Day 3 here at WBC and I am already exhausted! But there are games to be played. Today, I was invited by some of our friends (Cullen and Russ) to play a 6-player game of Here I Stand from GMT Games, which in case you didn’t know is one of my all time favorites. I played as the English and out of the 6 players everyone except one were veterans so we expected the game to take about 75-90 minutes per turn. We played the full campaign game and had it all set up and ready to start at around 9:30am.

If you don’t know, Here I Stand: Wars of the Reformation 1517-1555 is an experience packaged in a game that attempts to boldly cover the political and religious conflicts of early 16th Century Europe. The game focuses on the struggle of religious reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli as they battle the Papacy for changes in their views of God and religion. But it is more than just the Holy War as it deals with the other European countries involved in the affairs of the time including France, England, the mighty Hapsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire in the east. They all played a role in the process of the Reformation and the design brilliantly weaves this all together into an interesting and engaging experience. The game also covers the action of the period, including wars, marriages and ascendancies to thrones, using a unique Card Driven Game (CDG) system that models both the political and religious conflicts of the period on a single point-to-point map.

The first turn as the English I was focused on taking Edinburgh in Scotland and building up my troops to ultimately begin some campaigning in France to gain some keys and additional cards. I was very fortunate as I was able to take out Edinburgh fairly easily with some good rolling as with 4 dice I scored 3 hits to no hits for the Scots. Great start for the English!

I then put some effort into the exploration of the New World and it also paid off. My explorer rolled well and discovered the St. Lawrence River. At the end of Turn 1, the Papacy had 17VP, France/England were tied at 12VP, the Ottomans at 11VP, Hapsburgs at 10VP and Protestants at just 2VP. The Holy War was not going well for the Protestants and that would be a theme throughout the afternoon.

At the outset of Turn 2, I played the English Home Card to DOW France. Henry was feeling saucy and attacked Francis and decimated the French in a field battle killing all 6 of his units and capturing him! This would force the French to sue for peace at the start of Turn 3 to get him back and for me to return the key to him. Just look at all of those hits!

At the start of Turn 3, Henry VIII petitioned the Pope to grant him a divorce from Kathryn of Aragon which he granted for the draw of one of my cards. I then acted quickly and divorced her with my Home Card and married Anne Boleyn who granted me sickly Edward and I secured the 5VP that comes with a male heir. Very fortunate with this as well. I have actually never seen that happen on the first attempt. It usually comes down to the wire and is something that the English player has to spend time and resources on accomplishing.

It was going well for the English with 22VP at the end of Turn 3 and I was closing in on victory but so was the Papacy. And now things turned to take out the leaders as we both were buffeted on all sides.

I then went back on the offensive taking Paris and then ultimately moved south to take a final key to get to 26VP. Everyone tried to get me out of the winning position and France attacked me at several of my keys to attempt to gain them back. But to no avail and the game ended at the end of Turn 4 in an English victory. This one was pretty sweet!

Such a great game. Always tells a great story and leaves me wanting more! I’m so glad that we got the game in and it took about 6 1/2 hours to complete, which I thought was pretty darned good.

I then made one more trip to the vendor hall and bought a few more games in Raider Drop Zone from Keith Tracton and Viva Mexico! from White Dog Games. I spent a pretty penny in the vendor hall over the convention but am looking forward to playing some more great games!

Next up was a game of Mare Nostrum: Empires from Academy Games. I was Carthage and we played a full 6-player game using the Atlantis faction. Mare Nostrum is an empire-building game where players lead their empire to control the trade in the Mediterranean Sea. The players will expand their influence into new Provinces and then build new Trade Caravans, Markets and found new Cities and Temples to increase revenues. The players also can recruit Heroes and create Wonders to help your cause with cool special abilities.

I spent some time building up but then set my sights on Egypt to the east. We battled back and forth but ultimately they won as they were able to build several cities in the east that produced numerous coins allowing them to build all their heroes.

A great game with some really fun mechanics.

The last thing I did was sit down with Fritz Bronner to get an early look at Liftoff 2.0. The game is a pretty unique looking Cold War era space race game coming to Kickstarter this year.

Liftoff 2.0 updates the successful Liftoff! The Race to the Moon board game from 1989 and its computer game called Buzz Aldrin’s Race Into Space from 1994. This new edition will be packed with additional content based on actual and proposed technologies that make this a very highly researched and complete simulation of the journey into space.

The game is made for 4 players to fight to be the first nation to land a man on the moon, and successfully return them home again.

I was able to shoot a 20-minute video with Fritz and it will be up on the channel next month.

That was it for the day and I returned to the room for a good (hopefully) night’s sleep. See you tomorrow for the final day before I head home Sunday.

-Grant