After a pretty rough day of travel yesterday, our plane landed in San Diego around 11:45pm. By the time we got to the rental car center to get our car and made it to the air bnb it was 12:30am. I only got about 5 hours of sleep due to a combination of the room having no curtains, an early sunrise and the time difference. But we made it out of the accommodations around 7:30am and ate breakfast at the very popular Point Break Cafe where we saw plenty of gamers, designers (David Thompson and Liz Davidson), content creators (ZillaBlitz and Grant Linneberg with Pushing Cardboard) and friends we had a fantastic Southern California breakfast and arrived at the S.E.S. Portuguese Hall of San Diego at 8:30am and began setting up for our first game of the day Baltic Empires from GMT Games. 

Baltic Empires covers the period in the Baltic region from the collapse of the Teutonic Order in 1558 to the end of the Great Northern War in 1721. The game really focuses on representing both the mercantilist economic thinking of the time, the very limited resources at hand on the state/ruler level and the destructive nature of warfare and its effects on the local economy. When war occurs in spaces infrastructure can be destroyed and it is very expensive to keep replacing units that just die on the battlefield.

The game has 5 factions including Denmark-Norway, Sweden, Poland-Lithuania, Prussia-Brandenburg and Russia. Each power has 2 common victory conditions and 1 or 2 that are specific to that power. The shared victory conditions are either control of 2 custom houses or being the hegemon on all 3 tracks at the same time.

One of my favorite parts about the game was that each turn, 5 Dramatis Personae Cards are randomly drawn from the deck and become available for purchase by the players in the Production phase. These cards have a wide variety of effects, but can be broadly divided into 4 types: those that have permanent effects, those that have one-time effects, those that affect victory conditions and those that provide a special leader unit. These cards are excellent fun and really create somewhat of a race to purchase the best cards before others can acquire them. Now after having said that our draws of cards for the first 2 turns were not good and hardly anyone invested in them but that changed later.

I loved the game and very much enjoyed the lite nature of the game. The economic system is simple, but manages to capture a lot of key elements of this period. Each province has between 0 and 3 resource icons and between 0 and 2 city icons. If a workshop marker is present on a resource icon the province produces 1 of that type of resource and if a city marker is present on a city icon the province produces 1 thaler (the currency of the game). There is one twist though, as provinces under noble control will contribute a maximum of 1 of the resources and 1 of the thalers produced in it to the central administration while the rest is discarded as it goes into the coffers of the local nobility. Only provinces where royal control has been imposed will contribute their full income to the player. In addition to this there are 3 trade center provinces on the map, and these generate extra income for their controlling player as they are able to tax the trade there. Just a great little game that I hope to explore further later.

Alexander’s Poland ran away with it with a Hegemonic superiority victory (Hegemony leader for Mercantile, Production and Military). Great lite wargame similar to Mare Nostrum from Academy Games.

Our next game was a bit deeper and more involved in The Weimar Republic. The game is a Card Driven Game of political struggle in interwar Germany where 4 unique factions compete for dominance including the democratic Coalition, the Soviet-backed Communist Party, Hitler’s National Socialists and the far-right Radical Conservatives. The game covers the Interwar Years between 1919-1933 and represents all of the different fighting factions trying to gain control in Germany’s regions and major cities, to maneuver the political landscape of the Republic, and to dominate through a combination of propaganda, parliamentary elections, street violence and economic influence. This situation sets itself up perfectly for a game to explore the various parties involved.

The game makes me think of a COIN Series like game as each faction has their own unique abilities and powers but also win in their own way. The game also visually looks like a COIN game as it uses multi-colored wooden cubes to represent influence in the various districts of pre-WWII Germany.

A major focus of the game is the concept of Elections. Each Era has a number of Election Cards (based on the historical number of Elections) that are shuffled into the Event Card decks. When an Election Card is played, both a Regional and a General Election is held at the end of that round. Election scoring is based on players’ Dominance over spaces and Regions, with modifiers such as Middle Class Sympathies, Cadres, military Supremacy, etc. Regional Elections gives Parliamentary Control over the game’s Regions while a General Election can potentially end the game – if anyone but the Coalition wins a General Election, that player also immediately wins the game.

