A Stolen Extra Lap With Dominion, the Buzz-Building Game

Delicious stouts in the fridge, hot cocoa coming off the stove ready to get spiked with cinnamon whiskey, three nice people coming over to play Dominion. I have another board game, Mysterium, ready to give away at night’s end as a door prize.

When I moved down here nearly five years ago, I thought it only a matter of time until the many classics in my storage room would come back to life. They moldered instead. I often imagine my bonds with others as stronger than they are.

Last winter I started pacing around the stacks and admitted that I’m probably never getting to play most of these ever again. Instead I resolve to pry a few stories from them and start letting them go, beginning with the least favorites.

It is impossible to show a new group how charged with feeling these boxes are. I have only the base Dominion set and two expansions, Intrigue and Prosperity, which always proved plenty for us. The old group is gone, connected to this moment only by a mess: Every single box is full of mis-sorted cards from a hurried pack-up. From when? 2015? Three days before the crew arrives, I pour a Samuel Smith’s Organic Chocolate Stout and set about reorganizing them. Straightening a library when you know all the books are going to be read again is delirious busywork. I call the cards’ names and chant them back to order.

Dominion Deckbuilding and Samuel Smith’s Organic Chocolate Stout: I’m going to savor this.

They made the chocolate good and strong in this brew. I wish I’d picked up more than one. But the house is clean-ish by the Night Of, the drinks are ready and so are Bethany, David and Rygar. Two sets of headlights in my driveway. What a sight. I emcee the turns of the first game while they situate themselves, beating them handily on a simple supply of cards that seems bright with obvious (to me) choices.

They request a new setup for the second game. I get excited and have only stouts (Founders Breakfast Stout and Dragon’s Milk Bourbon Barrel-Aged) for dinner while they crush the saucepan of hot cocoa, put a dent in the whiskey jar, and mop the floor with me. There are two attack cards, powerful late-game conversion cards, and extra action/buy cards to consider. It’s late on a worknight and I’m being indulged, so I don’t begrudge Rygar feeding the supply to ChatGPT to get a quick strategy. Which Bethany overcomes anyhow because she timed her “greening” — when you start acquiring your final tranche of properties in a sprint and stop worrying about the efficiency of your deck — better than Ry.

Nobody walks empty-handed. Bethany wins Mysterium; Ryan and David each score a new paperback. I come back from seeing folks off and see that Bethany has neatly packed away all the cards and I feel like a country pastor with a brand new congregation.

Gunning for Daylight: Meditations on Depression and Storm Above the Reich

If you’d rather hear this than read it, check out Episode 86.

I had to treat 2023’s two-month run of nightly suicidal ideation with some skepticism. In 2022 I daydreamed about it for three days because my job was boring.

While detailed — my garage, a stepladder — it lacked sufficient motivational agony. The view through that escape hatch solved itself when I went deep field. Oh, look. There’s me being found by my neighbors’ grandkids. Poor form.

I still had to ask: “Where is this coming from? Why so appealing? Why so often?”

Aside from what was likely some kind of major seasonal depression, thinking about snuffing it gave me a sense of power and relief. Everything since 2019 had felt like the same long year. 2019 was when bad habits and bad breaks finally got on the phone and started coordinating with my warehouse of unattended personal work. It was a hell of a collab. Eject switches glowed disproportionately.

Everything from unanswered emails to the gradual, silent burial of general indifference had twisted my mind. My God, the amount of tribunals I conducted during the average day, alcove after alcove of defendants spiraling in a tower up to the hell of my skull. I restarted and won several fights from years ago in the course of any given minute.

I clawed my way to the 17th of January in this fashion. That’s when the gloom lost its density. It was still cold, but the evening light was counterattacking. Minus the hateful business of the holidays, the deep winter tipped to the sweet, the simply quiet, the restorative.

This was when I decided to burrow into Thunderbolt Apache Leader. I’d learned to use these kinds of tools before. But as the biographies show us, you can have the talent, the workspace, the instrument sitting right in front of you and not even have the will to pick it up and play a single note.

But I got the damn box open and started slogging through the rules. It was on my table for something like seven weeks before I could run a turn without having to look at the rulebook every step.

Not only did it finish off the gloom, it replaced it with a different world. I balked at the early pages of the rulebook. But I pushed through until I found myself capering across the high-gloss terrain hexes, running mission after mission, ecstatic.

I’ll never forget the day it deposited me on the other side. It was March. I’d opted for some dark beers and yet another mission on a Friday evening. I’d been hunched over the game every possible minute that week. It was well past six p.m. and I found myself standing in a shaft of warm evening sun that would not dissipate. It was just hanging there over the ridge. I’d found a friend for winter’s last mile and I’d made it. I’d made it, and I knew how to work that board like an air traffic controller. One at a pokey regional airport, but still.

Is There A Lightning Refill Station for This Bottle

It’s facile to say that Thunderbolt Apache Leader saved my life. Patience, time, minor rearchitecting of habits and a bit of self-reflection did that. But the game was an alchemical accelerant.

So was peeking over the fence into the hex-and-counter boys’ backyards. I started relaxing at night to videos of other middle-aged men with single-shot videos and uneven audio and lots of regimental tattoos in their intro music — the less polished and more avuncular, the better — who played chunky historical wargames.

A lot of these guys were my age. And chummy. And not worried about being cool. They were an after-the-fact proxy for the Saturday night basement crew who adopted me socially — and who I rejected — in middle school. They appeared on forums with well-cited answers to rules questions or cheered along with you when you emerged from a scrap with a clever new tactic. They made their own systems of markers and spreadsheets to customize their workflows. They had medical tweezers to move counters around so they didn’t bump the little stacks in neighboring hexes. If you told me I could have spent the next 100 Saturdays drinking beer and hollering at bum artillery rolls in a big table in a garage with some of these cats, I would have done it.

Dozens of videos and reviews gave me the taste for more war- and empire-themed stuff. By midsummer 2024, I had a strategy and a shopping list: Storm Above the Reich, because I wanted to see a different flavor of air war game and the scope — building and managing a squadron, commanding missions and tracking their minutia — seemed similar enough to Thunderbolt Apache Leader; Hadrian’s Wall, because it simply looked arousing and fussy and unlike anything else on my shelf; and Pavlov’s House, which became an idée fixe early in my reading about DVG’s Valiant Defense series.

If TAL provided such a lift, then loading up on three chewy titles would turn the darkness away for even longer.

I started with Storm Above the Reich. My parents visited in early October for my birthday. I got the solid work table and four matching stools I wanted as my primary dining set and play surface. I could then use my folding table as an auxiliary learning space so I wouldn’t have to pack the game away for meals I couldn’t wolf over the stovetop. I got Storm out on the folding table the second week of October. 90 days later it was still there; I’d barely played one mission.

It didn’t work.

November beat me again.

Unboxing Storm Above the Reich: The still-gentle days of October, when anything felt possible.

Learning Storm Above the Reich: The Impenetrable Double Membrane of Chatty Rulebooks and Paralyzing Sadness

I like the dramatic proposition that Storm Above the Reich puts before me. What I don’t know is whether I can pierce the double membrane of depression and the administrative burden of this system.

I smell an action and story payoff in the game’s cycle of picking planes, positioning, approaching, attacking, and getting shot up at various points along the way. But between this experience and me is a cowering numbness, a refusal bordering on panic when I realize my brain doesn’t want anything new. I crumple on each new page. My eyes move over the diagrams, seeing nothing. I overeat processed foods — anything to feel full with little effort — and spend evenings watching anything on YouTube that kills the hours. I pick movies for their running time.

Storm Above the Reich (GMT Games) is the second installment of a (so far) three-game series of designs from Jerry White and Mark Aasted that zoom in on the experience of managing WWII-era fighter squadrons as they try to make dents in wave after wave of incoming bombers. Like a lot of challenging solo games, the aim of the thing is to turn the feeling of being totally screwed into a forkful of moist seven-layer debacle cake.

And because it’s historically modeled, the Luftwaffe were pretty screwed when the Americans fired up those assembly lines; tapped its endless supply of sturdy, pissed-off kids with good eyesight; and got the bomber wings rolling.

The first game in the series, Skies Above the Reich, lets you try your luck in single-mission or campaign mode flying Messerschmitts against B-17s. The third and newest, Skies Above Britain, sees you scrambling RAF fighters against the Germans as they try to batter the UK to its knees. In Storm, my charge is to fly Focke-Wulf 190s against B-24J Liberators and all their deadly helpers, which include Kittyhawks, P-38 Lightnings, and God forbid, Mustangs.

If you don’t get picked off by those, your reward is diving into a formation of B-24Js flying in combat boxes, bristling with .50 cals and fairly snug in their overlapping fields of fire. You hope to harry the bombers enough to degrade their formation and maybe even shoot one or two down. (In case the havoc on the main board isn’t enough, there is an advanced variant in which you can find out what happens when your fighters break out in pursuit of an isolated quarry.)

The historical and day-to-day variables are painted in dozens of hues: The kind of mission you’re going to experience will morph based on which year it is. 1943? You’re somewhere over the Mediterranean and you can spend points to bring Italian fighters along. You’ll have more experienced pilots. 1945? You’ve still got the planes, but a dwindling amount of kids who can fly them off your makeshift fields. The escorts are deadlier and more numerous. The bomber formations are bigger and more disciplined.

A ton of d10 rolls during setup abstractly present the wild variance of the battlefield overhead and your intercept readiness. Some missions you can only scramble a fistful of planes. Is the incoming wave on approach, over the target or on their way home with empty bomb bays? Where is the sun? What kind of fighters are supporting them and how many? Is the formation high enough to throw contrails? Did the Americans have to rush a damaged bird or two out? Which ones are hit and how badly?

Against this richly rendered picture, you enter into a give-and-take of decisions and determinism, tap-dancing in a seam of agency through a field of attack, escort, breakaway and damage resolution tables. Spend your points. Pick your approach — flank, nose or wing. Decide whether the pilot is Determined (that MFer isn’t going to fire until he can count the side gunner’s freckles) or Evasive. A pilot with Evasive disposition fires at greater distance and incurs less chance of being hit, but burns more time getting back into position for another run, also creating more exposure to American fighters that peel out of their bunched trailing positions to stalk you.

Every flavor of fix you’re in has a rationale, a pedagogical thrust. Which I know because the rulebooks’s authors don’t let you forget about it once across 50+ pages.

This brings us to the inseparable aggravation and charm of this system. Storm Above the Reich is profuse and prolix, both in voice and documentation. Even when I’m not “getting it,” I delight often at brushstrokes like these:

“Map 8 represents a combat box of late-war B-24 heavy bombers. Each is armed with a third gun turret mounted under the nose, a ‘chin turret’ intended to punish Luftwaffe pilots attacking head on. The formation by 1944 had become a cauldron of spraying tracers.”

Or this, inserted into the instructions that guide you through how to simulate the behavior of Allied escorts:

“There are other bombers nearby as well as other Luftwaffe fighters, so if it seems an Escort marker is just sitting there doing nothing, it may be because their attention is elsewhere. It could also mean that they are low on ammunition, low on fuel, are following orders, or their pilots simply do not see your aircraft. It’s a big chaotic moving battlefield and maybe somebody besides you screwed up for a change.”

This narration features prominently across the book, loquaciously interjecting between the procedural, the abstracted, the implied animal adrenaline, the sweep of history and the fortunes of the day.

This voice also welcomes me in the sparsely-traveled alleys of the game’s forum on BoardGameGeek. The profile name of the guy with the best rules answers seems familiar. I check the side of the box. It’s one of the designers, Jerry White, the patient uncle who can’t resist a story or an explanation. (I record and speak to others like this often; I recognize the impulse.)

He shows up more than once to nudge me out of the wilds of uncertainty and back onto the board, with its repeated patterns of light grey bombers on flat sky blue. Its tones remind me of the patterned wallpaper I’d trace with my hands as a kid before falling asleep in my grandparent’s spare room over the holidays. It’s a voice from the Boundless Board Game Saturday Night, feet on shag carpet, a recent starchy meal still in the air, bedtime far away.

