Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Combat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 44 – Stalingrad of the North
Welcome to another tale of warfare and adventure on the Combat Commander ladder, which affords me the opportunity to play one of my favourite games with a bunch of really cool people.
The ladder is run by the ineffable Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame.
And Youtube fame is a lot better than celebrity fame!
Take that to the bank.
“Time waits for no one” – Folklore
Why am I including my favourite phrase about Time in this post? And when I say “favourite,” I mean the phrase that popped out at me when I googled “Time quotations?”
You’ll see.
The November ladder scenario takes place toward the end of the massive Soviet-German battle of Stalingrad in January 1943. It’s taken from the Combat Commander: Stalingrad battle pack, and it does not include all of the special Stalingrad rules because it takes place outside of the city.
This month was my first repeat opponent in my time on the Ladder!
Andrei F was my opponent in the May 2022 scenario and it was nice to face off with him again.
Scenario 44, Stalingrad of the North, has the Germans trying to break through the Soviet encirclement to rescue a German contingent located in the vital transportation hub of Velikiye Luki.
(Keep in mind that you can click on a picture to blow it up)
The Soviets (brown – Me) are the defenders in this scenario while the Germans (grey – Andrei) are the attackers.
There are at least 9 rounds/Time triggers in the game, as the Time Track starts at 0 and Sudden Death is at 9.
Some really interesting special rules in this one.
The area on the other side of the road, inside of the red oval, is the town. It’s impassable to Soviet units.
All of those Germans on the Time Track at the top of the picture are the units in the town. Once a German unit crosses that road, those German units go to the next space on the Time Track from where it currently is. The next Time Trigger will bring them out in the town on the board edge, suppressed.
At that point, the sides of the map switch, with the Soviet side of the map becoming the right side while the German side being on the left.
Nobody can exit the map except German leaders and the German reinforcement units.
Also, the entire hill is a Level 1 hill. There are no cliffs and no higher elevations. It’s really flat.
Finally, Rout orders do not exist. They are considered Command Confusion cards.
I essentially have to keep the Germans out of the town or, if I can’t do that, keep the reinforcements from getting back to that side of the board and exiting.
How did I do?
Keep that quote above in mind…
And let’s begin!
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Playing with Non-Gamers?
It’s another clear, and cold, Friday night, but it’s warm here in the bar, isn’t it?
I think I turned up the heat.
Or maybe I just have a bad fever.
Either way, have a seat and let me get you your favourite libation!
We can start chatting after David Gray is done.
That was nice.
I hope you’re looking forward to a nice weekend!
Maybe you’ll be playing some games with new gamers?
Hey, let’s talk about that!
Read MoreReview – Fantastic Factories
One game mechanism I really like is dice rolling and engine building (ok, that’s two mechanisms).
Who doesn’t like chucking a bunch of dice?
Ok, Len in the back, maybe.
But otherwise, who doesn’t?
Fantastic Factories doesn’t let you chuck a ton of dice, but it lets you chuck a few and it also lets you build an engine to use those dice!
Fantastic Factories was designed by Joseph Z Chen and Justin Faulkner, with artwork by Chen. It was published on Kickstarter in 2019 by Metafactory Games but now is being published by Deep Water Games.
It plays 1-5 players.
In the game, you are trying to build up a card engine of factories and other production and training buildings to get the most efficient industrial engine going and produce the most goods.
And you do it with dice!
How does it work?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreBottoscon 2023 Retrospective
This post has been a long time coming, mainly due to exhaustion on my part.
A four-day con is a long con, especially when you are playing a lot of longer games.
All of that would be fine, except then I started work on Monday and found out we had to pack up our offices in three days in order to get it ready for a new floor (as I already explained last Friday).
As exhausting as it was, though, it was a great con with many memorable gaming moments. There were some slow times (mainly due to me and friends gabbing or getting food or whatever) but overall it was a great con.
Bottoscon is the largest wargaming convention in the Pacific Northwest and there are many scheduled gaming events for other wargames, and even a few non-wargames. I don’t know if the non-wargames part is new (the convention is close to, if not more than, 20 years old I think), but there are definitely tons of wargamers played.
This year’s Bottoscon went from Thursday, November 2 to Sunday, November 5, and adding that extra day (previously it’s always been Friday-Sunday) just made it all the sweeter (though also that much more tiring).
One long game I didn’t play, but was set up for others, was Here I Stand by GMT Games.
Maybe one of these cons I’ll break down and do the 12 hours this game requires.
This post is about my game experiences. Apologies in advance, though.
The lighting was not conducive to good pictures.
There are many shadows to be had.
Since this might produce a long post, let’s get started!
Read MorePeople Power – Storage Solution From Rails on Boards
It’s time for another in a series of reviews of storage tray solutions from Rails on Boards/Cube4Me, as they endeavour to corner the market on these plastic trays.
I even have a bunch of GMT counter trays that I haven’t used because of this!
