Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Sex, 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 MoreIs Evolution a Thing or is it All Imaginary? – Doomlings: Imaginary Ends Review
What do you do when you’re really trying to evolve but you’re just not sure if you’re doing it right?
Maybe all of the evolution that you think is happening is all in your head?
That’s where the Doomlings: Imaginary Ends expansion for the evolutionary card game from Doomlings LLC comes in.
This is the second expansion (or, if you ordered the previous ones individually rather than as part of the Upgrade Pack, the sixth or seventh, I think?) for the Doomlings card game, that wacky game of evolution where you are trying to make your species as great as possible…before the world ends.
I promise not to get existential this time.
Much.
Check out the previous reviews linked above if you want to know about the base game or the Upgrade Pack expansion.
This time, they decided to just package everything all together rather than dole them out individually.
But the expansion is still modular, allowing you to add things to your Doomlings deck as you see fit.
What does it offer?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Thematically Weird Rules
Welcome back to the bar!
Apologies for being closed for so long, but we’ve had renovations going on.
We were trying to fix that jukebox that kept playing nothing but crappy music.
Along with maybe making this a more inviting place for people other than yourself to come, so maybe I might make a little money?
So come and have a seat at the bar and let me get you the beverage of your choice. It could be non-alcoholic, as we have plenty of that.
Of course, I’ve had a bunch, but when the bar is this empty, why not?
Yes, the renovations don’t seem to have helped with that part.
Let’s turn on the jukebox.
Ok! I guess we may have to have more renovations.
Anyway, what I wanted to talk about tonight is from a thread on Boardgame Geek called “Rules That Make No Thematic Sense.”
We’ve all come across some of those, even in otherwise great games.
But what are some of your favourites?
Read MoreUpgrading is Evolutional – Doomlings Upgrade Pack Review
There’s nothing I enjoy quite like a nice lunchtime card game with co-workers to unwind after a long morning, not to mention resting up for a stressful afternoon.
Especially when there’s a bunch of Work that’s making the Day so chaotic!
Doomlings was a game that was very helpful with that.
Having read that review (you have, haven’t you?), you know that Doomlings is a card game where you are a race on a doomed planet, trying to evolve as much as possible before the world ends.
Placing trait cards in front of you every turn, you go through the ages, experiencing catastrophes along the way, and eventually the world just ends, forcing you to count up your points and wonder about the reason behind it all.
Why evolve when it’s all just going to end anyway?
Sorry.
However, if you liked the game like I did, why not add some more stuff to it?
That’s what the Doomlings Upgrade Pack does, adding a little bit of variety to the various trait cards that you can play.
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There are a couple of new mechanics but mostly it’s just variations on cards with a few twists.
Note that you can get these packs individually, if some appeal to you and not others, so I’ll link to each individual pack when I name it.
Read MoreNew to Me – August 2024
July was not a great month for new to me games, but I had a feeling that August would make up for it, with a convention going on and everything.
And it did!
August was great for new to me games, with seven of them played.
That’s why this post is so late!
However, the Cult of the New to Me was not exactly happy, even with so many games played.
Why is that?
Because the oldest game played was from 2021, and everything else was either from 2023 or 2024.
I didn’t have much of an explanation, other than the fact that conventions typically bring out all of the new stuff and there wasn’t much chance to play anything else that was new to me.
Thankfully, I told them that I would make up for it in September and I already have. One of my new to me games already played from this month is from 2012!
They were mollified.
For now.
So without further ado (all of my ado was blown into irradiated dust anyway), let’s take a look at what was played!
Read MoreAugust 2024 Gaming
It’s funny how sometimes month end can sneak up on you.
I was going to hold off on writing this post for a bit, until the weekend.
Then I realized that my next game day is actually in September!
Who would’ve thunk that?
Not this guy.
So now I can actually write this ahead of time.
August was a pretty good month, though mostly fueled by the Dragonflight convention, even though I only played seven games there.
That convention is where all of my “new to me” games were played, which is why on my Sundays I tried to stick with the tried and true games to make my having to write the new to me post less taxing.
