Air War - Monthly Debrief Ep. 10 - October 2021 - The Players' Aid

so welcome to another video from players8.com my name is alexander and i'm grant and today we're doing our october monthly updates i've got my spoopy pumpkins if you don't know halloween is one of my favorite holidays so it is a cool holiday i had a good time with it yeah i i love horror films anyway so i'm like oh it's full let's get into that i think one of my favorite things about october is the uh just the marathons that you'll find on amc and others although i get tired of watching halloween there's just so many of those i just get tired well they're all terrible the first one's good everything else sucks in there i don't know that's generally but yeah it's a great story people who two people cares yeah as such i don't know it's also been a very busy month for us well we we only played like once or twice yeah i think we played two mate was it just one battle did we match the ball games yeah we played war games once and then we played twice with family the other kind of other guys yeah so it was it was a hard month and i part of it was you just started a new job yes right and i i still am kind of caught in the malaise of my new job even though it's been almost five months yeah but that's not that's not nothing no and i just felt like we had a lot of family stuff a lot of uh different activities and trunk or treats and church uh yeah the second one was like jam-packed so it was just it was rough yes i kind of missed uh playing i did yes i'm grateful we were able to kind of get together beginning in november i kind of started getting back into things so let's kind of just jump right in then i guess yeah for the game that we played in october and it was like october 1st as well when we played it uh and so we played europe in turmoil uh there is a review for this either on our channel it's on okay it's already what's up uh this was a very very good game yeah little kind of 1989 twilight struggle card driven style yep but this kind of build up to world war one real real good game it's just a v it's like i said twilight struggle but it's just been expanded there's been new things added different elements different historical period and it's just it's an excellent game it's it's uh i think i made this statement when we did the review i don't know when i played it i just wasn't enjoying it as much as i thought i would until afterwards and i thought oh that was really good yeah especially the way it used symbols and very similar to 1989 in that respect um and so so here's the thing a question for you because well this seems staged no it is no it's not this is not i don't know spontaneously so and this is kind of a question for the viewers out there as well because kind of to what you were talking about what we do is we will play a game and then we sit here and we discuss and kind of digest and break down what we've just done what we've experienced what the game was like the theme the mechanics and all that kind of stuff and there are times where i'm like i enjoy our conversation more than the game there's no doubt there's no doubt because we will play a game i'm like yeah that was a cool game and i had this but the more we talk about it where it's like oh man this part of it was really mean i'm like you know what the influence of that on the other parts of the game was extremely good and the more we kind of dive into those and that discussions it helps me to really almost elevate some of these games of how we experience them there have been many times where we've played a game and and mechanically i was like oh that was interesting or oh like i don't understand why it's why it's doing anything and then you're like well this and this yeah ah yeah the the discussion the banter back and forth after sometimes the debrief to me is the best part of a lot of times and so that's my question is that something that anyone would be interested in seeing like but how i don't know i don't know if that's cool if i just push the play button a record button and you've got like the raw maybe that'll be a patron thing i don't know well i i will say this here's one thing i would say you you know who i am right we've played together many many many many many years there are times i make snap judgments yeah because i'm pissed yes you know because something doesn't go the way it that i thought it was or expected it to go or i didn't get the cards that i that i needed or and it can be frustrating sometimes i'm playing yeah mm-hmm you know there's that in the game the gamesmanship back and forth and i think tim our friend made that comment about me he goes a great shot he goes just shut up i know what you're saying and trying to do just stop all right okay i'll just play the game but it's just fun i just don't know that that would be i don't know that it would be a spontaneous i don't know that it was it would be as cause there are times i agree but i'm like i just wonder if that would be oh i i don't think there's a doubt that people would enjoy that because some way shape or form because we ramble enough on video anyway and i'm like i don't know if people want more of that but i'm like some of those immediate like more rappers first time deception one ever where like it's i'm almost learning in real time i think is i really enjoy that in games yeah this was a great example of that where like i had a great time with it right off the bat and i thought it was i'm like i know i know what this game is i'm basically familiar with all the mechanics yep uh and it was awesome but like that doesn't necessarily mean that you felt the same way yeah we've had numbers of games like there'll be a game here i'm like what on earth what are we doing like what is this thing yeah and then you're like yeah but the mechanic is this because of this and i'm like yeah and then like and then we kind of like do it then we're done with it and then it's like i look at the end state of the board i'm like oh okay i kind of yeah i don't know i think i don't know i do think part of the thing that i enjoy about our sessions is that that real heartfelt discussion frustration difficulty as we're going through the games yeah or the concept of boy we're just something's wrong alexander how many times have we said that yeah where we're like doesn't feel right um this is your superpower by the way i think it is i'm not very good at this i do think i have a superpower like this is uncanny if you ever play a game with grant and it might be a new game or a game that we're learning most times we read the rules and it's kind of fine but they're always like every so often there's games and almost immediately if something's wrong you know it it feels wrong like there's