I don’t think I would have gotten through my first few turns without Jerry (and the dudes who landed on the BGG forum as confused as me). Storm Above the Reich frequently dares you to understand it. The info hierarchy, the typography/color choices on the books and counters throw me a lot. So here is an aid with an Operations Menu on the cover, labeled as Step or Phase J of a mission. OK. I look inside the four-page card: The inside left page is labeled G: Instructions. Explanatory callouts reference incorrect pages. There’s a master turn sequence printed on the board, but it’s at the lower left in what looks about 12-pt. white type and there’s a lot of competing info on the board: flavor quotes, scenario-specific explanatory paragraphs...these boards have been asked to do a lot. Sometimes it all looks like a palimpsest of a prophet cross-talking with generations of breakaway sects.

Is it November or December, taking it in such small bites that I can scarcely carry over what I’ve learned from the last fidgety sit? Some linearity starts to emerge from the insane pile of cards, counters and boards.

Why am I like this? Why is each of these things a new universe? Why is my mind such a piece of shit? Why can I write this, but not be, like, a person? Aren’t there any middle gears?

My favorite is curling up at night in the enclosing drey of sleep meds, hitting in stages as Toby Longworth reads to me about a hive city getting shelled. As I tug the voice on the speaker to the foreground, I close my eyes and see myself as an outline with moth wings, dead man’s pose, a faint stroke of grayscale around me, rising up to the succor of inexhaustible black.

Some Me163 experimental jet jockeys pitched in, but one’s out with a fuel tank hit and the others have been scattered to the four winds. That leaves two other FW109 kiddies whose planes aren’t shot up, but they got intercepted on their approach and pulled into a dogfight by two Mustangs. I’m not sanguine about their chances.

First Mission: Let’s Do This In the Most Difficult Way Possible

Relax, you freak, and read it again. Now just write down your staffel info like it says in the book.

Pops once warned me about the males in our bloodline and their attraction to doing everything the hardest way possible. I wasn’t listening. I decide to learn on a mission that’s set in 1945. I walk the setup steps: I’m dispatched against 27 B-24J Liberators — shadowed by a complement of hungry P-51 Mustangs — inbound to a German target. Because it’s late-war, all my pilots are about 14 years old.

I take three up-armored FW190s, three other FW190s with upgraded guns, and four fast, but mercurial, Me163s—right up the trailing bomber element’s asspipe, because the setup indicates they are throwing contrails that my flyers can use for cover.

I don’t want to try attacking from every angle on my first run, so I rush everything I have at the tail of the formation, luckily avoiding collisions with my own craft. The Me163s and FW109s succeed in knocking the tail bomber out of formation and inflicting three points of damage on another.
One Me163 is now out with a fuel tank hit — I assume this guy is going to be a comet of burning fuel in about .03 seconds. The other jets are scattered to the four winds by Mustang swarms running interference. Of the FW109 rookie wave, Ahrens is shot down and wounded. Clausen takes a heavy hit to his engine. Doppler and Ehlers? Heavy hits to the cockpit and fuselage, respectively. Zick and Oesau get intercepted on their approach and pulled into a dogfight by two other escorts.

The plan is to be well in my cups by the time they die en masse so I can focus on listening to the Psychedelic Furs and staring at that one streetlight down the dirt lane that focuses the middle ground and distracts me from the first of two derelict houses on my property that were supposed to be a toehold on some kind of empire. I need simpler plans, like music and beer.

What I know of the rules is as tenuous as the line I can trace from my streetlight to the neighbors’ to the distant third on the two-laner. It’s OK. Track seven of Talk Talk Talk is up: “It Goes On.” How was this band so good? You can bail out of a plane and land in this song and ride it through the night.

One Thought Can Take a Season of Your Life

I was talking to dudes on BGG’s Squad Leader forum about the copy of the game that The Moms got me for Christmas in 1979. She knew I was into WWII history and war movies, because weren’t we all? 

I was 10. I opened it, gawped at each bit of it, and put it away. Maybe my best friend Jesse could have played it with me. We would have had all of middle school to argue about it on the weekends. But we never did. We ended up moving to the same state as teens, but never re-established the Missouri bond. He died on Facebook. And some of the dudes on the BGG forum mentioned a common denominator: “My big brother and his friends…” They got to learn it under the wing of some adolescents.

And I realize it doesn’t matter how cool these games are unless somebody is there with you, moored at the point of fascination and raised on the broth of brotherhood. And I stopped shopping a bunch of wargames I liked that YouTubers were talking about when I realized I wasn’t shopping for a game. I was shopping for a big brother I never had, or friends I had and don’t have anymore. I thought it through, like I had my visions of eliminating myself, and thought better.

I have to be my own big brother now. I’m a solo player. It’s a lot of goddamn work, raising yourself all over at age 55. The great poets provide hints. Intuition sows fertile blanks between embarrassments. The lack of applause at the checkpoints is appalling.

Try-N-Fly: Mission Two

I try again in mid-January. Sunset is gradually creeping up to that 5:00 mark again, I know because I track it on the weather apps every week. There’s a smear of painfully bright indigo on the western ridges across the highway that wouldn’t have been there two weeks ago.

I set aside a whole Friday night. I let a wall of flame wash over the to-do list. And I still buck at the threshold: Just admit you bought the wrong game, dude. You’re forgetting your own rules: If you continually have to ask yourself if something’s worth it, that’s your answer. You burned $90. It happens. Let it go.

But I march to the table anyway because I don’t entirely trust the guy in my head who told me last month I couldn’t figure this game out. We’re going in again.

This time I start with the very first mission: 1943, the sunny Mediterranean. I pour a nice stout and keep the Golden Era beats perched on the edge of the sonic midground. Just do the turn, I tell myself when I want to drift away and harangue old friends on VoIP. Do the damn turn, you big, sweaty diaper.

Ehlers attacks solo on the first mission in an unmodified Focke-Wulf with two Italian pilots nearby in their MC202s. I conduct the planes in a fluid loop at flank attack angles for six turns of a Near Target scenario, making a mess of the formation’s middle element. P-40 Kittyhawk escorts appear briefly and are easily dodged before they melt away. Ack-ack takes divots out of other elements in the formation.

I finally see the coherent game cycle previously occluded by The Black Dog. The Magic Circle has enough surface tension to sustain itself. Another good sign: I’m bellowing at my aircraft in between runs. “Well, are we gonna get these motherfuckers or what?”

I back my way into a personalized workflow through the reference cards, books and board data. I discover and fix several small things I was doing wrong. I’m running more of the turns using just the abbreviated instructions from the reference cards instead of plowing through the book every step.

I land the craft, make some hashmarks on the mission log with a pencil. Put a dumb, loud song on repeat until I pass out, get out of bed and walk straight to the table the next morning. This cold snap is brutal, but there’s just enough of a suggestion of Something to Look Forward to. Marked against last year, I have gained a playable picture of a daunting new game nearly a full month earlier than last year. It did not salvage November and December, but I note the improvement.

Is There a Future With My Jocund and Bulky New Pal?

Yes. I can tell because I get enough of the mechanics repeating until they generate a luminous still from the movie I sensed on the other side. It is light painting, alive and effective and satisfying even when the story doesn’t go your way. Take a look at this picture:

This motherfucker right here

This is either a picture of how deterministic game elements bog down a player with a plan or one of the greatest air war short stories ever. I rake this single B-24J with high-altitude Oblique and Nose attacks for nearly six turns. I can not force him out of formation. I become livid, fixating on taking him down. Half of his crew must be dead or hit. I pepper the fuselage, engines, the wings, and he’s still magnetized to his three-plane element.

Whoever sits at the controls of this bomber is the most adamantine West Point product in the history of the institution. Some days you will simply bounce like a pebble off the aura of Jupiter’s adopted son and there’s nothing you can do about it, which is one of the brightest threads of Storm’s weft. This most of all: An initially cumbersome machine that belches out its own beguiling gems if you keep turning the crank.

Will I play it again? Yes, although in my dilettante’s eyes this game was difficult, tangential, unwieldy, self-indulgent and baffling — moments of cerulean evocation and constricting pace. It’s a weird niche product. But so am I.

It also feels like a successful bid for entry into the Fellowship of Crunch, resonating with my need to seek, handle and celebrate things whose justification is brighter the farther they are from the digital braying of this putrid age. The little work of the movements, planes trailing caravans of cardboard modifiers, are the ghost notes of the most endearing fans’ war songs. At both its most gripping and frustrating, it smacks of vellichor.

A minute tilt of the seasons can throw you from the planet’s surface. A bad run spiderwebs the canopy. Ever toward the sun, fuckers. Unless a sun position is indicated in the Situation Manual, in which case you keep that shit at your back because the .50 gunners on those B-24Js are not there to cheer you on.

Home-Infused Cinnamon Whiskey and Homemade Hot Chocolate: Suck a Dick, Cold Front

The multi-day forecast shows another week of single-digit or subzero temps: I need something else to look forward to. Time to see if Rygar wants to swing by after work and test my new jar of home-infused cinnamon whiskey — this time made with Fireside Straight Bourbon Whiskey instead of Beam.

It includes the usual big cinnamon stick and a dried arbol chile, but I pull it after three days instead of five to see if the better whiskey and milder spice will make it more approachable. The last time I brought a jar for him to try at the game shop, I could hear the soft tissues of his throat and stomach sizzling like bacon.

Plus I have all the makings for homemade hot chocolate, something I’ve never made in my whole life: Whole milk, unsweet cocoa powder, sugar, semisweet chocky chips, little marshmallows, all that shit. He stomps out of the freezing addition of my house in his electrified vest just as the spiked cup comes off the stove: Damn, this is good.

Project L: I’m flying off the caffeine and booze in this cinnamon whiskey-spiked hot chocolate, of course we want to handle all these pieces. Everybody does.

We try a sip of the cinnamon whiskey straight, too. Switching up the base was a good move: It’s mellower, less brute alcohol and sugar flavor, more depth in the middle, the burn in better balance with the booze. Once it’s stirred into the hot chocolate mug? Potent. I can’t even feel the booze hit because the caffeine and sugar has me off my face halfway through the drink. It’s a good accompaniment to the cigarettes and joints that get taken in multiple hit-and-run attacks in the addition. I can feel the cold conducting into the soles of my sneakers and Rygar points out during our second break that my hands look purple.

He has to go make sure a place he’s housesitting doesn’t have frozen pipes. We have about 15 minutes and half a mug left, so would he like to try Project L? We breeze through his first game in minutes flat and he declares it his new favorite. He mimics eating the irresistible pieces — this game would be a death sentence for any unattended toddler with functioning senses — and heads out with a bottle of Winter Warlock Oatmeal Stout. You gotta design waypoints with treats, light the route with little candles here and there.

More on this game and this drink in a future episode of Breakup Gaming Society.

Project L and Ski In Ski Stout: All the Pieces for a Good Night In

I’m not ready to reengage with the WWII air combat wargame against which I’ve dashed my brains (and my pilots) in intermittent learning sessions throughout winter. On this somnolent winter eve, I switch up the flavors.

Project L solo mode and a new-to-me Colorado stout: Ski In Ski Stout from Telluride Brewing Company

From the first sip and the first turn, I can tell I’ve made the right move: Without Joe across the table beating my ass red, I quickly digest the solo rules for Project L and find a pleasant rhythm of managing the game’s simple automa; drafting and placing puzzles; and a broader, gently forming picture of how to play the game more effectively.

Sometimes you chalk your biggest Ws by learning which games to quit, or at least set down for a while. As I age, I get better at dispelling the imaginary tribunal that lists what happens if You Don’t Stick With It. They’re not here. They never were. Why am I walking this overweight, surly dog? I drop the leash and watch it wander off. It’s not my dog. Fuck it.

