Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Talisman 5th Edition – App Review
I’ve always enjoyed the Talisman app from Nomad Games. They’ve done a brilliant job not only bringing this game to computers and mobile devices, but also including all of the expansions for it, including a digital-only expansion!
The game of Talisman itself is a tabletop classic, though after playing the app, I know there is no way I would ever play it on the table.
It’s a roll-and-move fantasy game where you are moving around the board, drawing adventure cards, meeting strangers or events or possibly fighting monsters, and perhaps dying because you meet a 10-strength dragon when your character only has 2 strength.
Now Nomad Games has released a vaunted 5th edition of this classic game. Avalon Hill is releasing the tabletop version of it. The digital edition, I have to say, is quite good.
And it also reminds me why I will never play this live online or on the table.
Because this game is long.
And not the most exciting thing if you’re going to be playing for 4+ hours!
As an app, though?
Brilliant.
And I love the changes the 5th edition makes.
More after the jump.
Read MoreNew to Me – October 2024
As I mentioned the other day, October as a month really sucked, especially for gaming.
Being sick, missing three game days, I was totally surprised that I actually managed to play any new to me games!
Much less three.
I even managed to placate the Cult of the New to Me members by getting an older game in there.
I am getting a bunch of new games and want to get them played, so it’s becoming even more imperative that I get some older ones in there too.
Or I might have a riot!
Or a president chastising me.
Funny, I didn’t even realize he was in my cult.
Who knew?
Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was stolen by a raccoon and buried in a tree anyway), let’s get started!
Read MoreOctober 2024 Gaming
October was a really bad month.
Not just for gaming, but in general as well.
I was sick for a week and I’m still not feeling 100% even a week later after I went back to work.
But for gaming, it really sucked!
There were some good things about it, but I missed three Sunday game days.
The first one, the venue was full due to other reservations (some kind of marathon, the ingrates!).
Then, being sick, I missed two other Sundays.
That was hard. I knew I needed to get better, but part of me wanted to play games!
Not to mention the fact that, being sick, there were no lunchtime games at work either.
However, there were some positives.
Here’s the list of games that I played in October.
Not a lot!
Only 11 plays of 9 games in total.
Thankfully, there were three new to me games, so at least that post will have something to say (though it probably will be a bit delayed.
Here’s that game list in grid format!
Many thanks to the excellent BG Stats app that made this possible!
What were the highlights?
While they were few and far between, they did exist.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Top 1000 BGG Games
I know what you’re thinking.
Two Friday Night Shots posts in a row?
That must mean Dave got the jukebox fixed!
It’s amazing what paying your work people can actually do.
Maybe that’s why I can’t keep a bartender?
Anyway, welcome back! Pull up a chair and I’ll get you a drink.
Whatever you like.
Ok, not that…but anything else?
Oh, and don’t mind my cat.
She’s just insane.
With something good finally on the jukebox, let’s talk about boardgames!
Namely, the Top 1000 games on Boardgame Geek.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots (Saturday Edition) – What Attracts You to a Game?
It’s been a month and the bar’s been closed! More renovations needed (and I’m just lazy, actually), but I’m glad you happened by and could stop in!
The jukebox renovations took up most of the month, partially because I kept forgetting to pay the repair folks.
Think that might actually make a difference?
Belly on up to the bar, though, and let me get you a drink of your favourite beverage.
That’s…different. But I can do it!
What day are you on?
Let me fire up the tunes so we can talk privately without all of the people that guy in the corner hearing us.
Ok, maybe you should pay your repair people.
Anyway, let’s talk about what attracts you to a boardgame!
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario M5 – Blind Man’s Bluff
I have been having a horrible streak of luck and bad play in my monthly Combat Commander ladder games, with a three-month losing streak going into my October game!
That is not good, and shall not stand!
Or maybe it did. I guess you’ll find out at the end of this post.
Let’s start at the beginning, though.
The Combat Commander ladder is the monthly tournament of one of the greatest wargames of all time, administered by the impressive Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame on Youtube.
And it really is fame. Youtube fame is almost as much celebrity as those Hollywood starlets!
Though I don’t know anything about his fashion sense.
In September and October, we leave the cozy confines of Europe to go to the Pacific, where a bunch of the rules change and you have to remember not to do things the way you are used to.
The October scenario is from the Combat Commander Pacific: New Guinea battle pack and is a scenario I’ve never played before.
It’s basically a cage match between the Japanese and Australian forces!
That’s because nobody can gain points by exiting the map.
My opponent this month was John L. We are both in the same time zone, so setting up our match was a breeze.
The Blind Man’s Bluff scenario has a meeting of Japanese and Australian patrols, which then resulted in an Australian attack on the Japanese screening force.
Here’s the setup.
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)
The setup is weird in that the Australian Company B sets up first, then the Japanese Pinning Force and Screening force sets up next, and finally the Australian assault force.
The Japanese (white – me) are trying to destroy Company B and hold off the Australian (tan – John) assault force as well.
There are a couple of special rules too.
