Rinse and repeat with the after gaming sleeping and eating of breakfast. I was very tired this morning when the alarm went off at 7:30am. I knew I had a big day and hoped that I’d have the energy to do all that I had planned.

First up was a learning game of the brand new The Weimar Republic from GMT Games. The Weimar Republic 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, economic influence and ideological zeal. This situation sets itself up perfectly for a game to explore the various parties involved. I was able to get into a game with the Hoosier Herd gaming group from Bloomington, Indiana.

The game appears to be 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 grok 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.

Next up I sat down with Greg Smith to play the upcoming Korean Tide from Compass Games. I took Greg to the woodshed with the Chinese and had a great time with the game. This one is a very good addition to the Tide Series and adds in some new tricks.

One of the things that I liked was the addition of new Divisional Displays which hold the strength points and assets of each division. The player will track the strength points as they are lost and gained but also will keep track of their reserves which is a new concept. Reserves can be used to force a reroll of your opponents dice during combat or to reroll your dice. The reserves are created by reducing the division’s strength points by 1. There are also tank counters that are attached to units, particularly the North Korean units at the start of the game which add a single strength point but also cause the defender to retreat after being attacked regardless of outcome. Both of these additions are very nice changes.

Greg and I played for the first 2 years of the war including 1950 and 1951 and I was able to break his units and destroy several American divisions. But the real thorn in Greg’s side was my 6th KPA unit who was dug in and just wouldn’t die. I was able to continually feed them reinforcements and their combat rolls were amazing inflicting 2-3 losses on the UN forces while taking no more than 1 loss. Such an interesting system and I very glad that I was able to play it.

Next up was a game of Baltic Empires from GMT Games. Baltic Empires covers the tumultuous 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 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.

I loved the game and was doing quite well with Sweden as I had captured Riga and Kurland in the Baltics and had built up quite the nice economic engine.

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.

My final game of the evening was a look at The Emperor’s Voice and The Emperor’s Choice coming to Kickstarter soon from Worthington Publishing. I was able to sit down with Wes Crawford to play his game The Emperor’s Voice which covers midnight until noon on August 15, 1945 when an attempted Army coup occurred against the Emperor of Japan in order to stop the surrender. The Emperor’s Choice is about the week leading up to the attempted coup, where the Imperial Cabinet debated over the issues concerning the ultimate decision by the Emperor to surrender. The two games may be joined together to create one longer legacy game that may be played in about two hours, although each may be played separately as a complete game, too.

I played The Emperor’s Voice as the Honor player who is trying to convince the Emperor to call off the surrender. The game is played with each player having a set type of action cards with things like move, plot, force commit, attack and persuade. Each of these actions is used to move into position to influence key figures and generals to sway them to your side with the draw of random chits and event cards to overcome your opponents total influence of the figures.

It’s all very tense and planning is key as you only have a few turns of 4-5 card plays to sway the generals, find the recording to destroy it, pressure the emperor and take out resistance against you. It all works well to create a very interesting and thematic game. I was able to win the game by convincing several of the key generals to my side and then successfully moved the emperor. I ended with 11 total cubes or VP’s to 5 for Wes.

I also played 1 round of The Emperors Choice where players are moving 1 of 6 issues up a track to their side to score VP’s and to gain special abilities from the won issues to assist in their next turn.

Both are great fun and will be coming to Kickstarter in the 4th quarter.

I had a great time today and got in a total of 5 games. I’m a bit beat and my mind is mush but I’m really looking forward to tomorrow as we have a full 6-player game of Imperial Elegy from VUCA Simulations planned and a look at an upcoming WWI aerial dogfight game called Above the Trenches from Flying Pig Games.

See you tomorrow night!

-Grant

Another early morning and we met John Sy to have some breakfast before heading to our scheduled game of World Order from Hegemonic Project Games. We met friends Tom and Tim and they had played the game and prepared to teach Mike and I.

World Order is a strategic level 2-4 player Euro-style board game that focuses on geopolitical influence in 7 different regions. Players are the United States, China, Russia, or the European Union in the year 2010 and compete for global hegemony by earning victory points through economic power, diplomacy, and regional control.

