ACTUALLY, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MANY WARGAMES. That said, October was a month of heavy pre-order and Kickstarter fulfillment along with some purchases but few actual plays.
NEW ORDER OF BATTLE
Agents of Mayhem: Pride of Babylon (Academy Games, 2019). Kickstarter including the Bombshells Team,Firing Squad, Get Gaunt, and Hammersmith expansions. This is definitely a lifestyle boardgame because the game is a table hog and takes a long time to set up and tear down. The tutorials are excellent; I played through them solo and want to walk the RockyMountainNavy Boys through it together.
Courtesy GMT Games
Next War: Poland (GMT Games, 2017). A gift to myself. Given its relevance to current events I consider this game “professional research.”
Blue Water Navy (Compass Games, 2019). Another present to myself. I held off on ordering this because of the long play time. Glad I got it for it brings back memories of my early days in the US Navy. I trained for this; how well can I do?
MBT: 4CMBG (GMT Games, 2019). Expansion for MBTthat adds the Canadians, eh! Another one of my Cold War Gone Hot wargames added this year.
BATTLE REPORTS
October was another sparse month of play. New fiscal year means lots of new initiatives at the office that have to be done soonest, of course.
Over half the plays this month were actually rules explorations, a tutorial series, or playtesting. I actually only played five (5) games competitively. Of those, the two Hold the Line: The American Revolution (Worthington Publishing, 2019) stand out because Middle RockyMountainNavy Boy continues to dominate when on defense. It will be interesting to see how he does when we get around to switching sides and he is on the offense!
As many games delivered or fulfilled this month, the stretch to the end of the year looks favorable for several more preorders and Kickstarters to fulfill:
September was a very slow gaming month. As a matter of fact, my 11 plays is the least amount of gaming since April this year and a four-way tie for the second-fewest monthly plays since I started seriously recording my plays in August 2017. I can’t really complain though; the few plays I got were very special.
The most interesting game is that “Unpublished Prototype” listed above. This is a game by a fellow gamer that I met at CONNECTIONS 2019. The game is in a very rough state but I have a copy for the next few weeks and will be working my way through it. Don’t know if the game will ever see publication but still I feel I am doing something for the greater hobby community.
Looking at my Preorder and Kickstarter line up, I have significantly trimmed down the collection. At the beginning of the month this list was up to 26 games. Between canceling orders and deliveries I am down to 13, of which eight (8!) may deliver by year’s end. I admit it; I had a touch of FoMO* and it took Mrs. RockyMountainNavy to cure me of it. I have an antidote on hand – my 2019 Challenges still await completion!
With the summer doldrums almost ended and the seasons turning, the RockyMountainNavy family will move indoors a bit more. Later this fall, Mrs. RMN will be on travel for a few weeks meaning I will just have to get games to the table to keep me from going crazy.Â
So, so long Summer, hello Fall, and bring on the dice!
* FoMO – Fear of Missing Out; an uncontrollable urge to buy as many new games as possible (or even not possible) for fear of “missing out” on the gameplay.
SUMMER IS NOT THE BEST TIME for boardgames or wargames in the RockyMountainNavy house. There are so many outdoor activities to be had and family events on the weekend that games get pushed to the back burner. So it was for August in the RockyMountainNavy home. I recorded a measly 13 plays of 9 different games…my worst month in almost two years of recording plays.
The best family night game was a long overdue session of 1812: Invasion of Canada (Academy Games, 2012). With the beginning of the school year and a return to a somewhat normal cycle of weekend family games I am sure that the many Birth of America / Birth of Europe-series titles will land on the table regularly.
On a recommendation at CONNECTIONS 2019 I picked up Cowboy Bebop: Boardgame Boogie (Jasco Games, 2019). I haven’t written up my thought yet but (spoiler alert…again) this tune is a bit flat to me.
I attended CONNECTIONS 2019, the professional wargaming conference in mid-August. I have yet to compose all my thoughts but I did get to see a bit of wargame history with Upton’s US Infantry Tactical Apparatus.