a and i'm like reading the rules trying to interpret that and i'm like yeah yeah i'm like this is what it says this is what it means and they're like you shouldn't be able to do this thing and then i'm like looking in other parts of the rules i'm like oh shoot it says right yeah there's an exception or you're absolutely right you have a feel for games where you're like a thing is broken and it's not because the game's broken it's because we're not playing it right right exactly and it is like yeah this mechanics we are doing if this is the way it was put into the to the game something's wrong yeah you and it's like because i'm like milling it or no no designer is that dumb yeah and every time it's in the rules and it like you were right and i'm like but but that kind of stuff freaks me out it's golden i i do wish we could capture that i'm just not sure because i'm not sure i would be as open yes and that's true and like only because i really uh disgustingly long because of how many rules we read like we're ridiculous sometimes i feel like we're two old women and nothing wrong with old women arguing and going back and forth and then you get your stone face where i can't tell whether you understand or agree with what i'm saying yeah i'm like just trying to get the factual answer but that's your and it's just who you are yeah um i don't know i i think it would be interesting yeah but but i do think we've played so many games and so many different types of games there are times that i'm just like wait a second yeah th this does not feel correct yeah we have a feel for rules i'm you know i can learn give me a rule book and i can read it and we can play it yeah like it's rare where i'm like this rule looks really bad yeah because i can't learn it because it's so so awful yeah uh but i've read so many where i'm like yep i know what i'm doing yeah then yeah your intuition is insane with that it's and i will say this i i actually am very proud of us we have never house ruled games no you and i have never said yeah that is not the way it should work we're gonna change it i've never done that and there are some games we've played a lot yeah but we've never done a house rule i don't i don't uh in board games i don't think i believe in house rules i don't either i hate them because our friend mike who we play with in st louis he is king of the house rules i i love the guy but we played a game war room we played war room for the first time we played like an eight-hour session and overnight as we were preparing for our second play the next day that's my pdf he had a pdf of house rules like four pages yeah and i said mike this doesn't work i don't agree with this nope nope he's got a house rural sheep empire of the sun yeah and it's just like anyway we're like kind of getting off topic and there's nothing wrong if that's how you play games that's fine that's just not what we and i'm like because if the game i'm going to play the game how how it was like intended to be played well i think that you don't like how it's intended we played play different game well and i think that's just it some people don't care enough to make it work i think it goes back to both your and my belief about these games people have put their blood sweat and tears into these games some of them some people design one game because it takes a long time a decade yeah and they don't have the gumption to do it again or just like a labor problem yeah and how dare i question their motives or their modus operandi or their way of thinking or their approach or their take on history i i just don't believe in that and you know more power too if that's what we want to do that's just not how we roll well i would discuss it with them but i'm going to play it the way you tried to make it because you made it that way for a reason there were a dozen play testers they played it 10 times a piece they agreed to that because it made the most sense so how dare i kind of well and in a dane to if it doesn't work for me and i don't like it don't play it i don't have to play it yeah we there's been a million other games that i can't play i i think that's the rea the other thing i think there's a big misconception about you and i and what we do we do not often do a negative review no in fact i i'm gonna say it empire uh at sea yeah or in that what it was called yeah from holland spiel i i just didn't really like it it just what but you know what i saw a lot of great things in it yes it is possible to like appreciate the things in there and talk about these things and still not have enjoyed it but there have been some games and i'm not going to name any of those that we have played and we were just like this is not for me yeah and that stuff doesn't make it onto video it doesn't make it like i will not make a review of that game and there have been some that i'm like well i really wanted to do a review of that one because it's it's a hot game and and people are like oh that'd be really helpful i'm like it might be but like you can get that information elsewhere i'm not the only person i just don't know that i'm gonna sit there and tear something apart it's not it's not worth my time and i'm also not gonna go through it if we really had that bad of an experience with it no that yeah i'm not gonna go through it and try to look for the one kernel that i did think was good because there's always something good in every game period i i don't care what it is from tiddlywinks yeah to sometimes sometimes the good thing in the game is the box odd yeah and that's or or the fact that it it's over you know we were playing it came in a box there was a very well thought of sorry i know we've gone way off the rails a very well thought of polybag series of games that we got a couple of years ago from wbc and i think we were very excited about him no i'm not gonna we played that one and i remember thinking after one turn it was like let's put this back in the poly bag yeah let's put it away and let's get something else out there pretend to play we didn't do this yeah and i i know i'm not wrong on it if i gave it another try i might but it wasn't but i don't like i don't need to no i don't have the time or inclination to do so when i could play something that i'm going to enjoy and i know and there also was a there was another company a very small company very small publisher that we played a polybag game that i spent 35 on of my own money this was before we got a few copies that was years ago of anything i thought oh yeah i'm gonna get that one because it looks dope we got that thing out i came over here we set it up the initial starting mechanic was so goofy it was like not a game well it was over half the time it was over before the game even