This game is played over 6 turns and players have a hand of 6 cards with various actions such as trading goods, influencing countries to become your ally, building military bases and placing influence. Each of the regions will score at the end of turn 3 and 6 and players will have to scramble to gain influence to get the most Victory Points in each region with lesser VP awarded for 2nd through 5th place. But each turn you only play 4 cards fur the actions and then use your remaining 2 cards to earn money and gain research points to purchase new upgraded and more efficient actions.

The game features asymmetric factions representing each superpower’s unique strengths and starting resources. Players will have to choose 1 of 3 Focus each round included my domestic, diplomatic or military, which grants specialized bonuses for that turn.

I loved this one. What a game! My Chinese won with 114 points as I was able to control 3 regions but also weasel my way into 3 others to gain lesser points. This one has a lot of moving parts but plays fairly quickly once people know what they are doing. I very much want to play again.

I next got into a 4-player game of Coalitions: Realpolitik from PHALANX designed by Valdemar Gumienny and Andrew Rourke.

Realpolitik is an area-control board game that features action selection cards where players have to play a card for 1 action that turn including taxing controlled areas, mobilizing new forces and battle cards, moving into battles, scoring victory points or then picking up your already played cards. It’s a very smart and slick little game that sees players competing for control of mid-19th-century German and Italian unification wars.

Combat is lite and fun and uses battle cards that add values of 1-5 to your combat totals but each played unit also has unique abilities that can change the battlefield such as destroying a played unit, adding +1 if the Barrie occurs in an area you control. The goal is to get to 25 victory points first and the game is very quick playing 60+ minutes with lots of strategy, creating alliances and working toward your goal of dominating key areas. Just a very fun and interesting game. I was able to guide my Prussians to victory scoring 25 VP first and it came down to the very end as Italy was also close on my heals. I liked it so much that I’m going to get a copy and hope to play the game with our local gaming group. Thanks to Ric Mann fur teaching and for the members of the Hoosier Herd gaming group for playing.

I then met up with Mark Miklos to chat about his newest upcoming volume in the Battles of the American Revolution Series called The Battle of Green Spring. We did a fairly lengthy video interview covering the game and its history as well as discussing his upcoming book called Liberty.

The Battle of Green Spring was the largest field battle fought in Virginia during the American Revolution with over 10,000 combatants. In addition to being noteworthy for its scope, this battle was Lord Cornwallis’s final victory in North America and served as the immediate precursor to the Siege of Yorktown.

I ended Day 3 playing The Adventures of Conan from Gale Force Nine, which is an asymmetric, semi-coop dice game of exploration, sorcery and combat set in the Hyborian age of Conan. We bounced off this one hard. Poor rules, lack of structure and little clarity, which is a shame. The art is fantastic, great components with custom dice but I felt like we had no idea what we were doing or how we were supposed to reliably get things done. We will try to watch a video out there to get an idea about what we are supposed to do and then maybe give it another try.

That was a long day and I’m very tired. I don’t have a lot on the schedule tomorrow but will find something to get into. I do get a chance to meet with Wes Crawford tomorrow night to play his new design coming to Kickstarter soon called The Emperor’s Voice from Worthington Publishing and might get in another play of China’s War from GMT Games or maybe Bretwalda from PHALANX. We shall see.

Tomorrow night then.

-Grant

The morning dawned early and I was up and ready to go by 8:30am. I had a muffin in my room and a trusty diet Mountain Dew for breakfast and we were on our way to the Winterberry Room to get going on our continued game of GTS.

We jumped right back into GTS Where Eagles Dare and The Devil’s Cauldron from MMP. I was assigned to command the area around Eindhoven/Best/Son and to eliminate the few pockets of German resistance remaining there and then move our armor north to cut off possible German reinforcements from the east. We jumped back in at the 1100 turn and played into the 1700 turn although I had to leave shortly after lunch to meet up with Gregory M. Smith. This system is just so solid and is really great fun.

