Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Ships That Pass in the Night – For Points!
Sometimes watching Youtube is dangerous.
I’m not talking about when you look up “how to cook a S’More on the car fire that you happened upon on Highway 1.”
That’s pretty dangerous and I don’t recommend it.
No, I don’t speak from experience, why do you ask?
I’m talking about watching boardgaming videos, and how dangerous they can be to your wallet!
Here I was, innocent little ol’ Dave, tuning into Youtube and seeing what the latest boardgaming stuff to watch was.
I happened upon the Heavy Cardboard live playthrough of Shipyard (2nd Edition) and was enthralled for three and a half hours.
(I’m sure Edward is getting tired of me tagging him on social media, but I promise this review will be the last time…for Shipyard, anyway).
I immediately ordered it from Boardgame Bliss and it arrived a week later.
I got it to game day the next week and it was just as good as I had imagined it to be from the playthrough.
I had never even seen or heard of the first edition of this game, or even this edition until watching the video.
Shipyard (2nd Edition) was published in 2023 by Delicious Games. It was designed by Vladimír Suchý with art by Michal Řezníček and Adela Stopka.
It plays 1-4 players.
In the game, you are doing literally what the title is: running a shipyard in some nebulous turn of the century time period where smoke stacks and snooty-looking businessmen are all the rage.
(Ok, that last part could be in any time period).
What is so great about this game? (Yeah, sorry, spoilers, I think it’s awesome).
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreNew to Me – June 2024
May was a really boring month for new to me games, so much so that I was wondering how I could correct that for June.
How about seven?
No, that’s no my winning lotto number, though it should be.
That’s how many new games were played in June, and two of them were mine.
That just adds to the goodness.
That being said, the Cult of the New to Me was not impressed, at least at first.
The oldest game was from 2022!
That’s not good, and almost sparked another rebellion.
Being a cult leader is a tough job sometimes.
However, the last two weeks of June, I managed to get a 2019 game played and, on the last day of the month, a 2014 game played.
They reacted a lot better to that.
Too bad they weren’t drinking the good stuff.
Canadian Club or nothing, baby!
Without further ado (all of my ado was lost in the canal during my ship’s shakedown cruise anyway), let’s set sail!
Read MoreJune 2024 Gaming
I wasn’t really expecting much for gaming in June, mainly because of Father’s Day but also because I wasn’t sure how many lunchtime games we would get in.
There was a lot of stuff going on at work that was taking the place of lunches.
Little did I know that I didn’t really need to be concerned!
Father’s Day happened, even though there was only two of us (which actually turned out to be really good for me) and we did get a bunch of lunchtime gaming in.
Compared to May, I ended up getting one more total play (22 instead of 21) but of two fewer games (12 instead of 14).
Here’s how it all shook out.
And here that is in grid format (thanks to BG Stats for the amazing extracts!)
There were a few surprises in there, including seven new to me games out of twelve!
That’s a lot, and thus this post is going up before my “new to me” post is (and that one might be delayed, we’ll see).
Read MoreFirst Impressions – Cascadero
Another first impressions post, mainly because I doubt this game will come out to our game days again, other than maybe one more time (I prefer to review a game after 3 plays).
These first impressions posts are not reviews exactly, because I’ve only played the game once (and sometimes that one play might be slightly wrong, like this one).
But I want to let you know some information about a game so you can maybe make your own decision about wanting to try it.
As I mentioned in my Harmonies first impressions post, my opinion could change with more plays and, if I play it enough to review it, I will either mention it in an amendment to this post or, if my opinion changes drastically, write up a new review.
This week’s first impressions post is about a brand new Reiner Knizia game called Cascadero.
It’s designed by Knizia with artwork by Ian O’Toole (wow, two masters on the same game? Can the space-time continuum handle it?) and published by Bitewing Games in 2024.
Bitewing games is coming up with some really cool productions recently. Definitely a publisher to keep an eye on.
How does this compare with other Dr. Knizia games?
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Modular Expansions & Stories
It’s vacation time!
Today was my last day of work for 4 weeks, and wow has this been needed.
I’m hoping that my blog output will increase a bit this month as I have more mental capacity to actually write.
But we’ll see what happens.
In the meantime, welcome back to the bar for another Friday night of talking about boardgames!
I will do my best not to fall asleep on you.
What? Oh, good. You’re still here. Sorry, must have nodded off.
Let me get you something to drink and let’s chat. Nobody else is here to interrupt.
Not sure how I stay in business, now that I think of it.
How about we talk about modular expansions and expansion stories?
After a few weeks of one of them, I need to get it off my chest!
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 02 – Hedgerows & Hand Grenades
One of the great things about Combat Commander is that you’re almost never truly out of the running to win the scenario.
There are times, of course, where there’s really no point in going on, but those times are much fewer than in some other war games.
Anything can happen in Combat Commander! The luck swings can be drastic within the scenario.
Allow me to use my June outing in the Combat Commander ladder to prove that point.
It’s time for another adventure!
The ladder, run by the phenomenal Patrick Pence, creator of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials on Youtube, is the chance to play your favourite game at least once a month.
It is your favourite game, right?
I’m going to call this month’s scenario recap “The Ballad of Lieutenant Blankenship,” for reasons that will soon become apparent.
