Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
The Eternal Artifacts – Vale of Eternity: Artifacts Review
Sometimes game expansions add some much-needed variety to a game that enhances it, maybe fixing something that players have found wrong or missing in the base game.
Other times, an expansion adds some unnecessary junk that makes a game more complicated or less enjoyable due to more and more things you need to keep track of.
The Vale of Eternity: Artifacts expansion is a little bit of both (without the “things found wrong in the base game” aspect, which didn’t really need fixing).
The Artifacts expansion for The Vale of Eternity was designed by Eric Hong and Mathieu Rivero, with artwork by Jacqui Davis, Jiahui Eva Gao, Gautier Maia, Stefano Martinuz and Erica Tormen. It was published by Mandoo Games in 2024.
It adds a load of new cards to the game, enhancing that “building your tableau” feeling to even greater heights.
But it also adds valuable artifacts to the game, items that you can use during your turn (or at the beginning of it) to enhance your play.
It also bumps the endgame threshold to 80 points instead of 60, something that I’m not sure is needed though more plays may help determine that.
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 118 – No. 4 Commando
Combat Commander can be a weird duck sometimes.
One day, luck is swinging wildly like a drunk pool player swinging his stick around because he scratched on an easy 8-ball shot.
The next day, things pretty much go in a straight line, from one end to the other with no deviation, like Johnny Fever after a few drinks.
(10,000 points if you get that reference in full, not just the name)
Today’s ladder game was one of the latter.
In other words, welcome to another tale from the Combat Commander ladder, that monthly tournament of one of the best games out there.
Run by the miraculous Patrick Pence (he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials on Youtube), the ladder gives you a chance to test your mettle against over a hundred different possible opponents on a monthly basis (that’s one a month, not hundreds all at one time. We’re not Rambo or anything).
This month’s mission is from a series of scenarios published in the C3i magazine.
And it is also my 4 -year anniversary on the ladder! I started playing this great game regularly in May 2021.
It’s been a wonderful 4 years.
My opponent this month was Frank E, another eastern opponent so we made a Saturday morning work for our game.
The scenario takes place during the Dieppe commando raids on the coast of France in 1942. A group of intrepid Brit commandos (and one US consultant team) face off against a small group of German defenders.
Here’s the initial setup.
Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Cooperative Games
No, you’re not drunk or stoned or just seeing things.
Yes, this is the third week in a row for a Friday Night Shots post.
The bar is now open weekly!
At least for now.
Maybe not next week.
I’m glad you happened to be walking by noticed me working in here.
I’m not sure why nobody else is?
Oh, maybe it’s because the Open sign is malfunctioning.
That could do it.
That’s what it’s supposed to look like! The contractors told me they fixed it and I guess I never checked.
Probably might have had some customers this week if not for that.
Anyway, why don’t you have a seat and we’ll talk about some boardgames.
Don’t worry about the lack of music. It was still stuck on Justin Bieber’s Greatest Hits so I took a hammer to it.
It’ll get better.
Just like last week’s post, I can’t believe that I haven’t talked about this one yet.
What are your opinions on cooperative games?
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – How Important is Art?
Has it been five weeks yet?
No, it hasn’t!
Welcome back to the bar, only a week later.
You must have seen the lights on in the window, or maybe the fire that’s in the corner.
We should probably put that out.
Anyway, it’s good to have you back. Have a seat and I’ll get you something to drink.
Anything you want.
Except Dr. Pepper, because while I like the other 22 flavours, I’m morally opposed to prickly ash.
(Thanks, AJ!)
So now that you’re here, and we literally have no other customers, let’s talk about board games!
I can’t believe we haven’t talked about this before, but just how important is good art to you in a boardgame?
Read MoreThe Beauty of Northwest Tiles – Cascadia App Review
(this is going to be a review of both the game and the app, since I’ve played the tabletop game a bunch too)
There’s something peaceful about a good tile-laying game where everybody is creating their own habitat for God’s natural wonders, both flora and fauna.
It’s especially peaceful when it can also be done in a lunch time at the office!
Or, in digital form, in about 15 minutes.
Cascadia recently came out in app form for iOS/Android/Steam.
Published by Dire Wolf Digital (with the boardgame itself published by Flatout Games and Alderac Entertainment Group), the game was designed by Randy Flynn with excellent artwork by Beth Sobel (said artwork looking gorgeous on the iPad as well).
The game plays 1-4 players, as does the app!
