I apologize in advance but tonight is going to have to be quick. I am very tired after a long day and really want to hit the hay. Day 3 here at WBC started early as we woke up at 6:45am to get out the door to breakfast with some good friends including Cullen, Russ, Mike and John Sy from the Philippines. Great conversation was had and it is always good to be able to reconnect with old friends.

As we entered the open gaming area, we met Daniel from Connecticut who is a fan of the channel. Really nice guy and this is his first convention! So glad to see that we have inspired people to get out of their comfort zones and come to these conventions. Bravo Daniel!

Before we get into the games I wanted to share some of my purchases today from Decision Games. I have long been wanting to collect the Battles in the East Series of operational level WWII East Front wargames designed by Antony Birkett. And today I dropped a few hundred bucks to acquire volumes 1, 3 and 4 as I already own volume 2. These are gorgeous games and I am very much excited about giving the system a try.

The 1st game today was Time of Wars from Strategemata. This is a multi-player card driven game similar to games like Here I Stand and Virgin Queen designed by Krzysztof Dytczak that focuses on the 16th and 17th centuries in Eastern Europe. The game focuses on the five superpowers of the time in Eastern Europe including the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Tsardom of Russia, the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire.

The game incorporates historical events like the Time of Troubles in Russia and the Thirty Years’ War and features a card-driven system with interaction between players through diplomacy, alliances, and warfare, while also taking into account factors such as economy, domestic policy, military strength, and religion.

If you are familiar with games like Here I Stand and Virgin Queen this one will feel very familiar.

Each of the factions is unique and assymetric and rather than a shared deck of strategy cards each player has their own personal deck that is tailored to their faction and incorporates the history of the time.

I played as the Ottomans and was able to develop my armies quickly and move out to attack the Holy Roman Empire in Vienna. Over a few turns I was able to capture the HRE capital and all but knock them out. I was able to get almost all of my keys out by the end of Turn 2 and we called it as it didn’t seem there was anyway back. The game took about 4 hours and we really did enjoy what it was trying to do. The rules are a bit poorly worded and need some editing and the graphic design is very basic but this one is good. We will definitely try to play this one again in the future.

After the game was over and we ate lunch, we returned to our game of Congress of Vienna restarting at Turn 7.

We played for about 3 more hours and finished the game which saw my British pulling out a close victory. The French did hold the combined Austrian/Russian out of Paris which allowed me to win as they didn’t collect 8VP’s. Interesting side note here, I had informally teamed with France near the end and was trading him my French cards to help him in battle as I didn’t want them to win at Paris. This strategy seemed ahistorical but it was actually really very plausible as we’re carving up the carcass of the fallen Empire.

Such a great game and at this early point in the year, probably my Best Game of 2025!

In the end the scores were fairly close and my British pulled out the victory.

Just before dinner, we got a nice introduction to the upcoming Army of the Potomac from GMT Games from the master himself. Very much looking forward to this volume in the Civil War Heritage Series.

The game can be played with Rebel Fury as a campaign and this new volume involves greater focus on supply, ammunition availability and has wagon trains. This map is huge and is quite the sight all setup.

We then went to dinner with Mark Herman and David Dockter and had such a great time chatting with them about all sorts of topics such as the war in Ukraine, intelligence activities, films, books and other topics.

Our final game of the evening was a playthrough directed by Mark Herman of his and Geoff Engelstein’s game called Triumvir from GMT Games. Triumvir builds on the system used in Versailles 1919 where players use influence cubes to try to gain control over issues that effect the outcome of the struggle for control of the Empire and the mood of the people of Rome. In Triumvir, players use their influence in popularity, money, and legions to vie for the offices of Consulship, Pontifex Maximus, and Governorships over provinces and try to outmaneuver their friends on the floor of the Senate. The game can be played by 1 – 3 players and we played a full 3-player game.

During a player’s turn, they can take 1 of 3 actions including placing influence (popularity, money, or legions) on various issues in the firm of bifurcated cards with 2 different choices that are being debated in the Senate, recover or get back their spent and exhausted influence, or settle an issue and cause it to be enacted to move around the mood of the Roman public and also to build their positions on the 3 tracks that can earn victory.

These actions are then followed by elections, revolts in the provinces and domestic unrest in the turn of riots. If these things are not all well managed the players can find themselves poor and devoid of any influence and publishing standing. The game played in 90 minutes and was really quite fun. We thought it was lite and fun and feels very similar to Versailles 1919.

What a great day of gaming! 3 games and we were able to do 3 videos and are very much ready for bed. Tomorrow sees us playing a full 6-player game of Here I Stand and possibly games of Valkyrie: A Black Orchestra Game from Starling Games and Border Reivers from GMT Games.

-Grant