Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Friday Night Shots – Update & Topic Ideas?
Hey there! Welcome back.
It’s been a couple of weeks.
Sorry about all of that.
Belly up to the bar and let’s chat a bit.
It’s also been a while since I posted anything at all, actually.
Read MoreCombat Commander After Action Report – Scenario #33 – We Go!
(Edit: 8/3023) – The video is live!!!
(The exclamation mark is in the scenario title, not meaning that I’m very excited about this scenario…though actually it is quite good!)
Two After Action Reports in quick succession, which can happen when one is really late and I’m on top of the other one!
That, of course, could be because I was playing…da Boss.
Oh, let’s start at the beginning.
This is another adventure in the Combat Commander ladder, where I get to play one of my favourite games at least once a month, online with a bunch of awesome people.
Run by da Boss…I mean the competitive Patrick Pence (he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame), the ladder is a monthly game of Combat Commander using all of the various expansions and the Pacific version of the game.
The August scenario is from the Paratrooper battle pack and has some American paratroopers landing behind the lines in Normandy on June 6, 1944.
Yes, Patrick and I faced off last Friday night for what would be a barnburner of a scenario (am I being facetious? I’ll let you make the call).
This was a battle to see whose luck would be worse.
I’ll embed the video from Patrick’s channel when he posts it.
I will be!
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up…I mean expand it)
The Germans (me, grey) have a small number of units in the village. The Americans (Patrick, green) land with each unit drawing a random hex.
A few special rules before I show you the American landing.
If they land in line of sight and range of a German unit or gun, they land broken.
The mortar then gets placed (probably not on a broken unit).
They can easily scatter and if the landing is bad and they don’t get a Recover card, it can be disastrous!
Read MoreBook Review – The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis
I know what you’re thinking.
You’re thinking “Dave, your new haircut makes you look so good!”
And I would agree with you.
But you’re also thinking “a book review from Dave? How long has it been?”
And the answer would be quite a while.
I typically only do book reviews for books that really grab me, and sometimes not even then (he says, looking at the list of other wonderful books that he’s read but couldn’t muster the will to write about).
Last week, however, I hit a book that not only captivated me (I read it in one day, and that’s 400 pages worth, something that I just don’t do) but it also seemed really worth writing about.
The Road to Roswell, published in June 2023 and written by noted science fiction author Connie Willis, is a hilarious take on a number of SF subjects. Part road trip book, part UFO invasion story, part UFOs are nonsense, and part Romantic Comedy, this book is hilarious fun.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Tiebreakers
Hey there!
It’s another Friday, and it’s time to belly up to the bar, have a drink (whatever you like), and chat a little bit about board games.
Don’t mind the music. I’ll turn it down.
Steely Dan is so good that it can make it hard to talk.
Anyway, where were we?
Oh yeah, how about chatting about tie breakers!
Nobody likes ties (except soccer…sorry, football fans).
Most games that have points have the potential to have ties in them, though.
So a good board game is going to have a series of tiebreakers in the rulebook.
I can’t think of any game where it just says “you tied? Oh well, you tied. Sucks to be you.”
Read MoreNew to Me – July 2023
July was yet another weird month for games, as I explained in last week’s “games played” post (sorry this one took so long after that).
Even with that, I was able to get six new to me games to the table.
Granted, three were quick card games, but still…
Not only did I get six games played, but three of them are from 2020 or older!
That made the Cult of the New to Me happy.
They even threw me a party!
Maybe that’s why this post was so late.
But I always persevere!
Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado disappeared with a bike thief anyway), let’s get started!
Read MoreDire Wolf Digital Going App Crazy With Announcements
(Edit: 10/5/23) – Finally, the last design diary! I think.
Nope, there are 1-2 more coming.
Paul Dennen reveals how Contracts work and it looks like a major boost to the beginning of the game, at least in trying to get money.
You can take a Contract and then fulfill it, often just by going to the designated space.
Not all give you money, though. Some give you cards, or troops or what have you. And some aren’t just going to a space. It might be “Harvest 3 Spice in one move”
Contracts are a modular addition to the game, though they don’t seem like they add much complexity. Maybe in the decision space?
Either way, there are of course some cards that use Contracts as well. If you’re not using this module, you can take them out.
The diary also confirms there will be 9 leaders in the game, including the Emperor himself!
This looks seriously cool and I am debating whether or not to get it even though I have the original game and both expansions and haven’t played them much (the expansions not at all).
We’ll see!
(Edit: 9/13/23) – It’s been a while, but another designer diary! This one details spies and how that system works.
You can send a Spy to a space and then later send an Agent (recalling the Spy) to the space even if it’s occupied by another player’s agent. You can also send a Spy and then if you play an Agent there later and recall the Spy, you get to draw a card.
To place a Spy, you’ll go to this new space. Or there will be cards that let you do it.
There’s a bunch more at the diary, so check it out!
(Edit: 8/25/23) – Another designer diary was published today for Dune Imperium: Uprising. It’s all about the worms!
Yes, designer Paul Dennen talks about bringing the famous sandworms directly into the game.
