Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
March 2023 Gaming
March was definitely a great month of gaming. I managed to play 21 games (32 plays) in 31 days! And 15 days worth of gaming is always good. Fifteen out of thirty-one?
Woo!
Many thanks to Boardgame Stats for the wonderful app that lets us keep track of our games.
It helps that there was a convention in there, but that only accounted for 10 plays out of 32.
Here’s the games played on a grid!
I’m not going to talk about the new to me games since that will happen in next week’s post, but let’s talk a little bit about the other games!
Read MoreCombat Commander After Action Report – Scenario #91 – The Battle of Trafalgar
After being early last month (it was almost like time travel!), this month’s game from the Combat Commander ladder came in just in the nick of time.
We played our game on Monday, March 27, mainly due to life stuff happening.
Combined with the early February, that was a long time away from one of my favourite games!
But it was worth it.
What an incredible game.
Oh yeah, I suppose I should introduce things in case this is your first visit (and really, does anybody read these anyway? I’m not so sure…)
Welcome to another tale from the Combat Commander ladder, that monthly tournament of one of my favourite games of all time.
The ladder is run by the well-mannered Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame (you really need to go check that Youtube channel out).
This month’s scenario is from the alternate history battle pack Sea Lion, where the Germans actually did invade Great Britain.
The scenario is called The Battle of Trafalgar and it basically involves the German wave washing over Trafalgar Square where Admiral Nelson’s statue is. Taking over the square and the statue would have beaucoup status effects for Hitler’s minions (Editor: “Look at you, trying to use the big words).
My opponent this month was Bill D, he from that faraway and exotic place called “The Eastern Time Zone,” and coordinating was a bit more of a challenge than usual.
But we persevered and got it done.
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to make it bigger)
Read MoreHighlights from the March 2023 GMT Update
It’s been a couple of months since my “highlights” post for the monthly GMT Update, though that is mostly because the best parts of the February update made their own posts.
This month had some great stuff and other cool updates in it, so I thought I’d go ahead and do another highlights post.
Once again GMT is costing me more money.
It’s kind of thrilling and annoying at the same time.
Never!
Most likely, anyway.
So let’s get this party started, shall we?
Read MoreExpansion Review – Smash Up Micro-Expansion – Knights of the Round Table
It’s been a while since I did one of these micro-expansion Smash Up reviews (has it really been 5 months? Where has the time gone?).
I had meant to do these monthly, but that promise to myself was like a new version of Glory to Rome being published: not going to happen.
But I’m back!
I’ve already reviewed two of the four micro-expansions. This time around I’m going to be talking about those old glory-hounds, the Knights of the Round Table.
These honourable knights travel the world bases of the Smash Up universe, going on quests and generally getting in the way.
Let’s see how these guys work.
Read MoreReview – Aces of Valor
Ever since the pandemic started, I have been collecting a lot of solo wargames. Even once the lockdowns ended and life returned to at least relative normal, I still found the idea of chucking dice or drawing cards for a game where I am the only one in control of the action to be quite enticing, even when I lose my table space (I will get back to my Storm Above the Reich campaign. I promise!).
And, of course, it does make have to decide whether to cheat or not.
I’ve also always been drawn to World War I flying days ever since the old Commodore Amiga game, Dawn Patrol (I think that was its name).
So when I heard about the new solo World War I flying game from Legion Wargames, called Aces of Valor, there was no way I was passing it up.
This game, designed by Erik von Rossing with art by Vincent Bourguignon, Randy Lein and Mark Mahaffey, was just published in 2023 and I got it in my hot little hands only a month or so ago.
I also published a storage solution option from Cube4Me that really makes the game easy to get to the table. In the game, you are supposed to keep a bunch of different counters in various cups so that you can draw them randomly. With that storage tray, I find I can get by with just one or two cups and put the counters back in the trays when I need a new group.
It works quite well!
I’ve done three missions now (campaigns can be Short (8 missions), Medium (12 missions) or Long (16 missions)) so I felt like I could write a review.
Which I wanted to do prior to doing After Action Reports, which will be coming soon!
So how does the game play?
Let’s take a look.
(You can click on the images to blow them up if you need to)
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – How Do You Use Boardgame Geek?
It’s Friday, the week is over, the shots are flowing, and I’m thinking about board games.
Because that’s what I do!
One of the best things for a lot of board gamers is Boardgame Geek.
You can find so much good stuff on the Geek, including news from Eric Martin and the wonderful Candace Harris to a listing for basically every board game that has ever even been a figment of somebody’s imagination.
Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not much!
I almost live on the Geek. I visit it multiple times a day.