started yeah literally like you would you'd lose the game and set up yeah and not in like oh i set it up wrong no it was it was not because of some some random roles with huge modifiers and i i remember we we literally sold that game yeah i think you tried to trade it or sell it or no i think i think i traded it i was like put it into a trade and it was like and i felt bad because i felt like we were putting a bear trap in that bag and trying to throw it on someone else but like anyway but like i don't know our channel is here to like showcase good things and to like be a positive influence in the hobby and uh yeah an hour of me ragging on something there's more than enough good out there that we can spend our time on that and you can go onto any forums and facebook groups you want and find plenty of negativity yeah like don't be afraid of the internet and not just negativity about war gaming there are some people that have have trashed us oh you know these guys are chills and blah blah blah probably correct in their opinions anyway it's so funny because i remember when we were new we're really going down the rabbit hole now we're also still very new we are but when we were so new we were so taken by one publisher and one set of games and a couple of designers and man we played everything that we could of theirs well and it was it's no secret who that was and as mark herman and gmt games i mean because they were the ones that opened their arms to us and were like yeah welcome to the hobby we'll give you we helped people in the hobby and it was like oh sweet yeah he's behind generous people but it's so funny i remember we found a some thread on a subreddit forum and i think you texted it this was months and months and months ago or maybe i texted it to you i was like look at these people ragging on us and they were like i kind of like the players they but you know what they uh they're just trying to to love this one company and i'm like i don't have money to buy 50 war games i just don't have the time to play fifa games but i think that's the funny thing sorry i just think that's the funny thing my gosh i got a family yeah i got a real job i got bills i'm trying to save for retirement and pay for college for my kids and i can't buy 30 war games a year i buy four or five war games a year and my wife wants to kill me and those are ones that we can't get yeah you know because there's some publishers that just don't they don't understand the value of a 30 game giving it to us and not expecting us to say oh that game was awesome because we don't do that nope i don't know i that's what that's what has been very interesting for me i think over the past six almost seven years now so yeah we played european mall this morning it was excellent uh it was good it was very very very good that was an excellent game the uh one of the other games i played africa uh from the gamers this is a standard combat series what did that come like out of 1980 1993 okay 93. this is a little one-inch box and it was old uh this thing costs like 20 bucks on board game geek that smell musty a little bit i mean the thing's 20 years ago and i'm like five we played bra stuff 41 loved it yeah same system absolutely the same this is number two in that system right yes what's number one oh gosh i knew it it was like something drive on moscow or something okay some some german tanks yeah yeah but uh this is a very you know the system's been around for ages and i'm like the africa 2 which is by mmp it's like a redo of this game it's like 120 bucks yeah they can't get it it's out of print i'm like you know what i'm going to try to try the first edition started who cares yeah and uh perfectly serviceable had a good time um yeah you tweeted out several pictures and kind of an aar going i played it solo no reason you couldn't do that and i shot a a solo aar and there's gonna be a review of this comment so i had a i had a great time yeah a great system i love and it was nice to play something not world war one and to set it up and just kind of push the cameras around and do it all that's very i do think that's something that you do that i i don't have the gumption to do i have several big war games that i know we're not going to play like day of days i would love to because that's scs right yep i would love to play that one you just got to set up two maps yeah i just need to put one or two maps out there i know a little bit every day i did some of that with holland 44 and a couple of i just great game i like playing them with you yeah i don't really understand that i don't know but i'm like this was i was also kind of testing it because i'm like yeah is it really old is it going to hold up i don't want to waste our time if it's kind of a dud so i kind of wanted to try it out i'm like that it's great yeah really really good well cool so yeah that'll give us some more kind of classic war game content on the yeah that was that was kind of the other war game that i played did you play war games well i played a couple of solo games um soviet dawn which we've already talked about i i shot a video review with my thoughts and i also did a play through what i would caution you about that play through is i made one big mistake and i kept making that mistake over and over and over and over again um you're supposed to discard the tokens i kept throwing them back into the pool so i could try to get them again i just made a mistake i played that game ten times it's a blast i've won the days of siege were always interesting yeah states have seen so i played that i also played about uh three quarters of a game of gorbachev from white dog games it's a solo 19 kind of the end of communist you know end of russia and end of the cold war uh perestroika and all that stuff very cool game it's also states of siege by ben madison i need to get back and play it and do some reviews of it but that's kind of what i played and then we played a couple games with her yeah we did a lot of kind of family gaming as we'll call it well we did oath oath was from uh yeah we played one game of it and it was we played two games no we played one we we set up for the second one and decided that we didn't want to do it oh we did what we did is we did the kind of learning play through that they did yes and then we played our own actual game yeah you're right that's what we did so we kind of played it twice yeah that was a very interesting and very different style of game oh yeah that's a lot of uh kind of wrap your head around a lot of things and it's yeah faux legacy style so like how we played affects the setup for the next one yeah because you like take certain cards out yeah or you put certain cards and it's just fascinating yeah that's just really