Check out the rest of the diary for more cool pictures and a description of how these worms will work in the game.
(Edit: 8/17/23) – With all of the controversy on BGG regarding the Dune Imperium: Uprising release, Dire Wolf has now published a designer diary addressing the genesis of this “standalone expansion”. You can read it here.
Original post is below
A lot of news came out of the recently-completed GenCon last weekend. Too much for me to be able to keep up with, especially because this isn’t technically a “news” site.
The “news” I post about is stuff that I’m excited about, and boy did Dire Wolf Digital deliver on that in spades.
Yesterday, they summarized it all in a post on their web site, so this post can seem like it’s only one day late instead of massively late.
Dire Wolf Digital announced a slew of games that they are going to be making digital versions of, and many of them just made me want to jump up and down.
They’ve previously announced the Clank digital game, but they re-announced it on their page.
(Yes, there are some board game announcements on this page too, but those didn’t excite me nearly as much).
But there’s a bunch more stuff, which I’ll get to after the break.
Read MoreCombat Commander After Action Report – Scenario #20 – A March in December
Wow, this is really late.
I mean, really late.
Yes, this is my report for July’s ladder game.
Almost a week into August!
Not only that, but I am probably playing my August game next weekend.
I’d better get on this!
Anyway, welcome to another tale from the Combat Commander ladder.
July marked 2 years of continuous play for me (I joined in May 2021 but had to take June off for personal reasons. I’ve had 2 years since July 2021).
The ladder is run by the delightful Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics and Tutorials fame.
This lets me play one of my favourite games at least once a month! (And recently, more than once a month).
My opponent this (last?) month was Brice F, somebody who I’ve never played before.
The July scenario was scenario #20 from the Mediterranean expansion, called A March in December.
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to enlarge it)
It has a line of Russians (brown, me) marching through the forest, suddenly attacked by a bunch of Finnish Sissi elite units (light blue, Brice).
Yes, the Russians are pretty much surrounded.
This is bad!
The scenario is interesting because of a couple of special rules.
The Russians set up first in a road hex (no more than 9 hexes from the north edge of the map). The Finnish then set up in a forest hex that doesn’t have a road (no more than 9 hexes from the south edge of the map).
After the Finns set up, the Russians then place their machine guns.
The Finnish use the Italian deck and discard rules (2 discard maximum) but they can discard one card even if they do an order.
Brice used that a lot.
Finally, the Finnish cannot exit units from the map unless the Russians have no machine guns on the board. If they are able to exit, they can exit off any map edge with a number 6 or less.
Needless to say, the Russians want to keep at least one gun safe at all times.
This was going to be a massacre, wasn’t it?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Who’s First Player?
Welcome back!
It wouldn’t be a Friday night without seeing you here.
I hope your week has gone well and, if you’re like I am, looking forward to a long weekend.
Grab a seat, and let’s chat about “first player rules”!
This will probably be a short one, but for me it’s entertaining.
I was inspired by this post on Boardgame Geek.
Entitled “Does the person with the first player marker for the first turn have a disadvantage?”, it’s a serious question (kind of) about advantages/disadvantages of being the first player in Terraforming Mars, by Stronghold Games.
However, that’s not the point of this post (I seriously have no idea if there is an advantage/disadvantage to going first in the game).
It’s this quote, from the rulebook, that the post highlights:
“The player who most recently won a game of Terraforming Mars is given the first player marker…”
Further discussion in the thread indicates that the poster seriously considers this a rule that should be followed.
What?
Read MoreColossal Cat in the Box From Bezier Games Coming to Kickstarter – August 29
(Edit: 8/29/23:) – It’s live! And it’s $81 CDN before shipping.
Something to think about…
Exciting news for trick-taking fans everywhere, especially those of the quantum trick-taking game Cat in the Box.
I like to think that Bezier Games decided to release this now because I finally did my review of the game (Editor: “We’ll let you have your delusions”)
What is “this”, you might ask?
“This” is the Colossal Cat in the Box edition of the brilliant card game, coming to Kickstarter on August 29th from Bezier Games.
(All images in this post provided by Bezier Games)
Apparently, according to the press release, it will be exclusive to Kickstarter, so whether or not it will ever hit retail is unknown.
Designed by Muneyuki Yokouchi with artwork by Osamu Inoue, the Colossal edition will revamp all of the components as well as come with two mini-expansions!
Read MoreJuly 2023 Gaming
July was an interesting month for gaming, mainly because I had no idea what kind of gaming I would get in.
I was off the entire month of July, so there wouldn’t be any lunch time work games.
However, there were no Sunday holidays so every Sunday would be a game day.
I also got an extra game night in, something that I think I will be repeating once a month from now on.
So what ended up happening?
Here’s my list of games played.
I managed to get 14 games played (one fewer than June) and 16 plays of those games (4 fewer than June).
It probably wouldn’t even have been that much if I didn’t have some quick games in there.
Here are the games in grid form, so you can see even better!
Many thanks to Boardgame Stats for a great app that produces these images.
Some interesting stuff this month, even if there isn’t quite as much.
Let’s take a look at it.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 