Episode 1 - Pod Intro & Latest On The Table

(upbeat music) - Good day listeners and welcome to episode one of Cardboard Campings. My name is Kevin Halls and I'm joined today by my co-host Don Lovek. Don, how you doing? - Good. Hope everyone out there is doing fine tonight. Welcome to our first attempt at this podcast. So we wanted to do this podcast monthly just as a good little connect as we already play regularly together Don and I do and want it to add more content to the Wargaming Nation. We'll get into a little bit more about the podcast later, but maybe first we can just start Don with an intro for yourself. - Sure. So as Kevin said, I'm Don Lovek currently located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is about an hour north of Philadelphia. I was born and raised and educated in Philadelphia. So when I promote Philadelphia sports and say go birds every once in a while, hopefully we won't lose too many listeners from that. I'm a huge flyers fan, probably it's my favorite sport and the Eagles as well as the Phillies. Not a big pro basketball fan since I think it's a terrible product and it's almost unwatchable these days. So I won't talk much about that, but college basketball I like. And for those that are on these coast or no college basketball I went to LaSalle University, which back then, a hundred years ago when I was in college, was part of the big five. So I'm a huge big five fan and people want to hear about that. We can certainly talk about the big five. So I was educated in Philadelphia, like I said, went to medical school in Philadelphia where I met my wife, cheated off her as much as I could since she's a lot smarter than I am. And we got married actually during our residency, our pediatric training in Philadelphia. I always say that I went after the pity vote and I think that's how I landed her was. She took pity on me and said, all right, what the hell? So we finished our training in '85 and then moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania in '86 for a job opportunity for both of us. We bought a house in '86 and the Realtor said to us when we moved in, this is a good starting house for two physicians and 40 years later, we're still in the same house. So it's a very lived in house. So we, like I said, I've been a pediatrician all my career. I got into the administrative part of medicine and then actually into the IT side for the last 20 years of my career where I worked on clinical information systems and implementing those and essentially trying to drag doctors into the 21st century for a while, especially around the year 2000 and the early 2000s when that was sort of a new thing for physicians to use computers and practice and in the hospital. So now I'm mostly retired. I work occasionally at a clinic for children with Down syndrome, sort of my ticket to heaven since I volunteered there for about 20 years. I actually started the clinic so I figured being an asshole, most of the rest of my life I'd probably needed something good to balance the scales when the time comes for the final reckoning. So I played board games and card games on and off growing up and then with our children we have three children that are all in their 30s now and out, without the country. And then in 2017 my youngest son gave me size as my first sort of major league board game and I absolutely fell in love with it. It's still one of my favorite games. And so I started, that's when I started getting into some of the more complex Euro games, things like that. And then somehow and I think it was on board game geek that I came upon war games, which back then my understanding was access and allies and risk and that was about it. And then this whole world opened up to me of board games. And actually my first board game that I bought was a GMT title called Cataclysm, which was a second world war sandbox type game, actually moderately complex. So I played that for a while and then I got into coin games, Liberty and Death and a couple of others. I got into Labyrinth also from GMT. So a lot of CKGs at that point. And then at one point I was thinking, you know, and I was reading about it and I said, "I'll never get into Hex and Counter games." Those are just too granular, too tedious, you know, all these small counters. And then my first foray was actually a World War Three game from a Polish company called TS War Games. And I think it was our 10, 20, 24. And so it was sort of a medium weight Hex and Counter game. As I look back on it, to me it was very heavy when I first bought it, but I had no idea what heavy war games were, I'm sure we're going to talk about that at some point. So once I started that then I started to get into other games. I started listening to the history on the table podcast. And those guys loved Next War. They talked about Next War all the time. So I finally bought one of those titles. And now I've been able to talk about this. I've played Next War probably continuously now for three years. And I think Kevin and I are going to deep dive into Next War at some point. I play a lot of sports simulations. Some of the big stratomatic fan that's been going on for many years, and especially during pandemic it really picked up. And I play some RPGs, actually more solo RPGs than group RPGs although I'm currently DMing the recently released Monty Python RPG for my wife and our friends. So that's been started. That's sort of where I am, how I got to this point. And that Kevin at a convention. And then we started playing online. And then one day when he had nothing absolutely better to do, he said, hey, let's do a podcast. And so here I am. So there it is. That's me in five minutes. Yeah. And meanwhile behind me, my board games on the shelf of shame are going, what the hell are you doing? You idiot, play me instead of spending more time doing content stuff. That's probably the voice is coming out of the wall there. That's great Don. And I am pretty happy that we both kind of connected over the history on the table, community, a great community. Not biased at all, making that statement. But if you're not familiar with it, make sure you check it out. Like I said earlier, my name's Kevin. And some of you may be have heard me through my YouTube channel, First Contact Gamer, which is trying to win the award for the least consistent publishing of content in the war game space. I think I'm getting pretty close to the peaks and valleys in terms of update frequency. But just been in the hobby now for about 10 years, kind of a similar timeline as Don's. I had a really good friend who I think it was Twilight Struggle that he picked up first. We gave that a play. Had a lot of fun with that. Didn't understand it at all the first couple of times. And then at the end of the day, found out that this company makes other games. And they've got this really interesting one. I remember this son, what happens if everybody invades Taiwan? Well, let's give that a shot. That sounds fascinating. And that was, of course, next work Taiwan by GMT. And that really then just became a snowball effect for me as I found kind of the hex encounter space of war games. I had actually done a fair amount of hex encounter war gaming on PC growing up. So I had some understanding