Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Review – Aces of Valor
Ever since the pandemic started, I have been collecting a lot of solo wargames. Even once the lockdowns ended and life returned to at least relative normal, I still found the idea of chucking dice or drawing cards for a game where I am the only one in control of the action to be quite enticing, even when I lose my table space (I will get back to my Storm Above the Reich campaign. I promise!).
And, of course, it does make me have to decide whether to cheat or not.
I’ve also always been drawn to World War I flying days ever since the old Commodore Amiga game, Dawn Patrol (I think that was its name).
So when I heard about the new solo World War I flying game from Legion Wargames, called Aces of Valor, there was no way I was passing it up.
This game, designed by Erik von Rossing with art by Vincent Bourguignon, Randy Lein and Mark Mahaffey, was just published in 2023 and I got it in my hot little hands only a month or so ago.
I also published a storage solution option from Cube4Me that really makes the game easy to get to the table. In the game, you are supposed to keep a bunch of different counters in various cups so that you can draw them randomly. With that storage tray, I find I can get by with just one or two cups and put the counters back in the trays when I need a new group.
It works quite well!
I’ve done three missions now (campaigns can be Short (8 missions), Medium (12 missions) or Long (16 missions)) so I felt like I could write a review.
Which I wanted to do prior to doing After Action Reports, which will be coming soon!
So how does the game play?
Let’s take a look.
(You can click on the images to blow them up if you need to)
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – How Do You Use Boardgame Geek?
It’s Friday, the week is over, the shots are flowing, and I’m thinking about board games.
Because that’s what I do!
One of the best things for a lot of board gamers is Boardgame Geek.
You can find so much good stuff on the Geek, including news from Eric Martin and the wonderful Candace Harris to a listing for basically every board game that has ever even been a figment of somebody’s imagination.
Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not much!
I almost live on the Geek. I visit it multiple times a day.
I look at it every day, I subscribe to the forums for every game that I own, and even to a few that I may want to own in the future (or just want to follow even though I don’t own them).
Of course, as my game ownership has increased, that means my forum post subscriptions have increased exponentially from there!
Which got me to thinking (though maybe that’s the vodka talking), how do you use the Geek?
Read MoreUnderworld Expansion Coming to Digital Root
It’s been a light week here at Dude Take Your Turn (sorry about that), but I saw this pop into my email yesterday and I knew I had to talk about it.
The wonderful digital version of Root (published by Dire Wolf Digital) is getting its fourth expansion, The Underworld, on March 30.
What is Root?
It’s a game of asymmetric warfare among anthropomorphic animal species for control of the woodlands (or I guess with this expansion maybe a lake or a mountain). It was designed by Cole Wehrle with art by Kyle Ferrin and published by Leder Games in 2018.
The base game was already good, made even better with the Riverfolk expansion.
I’ve at least played with these in my one play on the table.
I have no experience with the Underworld expansion at all.
Which means I’m really looking forward to it!
There are two new factions in Underworld.
The Underground Duchy is attempting to bring order to the Woodland above, trying to end the endless chaotic fighting.
The Corvid Conspiracy, on the other hand, uses terror and cunning plots to take control.
I know my friends who have played with this expansion a lot (hi, Michal!) can tell you even more about them.
There are even two new maps!
Here is the mountain map, and there’s also a beautiful lake map as well (check out the news post for that one).
The expansion will also add an Advanced Setup option, allowing players who own 6 or more factions (so essentially at least one major expansion) to draft and setup factions.
Even better, as long as the player who sets up the game has them, players who join them don’t even have to have the expansions.
Win-win!
Another bonus that Dire Wolf always seems to do is that the expansions are all cross-platform.
If you buy it on iOS, you will have it on Steam as well. It will also be coming out on Android and Nintendo Switch, of course.
All this and more is coming your way on March 30.
Hell, maybe I should probably review the app itself one of these days.
Nah…why should I do that?
Are you as excited about this as I am?
Let me know in the comments.
Terminal City Tabletop Convention Retrospective – 2023
It’s Wednesday and part of me is still coming down from the high of a weekend full of boardgames!
For the first time since March 2019, the annual (until COVID, damn it) Terminal City Tabletop Convention was held in my hometown of Vancouver this last weekend.
There were new organizers this time around and the venue has moved to downtown Vancouver, which is really convenient for me!
I still drove, because I brought a ton of games and didn’t want to carry them too far, but it was still nice to just be 5-10 minutes away.
And wow, were there a lot of games to play!
Unlike many conventions, Terminal City is only a Saturday and Sunday affair, so it wasn’t quite as much gaming as OrcaCon, but there was definitely a lot of good stuff there.
Read MoreThe Last Hundred Yards (Volume 2) – Airborne Over Europe – Storage Solution With Rails on Boards
Hey there!
It’s Dave, your friendly neighbourhood board game storage solution guy.
You may know me from my stint on an old Simpsons episode.
Ummm…or maybe not.
Anyway, after extolling the virtues of the various wargame storage solutions from Rails on Boards (Cube4Me), and even putting together one of my own, it’s time to show you another one that I put together with the trays they provided me.
Thanks, guys!
I’ve owned The Last Hundred Yards (Volume 2): Airborne Over Europe for quite a while now though I haven’t been able to play it yet.
The game was designed by Mike Denson and published by GMT Games in 2020.