Players draw a hand of cards for each Era and use their AP to conduct Actions. You don’t chose between AP and Event as when you play an Event Card the Event always takes place, unless there are some requirements that aren’t met. You don’t need to play a card every turn – in fact you can’t, as there are fewer cards in a hand than turns in an Era and you may only play one Event Card per turn. However, you always have a basic 1 AP that may be used by itself or in combination with any Event Card played, so during some turns you will be using only that basic point. You can also pass which allows you to discard a card and draw a new one.

I very much like what I was doing but need to continue to learn the rules so I know what I should be doing. We had a good time and I look forward to another play in the near future. I was able to pull a victory out as the Coalition, which I understand is generally pretty difficult.

Our final game of the evening was a look at a new and as-of-yet unannounced collaboration between Mark Herman and Mark Simonitch called Caesar: Rome vs Rome. This game is a CDG and uses the same system found in Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul from GMT Games but covers the Roman Civil War where Caesar confronted the Republic and the forces of Pompey.

The game really is focused on the struggle for political control of the empire as players will play events, move armies and fight in order to control the minds of the people.

Battles are commons and a major part of the game but the game is very snappy and only lasts 5 turns.

I think that this one is going to be a winner and I very much appreciated Mark Herman showing us the game. I have been told that it will be announced on the P500 in December.

That was our day! 3 big games and lots of good times were had by all. Tomorrow we have an early morning game of Thirty Years of Misery from VUCA Simulations and I also hope to sit down with Russell Brown to get a look at Checkpoint Charlie from GMT Games and possibly Coast Watchers from GMT Games with Volko. See you tomorrow evening for a synopsis of Day 2.

-Grant

What a long day! Made up mostly of travel but I’m exhausted. We left my house this morning at 8:30am via an Uber to the airport where we made it through security and to our gate for a 10:15am flight from Indianapolis to Chicago where we transferred over with a 2-hour layover to a 1:30pm flight to Columbia, South Carolina.

We landed in Columbia at 4:30pm, grabbed our luggage and picked up our rental car to make the 35 minute drive to Camden, South Carolina on I-20.

We checked into the hotel and made our way over to the Camden Revolutionary War Visitor Center for the opening social event where we gathered with about 60 fellow wargamers who have all made the effort to travel here to play games over their weekend and also to tour the historic sites in and around Camden. If you didn’t know, Camden was pivotal to the story of the Southern Campaign during the American Revolutionary War with two battles fought within 6 miles of each other, bracketing the British occupation of the town. The Battle of Camden in 1780 was a decisive British victory that crushed the American Southern Army and brought disgrace to American General Horatio Gates. The Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill in 1781 was a British tactical victory that proved to be a strategic defeat.

We were able to catch up with lots of viewers of our videos and friends we have known for a long time as well as several designers, including Sam London and Justin Fassino. I also got a chance to chat with Gene Billingsley from GMT Games for about 30 minutes on a number of topics including gaming, publishing games, life and the event. I want to say that I took this opportunity to beg Gene to see about making a Deluxe Edition of Here I Stand as they have done with other games such as Combat Commander and For the People with new updated art, components and boards. He was not spilling any beans on the subject and wouldn’t give me an indication if it was either in the works or planned fur the future. Bummer but I made my pitch.

We then had a fantastic introduction on the event and the commemoration of America’s 250th Anniversary from Battles of the American Revolution Series designer Mark Miklos and Gene Billingsley. There were a lot of very touching and patriotic words spoken by these 2 and I truly felt great pride in our nation and the experiment that created it and has kept us strong these past 250 years.

We then were treated to a live artillery firing by local volunteers of a period 1-pounder and it was quite impressive. When it was fired, it was past sunset and quite dark and the explosion was quite impressive and very loud.

Here are 2 videos we took of the firing with one being in real speed and the other in slow motion.

That was our evening and I’m very excited for tomorrow as there is an opening ceremony at 8:30am followed by open gaming. Alexander and I will be playing Oriskany, which is a bonus game included in Newtown from the American Revolution Tri-Pack #2, followed by a 4-player game of Liberty or Death. The evening will conclude with a group dinner.