Because it’s all about my comfort.
Let’s take a look at the month that was.
Here’s the list view.
And here it is in grid view.
August was actually a pretty good month for games, not just because of the new to me ones, but also because of the older games that I played.
Thanks to the Boardgame Stats app for these wonderful pictures!
Read MoreThe Apocalypse Will be in Technicolor
Post-apocalyptic games are all the rage, and Radlands is yet another entry into the increasingly-crowded genre.
The question becomes, is it worthy of recognition in that genre and beyond?
Radlands is a 2-player battling card game designed by Daniel Piechnick with artwork by Delia Arnone, Lina Cossette, Damien Mammoliti and Manny Trembley. It was published by Roxley Games in 2021.
When it first came out and hit Kickstarter, it was all the rage and a ton of people backed it.
Hell, I almost did.
But something about the cost and the ability to get it to the table stayed my hand and I backed out.
I recently received it in a math trade though and I’ve already got it to the table three times.
And it is quite impressive!
Also it’s very colourful.
Almost blindingly-colourful if you object to bright colours in weird art.
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 28 – No Ingouf Around
Pardon me if you’ve seen this before.
Yes, the August scenario for our Combat Commander ladder tournament is a scenario that I’ve already played twice now.
I’ve even written up one of them.
The other one happened last month, and I didn’t want to do two AARs of the same scenario within a month of each other.
That being said, that one might have been more interesting to read about than this month’s.
Not that the scenario wasn’t fun! I really enjoyed the play.
I’m just not sure how riveting the actual read will be.
You will get to see one of the most colossal blunders in the history of the game (or the most effective mind-fuck ever, you be the judge) in this post, so maybe it will be interesting!
Let’s see, shall we?
But allow me start at the beginning.
Welcome to another adventure on the Combat Commander ladder, that monthly tournament of one of my favourite games where we get to play a different scenario each month from the base game or the many battle packs/expansions that are out there.
Led by the noble Patrick Pence of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame (and he is noble! He’s now Number 1 on the ladder, which means he can’t complain about his luck anymore), this ladder gives all players an opportunity to play a favourite game once a month, and even more if you join the Discord and look for opponents!
I’m sure Tony is waiting for your call.
This month’s opponent was Ted L, who I think Patrick played last month?
Or I could be misremembering.
(Research? What does that mean?)
He’s also a first-time opponent for me and this was a tense match from beginning to end.
In “No Ingouf Around”, US paratroopers (Ted – Green) are facing a big German (Me – Grey) counterattack just off the beaches of the Normandy beachhead in 1944.
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)
Like I said, I’ve played this scenario twice already and won as the Germans both times, mainly be squeaking out a VP win when Sudden Death hit.
Even though the Germans are the attackers, I didn’t really attack too much.
Could I do the same a third time?
Let’s find out.
Read MoreDragonflight 2024 Retrospective
This past weekend was the Dragonflight boardgame convention in Bellevue, Washington.
I’ve gone down the last couple of years and used to go down before the pandemic, but this was the first year where most of my Vancouver contingent didn’t go down too.
Thankfully, I have a Seattle contingent of friends to hang out with, and I even got to meet more of them on the weekend!
I pretty much only see them annually (most didn’t go to OrcaCon last January and aren’t going to it this coming January either) so it’s always good to catch up with them.
Of course, one of that group is the awesome Sean Epperson from Thing 12 Games, a man who not only designs great games, but also somebody I love hanging out with.
This year, I didn’t play a whole lot of games, but every one of them was new to me!
And also fairly new, which isn’t going to make my cult happy.
Since all of them are new to me, I’m not going to go into great detail about them here. I’ll save that for my September “New to Me” post.
This convention is always fun, but it was marred this year by the fact that there were so few “free play” tables and tons of scheduled games.
Were they a victim of their own success? Maybe?
The Hilton in Bellevue doesn’t have the largest space if a convention is getting successful.
That’s why OrcaCon (supposedly) moved to a new venue starting in 2025.
Other hitches made Friday a bit of a slow day for gaming.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 