After looking through what was left of the counter trays that Rails on Boards sent to me, and realizing that I have a distinct shortage of card deck trays, I thought about it and realized that I had the perfect solution: one of the few games I have that doesn’t have cards!
It worked out even more perfectly than I could even imagine.
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreNew to Me – February 2023
February is the shortest month of the year, though it can seem quite long (or did before a stat holiday was added to it).
It can seem even longer when you don’t get as many games played as usual!
As I mentioned in my February gaming post, missing two Sundays and a week of no games at work, it was only natural that fewer games would be played.
I still think playing 14 games in 28 days isn’t anything to be sniffed at.
I even managed to get five “new to me” games played!
That’s pretty good.
I’ll just pat myself on the back for that.
I even managed to get one of the new plays to be from 2015!
That kept any unrest in the Cult of the New to Me from manifesting.
I think they would prefer it if I maybe played something from 1963, though.
Anyway, they’re placated for now so I don’t care about them.
At least until the next fundraising car wash.
So without further ado (all of my ado was taken to Japan without my consent and given to somebody that they wouldn’t name anyway), let’s begin!
Read MoreFebruary 2023 Gaming
February was a weird month for gaming. I missed on Sunday Funday because of doing a math trade (where I traded 17 games for a bunch of money and 5 other games!) and then I was on vacation for a week so we didn’t play any games at work.
Plus, snow kept us home from another Sunday Funday.
Even so, I managed to play 16 games in February, which isn’t too bad!
I’ll talk about the “new to me” games in an upcoming post (hopefully Monday or Tuesday!), but let’s just talk a little bit about the other games.
Read MoreAces of Valor – Storage Solution with With Rails on Boards
Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of the Rails on Boards (Cube4Me) storage solution for wargames.
Heck, I’ve already done 5 posts about various ones that I have purchased from them.
However, you may notice that the title of this post is “with” Rails on Boards and not “from” Rails on Boards.
That’s because the kind folks there sent me a bunch of trays of various types, including a few card trays, and said “hey, why don’t you come up with some sets?” (I don’t think that’s an exact quote).
I may write with the panache and quality of…well, somebody who writes high-quality stuff with panache.
But trying to figure out spatial relationships, how things fit together, and all that jazz?
I said I would be willing to give it a try, though.
And here’s the first one, a very simple one (gotta start small, right?)
I just recently purchased my first game from Legion Wargames, a wargame company with some great-sounding games that I probably would never get to the table.
The game in question is Aces of Valor, a solitaire World War I air combat game where you are running a squadron of fighters and taking them through campaigns of certain lengths (8, 12 or 16 missions).
The game is designed by Erik von Rossing, was just published in 2023 (BGG says 2022 but I don’t think it was available until January sometime. I could be wrong) and it looks very cool!
As I was punching out the counters (only two sheets), I got to thinking that this would make a good candidate for my first Cube4Me job.
And it worked almost perfectly.
Read MoreTwilight Struggle: Red Sea Coming to Digital via Playdek on March 28
(Edit 3/28/23) – Playdek announced in the March GMT newsletter that they wouldn’t be meeting the March 28 release date. Further information will be released as soon as they have it.
More news from the GMT February newsletter!
This one is exciting too, though not quite equal to yesterday‘s.
The newsletter also had the announcement from Playdek that the electronic version of the new lunchtime game Twilight Struggle: Red Sea lunchtime game (which I just finally picked up a few weeks ago and haven’t played yet) is coming to digital platforms on March 28!
Published on the table by GMT Games, this game is a quick-playing miniature version of the classic game, playable in a 45-60 minute time frame and focused solely on the Red Sea area of the world.
I’ve been looking forward to breaking this out but logistics has made it impossible so far.
Hopefully I’ll be able to do so prior to being able to play it on my iPad!
It’s Playdek so you know it will be good. They’ve done an excellent job with the Twilight Struggle app as well as Labyrinth: the War on Terror app.
I thought this would be a longer-term project. The fact that it’s coming out so soon hopefully means they will be able to start on that Imperial Struggle app or something else GMT-related!
It will be available to pre-order on Steam, iOS and Android on February 28, so you know I will be down on that one.
No word on cost, yet. I guess we’ll see when the pre-order page goes up.
This is exciting me as well.
You know a review of this baby will be coming at some point.
Let me know what you think in the comments, and whether we might be able to get a game in!
Combat Commander News from GMT Games
(Edit – 2/25/23) – Kai Jensen confirmed on Boardgame Geek that the Minor Nations battle pack will just have updated scenarios with the new Minor Nations artwork on them. I’ve asked whether or not the Minor Nations counters will be the same as the Italian/French counters but with updated artwork, names, and leader names. I’m assuming that they will be or the scenarios would be really changed. But I’ll update here if that’s different
I was taking the week off (both from work and blogging) but then the GMT monthly newsletter came out and I had to share this excitement.
Remember from previous GMT updates the stuff about some news regarding Combat Commander?
Well, this news is big!
If you’re a fan of the game.
Even better if you’ve become interested in the game because of my ladder posts and couldn’t find the game to get started!
Both the base Combat Commander: Europe game and the two expansions for it (Mediterranean and Resistance) have been languishing on the P500 reprint list for quite a while. They’ve been impossible to find.
But now GMT Games has announced that they are issuing Combat Commander: Europe as it was always planned: both in the same master set!
Yes, now you can order off the P500 list the new Combat Commander: Europe/Med. Master Edition for $99 US.
Read More
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