Lmst

Finally got the #SpaceEmpires4X expansions from #gmtgames!

The good is that they look great, and I finally have them. All Good Things has just been released, but the other two have just been hard to find.

But...

Now got that unenviable decision of 'How much of this am I going to try to introduce at once?'

Thing is - this is primarily for #sologaming - and I don't know how many new rules will fit in my head at once.

#boardgames #wargames

Three game boxes on a couch. Space Empires 4X Close Encounters, Space Empires 4X All Good Things, and Space Empires 4X Replicators.

All have sci-fi ship scenes on the front.

Okay, dann gucken wir mal ob die Merry Man wirklich die Herren im Walde bleiben ...

#AGestofRobinHood
#boardgames
#GMTGames

I got my copy of #SpaceEmpires4X that I picked up from #gmtgames’ most recent P500 to the table late last night. Played the easy solo Doomsday Machine scenario to get the hang of things.

My main experiences with 4X have been digital (Civ, Endless Legend, and #Stellaris [soundtrack for the evening actually]), and while it’s not as extensive as those games in scope, Space Empires does a great job of bringing the 4X experience to the table in a fun and time-efficient manner.
#boardgames #spaaaace

A tabletop game setup featuring a hexagonal game board with various colored tokens and resources. Nearby, there is a production sheet detailing game mechanics. A game box and a stack of books are visible in the background. The board depicts a space exploration theme.

The final Doomsday Machine counter is surrounded by a fatal amount of damage counters. It faces an array of my ships, organized by attack order with each featuring the miner of ships in their respective fleets.

#GMTGames #P500 update https://www.gmtgames.com/news.aspx?showarticle=567

China's War
Combat Commander BP #8: Minor Nations
Combat Commander: Europe, 5th Printing
Combat Commander: Mediterranean, 3rd
Combat Commander: Resistance, 2nd Printing
Combat Commander: Europe/Med. 20th Anniversary Edition
Cross Bronx Expressway
Hubris

(Going to start reposting these when I see them, because I got a significantly priced surprise that I didn't realise was all charging at once last month)

#BoardGames #Wargames

Comancheria, solo

Played a solo game of Comancheria. It is a real gem of GMT's recent lineup; it's been OOP and it's a bit of a heavy lift so you don't hear about it much. It's a really outsider approach to a sort of civ game not modeling an agricultural group. The AI instruction river is maybe my favorite AI system, even though it's a little fiddly. I wish other solo games would copy it. It generates the perfect balance between giving you a predictable opponent and throwing curves at you, making your colonial oppressors seem quite capricious. It also is so, so tempting because the game generates enemy activity from your actions, with them harvesting AP when you get a failure while you raid. You can't accomplish too much if you don't raid but you also can't win if you just hang out and hunt bison and trade with locals on the plains. It's a strong game if you can get a good start.

I had some probably average luck on raiding but managed to get my 2nd Rancheria up early which is what you need to do to succeed. Yellow (Spain) was quite punishing because I had to raid one tribe counter a bunch of times and generate a lot of enemy action points with failures (17!).

Super tough game. The intro scenario is really hard unless you understand what you're trying to do in T1 of the game, I think it must have turned a lot of people off from the game. I think a slightly more established start, closer to the apex of Comanche strength in West/North Texas, would have been a better tutorial.

#comancheria #gmtgames #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiele

Twilight Struggle x2, 2 players

There's this thing that happens where when you start to know too much meta knowledge about strategy that you didn't earn yourself, or play too many reps on an app, a game becomes less fun. Twilight Struggle suffers from this. I used to play quite experienced players (and lost!) and knew "best moves" which makes TS a little staid. Luckily, I've forgotten most of that knowledge, so when I suggested to a friend we play some TS at a brewery it was between two players who've played a fair amount but only remember the basics of meta approved "good" strategy. It revitalized the game for me, we had a great time talking and playing, so much so that we made it through two games in the afternoon and the 2nd one went to final scoring. Glad I've held onto the collector's edition I bought all these years, it's still a nice production despite tons of complaints from people when it came out.

#twilightstruggle #gmtgames #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #wargames #brettspiele

Picture of a late game Twilight Struggle board, with almost every country on the board covered with influence. Also seen are a person's arms over the board holding a card.

Heute ist der Re-Print von Comancheria - The Rise and Fall of the Comacnhe Empire eingetroffen.

Bin gespannt ob mir dieses reine Solospiel mit historischem Hintergrund gefällt.

