Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Books Review – Double Threat/Double Dose by F. Paul Wilson
F. Paul Wilson is a fantastic author, know for his Secret History of the World books, most notably the Repairman Jack novels.
Many of his books (and especially those in the Secret History) are thrillers with some kind of supernatural/interdimensional antagonist with cosmic implications from the plot (or the ongoing plot, in the case of the Repairman Jack novels).
While there is some humour in there (at least the Jack books, which I’ve read almost all of), I wouldn’t necessarily describe them as “funny.”
Double Threat and Double Dose, a 2-book series (called the “Duad Series”) that is vaguely part of the Secret History, is funny as hell, though it’s also kind of a terrifying thriller too.
That’s almost solely due to the relationship between Daley (the main character) and “Pard” (a self-named entity that kinda/sorta entered her head).
Daley is a grifter who grew up in a family of grifters. Even though her mother and (after she died) her Gram and uncle try to shift her out of that life, her Family upbringing continues to guide her.
On the run from a scam that went bad, she’s suddenly (and I won’t explain how) plagued with a voice inside her head.
That won’t shut up.
Read MoreSeptember 2025 Gaming
September was a weird month of gaming, mainly because I had a huge number of plays compared to August, but actually fewer games!
Part of that was because the final two Sunday game days were dominated by a huge game of Wonderland’s War (details in my next “new to me” games post), so that I only played one other game each of those days.
Some Sundays, we manage to get 3-4 games in because we play some shorter ones.
Not this month!
On the other hand, a couple of games were played a bunch, which is why the total plays beats August by a lot.
Finally, ten “new to me” games in September (with only 19 games in general) means that I won’t talk about a lot of them in this post!
Here’s what I played in September.
And here it is in grid format!
I love Boardgame Stats and how it can give me such great information.
I have to say, playing a quick filler type game can really add to your play stats when you play the hell out of it.
Let’s take a look at the non-new games I played this month!
Like I said, this may be short…
Read MoreReal-Time Heroes – 5 Minute Marvel Review
I’m not a huge fan of real-time games, mainly because my brain doesn’t make decisions that quickly and thus I often find myself behind everybody else.
Cooperative games can be a little different, because everybody’s trying to help each other and you’re not competing with everybody else.
But it can still be annoying.
Then you have a game like 5 Minute Marvel, the game with a bit of a confusing title (more on that in a bit).
5 Minute Marvel is a real-time cooperative card game published by Korea Boardgames and Spin Master in 2018.
It was designed by Connor Reid with artwork by Alex Diochon.
How is it confusing?
Each player gets to be one of a series of Marvel heroes, all of you working through a bunch of villain bosses to make your way to the ultimate boss: Thanos (of course).
But are you?
Read MoreStop Stealing My Stuff! – Cover Your Assets review
Some people don’t like “take that” games, where you are actively trying to harm your opponent (not literally, of course, unless you’re playing a game in some action movie against a mad villain who has made this a kill or be killed situation).
These games could be what are called “dudes on a map” games where you are attacking your opponent and trying to take territory, or maybe a wargame or something.
Rarely are you just playing a card game, though.
Cover Your Assets (also called “Grandpa Beck’s Cover Your A$$ets“) is that card game exception, though.
The game, designed by Brent and Jeffrey Beck with artwork by David Bock, Andrew Bosley, Anne Pätzke, and Apryl Stott, was published by Grandpa Beck’s Games back in 2011.
And it’s still available!
That’s a game with staying power.
This is a game about stealing.
Not stealing your spouse, which would be more of a messed up game of Fog of Love.
It’s about stealing…look at the title and guess…yes, your assets!
That’s all it is. Collecting assets and trying to steal assets from the other players.
It sounds kind of like a take that game, eh?
But don’t worry.
This is actually fun, even if you don’t generally like take that.