from there of kind of the base mechanics, but getting into it in a physical fashion, coming from that generation of spending the entire life behind computer screens. It's nice to have something a little bit more physical in front of you when you're enjoying your hobbies. Certainly one of my favorite parts about it as well as just the community that surrounds it. I live in Minnesota and you will probably pick up on more sports references between Don and I. And we'll talk a little bit about that in the podcast purpose a little later on. But I'm more of a European football supporter. Chelsea specifically is my club there. And then Detroit Red Wings for the NHL. Those are really the two that you can get me worked up on when it comes to sports, not quite as much on the collegiate level or like Don on the NBA side. Eric, to my wife now for nine years, we've been together for 12. Oh God, no, that's 11. I'm gonna have to edit that out too. And we have a son who's six. And he is just now getting to the stage of really being interested in board games and stuff. And I'm trying as best I can to moderate my zeal for going straight from checkers to standard combat series titles or something like that. For now he's really getting into the board game and card game hobby. So that's been just so exciting over the last couple of years as he's been growing into that a little bit. Keeps things busy. The other thing that I'd say is with the YouTube content with this podcast, and I'll speak for Don for a second here. We both will do this as we have the time and as we have the opportunity to and we'll target month of the episode sometimes might be more sometimes, so it might be less. But I just always want to put that qualifier on there that we're not doing this for our jobs. So please don't expect that from us that you'll get something on the first of every month or something like that because we do this, We have fun with it and as long as we're having fun. and you'll get more and more content coming out of it. And I'll maybe use that as a transition to the topic of what will this podcast be other than an opportunity for Don to make fun of me and me to make fun of Don on a more regular basis than we already do. What were you thinking Don? - So Kevin and I talked about what we want the podcast to be. I think first and foremost, we wanted to be fun and to be honest, fun for us is the most important thing. Hopefully that means fun for the listeners also. Time will tell whether or not that bears out. And then we just talk about the hobby and things associated with the hobby. And as Kevin said, we'll get into some sports talk we're both big sports fans and talk about some stuff outside of war games, I think other games that we play and our experiences with that. And then topics that will go into based on hopefully some listener feedback. So maybe both of the listeners that tune into this can give us some ideas on what they'd like to hear and we can tailor some of the content based on that. I think we'll talk about. - Well then if that's our audience, Kevin, we're limited to two because both my wife and my parents are both deceased. So can we count my children? Then if I pay them, I think I can get them to listen. So 'cause they're all very busy. And they're actually game players. So my youngest is a big D&D fan. He also loves to play root when we're together. Actually we'll all play root. My middle son has a two year old. So he's mostly playing with hot wheels and building blocks right now. And then my oldest daughter actually is a huge windspan fan and her and her husband, I bet have probably played well over 500 games of windspan together. So they all like root, we play that. I can't get them into war games, pure war games but I try when they're at the house. - I always find bribery is a very successful measure. So maybe if we take the kids to Disney, we can get a five star review or a like or something like that. - Right. - I already do that. So I need to, I already take them to Disney. So I need to find something even higher than that now to get them. So it's typically I threaten them with it, if they don't do this or if they're out of the will but they've sort of gotten tired of, so now they'll preempt me with. If I do this, am I out of the will? So wait till they find out the war games are in the will. - That's right. That in my fountain pen collection. I have a fountain pen collection that they've none of them won. - Right, none of them won. So anyway, so some of the other topics we were thinking about was maybe how we consume content or what our preferences are in our opinions on the various ways the content's being distributed these days, both print, audio and video. I think we're hoping because we do, we do know some people in the industry that we can get some interviews of maybe designers and other dignitaries in the field and other people that you may know from other podcasts. I talked about maybe talking about our experience at conventions and which ones we've been to and again get some ideas from the listeners on feedback in terms of other places that we could think about going. Kevin, what else did we talk about? - I think you've covered most of it. I would maybe just summarize of any great idea you've seen from other content providers in our space in the War Game hobby. We're likely to just pill for that idea and follow a similar structure and content here on this show too. So if you like that, you'll probably like the same content we're going into and I promise we'll eventually get to talking more about the war games in this particular episode too. But there's so many great structures of how contents made in our space. Don't need to reinvent the wheel. I don't think with us will review what we've been playing. We'll likely will review what games we're doing deep dives into what we have planned for gaming sessions, et cetera and really just kind of share some of our experiences and hopefully hear some of yours as well. But nothing too revolutionary because again, I want to set expectations in episode one for Don and I. Don't expect jaw dropping. Unless it's comedy in each other's expense. - Yeah, I think that we can do. - Yeah. So on that nice little treasure topic, Don, what have you been playing? - So what have I been playing? So for the last three years plus, I always had at least one game of next war going. So I started that like I said back after one of the podcasts that history on the table guys talked about it. I figured I would give it a shot. To me and again, I limited hex encounter experience. But to me it's the most complex rule set that I've tried to consume and if it wasn't for such a great supportive community that it responds to questions, sometimes almost immediately, whether it's on Discord or Board Game Geek, I'm not sure I could have stayed in that game. It was just so daunting to me. So I started with next word Vietnam. I had it on the table and was playing it two handed solo, myself asking a million questions. But I was able to see the sophistication of that game and how well it dealt with combined arms and strategy and then I got into it more and more. And where I met Kevin actually was at the historic AC fest which was put on by the history on