Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Terminal City Tabletop Convention Retrospective – 2024
It’s a few days after another great convention experience, so let’s talk a little bit about Terminal City Tabletop Convention – 2024.
This year, it was held at the Vancouver Convention Centre which is right on the water in downtown Vancouver. It’s a beautiful site, and also the same venue as SHUX was held in…I don’t remember the last one (hey, let’s link to a blog post that might refresh the memory).
They didn’t reserve as much space as SHUX, obviously, but it was still much better than 2023 where space was so much at a premium that we went to get food in shifts because we couldn’t afford to give up our tables.
They also avoided the Daylight Savings Time weekend, which meant that we didn’t lose an hour of sleep while trying to attend.
So a win-win!!!
The thing I like about the Convention Centre is that it’s a 20-minute walk for me. It gives me good exercise but it’s also not too far away.
Of course, I’m not taking my huge bag of games like I did last year, but they have a great library and I have friends who bring a bunch of games (they’re driving from further away) so that’s also a win-win!
And I still got one of my games played, so a win-win-win!
There are plenty of food options in the Waterfront Centre food court, which makes eating pretty easy. Though you technically can’t bring outside food and drink into the hall, which makes things difficult.
Didn’t mean others didn’t do it (and I think I brought the remains of a bottle of pop in on Saturday and maybe Friday night), but it’s policy apparently.
I don’t remember that being an issue with SHUX, but maybe it was?
(Edit: I’ve since been informed that it was a policy imposed by the Convention Centre)
Another new thing this year was that the convention was open from 3:00 on Friday until Sunday. Previously it was only Saturday & Sunday.
That was great!
There was some miscommunication about when it opened, though. They said that it opened at 3:00 pm, but then it came out that you could pick up your badge at 2:00.
A lot of people thought that meant that you could get in at 2:00.
Nope! You could line up to pick up your badge, but then you had to leave again and line up to get in at 3:00 pm.
Nothing too major, but a little annoying.
Overall, though, kudos to those volunteering and running the con, as (from my perspective, anyway), it went off without a hitch.
How were the games?
Let’s talk about Friday-Sunday games played!
I assume so!
Let’s get started, as there are a lot to talk about!
Read MoreBook Series Recommendation – “Berlin Wartime Thriller” by Simon Scarrow
Simon Scarrow is a historical thriller author who’s best known (I think) for his novels set in Ancient Rome. His “Eagles of the Empire” series starring Quintus Licinius Cato, a former imperial slave, and centurion Lucius Cornelius Macro, is now at 25 books!
I’ve only read one of them, though I found another one in a thrift store and skimmed the first couple of chapters and was very impressed.
I wanted to start at (or near) the beginning, but I finally succumbed and read Book #19 (The Emperor’s Exile) just to see what I thought.
And it was good!
While I am still wanting to start near the beginning before reading further, I stumbled upon another small series of books by Scarrow, this time completely removed from Ancient Rome.
The Berlin Wartime Thriller series (what a weird title, but it is accurate!) just consists of two books right now, but both are really good.
The series takes place at the start of World War II and the main character is Horst Schenke, a Criminal Inspector for the Berlin police (Kripo) who has no sympathy for the Nazi regime but just wants to see justice done.
Let’s talk a little bit about them.
Read MoreReview – Underwater Cities
It would be cool to live on the ocean.
Beachfront property, your back door opening right onto the beach, listening from your balcony to the ocean waves crash on the shore, watching the lightning from a storm out over the water.
That would be amazing!
How about living under the ocean, though?
That would be very wet and hard to breathe…unless you had domes!
That’s kind of the premise of Underwater Cities.
The game was designed by Vladimír Suchý with artwork by Uildrim and Milan Vavroň.
It was published by Delicious Games and Rio Grande Games in 2018.
With population booming on the surface, it’s decided to try and colonize the ocean depths to help ease the burden on the planet.
You’re essentially building a network of domed cities that is self-sustaining, earning victory points in the process.
Because you know victory points will save the world one day.
But I digress.
When the game first came out, some people called it a Terraforming Mars killer.
And in the sense that you are now going under water and foregoing actually terraforming Mars, that’s true.
But as a game?
I don’t really see a lot of similarities.