When I go downtown to get some stout, I get bat-flights of anxiety, piling up other stops in town even before I’ve parked. It’s Friday night, I should see who’s around and jolt my conversational reflexes. Then I realize I don’t want to do that shit, either.

What I want is to try a new stout. So I skip over the usual Winter Warlock, Guinness and Left Hand. Ski In Ski Stout is new. Let’s do that.

Let’s sip that (it’s delicious and will be on a future Drink of the Week segment). Let’s play this (it’s a perfect ratio of brainpower demanded to pace of play and will be a future Game of the Week segment). Let’s instead ease into the moment: Nothing in the way except what I erected previously, the gelid evening squeezing out a bit more dusk light than weeks previous. The blooming aftertaste of the brew. The fleeting disappointment in a loss to the automa falling to the wildly-within-reach joy of another game.

Then another one. And another. I am candlelit. It is a good, long and slow night.

10 Tabletop Scenes That Defined My Board Gaming in 2024

Every board game session has a bravura move, catastrophic fuckup or well-placed quip that crystallizes the game. Or the session. Or a new friendship. Presented here: An unranked look at my top 10 board game memories of 2024.

1. Star Wars: Outer Rim - Never Tell Rygar About the Odds

Star Wars: Outer Rim multiplayer: Rygar toasts himself in advance of some swashbuckling shit he’s about to pull off.

The setting: the Outer Rim, where the Empire’s grip is loose enough that Syndicates, Hutt and Rebels can effectively jockey for pockets of control. It’s a good place to make one’s fortune.

The players: The Don as Han Solo, myself as Ketsu, and Rygar as Dr. Aphra. It’s our first-ever play. Our first few turns. Ryan attempts the Kessel Run job almost immediately. The Kessel Run is supposed to be hard, with several layers of skill checks. I try to explain this to Rygar.

He’s not hearing it. He simply picks up the eight-sided dice and starts passing the checks. He hits the third one and I’m still trying to tell him about ways he can increase his odds of passing. “I’m gonna crit it,” he says. And does. It was only the fourth turn or so and he had just run away with the game. He pushed all his chips on the table in the opening sequence and won. 

You can hear the whole story — along with my solo and multiplayer review of this game — in Ep. 80: Star Wars Outer Rim and a Nice Glass of Farmer’s Punch.

2. Project L: Joe Serves Up Some Savory Italian Understatement

Learn Project L with Joe, who will show you how to build and eat a spicy meatball

So my homie Joe down at the game shop — who I nicknamed Project J because he taught me this game — is doing his usual thing at Project L, an inviting and addictive affair where you draft bright plastic polyominoes to fill up scoring boards of various values.

Joe is a machine at this. I am a mere laborer, painstakingly crafting a few scoring boards across the table from his gleaming point factory. This particular loss is bigger than the others. I’ve somehow become worse at this game than when he taught it to me. A four-point gap is usually a pretty resounding win…but I have just posted a score of 18. To Joe’s 29.

Now, Joe is not sparing with his editorializing during a game, but to his credit, he also doesn’t gloat. When I announce my score, he is impassive. He lets out a small sigh, pauses, and says, “That’s a spicy meatball.”

We both knew I just got gutted.

That’s all that had to be said.

I finally bought a copy of this game for myself down at Frontier Geeks, so look for a proper review sometime in 2025 in a Game of the Week segment and hopefully an end to the double-digit losses.

3. Final Girl: Madness in the Dark - The Wicked Bitch is Dead

Final Girl: Madness in the Dark - Once you start swinging the Hook-Handled Bone Hammer, you don’t stop until the Ratchet Lady is flat and motionless

It’s my 15th attempt to beat The Ratchet Lady in the halls of Wolfe Asylum, playing as Veronica, a teen who must do what we expect all horror leads to do: Get her head together, save some of her friends, find a weapon and fight back all on her own.

Except this movie never seems to materialize. I have to yell CUT like 15 games in a row because the Ratchet Lady and her little minions are slicing Veronica to ribbons on every attempt.

Until.

I get some early breaks and get the right weapon early. And start swinging it liberally. Veronica clobbers her way down several hallways, stalking the Ratchet Lady and taking every opportunity she can to mount big attacks. Veronica tracks her down and kills her in the Doctor’s Office. And the room fills with confetti. I’m sprinting up and down my living room and yelling. It’s the most vindicating, elusive solo win of the year, which you can hear about in more detail in Episode 83: Dark Colorado Beers and Rich-Tasting Boardgame Replays.

4. Survive! Escape from Atlantis - The Sharks Eat All the Thanksgiving Leftovers

Survive the Island (The Board Game Formerly Known as Survive! Escape from Atlantis): These look like real nice folks until one of them triggers a 10-foot tidal wave that pushes you into a shark’s mouth

This is currently the game down at Frontier Geeks, along with its successor title (Survive the Island), which is now in stock at the shop and which you should get if you like chaotic fun by the barrelful. 

Our new friends Bethany and David put this one in front of us after we’d stuffed ourselves on Thanksgiving…and what a hoot we had trying to pilot people off an island that’s about to get broiled by emergent volcanos.

There’s a massive scramble for the boats as you take turns manipulating sea monsters and kaijus and sharks to mess up everybody else’s escape plans. It’s simply a blast that roused me from a deep food coma and has turned into our go-to for quick, fun, evocative “take that!” contests.

I went into it in more detail in Episode 84: Enough Thanksgiving Board Games to Make You Puke. Check it out.

5. Vale of Eternity: The Don Activates His Sleeper Cells

Vale of Eternity: The Don adds another powder keg to a card combo that’s gonna go sky-high in about three more turns

Every time I think I have this game about surveyed, some new twist in how to summon and score the pretty monsters on the cards up and bites me in a new place.

Thanksgiving Eve: My old HS buddy Hurricane 75 visited and we sat down for a game with The Don down at the game shop. The Don sat and did almost nothing for six turns, then unveiled an interlocking scoring combo of creatures and effects that turned him from a speck in the rear view mirror to a faint glimmer on the horizon.

Which is to say, Vale of Eternity keeps proving its value and showing me new facets months after I thought I’d seen all its tricks. I said last summer that the card pool needs to grow (which it is), but it was nice seeing that the base game is still plenty to chew on. It keeps popping up on the year-end roundups of other boardgame bloggers and YouTubers I follow, so that testifies to its sticking power.

I talked about Vale of Eternity in some detail back in Episode 79: After the Board Games of Summer Are Gone if you’d like to give it a listen.

6. Thunderbolt Apache Leader: Laughing and Eating in a C-130

Thunderbolt Apache Leader: A whole mess of enemy battalions queued to overrun my airbase; this stew needs a pinch of C-130

You can get a squadron shot to pieces really quick in Thunderbolt Apache Leader, which is the most rules-intensive thing I played in 2024. It absolutely rivets me. When I’m in the middle of a campaign, everything else vanishes at the margins. It’s that engrossing.

By the time of my spring campaigns, I’m branching out, trying new aircraft combinations to run the missions. And I finally see what the C-130 Specter can do after learning its special flight and attack rules.

Oh my. It is destructive.

I sent it out alone and chortled as the guns bristling from its port side just raked everything it could see with lethal fire. I whooped as I saw that drawing damage markers didn’t bring the sweaty apprehension as usual; that thing was so high in the air, so chockfull of countermeasures, that I was shrugging off the kind of thick surface-to-air fire that had been mincing my smaller craft for weeks. I had to mop up pieces of breakfast from the terrain tiles after I was done taunting the enemy elements, across whose faces I had just drug a giant, veined dong. Which felt good after losing so many games of cat-and-mouse with smaller craft.

This game is my muse. I wrote a four-post blog series about my learning experiences and the first of a new series: Learning Thunderbolt Apache Leader: An Improving Commander’s Notebook, where I mine the game for every bit of comedy and drama I can find as I develop myself into an intermediate player.

Every time those primary weapons start chattering, my keyboard lights up, too. Sometimes I beat myself up because I never captured those fiction ideas or worked with discarded essays, but I feel like this game gave me occasion to do my best writing of the year. Check out the blog and tell me if you agree.

7. Cascadia Solo: Eating Shit on Reddit After My Fake High Score

Cascadia solo: Check it out, I placed 26 animals. That is cheating.

Playing Cascadia, a beautifully executed nature tile-laying game, was my extended palate cleanser after Thunderbolt Apache Leader. I played it allll summer, chasing a rating from the rulebook: The 110-point solo game, for which you earn the Ascended ranking. I would play the thing half of every morning, racking up 105s, 106s, even a 109. But I never hit the 110. 

Until one morning I picked up my cup of coffee and made those patterns of habitat tiles and animal tokens dance like I could see the mind of the creator in a perfect clockwork universe. I’d scored over 130 points.

I take a pic and post it on the Reddit solo boardgaming community to brag about it. And it’s not until I see the picture on my post that the explanation for the stratospheric score becomes clear: I miscounted my tile supply for the solo variant, hypnotized myself and took several extra turns. When you grant yourself extra tiles and animals, there’s all kinds of amazing scores you can hit.

I had to walk it back in front of everyone on the thread. Luckily, they were very nice about it.

The quest for the 110-point solo game continues. I reviewed the game in Episode 79. It was the light-playing, easy-setup answer to the heavy thud of war that was Thunderbolt Apache Leader, and it ate a disproportionate amount of my 2024 calendar.

8. Cockroach Poker: Eating Bugs With Matthew Schniper

Cockroach Poker: Matthew Schniper demonstrates the importance of having something to wash down all the bugs you eat after clumsy bluffs

Cockroach Poker is one of the best things you can own for fast-moving, funny bluffing with a deck of cards. It was an easy teach, but that’s not really what this play was about: It was more about who was at the table: Matthew Schniper of Side Dish with Schniper, who does the most exhaustive and generous food writing and podcasting you’re going to consumer in Colorado Springs. He paid the Purgatoire Valley a summer visit and I played a round with him and Lauren.

It bolstered me to see a face from the old days. It was nice to know that Colorado Springs hasn’t forgotten about me entirely. I finally had an ear for a curated valise of observations, theories, recommendations and complaints I’d been carrying around since I moved down here. And I got to see my adopted region with new eyes when he published his excellent travelogue after his 48-hour whirlwind trip through Trinidad.

9. Warhammer 40,000 Conquest The Card Game: Having My Own Weapons Turned Against Me

Warhammer 40000 Conquest the Card Game: You, too, can get steamrolled and added to the trophy wall

I doubt I’ll ever have another game that will transfix and possess me like Warhammer 40,000: Conquest did. It gave me everything I wanted: a thematic and thrilling way to have battles in the W40K universe without having to buy codexes and minis and take part in the rest of the economically sordid gavage of the Games Workshop assembly line.

For four years, I had a small group who loved it as much as I did, and they all had one thing in common: They were former Magic: The Gathering guys who left the game behind for various reasons and who loved the Conquest application of theme or just got sick of Magic and its burgeoning supply of cards and conditions.

For about 45 minutes, I found another kid like that down here in Trinidad: A former competitive Magic player who, not even done with his undergrad studies, had more or less set the game down. He didn’t know anything about Conquest or W40K or how well its theme manifested in the game’s warlord-driven system, but he liked the idea of a saner, smaller card pool. I played him once. He murdered me in that little pool. 

When I teach this game, an event that gets more rare with every year, I usually hand the neophyte my Ork deck built around a slugger named Nazdreg. The scheme is straightforward and strong. And within three turns, he was playing it smarter than I ever had, especially impressive considering you also have to consider which of five planets you want to invest your resources in, as the game models key engagements of a running battle for supremacy in a ten-planet sector tucked away in Warhammer 40K’s sprawling, ultraviolent and cynical expanse.

He grasped the nuances of the the Ork cards with frightening speed. Outplayed me badly on the planet strategy, too. It was breathtaking. Beheaded by my own pupil in minutes flat. And that would be the last of it, because this young swordsman returned to college not long after our match and, like a lot of young locals who have a plan, has no immediate reason to return. 

Hell of a game, though. Good job, youngster.

10. Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Psychic Attack Heard Round the World

Space Hulk: Death Angel, The Card Game: This game still makes me yell

No fewer than 12 Blood Angel Terminators are arrayed in a column down the table, marching into the pitiless jumble of a space hulk filled with cunning, agile Genestealer aliens. I’m teaching the game to Rygar and The Don, so I’m braced for early catastrophe as they learn to maneuver and shoot in that bulky relic warplate.

It doesn’t take long. A member of my squad, Brother Adron, gets flanked by a xenos swarm comprising no fewer than eight Genestealer cards. It is not survivable. But then Lexicanium Calistarius, the group’s battlefield psyker under the command of The Don, attacks.

Lexicanium Calistarius has a special ability: If he rolls a skull icon on a six-sided die — something which you can do 50% of the time — he gets to attack again. More skulls? More attacks.

The Don pitches a skull as Calistarius’s eyes turn argent and deadly empyrean power incinerates the first band of Genestealers bearing down on the helpless Adron. Then he pitches another one. And another. And another, the deadly energy arcing from beast to beast. He used a special token once during the attack that gave him a reroll, but all told, he cooked the entire column of Tyranids. All eight cards in the swarm. Slumped and smoking.

It was then I shouted. I shouted so loud that poor Bethany, who had just arrived and was observing the action, buckled in her chair. A table full of Magic players right next to us all looked up in alarm. Rygar told me that was my last bit of yelling for the night, which was a self-solving problem, as I have never seen an attack like that in my 14 years of playing this game, and had no chance of seeing another one that night.

We folded up the cards and started a different game that would include David and Bethany because Rygar is a good host and not a hyperfixated, drunken teenager. I would have let those poor people sit there for an hour while we played that out. Better judgment and manners prevailed, but I saw it. The most legendary close-quarters attack ever made in service to the Emperor and Sanginius. I was on that ship and I saw it.

What was the most singular scene that materialized on your game table in 2024? If something unforgettable now forms in your mind’s eye, hit me up on the Breakup Gaming Society Contact page and shoot me a note about it, I may read it on a future episode or feature it on the blog. You have the storytelling stick, should you want to seize it.

52 Realms Adventures: It’s Indie Dungeoncrawl Time Again

I’ve watched the fellas at Postmark Games pivot over the last few years to affordable, visually irresistible print-and-play titles and knew I was overdue to try one, especially as I seem unable to keep myself from snapping up a dungeoncrawler at least once a year. (I am actively hostile toward D&D, but love the proposition of a light scramble through a puzzle with some combat, goodies, and a distinct mechanical twist on the setting.)

52 Realms Adventures: Just gimme the loot, I don’t care what your character’s backstory is. Look at this map. Tell me you don’t want to play around on this map. This is candy.

I spent quite a bit of time with A Couple of Drakes’ Dead Belt, even more time with Grey Gnome Game’s Tin Helm, and really liked Grumpy Spider’s Pocket Book Adventures.

Now I’m ready to see how Postmark’s application of standard playing cards tastes in 52 Realms Adventures, where drawn suits and values provide the beats of a story, the stats, and inform how you manage the fortunes of the Barbarian or Seer that came with the Kickstarted files I bought a few weeks ago. The game has more dungeons and characters and is for sale now on Postmark’s website. Add to cart.

This kind of game ends up on my table a lot when I’m hypnotized by good breakbeats, have a few in me, am too faded to set up Star Wars: Outer Rim or Thunderbolt Apache Leader, but I need something more rousing and vivid than my abstract solo quick-players and tile-layers. I want to kill stuff, feel the contained danger of being killed by stuff, and the titillation of seeing what’s around in a corner, what’s in a room, what baubles are to be had.

Right now I’m hip-deep in a bunch of chewy empire- and war-themed titles from major publishers, but stay tuned here, because this thing is getting printed, played and reviewed in 2025. Stay tuned for a report and a review.

D&D One-Room Scenarios: A Drow Enjoys a Birthday Relapse Aboard a Pretty Skyship

Breakup Gaming Society’s Chief Mixologist, Skrrt_Vonnegut, offers up a character for sacrifice to Darkroast McFanticide, a hulking, rusty, armored murderer who makes sure D&D 5e sessions are short and bloody. Skrrt did a good job. Plus he got to prepare, unlike the first time when I ran Darkroast against an unsuspecting Hurricane 75.

I thought I could squeeze in some identity theft opportunities when we were sketching out the backstory for Skrrt’s PC, who was boring.

We clear up some confusion about his character’s name and then we’re almost ready for the scenario.

The scenario revolves around Pumpkin Hazelnut-Lose getting to take a morning pleasure cruise on an airship for his birthday. Skrrt’s into it.

We establish that the ship is pretty, the sun is a strange color, and that Pumpkin has a dumb cone hat and some Demerol. An excited party of sight-seers queues for the ramp and talk excitedly. Skrrt determines that they’re talking about the on-field exploits of the Gauntlegrim GrundleReavers, who are “second in college rockball.”

Skrrt announces that Pumpkin is getting into the Demerol early in the trip. Wine is being served in the prow viewing area, and a roll on the Party Table determines that Pumpkin Hazelnut-Lose knocks down seven glasses, to which Skrrt also adds shrooms.

Some pleasant conversation with other passengers somehow occurs and I walk into a zinger.

Skrrt switches up some location details, so we work that into the story in as things tilt toward ugliness.

Skrrt’s character gets cut off by an exasperated wine steward, who tries to mollify him with a 1/3 pour. Then we get our first indications that Darkroast McFanticide has stowed away on the ship. Soon Pumpkin will be dead and we can both go do something else.

Pumpkin Hazelnut-Lose has a hat full of vomit and Darkroast has begun his trail of carnage on the now-listing ship, murdering his way toward the prow and breaking things. Everybody on the ship gets booted over the side or is clotheslined to death. Pumpkin and one other character are the only ones who can summon their wits and face Darkroast McFanticide down.

Pumpkin’s ad hoc comrade-in-arms gets his face slapped off after the two assault Darkroast McFanticide. Pumpkin’s attack highly amuses the villain, who cracks his skull.

After Skrrt notes that the memory ends with a trip to “the good red lobster,” Pumpkin uses some magic object, which is fine.

Anyway:

Skrrt follows up by pitching a d60 for an ad-libbed funeral outcome and generates a 1.

The tragic day gets even worse with the funeral soundtrack.

And that was the end of Pumpkin Hazelnut-Lose’s magical skyship ride. Stay tuned for more innovations in roleplay storytelling.

Learn to Play Storm Above the Reich: Get Rinsed in a Brawl at Staffel Haus

I like the dramatic proposition that learning Storm Above the Reich has put before me. What I don’t know yet is whether the action and story payoff is equal to the administrative burden of running it.

Of course, I’ve done this the hard way: Randomly selecting a mission to learn on and drawing a scenario in which 27 B-24J Liberators—shadowed by a complement of hungry P-51 Mustangs—are inbound to a German target. Since the scenario’s set in 1945, all my Focke-Wulf Fw 190 pilots are about 14 years old.

I didn’t want to try attacking from every angle on my first run, so I rushed everything I had at the tail of the formation, luckily avoiding collisions with my own craft. The Me-163s and FW109s succeeded in knocking the tail bomber out of formation and inflicting three damage on another.

I’ve run three turns of the first mission: Ahrens is shot down and wounded. Clausen has taken a heavy hit to his engine. Doppler and Ehlers? Heavy hits to the cockpit and fuselage, respectively. An Me-163 sustained a fuel tank hit, so I’m going to go ahead and assume this guy is going to be a comet of burning fuel in about .03 seconds.

Some Me163 experimental jet jockeys pitched in, but one’s out with a fuel tank hit and the others have been scattered to the four winds. That leaves two other FW109 kiddies whose planes aren’t shot up, but they got intercepted on their approach and pulled into a dogfight by two Mustangs. I’m not sanguine about their chances.

I think picking this Storm Above the Reich 1945 scenario to learn on was the equivalent of walking right up to the most crowded table of meanest dudes at a Waffle House after the bars get out and just spitting on their table.

Look for deeper impressions—and hopefully a semblance of air command competence—in a future episode of Breakup Gaming Society.

I Have Built a Shrine to Warhammer 40,000: Conquest the Card Game

The peace of great churches be for you,
Where the players of loft pipe organs
Practice old lovely fragments, alone.

“For You,” Carl Sandburg

Several times a year I’ll break one of my old decks out, deal out a flop of five planets and deal myself a theoretical hand. I’ll do this simulation with a particular deck over the course of several days, seeing if I can remember how the scheme for a particular build fits together. Flexing the multiple layers of situational analysis I taught myself when one of my Conquest rivals was across the table waiting to bury me in aggression and dispiriting counterplays.

Warhammer 40,000: Conquest playmats that came with collections I bought up in 2016 when the game got discontinued. Serious players were hanging it up because the game would no longer be supported by Fantasy Flight. I was just learning and wanted every piece of it I could get my hands on.

I test dealt several opening scenarios recently with my Packmaster Kith deck. She was a Khymera herder from a faction known back then as the Dark Edar. Now they’re Drukhari. By the third deal, I was remembering the synergy of the cards in the build and let a low whistle out: “This shit is mean.” This was the kind of deck I started building after I got my fill of losses incurred by my early tendency to build thematic decks full of weird, expensive, fussy bank shots instead of going for the jugular with more obvious or effective choices.

I may turn ol’ Kith loose on Rygar or The Don, who still indulge me in a game now and again. I gave them two of my most murderous builds to learn with and fielded some of my more experimental second-tier decks while they cut their teeth. They learned quickly and clobbered me. Recently they have both also touted their unbeaten record. I think it’s time to give them a new view of just how real shit can get in the Traxis Sector.

In the meantime, I have the satisfaction of having improved this long and rectangular old living room with a pleasant arrangement of artifacts from my number one game of all time. I mounted some playmats and got some card frames up, and I’m happy every time I look at it. It’s the least I can do for a game that has given me so much, and may yet provide a thrill or two before the sector falls dark.

Best Board Games for Grownups: Bounce on Your Thumb

I tried writing a regular post with some of these SEO phrases bolted on the front end and it looked so offensive that I thought maybe a top board game for adults would be bouncing up and down on your thumb.

You’d think best board games for grownups would be John Daly Irritable Bowel PGA Shootout or Settlers of Catan, but Settlers has been out of print for years and JDIBPGAS is notoriously difficult to win. Bouncing on your thumb is a party game you can’t pass up!

You’ll need:
• Yourself
• Thumb

Like UNO, it’s something you can do if you hate yourself and don’t have friends who say interesting things. I also yell when I see colors and numbers, but I’ve never needed cards for that. Believe me, you’ll look a lot smarter bouncing on your thumb.

Cool Board Games Ever for Adults: Phrases Like These Are Why the Internet Was a Mistake

The best way to do cool board games ever for adults is to remember not to spit on the pieces. I had a friend who auditioned for Wheel of Fortune once. He didn’t get to play on TV because he spit on the wheel when it stopped because he didn’t like the prize. He turned it into an allegorical novella that got picked up by an indie press and did pretty good for a while, but now he sleeps hanging upside down on one of his towel bars and shits down his own back at night.

Now it’s game night! For adults!

Here are some more board games to try if you decide your group has mastered bouncing on your thumbs:

• Hey, That’s My Cornea!

• Cascadia Board Game Review

“I have not been so transported, so riveted by a game since Thunderbolt Apache Leader over the winter. The sign’s it’s sticking? Getting it on the table for at least one play is #1 on the list when the first pourover carafe is ready. I put off meals. I’m going to repeat this for the few that know me: I put off meals to play this. Hunger is a rude interruption to what I am experiencing. I’m on that Chinook Salmon and Red-Tailed Hawk rock. The scorepad is filling up with solo games as my mind dances with the thing, susses out small tipping points and synergies in the scoring cards, learns to track the relative species, terrain balance simultaneously.”