the table guys in Kansas City which was very hot when we were there. It's been in August that convention. And the designer Mitch Land was there and actually had a sort of mini convention, a mini tournament for next war that we've played a couple of times. And so since then I've been playing on Vassal with several different people. So I've had usually at least two games going and actually now I'm at the point where I have some people that are newer to the game that I'm actually starting to walk through the game and walk through the sequence of play and go through there. So terrifying prospect. Me teaching. Yeah, it's a great, it's, I try and not be that guy. It's like, Blight, no, you moron. That's not what we do in X. So I've tried not to do that, but it probably slips through everyone's in a while. Well, you've actually-- Actually, a lot of it when you were learning. That's right. Yeah, from you and other people is, you know, it's, and you could sort of feel that on some of the responses when you asked something really simple. And you could tell people they're holding back from what they're really thinking when they answer. Yeah, well, as it says clearly on page 12, you know, number 10.4.2.2, you're doing this wrong. Right. I am curious though, which next word titles have you had on the table? Because I know you've always got a couple going on. What's the current portfolio look like? So I have all of them. I actually help play tests next war I ran before that came out. So right now, physically on the table, I do not have a next war game. I just have two games going on in the vassal. I think that one I've had the most physically on the table was probably Vietnam, because that's where I started. And it was up for months as I was learning and trying to play through. And then I think the-- and that's probably where I've spent the most hours in that game. So Bill and I and people might have heard Bill, and he appears occasionally, I think, when on-chair, Jorgons, when I'm over the place. He's like on the late night show circuit. It's amazing. I don't know how he gets so many invites. And he's in every picture, at every convention, also. So anytime anyone posts, it's there's Bill. So Bill and I played a full next war Vietnam campaign, one of the long advanced scenarios. We played probably three mornings a month. We tried to play every week. Usually once a month, you miss a week for two hours. And we played for 18 months to get through 13, 14 turns. And we sort of-- especially after the first few months, we knew what we were doing. So it wasn't that we spent the entire time in the rule book. It's just that complex of a game. And when you're playing with all the advanced rules, there's a lot to do. So I think I've spent more hours in next war Vietnam than anything else. Yeah. I do want to call out on that comment for the listeners. It may not be too familiar with next war. Is don't necessarily interpret that that if you want to play next war, solidaire, something's sitting at the table, that it's going to take you 400 hours to finish a campaign. I think it's one where your opponent can take a lot of time to think, which is fine. Absolutely fine. But that adds to the time, especially when you're playing face to face. And the other is just you get into such a groove. The last 30 minutes of a two hour next war session, you do as much content in gameplay as you did in the first hour and a half. So just want to call that out that you don't need 400 hours to play next war Vietnam necessarily. And I'm going to try not to pick too much on Don by saying that he plays next war Vietnam for 400 hours. But it's hard not to. Yeah, so yeah, we'll probably, I think we'll probably spend another episode deep diving into next war since we're both sort of fans. Yeah. So other things that I've played, I actually just finished playing the Blind Swords Shiloh game that was released a few months ago. Shiloh the first day. That's from Revolution Games. It's based that it is a Blind Swords game, so it's Chit Paul, which makes it really fun to play solo. I think we did at some points spend some time on Blind Swords. I've been a huge fan of that. I'm also actually now with Bill, now that we finally finished next war. We moved on. We're playing Stonewall Sword on Vassal. So that's also one of the early, might be the first or second, I think, next war title. Blind Swords title that was released. So we're playing that on Vassal. Currently on the table, I have Assault Gains, Sicily 43, Gila Beachhead, and so I've been I have the first one of that Assault 43, 41, excuse me, and then they just released 43. And actually I had, there's a guy I play with who comes out of Manhattan, drives about two hours to my house, and will play for a whole day. And he comes about once every other month. So he was just here this week. We played about five, six hours of this game, and it's a lot of fun. It's a good system. It's got a few sort of specific rules that you have to keep remembering. The combat system is very interesting. It uses very colored dice, both for the attack as well as the defense. You wind up attacking and then the defense cancels the hits with their roll of dice and the remaining hits are the ones that are applied. And it's not as multi-combat as some of the other games, the air and some of the infantry is done off board with cards. But it's still a lot of fun. What else I've been playing? Like I mentioned, I've been DMing the Monty Python RPG with some friends, and that's pretty silly, so it's a silly take sort of on D&D. And I've played some solo RPGs for those that have any experience in that space. I've been, I just finished a campaign of Star Forged, which is based on the Iron Sworn system. What else? So Kevin and I have played some BCS. He's been teaching me BCS, so just like next war, once someone like, you know, beats it into me enough, how much they love the game, I wind up buying it. And Kevin's really sort of a BCS, not sure what word to use here, whether it's, well, it's not expert. Right. Maybe groupie? There you go. That's a good word for it. Right. Yeah, I had some more vulgar words for that. I couldn't pull groupie out, so that is a good one. So I bought Valley of Tears, and so we've been playing that often on, and Kevin can talk for days, probably about BCS. So I'll leave that to him. What else? Oh, actually, I've been play testing for flying pig games at their next expansion to the long road for people that know the long road. So it's, it's a World War III game with paranormal elements. So at its base, it's a World War III hex and counter game with Russians, Germans, US, British, I think, and then there are these extra factions that are vampires and werewolves and sort of other monsters that either play as their own faction and have sort of a bot behind them, or one of the factions is able to take control of them and use them, and they have sort of special powers. So it's sort of fun because it's different than just a street, hex and counter game. So they're coming out with a new expansion called Broken Logic. So I've been play testing scenarios for them. I think that the play testing might be done. And yet we hear from so many folks, why does everybody publish a Normandy game, a