Looking ahead, designer John Gorkowski was kind enough to send me an e-kit to playtest with for the next game in South China Sea-series from Compass Games. Indian Ocean Region is already available for preorder and this is my chance to try and influence the game and make it better for everyone.
As mentioned before, the return to school means a return to a more regular schedule of gaming. I also still have several games in my 2019 CSR, Origins, and GameGeek Challenges to complete before the end of the year.
What do they say? “April showers bring spring May flowers?” Well, my gaming April was a drought.
April was also a very busy month outside of gaming. For the first time in a few years we took a family Spring Break vacation. Sorry friends, spending a week at DisneyWorld, even when not playing games, is quite the mental health break the family needed.
Not that the month was a total loss. I got three very exciting plays of Harold Buchanan’s excellent Campaigns of 1777 (Decision Games/Strategy & Tactics 316). After playing the full campaign first I went back and played the shorter scenarios. I strongly recommend that one play the shorter scenarios first and thenjump into the campaign; the locations and strategy decisions come easier and make more sense leading to a deeper game experience.
After two years of waiting (at least for me) it appears that the new edition of Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel! – Kursk 1943 (Academy Games) is getting real close (finally).  According to a May 01 production update:
Production for ‘Conflict of Heroes – Storms of Steel 3rd Ed’ and ‘Conflict of Heroes – Awakening the Bear 3rd Ed’ is nearing completion! The Map Boards printed by Ludofact in Germany have arrived on the coast in Norfolk, VA and are working their way through customs. Once cleared, they will be shipped on to Ludofact USA to await the arrival of the rest of ‘Conflict of Heroes’ components being produced in China for final assembly.
The Chinese printer has completed production on the three (3!) individual Game Trayz that will be included in each game, dice, and cards. We just received final proofs for the unit counters, rule books, track sheets, etc. and have given approval for final production. We are implementing final tweaks to the SoS3 Mission book.
Our printer knows how important it is that we receive these games for early June release, so they are working diligently to get everything shipped soon. We are estimating they will be finished printing within the next two weeks for shipment to Ludofact USA for final assembly with the map boards. We are currently estimating we will receive the games for fulfillment by mid-June.
We had a lot of fun showing off the new maps and game system at Little Wars last weekend. Thanks for all of your great comments and those of you who kept coming back to play even more of the 3rd Ed Missions!
We want to thank everyone for their support, great suggestions, and feedback on the 3rd Ed Conflict of Heroes system.
March was a bit of a slow gaming month here at Casa RockyMountainNavy.
The numbers are a bit deceptive; 23 plays of 12 different games but if you throw out the 11 plays of Quarriors (WizKids, 2011) than that is a single play of most other games. Quarriors dominated the family gaming time this month with many games played in the short time after evening chores and bed time. Great family filler game!
After flirting with Villainous, I picked up the expansion. It kinda fell flat. There is not anything necessarily wrong with the game, it just didn’t grab us. Same goes for Illuminati; mechanically the game doesn’t know when to end and my older version has political and social references lost on the younger generation (to their detriment).
Speaking of Commands & Colors, there are some interesting developments in the series. I always understood that the main designer is Richard Berg, but didn’t realize until this month how the game license is divided up amongst publishers by era. GMT Games has Ancients, Medieval, Samurai, and Napoleonics; Compass Games has The American Revolution; Fantasy Flight Games has fantasy; PSC Games has World War I and space; and Days of Wonder does World War II. The question becomes who is going to do the American Civil War or the French & Indian War? This is important for my gaming budget!
According to my BGStats app, in February I recorded 26 plays of 21 games. This is a 60% drop in games played compared to February 2018. On the positive side, the 21 different games played is an increase over the 16 last February.
February 2019 BG Stats
A major factor in the large drop was last February I played 16 games of Rhino Hero(Haba). This year there were few light family/party games played. Need to work on that; maybe trying to play a light weeknight game with the RockyMountainNavy Boys is worth the few minutes of family time spent together rather than just depending on our weekend game.