This month’s scenario is from the Combat Commander: Europe base game.
It’s also the second scenario I ever played when learning the game, with my good friend Michael from the Boardgame Chronicle.
I won that one (I thought I had lost it until I just now reread it), but could I repeat history?
I had played my opponent, Greg L, once before on the ladder, back in 2022 in a Stalingrad scenario. Would he be able to get revenge?
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)
The scenario pits the Americans (me – green) against the Germans (Greg – grey) in a fight among the bocage hedges just past the Normandy beaches in 1944.
The Americans are the attacker and the Germans the defender, and there are only a couple of special rules.
The Americans set up first on the left side of the board, in the first three columns. Then the Germans set up anywhere on the rest of the board.
However, Lt. Blankenship is a forward observer and can set up anywhere on the board after the Germans set up. You could, of course, end up putting him with your units, but he can also be valuable in the German rear.
Since Greg hadn’t covered Objective 1, I figured that would be a good place to start him. He could maybe then move to rain down some artillery fire from behind the lines.
Unfortunately (or fortunately?) he seemed to have replaced his radio with some other stuff instead.
The other special rule is that all of the hedgerows (those green lines that go along the hex sides) are considered bocage, meaning they are +2 to cover and +2 to move instead of the normal +1.
Would the Americans prevail?
Why don’t you come along for the ride with me and find out?
Read MoreReview – Furnace
There’s something about chains in games that is just so cool, even though they burn my brain sometimes.
I’m not talking about actual chains, of course. That would be terrible.
Unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case who am I to judge?
But I’m talking about chaining abilities and cards so that one card feeds into another, which feeds into another, which feeds into another, until the whole world is destroyed by some long-forgotten ancient god or something.
Or, you know, you get tons of points.
Probably best to go for that second goal.
This is all a roundabout way to talk about a really cool auction/chaining card game called Furnace.
Furnace was designed by Ivan Lashin with artwork by Sergey Dulin, Marta Ivanova, Ilya Konovalov, Vadim Poluboyarov, Oleg Yurkov and Egor Zharkov.
It was published by Hobby World and Arcane Wonders, along with a host of other worldwide publishing companies, in 2020.
It plays 2-4 players, though the expansion (which I’ll review once I’ve played it more) adds a 5th player. It also has solo rules.
But the base game is 2-4 players.
What’s so special about Furnace?
It’s an auction game unlike almost any other auction game I can think of (which is where somebody comes in and points out an obvious other example that I’ve never heard of).
Let’s take a look under the hood and see what’s what.
Read MoreFirst Impressions – Harmonies
Welcome to the first in a periodic series of posts where I give my first impressions on a game that I don’t think I’m going to end up playing enough to actually write a review for it.
I broached this subject in a previous Friday Night Shots post, and the idea seemed to go over well, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
Keep in mind that the reason I don’t think I’ll play it enough to review it is not necessarily because my first impression of it was a bad one.
It’s more that so many different games get brought to our game group, or sometimes a game is difficult to get to the table, that I’m predicting that I won’t get to play it enough to review.
The inaugural game in this series is Harmonies, published by Libellud Games in 2024.
The game was designed by Johan Benvenuto with artwork by Maëva da Silva.
It plays 1-4 players.
Harmonies is a beautiful game, combining a couple of different mechanisms that I love along with one that I’m not a fan of (mainly because my brain hurts when I try to do it).
With that intriguing thought, let’s take a look at it!
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Box Size Preference – Room for Expansions?
Yes, the bar is still open!
It’s just been under renovations for the last…month, I guess.
Hopefully they’ve fixed that jukebox so that it stops playing shitty music.
Anyway, welcome back! I’m happy to have you stop by, have a drink, and talk a little bit about board games.
I know I’ve missed you!
So hop on a stool, let me get you a cold libation of some sort (or hot, if you’d like), and let’s go!
Damn, sorry, let me turn down the jukebox. Why it started playing “Roseanne’s Greatest National Anthem Renditions,” I have no idea.
I’ll have to fire the contractors.
Anyway, tonight I’d like to talk about board game box size.
Some too big, some too small, and some just right…until the expansion comes out.
Read MoreReview – Guild Academies of Valeria
I just love “series” boardgames, where you have multiple games in the same setting, though they have different mechanisms and stuff.
I think I actually talked about that before.
While I haven’t played a bunch of the Valeria series of games, I have played four now, and the latest (until the next Kickstarter which I’m sure will drag me in) is Guild Academies of Valeria.
This one is where you are running a mage academy, trying to teach students the basics of magic so they can go out and complete quests and give you prestige.
Like most universities in North America, when somebody has a major success, they say “that person went to college here!”
And that’s what you’re going for.
The game was designed by Stan Kordonskiy with artwork by Mihajlo Dimitrievski. It was published by Daily Magic Games in 2023.
In Villages of Valeria, you are trying to build the new capital of the region. In Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria, you actually play as the monsters who are attacking the kingdom.
Here, you are just running the local university, trying to turn out the best students to deal with bad situations around the kingdom.
It’s still a dice-drafting game, like Shadows, but there are plenty of differences as well.
How different is it?
Let’s take a look.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 