bulge game, World War III with paranormal factions? I mean, come on, that's creative. Yes, I've actually never heard that done. I've never heard of me. Yeah, it's a Mark Walker who's behind flying pig. It's his design. There's one expansion already called the Fatherland expansion that I think adds to Germans to the mix, as opposed to Russia versus the USA and Britain. And then this new one will add new factions, new paranormal factions. And there's some card assist in terms of powers, things like that. And yeah, it's, you know, like I said, at its heart, most of it is just sort of straight hex and counter, you know, with spotting roles and then, you know, CRTs. But these factions had a cute element. I think one of the nice things about going into that space too is, as a designer, you never have to worry about any criticism of the order of battle for the vampires. Right. Right. So that's the added bonus there, but might have to give that a look. I don't know that the crossover would be quite my take, but maybe the base World War III aspect, I'll have to take a look at. Yeah, and they actually have scenarios that do not use the paranormal elements. So then you can play it as a straight World War III hypothetical hex and counter game. Got it. Nice. Let's see. Sorry. One more question on that. Is it World War III like present day or World War III like a 1989 or something like that Cold War goes hot? Good question. These futuristic vampires or are these vampires rocking T6? Yes. Yeah, it's more current, more more current ordinances than, than height, the satical ordinances. Got it. Okay. Then on the sports front, I've been playing a game called Classic Soccer with a friend, so they'll come over every few days and we'll play that. So that's based on, it's very statistically driven. It's a very long game. In fact, we played yesterday and we're talking about whether or not it could be a bit too tedious. It's actually been converted into a computer game to expedite the play because it's the, and I think Kevin's seen this, right? I think I brought it to one of the historic KC Fests and we played it a little. So, you know, it's one of those games that my wife will walk by and joke that playing the game takes much, much longer than the actual game and that's true for this one. And then I play Fair Man of Stratohmatic, so I actually organized a club. Stratohmatic two years ago tried to get people to organize local clubs and so I, of course, not working and having more time than I, actually less time than I think, but more time than I profess said I would help organize a Philadelphia area club. And so they gave me all the emails of everyone that signed up as interested and I organized a club and so we meet once a month. In fact, we're meeting tomorrow's Sunday and we meet at a sports bar or at a gaming cafe if we can find one that'll host us. And it's mostly baseball. We've played some hockey playing actually Strat Football tomorrow when we play and every month we'll come up with a different theme for baseball. So we've had themes such as, so tomorrow's theme is teams with more than 90 wins who did not make the playoffs. And then we've had themes of World Series losers. We've had themes of teams that are less than 500, teams of greater than 200 teams stolen bases, favorite Phillies teams since a lot of people are right around there and are Phillies fans. So that's been a lot of fun. We get about 8 to 10, 8 to 12 people each month that show up. We have a little tournament each month and I had trophies made up so that we hand out a trophy each month. It actually gets past the long. It's like the Stanley Cup. You have to bring it back the next month and then we give it to the next winner. And then there's pictures of the trophy ceremony and people drinking out of it. Actually they don't do that. That's got to be a novel experience for the average working player to go to a tournament and leave with a trophy. Right. That's got to be novel. So yeah, these are some serious strat players too. For people that have played stratomatic, it goes all the way from basic to advanced to super advanced rules and some of the super advanced rules are really intense. And so just for time purposes, we've had to scale some of that back. Because otherwise we can't get all the games in that we want to get in. But it's a fun group. It's a nice group of guys. They're really just to play. Which is why we have an organized league. A lot of people are involved in draft leagues or point-based leagues. These guys just want to play each month. So we pick a new theme every month and get together and just roll some dice. You need a good balance of casual and competitive there. Right. Yeah. So that's probably a good summary of what I've been doing. So that was all yesterday. I can talk about what I'm not kidding. Yeah. No. So now it's time for Kevin to be a little embarrassed with his list of what he's been playing compared to that exhaustive summary. My goodness, don't. But I think we both knew that coming into this. So for what's been on my table, this is a really strange development for me. I've got probably close to a dozen gaming surfaces that I could have games on because my wife is fantastic and has just given me the basement to play war games and will never stop thinking her for that but I've got none up because we're remodeling our basement and for those who follow my youtube channel and are wondering where the hell are your monthly updates. All the tables and all the setups of third war or third winter specific war or federation and empire. They're all taken down as we remodel the basement so what I've been doing a lot lately have just been smaller day games so not necessarily campaigns are some of the bigger games that I'm normally drawn to and vassal so I still have been doing in the last month a lot of the third winter on vassal and that that's been a really positive experience it's my favorite game by far and we can die more into that in the future date but. Still still making a lot of. I'll say study notes and content on the side so that way when I get the games set back up we will be good to go and we'll have those those updates coming back out more regularly and I think don's already left me a half dozen times for this obviously had those campaigns set up on on these massive setups and bought thousands of little dime bags and labeled each one with what the hex was and on what map and put every unit into dime bags. Let's interrupt for a second and sure so when Kevin says dime bags he's talking about like size of of bag for those of us from the eight and 70s dime bags have a much different connotation so yes of course I am not actually distributed anything in my my home here but that exercise took a while but we'll be able to get everything set right back up to how it was will continue the campaign where I'd kind of left off just. Honestly don't it's felt weird because I'm just itching. To have a big campaign game set up and to just tinker with it because I that's kind of my my normal operation is you know after the kids gone to bed work days done stuffs picked up around the house just go tinker for an hour or two at a table that's got a game already set up and not having that's really