fascinating yeah i'd like to get back to that and do that again i didn't understand it but you know what i enjoyed it he really did and brum our brother-in-law man he jumped on it and i think he really he really picked it up very well he think about yeah he he he does a lot of those yeah styles the games and here's me with my little hexes and counters and it's no that's applicable yeah yeah so yeah we did that and then we did descent yep second edition from fantasy flight games which is a third edition third edition what it is yeah dungeon crawl yes the center wide of the dark big app assisted miniatures big 3d cardboard terrain i enjoyed it it's a nice color and that's what we played about father and lord brother-in-law because they enjoy those kind of games and it's a great way to kind of play with family and it's that it's a gorgeous game yeah yeah the minis are fantastic and you painted them and they're just they're just awesome yeah although there were some you didn't paint and yeah which i thought was funny um but yeah that was a great time um i think that's most um pathfinder they have played some played something i think we played two sessions in october we've now played yeah session zero plus i want to say three sessions one two three four yeah so four total and you guys just hit third level yeah so literally at the end of last session you guys gained third level um you've almost all almost died a couple of times some of us numerous times yeah but it's been fun yeah always enjoy it i enjoy that that role-playing is just fun and being the dm it's just a different different experience i think i would prefer to play but i do like the storytelling so but that's i think that's everything we did in october and then in november and looking forwards we've got a number of games that we're going to look at and or play so yeah first off on top we got grass the grass crown huh well i can't want to call it the glass crown i don't like shields and swords uh shields and swords ancients yes sequel for with it or on it there's a review for that already we played this actually played it earlier on today yeah it's actually set up right here you can't see it oh you probably can't see it maybe maybe a little bit yeah it's right here uh that's a great yeah what spoiler alert really like this is yeah really so we already played we've already played a game out of war games we played last month ridiculous but uh i do think world war one took so much out of us that i just felt like we had a little bit of a little break a little hangover because it was uh so what do we got here some other games that we're going to try and tackle we are not going to try we are going to get these done this month yeah because we've got a ton that we need to play we really do the donk summer ted racer the dark series this is a game this is a one mapper i'm so excited i love this system it's normandy it's one [Music] sorry it's like the chipper makes it solo friendly like yeah i'm primed to like this game yep because i like the system and i like the theme of this so i have pretty high expectations for this i do too that's why i'm like we got to play that this month i got high hopes for that one i i really want that to be good another one that uh we actually just got this game from phalanx just came off kickstarter i think a couple of months ago we got a copy a couple months afterwards you can see we haven't even taken it yeah probably a box this yeah we definitely need to unbox it but it it is a card driven uh war game based on uh i think the gmt game called successors this is like either third or fourth edition of that game it's by richard berg and mike simonich so i presume that that's the case yeah it's it's a fantastic looking game on the wars of uh the diadoki and the alexander successors i it just looks awesome and it's been given the phalanx treatment yeah if you don't know what that means they've like huged it out miniatures yeah very nice plastic components cards like this isn't uh this isn't this right yeah this is this is modern this weighs a lot it's big it looks great i'm hoping that it's enjoyable and people love it yeah the reviews and i will say we played a game along this same lines um hannibal and hamilkar yeah and i don't know we we had a different experience than i think most other people yeah i i i don't know if that's one of the times where i'm like are we idiots but like that one kind of fell flat for us i'm hoping this one is is a little more exciting and because i really have an interest in alexander the great and and that time period obviously alexander's dead but you know his successors it just looks really good yeah i'm i'm thinking this one's going to be very interesting i hope i hope it's good it looks excellent got some high hopes for that and then we have commands and color samurai battles i know a whole bunch of you already played this yeah it came out like nine months ago well and i think we we have been trying to play it we just had that world war one thing that got in our world and you know it's okay it took me a while to sticker it and then we were playing some french indian war games and then this just kind of got pushed back this has 40 scenarios yeah this is pretty flipping scenarios the price you're going to pay for this this is probably the best value for money if you get going down that road most of these cnc games have 10 12 yeah or 15 to 20 yes this is twice as much as 40 any other cnc game basically it's wild so i'm looking forward to that we will play this this month like i said these three games we are definitely gonna play and then i know uh solo games i've got we just acquired empires in america the french and indian war yes which is a states of siege uh solitaire game and also the little there's a mini expansion you go with it right which was i haven't really looked through it because the cards were missing yes we the cards were over here yes um i'm looking forward to this one i've heard it's hard i've heard it uh very challenging and i'm very interested to try it out so that's one of my solo games along with gorbachev yeah and i've got uh phantom fury from nuts publishing uh this is i've just got a hold of this and i'm gonna play this bad boy over the course of the month i'm to get this set up and at match this one i've had my eye on this basically since 2015. got it uh it was just it's extremely expensive secondhand and i'm like well the problem with nuts is they're a small publisher and they don't do they don't do reprints very often yeah they really don't so this was done 20 you know five six seven years ago yeah and it's just never been reprinted reprinted so it's rare yes and people will charge it 200 bucks for it it's like it's like ranger