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.

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.

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.

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

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