thrown me into a funk for the last couple of months but. I've also had a chance to play some games just with family and friends again that can be done on a dining room table and are just a day game so for fathers day we did some Washington's war i'm a big big fan of that game and you can find it on rally the troops as well which makes it convenient to play a little bit easier than a vassal set up and you can do it you know on a mobile device and lose all of your time on rally the troops that way. And then also had a really nice gaming session with some friends teaching them plantage and so that that levy and campaign series plantage and it has has certainly become my favorite Paco did a great job with that design. We had a very interesting playthrough as the for the gaming group we ended up doing a co-op game where each side then kind of split the lords up which was a lot of fun so it turned it into more of a multiplayer experience but one of the players got. Far too aggressive as they had a Henry with this massive army and was just chasing everybody up and down England and at the end of the day didn't turn out so well but. Plantage and it highly recommend and hope to get that to the table and frankly to do more co-op experience with levy and campaign because I haven't heard many people talk about it but we had a lot of fun playing that way as a multiplayer as opposed to a one v one. Was that virtual or face to face face to face just with a local friend group here in Minnesota so and then the last one just to call out is had a great chance to meet up with a friend for the first time face to face here in Minnesota he's he's local but also part of the history on the table discord community and we got a chance to play two training exercises of red strike. He's gone on to actually set up the full to gap battle scenario and seem to have a good time with that red strike is one that is on the very long list of. Want to do deeper dives into the full campaigns i've done a number of the training scenarios a little bit of tinkering with the battle scenarios but that system is is pretty exciting and. With a couple of expansions coming out when vuka drops those I don't know that i'll be able to resist not getting that game back to the table. No vampires though so i don't quite know if it has enough flair for you don't. I wasn't sure i actually wasn't sure that that i was going to like that game and. Now flying pig has has really nice components you know nice mounted maps i'm actually a mounted map fan i know that's a debate mount now is his paper so there you go absolutely not. Oh no yes i'm. Because otherwise you have to cover your you have to cover your paper maps with something and. So i actually use rolled vinyl for mine like not plexiglass i have like this this vinyl that i so because it has some tactile. Resistance so that the counters done slide it's easy so it's harder to like screw up you know bump the table and they all go flying. So i'm a complete clutz as a person and mounted map board scare the crap out of me that i'm going to fold it the wrong way rip that map up off of the mountain etc. And i've had this paranoia for as long as i've been in the hobby. And it finally happened last year where i actually made that mistake with um gmt's wolf pack. I was so upset today i got to take it out of the box set it up but then put the map board back in and just wasn't holding it because it has so much have to it correctly and it ripped just a little bit off of the the mountain and. Now it's it's not the shelf of shame it's like the corner of disappoint you like that yeah well no i can't even look at it i just feel bad it's what have i done to you which is a shame because i want to get that to the table tube. But no mounted map boards will have a whole different episode on that maybe right well now it's to get you for the holidays i'll replace that game for you and so that you can play it again i'll get you a new version of of the map. For those who may not be as OCD that the mistake here in the the rip is like one inch on the map it's next to nothing but the smallest perfection drives you crazy. You can't glue it back down or that would be heresy i'm convinced i would just eff it up more i don't even want to try that that's what wives are for. Because they're all they're all better at arts and crafts than you know than we are so. My wife's too much of a perfectionist to put herself liable for that she would never do it never but. Speaking of damaging games and getting replacements and stuff anything been in the mailbox for you. So let's see so today. I actually have a couple of star trek adventures RPG books coming so that'll so i you know they have a solo book called star trek adventures. Captain's log right. I haven't been behind me yeah and then so you can use that to actually play the full star trek adventures full RPG and then they have a bunch of which i have and then they have a bunch of expansion books cling on campaign things like that so so those are coming today i'm waiting for inflection point another bcs title because now i have to you know by those because of you and i think yours came right. Yeah we'll get there's a right minute yeah okay so yeah there's a fun an interesting story behind that so we'll get to that so that that you know i'm waiting for and it sounds like that'll be a few weeks now till till that comes is there anything else that is do and then it will. Maybe it and so i've started to focus more on series that i know that i can add to as opposed to completely new games bcs being the most recent exception to that since you know i took on a whole new system this this calendar year because of kevin's constant haranging of why i don't play that so. Embarrassing me in front of other people that i don't know bcs is if you know made me. An ongoing war game newbie. One i would hate for you to break pattern and trend and be out of character and not embarrassing yourself don't i would hate for you to break that trend. To i don't know that i put much pressure on for bcs just despite my favorite face to face game system and then you said great let's do it actually think you ordered valley of tears before you even told me you're going to just hey so i got this let's play. I think it was on sale so i think they're like they're they're yeah might have been their holiday sale and it's like i've been thinking about it you know people talk about it. Kevin never shuts up about it so let me get one so i picked one that's probably one of the most complex right is that. That that's my opinion on it i think there is some differing opinion on valley of tears just just touch on that real quick i i do think valley of tears is a great game. I just don't know that it's the best implementation or no let me say this differently i don't know that that war that time period is the best for the bcs. CS system. Maybe that's how I would phrase it. I think the system just does much better in a World War II setting, but for the conflict it's covering, I think it does fantastic job. I can't think of a better game that covers warfare in the 60s than Valley of Tears, in my opinion. It's just I think BCS shines in a World War II setting. Speaking of, yes, inflection point did come for