#comancheria #Numunuu #brettspiele #wargames #boardgames #gmtgames #solospiel #sologame

@altbot

Das Bild zeigt die Rückseite einer Spielbox für "Comancheria," ein solitärspiel, das die Zeit der Comanchen auf den südlichen Prärien von Nordamerika im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert thematisiert. Die Box enthält eine detaillierte Karte mit verschiedenen Spielzonen und Einheiten, darunter Bison, Medizin, Pferde, Waffen und Nahrung. Es sind auch verschiedene Spielkarten wie die "Kriegsdecke" und die "Entwicklungskarte" zu sehen. Die Spielbox enthält 84 Entwicklungskarten, 84 Kriegskarten, 2 Zählsteine, 1 Regeln- und Spielerbuch, 4 Historiehilfekarten, 2 Würfel und 4 Spielersteine. Die Spielzeit beträgt 4 bis 8 Stunden und ist für Spieler ab 14 Jahren geeignet. Die Spielbox wurde von GMT Games im Jahr 2022 in China hergestellt.

Got Red Dust Rebellion on the table yesterday. Excellent game. Played as the Reclaimers. Great fun. #boardgames #GMTGames #COIN

A game board on a table. It's mostly red, as it represents the surface of Mars. There are lots of different colored wooden bits on the game board as well.

Vijayanagara, 3 players

Been playing this on rally the troops, great implementation. I like it a lot better than the COINs I've played, it's pretty straightforward while still retaining some asymmetry. Kind of just poking around right now, it seems like a perfectly cromulent push and pull game.

#vijayanagara #gmtgames #saveriospagnolie #mathieujohnson #corygraham #amanmatthews #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiele #rallythetroops

Screenshot of a mid game map of Southern India from the game Vijayanagara, mostly focused on the titular Vijayanagara orange cylinders.

Mail came. #wargaming #wargames #GMTgames

A picture of the board game The Great Battles Of Alexander, the Macedonian Art of War by GMT games. The box is still inside the shipping box and is slightly obscured by packing peanuts. In the center is a drawing of Alexander.

What is it about little cardboard chits in a cup that look so good? #GMTGames #HexesForever #NotAHexGame #SwordOfRome

Sword of Rome was the first GMT Game I purchased. I still love it, and I love the art and design. So primary and economical.

Screenshot taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cl6GNx62Mo

A cup of brightly colored cardboard chits for a board game.

Fields of Fire, solo

I finally finished the extra, extra long Naktong defensive mission in the Korea campaign. I sort of chunked it out over a number of days doing an hour here and there. It was a complete disaster but I still managed to win and hold enough ground to continue the campaign. While it is a night attack, it isn't *that* dark at +2, so you're still going to eat losses. I lost a huge number of units, ending with just three commanders---my first sergeant, 2nd platoon HQ, and my CO HQ. And that was after losing my COHQ. So this mission is a real widowmaker over 12 turns.

It was a pretty harrowing game, I was pretty sure it was all going to collapse and, based on that first picture of how the end of the night looked, it almost did/was in the middle of doing so. It came out pretty close to historical, as this was an all-out final offensive by the NKPA to break the UN lines that won but at too high a cost to continue.

We'll see how the next mission goes, I'm starting with a company that is starting with I think 4 less platoons due to unreplaced losses.

#fieldsoffiredeluxe #gmtgames #benhull #boardgames #tabletopgames #brettespiele #wargames #tabletopsimulator

Tabletop simulator screenshot of messy Fields of Fire board with huge numbers of pinned friendly and enemy units on the terrain cards.

Tabletop simulator screenshot of the units lost box piled with a large number of American units.

Fields of Fire Deluxe, solo

I've been working through my retry of mission one of Naktong River (Korean War) slowly, an hour or so at a time here and there. It was rocky but I was making solid progress, occupying the objective... until I pulled a counter attack random event and it all fell apart. Here, you can see my core command staff behind friendly lines but adjacent to an empty spot (whoops) being destroyed with a heavy mortar attack. Most of the line is ruined as well. I'll be lucky to have more than half an intact company available for try three if I survive the attack.