The app just came out a couple of months ago while the game itself was published in 2022.
What can be bad about laying out a bunch of tiles until you have a large, beautiful panorama with a bunch of animals on it?
Read MoreSalty Origami – Sea Salt & Paper Review
As I spoke about on Saturday, the word “filler” for a game is often seen as derogatory, when it really shouldn’t be.
Some fillers are really great!
Many card games are filler games, and one really juicy one (though it does feel a bit papery for some reason) is Sea Salt & Paper (oh, that’s why it feels that way!) published by Bombyx Games (and Pandasaurus Games over here in North America) in 2022.
The game was designed by Bruno Cathala and Théo Rivière with artwork by Lucien Derainne, Pierre-Yves Gallard and plays 2-4 players.
And it’s cute as hell, if you like origami.
Sea Salt & Paper is a simple set-collecting card game that adds a bit of a push your luck element.
Well, maybe not push your luck.
More like “do I declare now and risk the others being ahead of me? Or do I wait to see if I can score more points but they may jump ahead of me and I don’t know how many points anybody has right now?”
Ok, that was long-winded.
Let me catch my breath.
The rules of the game are simple to teach and you will be be done in 20-30 minutes.
The perfect filler!
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Filler Games
Welcome back to the bar! It’s been a whole five weeks, so sorry about that.
One of the kegs exploded and we had beer all over the floor.
Spent a number of weeks trying to save as much as possible rather than cleaning it up, until we realized that’s probably unsanitary!
So here we are, though, and I’m glad you noticed the Open sign in the window while you were walking by.
Nobody else has.
It’s even a Saturday!
Have a seat and I’ll get you a drink of your choice.
Completely debris-free!
Let me turn off the jukebox.
For some reason it’s stuck on the MacLeod Clan playing the bagpipes 24/7.
Nobody can stand that.
So what are we going to talk about?
How about filler games?
Read MoreEvolution is Legendary! – Doomlings: Legends of Enderas review
One of the very cool games that came out in 2022 was a neat little card game called Doomlings.
This is a game where each player represents a doomling civilization on some distant planet (or is it an alternate Earth? Only Kang can know for sure).
As a civilization, you are playing trait cards to upgrade and evolve your doomling race, but as ages pass, the world will inevitably end in world-wide catastrophe.
I promise no existential angst in this review (unless you like Trinkets).
The latest expansion (kindly provided to me by Doomlings LLC) is called Legends of Enderas, and it provides more stuff.
Yes, more of that too!
One of the previous expansions, the Upgrade Pack (unless you bought all of them individually), offered some doomling variety in the form of Mythlings, Dinolings, and Techlings, and multi-colour doomlings.
Another one, Imaginary Ends, added some more types along with Fuzelings that combined those types.
So what does Legends of Enderas give you?
More Mythlings, Dinolings, and Techlings! Along with some multi-colour and Fuzelings of these three types.
Also coming for the ride is a new mechanic, which is much better than the Trinkets in Imaginary Ends: Treasures.
Read MoreNew to Me – April 2025
While April wasn’t a really full month of games, it was surprisingly full of new to me games!
Six new to me games out of the fourteen I played is actually a really good ratio.
I love it when months come together like that.
Of course, it helps when Abi shows up at Sunday game days consistently, as there’s always something new to play! Four of the six were from him.
One day I will get some of my new games to the table too.
However, I love months like this because I always enjoy games that I haven’t played before!
Especially when some of them are actually kind of old.
That keeps the Cult of the New to Me happy too.
Hell, when they saw that one game was from 1999, they were extremely happy!
I need to do more of that, because they were starting to get antsy.
No rebellions on my watch!
Until next month, anyway.
Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was shipped off to Germany for some evil Nazi ceremony anyway), let’s begin!
Read MoreApril 2025 Gaming
As expected after last month’s post, where March had a huge number of games because of a convention, April came back down to earth with a much fewer amount of games.
However, it was much better than February!
Which means it was a good month.
Especially because I got a few older games that I haven’t played in quite a while
Would have been better without missing a Sunday and a couple of work lunch days, but still.
Two of the games, it had been 2 years since I played them.
In April, I played 16 games a total of 20 times (so the total plays was the same as February, but a couple more games).
Here’s what I played last month.
And here it is in grid format.
Many thanks to the wonderful BG Stats app, which lets me keep track of all this and produces such beautiful work!
There were also some great new to me games played, but those will be in another post.
Let’s take a look and see what was out there.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 