me on Thursday, a couple of days ago. I've been clipping that like a madman. I'm going to have that up. My game plan is all the games are actually going back onto tables in the next couple of weeks as we finish the basement remodel here. But I'm going to play inflection point before I get all the campaigns set back up. So there's a nice little transition point. I'm really excited for this game. I think Carl's done a great job with it. Valley of Tears, you and I, we're both big on the Learn series, so then you can just hop into a system and run with it, right? Valley of Tears has the most pages dedicated to it. I think it's about 16 or something for game specific rules. Again, fair enough, you're introducing fighter jets and bombing and these types of concepts. So that takes some time. But by comparison, inflection point done, the game specific rules, there's two games within the box. Let me clarify that. Each of the games in the box, there are game specific rules, one page of royals. That's a massive accomplishment. And I'm just excited about, again, based off that, that philosophy being able to pick it up by no BCS, I don't have to read 10 to 20 pages of game specific rules, not that that's some unreasonable burden for the war game community, but it's just going to be easy to get right into. And you know, it would make it easier and quicker if you didn't clip the counters. No, I'm just thinking of how many hours, how many hours sooner you'd have this on the table if you didn't clip the counters. No, so I, the clipping of the counters has given me a great opportunity to go back and rewatch the table tops edge playthrough of last blitz league, which if he compiled that into like a movie marathon, I think I've watched that too many times is great content. Doug does a great job on that channel. That's our good. I actually had to what I've used to help. Yeah, the system. Even outside from a learning perspective, his playthrough is just great. He has good insight. He explains his tactics and strategies. Well, it's wonderful. But yeah, so inflection point was one that I had in the mail recently. And as you guys can tell, just just very excited for that. Do you want to talk about the map controversy with with an election point? Yeah, this first off, good job, MMP. You're doing the right thing. I'm, I'm thankful to see that you are taking the step that you are stepping that you are taking. You're explaining what what happened. I don't want to get everyone those. Okay. It's completely unnecessary, though, MMP. You don't need to do it. It's fine. I know it's your logo, but you don't need to reprint the maps. They sent out some copies of the game. And the printer had sent maps where one of the MMP logos is blurry and fuzzy. And you can barely recognize that it says MMP on the logo to be fair. I would have never seen it. I, I never look at that when I'm looking at my maps. It's the right thing to do to replace them, etc. Kudos to them for doing it, but not a single person anywhere should have any concern about picking up the game because of some map printing issue or something like that. You could get second hand this game with that error on the maps, not get the replacements and you are perfectly fine. I will be taking the new ones that they send out to me and putting them in picture frames and hanging them on the wall and keeping the one with the fuzzy logo inside the box is the play set of maps. It's, yeah, collectors all items. It is. And yeah, I guess just again, gratitude that they're doing the right thing there. There was an error. They're fixing it. But again, nobody get the impression that that's game breaking for you. You won't even notice. I promise. If you never heard about the update, you would never see it. So that's why mine's delayed because mine hasn't shipped yet and now they're not shipping until they replace all the maps. So I will only get one set of maps with clear logos. And your OCD doesn't like get to you that like, oh, there's something wrong with the map. It's just the logo. If it was a hex or a terrain feature, yes, completely. But and maybe this is getting a little off topic. I would kind of prefer war game maps don't have the company's logo on the map. Maybe an artist credit or something like that. But I think there's like three or four logos on each of these M&B maps because you've got M&P. You have the gamers on there. I don't know if there's like a system logo or anything. There may not be. But I don't know you need to put. I'm not going to get all worked up and red blooded about this. But I don't think you need to put logos on maps. Put a card on key. Right. Some other information that could be helpful. Yeah. But you raise a good point Don. This is another thing that is an added bonus from M&P's action. I get to play this for a couple of weeks. We'll use sit there and envy. Right. So thank you M&P. Thank you for this opportunity. Just making my day. There was one other. There was one other that I'll mention that I'm waiting for. And that's a rock of chick among. So the follow up to the same system is the most fearful sacrifice and pipe creek that they. So that's I think about to ship. And that's the what what do they refer to that as the black swan system? Right. Black swan. So very similar to blind swords. It uses cards instead of chips. And you have to prioritize your your brigade activation so that when you get an activation for that division, it goes in order of your preference of activation. So it's a very cool system. But for those that know blind swords, you can make the transition to black swan pretty quickly. And those are beautiful mounted maps that they come with very pretty mounted maps that are very heavy and big mounted maps that everyone seems to rave that these are some of the most beautiful mounted maps that have been produced. I hope all the listeners see the abuse that I put up with just to bring this podcast out there. This is incredible. I probably would have already picked up a most fearful sacrifice if it was not mounted maps. I I really I've been right on the fence of picking that up for a while now. And something like it not being mounted maps probably would have pushed me over the edge. So even though I think was a game of the year, I think so. Yeah. You'll you'll not you will not purchase it because it's mounted. I mean, that's a serious question. That really is enough of a barrier for you? No, no, no. Honestly, more so the reason is that I'm just not a big ACW guy, which folks will learn over time, right? I mean, I have in my collection one ACW title and else GCACW from MMP. And yeah, just not a I've never been a big civil war buff and I feel perhaps this is a misconception, but I feel that to really enjoy ACW war gaming, you do need to have some good understanding of the history of the conflict. And other than what you'll learn in, you know, basic education system of history courses about you, a civil war, I've never really dived into it too much. The different battles and the different generals and what have you that that's the biggest reason I haven't picked it up. But I'm on that fence because to your point, it's a game of the year. It's a fantastic system. It's a great designer. The map art is lovely. All