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A Gaming Life
New To Me – August 2021
What’s this, out of the wild? Cue Marlin Perkins!
Yes, it’s a “New to Me” games post!
For the first time in a few months, I’ve actually played some new games, so I get to tell you about them!
Yes, it’s been 4 months since the last one! It’s been a really tough Summer, at least emotionally.
Apologies for that.
It’s been so good to get out to organized game days again.
Especially because it got me two new to me games!
The Cult of the New to Me has been pretty gracious this last year. They know this COVID thing sucks. They haven’t even tried to revolt, instead being pretty chill about things.
In addition to a couple of new to me games, one of the first games I got played was an old favourite!
Not a new to me game, but I played one of my favourite games, Terraforming Mars, on the table for the first time in a year and a half in August. With the blinged-out Big Box components!
That was a blast.
So, without further adieu (all of my adieu was taken in a Goblin raid anyway), let’s get this party started!
Read MoreBoardgame Geek Top 300 – Play or Played – #250 – 241
What? Two editions of this list in two weeks?
Could Dave be back?
I wouldn’t count on it, but this is a welcome thing to see!
My editor is very happy (Editor: Yeah, so happy I could almost not speak in a monotone)
It’s been a tough Summer, but I feel I’m coming out of it a little bit, which is a really nice feeling.
Not to mention that we’re back to Sunday game days! That’s always a good thing too (A “New to Me” post is coming later this week!)
Should we celebrate?
Let’s all dance.
I won’t be finishing this list by the time I get back to work (that’s next week) but hopefully by the end of the year!
We’ll see.
Anyway, just to let you know, this list was downloaded on February 8, 2021.
So yeah, there are lots of changes.
Let’s begin!
Read MoreFounders of Teotihuacan Coming from Board & Dice in May 2022
Sometimes it pays to be on email lists.
And sometimes it doesn’t (I’m looking at you, you US Special Forces operative who keeps promising me a fortune in stolen loot but never answers my email responses!).
But this time it did!
Today’s Inbox contained the formal announcement of a new game from Board & Dice which has the spirit of the awesome Teotihuacan without being a sequel.
Founders of Teotihuacan is a tile-laying game designed by Filip Głowacz with artwork by Chuy de Leon, Odysseas Stamoglou and Aleksander Zawada.
This looks really interesting! The artwork looks amazing, definitely keeping the feel of Teotihuacan and yet being fairly different.
Read MoreBoardgame Geek Top 300 – Play or Played – #260-251
Wow, has it been 2 months since I last posted an entry in this series looking at the top-ranked games on BGG, #300-201?
Yes, yes it has.
A lot of personal stuff has been going on and I just didn’t feel up to blogging during June and July.
I did some reblogging of Combat Commander posts from Michal, which gave this blog a little bit of activity.
But actively writing something?
It was beyond me.
Thankfully, that’s all changed now, at least for the most part.
While COVID is not over, it is possible to get together with fellow vaccinated friends and actually get some games in.
In fact, I’ll be writing a “New to Me Games” post for August, the first one in a couple of months!
Really, people. With the Delta Variant running rampant, get the shot!
Don’t be a loser.
I want to go to conventions again, and this current situation ain’t helping!
But that’s not the point of this post.
We are looking at the Top 300 games on BGG, counting down from #300 to #201, and we are finally half-way done.
It’s only taken 3 or 4 months.
Yes, the list I’m basing this on was downloaded on February 8, 2021 and it’s really outdated!
Especially with our first entry.
So let’s get started before all of these game move even further away from what I’m actually talking about.
Read MoreLegendary Marvel – New Expansions Cover Art
This was a pretty cool find over the weekend.
The massive delays in the release of Marvel Legendary: Annihilation have made Upper Deck indicate that they are going to be releasing all of the scheduled 2021 expansions even though the first one isn’t coming out until maybe September (if that).
Can they do that?
I have trouble seeing it, but maybe?
Anyway, one of the announced expansions for 2021 is Messiah Complex, based apparently on one of the mutant storylines from years past (can you tell I haven’t followed the comics much?)
Bageltop Games posted on Boardgame Geek that he found the cover artwork on Cardhaus Games’ site.
This, of course, does seem to indicate at least some of the mutant heroes that will be in the expansion (hopefully they wouldn’t mislead on that).
Looks pretty cool, eh?
Here’s the solicit for it, which also may give you some ideas.
Read MoreCombat Commander Europe – #10 Commando Schools
This was a fun scenario where I was actually able to adapt to a little adversity! Well…having a few Ambushes helped.
Thanks, Michal, for another great write-up! Check out the rest of his blog while you’re there.
We’re currently in the middle of Scenario #11, so probably no post for a little while, but we’re getting close to the end!
Incredible! That was already our 10th Combat Commander Europe scenario which we played with Dave since January! This is our epic journey to play the whole base game and we are getting pretty nice progress here. While scenario #9 was comparatively long, the below #10 went pretty quickly. So we are not far away from our final goal – merely 2 more sessions left – and we shall start discussing soon what next! But before this, welcome to as always action-packed, picture-rich session report!