• Slapping and Biting Deluxe Kickstarter Edition

• Mentos: The Pointmaker

• The Stupefaction of Paper Boats

• Star Wars Outer Rim Review
“It was also super annoying when, on about his third turn, he passed waypoint checks between planets that won him extra turns. It was even more annoying when he just pulled the infamous Kessel Run job—which is not easy for a starting character—and aced it. There multiple stages of skill checks for this one that require some tough rolls. I try to warn him about the odds on some of the checks he’s trying, but…with stoned gunslinger eyes, Rygar calmly says “I’m gonna crit it,” reaches for the dice, doesn’t shake them hardly at all, just picks up and chucks in one fluid motion, almost contemptuous in its off-handedness, and hits it. It was some real cowboy shit and the defining moment of the game.”

• Liquid Emoji Kingdom

• Finding a Turd While Frolicking in a Pile of Leaves

Sometimes when you look for best board games for adults, people will say Cards Against Humanity, but that game is for the kind of person who backs you into a corner at a barbecue and recites Deadpool quotes while you nod and try to fashion a noose from the cord of some nearby string lights. You’ll be climbing up on a plastic lawn chair to make it stop and they just keep saying Deadpool quotes.

People are always claiming you can “write for people and the search engines,” but that is a lie. I had to pick. I could do my voice and march doggedly toward the green beacon of my insanity or I could research the most boring possible post so I could be the third first-page search result that, despite claiming to solve a problem, starts with 500 words of anti-information before you pick up your laptop and see how far back that screen will really bend against its hinges. Sometimes it’s pretty far! People at the food court will be like, “Hey! You can’t read best strategy board games for adults inside-out!” Then you can make their face inside-out.

Best Board Game Podcasts: Bicycle Horn Sound

If you are a baby who likes sounds that last a long time, a board game design podcast is probably a good place to start. You’ll learn about:

• Worker Placement
• How to Interrogate Troubling Historical Themes in Ludic Settings
• Importance of Trimming Your Thumbnails Regularly
• How Many Points is it for a Building? Why?
• The Story of Why I Closed the Tab at 4:48 Because These Two Chuckleheads are Still Over the Moon About a Joke They Made Last Episode

Otherwise, you can listen to the hands-down best board game podcast: Breakup Gaming Society. The first 70 episodes are a Guernica of self-loathing and poorly considered riffs, but I decided to make this show the chariot in which I would take the field once more. Wrote scripts instead of trying to extemporize off bullet points. Stopped recording drunk. Improved the sound. Got rid of “other people” in the creative process because external dependencies are horseshit, you’ve got to pick something you can wake up and make with your own two hands when “other people” realize the venture involves more “trying.” I re-approached the whole thing with a little more patience and humility. But not too much, because I’m angry and I turn my best phrases when I’m swinging two-fisted against boredom, which is everywhere.

Best Board Game Podcast That You Can Listen to Right Now

• Board Games for Dinner: A lady who liked to drink tea and who would eat an entire board game, piece by piece, and review the components. She died after the third episode, but I’ve been binging those early efforts. The one where an Arkham Horror Second Edition turn marker catches sideways in her throat is memorable for both its bathos and relatability.

• Hit in the Face With a Board: It’s just a regular board game show with compartmentalized shelves and violet accent lighting, they just couldn’t think of a title. The best board game podcasts should do more to deliver on their promises of violence.

• Dork Parade: Three rosy-cheeked dinguses fight over who gets custody of the group’s four adjectives

• Roll ’n’ Write, Sounds ’n’ Lights: 32K subscribers! Maybe these people know something I don’t.

• Good Job, Boardo: This guy still thinks he can do an English accent.

Other podcasts are there aren’t any.

Well, I fell like that’s enough SEO for today.

Grease it up and bounce, board gamers!

Mysterium Board Game: I’m Not Playing This Again, Win My Copy

I’m accepting the fact that dozens of incredible titles in my spare room just won’t be played again.

I am culling, beginning with a game that I think is beautiful, well-designed and worthy, but just not for me: Mysterium, the 2015 murder mystery deduction hit.

The pieces and cards are all there. It’s been played only three times. I want it to live with somebody who loves it.

Here’s how this works:

• I’m still seeking donors who want their own copy of my beautiful and dangerous cocktail booklet. Anybody who donates through the end of Jan. 2025 gets the booklet and is in the prize pool.

• At the end of December, one random donor will get my copy of Mysterium. I’ll mail it in Feb. 2025.

• I have to limit the Mysterium prize to donors in the U.S. lower 48, as international postage rates are breathtaking.

That’s it. Donate and get the cocktail booklet. Maybe end up with a beautiful coop deduction game in which a ghost tries — using only lush and oblique image cards — to tell a table full of psychics who was responsible for their death.

Glory to Rome: Smudge’s THC Resource Strategy Pays Off

Some of you may remember Smudge’s tale about how a college poker group devised a comeuppance for a cheapskate who liked to drink, but who didn’t have five on it.

Smudge had an extra story to tell about another group and the 2005 classic, Glory to Rome.

It went like this:

So, the first few times I played Glory to Rome, I was never sober for it. The host of an irregular game night was a gregarious fellow with an interest in high-interaction board games, and his collection of both games and friends was delightfully eccentric and rarely the same.

On this occasion, we had been casually hanging out most of the afternoon and playing various games while sipping drinks and having snacks, but around 11:30 p.m. our host brought out the Kickstarter version of Glory to Rome — along with a THC vape pen. We asked the table to make sure that everyone was OK with folks smoking during the game, and everyone was chill with it—including one of the party who preferred to remain sober, who we'll call Adam.

The game started out fine — everyone had played before, so there were no delays for rules, but the vape pen continued to make its way around the table. The game got more and more eccentric the longer it went on, both as folks built up power combinations and as everyone but Adam got stoned out of their gourds on top of tiredness from a long afternoon, laughing and getting distracted.

Adam's patience for the table was growing shorter as we crept past midnight and towards 12:30 a.m. - the rounds were taking longer and longer as he had to remind almost everyone else whose turn it was, clearly signaling that we weren’t taking the game seriously enough for him. I apologized for it profusely, with a real sense of guilt at the excellent time we were all having largely forgetting to play the game, but I was actually serious about trying to win it even though we were all completely out of it. 

Adam had what looked like a clear lead over the rest of us, but Glory to Rome is nothing if not unpredictable, and believe it or not there was a plan in the fluffy cloud passing for my brain. It was almost 1 a.m. and it looked like Adam was about to win the game on points — but on the last turn I managed to complete an instant win condition to the delight of the entire table. Except Adam.

I'm still not entirely sure whether Glory to Rome is the best game from its creator or of similar mechanics — it's chaotic, and messy, and patently unfair at times —but it will always remain wrapped in a warm, minty vapor mist of nostalgia from that night for me.

Cascadia Solo: I Thought I Was a Thrice-Ascended EcoArchitect, But I Cheated

Moments after publishing this post, I finally spotted the reason why I was able to rack up such an obscene score: I took too many turns. There are 26 animals placed here. So, regarding the text that follows: It’s all erroneous. I forge on humbled, still in pursuit of an Ascended 110+ score.

What do I do with this game now? Frame it? File it away? I’d been chasing the 110+ “Ascended” solo score ranking of Cascadia all summer, notching 100+ games regularly. A 110+ score seemed like it required a subtle extra layer of calculation I just didn’t have.

Then this. I gasped when I totaled the top half of the sheet. 93 points. I checked it again. And again:

• Bears (Card C, Families): 18
• Elk (Card B, Formations): 15
• Salmon (Card C, Families): 10
• Hawks (Card D, Territorial): 25
• Foxes (Card D, Dynamic Duos): 25

I didn’t realize I’d hit the Bear Families bonus until my next to last move, but I had focused on building diverse axes of animals that I could bookend with Territorial hawk pairs. In the back half of the game, owing to the vagaries of the draw, I did something else I usually don’t do: Went for a third pair of foxes, which turned out to be massive.

Add 40 points of terrain/nature token leftovers and I think that’s 133 — 20+ points in excess of any of my best-ever games up to that point and a mark I don’t imagine I’ll hit ever again. So I quadruple-checked the score. Took a pic, swept my eyes around the room to note the jarring gulf between what just happened on this table and the oblivion of the remaining day, then packed it up.

What a morning. What a game.

D&D One-Room Sessions: The Unstoppable Depredations of Darkroast McFanticide

Hurricane 75 doesn’t even have a character ready and is burning daylight hmmming and umming through his decades-old knowledge of D&D character classes, so I make him an Assistant Crew Leader.

His character’s task? Track down Darkroast McFanticide, the hulking, rust-armored Butcher of Hasbronia.

The room: Long and rectangular, a dais or something at the far end that, for some reason, displays a single flask that has the character’s picture on it.

He announces that he’s going to break the flask, but we’re not doing any of that because the knives are starting: “More knives than you’ve ever seen in your life.”

First plot point: Determine how many of the initial volley of flying knives hit the Assistant Crew Leader. It’s something like eight.

“This seems pretty bad,” I tell him.

“Well, it doesn’t seem like I get to do much. It’s been all you so far.”

“Bro, do you even like D&D.”

I roll a quick grapple/surprise check for him, which he fails. Darkroast McFanticide has embraced him from behind in an adamantine grip and a wave of necrotic gum tissue odor. Darkroast is upset because not enough of the knives are going into the Assistant Crew Leader’s mouth, so I tell Hurricane 75 that Darkroast stretches his character’s mouth out so more knives go inside his mouth. He gets a three.

At this point, Hurricane 75 is starting to check out on the whole experience, but I tell him he’s doing fine because we still have to do the eye check. Darkroast now wants more of the nonstop flying knives from the far wall to go into the character’s eyes.

“He’s stretching my eyes out,” he says glumly.

“Yeah. Let’s do a d6 to see how many knives go in your eyes.” It’s a six.

“Great.”

“I made an eye hit placement chart. Do you want to figure out where the first knife hits.”

“Sure.”

Oof. Right in the lacrimal caruncle. Rough. I plot out the remaining five eye hits for him so he can learn more about eyes.

There’s one piece of detailing at the end that finally engages him: Rolling a d20 to see for how many minutes Darkroast McFanticide holds the Assistant Crew Leader aloft, shaking him and gurgling in triumph. 12 minutes. We both collaborate to sketch out the scene, which is wet and crunchy because I’m a good DM and I like players to have fun.

Anyway, for all you DMs out there refining your worldbuilding and agonizing about plot and interesting NPCs: you’re overindulging your players. Boil the process down to the fundamentals. Wipe these sons of bitches off the map so you can play something else.

There is some post-session nitpicking from Hurricane 75 about Darkroast’s prowess because the flying knife trap did all the work, and some speculation as to whether my villain is a bitch. He sort of has a point, so I’m working on a different session: It’s an elegant skyship, where Darkroast will slowly work the player character into an approximate ball shape using just his hands. I’m going to also design an option where the character gets to say something before they’re fatally compressed.

Keep your eye on Breakup Gaming Society to see what thrilling duel erupts next; wherever Darkroast McFantide appears, fun is sure to follow.

Preview photo is a detail of the Sin Eater character from the Trench Crusade tabletop game, which is supposed to jump off on Kickstarter in Oct. 2024. It’s actually more horrifying than this post, check this out.

Learning Thunderbolt Apache Leader: An Improving Commander’s Notebook, Pt. 1

I started trolling the boys again with fake medals and citations. They ran with it and it’s gotten out of hand. Somebody up the chain wants an explanation as to what the Lord Quincy Entertainment III decoration is for and why it has been awarded to a nonexistent flyer, a “Capt. Rarginalt.” They fired off a press release to some goof they went to the Academy with and now it’s all over CENTCOM.

What’s this? New intel? Surrounded? It’s good timing in one sense, but have the Pakistanis gone mad? Who let us get flanked and cut off? All of a sudden me and my impish flyers are out of the administrative spotlight and into the furnace.