right yeah kind of omega games the same thing they they made one print run now they've come out with a second yeah there's there's a few but like it's that ranger good luck yeah it's hard to find because unfortunately the designer passed away on that one this one at least oh maybe someone's gonna get right some reprint at some point but yeah this is like a tactical building to building clearing of fallujah but i'm like a scale that's what i'm really interested in so yeah i'm excited to play this one solitaire as well at some point this month and i think oh and uh 1979 revolution in iran is one that we've talked about yeah just off kickstarter from the deets foundation and so we'll kind of tie that into what's the whole kickstarter section of this which it's going to be very short yeah uh because i don't i i have not been paying attention this month there may be some good ones out there i'm just not seeing them i feel like i there is a cool one on uh like maronostrum um really it's like a three game so there's a solo game a two player game and a five to six player game and it's all on that mediterranean did you know who's running i i don't i looked at it it's very expensive okay gonna be honest and you can buy any one of those three you can buy them separately we can get the tri pack right so i and the tripack was the one i was like yeah that might but it was like 300 bucks because it's three games i mean it's three full games looks great i can't remember anyway i don't even know why i brought it up i apologize but so we what we had is is um we did the kickstarter for 1979 revolution in iran which this is not but we we uh it was by the deets foundation which is a non-profit that supports um education and we we back to their tripac because really 1979 is like that looks very cool yeah but i'm like donate to a good cause we got this extra war game called three years before which is like a card based i think medievally type war games it's a 30 year war and uh so we got that and then there's like a a little racing game as well cause yeah super charged i'm like so that shipped and delivered from kickstarter and was frankly one of the smoothest kickstarters i've ever been a part of with the exception of the stickers they were hard but what was it yeah i wanted i haven't heard your opinion on that well it took me two and a half hours to stick her about 45 or 50 blocks they were tiny yeah sorry the little discs and the stickers themselves are small and i think they would their die cut was machine was just a little bit off it was too heavy so they like so you would peel literally the entire sticker okay off the sheet and then you'd have to figure out how to get get there without ruining it to then pull it off the sticker now i will say it got better down near the bottom of the sheet the last 20 stickers we're like oh i can get a normal but i i was disappointed in that i hope that jim at the dietz foundation uses maybe a different yeah he knows because i everyone's complaining but it looks really good it's a card driven by dan bullock i'm very excited about it they were like so clear about their communication yeah delivered basically when they said it was well they have a new one considering yeah for is it free at last something like that i want to say right martin luther king but it's a cooperative game and it's one that i yeah they get we need to back that one historical and educational and the proceeds go to like funding scholarships for teachers and getting board games into curriculum and schools yeah so it's a great little cause jim's an interesting guy i've never met him i think he lives in uh south central illinois i lived in centralia which is kind of southwest illinois for about seven years six and a half and he just seems like a really down-to-earth guy who has a very good uh mission and is trying to to run that mission to the best of his ability and and he's got guys like dan bullock designing games dan bullock's kind of a genius and you like he's teaming up with the right people yeah he's getting good people they're turning out good games i it's interesting yeah but they have that one called free at last or something like that it's about civil rights and martin luther king and looks very good yeah but that's i don't know yeah i'm sure there's a billion other things on kickstarter yeah that are going on i just don't know anything else next month i will prepare a little bit i'm trying to get more back into the blog and yes staying on top of it it's just been a busy four months yes it has so i think that's all of that kind of preamble stuff so let's talk about did you say that's all that rambling stuff that preamble oh preamble because what we'll do i heard you yes so the main topic of this month is was submitted by derek davis one of our patrons yes and if you want to submit uh or have the capacity to submit suggestions for these topics um it's available to our five dollar level patrons i'll make a post every month 60 bucks a year i mean look at it though you can do it for one month and suggest that one month and i might pick it yeah i don't you know i don't look at anyone's like history that doesn't influence me we get eight or ten suggestions and we try to pick the one that that like some were not comfortable with yeah some i like don't know enough about people like i'm like like we were asked this month about american civil war games we've played half a dozen i don't know that it's one that we're so into that i can intelligently well and there's like like i have a couple games from very very um well-known and well-regarded systems once we've played those on top of the ones who played maybe i'd feel like i'd be a bit more informed and i'm not just talking about my ass frankly yeah yeah so well you do that a lot i do that a lot i'd like a heck of a lot like me talking about the american civil war would be extremely obvious i have no idea what i'm talking about because i'll be honest i generally speaking don't know what i'm talking about with anything and acw is like i know double down on that bad boy i'm like i like well it's just not i know what gettysburg was yeah and that's about it yeah right like so so some topics don't get baked yeah right for reasons like that but if you want to suggest topics that's the way to do it sign up for a patreon and then just reply on the posts and you know you might thanks to all of our patrons it does help us you guys make this kind of thing happen yeah and make make some of this procurement games procuring the hardware that you're watching on much much simpler for us as well so the topic is air wall games one of our favorite types real broad air war games solitaire and multiplayer and we have played a bunch we have not played