Read MoreIt Could Be Anyone! – Final Girl – Panic at Station 2891 Review
Anybody with any horror movie knowledge has heard of The Thing, directed by John Carpenter.
This 1982 movie takes place on an Antarctic base with some kind of organism or creature inhabiting people and slowly assimilating all of the members of the scientific team down there.
Even if you’ve never seen it, you’ve probably heard of it.
I’ve never seen it!
But I know the tropes.
So does Van Ryder Games and designer A.J. Porfirio!
Final Girl is a solo game that takes all of these horror movie tropes and makes a great solo game out of them.
There’s a core set and then “feature films” that bring a new killer, a new location, and two new “final girls” (the lone female character who survives and ends up killing the killer).
I reviewed the game itself as well as the first feature film here.
My next feature film purchase was from Season 2 and called Panic at Station 2891, which of course is a take-off of The Thing.
The artwork in this one is by Roland MacDonald and it was published in 2023.
The killer in this one is The Organism, the thing infecting everybody in the base.
There could be anywhere from one to three killers in this one, so watch out!
The location is, of course, Station 2891, an arctic (or Antarctic, it never really says) base that’s completely isolated except by helicopter.
Combine these two and you have a pulse-pounding, fear-inducing game that’s full of thrills and chills until you ultimately die (or at least that’s my experience).
Let’s take a look at it!
Read MoreFirst Impressions – Galactic Cruise
This is another “first impressions” post about a new game, a game that I’m not sure I will get three plays of but yet one I want to talk about.
As I said in my Friday Night Shots post about first impressions, this is not going to be a review.
I’ve only played it once!
And I’m in the middle of three asynchronous games on Boardgame Arena.
But I certainly haven’t played it enough to review.
So please keep that in mind.
Galactic Cruise is a game about space tourists and catering to their every whim (kind of, in an abstract kind of way).
It was designed by T.K. King, Dennis Northcott, Koltin Thompson with artwork by the incredible Ian O’Toole. It was published by Kinson Key Games in 2025.
This feels a lot like a Vital Lacerda game and, considering that I’ve heard that the designers were inspired by his games, that’s a good thing!
This game has intrigued me for quite a while so I was glad to finally get it to the table this past weekend.
It’s now in Alpha status on Boardgame Arena and, seeing that, I started a couple games of it and was kind of lost.
The Heavy Cardboard playthrough and teach really helped me get a handle on it, though, and playing it on the table doubled that.
Apparently Paul Grogan’s teach video is also really helpful.
After all of this anticipation, was it worth it?
Read MoreNew to Me – August 2025
I love playing games that are new, even more when they’re older but still new to me!
You know what I love even more?
Having reviewed a bunch of them already so I don’t have to try and condense a description of them for this post.
Yes, August was a great month for new to me games, with a wide variety of interesting subjects and mechanisms and a couple of major highlights.
It’s always so satisfying, learning something new.
Members of the Cult of the New to Me weren’t exactly happy, though, since the oldest game was from 2022 and there were too many from 2024 and later.
They got quite irate!
Thankfully I organized a pool party and they were all having so much fun that they kind of forgot about it.
Quick thinking!
If you’d like to join the cult, I am a benevolent cult leader.
And there’s cookies!
You can’t beat that.
Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was traded away for peace in our time anyway), let’s begin!
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario C – Ichiki Attacks
Have you ever played a game where the worst mistake you made in the game was 2-3 days before you played it?
Now I have!
Welcome to another adventure in the exciting Combat Commander ladder, that monthly tournament of one of the finest games out there where you too can be a victim of gods you didn’t even know existed.
The ladder, administered by the impeccable Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials Youtube fame, is also a great place to play pick-up games where maybe you can kind of even out your odds a bit throughout the month.
The September and October scenarios on the ladder are from Combat Commander: Pacific, so we all have to relearn a bunch of different rules that probably haven’t been used since last October.
This month, I was matched up against Ted L, a second-time opponent who beat me handily in a game last August where I also made one of the most colossal blunders I’ve ever made.