Today’s storage solution was purchased from Cube4Me, so not one I put together.
It’s for one of the latest COIN games from GMT, People Power: Insurgency in the Phillippines, 1981-1986.
COIN games are really great candidates for these trays because they’re not heavy in the counter department, the wooden cubes and discs fit really well, and the card deck fits perfectly in a couple of the card trays.
Is it the same for People Power?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Update & Upcoming Games
Hey there!
It’s been a while, I know. It seems like you were just in here last week!
Take a seat at the bar and take a load off. I’ll get you anything you want.
Let me turn down the jukebox. Who put MC Hammer on here anyway?
But yes, it’s been a while since my last post too. Last week’s Friday Night Shots was it and nothing this week.
Let’s just say that it’s been a week.
First, I have to say that Bottoscon last weekend was amazing! I owe you a retrospective and that will be coming. Lots of games were played so lots to talk about.
And that post will be soon. Hopefully in the next few days.
As much as I loved the four days of Bottoscon, though, they were exhausting as well.
Which wouldn’t have been an issue if I hadn’t come back to work on Monday and found out that we had one week (and really three days since I work remotely on Monday and Friday) to pack up our offices so that a new floor can be put in.
For me, that was mentally and physically exhausting, and I hadn’t recovered from the weekend yet.
So needless to say, I haven’t been in any kind of headspace to write anything.
Hopefully that will improve going forward!
All of that being said, there were some good things about the week.
Like the arrival of four games! Well, three games and an expansion.
So let’s talk about those for a bit while we enjoy the early evening (I mean, it’s 4:00 and it’s pitch black, right?)
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Con Anticipation
Look at it out there! It’s dark and it’s only 5:00.
But the bar is cozy, and it’s certainly airy with nobody but you in it.
I hope you’re looking forward to a really nice weekend.
I know I am!
Have a seat and I’ll get you a drink.
Let me turn down the jukebox. I know we both love INXS, but we have to be able to talk, right?
Tonight’s going to be a short post because I’m actually busy in regards to the subject of this post.
That’s right. As you are reading this, I am enjoying myself at the second day of Bottoscon in New Westminster up here in beautiful British Columbia.
But as I am writing this, it’s two days before the con starts and I’m getting antsy.
Read MoreOctober 2023 Gaming
October was another month of decent gaming. I was worried that it was going to be a slow month, even though we did get a Sunday game day every week this month.
But I shouldn’t have been concerned, as the last Sunday brought me up to 16 games played and 20 plays in total.
This is pretty much like previous months. Last month, I only played 12 games but 21 times. So 16 games is a great improvement!
One of my work gaming partners was gone for most of the month, but I did manage to get some plays of Twilight Struggle: Red Sea in with my other gaming partner while she was gone, which made up the difference.
Here’s my list of games played last month!
Yes, 16 different games played is pretty good for a non-convention month (August was Dragonflight, so it was skewed at 22 games).
And five new to me games!
That’s even better.
Here is the list in grid format (thanks, BG Stats!)
In addition, there were a few “first time played this year” games which is even better!
With two months left to go in the year, and with a convention coming up in November (I’m already at 109 games for 2023), I’m set for a record number of games played!
I’ve already talked about the “new to me” games for October, so let’s talk about the games in general!
Read MoreNew to Me – October 2023
October was a great month for new to me games!
That’s been a bit unusual lately, so I’m glad that this is back on the upswing.
Of course, with every improvement there comes a downside.
I played 5 new to me games in October, plus a new expansion!
But all of them were from 2023.
The Cult of the New to Me was not happy.
At all.
There was actually talk of a rebellion so harsh that it would make the latest Republican infighting look like a picnic on the beach with a bonfire and everything.
So I gave them a picnic on the beach with a bonfire and everything, and they all moved from rebellious to just disgruntled.
I’ll have to work on improving that next month. Considering one of my already-scheduled new to me games for November is from 2010 and one is from 2019, I may be able to do that!
Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was used as an appetizer for a US-Soviet summit meeting anyway), let’s see what’s out there!
Read MoreReview – Resist!
Ever since the COVID lockdowns began in 2020, I’ve become an avid consumer of solitaire games.
One of the more popular solo games that have come out recently, getting great reviews from as disparate sources as Zilla Blitz and Chris Yi on the Dice Tower, is the solo card game Resist!
(The exclamation point is in the title of the game, and I really wish people would stop putting punctuation in the names of things because it makes them difficult to write about coherently).
Resist! was designed by the intrepid team of Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson along with Roger Tankersley, with artwork by Albert Monteys. It was published in 2022 by Salt & Pepper Games.
In the game, you are the Maquis resistance movement in Spain after the Spanish Civil War, fighting the fascist General Franco regime for freedom. Hiding in the mountains, these Maquis members took the fight back to Franco.
It’s also a card game with no dice whatsoever.
Let’s see how it looks.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 