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 93 – Foxtrot Uniform
After a really bad (and late!) February episode of Tales from the Combat Commander ladder, we’re getting to March’s almost as soon as I’m done playing it!
This was a much more satisfying game, and that’s whether or not I won (I’m not giving you any spoilers). The scenario was clean and it was just an amazingly fun time!
What’s the ladder?
It’s a tournament setting run by the beyond compare Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials Youtube fame.
Yes, I do mean fame. He’s got more followers than I do!
(Editor: “That’s not saying much”)
The March scenario is from the Sea Lion battle pack, a bunch of scenarios that portray action that might have happened if the Germans went ahead with their Operation Sea Lion plans to invade England.
Just adding to the “what if” nature of the scenarios, this month’s scenario pits the German invaders facing a counterattack on an airfield from…the Americans?
That’s right, apparently in this hypothetical invasion, the Americans either decided to join the war in 1940, or sent a contingent of troops to England even as they tried to remain neutral.
My opponent was Doug L, another guy in my time zone! So scheduling a play was pretty easy.
We did it on Saturday morning.
(As usual, you can click on a picture to enlarge it)
A joint task force of Americans and British troops are counterattacking, and the Americans (me: green) are tasked with recapturing the Upper Heyford RAF base from the Germans (Doug: grey).
As per the description, “Allied Commanders were reluctant to authorise air support from the tattered remnants of the RAF and as a result the Allied attack commenced without it.”
I have a question about that sentence, which I will address during the AAR below.
Anyway, there are a few special rules in this scenario, which actually make it quite tense.
First, those two tan heavy machine guns up there? Those represent anti-aircraft guns that were repurposed to fire at ground units. They start on a hill, and the Germans control them.
However, no matter what happens to the units possessing them, they stay in the hex. So technically anybody else can run into the hex and take possession of them, using them at will.
Even the Americans!
I thought about it…
Secondly, no fortifications can go on any of the hills. So the Germans can’t drop Wire into one of the HMG hexes when an American unit goes to capture one of them. And nobody can dig foxholes.
The multitude of grey hexes are airport tarmac, and they count as roads. Meaning that units on them might be in a lot of trouble.
Finally (and this didn’t come into play in our scenario), an American reinforcement event just brings in an American Line squad. No rolling, and no chance for a radio!
Damn it.
Anyway, how did I do after a losing streak in previous months?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreReview – Fire in the Library
I’m a pretty big fan of push your luck games.
Hell, I play tons of games of Can’t Stop on Boardgame Arena, even though it’s not an awesome asynchronous game.
I just can’t get enough with pushing my luck!
I’m also a bibliophile.
I love books. I love reading them, and if I had the space, I’d love collecting them. (Instead, I mainly read e-books).
Put those two tastes together and what do you get?
You get Fire in the Library, published by Weird Giraffe Games.
Designed by Tony Miller and John Prather, with artwork by Katie Khau, Jon Merchant, and Beth Sobel, this game was published in 2019.
Before I go any further, I want to say that I met Carla from Weird Giraffe Games at OrcaCon back in January and she is one of the nicest people I met. I didn’t talk to her a whole lot, but listening to her talk to Sean from Thing 12 Games was a treat, especially seeing the ins and outs of game publishing.
Anyway, let’s talk about Fire in the Library.
You’re working in the library when it catches fire. Books are burning everywhere!
You are trying to save as many books as you can as the fire gets worse and worse.
How much knowledge can you save?
That’s what the points you accumulate will indicate.
Let’s see how it works.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Friendship Killing Games
It’s another Friday and welcome to the bar!
Funny how nobody else seems to be in here, but it is raining out there pretty good.
Always happy to have just my friends in the bar with me, hanging out on a Friday night.
Who needs customers?
It’s getting a bit warmer, and maybe the sun will come out soon?
Not for almost a week, at least up here.
Let me pour you a drink and we can talk about destroying friendships…I mean board games.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – 5 Player Games
Two Fridays in a row!
Welcome back to the bar. I hope you’re enjoying the excessively wet evening out there.
Why not cozy up to the bar, get some heat going, along with a drink of some sort, and just have a chat?
I promised no fire jokes anymore, so I’m actually kind of out of material now.
Let me see if I can find something…
Nope, nothing there!
Oh well. Next week.
Anyway, let me turn down the music. I’m not sure how the Greatest Hits of the Brady Bunch got on there.
