Well. The trip already has a story! Last night, we arrived at the airport in plenty of time, made it through bag check and security and even had time to get a snack. Then we sat down at our gate and waited. And waited. And waited. Until about 10 minutes prior to our boarding time the loud speaker crackled to life and a very sweet and apologetic voice came over the intercom informing us that the plane had experienced some technical issues that were being addressed and that departure would be delayed by 20 minutes or so. No big deal! Our connecting flight in Denver didn’t leave for a few hours and a short delay wouldn’t affect us. We waited. And waited. And then the voice came again, but this time not so sweet and not so apologetic and not so positive, as we were informed that the issue would take at least another 30 minutes before we could depart. Hhhhm. Not a great start to our trip…and it would get worse.

Here is where Alexander proved his worth as he immediately sniffed out the impending cancellation and before anyone else could react he proactively approached the service counter to make other arrangements to move our flight to leave in the morning grabbing 2 of the last remaining seats. After this was all set, we would not be leaving until 9:45am on Friday morning. Come to find out the hydraulics lines were leaking on our plane so we were relieved this happened while on the ground and before we departed. Although I just can’t believe that United didn’t have at least one spare plan on the premises. Bummed out we returned to my house to eat dinner, consisting of Domino’s pizza, watch Thursday Night Football and retire to bed by 10:30pm.

After a restless night’s sleep because I was stewing over the fact that we would miss most of Day 1 at the Con we awoke early, made our way to the airport and without further trouble departed on time for a nearly 5-hour flight to San Francisco with a 90-minute layover there and finally our connecting flight to sunny San Diego arriving at 2:45pm local time.

We had finally arrived and quickly grabbed our bags, hailed a cab and made it to the hotel where we dumped off our stuff and hurried over to the Portuguese Hall at Point Loma where the convention was held.

Upon arriving, we were immediately greeted by Sam London who is the designer for a new game just recently put up on P500 from GMT Games called Firefight Tactical. We sat down with him and learned the game and played the introductory scenario and had an absolute blast.

The game draws inspiration from Up Front and Combat Commander and uses dice to fuel the actions of small tactical units during World War II in various scenarios. The dice are multi colored 6-sided dice and each unit needs different numbers and colors for their actions.

The game uses terrain cards to form the board and players can scout the terrain before entering and even change them to a more advantageous card.

We played for about an hour and then shot an interview video with Sam and you can look for that soon on the YouTube Channel. We will also do a written interview soon with him and I promise you this one will be a game to watch.

While we didn’t get a long look into the design or an opportunity to play it, Sam also showed us his upcoming American Revolutionary War Strategic Level game called Absolved from All Allegiance coming to the GMT Games P500 soonish.

Next we participated in a panel discussion on Written Content with Candice Harris and Dan Thurot (Space-Biff!). The panel was moderated by Andrew Buchholtz and had about 25 attendees so it was a great crowd. I really do love writing and was bolstered by some of the discussion and questions and have an even greater desire to continue with the blog.

We then were invited to dinner by Sam London and Kai Jensen and ate at a very good Mexican restaurant called Miguel’s. The salsa and chips were so very good and the chili con queso was absolutely scrumptious. It was amazing to sit and talk with these two and Kai shared lots of information about some upcoming Combat Commander Series products such as Combat Commander: Spanish Civil War, Combat Commander: Pacific Islands and Combat Commander: Afghanistan. Man that got my juices flowing as you know my affinity for Combat Commander!

Next up, we hung out with Maurice Suckling whose designs we have enjoyed such as Freeman’s Farm, Chancellorsville 1862 and Siege of Malta. He had a prototype of a new game coming out next year from Fort Circle Games called Peace 1905 which deals with the negotiations between the Japanese and Russians at the end of the Russo-Japanese War.

It is a 2-3 player game with a solo option that is considered a card game where the focus is on negotiation and winning various issues for Victory Points. Each side has the same 13 card deck that they use to vie for issues that their side desires to have. The game is very thinly and focuses on the concept of tension caused from over aggressive negotiations. If one side wins too many issues, or wins the issues by too much, tension is created and too much tension can lose the game. Think Churchill in this regard.

The game is very good and plays in about 30-45 minutes. Very enjoyable and I’m really looking forward to it. We shot a video with Maurice discussing the game and you can see that soon on the YouTube Channel.

After that we chatted with lots of folks and returned to our room at around 9:30pm. We were tired as it felt like 12:30am to us and we wanted to get to bed and get an early start tomorrow.

We have plans to play a game of John Company from Wehrlegig Games tomorrow, take a look at Night Witches designed by David Thompson and Liz Davidson and also play Alex Knight’s new game called John Brown: Harper’s Ferry 1859. We also have a celebrity game of Liberty or Death tomorrow night at 8:00pm.

Thanks for reading along and we will be back with you tomorrow night with a rundown of day 2 here at San Diego HistCon.

-Grant