Coincidence?
Anyway, much like last September’s scenario, Patrick had the lowest-rated AREA player choose which side they wanted to be.
A couple of days beforehand, I chose the Japanese.
Yeah, in this scenario, that was really really really stupid.
Did I mention it was stupid?
The scenario is Ichiki Attacks, where the Japanese are doing a human wave assault against American positions on the island of Guadalcanal.
Here’s the setup.
(Don’t forget you can click on a picture to blow it up)
The Americans (khaki, Ted) set up Wire as shown in the picture, which thankfully the wonderful Scott has the Vassal setup already do so you don’t have to.
(That may have been there before Scott started doing VASSAL updates, but I still want to give him credit for all the incredible work he does)
They are in Defend mode and get 4 cards.
The Japanese (white, me) then set up one hex deep on the bottom of the board, so basically one squad per hex and your only choices are which squads go in which hex and where to put the leaders.
They start in Banzai mode, which has a couple of interesting (and potentially deadly) rules.
First, they only get 3 cards in hand.
Secondly, they can use the Charge order, which rallies all broken Japanese units and activates them to move.
However, all enemies are activated to fire without a Fire card.
Finally, all eliminated Japanese units go to the next space on the Time Track to come back as reinforcements, rather than going to the elimination track.
I’m terrible at attacking, but I lost this scenario to my friend Michal as the US, so I thought maybe this might be fun and educational?
Well, it was both!
Educational in the “Think Better Next Time” sense.
The only other special rules are that when a Japanese unit enters a river hex, the Americans then get to place their reinforcements on the next Time Track space.
When a Japanese unit enters a palm or jungle hex on the American side of the river, then the Japanese can do the same with their reinforcements.
How’d I fare?
Well, you can probably guess, but it was still an entertaining game!
Read MoreAugust 2025 Gaming
It’s nice when a month of gaming comes together in unexpected ways is better than you expected it to be.
I was surprised by July’s gaming numbers, considering I was off.
August came around and I was going to be missing one Sunday due to a no-ship math trade (I received some money and one Final Girl film for five games I was never going to play again).
Combine that with one of my gaming co-workers being away for a week, so I thought that the lunch-time gaming would be slower this month as well.
But it all worked out really well!
A new 2-player game to play with my other game-playing co-worker, a new solo game I wanted to try, and multiple games on some of the other days, all added up to a very good month!
Not convention-worthy or anything, but very solid.
I ended with a total of 28 plays of 22 different games.
Here’s what I played.
And here it is in grid format!
Many thanks to the incredible BG Stats app for helping get this information.
Read MoreWitch One Will You Convict? – Witchcraft! Review
Solo games make a great thing to do when you’re working at home and want to take a lunch break to enjoy some games.
David Thompson, Trevor Benjamin, and Roger Tankersley already have a wonderful solo game called Resist! that almost brought a tear to my eye.
However, in 2023, they enhanced the system with a new game with some of the same mechanics but some deviations that make it very different.
Witchcraft! (Why do these publishers put punctuation in the title?????) is a new design from the intrepid trio (and when I say “new,” I mean it came out in 2023) that feels somewhat familiar but yet totally a new game as well.
It was published by Salt & Pepper Games and has artwork from the always awesome Albert Monteys.
Gone is the pre-World War II Spanish Revolution setting.
Instead, Witchcraft (no more exclamation points, please) takes place in a pseudo-17th century village with some supernatural occurrences adding to the fantasy element.
The designers do give recognition to those women who, historically, were classified as witches and burned at the stake for nothing more than misguided suspicion.
But the game itself has a real coven full of families of witches, village elders who need to be convinced that nothing bad is going on, and potential supernatural happenings that need to be prevented even as the coven is trying to protect itself.
In many ways, Witchcraft is actually the better game, even if Resist is a more enriching experience, if that makes sense.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 