San Diego Historical Games Convention (SDHistCon) 2023 Daily Debrief Series – Day 2

Day 2 of SDHistCon was a fast paced, action packed up at dawn gaming assault and we absolutely had a ball! First off, I want to share what a beautiful location the con is at.

San Diego is somewhat of a paradise and where the con is located is called Point Loma. It is named so as there is a picturesque bay with many yachts, sailboats and other water craft surrounded by elevated hills with lots of beautiful homes. The palm trees are plentiful and we even saw a lemon tree outside the Portuguese Hall. Absolutely a beautiful place to visit and play wargames!

The day started with us playing a very cool and interesting Card Driven Game called Lenin’s Death designed by Matthias Cramer. The game deals with the power struggle between Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin for control of Russia following the strokes suffered by Lenin. The game plays in about 30-45 minutes and has some very interesting mechanics where players struggle over the control of various issues such as the Politburo, control of regions that provide new powerful cards for the players and the NKVD which keeps the army under control and out of the other player’s reach.

The cards and how players obtain them to play is one of the best parts as a common tableau is built with a total of 7 cards at the start of each round, 5 of which are visible to both players and then 2 cards that each player can view but keep hidden. The player with initiative, which is an issue that can be moved to your side, gets to play 4 cards while the non-initiative player only plays 3. Huge advantage there!

The game is very slick and very fun as it is a tug of war style back and forth battle. This was quite possibly my favorite game of the day but we played a lot of great games.

Next up we got in a full 6-player game of John Company 2nd Edition from Wehrlegig Games. For those that haven’t played it the game is a look at the fate of the East India Company and a struggle between the players to gain prestige and wealth and retire their family members to gain victory points all while trying to obtain the riches of the Indian subcontinent through trade and military conquest. We played with the likes of Harold Buchanan and Maurice Suckling.

I have now played the game twice and had a blast both times and frankly am starting to get what it is that I am supposed to be doing and how best to do it. Now I say that but I tied for third with zero victory points but enjoyed every second of it.

After John Company we went to lunch with Harold Buchanan, David Thompson and Liz Davidson and had some really great fried fish, onion rings and scallops. The tartar sauce was to die for and the breading was just right. The fish was also very fresh, probably having been caught that very morning, and the conversation was very enjoyable. I really love discussing wargames and their impact with these folks as they have such interesting perspectives and opinions.

After lunch, we again played one of Matthias Cramer’s designs called The Promised Land: War and Peace in the Middle East 1940-1989, which covers the 70 years of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The game is also a Card Driven Game but was way more a wargame than the other we played as there were clearly defined fronts, units and direct combat once war had been declared.

We both enjoyed this a great deal and it was very cool to see the flow of the game where we were worried about lots of things including building our infrastructure, gaining support from foreign powers, mobilizing units to the fronts and then fighting when war was declared.

Each of the actions requires the use of operations points to roll dice and attempt to hit a target number of 4-6 to have a success and then take those actions on the board. These dice have a clenched first on at least one of the sides and if this is rolled that locks that dice and represents crisis. The Egyptians/Jordan/Syria have 2 sides on their d6’s that are crisis but have more dice. If you get too many locked dice, one of the ways to get them back is to go to war but you have to be ready by having war events and a good number of operations points to fuel your wartime actions.

We both loved this game and you can look for that on Kickstarter in the next year or so. It will be a big hit for sure and many of you will really love the game.

I want to thank Matthias for his time and also for his lovely wife Engin Kunter. They are both such sweet and kind people and can really make some great games!

We then got to play Night Witches designed by David Thompson and Liz Davidson. Night Witches has both a solitaire and 2-player cooperative mode and tells the story of the Night Witches–female pilots of the Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment–working together to fly harassment missions on the Eastern Front during WWII. Their planes are rickety and minimally equipped, but with their engines whirring quietly and with the dark of night to cloak them, the Night Witches are flying towards promotion to 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment–and towards making aviation history!

It is a light wargame that consists of a ten-mission campaign, during which the pilots try to amass enough victory points to be promoted to form a Guards unit, a great honor in the Soviet military. Each mission lasts roughly 30 minutes, and each can be played on its own, separately from the campaign. On each mission, two planes will venture into unknown territory to complete a specific goal and to earn victory points. As they fly, players will observe the terrain around them by drawing tokens from a bag. Some tokens will merely represent the night, but the players will also need to avoid spotlights, navigate through clouds, respond to attacks from AAA, and more.

This one is a very solid design and is a game on a very interesting subject. This one will be on Kickstarter next year from Fort Circle Games.

The main event of the evening was a celebrity game of one of my favorite COIN Series games Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection from GMT Games using a huge oversized board and very fantastically painted miniatures. Alexander and I controlled the French, Harold Buchanan controlled the British, Candice Harris and Cole Wehrle the Patriots and Jason Matthews, Jason Carr and Liz Davidson the Indians.

The game lasted for just about 2 hours and was ultimately won by the Patriots on a tiebreaker with us as French. And yes that is Alexander with a foppish powdered wig on as the French commander. A good time was had by all!

One other thing I want to share is the number of very talented young designers here in attendance. We met up this afternoon with Jason Walonoski who is the designer of Epipolae: The Athenian Expedition in Sicily, 415-413 BCE from GMT Games as well as Justin Fassino designer of Seljuk: Byzantium Besieged, 1068-1071 also from GMT Games. These are both volumes in the Levy & Campaign Series and look very good. These 2 young designers are going to be around for a while and I cannot wait to see them grow!