To start the day, we had breakfast with Mark Herman and Phil Rodriguez. Great way to start any day! The conversation was fantastic and the eggs were solid.

As we entered the convention center and the open gaming area for our first game of the day we ran into a fan of our channel. Greg was a very friendly guy and he thanked us profusely for our videos as he said they have cost him lots of money!

We also ran into Chuck who is a follower of the channel. He also complained about having to spend money on games from our recommendations. Love the beard Chuck!

I also got to meet David Dockter who is the designer of Defiance: 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War 2022-? from GMT Games. We did an interview with David last year and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2025/02/04/interview-with-db-dockter-designer-of-defiance-2nd-russo-ukrainian-war-2022-from-gmt-games/

The graphics for the board have come along nicely and the game is looking really great!

We then started our first game of the day at 9:30am which was Congress of Vienna from GMT Games. We played with Robert, Cullen (who is a long time friend) and Mike (who is also a long time friend who we visit annually in St. Louis for Basement Con). Alexander acted as GM as we had 3 new players and we wanted to make sure the game was as smooth as possible. This is our 2nd play of the game and we had decided to do the full 10-turn campaign. I played as the British, Mike was the Russians, Robert the Austrians and Cullen as the French.

Congress of Vienna is a diplomatic card driven wargame based on Churchill and is the 4th game in the Great Statesmen Series. The game is set during the years of 1813-1814 and sees players take on the role of the main powers of the struggle between the Napoleonic Empire and the coalition of Russia, Austria, and Great Britain with their Prussian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish allies. We played the game recently while attending Buckeye Game Fest and absolutely were amazed at the changes and innovations to the system introduced by the designer Frank Esparrago. After now playing again we are seeing the genius in the design that much more.

Similar to Churchill, the game uses a negotiation aspect called the conference table where players will vie for issues such as military operations, recruitment, various diplomatic type actions to bring minors under your control and also military support and then will put those issues to use on the battlefield portion of the board which is represented by tracks that all converge on Paris.

To me, this game is very much a wargame as the combat process is much more involved and less abstracted than in other games in the series. Each side totals up their units plus various DRM’s for terrain, leader cards that can add DRM’s or reduce DRM’s for enemies and then each player rolls 2d6 and consults the loss table to see how many losses are inflicted. This seems more complex than it really is and once you do it a few times it is really very simple. The combat process does add time to the game though and a 10-turn scenario is going to take about 10+ hours to play.

We played for about 7 hours and got through a full 6 turns. Here is a look at the situation after turn 6 with the French holding on to a 20 point lead but their borders in the east are under severe pressure. This one is going to come down to the wire and we stopped for dinner at 5:00pm and have decided to suspend the game to tomorrow night.

The final game of the day is The Napoleonic Wars from GMT Games. We have long wanted to play this and have a 1st edition copy which is unplayed. Here we go.

This was a friendly game being coached by Phil Rodrigues and Kipp Brailey. I was playing as the Russians with Alexander as the British. The game is a Card Driven Game where the cards have Command Points that can be used to build units, move armies, lay siege, negotiate with neutral countries and other such actions. The game is a strategic level look at the entire Napoleonic Wars from 1805-1815. We had a very good time with the game and are very glad that we had a chance to play it with seasoned and experienced players.

Funny point in the game. My Russians teamed up with the Austrians to assault the French in Munich and won handily driving Davout back and capturing an important key. Kip was not happy about this development and told me that I was number 1! Hahaha. Great times!

In the end, France won with 5VP, Prussia was 2nd with 3VP, England was 3rd with 2VP, Russia 2VP and Austria was last with -1Vp.

Tomorrow starts early with breakfast followed by a game of Time of Wars from Strategemata, a look at Army of the Potomac from GMT Games with Mark Herman and a continuance of our game of Congress of Vienna.

-Grant