I look at it every day, I subscribe to the forums for every game that I own, and even to a few that I may want to own in the future (or just want to follow even though I don’t own them).
Of course, as my game ownership has increased, that means my forum post subscriptions have increased exponentially from there!
Which got me to thinking (though maybe that’s the vodka talking), how do you use the Geek?
Read MoreUnderworld Expansion Coming to Digital Root
It’s been a light week here at Dude Take Your Turn (sorry about that), but I saw this pop into my email yesterday and I knew I had to talk about it.
The wonderful digital version of Root (published by Dire Wolf Digital) is getting its fourth expansion, The Underworld, on March 30.
What is Root?
It’s a game of asymmetric warfare among anthropomorphic animal species for control of the woodlands (or I guess with this expansion maybe a lake or a mountain). It was designed by Cole Wehrle with art by Kyle Ferrin and published by Leder Games in 2018.
The base game was already good, made even better with the Riverfolk expansion.
I’ve at least played with these in my one play on the table.
I have no experience with the Underworld expansion at all.
Which means I’m really looking forward to it!
There are two new factions in Underworld.
The Underground Duchy is attempting to bring order to the Woodland above, trying to end the endless chaotic fighting.
The Corvid Conspiracy, on the other hand, uses terror and cunning plots to take control.
I know my friends who have played with this expansion a lot (hi, Michal!) can tell you even more about them.
There are even two new maps!
Here is the mountain map, and there’s also a beautiful lake map as well (check out the news post for that one).
The expansion will also add an Advanced Setup option, allowing players who own 6 or more factions (so essentially at least one major expansion) to draft and setup factions.
Even better, as long as the player who sets up the game has them, players who join them don’t even have to have the expansions.
Win-win!
Another bonus that Dire Wolf always seems to do is that the expansions are all cross-platform.
If you buy it on iOS, you will have it on Steam as well. It will also be coming out on Android and Nintendo Switch, of course.
All this and more is coming your way on March 30.
Hell, maybe I should probably review the app itself one of these days.
Nah…why should I do that?
Are you as excited about this as I am?
Let me know in the comments.
Terminal City Tabletop Convention Retrospective – 2023
It’s Wednesday and part of me is still coming down from the high of a weekend full of boardgames!
For the first time since March 2019, the annual (until COVID, damn it) Terminal City Tabletop Convention was held in my hometown of Vancouver this last weekend.
There were new organizers this time around and the venue has moved to downtown Vancouver, which is really convenient for me!
I still drove, because I brought a ton of games and didn’t want to carry them too far, but it was still nice to just be 5-10 minutes away.
And wow, were there a lot of games to play!
Unlike many conventions, Terminal City is only a Saturday and Sunday affair, so it wasn’t quite as much gaming as OrcaCon, but there was definitely a lot of good stuff there.
Read MoreThe Last Hundred Yards (Volume 2) – Airborne Over Europe – Storage Solution With Rails on Boards
Hey there!
It’s Dave, your friendly neighbourhood board game storage solution guy.
You may know me from my stint on an old Simpsons episode.
Ummm…or maybe not.
Anyway, after extolling the virtues of the various wargame storage solutions from Rails on Boards (Cube4Me), and even putting together one of my own, it’s time to show you another one that I put together with the trays they provided me.
Thanks, guys!
I’ve owned The Last Hundred Yards (Volume 2): Airborne Over Europe for quite a while now though I haven’t been able to play it yet.
The game was designed by Mike Denson and published by GMT Games in 2020.
After looking through what was left of the counter trays that Rails on Boards sent to me, and realizing that I have a distinct shortage of card deck trays, I thought about it and realized that I had the perfect solution: one of the few games I have that doesn’t have cards!
It worked out even more perfectly than I could even imagine.
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreNew to Me – February 2023
February is the shortest month of the year, though it can seem quite long (or did before a stat holiday was added to it).
It can seem even longer when you don’t get as many games played as usual!
As I mentioned in my February gaming post, missing two Sundays and a week of no games at work, it was only natural that fewer games would be played.
I still think playing 14 games in 28 days isn’t anything to be sniffed at.
I even managed to get five “new to me” games played!
That’s pretty good.
I’ll just pat myself on the back for that.
I even managed to get one of the new plays to be from 2015!
That kept any unrest in the Cult of the New to Me from manifesting.
I think they would prefer it if I maybe played something from 1963, though.
Anyway, they’re placated for now so I don’t care about them.
At least until the next fundraising car wash.
So without further ado (all of my ado was taken to Japan without my consent and given to somebody that they wouldn’t name anyway), let’s begin!
Read More
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