And I also very much enjoy the deep historical immersion into the event and its incorporation of things like heroes and artillery parks as well as the gorgeous production values with amazing counters, a very detailed and beautiful board and the way it portrays company-level combat. I will say that there is a fairly steep learning curve and rules overhead and while I feel the combat system works it is very involved and bits can be forgotten. But it really is a solid operational level portrayal of WWII combat. I very much can’t wait to play it again in the future and we actually have the reprint of The Devil’s Cauldron on pre-order and I have heard it might be out by the end of the year. I need to find me a copy of Where Eagles Dare as well although I most likely will never get the full combined games together on the table at the same time.

After 14 hours of pushing counters, I am now a follower of this system and want to thank Joe and Matt, as well as my friend Mike Heckman, for teaching me.

After lunch I found my friend John Sy from the Philippines and said hello but he had a gift he had brought for me. It was Japanese occupation currency in the form of Philippine pesos from WWII. What a very cool and thoughtful gift and upon my return home I will be placing it in a frame and hanging it in my game room. Thanks John!

I then was able to meet up with my friend and fantastic designer Gregory M. Smith as well as Kevin McPartland to get a look at a few games that they are designing together, including Viking Dawn from Compass Games and Star Spangled Tide: The War of 1812 from Compass Games.

We first got a play in of Viking Dawn and had a great time with the game. It is a light, beer and pretzels style game based on the SPI Conquistadors designed by Richard Berg where players control 1 of 4 Viking clans and are trying to build longboats, train war bands, develop explorers and lead them to explore, settle, raid and conquer Europe from Russia in the east, to Iceland and Newfoundland in the west, the Mediterranean and parts of North Africa. When leaders die you must bury them with silver gaining VP’s or if you can’t afford it bury them with nothing and lose VP’s. The main mechanic is a press your luck exploration mechanic where you must roll for the destruction of your fleets based upon how far they have traveled that year. You might lose all of your ships or may get lucky and lose none, you can mitigate this be investing in the journeys with additional supplies and tech to ensure better offs but the dice are cruel and you might just lose not only your fleets but also the booty they have collected from raiding.

It’s a very fun and lite take on this chaotic time in history and I very much enjoyed it. The game is nearly complete and should be printing and ready for shipping in early 2027. I think that this one is a perfect convention game and is sure to see more plays on my table.

We then shot a video with both designers together and then broke off with just Greg to talk about 6 of his other in-design projects. These included the following Korean Tide (next entry in the Tide Series covering the Korean War 1940-1953), Rifle Platoon (tactical level squad based solitaire game using the American Tank Ace Series), Project Z (what if bombing game where Japan won at Midway and began to run bombing operations against the United States mainland and Australia similar to Amerika Bomber), Western Desert Ace (solitaire Ace Series game focused in North Africa), B-52D Linebacker II (solitaire Vietnam War bombing game in 1972) and then finally a scoop on a joint design from Kevin McPartland and Greg Smith called Star Spangled Tide. It was a great discussion and I’m very much looking forward to all of these games.

To end the video, Greg spoiled his upcoming Lone Banner game which is a 1-4 player dungeon crawler set in the fantasy world of Kalar from Burning Banners from Compass Games. This one is going to be fun and I got a look at the characters, spells and weapons and also saw the dungeon tiles that will be laid out as players move through the dungeon encountering traps, monsters and bosses to fight. This looks great but it is a ways off as Greg said he has only been designing it for a month or so.

I then got to play the new The Great Hunger from Compass Games with designer Kevin McPartland. In The Great Hunger players represent families of tenant farmers and field hands. At first, when the potatoes are plentiful your clan will grow, using the events on the top half of cards to help your family expand across the map moving into counties, working on estates and in factories. When the potatoes blight arrives, you’ll use the events on the bottom half to save as many as you can, finding them aid or employment in Ireland, or scrambling to ports to secure passage to America. 

The game is a very light Euro style game of survival and is well done as it’s rooted in history and teaches about the struggles of the Irish. I am glad to have played the final production copy as I got to play a prototype copy a few years ago at WBC. This one will catch some heat from people for it’s dark topic and will just not be for everyone but it has something to teach about history and I have Irish ancestry and am interested as to what happened to cause my ancestors to leave their home to come to America.