-Grant

I was supposed to wake up at 6:50am this morning but due to the fact that I was so excited to get going I actually woke up at 5:15 and was unable to get back to sleep. So I just got up and got ready early and was able to leave my house at 7:15, which was about 45 minutes earlier than I expected. Ultimately this was a good thing as it allowed me to drive a bit more leisurely and stop to go to the restroom and get more soda to keep me going. I drove 5 1/2 hours to the Pittsburgh Airport to pick up my friend Mike Heckman who had flown in from St. Louis. His flight left about 20 minutes later than scheduled but they must have made up some time as they arrived only 10 minutes past his scheduled arrival time.

It’s a bit lonely driving by myself but I had some good tunes and the time went quickly. It was nice though to have Mike in the car to chat and that made the final 90 miles to Seven Springs fly by. We arrived at the resort at around 3:30 and got checked in and unloaded the car and were in the room getting organized pretty quickly. We then tried to decide what game to start the convention with and I had brought For the People from GMT Games so we made our choice and headed down to the main gaming area.

It took us about 30 minutes to setup and get the rules overview done and we jumped right into it with the campaign game.

I own the 25th Anniversary Edition which is absolutely gorgeous with beautiful cover art done by Donal Hagerty and a double sided mounted map board with the original on one side and a redesigned map by Terry Leeds on the other.

If you don’t know, For the People is a Strategic level Card-Driven board-wargame covering the whole 4+ years of the American Civil War. We played 5 full turns in about 4 hours which included dinner, talking with several people and chatting about our experience with the game.

My initial opinion is that there is a lot to like here but the game is fairly rules-heavy and complex. I didn’t find the players aid all that helpful and we just seemed to bounce off of the rules. I also found that the strategy is very challenging, as would be expected with my first play of the game, and I had a great deal of trouble getting the required 3 Ops cards to activate my generals. In fact, in 5 turns I was only able to activate about 5 times. I just kept drawing a lot of 1 and 2 Ops cards.

This truly felt like the Union generals, especially McClellan, were afraid to be aggressive and this element is demonstrated by this friction and lack of lower activation Generals. Burnsides and Pope were my only early Generals with a 2 and they were able to do a bit more until Pope was killed in battle (of course). Through the game and its mechanics, I can see why Lincoln would get frustrated with their lack of aggression and ultimately would make leadership changes. Is this a prime example of design for effect? I think it actually felt historically well done but from a playability perspective makes it tough. Would reserve points be a good addition to this like in games such as Labyrinth where you can play a 1 Ops card to then later add to a 2 Ops card to get to 3? Just a thought I had that kept rolling through my head. I liked what I was doing but I didn’t like it while I was doing it. Does that make sense?

I will also say that the CSA generals are comparably much, much better and typically activate on 2’s which makes it much easier to do anything with them. I think that I just had bad luck but once the CSA got Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia was created he was literally a demolition crew annihilating my Union armies. In fact outside of 3 victorious battles, I lost about 7-8 times and was really getting rocked. The only real saving grace for me was that I drew the Frederick Douglas card in my first hand that gave me 5 Strength points of troops to place out to protect Washington from attacks. Had that card not been drawn I think that Washington might have fallen.

I very much enjoy the political control markers and the initial battle for control of the Border States of Kentucky, West Virginia and Missouri. This was a nice part of the game and I can see the connection between other games from Mark Herman such as Washington’s War.

Overall I want to explore the game more. I have some issues but I think that a few more plays will change my opinion as I learn the strategy. Overall a good intro to the game and I am intrigued.

Well that’s it for day 1. Short and sweet with a lot of travel. And I am simply exhausted. Got up very early. And now it’s late. I’m going to sleep well…I hope. Tomorrow we will be in a major game of Grand Tactical Series The Devil’s Cauldron: The Battles for Arnhem and Nijmegen and Where Eagles Dare: The Battle for Hell’s Highway from Multi-Man Publishing. I’m very much looking forward to it.

-Grant