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A Gaming Life
Expansion Review – Shards of Infinity: Into the Horizon
I’ve playing a ton of the Shards of Infinity app and I finally played the card game last year at Dice Tower West. I liked it so much that I bought it during the pandemic lockdown for me and the wife to play.
It really came into its own with the Relics of the Future expansion, though, fixing almost every problem I had with the base game.
But when I saw there was another expansion coming, I had to wonder: what was there left to add?
It turns out quite a bit.
Shards of Infinity: Into the Horizon is an expansion for this great game designed by
Gary Arant, Justin Gary, Ryan Sutherland, Jared Saramago, Mataio Wilson and Jason Zila with art by Kris Aubin, Jessica R. Eyler, Rod Mendez and Aaron Nakahara (this is definitely an expansion done by committee, but is that a bad thing in this case?).
It’s published by Stoneblade Entertainment and Ultra-PRO and just came out a couple of months ago (that’s 2021 for those of you looking back at this post a few years from now).
I already explained how to play the game in my Shards review, so I won’t go into that here.
What does this expansion add?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario M6 – Breakout
I’m now 5 months in to my time with the Combat Commander ladder run by the ever-wonderful Patrick Pence (he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials on Youtube) and it’s going great.
It’s tons of fun and I’m actually doing well!
(Ok, I’m actually 6 months in, but I had to take June off due to previously-mentioned bad times).
I went into this month’s game with a 3-1 record. Not bad!
For the month of October, we were playing Scenario M6 from the Combat Commander: Pacific battle pack New Guinea. This one was a tough-looking one for the Japanese.
This month, I was playing against Vlad M, a very gracious guy from the Midwest USA. We managed to coordinate a Saturday afternoon game this last weekend.
This scenario has the Australians (me) facing off against the Japanese (Vlad). The Australians are split up a little bit and the Japanese are desperately trying to breakout through their lines.
A couple of special rules:
- All water is considered Grass
- The Australians have to set up 3 squads south of hexrow 6 and 3 squads north of hexrow 5. The remaining forces can be set up anywhere within the Australian setup area, except that nothing can be set up in row 5 or 6.
- The Japanese are in “Banzai posture”, which means they only get 3 cards while the Australians are in “Recon” (5 cards). Banzai posture means that the Japanese can use the “Charge” order. This order rallies and unsuppresses all Japanese units not previously activated and then gives them a Move order. However, the Allies get an Opportunity Fire action without having to play the card for it.
This can do great things for the Japanese or it can be horrific. Rallying everybody is definitely a major plus, though.
The other great thing the Banzai posture does is that every Japanese unit (and weapon) that’s eliminated will come back next round as reinforcements. They never go to the Casualty Track.
Thankfully the Australians get enough foxholes for all of their units as well as a Heavy Machine-Gun that may really help with any Charges.
I did a pretty standard setup for the Australians and Vlad strung the Japanese out up and down the map (some players I’ve seen do a couple of concentrations in the north and south).
(You can click on the pictures to see them full size)
The Japanese set up last so that Vlad knew how I was positioned, and then they get to move first.
Then we began.
Read MoreOctober 2021 Monthly Update from GMT Games
It’s been since June that one of my favourite blogs, the Players’ Aid, has had a post about the monthly GMT Games update.
I’ve missed it (along with all of their other posts).
Life happens, I know. Both Grant and Alexander have been extremely busy and I totally understand that the video channel has to take precedence when you’re crunched for time.
So until Grant or Alexander can get out from under the heaping pile of whatever that they’re dealing with that is preventing blogging, I figured somebody had better take up the mantle of posting about the monthly GMT Games update.
I’m not going to be anywhere near as good as Grant is, though, because for one thing I’m not typically a wargamer (though I am becoming more and more of one recently, check out my P500 list below).
And for another…well, Grant’s awesome.
So this will be a shadow of Grant’s.
But I hope it will suffice in the meantime!
I got your back, Grant.
In case you want to go check it out for yourself (and really, why wouldn’t you?), here’s a link to the full update.
Let’s see what’s coming!
Read MoreApp Review – Oceans
I love science.
I love science even more when it’s in the name of a boardgame that’s talking about science.
That’s why I really like Evolution.
But wait, this isn’t about Evolution! Though it does have a pretty kick-ass app.
No, this review is about its…sequel, maybe? Where Evolution took place on land and involved evolving your land creatures into bastard predators or maybe some cute, huge dinosaur type creature that likes to eat all of the plants so other species die out (the prick), Oceans takes place in the…well, ocean (gee, I guess that’s where they got the name!) where you are evolving your sea creatures in much the same way.
Thus there isn’t even any science in the name.
Harumph.
Anyway, Oceans is a game designed by Nick Bentley, Dominic Crapuchettes, Ben Goldman and Brian O’Neill. The artwork is by Guillaume Ducos and Catherine Hamilton. Both the game itself and the app are published by North Star Games.
How does the game work?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreStorm Above the Reich – After Action Report – Mission #3
It’s time for another exciting (well, I think so) After Action Report for the Staffel Roy (a Luftwaffe squadron) as it tries to defend the Reich from American bombing.
The first two missions can be found here, and that’s also where I explain how most of the game works. Go there if you want to see that, then come back here for more.
This is, however, the first time I had to face Escort fighters, so I will explain that here.
