Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Book Review – The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 by Rick Atkinson
I’ve been reading Rick Atkinson’s military history books for years and years, partially because it has taken him years and years to get them out!
The World War II Liberation trilogy was simply sensational, and took 11 years to actually get finished.
Now, Atkinson is taking on the American Revolution.
The first book, The British Are Coming, came out in 2019 and covered the first 3 years of the war, from 1775 to 1777.
Now, the second book is out.
The Fate of the Day covers 1777 to 1780 and goes through the uncertain future of the Revolution as the American Colonials faced defeat after defeat, super-cold winters (including one that could be said to have almost ended the rebellion at Valley Forge in 1777-78), and an ineffective Congress.
In these middle years of the war, only a fateful victory at Saratoga, and the ill-fated occupation (and then withdrawal from) Philadelphia by the British, lifted American hopes that the British could actually be defeated.
Otherwise, money shortages, shortages of ammunition and supplies, and deserting troops made American defeat very possible.
Atkinson is a great popular military historian and his books are always well-researched (which kind of explains how long they take to get published).
His books are filled with historical footnotes, images, and the like. I read books mostly on an e-reader, and I can say that the main text of this book only takes up the first 43% of the book or so.
The tons of endnotes are just staggering, showcasing just how deeply researched this book is.
Read MoreHave Fun Storming the Castle! – Castle Combo Review
One of the really common things about our Sunday game days, unless we are playing a couple of really deep games that take too much time, is to have 30-45 minutes left after the main game and then trying to decide if we should all go home or if we want to try something short and sweet.
There are so many great short and sweet games, that my choice is always to play one of those, unless everybody else wants to go.
One of the common ones, depending on who is there (since I don’t own the game), is Castle Combo.
This game hits the very definition of both options: short and sweet.
It plays in about 20 minutes and can play up to 5 players.
Which is also good on those odd days where we have a bunch of people.
Designed by Grégory Grard and Mathieu Roussel, with cute artwork by Stéphane Escapa, this game was published in 2024 by Catch Up Games.
This is the ideal filler because it’s easy, doesn’t take a lot of thought but does take some, and it’s really just a great cool-down after a brain-burning game like Civolution.
Castle Combo is a card-drafting game where you are drafting cards to build a 3×3 tableau of cards.
It’s the scoring combos that make the game interesting.
Read MoreNew to Me – September 2025
I love months where I play a bunch of games that I have no experience with.
September gaming was great for the number of plays, but even better for the new to me games that I got to play!
I especially love it when there’s a good mix of lighthearted, relatively short, interesting games and those games that make your brain burn if you’re not careful.
September was a good example of that mix.
Even better for the Cult of the New to Me was that the ages of the games were mixed too.
Yes, there were a few 2025s and most of the other games were 2022 or later, but two of them were from before COVID.
I guess that’s how we’re defining time frames now.
Pre-lockdowns and post-lockdowns.
Anyway, they decided to give me a temporary pass on rebelling, at least for this month.
But no promises for next month if I don’t get some older new to me games played in October.
Who knew that cult members could be so unruly?
So without further ado (all of my ado was lost on some cosmic joyride anyway), let’s begin!
Read MoreBooks 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!
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Dude! Take Your Turn! 