all of them no uh there are many that we want very desperately yes to play and i own a lot of guys yeah you do downtown uh i don't have downtown but i thought you did no but i have red storm and um elusive victory does use the downtown system yeah yeah but like those i've got the burning blue i desperately want to play that at some point some of them like those like all three of those fairly complicated yeah and that's that's kind of what i'm going to start with with air war games isn't that one of the hallmarks of of an air war game it's fairly complex well it's it there's a spectrum and yeah you're right and there's not much in the middle they're either quite simple and reductive and usually fun or they are while very wildly under yeah usually usually quite detailed verging on simulation and like did i move too far into like this is a sim and not a game yeah and usually quite crunchy got it um so like red storm is very crunchy yeah the way that things move and like that's one of those games where a turn takes you like a half hour and in real time it's six seconds yeah like exactly yeah so understand that some of those games that's what you're getting into um but but like sometimes that's extremely good and rewarding yeah and i like some of those games um but i understand that like usually it's one of those two things it's rare that you get stuff that's kind of in the middle that's satisfying because it's either too complicated to be like a light fun game but not complicated enough to be like a realistic sin yeah and so you end up in this kind of wishy-washy middle area so that's kind of where i'm starting with yeah that's kind of at least my opinion of those kinds of things so light fun games we already talked about wild blue yonder which i got up here let's pick such a great game and it's a card game yep you have a hand of cards and that's what you're using to like maneuver your little one plane and your little wingman that's out and you're go you're competing against one other person if you're doing a two-player yeah you can play like four i think you can play up to eight people you can't play you like sit around a table it's a big dog fight and you're kind of fighting each other but it's you're playing these cards oh i'm gonna do a loop-de-loop maneuver and you're gonna do like a scissors maneuver to counter that and i'm gonna counter your counter and you're like it's a hand management game yep i'm not trying to out play you so that i've got you in my sights attack attack attack shoot you a whole bunch of times yeah that's basically what that game is then it's like your turn to do that kind of thing and everyone's doing that and then you kind of yeah who's dead who's not do i refill my hand if i'm alive and go again and particularly wild blue yonder those games 15 minutes 10 to 15 minutes is what you're going to experience and then do like big tournaments that stuff wbc which is cool but once again you can you can play different airplane types you can play different nationalities it's just a very cool game it it's a lot about having the right cards right but it's also a lot about managing that hand yeah because you don't want to using your concepts you don't want to over blow it and kind of blow your wad because once because you don't refill until they've had their turn on you yes so you may not have no cards to defend yourself and you will lose if yeah so it's a matter it's a balance and i think although there comes a point kind of that tipping point or point of no return yeah oh i've played three cards or four cards i i can't lose this now yeah so so you know now that i've gone like that one contest i gotta go and i gotta and if i don't win this i was going to lose anyway yeah which is cool it's my it's a 50 minute game yeah they set it back up i was like yep we had we have enjoyed that we've probably played that i want to say 15 20 times and and so just really enjoy it while blue yonder is the name of the box it's part of the down in flames system which has been around for decades and had many iterations and many companies have done titles of it one of those is uh we've got down in flames locked on that's awesome which is just the 19. well it's really the same concept but think explosive missiles yeah it's the jet fighters versus machine guns yeah probably onto world war ii you can get hit a couple times you're gonna be okay yeah you can recover down in flames locked on you get toned it's it's hard to get away you're dead it's straight up like top gun in the game yeah exactly and uh it like was great yeah and it's and it's cute seeing the difference between those two like i said like you know world war ii oh i got strafed oh i took a damage oh i got straight again my wingman got shut down i took another damage yeah yeah yeah locked on it's like if if that missile launches you're the you're done like you're dead yeah you don't survive the missile and you can use machine guns in in that too but why would you when you have these cool well these but like to get into machine gun range you've had to go through so many different air-to-air ranges that you're probably dead already yeah yeah you've died long before you got into that range it's just fun it's extremely lethal yeah but it's cute seeing two different parts of that system it's nice but just two different eras that really use different equipment but but the same core system works in both yeah and it's a fun target like that's the game i would recommend to anyone who's interested in air war yeah like you could play that with someone who's not a war gamer yeah play with a kid play with your dad play with your brother because it's not it's not well the rules are simple it's cards so yeah it's it's very you can pick the game up very approachable yeah very fun and very fun i i have enjoyed those games i would play it right now if you wanted to get out wild blue because it's ten minutes i mean and i can do it three or four times and we can go to something else so so those are kind of two examples of that basic yeah real real nice and easy yeah so then something else that i feel like is kind of on that level is something like that so there's a series of solitaire games uh that are done by greg smith and knight fighter ace and interceptor a spitfire ace all those kinds of games kind of uh also very simple like they're very easy to learn that's what i mean by that yeah and those are more narrative style games they're solitaire you've got a pilot and he's flying a plane you're going on night missions and it's rolling on rolling dice on charts to see or do you find anything then i'm going to go to this attack sequence which uses a deck of cards which is really cool uh that is a very cool part of it yeah and then