Mission #3 seemed like it would start off very well. I had four Operation Points so I chose three pilots from my Staffel and equipped them all with Cannons!
Cannons just means that when you do damage to a bomber, you draw two damage chits and get to choose the one you want to apply.
I could have chosen Rockets (which allows you a one-time blast while you’re still waiting to approach the bomber formation), and may do that next time, as this time didn’t quite satisfy me.
Read MoreCombat Commander Europe – #12 Misty Mountain
The final scenario in the 8-month marathon of playing all 12 scenarios in Combat Commander: Europe! This was definitely a nail-biter. For a while there, I didn’t think the Time triggers could come fast enough. But I prevailed!
Michal will be doing a post analyzing all 12 scenarios and I’ll be reblogging that when he does it.
Just want to thank Michal again for these great reports (his pictures are much better than mine could ever be) and for being my guide through the game!
We’ve moved on to Combat Commander: Pacific (Scenario A already in the books) and I’m sure reports for those will be coming soon as well.
Incredible! We did it – we played with Dave the whole Combat Commander Europe Base Game in slightly over 8 months! This was asynchronous gaming, using the Discord for file exchange and interruptions as well as VASSAL to do the actual playing. That was such a joy and fun – organised approach, scenario by scenario, was also very welcome. To the extent that Dave started to play in CCE Ladder! I will provide today the session report from our game, but there will be one more post, summarizing the whole campaign, richly saturated with statistics!
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#10 CommandoSchools#11 Hold theLine
#12 Misty Mountain is a large scenario – you would expect…
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Review – The Rival Networks
I have always loved The Networks, ever since the beginning. It was one of my first Kickstarter games and it’s solidly in my Top 10 games of all time.
So when I heard that a 2-player version of the game, The Rival Networks, was coming to Kickstarter, you knew I had to back it.
I’ve never tried the 2-player variant for the original game, so I thought this would be a cool thing to have.
It arrived during the Summer of COVID 2021 and so I didn’t get a chance to play it until I got back to work in September.
The game is designed by Gil Hova with artwork by Heiko Günther and Travis Kinchy. It’s published by Hova’s Formal Ferret Games.
While it is a fun game, I was left feeling a little “blah” about the whole thing. It does make me want to see how the 2-player version of the original game is.
How does it work?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreStorm Above the Reich – After Action Report – Missions #1 & #2
Storm Above the Reich is a solo game (it can be played 2-players cooperatively, but why would you?) where you are leading a squadron of German Luftwaffe fighters against B-24 bombers who are attempting to bomb their targets. In the 1943 seasons, this is in the Mediterranean theater of operations while 1944 will have you over Germany.
The game was designed by Jeremy White and Mark Aasted with artwork by Antonis Karidis, Mark Simonitch and Jeremy White. It was published in 2021 by GMT Games.
The game is played over one or more seasons as part of a campaign. You are the leader of a German Air Force (Luftwaffe) squadron (staffel) who are defending Germany (or somewhere in the Mediterranean Theater to start with) against the relentless American bombing with B-24 bombers making their runs over German territory.
Your staffel consists of 18 pilots and for each mission, you will be choosing a number of your pilots (in addition to any support fighters) to go and try to shoot down as many bombers as you can.
You can play a mini-campaign of only one season (6-10 missions depending on the season) or you can an even longer campaign (though I think, if you don’t make the “don’t lose” victory point level at the end of the season, it ends anyway?).
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Are Boardgame Playthroughs Boring? Or Awesome?
It’s Friday and the vodka is flowing yet again.
What does that mean?
That my liver will be complaining for a while?
That is true, but it also means it’s time for another edition of Friday Night Shots!
I wasn’t actually sure what I would write about tonight, but then I got handed a topic on a platter.
The title is quite provocative!
As many people on Twitter pointed out.
Of course, they have changed the title since Rodney and others mentioned that this kind of negative labelling was not very helpful in fostering discussion about the topic.
I have to say, I haven’t watched the video so I’m not going to address the points actually made in the video.
Instead, I’m going to just give my own opinion on the topic.
Read MoreApp Review – Neuroshima Hex by Portal Games
(Edit – 12/14/21: I completely forgot to update this to say that the Steel Police faction is now out. Free if you had it in the app before! Now there are 5 factions to choose from)
The Neuroshima Hex app has been around for quite a while. Big Daddy Creations originally did it and it was actually not bad. But it became buggy as hell and the multiplayer (at least asynchronous) became virtually unusable.
I enjoyed playing it but finally it just subsided and went away as playing it with friends became more of a chore than an enjoyable time.
So when Portal Games announced that not only had they taken over the app, but that it would be coming out in September 2021, a lot of people cheered like never before.
But there was still some trepidation.
Portal hasn’t been brilliant at asynchronous multiplayer, including the Tides of Time app that almost called for it.
I was heartened when they said that not only would it have asynchronous play, but that those who owned the original app would get it as a free upgrade.
In addition, even though only the four base game factions would be available at start, if you owned the expansion factions, they would be free when they were implemented too!
Holy shit!
Talk about looking after your customers, especially when they’re not technically yours! (if we bought the Big Daddy version).
That was amazing news.
So the base game app came out. It’s available on iOS and Android.
How is it?
Let’s take a look.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 