In February I tried to limit my spending on new games. Sure, I still purchased a few but more importantly (for me) I passed on several Kickstarter campaigns that tempted me. I also paid more attention to my existing Kickstarter and Pre-order games; in the end I will still be getting new games, but just at a more reasonable pace (and cost). Potentially I could see most of my KS/pre-order list in my hands by the end of 2019 [sure….]. On another positive note, the reduction of incoming new games has let me focus more of what I already have and explore several good titles in already possess.
…shocking blog numbers…
In mid-January I changed my blog theme to the current version and since then my views have skyrocketed. In February I logged over 5,800 views – as compared to 14,000 views in ALL OF 2018! There certainly was a bounce in views as part of the “shocking” kerfuffle I will discuss in a bit but I cannot help but notice that the new format, which is much more visually appealing, gets visitors to click around more. So to all my readers I say welcome and thanks!
I am very conscious that as a wargamer I am already a member of a subset of a very niche hobby. Further, as a sometime “professional” wargamer or “serious gamer” I realize that I am in an even smaller (microscopic?) subset of the wargaming subgroup. In the “shocking” kerfluffle of the month I saw too many comments that denigrated my small gaming clan. Although it admittedly seems relatively benign, the comment that upset me the most was this:
This site is a hobby game site, if someone is coming here and searching for Aftershock, likely they are looking for the Stronghold published game.
The “site” referenced is BoardGameGeek. This poor soul does not understand (nor does he seem to want to tolerate) that BoardGameGeek is used not just for gaming, but as a leading portal to all things boardgaming. This means it is used by hobbyist and “professionals.” I have been at professional wargaming/serious games conferences where the question, “Where do I find games?” is asked. Invariably, the first answer is, “BoardGameGeek.” This is a good thing; BGG serves a wide array of boardgamers, from the very playful to serious. To say it is “just” a hobby game site is ignorant at best. Possibly I am taking the “serious games” moniker a bit too seriously; but then again I am a strong proponent of gaming for fun, learning, and military planning and government policy making.
Stephen Buonocore of Stronghold Games responded with a very thoughtful post that deserves much more attention that it is getting (emphasis is mine):
All,
As has been posted here above, Rex and I have discussed all of this.
We will make a name change to our game. This will settle the issue completely, and it will make both parties happy.
Neither of us wants the negativity that has been seen throughout this, and most of all, neither of us wants any harm done to the reputation of the other.
What we do want is happiness among gamers, including of course everyone that has participated in this dialogue, whether they favored one side or the other.
This is what it is all about. We are in an industry that creates FUN. There is no other industry in the world like this. We create FUN, so that families, friends, acquaintances, strangers, and everyone, can come together and compete or cooperate across a table in a social, happy, and fun way.
Thank you to all out there for your passion and love of board games. Without all of you, this industry would not exist.
Best, Stephen M. Buonocore Stronghold Games
Surprisingly, the event that calmed me down the most was not Stephen’s comment but Villainouswinning the The Toy of the Year Award. As much as I love BGG, listening to the comments of Mr. Francke about the 250,000 units sold in late 2018 (as compared to ~5,200 “owned” in BGG) illustrated for me that even BGG is a small portion of the hobby boardgame market. For Villainous, BGG users possibly represent as little as 2% of the players. This makes even BGG a very small niche within a niche.
Still, I cannot ignore the attitude behind some comments from the past month. I really am trying to keep Mr. Buonocore’s comments in mind but it’s hard. This was more than a simple “Ameritrash vs Eurogamer” flamewar; Â it was rank intolerance of a minority sector of our hobby. Sure, it was just a few loud-mouthed a$$hats but they did a fine job of showing me a dark side of our hobby. Part of the reason I write this blog is to show my happiness with the hobby I enjoy. This month was very discouraging to do so.
I’m going to leave it there and hope for a better March.
According to my BGStats app, my January gaming was pretty good. It shows I played 18 different games 25 times. In reality, two of those games were expansions played at the same time as the base game. I got a decent mix of wargames vs boardgames (13:5) and old vs new (4:14).
I changed the blog theme in mid-January to Apostrophe 2. Since them the number of visitors has held fairly steady but the number of page views shot thru the roof. I am showing over 5,000 page views in January, compared to all of 2018 where I had around 14,500 for the entire year. I also had my single best day ever on 28 Jan with over 500 page views.