you know do i shoot the guy down does he shoot me down do i make it do i survive great i fly another mission and you're looking at like it's the campaign overall can you become an ace how many guys can you shoot down over the course of a year and a half or do i die on a crash landing because i didn't have a parachute yeah on your very first time you can you can die on your first and and it's interesting because greg for everybody that knows greg smith you know his his main games were you know silent victory yeah the hunters the hunted that's what he started on so those are submarines uh world war ii submarines he has now used that same system that narrative driven solitaire the bones of that of the yeah and now merged it into the to the air war he's also now starting to come out with a american tank case yeah i'm curious to see how that works too so it it's cool to see that he has used that system in different it's been able to be modified enough very agile well and flexible knight fighter ace if you compare that to like the hunters you can see some of the similarities but like the combat system's entirely different has to be and and like the little fuel on the missions it's it's nice the way he tracks the fuel on that is really ingenious it's very clever it that could be a part of a game that's more a simulation and could be really intense and tracking yes the way he does this you can only go a certain amount of patrol boxes that's your fuel limit yes it's genius i mean i i'm going to be able to go out for four patrol boxes this time or whatever because this plane is limited on fuel yeah and you know where yeah it's it's to track it it's just tracked for me automatically um i i actually have really enjoyed those games and i don't know that i'm a big that solitaire system fan i play silent victory i've played hunters i've enjoyed them but they don't speak to me like you yeah knight fight trace is one of my favorite ones honestly i also enjoyed uh america bomber i mean i had a good time with that one it's a a what if um that one's a bit more zany because it's kind of because it's like oh what if and you're like yeah yeah i'm baron red skull in like my evil right giant vomit yeah and some of your missions it's you know you're bombing a ball bearings factory in upstate new york and you're trying to drop off some uh propaganda over the eastern seaboard and because you don't want the americans to hate you and it's just interesting there's just a lot of different but that whole system he's just done game after game he has west front ace coming out yeah which is very cool the the world one yeah just like oh i like sap with simulator yeah right yeah like you just you don't parachutes didn't exist yeah uh you've got to shoot down a giant barrage balloon that's full of helium good luck yeah right you're going to burn yourself up with my little canvas and wood plank yeah yeah it's just so cool to see how he's so that's another genre or another yeah kind of grouping of of air war games one of both of our favorite games of all time is lee bremacombe's remycom woods bomber command yeah it's it's so good i'm trying to think if it's up here yep sorry okay i just we have played that three four times now yeah and i just like pharmacomon is one of my favorite games of all time every time we play it it's just so cool and it's so leewood famously is a designer who he's the one that kind of like writes that line like his game is usually pretty crunchy yep and he like i remember reading an article by him where it was like he's always like trying to find that line between game and simulation and where that merges and he's like i understand that sometimes i sacrifice game for simulation but like if that's what you want to do then it's great and understand that going into some of this game so he did yeah he did wing leader which is another system that we played yeah which is very different um we have we actually haven't played this one this is victory yeah we played wing leader supremacy yeah yeah long time ago yeah uh but like his games are usually pretty dense rules-wise but when you play them it gives you something but man bomber command it's so good you got you got all this like hidden information the raf's like got this little piece of paper and they're like this is where i'm going and this is and the german knight fighters are and yeah i'm getting this i'm doing i'm just trying to launch my sauntees and try to find you and i'm just trying to like penetrate that huge bomber stream and like reek as much havoc as i can but i'm limited on how much fuel each of my yakishwatas have that fuel tracking system is horrible yeah it makes the game a little complex that's the only thing about that game i don't like yeah and if there was a way to make that simple it would be great but uh i don't know what that would look like some of that smart but that that's quite involved because if you mess up and you forget to like move one fuel down yeah you know you break you're starting to get into like you're not actively cheating but like yeah you're cheating it makes a huge difference you wouldn't be able to get that extra search and like you did too much and maybe yeah yeah yeah it has a lot of knock-on domino effects in that game but man you like it's all this secrecy and you're like trying to throw up all of your different radar systems and all your flat guns and all these events are going off the events are very cool too yeah and then like at the end you get to like this little battle splat board and you like drop all of your bombs on it and it's pretty grim and you roll some dice and it's all modified by the amount of damage that you've taken over time yeah and getting in there and it's possible when you put all this stuff out and then it like all shifts off because you were so damaged yeah i got to move all these counters off and you did basically nothing yep or i didn't do enough damage to you and it's just like it was like a fire tornado there's like yeah there's like five storms that can happen the very cool part about and and the one thing that i didn't like about that game but we had this conversation is you're and it's the same discussion that high command had should we be doing this is it moral to bomb civilian populations you know and some of the stuff bomber command had that those discussions right you get that dresden mission you're like yeah that's intense but having a fly out there and then you're trying to bomb their their houses i mean it's it's a very interesting concept like you're not trying to do that because that you're doing it you like you will do it it will happen but like they've got their targets of like look here's this and here's this is this and you you lose points