Go away!
Last week, I talked about favourite player count, and it was pointed out to me that I forgot to mention one of the really odd ducks in the whole player count space: 5-players.
This actually came up last week, as we ended up with only 5 people coming to our game day. One person cancelled to make it 4 because they didn’t want to deal with a 5-player day.
Which brings up the question…how do you deal with it when you end up with 5 players at your game day/night?
Read MoreFebruary 2024 Gaming
After a raucous January as far as gaming went (posting the New to Me in the last week of February was a good sign of that!), I knew February would be a lot less.
However, I didn’t realize it would be this much less!
I missed two Sundays, between a math trade (got a bunch of money and a great game!) and the Super Bowl, two of the four Sundays were nuked.
Add to that me getting sick, or tired, and not playing a lot of lunchtime games at work, and that leads to a very lean month for gaming.
Which I’m not worried about, because there’s another convention in March!
Next month will have a big upswing, I’m sure.
Let’s take a look at the games I did play in February, though.
And here they are in grid form.
That’s right, only 10 games played!
Many thanks to the wonderful BG Stats app for these pictures and just the ability to track all of our games played!
Before we continue, though, you will notice that there are no new to me games!
That’s right. I did not play one new to me game in February.
So don’t expect a post for February about that.
There won’t be one.
I could have forced one, but it would have only been one game and it didn’t seem worth it.
Still, there were a couple of highlights even given the few games played.
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 74 – Sturmgruppe Granit
Welcome to another amazing tale from the Combat Commander ladder, that monthly chance for me to play one of my favourite games of all time!
Run by the sensational Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame (one day I will be featured on that channel), the ladder is a great opportunity for me because it gives me an excellent opportunity to lose at the game!
We get to play a different person each month, though this month’s opponent was my second repeat opponent, Stan M!
I originally played him back in January 2022 where he beat me in a fairly close game.
Maybe with a second repeat opponent, this means I’ll play Patrick again some day?
One can hope.
Anyway, this month’s scenario was from the Fall of the West battle pack, and mercifully didn’t include any tanks.
It pits the Belgians (Light blue, Stan, using the French deck and discarding rules) against the Germans (Grey – Me) as the Germans attempt to destroy and isolate some bunkers during their initial blitz of the country.
There are a bunch of special rules that are kind of interesting.
First, the Germans can destroy the three bunkers by activating a unit next to them with an Artillery Request order. This will destroy the bunker and attack the units in it with a 9 firepower attack against them.
Secondly, Belgians in bunkers can advance from one bunker to another. We didn’t end up using that.
However, as long as two bunkers remain in play, any Belgians who are eliminated don’t go to the casualty track. They go to the next Time track and come on as reinforcements.
So the Germans really need to destroy two bunkers quickly.
Thirdly, Objective 5 (near the bottom of the map) can be destroyed by the Germans with an Artillery Support order and an adjacent unit. If they do that, it’s forever destroyed and the Germans get 5 VP (the Belgians can’t get those back).
There’s also a bit of a Belgian artillery special rule, but since that didn’t really come into play in our game, we’ll just ignore that.
Was I able to pull this one out?
Let’s see!
Read MoreNew to Me – January 2024
It’s the first month of the year!
And it’s also almost the end of February.
Yes, it took so much energy to get my Top 50 games played of all time done, along with getting sick recently, that we’re into the last week of February and I still haven’t talked about the “new to me” games that I played in January!
I know, right?
With OrcaCon in January, I knew that this would be a long post.
I did not realize just how taxing it was going to be, though.
This one is going to be brutal on me, so I’m going to take some steps to alleviate the pain.
For all of the OrcaCon games, since I did talk about them in that retrospective post, I’m going to just refer you to that post.
I didn’t go into detailed “how to play” descriptions there, but enough that I think you should get a good sense of how the game works.
The Cult of the New to Me was certainly happy because while a few of the games last month were brand new, there were quite a number of older games there.
They were satisfied and content.
Which means that this month, they’re going to be really pissed off.
Actually, I’m not sure about that…because I haven’t played any new to me games in February.
Yes, it’s the last week in February and I will not have a post next month!
That doesn’t make them happy either.
Really, they’re terribly hard to please.
Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was stolen by some big furry guy who broke into my campground anyway), let’s begin!
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 