There's an interesting mindset shift you have to go through with non-eurogames, especially wargames. I've been playing a lot more euros and tightly geared together games in the last five years, so I'm a little out of touch with it. Fields is asking you to accept unexpected events that aren't fair and deal with it as best you can, as your real life counterpart might have to. Fields can extra ramp unfair situations up because it's solo, so it's really about the journey. While this ethos leads to dismaying conditions like me dragging myself through the last five turns of this mission with every man who can lift a gun staggering through, it generates tremendously memorable situations. More importantly, it generates drama and hardship to create those memories. It is very difficult---though not impossible---for a thoughtfully balanced euro like Endeavor Deep Sea to generate anything like this sort of highlight tabletop moment because they have to be so scrupulously fair and systemic.

#fieldsoffiredeluxe #gmtgames #benhull #boardgames #bgg #boardgamegeek #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiele #brettspiel #consim #tabletopsimulator

Tight Fields of Fire screenshot from tabletop simulator. Screenshot is of a central card with the CO HQ, 1st Sargeant, and a variety of strong support units under a -5 "Incoming" marker. A variety of other cards surround the central card with some fighting with a stray NKPA squad.

Fields of Fire Deluxe, Naktong mission 1

I've played a lot of Fields of Fire, especially the first box, but not recently. That made the deluxe version (3rd ed) which is about to come out hit HARD. It is a complete overhaul for clarity and consistency of everything in this huge game. It also includes tons of examples, a tutorial, and a progressively more complex boot camp mission series in the box. Amazing stuff.

They also made a new tabletop simulator mod. With scripting! Since I don't need the tutorial materials since I learned in the bad old days ruleswise, I went right into Naktong which I've played through before.

I couldn't get any firepower to bear, I was rusty. Got my 3rd platoon leader killed and my offensive was stuffed for 4 turns on the left side which was supposed to be my strongest advance. I finally rolled some of them up and captured prisoners but that was the final turn. I'll need to reattempt. It's baked into the mission so I didn't feel too bad, and losing is part of this system.

It's a complex game, so most people just play the first four Normany missions or whatever. They're missing a lot, because there's a lot of range in here. Korea is good fun to play because it gives you some variance in how even linear conventional warfare plays out. The terrain is very bare with long ranges which just doesn't happen in Normandy where everyone is one card away in high cover. Moreover, the North Korean army is not as well equipped as some parts of Normandy invasion era Germans---though they're veterans so equal to them or more in terms of sustaining fire and morale but have slightly worse armed squads with only detached automatic weapons.

If you can take high complexity wargames and like solo games, the deluxe edition is the way to get in. Really interesting game system in its perspective on tactical battle.

#fieldsoffiredeluxe #gmtgames #benhull #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiele #brettspiel #boardgamegeek #bgg #consim #tabletopsimulator

Tabletop simulator picture of a Fields of Fire map made up of many terrain cards and enemy and friendly US positions midgame. The mission is Naktong and most of the North Korean squads and mortar spotters are taking it to the Americans, often hidden on many of the cards on the front.

A Gest of Robin Hood was a lot of fun implementing on #Tabletopia and it opened my eyes to wargaming. It's the second game in the Irregular Conflicts Series, further adapting the COIN system to depict peasant revolts, feudal tax collection, and outlaw activities in the 12th century medieval England. Transposing one of #GMTgames most popular systems into a simpler format makes AGoRH perfect for newcomers to wargaming.
https://tabletopia.com/games/a-gest-of-robin-hood

Added another #GMTGames to the shelf. Reading through the rules and excited to get this to the table!

A photo of the box top of Red Dust Rebellion. The artwork on the box has a portion of mars on the cover, with some people in the background with riot shields, others seem to be rioting.

Really wish it wasn't so hard to find #GMTGames #SpaceEmpires 4X Expansions second hand, or even new.

#boardgames

A great day of #boardgames yesterday at @geekyteas in Burbank. Karl and I haven’t played the classic #ww1 CDG #boardgame Paths of Glory in a while. Unfortunately my Central Powers side lost by over extending in Russia. Karl was happy to watch me throw the game again as my flanks grew more tenuous. That makes it twice in a row I have done that. D'oh!

#GMTGames #hexesforever #boardwargames
1/3

Early January, 2021, I bought this expansion to Commands & Colors: Medieval. The expansion hadn’t been released at that time. Today I got it!
#boardgame #GMTGames #C&C

Just released a digital version of Red Dust Rebellion from #GMTgames on #Tabletopia. 200 years after the colonization of Mars, there's revolt! The first game in the COIN series to be published on the platform, and the fifth GMT game. More to come!
https://tabletopia.com/games/red-dust-rebellion #boardgames

#GMTGames

Client Info