of these things are the little tech checkboxes on the right scene by now, by now. And the counterbalance is ACW and then the tipping point is mounted maps. So I live, I live less than two hours from Gettysburg. So we're out there a lot and actually over the last two to three years, I started doing living history as a civil war surgeon. Once a month in the in the nicer months, usually March through October, I get dressed up and full civil war surgeon uniform and go out to Gettysburg or Harrisburg. And we present, you know, we set up and we don't run the battlefield. We're not reenactors. We're living historians. So we set up and tables with all our instruments are reproves of all the surgical instruments that were used. And then people come by and we talk to them and tell them what it was like and to spell some myths about civil war medicine. And so that's another one of my hobbies that I get to do now that I'm not really working. It's always reassuring folks when your gaming partner can perform a civil war medical practices on you. It's just add it bonus in case of emergency. Amputations, 8 to 10 minutes. So moving on. I don't even have a transition for that one. Just moving on. Right, right. The other kind of coming up or or news that I wanted to call out is for MMP, not to belabor their products too much here, but they did just have their annual state of the gamers update go out. So you have GMT doing monthly updates and newsletters and such. For MMP, they really do this, or excuse me, for the gamers to be more specific. The gamers, they do an annual update of just the status of the different series and the games within them. So if you do have an interest in standard combat series, BCS, OCS, TCS, line of battle, any of those the gamers series, you can find that on Carl Fung's blog on BG. And big news for that gamers community, Don. They are going to actually have, there's some complexity to this comment, but a reprint of Case Blue, I'm going to oversimplify it a little bit. So something that goes in the aftermarket for $1,000 or, or, or, between $500 or $1,000 depending on your retailer of choice or your buyer of choice. That is finally getting a, a repackage where they're going to do enemy at the gates too. That effectively covers, it areas Blitzkrieg 2, Case Blue, multiple games within it. It'll be a behemoth, probably not going to see it for a couple of years still, maybe three years. But if you're on the fence tomorrow of picking up a $1,000 copy of Case Blue, just keep in mind if you're a patient individual, there is an option out there for you. So just to see that. My ignorance, what, what system is that? That's OCS operation. OCS series. Yep, so that, in Case Blue covers the, the German operation of Case Blue and, and Southern Soviet Union kind of advancing to Stalin Grot and such. Just a massive game, I said six maps. No, it's more than six maps. It's got a lot of random, or a different sized maps, so it's hard to remember what the quantity is. It might be upwards of nine, just a little add-ons that you add to the map and stuff. So it's, again, you need a very dedicated gaming space for that game, but it gets referenced often in the community as a little bit of that crown jewel for big and hefty campaigns that people could dive into is an example of that. So excited to see a reprint, not reprint, a new version of it coming out. So one of the topics we talked about discussing was our preferences regarding online game playing versus face to face. And how playing solo fits into that also. So I think it's a topic that gets discussed. I think it's a topic that really came to the forefront during pandemic when virtual playing became pretty much the only way that people could play against other players and other opponents. So, you know, I had my opinions, Kevin, why don't you start with what you've, how you feel, and then I'll chime in. Tell you where you're wronged. Yeah, I, I think it's a little interesting and I'll try to take it an interesting way here right off the bat of that question feels like it almost divides the war gaming hobby into two different hobbies. And what I mean by that is, hey, my preference is face to face. I absolutely want to be sitting across the table from my friend playing a war game drinking a beer, be asking a little bit. That's always the preference. However, you look at something like an OCS campaign or Valley of Tears campaign. You can't really do that face to face unless you're dedicating four days at a convention to only doing that one thing and even then you probably wouldn't finish. So, to me, it's like there's a whole subset of the war game titles, libraries, play types, etc. That you can't do face to face in the unrealistic capacity. So, for me, my question is always of which is my preference. It depends on what, what game type we're talking about. So, if we're talking about a levy and campaign or a great statesman series game and multiplayer game, something like that face to face all day. No question for me. But if we're talking about doing a next war Taiwan campaign game Don, you and I, no offense man, but preferences and face to face with that because I'm going to get sick of spending 60 hours with you over the course of five days, nonstop doing that one thing and nothing else. It becomes tough. That's that's that's a very unique opportunity that you can't really repeat with any consistency, in my opinion. Perhaps there are some that do it successfully, but what about you? So, having started into the hobby mostly as a solo war gamer and like use, having spent a lot of time in the previous years at work and for you still at work in front of computer screens. The idea of the tactile feedback, the appreciating sort of the beauty of the maps and the components and being able to physically manipulate that I think has been my strong preference. So, the idea of, you know, and both of us are fortunate and I know it comes up a lot in discussion that we're fortunate that we have dedicated space. I don't have 12 tables, I have one big one and sometimes I'll steal the dining room table because, you know, we don't eat there so I can sometimes use that. But having that space certainly facilitates playing physical copies of games because I can keep them set up and I've been able to teach my cat that, you know, he's allowed everywhere in the house, you know, except the, except the gaming table. It's sort of like the end of 2010, the movie when, when the obelisk says all these worlds are yours to explore except blank him on which noon it was, you know, post no. So, I can keep stuff set up and that allows me to keep sort of physical copies out there. I agree though that, you know, to play face to face my opportunities are very limited. I haven't found a lot of people local that will play. I said that, you know, I play physically with one guy who travels two hours out of Manhattan to Allentown and then another guy that's about a half hour away. But he's a college professor and so during the academic year, he's almost unavailable. So I, you know, so then you have to turn to some some online version of the game and I think it works out very well. I would have never been able to play whatever you said the 400 hours of of next war, you