First, nobody can gain points from exiting the board.
As Patrick has pointed out on Discord, though, the scenario does not say that units exiting the map are eliminated, like many scenarios like this do.
No, it just says that you don’t get any points.
So Company B could exit and then reappear on the Australian board edge after the next Time Trigger.
Nobody really realized that before.
Anyway, the second special rule is that the Australians can only call in the artillery (mortars) with a leader on a Level 2 hill hex.
Finally, in addition to the weird setup sequence, Company B sets up with all units suppressed.
Considering that it takes Revive orders to remove Suppression markers, that can be big!
Would my losing streak finally end?
Let’s take a look!
Read MoreNew to Me – September 2024
This post has been a bit delayed, for reasons.
Some of those reasons were me killing a whole bunch of Greek soldiers in Ancient Egypt in Assassin’s Creed: Origins, which is super-addicting right now.
The game, not the killing.
I’m fighting for Cleopatra!
Or something.
Anyway, it’s also been my lack of writing energy as well.
September was a pretty good month for new to me games, which made me happy after August.
It made the Cult of the New to Me happy too!
When they saw that the first new to me game I played in September was from 2012, you’d think they were attending an ancient Roman bacchanal!
We’ll have to see what October brings, with one game day already cancelled.
But we shall persevere!
So without further ado (all of my ado was used for bidding on my lumber business anyway), let’s begin!
Read MoreSeptember 2024 Gaming
September was a weird month for gaming, mainly because we didn’t play a lot at work because various people were away (or we just were so exhausted due to work stuff that we just wanted to hibernate at lunch).
Thus, most (but not all) of my gaming in September was done on our Sunday game days.
Thankfully at least one of those had a bunch of games, which means the totals weren’t too bad compared to the usual.
Here’s my list of games played in September.
And here they are in grid format!
Many thanks to BG Stats for the wonderful app that created these.
It was a slower month overall, but part of that was because a couple of our Sundays involved longer games that took up most of the day.
Thirteen games played (last month was 17) and 16 total plays (last month was 21).
I hope to change that in October!
Unless we play another game that takes up the entire Sunday, of course.
As usual, I will talk about my New to Me games in a future post (probably not tomorrow, but soon), but I did want to highlight some other things.
Read MoreSex, Candy, and Rock & Roll
In the 70s, I wonder how many kids wanted to grow up to be rock stars.
I wasn’t one of them. While I am a child of the 70s, I wasn’t really listening to much rock music when I was growing up. My parents listened to Country.
I started listening to the radio (and Casey Kasem’s American Top 40) in the very late 70s or early 80s so grew up with more pop stuff than anything else.
Since then, I’ve become a fan of the 70s music scene through my wife, who is a fan, and I’ve learned to love it a lot.
So when it was announced that Jackie Fox, the bassist for the 70s group The Runaways, was designing a game about become a rock star, in 1977, that sounded amazing!
The game has finally appeared.
Rock Hard 1977 is the game where you are an aspiring musician trying to drag you and your bandmates into fame and fortune (and hopefully not ignominy, though thankfully the game doesn’t really go there).
Designed by Fox, it has wonderful artwork by Jennifer Giner that really puts you in the 70s mood.
The game was published by Devir Games this Summer (2024 for those of you visiting in the future) and plays 2-5 players.
Rock Hard 1977 is basically a worker placement game with a little bit of push your luck, set collection, all of that good stuff.
While each player gets three actions a round (Day, Night, and After Hours), you can get additional actions, possibly, by spending Candy to do them.
So let’s talk about that big thing first before getting into the meat of the game.
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario G – Bitter Creek
One of the really cool things about the monthly Combat Commander ladder is meeting new opponents and then trying to wipe the floor with them.
The latter part doesn’t happen very often, unfortunately.
While Combat Commander: Europe is my favourite, I do enjoy (and it’s the only one I actually own) Combat Commander: Pacific.
In the lead-in to the Autumn, the ladder scenarios move from Europe to Pacific, which means we have to remember all of the rules changes from what we’ve been using for the last 10 months.
Hence it’s really cool that we had Rules Guru Noel spectating our match this month!
Let me start at the beginning, though.
The Combat Commander ladder is a monthly tournament administered by the Champion-caliber Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials Youtube fame.
This is the tournament where we play a monthly game against various opponents as we try to reach the top! Like Patrick has.
Curse him…
But anyway…
The September and October scenarios are from Combat Commander: Pacific and the New Guinea battle pack.
September is from the base game.
This month, I was matched up against Steve C (not the same Steve C from my very first ever game, but a different one), and I was actually able to choose the side I wanted to play!
This month’s scenario is Bitter Creek, where the attacking Australian forces are trying to pin down the defending Japanese forces on New Guinea, breaking through to exit off the map edge.
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)
I was the Australians (I actually chose them! I am so dumb…)
Steve was the Japanese defenders.
They don’t have a lot of units, so Steve decided to sit back and wait for me to come to him.
This meant I didn’t have a lot of targets initially.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 