***

Session: Cut-Off, Pakistan
Setup

It’s the ceremony, pre-dawn. Only six hours of sleep despite how I timed everything and drugged myself up. Plenty of work to do today. I don’t know about you, but a raft of tasks and nothing else isn’t a day worth living for; some have stolen moments of endorphin checking the Instagram feed, some have love and a natural way with being with others; I have a Cut-Off situation in Pakistan. Usually waking up pre-dawn sours me, but this process — setting up the conditions, composing the terrain hex pool and enemy divisions, is a trill of bright-calm-excited.

Including the imagined space where I think I can survive a Cut-Off, which I never have. The usual pattern: Commit at least one deep strike on Day 1 to blunt the persistent effect of the most annoying Support or Command battalion, let the lesser craft slow down the most aggressive frontline Assault elements…then send flurries of parrying attacks out in a panic over the next three days with increasingly split forces, degrading craft and pilots, until I’m overrun about Day 3, or I wake up one day, look at the board and just pack it up. I’m losing my appetite for grinding out an extra day, wriggling and bleeding for an ounce of maneuver room, just for honor.

And here we are again: Two battalions that accelerate battalion movement, and the first part of the puzzle: What’s the craft mix?

Not overthinking it this time. Modest-cost sluggers in quantity: Two A-10 As and two AH-64 As.  And we’re doing concentration of force. After all, the game is Thunderbolt Apache Leader, not Carnival of Esoteric Decisions (a medal I won after sending an amusing, if ineffective, mix of craft into some imbroglio in Libya; somebody had an algorithm or something that awarded you a ribbon if you wasted exactly $50M each from the Northrup Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin piles. Stand up, stupid, you hit the Imperial Bingo!)

So what if the annoying and surprisingly sophisticated Pakistani command battalions—check you out, Pakistan, I see you—can push everything at me at double speed. I’m going to fix on one thing: Making sure they have less and less stuff to push each day. Go ahead. Force march your shot-full-of-holes ragtag bullshit my way. I’m going to try to turn the Front Line and Friendly Transit zones into a buzzsaw into which they can push all the crappy particle board they want. 

Wish me luck. If this works, I could end up with a shiny Order of the Malted Milk Falcon.

My, my, aren't we frisky.

***

What have we learned since Thunderbolt Apache Leader pulled us singlehandedly from an intractable late-winter depression? I’ve now filled 14 mission sheets out since learning this game in late winter ‘24. In service of not being a monophagous slouch — the world already has enough twats who just want to hunch over one title with the same people week after week, year after year — I’ve added several new titles to my collection: Final Girl, Wingspan, Cascadia, Vale of Eternity and Star Wars Outer Rim.

But the test is this: What do I regularly crave? What am I going to reach for? Along with all these new arrivals — some of which I have played heavily — I still need TAL on the table at least once a month. What sticks is its own testament.

Missions to Date (Personal Surrender Notes Sometimes Substitute for Formal Rating)

• Pakistan, Cut-Off Outcome: Tap-out - Untenable by Day 3

• Libya, Cut-Off Outcome: Day 6 Tap-out

• North Korea, Show of Force Outcome: Dismal

• North Korea, Surge Outcome: Good*

• North Atlantic, WWIII Outcome: Failure. Overrun.

• Iran, Rapid Deployment Outcome: Are you kidding me with these attack rolls?!!

• Iraq, Show of Force Outcome: Good

• Libya, Rapid Deployment Outcome: Good

• Pakistan, Holding Action Outcome: NOPE

• Pakistan, Rapid Deployment Outcome: Poor

• Iraq, Cut-Off Outcome: Good

• Israel Defense, Cut-Off Outcome: Mission failure.

• Iraq, Rapid Deployment Outcome: Good

• Pakistan, General War Outcome: i can’t take it any more

*Even my best efforts are marred here. There are a couple things I was playing incorrectly. 1) You get ONE auxiliary pilot for every craft TYPE, not every CRAFT. I was playing with too deep a bench. 2) I thought I was being clever and economical by collapsing all the Arm Aircraft steps for the day into one umbrella move. I was cheating. It’s a separate step for each mission, I believe, so my SO expenditure was also padded. Whoopsie.

***

Session: Cut-Off, Pakistan
Day 1, Mission 1
Target: Fast Assault Battalion 
Pilot: Viper, A-10A

The enemy — none of whose vehicles have ranged attacks — obligingly clusters in key points along neat reverse-S pattern on flat ground between ridgelines, offering themselves up to at least be halved in strength with one low-altitude pass. Viper seizes this opportunity by knocking out a grand total of three points worth of vehicles, missing hilariously with every kind of armament on the craft. He tops off this gobsmacking display by getting the HUD damaged and biffing a 6+ Bingo check, accruing three Stress on homebound approach. What an asswipe. This was a weak battalion that he could have cratered and should have halved at the very least. My opening gambit is already sideways. Concentration of farce. With the exception of one late APC kill, I have a string of something like six attacks where I didn’t generate more than a natural three on the d10. That is discouraging.

Award: Medal of Defecation

***

Experimentation: In my rookie outings I anchored on the Fast ability to make the variables less dizzying. Then I ease my way into the charms of other abilities, figuring out the nifty trick of having Slow dudes enter low-altitude under heavy ridge cover, wait out the enemy’s fire step, then burst onto the scene in a breathtakingly destructive, patiently timed counter. It takes more Loiter time, but it slaps.

Experimentation: The possibility vibrates. What happens, for instance, if I requisition myself a Specter gunship and then spam a cluster of choppers? Let the Specter, with its free ammo pass and giddy lack of weight restrictions, hit the enemy deep to take out far-away divisions who think they can sit back there between three bands of friendly cushion and just fuck with me? Then we dispatch our cheapo choppers — two AH-1s and an AH-64A—in a cluster to knock out the most menacing frontline assault battalions.

It turned out pretty good because I challenged another habit: Stewing about three delicate complicated entry points onto the battle hex map. What if I just bunched them up for a cavalry charge? It was not only effective, it was devastating. Riding low and dispensing generous ladles of Hellfires for Stand-Off strikes and LAUs for close-in work, they would scour their hex, pound the next one and glide easily over the smoking bric-a-brac. Sometimes I had chopper pilots who had nothing to do on their turn except throttle forward, hoping they could at least dump a bird or two before their mates slagged everything. It was glorious.

***

Session: Cut-Off, Pakistan
Day 2, Mission 1
Target: Tank Leader Battalion
Pilot: Halo, A-10A

With Viper’s loose stool being pressure-washed out of seams in the cockpit previously thought impermeable, I give the stress-resistant Halo the nod. The Tank Leader battalion that was halved on Day 1 by yeoman work from my AH-64 operators—Rock and Eagle—has rumbled into my rear band. Halo has to mop it up post-haste. I decide we don’t have the luxury of running fewer than three missions today, as the Friendly Transit zone now has three assault battalions jostling for our necks—including the Fast Assault Battalion that so baffled Viper. The Apache duo is going after that. I repaired nothing, so hopefully that compromised engine gets the bird to the zone. I don’t even want to detail what I have asked Rebel to do. The bandsaw has to start whirring, missing teeth and all. I’m not diverting to rear-line attacks and I’m not sparing the horses.

Halo starts off with a bad break: Bad Coordinates. But he caught a good one earlier: Four HVTs are clustered in two hexes, which allows him to rip across the board in two turns and unload obscene amounts of munitions into each. He comes home with three Stress and a much lighter aircraft. There are two hellacious missions left to go before I could dare call what I see daylight.

Award: The Timely Mop-Up. It’s a watch glued to a mop I found. Just take it to your billet. Yes, I thought you would appreciate the googly eyes. What’s that? You’re going to fuck the mop. That’s fine. I’m very proud of you and you’re a very good pilot and would you please go away.

***

The brown bear that digs through my trash must be hitting some insane pre-hibernation caloric requirements. I took a full-on whiz in the remains of a Safeway rotisserie chicken, hoping to dissuade it. Every scrap was gone the following morning. I was awestruck.

I’m paralleling that path in anticipation of what I call the Awful 90: November, December, January. I’m laying in calorie-dense stores at all costs. My table will be a bonfire of crackling new endeavors. A deep black-and-red coal bed of Roman, German, American, and Russian goings-on, aiming for that March day when—probably drunk—I will realize the evening sun is stretching and stretching, hanging there like it’s stuck, and I’ve made it.

I now own GMT’s Storm Above the Reich. By Thanksgiving I hope to add Pavlov’s House and Hadrian’s Wall. When the sun starts setting at 4:43 p.m. and I feel hollowed out by 6, I hope to remember in November what I learned in March. Just take the game out. Set it up. Take Ambien and fall asleep with the rulebook on your chest. Bank the fires and grind through. Dream of bears, their stomachs full of chicken bones and piss.

***

Session: Cut-Off, Pakistan
Sitrep, End of Day 2

It’s been a day of valiant flying. Rebel executed a simply brilliant run, halving a full-strength infantry battalion singlehanded. He found a seam somehow, clearing two AAAs his first turn with a well-placed one-two of a Maverick and a GBU-16. His Evasive ability and ECM then kept him aloft as he plied his way west over scads of APCs and infantry with MANPADs, blessing the occupants—which included both enemy command units—with a judicious sprinkling of cluster bombs and Mk. 83s. He even somehow returned a useable craft.

It’s the kind of thing you could put your feet up and savor over a whiskey if it weren’t for the sirens and the fact that there’s no whiskey. The remains of the enemy Infantry Force and the Fast Assault battalions — along with a full-strength Air Defense Unit — have all barreled into the Friendly Rear band.

There’s one play. It’s the same play as Day 1. Lash out at the nearest antagonists with the best-placed shots you can muster. I have eight SO points, most of which I assume I’ll need to reserve for the penalties for extreme encroachment. But those infantry and assault elements are half-strength. If I go at those with two craft each, pitiable state though they may be in, I’ll knock them off for a three-SO kicker. That will keep us in it. The craft will be armed with stuff my adjutants found at Lowe’s*, but we’ll be in it, and the Pakistanis will only have two operational assault battalions left. Maybe just few enough that my tattered squad can gang up on and neutralize on Days 4 and 5. Maybe.

Award: The 7 Seconds Clenched-Fists, Black-Eyes Medal of Being Hardcore as Hell

*You have not had a true retail experience until you’ve visited the Lowe’s in Kandahar. Haggling for cart food in the front alone is worth the trip, the most fun you’ll have on this side of the Durand Line.

Rebel's in the arena. He's trying stuff.

***

Session: Cut-Off, Pakistan
Day 3, Mission 2
Target: Infantry Battalion
Pilot: Halo, A-10A

Today Warthogs and Apaches were paired off with each other for our desperate sweep of the back porch. There was much hooting on comms as we confirmed Rebel and Rock had finally crushed the Fast Assault Battalion that had been flooring it through our fire for the last 72 hours. They spotted a surviving truck or two hauling ass to comical banjo music, but those discombobulated lees will never be a coherent fighting force again. If Halo and Montana can do the same to the remnants of the Infantry Battalion, we can likely weather it when the Air Defense Unit enters our tender rear zone, regroup and make them pay on Day 4.

My gamble with Montana’s engine block craps out. He plummets into scrub and rock en route to the attack zone. Halo pushes on, his A-10 laden with with the fruits of one of the last SO points I can justify spending. He opens with a classic: busting a command unit wide open with a Maverick and simultaneously knocking out an AAA in his approach path with a GBU-16 shot. He banks back, switching to high altitude. His strike ability is compromised, but the three Mk. 20s and two Mk. 83s should be enough to hollow out the remnants of the battalion bunched across three hexes in the middle of the board. With a little luck.

There’s no more luck. He calls in the ping from the helicopter that materializes at six o’clock low. And the Sidewinder that issues from it. That’s the last we hear.

Two enemy battalions will be hammering the base by evening, with a third due to arrive before we’re reinforced. I’ll have one SO point left on Day 4 with which to send out two chewed-up craft, with pilots that are all about to go on tilt. No sense in throwing them away; we’re beat.

