ve played, though I really enjoy that because we can then spend more time talking about games that it would be cool to play!
If there are any in that century, anyway.
That’s not always the case.
Last week’s didn’t cause that much discussion amongst friends, so I guess even they hit a lean week.
Or they didn’t read the post.
Which makes me sad.
This week is going to be one of those lean weeks for me, though, as I was worried I would hit that fabled “didn’t play any games” plateau!
I didn’t, though, as there are a few in there.
I’m actually not writing this one a week ahead of time. Only 6 days ahead (that’s not a week!).
So hopefully there isn’t a lot of movement between the time I finish this up and when it goes live.
Speaking of which, this week’s century can be found here, but if you come to this one in the future, there’s likely some new up and coming game here that you’re wondering how it could be this far down.
Here are my numbers for this week: 3 games played and one of them (previously) owned!
Yep, lean indeed.
Let’s use some of this unused introductory space to talk about some games!
Read MoreDicing Your Way Through the Galaxy – Tiny Epic Galaxies Review
There’s something cool about games that have small boxes that you can cart around fairly easily, just sticking it in the back of your pack behind huge games like Speakeasy or something.
There’s also something cool about jetting through the galaxy, colonizing planets and robbing them of their resources, and also making sure they do something for you if you happen to bring them into your galactic empire.
Galaxies are huge! And who knew that we could each have our own?
Hence the name Tiny Epic Galaxies.
Tiny Epic Galaxies is a dice throwing game where you are trying to build up your galactic empire by adding colonies to it, because somehow you can drag planets into your own galaxy like they were a wayward child, maybe?
Or maybe they’re Schrodinger’s Planets and it’s not clear which galaxy they’re in until somebody claims them?
The game was designed by Scott Almes with artwork by William Bricker.
It was published by Gamelyn Games (which has apparently been absorbed by Tycoon Games) in 2015.
It’s actually a fairly simple game in concept, though for some reason it can be hard to really wrap your head around.
You build up your empire for points, you acquire planets for points.
As soon as somebody hits or passes 21 points, that triggers the end of the game.
Complete the round (and how are you supposed to tell who was first player with no first player marker??? I kid, I kid…) and then see who managed to actually get the high score after the endgame scoring cards.
How do you do all of that?
Let’s talk about it.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – If You Aren’t Playing the Game to Win, Are You Playing the Game?
I mentioned last week that this Boardgame Geek thread about unpopular opinions was going to be a gold mine for Friday Night Shots posts.
Lo and behold, here’s a second post!
Games are games, with winners and losers.
The cogent question this time around is “are you playing the game to win?”
An additional, and supplementary question, is how important is it to you to play a game to win versus just trying to have fun and enjoy the social aspect of the game?
That brings to mind a post that I thought I had written, but I can’t find, which basically asks “why do you play games?”
So let’s explore both of those questions in this post.
Because the basic answer to the original question is “yes, of course you are playing the game even if you aren’t playing to win.”
Though there is a bit of a caveat to my response on that one.
Are we just playing to win?
The object of a game is to win it, but what if there’s no way in Hell you’re going to, because you’re playing Cal in a game of Gaia Project, which you don’t know at all and he knows like the back of his hand?
Let’s explore that further.
Read MoreRock Hard: Ear Candy Update
I normally don’t do two posts in one day, but I couldn’t contain my excitement about this one and wanted to post something quick about it.
It’s long been known that Rock Hard is one of my favourite games out there right now, but that I felt it needed a few more cards and options to really come into its own.
When designer Jackie Fox announced the Ear Candy expansion, I knew those needs would be fulfilled, but she was understandably vague about just what the new content would be.
However, Devir just announced that the rules are available and what that new content will be.
And it looks amazing.
Here’s the picture Devir posted in their email along with the announcement.
Read MoreHidden Jungle Horror – Final Girl – The Green Terror Review
One of the conceits with the whole Final Girl franchise of dice-rolling, solo horror games, is that you and your character are the typical “final girl” in various horror films, the one who watches everybody die around her but she ends up defeating the killer before she can be killed herself.
It has expanded a bit in some Final Girl feature films, basically to include female characters who are more professionals (rather than just a camper who happens to be there) but who are still only in this situation by happenstance.
I mean, Ripley didn’t mean to be the sole survivor of her ship when the Alien attacked, right?
The Green Terror moves away from that trope, at least slightly, and thus ends up being one of the least-thematic feature films of the franchise in that respect.
(Please note you can click on a picture to blow it up)
Not that it’s non-thematic in a lot of others, though!
For the first time that I can recall (there are a few films I haven’t played yet), there doesn’t seem to be any real reason for the Final Girl to be there before the killing starts happening.
The Green Terror takes place in an island jungle (Pesadilla Verde) with a killer (Volkar) straight out of the Predator franchise, with invisible movement and everything.
With a bunch of soldiers on the island hunting the Volkar (or whichever killer you use on this island).
Who is this girl, how did she get to this island, and why are these soldiers listening to this girl who is probably not a professional at all?
What, is she a Time Lord or something? The Doctor and his companions can often make military types listen to them…eventually.
All of that is to say that the Final Girl franchise has seemingly evolved again, endlessly adaptable as it should be.
The Green Terror was designed by Evan Derrick with art by Agnieszka Dabrowiecka.
It was published by Van Ryder Games in 2026.
Let’s talk about the Volkar first.
Read More