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:
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.
October 2017 was actually a relatively game-filled month for me. Of my twelve games played, nine were “actual plays” while three are what I call “rules exploration” or “familiarization play.”
I got two good solo plays in, The Expanse Board Game and Pacific Fury. I really need to get more wargaming going. With the coming of winter (hard to tell with unseasonable upper 70’s outside) I hopefully will get more tabletop time to do so.
Looking forward to November, my niece will be visiting. Last time she was here she became obsessed with Ticket to Ride. This time the RockyMountainNavy Boys want to get Scytheto the table with her. We shall see.
There was one special game this month, 