I think of Halo’s freshly widowed mop. For some reason that’s really getting me down.

Award: Order of the Nice Try, Cowboy

***

Day 4 of running 2-3 missions a day on Total War in Pakistan. This isn’t turning out much better than the Cut-Off debacle. I quit. This has been on the table for two or three days now and I’m just tired. The last run was my two AH-1s on a hopeless bid…I was begging for the Killed chit. 

It was a miracle even in its failure: Gator (a replacement for another KIA Cobra jockey) and Grandpa were running the gauntlet, surviving just enough damage draws not to get killed, but not enough to remain effective. HUDs were knocked out. Stress levels were spiking. Depending on the ad hoc targeting, one or the other were drawing three hits per turn as they barreled for the other edge of the map. I did a count. They were one point shy of halving the battalion…but the penalties from damage were so severe, the few birds they had left in the rack wouldn’t do anything. 

The fact that they made it home was just another in a desert full of such. I speed-ran the Close Support Old and New Testaments in two days and I didn’t even care what happened next. Please let it be the Apocalypse. Do I get to at least put my head down on the desk for 15 minutes if it’s the Apocalypse?

On the second mission, I lost the F-16 and Dart — one strike short of finishing the remains of Infantry Battalion 1A. I wasn’t worried about mortgaging my score and blowing the VPs for a new bird. It was the psychic energy and focus I didn’t have.

Each mission had the emotion of a movie. The solo flights, last-chance shots closing up and opening again with a miraculous Enemy Cover roll and then the pilot missing on the last possible try with the last possible missile. Anticipation and rage. Despair and resignation. And the overlap of unnameable alloys that should be added to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. I was relieved to set it down, but still happy to savor it. Although I’m wondering if the eight-day missions just aren’t a bit protracted for me.

If you’d have told me two years ago that a solitaire boardgame about close air support would be my muse, I wouldn’t have believed you. This is a categorically unique being on my shelf, a private and exhausting and thrilling second life on my table — not exactly spiritual, but undeniably transcendent and engrossing.

I can only say to those who have made that AGM-114 strike at the last possible moment before the tanks run dry and your tailbone chakra disappears down a black flume, thank you for reading. And good hunting.

Award: It’s for you, my fellow Special Option-point spenders and pilot allocators: the  Gen. Johneld B. Dubious Patient Reader Award. I can only thank you for indulging me. I am currently lobbying BGG to get you some profile flair for this one. Should happen any day now. Count your mops before you shut down the house tonight. This century is freaky as hell.

Further Recommended Reading: Here’s Part One of my four-part series about my freshman season as a TAL commander.

Vale of Eternity, Wingspan, Cascadia: The Games of Summer

I acquire, learn and play slowly, so this doesn’t happen often: My play-pace over the last six weeks has totally outstripped my ability to makes sense of it on a microphone. Notes/initial impressions on new acquisitions here; look for a deeper dive in upcoming episodes.

The titular Eternity, a dragon who simply presides for the ‘Gram

Vale of Eternity
Buying a game with no solo mode is a major act of optimism for Breakup Gaming Society (me). I was rewarded by having something like seven different people join me for games, from hardcore M:TGers to casuals. They all loved it. One of them had his own copy the next time I saw him.

I’ve seen a few breathless reviews (unmerited) and a lot dismissal in comment threads (misguided). It’s a good game, as much for its timing in my life as anything.

See, now that’s just lovely

Wingspan
Another purchase where I went against my usual instincts in the name of game shelf biodiversity. It’s every bit as beautiful to see and touch as they say it is. I foundered in the three rulebooks and programmed instruction. I just could not picture how a turn worked. (Liz Davidson solved that. Thanks, Liz.) But I’ve got a solo game under my belt and will try it again, hopefully with others. But that’s low-priority because…

This is what the fuck I’m talking about right here

Cascadia
This game is my new girlfriend. I’ve played solo and against two other folks, each time appreciating the growing contrast between the ludicrously simply play steps and the colorful, crunchy puzzle you find yourself in about a third of the way through. (“Oh, this is nice…fuck. How do I keep the bears happy and find somewhere for this contentious hawk. Oh, my.”) Interpreting the variable scoring patterns of the animal’s five species is producing more moments of confusion than I would like, busting the flow. But I’m going to put up with that and figure it out because I woke up this morning thinking about playing this. Which I’m going to do now. Fuck blogging.

Wasteland Express Delivery Service Solo Campaign Mode: Session 3

I decided to play the Campaign Mode of this game solo. There is no formal solo mode, so I’m merely tracking how many turns it takes me to lock down three Priority First-Class Contracts. I’m playing the entire campaign as The Fallen, the salty former cultist who drives a school bus. These notes are from #3. Less Than Dead. The master narrative has resurfaced Grand Lord Emperor Torque as a character and a mission. We got intel that says he’s back and he’s a dick and he’s a cheater. Whatever. I’m going to make some money.

Writeup for #1. Welcome to the Wasteland is here. #2. Secret Mission is here.

Public Priority First Class Contracts

• Smuggler

• Blue Screen of Death

• Grand Lord Emperor Torque

Turns Elapsed: 11

Shady appears and offers to ride shotgun as my starting ally. He’s going to be handy for the first step of the “Ivory Towers” mission I draw from The Archive. He helps me buy at The Citadel for cheap and smuggle the proceeds to New Alexandria. I hang around there an extra turn to buy an extra general-purpose cargo liner and an MG. Now I’m throwing up a dust plume, crepuscular-like.

What do you mean you need “EVEN MOAR WATER,” you trying to build a log flume ride or something

I make a quick food buy and deliver it to Delos. I can’t Purchase again, so I barrel across the rutilant wastes to Corinth and pick up a mission from The Oracles of Ceres: “Free Market.” Target of opportunity: I deliver food to Silo 42 because nearby vendors were offering it cheap and Silo 42 was close. I double back to Dispatch to burn new earnings on some Vintage Hardware for the “Blue Screen of Death” requirement. The sun sets before I can ferry it to The Depot.

I drop off the Commodore 64 and also manage to fulfill the “Free Market” mission requirement at Dispatch. Shady is ousted from the sleeper cab in favor of Butch. I’ve completed 1/3 of Blue Screen of Death and 2/3 of Smuggler public Priority First-Class Contracts. I’m feeling pretty efficient.

I burn a turn buying Ammo at Dispatch because demand is nuts right now—$11 Scrap/unit—so OK. I can dump it in New New York in one move. Which I do, then parlay it right back into buying more Archaic Chips, and haul them to The Depot. “Blue Screen of Death” is 2/3 complete. 

Scanning around with the binocs after a piss break, I see that a Bonesaw Raider Truck just drifted into reach. I have an MG. The contents of his bed are fascinating: an Ammo and a Water that will trigger a crazy payday for a dual Demand marker at Delos. This would be “fuck you money,” so I give the Raider a try. It’s Section 8. My MG isn’t enough, I lose and take a damage. I try again and lose, now my Armor is clean tore off. I lose again. I decide to attack again, my rolls can’t stay this poor: I lose again, now my auxiliary General Purpose hold is shot up. Sunk cost: fuck this guy. I attack AGAIN. Never have dice been this putrid; a hit to my Sleeper Cab slays Butch.

I’m in a purple rage. The Depot is less than a move away and my bus is shot to hell. I detach a bit and go get repaired. I won’t get to take it out on Section 8, but whoever the fuck is in this Bonesaw truck is going to die next time. Next time it turns out to be Buzzsaw, who’s even tougher than Section 8. I’m in a death spiral of fixation. I lose by one shot to Buzzsaw.

The Message finally gets through: OK, I’m leaving. I disengage without further damage and go to The Citadel and pull “A Delivery,” which will complete my trio of Smuggling runs. But I still have murder in my heart for Bonesaw. I’m going to take that truck down. Fuck the turn count. At the end of the turn, I’m almost ready to pull into New Alexandria’s gates, which will notch a Priority First-Class completion. I am still SO MAD. There were SO MANY THINGS inside of Butch that are now on my upholstery.

I deliver food to New Alexandria, completing Smuggler. I hammer it straight fo the Bonesaw truck and see Zed behind the wheel. I light him up and feel hollow afterwards as I haul ass to Delos for the delivery. Big profit. Now to Dispatch to blow everything on tech and maybe a piece of ass. 

After a couple turns eating dust on the road, the third GameBoy chunk is delivered. That’s two Priority First-Class Contracts completed. I drive to The Citadel and fish for the third and decisive contract: I get “Coups Aren’t Cool,” which requires me to fulfill demand at a New Republic Army location for at least 18 $scrap. Ok. I’ll do it. I burn a turn filling my Ammo hold at The Citadel because ammo is still fetching kooky prices. I dump the single ammo crate for breathtaking margin, but I still have no clear path to an $18 trade with a NRA outpost.

I contemplate my options and cool my heels, repairing damage and installing a third cargo hold that I’ll need to deliver a water payoff to satisfy “Coups Aren’t Cool” requirements. Water? IN THIS ECONOMY? On my penultimate turn I fill my newly fitted cargo holds with three units of water for most of my cash on hand. I flog the bus back to Terminus and make a Delivery worth $18. That’s the win, kids. Thanks for nothing, Chapter 3.

Summary:  I can only imagine what could have happened with a little bit more luck across my many fruitless battles with Bonesaw Raiders. Or a little bit less pride. Either I was perverse or the dice were. In either case, it adds up to 11 ugly, amateurish turns.

Next: #4. Calm Before the Storm

Wasteland Express Delivery Service Solo Campaign Mode: Session 2

I decided to play the Campaign Mode of this game solo. There is no formal solo mode, so I’m merely tracking how many turns it takes me to lock down three Priority First-Class Contracts. I’m playing the entire campaign as The Fallen, the salty former cultist who drives a school bus. These notes are from #2. Secret Mission, in which the plotline asks the game’s truckers to take punitive action against the Raiders while helping the Archivists both prop up the world’s shaky economy and find a dangerous and pivotal item in the wastes.

Writeup for #1. Welcome to the Wasteland is here.

Public Priority First Class Contracts
• Bailout
• The Big Dig
• Kill ‘Em All

Turns Elapsed: 10

I retain The Creep as a starting ally, which means hopefully I don’t get my shields burned off just trying to get somewhere. I also select the Respect mission from The Archivists on the setup draw, as the prize will let me put a combat edge into my extra ally slot. In #1. Welcome to the Wasteland I focused entirely on trade and smuggling, but things are going to get more pugnacious this time out.

Don’t tell any of the crew back at The Depot how long I had to duel with this loser

I sink my cash on hand into an extra general storage hold and a machine gun right away at Terminus’ Mod Shop, then peel out to target a nearby Raider truck piloted by the repulsive Beanman. I close on him at high speed in a rad zone. The machine gun apparently is still in its “breaking in” period. The normally weak Beanman proves cagey; two turns invested in combat only gets all my armor riddled and useless. It’s an abominable start.

After an eternity of circling Beanman amid acrid dust, automatic weapons and insult exchanges, I finally get my new gun unjammed and sort him out—pillaging his truck for water, which is fetching high prices. The cash lets me notch an important Archivist mission after I ferry it to the thirsty buyers at Motown. Stinging from the cost of my exchanges with Beanman, I buy a rack of missiles to back up the MG. Then it’s off to refill those general cargo slots with cheap rations.

Currently I’m leaning towards fulfilling the Kill ‘Em All and Bailout public missions. I’ll fish for a third Priority First-Class Contract along the way as I don’t want to divide my energy and space messing with the expensive digger mod and extra turns it will take to fulfill The Big Dig’s contract requirements. Hopefully somebody else on staff picks up that slack for me.

I drop off food at New Alexandria, replace my armor at their Mod Shop, and set my sights on the Railmen’s enclave—the first of four Raider enclave battles I’ll have to win to fulfill Kill ‘Em All. The Twins issue from their gates to challenge me and get cratered. I leave with smoking barrels, looted food and water.

