First off, we arrived at around 12:00noon in San Diego on Thursday after no issues with our flights. Funny story though. While in Chicago Ohare waiting for our flight to San Diego, we saw both David Thompson and Dan Bullock. But while boarding, I was sitting in row 28 with an open seat next to me when I saw Dan moving down the aisle. As he drew closer, I asked myself “Is he going to be sat next to me?”, not really believing that was the case as there were nearly 250 passengers on that flight. But to my surprise, he was ticketed right next to me and we spent the next 3+ hours chatting about his ongoing projects including a new 2nd Edition of No Motherland Without from Compass Games, Penitent which will be from Lock Horns Games which is a solitaire game where players take the role of Quaker reformers, tasked with designing a visionary American penitentiary in the early 19th century.

Players will draw a floorplan for their model penitentiary and determine how it is governed by resolving a sequence of event cards. Your model will be evaluated at the end of each era based on its influence among reforms and architecture, funding, and the impact it has on the moral fiber of its inmates. Players will expand and renovate their blueprint at the conclusion of each era and the penitentiary must endure three eras of events to win. Finally, we discussed the upcoming Fruit from Fort Circle Games which is a 4-player CDG covering about 50 years of United Fruit in Latin America. Truly a great way to start our trip!

We arrived and attended the mixer that night and had the chance to speak with so many great people including Mike Bertucelli, Mark Herman, Candice Harris, Kevin Bertram, Harold Buchanan, Russ Wetli, Zilla Blitz, Eric Lee Smith, Mark Miklos, Kai Jensen, Justin Fassino, Grant Linneberg and many more!

Mike Bertucelli designer of Tank Duel and Wolfpack.
Mark Miklos the godfather of the Battles of the American Revolution Series from GMT Games.
Mark Herman who is always a joy to listen to.
Ardwulf in all his glory.

So at the crack of dawn on Friday we made our way to the Portuguese Hall to get to the gaming. The first game of the day was a Blind Swords Series title Shiloh: The First Day from Revolution Games. We played with Grant Linneberg who runs Pushing Cardboard and he was an excellent teacher. We also benefited from the presence of Steve Carey who is the designer. Alexander and I played together and we were the CSA who had a very long row to how to be able to make any headway against US Grant.

The Blind Swords System is a chit pull system originally designed by Hermann Luttmann for Position Magnifique: The Battle of Mars-la-Tour, 1870. Since then several games have been published using it from several publishers, covering action in the US Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War.

The system emphasizes the three FOW’s of military conflict: fog-of-war, friction-of-war and fortunes-of-war. The system mixes events with activation chits and does not guarantee that each unit on the board will be able to activate each turn or that each unit will only activate once. The system is designed to force players to make tough decisions with each chit pull.

This was our first foray into the series and we very much enjoyed the experience. We were able to win an auto victory by seizing the roads at the top of the board. This came about because we pressed the center pretty aggressively and broke through the Union lines causing Grant to move up a few rearguard units to plug holes. This allowed out beat up and fairly weak units who were in the back to advance with a couple of fortuitous chit draws to squeeze the auto win hexes. We had a blast and Grant can roll dice as he rolled plenty of 5’s and 6’s.

We then held a 1 hour panel with The Players’ Aid Wives (Kelly and Paisley) and had a great time asking them questions about The Players’ Aid journey over the past nearly 9 years. we are eternally grateful to the 2 of them as their support and encouragement has been invaluable to both of us. We couldn’t do what we do without them and truly love and appreciate them immensely.

We then got together a 5-player game of Crisis: 1914 from Worthington Publishing, which is a recent release that deals with the July Crisis that lead to the commencement of World War I. The players are trying to score points for their country while trying to avoid war. The game is designed for 1 to 5 players and plays in under 2 hours.

There are 3 interrelated concepts at the heart of Crisis: 1914 including Prestige, Tension, and Diplomatic Pressure. Prestige is how you win. The player with the most Prestige at the end of the game is the winner. Diplomatic Pressure is how you score Prestige. Every card has a DP value. You apply DP by playing cards. The player with the most Prestige at the end of a turn earns Prestige points. There are other ways of scoring Prestige points too, but this is the most important one.

Tension is how you lose. If you end a turn in the red zone on the Score Track you are also creating Tension for your opponents which reflects how close you are to provoking them into mobilizing for war. If you provoke them too far war starts and you lose. Cards drive the game.

There are various card types that affect the game as follows:

Assertion Cards – uses your nation’s power to increases your Prestige.

Consensus and National Interests Cards – allow your nation to play more cards

Diplomatic Back-Channel Cards – let you increase DP without increasing Tension

Caution Cards – allow more cards to be drawn into your hand.

In addition, some cards have recurring effects on Momentum, which stops players from performing certain actions and Reduce Tension which lets you lower Tension in your country.

We had a blast with this one and I cannot wait to play this again sometime. It is best with 5-players so make sure you get the right group and give yourselves a chance to really learn the game as each is faction’s deck is completely asymmetrical and repeated plays will help you understand each’s strengths and strategies. Maurice Suckling (the designer) won the game but the scores were all fairly close.

We then sat down with Sam London to play his upcoming game called Common Sense (it was originally called Absolved from All Allegiance), which will be announced on GMT Games P500 in the next few months. The game is an American Revolutionary War Strategic Level game that uses trick taking and is a struggle over the Will to Fight Track that measures the level of commitment by both sides to the fight.

Very challenging game that saw me eeking out a win with the Patriots by holding a majority of the major cities while pushing Britain’s will down by winning a few key battles, destroying British Regulars and getting the French to join the rebellion.

This was a very interesting game and I am very glad we got to try it out and also shoot a 30-minute video with Sam.

We returned to our place at around 11:00 and fell into bed exhausted. Tomorrow, we have a game of Virgin Queen from GMT Games, Greek Tragedy from Blue Panther and John Company 2nd Edition from Wehrlegig Games.

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