Tag Archives: World War II

Saturday Morning Musings

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I was browsing YouTube and came across videos about Bolt Action v3, a World War II tabletop miniatures wargame, which I’ve seen before, and went into a deep dive on how to play, what you need, and what’s in the starter box.

I eventually found myself searching for the starter set, along with US Marines and Imperial Japanese Army  sets, since my interest lies more in the Pacific than the European front.

As I was searching for those, other products appeared, specifically Firelock Games’ Blood & Plunder.

Which made me stop looking for Bolt Action stuff, since I still hadn’t finished building/painting my various factions for that game.

I then remembered that if I really need to scratch that World War II itch, I do have Firelock Games’ War Stories, which is a WWII RPG, and the Pacific expansion that I pledged on Kickstarter will be coming out at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I may create a small squad/warband based in post D-Day France, or use the pregenerated characters and try playing solo at some point soon.

I’ll probably spend some time with Blood & Plunder as well, as they’re starting their ‘Summer of Plunder 2025’ event this weekend.

Don’t touch that dial!

Catching Up

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Ha.  Never will.

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Basically I come up with great ideas but fail to execute.  Just ask my gaming group(s) who are still waiting on me to start up a D&D campaign here or a sci-fi campaign there, or all of the various unplayed/unread RPG systems or solo boardgames that are sitting around in various boxes and shelves.

And don’t even mention the multitude of sports game projects/replays that I’ve had lined up for the last decade or so.

But I digress.

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My latest idea was for the War Stories RPG from Firelock games.  It’s based on post-D-Day World War II, European Theatre, and I was thinking about playing a soldier from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the Japanese-American army unit based in Europe.  Through research I found that they mostly operated on the Italian/French border, so perhaps one soldier got separated from the main unit and ended up in the small group that I was planning to create.

I went back and forth with this idea, because the main archetypes for the game primarily come from British, US or Canadian nationalities but using the lifepath method for character creation has ‘Commonwealth (Anzac, African, Indian, etc)’ as an option, so maybe my Japanese-American could start from there.

I thought about how this character would interact with the rest of the squad, and whether his race would be an issue (of course it would) or would I just ignore that aspect, which wouldn’t feel right either.  Or I can create a small group all from the 442nd but once again I would end up addressing/not addressing their place in the game, and finally realized that I would just be doing it as a gimmick or novelty and it would take away too much from just playing the game.

In the end I’ve decided to shelve this concept and move on to trying to figure out how to play yet another soccer game that I haven’t tried to play yet.

To-Do List

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A bunch of games came in recently, and I really want to play all of them as soon as possible.

But that’s not happening.

Links for the current bunch of games that came in:

Right now I’m focusing my time and energy on Core Space, reading the rule book, priming and painting the miniatures, and watching YouTube tutorials on how to play.

We’ll see if I can get a scenario in this weekend.

Stand by!

At my signal, unleash hell.

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I wish there was a better solo system for this game.

I’ve had this game in my collection for a while, probably over a decade, but I can count the number of times I’ve played on one hand.

I’ve played more games of Memoir ’44, also by the same designer (Richard Borg), than I have this game, and the only time I played against a human opponent was at Dice Tower 2019.

I decided to revisit C&CA because I had preordered a Samurai version of the game sometime last year.  As I was browsing Amazon for expansions (I got the 1st and 6th expansions over the years, Greece and Eastern Kingdoms, and Spartan Army, respectively) I saw a damaged copy of C&C Napoleonics on sale for almost 50% off retail price.  I’d never played any Napoleonic wargame, but it’s been something I’d wanted to try, so I ordered it.

Cool, I thought, I’m going to play this one as soon as it comes in.  I was planning to develop a bad French accent to use while playing.

The next day I got an email that the game I had preordered had shipped.

Welp.

So in the span of a week I’ve gone from 1 of these games to 3 variants, or 2 to 4 if you include Memoir ’44.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still possible to play these games solitaire, with one of my plushies or action figures on the opposite side of the board to represent my opponent, but they’re more fun and challenging when playing against a live person.

For now, it’s time to assemble the playing pieces for the Samurai Battles game.

Stand by!

After Further Review

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In the handful of games of Memoir 44 that I’ve played, I’ve had the opportunity to use the ‘Air Power’ card only a couple of times, and usually as the Axis, which is a weaker (1 battle die) attack than an Allied attack (2 battle dice).  So for the most part I’ve thought of this game as primarily a ground assault game.

A few years back and long before I plunged into this game there was an Air Pack expansion that expanded the air combat rules for the game.

At first glance I believed that it was not necessary, since there was an ‘Air Power’ card in the game already.  Many players appeared to feel the same, but others felt it was a necessary addition.

The Air Pack is out of print (like most expansions for this 15 year old game) but Days of Wonder is now planning to release the New Flight Plan expansion.

The rules are posted on the site, and after reviewing them, I decided to preorder a copy of the expansion.

It comes with plane miniatures, like my beloved B-17 Flying Fortress.

Looks like the ‘G’ variant.

Stand by.