That means I absolutely have to say a big THANK YOU to all you readers out there!
November was a VERY slow gaming month. Lots of moving parts conspired to reduce the number of games played this past month. The RockyMountainNavy tribe missed two (2!) weekends of game nights. This is the first time since August 2016 that we missed  more than one week at a time. It also doesn’t help that the Youngest RMN Boy started Indoor Track season which digs into my weeknight game time. It also doesn’t help that my gaming space has been overtaken by the gift wrap station….
So how did the month look?
According to BGStats, I played 18 games in November. Once again, the way BGG Stats tracks plays is off as I actually played 16 games and two expansions. The multi-game play was Terraforming Mars (Stronghold Games, 2016) using both the Preludeand new Colonies expansion.
The game of the month was definitely AuZtralia(Stronghold Games). All my plays to date are solo play as this game has yet to reach the RMN Game Night table. My initial impression was a bit weak, but as time has passed the game has grown on me more. I really want to get this one to Game Night and see what the RMN Boys say!
The biggest surprise of the month was the Kickstarter fulfillment of Squadron Strike: Traveller (Ad Astra Games) after a delay of over two years. I will have many more thoughts on this game coming at you in the future. Actually, there are several Kickstarter and pre-order fulfillments coming that I did not expect as recently as two weeks ago. My preorder copy of Pandemic: Fall of Rome (Z-Man Games) is enroute, and Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel, Kursk, 1943 (Academy Games) may be in hand before the end of the year! I will also likely add several more games to my order list as Hollandspiele is having their Hollandays sale starting the day this posts.
December will continue to be gaming challenge as we are busy and my gaming space is preempted. On the plus side, I earned a generous amount of vacation time and I plan on using it at the end of the year (after Christmas). I feel that the last week of December may see an explosion of gaming as I make up for lost time.
Here’s wishing all of you a Happy Holiday. May you spend it gaming with family and making memories for a lifetime.
My October gaming featured 20 plays of 11 different games. Actually, I played 19 times with 10 games and one expansion. Or two expansions? Confusing. The ability to tie an expansion to a game is a needed upgrade to BoardGameStats to avoid this very confusion.
There was one special game this month, Kingdomino(Blue Orange Games, 2017). My father, aged 88 years and a veteran of the Korean War, visited our area as part of an Honor Flight group. After dinner one night the RockyMountainNavy Boys got to sit down and play a single game of Kingdomino with him. When we lived closer to him we played many games togther. I remember one early game where he sat down and played Blokuswith the kids. As the kids racked up the points Dad sat there pondering the board until he finally asked, “How do you win?” To him a game is always a puzzle to be solved; it was supposed to have a “key” to unlock it. He never did figure out the key to Blokus, though over the years he did play several games of Ticket to Ride with the kids (and often held his own). Given my dad’s age and general health, and the fact he lives on the opposite side of the country, this very well could be the last game the RockyMountainNavy Boys play with him. Thanks to boardgaming we have several good memories of times with him.
April was also a very busy month outside of gaming. For the first time in a few years we took a family Spring Break vacation. Sorry friends, spending a week at DisneyWorld, even when not playing games, is quite the mental health break the family needed.
The numbers are a bit deceptive; 23 plays of 12 different games but if you throw out the 11 plays of 
According to my BGStats app, my January gaming was pretty good. It shows I played 18 different games 25 times. In reality, two of those games were expansions played at the same time as the base game. I got a decent mix of wargames vs boardgames (13:5) and old vs new (4:14).
The game of the month was definitely AuZtralia (Stronghold Games). All my plays to date are solo play as this game has yet to reach the RMN Game Night table. 
My Grognard Game of the Month was Tokyo Express (Victory Games, 1988). 
The biggest surprise of the month was the Kickstarter fulfillment of Squadron Strike: Traveller (Ad Astra Games) after a delay of over two years. I will have many more thoughts on this game coming at you in the future. 
There was one special game this month, 
RockyMountain Navy Gamer 