know, without without a vassal and being having opponents that I could play online, you know, on a regular basis. A real quick point before folks assume that Kevin has like nine dedicated gaming rooms in his giant house or something like that. Let's maybe rephrase it to dozen gaming surfaces. They're stackable and they're almost all DIY. So they just stack on top of each other. There's not 12 tables in this house full of games as nice as that would be. The one thing I really want to emphasize there that you called on is, you're right, I don't want to look at a computer screen anymore than I have to after being at work all day. I want to take my eyes and look at something that's not an electronic screen that display of some kind and just focus on the board game and the tactile feel that it presents. And then carries over to the preference of face to face where I'd rather a friend come over and we sit down and play something face to face, not looking to the computer screen, etc. Absolutely. I think solitaire. So let me ask that question, though, of you for solitaire. Are there instances where you prefer vassal when you're just doing it at home and by yourself? No. And into this conversation, I was trying to think of situations where I could answer that question and think of examples, but there aren't. And going through this kind of redo of the war gaming space we've had going on, I have just hated vassal as I've been trying to place some of these solitaire that normally I would play on the table. And it's not miserable and as a result, I've just played a lot less. It's not nearly as enjoyable for me. If I'm going to be sitting at the computer and I'm going to be spending two hours playing a strategy game like OCS title or something like that, I'd rather play Gary Griggs Bees war in the East too. Or you've got all those simulations and stuff and it's if you're going to play these types of games in front of a screen, I think there are better implementations, then vassal, then tabletop simulator, whatever it might be. And you almost migrate then to those options because the fact is operational combat series doesn't have a product sitting out there on steam. Your only option is vassal. Is that a critique of vassal, do you think, or is that just two different games to different genres? Yeah, I would say the latter. I mean, you know, personally, I think the vassal implementations are decent. You know, it's emulated. It simulates the board, you get to pick up pieces and move them around. But it also goes to sort of, and I think we're going to spend some time on this, my approach to gaming in terms of playing a bunch of games one off, play at once, put it away, versus playing it in depth for a while to really try and gain an understanding. And so when I bring a game out onto the table, it's out for quite a while, usually several weeks, and I'll play either full campaigns or a game like, you know, when I play Roots Solo or other games, you know, I'll play Spirit Island, you know, I'll play 15-20 games before I put it away. And so we can talk about that another time. So again, that promotes the advantage of having the physical copy out there because I don't, you know, the way I approach it, I have the time that I can do it. I can leave it up and just play it. So yeah, I think that's a good call out. If you're, if in the span of one week, you're going to play five different war games, that's where something like an online play has a great appeal to you because click of a button, the scenario set up, click of a button, you're finding an opponent and, you know, starting to play, doing face-to-face in-person play or what have you, you're doing a couple of hours of set up, prepping for the friend to come over and play face-to-face, etc. Or you're the one traveling to that face-to-face event and there's just much more of a time commitment that then subtracts from the diversity and number of games that you can play. So you really, you almost have to be committed to multiple playthroughs, especially solitaire of the same game. Or you never finish them like some in the hobby done. I know that's not you, but some in the hobby never finish a game. Yeah, so that's where my OC deal will kick in. It's very hard for me to just stop and like, you know, all right, that's enough. Let's put it away or, you know, let's move on. So when I play, I usually try and, and again, we'll hopefully we'll talk about this, but, you know, I enjoy the longer campaign games that we really get, you know, it's, you get to see the full narrative, you get to see things develop. Yeah. Yeah, that should maybe be a different topic we go really into because I have almost an aversion if a game box tells me it's going to take an hour to play. It's, don't understand it. It's irrational, but I just, I look at it and I go, you can't provide, let me say this a different way. If you're telling me I can play it in an hour, then that isn't enough of a commitment it feels like, I don't know, that different topic, different day. All right. So maybe a little bit to just touch on for what's next because I think we're pretty aligned on that and curious other folks thoughts, but I, I think we're both in the face to face and physical camp quite clearly. For what's next, we've got a couple of different topics that we want to explore will, will plan on a monthly update cadence to the podcast. I think next month will likely have something related to next war as we are prepping for a bit of a next war gaming event that Don and I have in August. So I think that timing would be good in July to talk about that topic a little bit in some capacity. And then we'll probably come up with a little bit of a calendar of guests and different games and different war gaming topics throughout the holiday season. Plus we get back from that gaming event. Well actually, yeah, we'll see because Don and I spending a week gaming together face to face. Could be the end of this podcast. Could be a solo adventure because somebody had an amputation. So really, I'll try to get my instruments on the plane. So be hard to explain a capital amputation sought to the security people. I might have to edit that out so there's no investigation into whether or not I had knowledge of the event before it occurred. Any other closing comments before we shut down here, Don? No, I think that we'll probably touch on some non-gaming interests of ours as we talk more. Like we said initially, we're both big sports fans. And we're both from different areas. So our legions are much different from each other. So that'll create some good conversation. In a very depressing way, neither of us has had to worry about the other's hockey team in a while. So that's something. Alright. Yeah, one point we should discuss while you're not a Minnesota wild fan. So we can, and you've remained a Dichurder Red Wings fan. So that'll be for the future. Yeah, grew up in Michigan is the very short answer to that question. So just stuck with the hometown loyalty. But yeah. Alright. Well, wishing all you were gamers, good dice rolling, and hopefully get a chance to get games to the table in the near future. So thanks for listening, and we'll be back soon. Be safe, everyone. Take care. (upbeat music)