One final thing I want to show you is the lineup of games that GMT has staged in the main gaming area. These are all of their newest arrivals and they are just gorgeous. I’m most interested in Coast Watchers designed by Volko Ruhnke and The Weimar Republic designed by Gunnar Holmbäck.

That was it for Day 3 and I’m off to bed with an early start tomorrow with a few games on the docket including World Order from Hegemonic Games Project and Coalitions: Realpolitik from PHALANX.

See you tomorrow night!

-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

Good morning faithful readers and wargaming enthusiasts! At the time this post uploads to the blog at 8:00am on Saturday morning, July 25th, I will already be on the way to the World Boardgaming Championships held at the beautiful Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. This year, unfortunately, Alexander will not be with me as he is visiting family in the south of France for a reunion. This is now the 2nd time in the past 3 years that I have flown solo to WBC but this time I am more prepared and more ready to take on the convention and its coverage. I will miss my friend and partner Alexander but will have a blast anyway. I am leaving earlier than I have ever left before for the convention and plan to make a pit stop in Pittsburgh, PA to pick up a friend Mike from the airport on Saturday afternoon to travel down together. We should arrive at WBC around 3:00pm on Saturday, July 25th and I plan to be at the convention for a total of 6 1/2 days leaving on Saturday, August 1st to come back home.

I already have a lot of plans laid out and will have 6 1/2 days filled with gaming, designer interviews, looks at new prototypes, visiting with friends, publishers and designers.

Here are my scheduled games as of today:

Sunday-Monday – 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 will be playing this one with Mike Heckman and a few others. I am very much looking forward to my first exposure to the Grand Tactical Series.

Monday – sit down with designer Gregory M. Smith and maybe a play of his Viking Dawn and a look at a new surprise Burning Banners offering (I won’t talk….yet!). But what I can say is that you will be able to play tactical battles in Kalar. We will also discuss his other in-process designs.

Tuesday – World Order from Hegemonic Games Project taught by our friend Tom and Coalitions: Realpolitik from PHALANX taught by Ric Manns from Southern Indiana.

Wednesday – The Emperor’s Choice and The Emperor’s Voice coming from Worthington Publishing designed by Wes Crawford and Maurice Suckling. I am very much excited about seeing these games and getting to play them.

Thursday – Imperial Elegy from VUCA Simulations. This will be my 3rd play and is sure to be epic!

Friday – Here I Stand from GMT Games. Our standard play of one of the best games in the hobby. Always look forward to this.

Plus I am trying to schedule a game of Small BoaR: The Battle of Cowpens from GMT Games with designer Bruno Sinigaglio, A Forlorn Hope from Wharf Rat Games, Above the Trenches: The Fokker Scourge 1915-1917 from Flying Pig Games with designer Bob Tkach and a sit down with Uwe Wallentin to get a look at Sound of Drums upcoming games. Already a full schedule and that isn’t even accounting for the opportunities that will present themselves. Should be an exhausting blast!

This year will be my 8th trip to WBC (2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025) and this is by far the best of all the different conventions that we attend! WBC is an event put on by the Boardgame Player’s Association (BPA), which is a non-profit corporation established to support the shared interests of board game players everywhere. This is a membership organization and I have been a member since 2019.

At the end of each day, I will be putting together a short summary of what I was able to do that day at the convention. I would like to keep this to just a few paragraphs with several pictures to give you an idea of the games I played that day, designers I was able to speak with and other activities I found my way to participate in. I am still planning on doing some videos that will be released on the YouTube Channel over the next few months but this written coverage will supplement the videos and be a real-time look at my time at the convention. This summary will most likely not be posted until after 11:30pm EST each night, if not a bit later, so you might be checking it out the next morning which is fine.

If you might be interested in attending WBC in the future, here is a look at their schedule for the next few years.

Finally, if you are at WBC please feel free to find me and say hello. I love to meet people, discuss gaming and catch up so don’t hesitate. I will also have plenty of TPA buttons and stickers to give away so just ask. I also would like to take a picture with you so I can document it in our writings. As is usual at our convention attendance, I will be looking to get in some bigger multi-player games so hit me up if you are interested. Thank you and here is to a successful trip to WBC!

-Grant