The Rock outpost buys the food, New New York gets $25 in Bailout funds (chalk one Priority First-Class Contract). I make a beeline for Bonesaw’s enclave. Sky Captain emerges to contest me, but the missiles I picked up in Motown are too much for him; his craft is splintered in a fusillade on his first attack pass. My hold is full of food and weapons, too. Two down. The Raiders are getting served like I’m a short-order cook.

There’s nowhere good to sell anything, so I replenish my missiles and head right for Nein Nein’s Raider HQ because I’m feeling myself. I pull impatiently into The Library en route, hoping to pull a third Priority contract so I can win without the tedium of the Big Dig: I pull “A Solid,” which will mean taking on some smuggling work for the New Republic Army. Cool. I tangle with The Family at the Nein Nein compound. I keep my missiles in reserve and lose, damaging my armor.

My ally and machine gun finally earn their keep as my tussle with The Fam spills into the next day’s action. We light them up good. That’s three successful punitive raids on the Raiders. I could make it to The Eyeless’ hideout and sew this thing up, but I have no Pillage actions left. Gonna burn a few turns dropping off my burgeoning cargo hold contents just for laughs. New Chernobyl snags my food and Serenity pays 10 $crap for the ammo crate I’ve got. I’m back on the road, about to knock on The Eyeless’ door.

The Eyeless come out understrength, fielding The Harvesters, who reap a bounty crop of my heirloom .50 cal seeds. The enforcement action on all Raider enclaves is complete. There’s a lot of driving ahead to get to The Citadel, the only place I can fish for New Republic smuggling runs that the greaseballs at The Archive need done. I hit The Citadel’s driveway with my last gear at unsafe speeds and draw the “Muck and Brass” job; I have water on hand to complete the smuggling run, but New Chernobyl, the destination, is another massive drive. I’m set upon by the Nein Nein truck en route. The Maw is behind the wheel. He’s a rugged dude, so I uncork the missiles for him and deny the Nein Nein’s attempt at retribution.

My replacement shields melt down in a rad zone on the next stretch of road, but I dump the water barrels at New Chernobyl, fire The Creep and put Armistice in my sleeper cab. Her movement bonus proved invaluable on the home stretch of the first chapter. She seems glad to see me. The Archive has half of their “Solid.” I’m not worried about combat and damage; I have plenty of cash and don’t mind stacking some hits on unused cargo holds if it means I can haul ass with Armistice and close this out.

It’s a long drive to The Citadel as Armistice tells me stories about her dad—Grand Lord Emperor Torque, the legend of highway terror who supposedly died in a big battle with the New Republic Army at Silo 42—but I pull the “Train Station” mission. The Citadel is also selling the weapons I need to deliver to Terminus, which is only one outpost away. I burn a turn getting gouged for a crate of weapons, then get it back in first gear.

We’re on a glide path now. We rumble over a few miles with Hasil Adkins on the tape deck and soon Terminus has their weapons, “A Solid” has been completed, and three Priority First Class contracts are in the bag. On to the next chapter! Although Armistice’s stories about Pops seem to suggest that this monster may figure largely in whatever’s to come next.

Summary: It was fun rebalancing the bus’ slots to have offensive punch and trade capacity—The Fallen’s capacious Sleeper Cab (pulling The Archivist’s Respect mission on my setup draw was a boon), and the early purchase of a Machine Gun + General Purpose extra cargo hold provided enough early impetus to give me all the cash I needed, plus affordable repairs and replacement missiles for the heavy fighting. Not bad!

Next: #3. Less Than Dead

Two Songs That Amazed Me Last Winter

File under: Non-hip hop listening that somehow spun bleak mid-winter mid-evenings into pre-bedtime revelations. Mucho gusto.

“Monomania,” Deerhunter
Amazing how a sprig of melody can tease despair into a wider, protean ache pulsing with ecstatic light. You can feel hope or rage or some nameless, riveting aggregate of the two. That's one of my favorite moments as a listener: "What, exactly, am I feeling right now?" And upon subsequent listens: "What techniques are being used to do this to me?"

This landed on my playlist after I found an article about the 10th anniversary of Deerhunter's Monomania. The writer talked about frontman Bradford Cox's state at the time in relation to the title track, which I listened to right after reading the article.

“In my head/There's something rotten and dead/I can't compete with,” he croaks in a highly processed voice seconds before the song launches into one of Deerhunter's signature Heroic Layered Fadeouts that take up half the song. Except they subvert the formula so the usual dreamy surrender becomes disintegration. There's a very pretty and simple guitar melody, but it is subsumed by what I take to be an obsessively sculpted sonic portrait of allostatic overload. Alcoholism. Nervous breakdown.

The little melody gets buffeted and nearly drowned by groaning walls of feedback (wait, is that the sound of a go-kart engine or chainsaw they're throwing in there?), and it's oddly soaring, if soaring means escaping any geometric plane at steep angles regardless of the orientation of the surrounding world. I listened to it six times in a row before bed and it felt like the only important thing that happened all day.

“Unwritten Law,” The Sound
Most of the time I "shop and hunt" with my music list. I hear a track that wallops me. Calculate that a track that good will have maybe two others that make me feel that way. Play the LP, harvest the handful of star efforts into the big list and move on.

But if intriguing singles from a particular act keep surfacing—especially one whose sound and smarts feel ahead of the curve or spring out of a lacuna in my mental map of an era—I'll stop and listen longer. Enter Jeopardy by The Sound. For the purposes of feeding readers a morsel, I'm going to put a single track at the end of this entry, but I played this thing front to back and was rewarded.

At first I assumed I was hearing a polished and studied post-punk revival band from c. 2008, like somebody trying to subtly optimize old recipes. But I looked it up and gaped at the result. They did this in 1980. They predicted every slick, moody trick that bands like INXS and Flock of Seagulls and U2 would use to flood the charts in '83. It's punchy and saturnine. Full of good hooks. Rutilant with a smoldering confidence. It shifts from austere to jubilant—within and between songs—with such sure-footedness and absolute trust in their arrangements and mixing. Like a sentence that reveals just what it means to and not a syllable more.

After I did my first room-to-room tour of Jeopardy, here's the track I circled back to put on repeat while drinking Starkville-style toddies and pitying every dunce who was not in that room with me. (One of many nifty touches here: I love how the chorus is just instrumental the first two times and he sings on the third one. Showcase that toothsome bass string and beautiful lead melody, let it glisten and chug while the lead singer broods in the cut to emerge at the end. All the best drugs at all the right potency in the divine sequence.)

Wasteland Express Delivery Service Solo Campaign Mode: Session 1

I decided to play the Campaign Mode of this game solo. There is no formal solo mode, so I’m merely tracking how many turns it takes me to lock down three Priority First-Class Contracts. At the end of the first game, I realized I’d defaulted to Nathan’s “I Hate Event Decks” Variant out of sheer forgetfulness. Take my accomplishments here with a grain of salt; upon review, my turn-by-turn notes sometimes revealed I’d done way more than was possible with five actions. And there were gaps where I didn’t record important checkpoints. Nonetheless, the story is still mostly here, which is why I did this in the first place. I’m playing the entire campaign as The Fallen, the salty former cultist who drives a school bus.

Public Priority First Class Contracts
• Blue Screen of Death
• Kill ‘Em All
• Smuggler

Turns Elapsed: 9 (I think)

I’m joined early by Chief, a New Republic Army soldier whose specialty is helping me earn bigger paydays on weapons deliveries. I’ve also drawn a smuggling job from the Archivists faction, so I’m thinking of starting there as it will give me progress towards the Smuggler Priority Contract on the board.

Are you happy now, you bastards? The Fallen seals Chapter One by completing the Fiat Currency mission.

A handy northern cluster of outposts allows me to buy some food for just 1 $crap and quickly deliver it to Terminus, a location operated by the New Republic Army, fulfilling the Archivists’ smuggling mission. I also draw an extra mission from Terminus on the way and land another smuggling run—this time for the New Republic Army, which I quickly fulfill at Delos.

Cash on hand is now good. I peer across the wastes and see a throughline from Dispatch back to the Depot. Soon I’ve got some tech artifacts in the bus; that’s progress toward both the Smuggler and Blue Screen of Death Priority First-Class contracts. Now I look northeast, through an irradiated zone and to the stronghold of Corinth, where I hope to be able to pick up more smuggling work from the Oracles of Ceres.

I burn a turn handing off a swaddled motherboard over to Dispatch. It’s wrapped in a copy of SPIN Magazine from 1991. LL Cool J’s in that issue. My armor sizzles a bit in the rad zone en route before acquiring the Surprise Party smuggling mission from the wackadoodles in Corinth. The rads cook the rest of my armor off immediately on the trip back out, but I make it back to Dispatch and secure a crate of weapons to boot.

The weapons are offloaded at Delos. Oh: Molls Electric has also been taking up room and farting in the sleeper cab and doing nothing, so I boot her in favor of Armistice because I’m tired of waiting for rock-bottom current water market prices to move. The Smuggler Priority First-Class mission is now complete. 

I pick up another ungainly wad of half-melted server racks for Depot, but I’m out of Outpost actions. With Armistice’s second-turn movement boost, though, I can replenish my depleted bank with a quick buy-and-flip of some foodstuffs between neighboring forts just on the other side of The Depot.

Soon Blue Screen of Death is 2/3 complete. Have fun with the wadded server racks, boys, I’m sure there’s something you need in there. I’m approaching a decision point: I will have to either build a war chest to turn my bus into a combat rig or pull a primo contract of some other kind. I’m leaning toward the latter. Right now I spot another food-flip opportunity, so I opt for quick $crap and fish for new missions at The Citadel. It’s a junky little job, but weapons just came up for sale here and prices are soaring; looks like Chief is going to earn his keep at last.

Now I’m just chasing shiny objects because the cash is irresistible. The Rock, The Citadel and Terminus are all right in a row, either selling ammo or desperate to buy it. The stashbox in the bus is groaning now, so I dash halfway across the board to buy the last tech artifact required for Blue Screen of Death. But not before I dump yet more weapons at Delos. People are getting strapped up around here! Ammo prices are starting to flatten because of the minor glut I caused, so I take an Outpost action at The Depot on my next move. Blue Screen of Death is complete and so is Smuggler.

Hmm: I’ve got 18 $scrap on hand. Do I gamble on another Priority First-Class Mission pull or resign myself to arming up at the Mod Shop for a military grind to fulfill Kill ‘Em All? Naw. I haul ass to The Library and see if the Archivists have anything interesting for me to do. Bingo: I pull the Fiat Currency mission. And The Library is selling water, which New New York wants.  This feels like less of a slog than Kill ‘Em All, so let’s see how fast I can deliver to New Chernobyl, New New York and New Alexandria. By the end of the turn, I’m rolling off the first water barrels in New New York.

I buy food in The Citadel (for one $crap, no less!) then barrel along to flip it to the hungry folks at New Chernobyl. The Citadel’s selling food again (although not for $1), so I head back there to cool it until I can make the next purchase. Then it’s a long drive with Armistice all the way to the southern reaches to feed New Alexandria.

I buy another pallet of sus MREs in The Citadel and hit the road, getting the load to New Alexandria after a long drive. The sale’s done and I’ve done my part to prop up The Archive’s economic house of cards with some tangible goods. That’s the win!

Final Thoughts: I had 35 $crap just bouncing around the bus unspent. I never bought a mod nor tangled with a Raider. One thing that’s different about playing this way: It was easier to analyze the board at my leisure and stay focused with no downtime or banter. You’d think the downtime with other players would make you more lucid, but after watching three other dudes go and riffing on their various mishaps, sometimes you forget what the hell it was you set out to do.

Fortunate clusters of settlements and insanely convenient strings of demand/supply markers were a major factor here. These plus Armistice’s second-move distance bonus, no opponents throwing Raiders in my way, plus a good late mission pull at The Library let me focus on a fairly frictionless trade route to victory.

Next: #2. Secret Mission