Other Combat Commander scenarios in our camping with Dave:#1 FatLipki#2 Hedgroves and HandGrenades#3 Bonfire of theNKVD#4 Closed forRenovation#5 Cold Front#6 Paralyzed from the West Down#7 Bessarabian Nights#8 Breakoutdance#9 Rush tocontact
So what we played this time? #10 Commando Schools – another Attacker-Defender scenario, which features large lake, splitting the map in half and creating two parallel approach…
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Dog Lover From AEG Coming in 2022
One of my favourite 4-player, quick, lunch-time games is Cat Lady from Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG). I love it so much that I did a glowing review of it!
AEG has now proven that they are an equal opportunity game publisher when it comes to pets (though we really need to see a Rat game soon).
Late last week, they announced a new game coming in 2022: Dog Lover. This announcement is so new that there’s not even a page on Boardgame Geek for it yet! (Watch, in between me writing this post and it going live, there will be one created).
Dog Lover is a card game designed by David Short (Cat Lady was a Josh Wood game).
Much like the cat game, Dog Lover will play in about 30 minutes, which makes it perfect for that in-between time at game day (or when you’re ramping up for the big game) or, even better for me, a lunch-time game at work.
Read MoreEarly Access First Impressions – Brass Birmingham App by Phalanx Games
During my self-imposed blogging hiatus, exciting news came out.
Brass: Birmingham was being released in app form on Steam by Phalanx Games and Cublo! It’s now in Early Access.
It was a first-day buy for me, but because I was…not doing very well at the time, I didn’t actually get it played until sometime in July.
Brass: Birmingham is an economic game and successor to the original Brass (later renamed Brass: Lancashire to distinguish it from this one), both developed by Martin Wallace (though Birmingham also was co-designed by Gavan Brown and Matt Tolman).
I first played the boardgame back in January 2019, and if you want a full (well, kind of full) how to play of the game, go here.
This is a post about the app, though.
The game is currently in Early Access, so there will be bugs squashed and possibly gameplay changes (not in the game itself, obviously! But in how the app implements the gameplay).
How does it measure up, at least under first impressions?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario #34 – Encircled at Hill 30
Two months in a row I’ve managed to get my Combat Commander ladder game in. The ladder is run by Patrick Pence and is a great way to play a monthly game against some good people and maybe (I don’t know, probably not) rise to the top of the ladder!
That would require winning every game you play. I was off to a great start in May and July! I had moved up to #16!
But that sadly ended with my August game, “Encircled at Hill 30”.
My opponent this time was David Stewart-Peterson, an incredibly nice guy who was willing to play me in two sessions over my lunch hours earlier this week.
The scenario is “Encircled at Hill 30,” from the Paratrooper scenario pack. These scenarios involve US paratroops (David – Green) either just after the Normandy landings or during the Battle of the Bulge. This particular scenario takes place on June 8, 1944, two days after the landings, with a contingent of paratroops defending a hill against a vicious German (Me – Blue) counterattack.
The Americans just have some foxholes but they are holding all but one of the objective hexes on the map. David set his men up so that a number of them were up on the hill but some troops were down in the farm house, keeping the Germans honest.
The Germans are limited in setup to the first two columns, and there are too many German troops to all fit up on the hill and brush in the southeast corner. Most of them are up on the very high hill in the corner with one squad sitting in the wide open.
Both sides have a mortar and the Americans have artillery. The Germans will get artillery after the second Time event.
Let’s see what happened!
Read MoreUpdated Neuroshima Hex App Coming in September
(Edit: 8/19/21) – Just confirmed with Portal Games on Twitter that the online play will have asynchronous options. Yay!
One of the classic boardgame apps for iOS (and maybe Android? I’m not sure) was Neuroshima Hex, the 1-4 player duel game where each player is a faction in a post-apocalyptic world, placing armies and trying to destroy the headquarters of your opponent on a fairly small hexagonal map.
While it plays up to 4 players, it definitely shines as a 2-player game (though sadly I have only played it on the app).
Let’s blurb the boardgame just to give you an idea of what this is:
“Each player leads one of four armies: Borgo, Hegemonia (Hegemony), Moloch, and Posterunek (Outpost). Each army deck consists of 34 tiles: soldiers, support tiles, and special actions. You win when all enemy headquarters are destroyed or when your headquarters is the least damaged at the end of the game.”
The app, done by Big Daddy Creations, was brilliantly done but it was left to fester as the company had financial issues and I believe they are now defunct. The app was still fun to play but online play against a friend was atrocious and it suffered from other ailments as well.
Recently, within the last couple of years, Portal Games (the original publisher of the boardgame) reacquired the rights to the app and promised that an updated version would be coming.
We waited…and waited…occasionally there was a little bit of news but we were starting to think this might be vaporware.
However, Portal Games and Ignacy Trzewiczek just released a new vlog that states the new version of the game will be coming out in September.
September!
Wow, what a rush.
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