for bombing the civilian no you do but it ends up happening but like yeah yeah you don't have a ton of control of no but but and i think the thing i like about that bombing procedure is is there is a lot of randomness to it there is some dice rolling yeah and you're rolling and you can roll really well and it's like oh my bomb my incendiary set other things on fire like you don't get to like do all of that unless you've played the game really well well yeah that's what i enjoy you can be so damaged that you're not gonna do anything yeah which like me as the little german defenders if i've played the game really well you ain't bombing the city right like you're not gonna hit anything yeah or like if you've been so secretive enough and you've done good defensive fire and decoys and stuff and i haven't found you yeah like it's it's going off yeah and i think it's really nice nice it is i don't know that it gosh that sounds like a psychopath yeah yeah yeah that is a game that has payoff in the end it does like it is so like so many war games it's like oh i won the game and kind of like we had some tension and then like i like kind of steamrolled things we kind of peek it out at the end but this is a game where it's like like you played really well and then like there is a payoff at the end it's like all this stuff gets done and it's like yes i executed my mission extremely well but then guess what you're going to fly back back and and that's the other very and you all die on the way back and then you lose the game is almost like three games in one yeah it's the cat and mouse between the night fighters and the the bomber streams it's the bombing run in that procedure and then it's the getting home when you're being harried by every night fighter in the area that can reach you who now know exactly where you are and you're very limited on your ways home and it's just it's it's such an interesting simulation of that game and it's i love the hidden movement i love the hidden information i love the card play i love that bombing procedure there's just a lot to like and that's that's one of why i'm like desperate at some point to play the burning blue yeah because it's a very similar concept yeah where the germans are sitting but it's burning in london right it's yeah it's it's not britain yeah but it's this very similar concept you got all these radar systems and nta and then it's like all your fighter command yeah uh launching all that different patrol very very similar type of concept yeah yeah yeah and i love bomber command and so i'm like i already hope this is equally as good yeah so that's that's one but yeah those are much more detailed yeah pretty intense and there's a follow-up to that and i think we have it we just have never played it knight fighter isn't it called night fighter so that's a very different game okay it's very different okay sorry no you forget that we have not played that that's by gmt as well yeah and there's like there's actually like a computer game version of it which apparently is better because it's not really a two-player game yeah it's a one-player game with a referee which i'm like oh okay a little bit almost straight yeah kind of odd yeah that's like that's yeah but we've not played that one's yet i know we have it sitting over there i can see it yes uh other air war games well one that we played that i thought was very interesting was battle of britain by from psg dsc games yeah it's a remake of an older game uses miniatures you know so you got who doesn't want it you got heinkels you got i mean all the different planes and you're you're trying to fly around and intercept and and dog fight and shoot down these planes and prevent them from bombing your cities and your your key areas it's just a fun interesting game it uses some cards it it lots of bucket of dice game you're getting that one eight or ten dice that one's one of those games where like complexity-wise it's really in the middle like it's not like these like 15 minute like games that one's a bit more involved it's a 45 minute to an hour long game but it's a dice chucking beer and pretzels i enjoyed that game i don't know if you did or not it's been it's been four or five yeah it was it was it was enjoyable i had a good time with that they had some cool uh the the hidden objectives type stuff and that is always always enjoyable yeah yeah that was a fun one uh i'm trying to think of other ones well wing leader supremacy you kind of talked about yeah we played wing leader supremacy a long time ago i'm not sure we had an amazing experience with it because we were pretty new yeah and it's a very detailed game yeah so i've i've got wing leader victories i want to give that another go because i think we will understand it better now and get the concepts a little better and yeah like i i think about the game all the time yeah because i'm like it was very cool it was very different but some of the things that it was trying to do i don't think i was really groking but now i'm like yeah i think i know i know much better what i would what's kind of going on with yeah because it was had all this like kind of like these are your pre-programmed orders and like you can only break those orders under certain conditions if i'm like those conditions how do you meet like it was there's a lot of stuff in that game that's all and it was yeah it was intense so i'm like i want to give that one another go but one of my favorite games of all time is raf battle of britain from decision games love love love that game we played it two player once we did yep and i had a great time with it it's a very long and in-depth game yeah and it's long because you want to play the campaign yeah yeah yeah straight up like you can do like they got like oh this like one day scenario you don't want to do that it's fine it's like a snack you'll learn the rules that way but like this game is a game of the battle of brexit it's about attrition you're playing this whole arc of this game of yeah it's your resources i gotta get in my reinforcements i gotta get new pilots in my new pilots aren't very good i have to get them experienced oh they all got shut down when i used them get me more new green pilots yeah like and you're desperately trying to keep enough sorties in the air and like air defenses spread out to keep the bombing like mitigate that damage and like desperately trying to repel like i love it and when you play two player the germans have like the secret little planning board where they're like i'm going to do a raid and it's going to be here and it's going to be made up of all of these planes conversely the germans have only a limited number of planes in there and like at the beginning of the game it looks like so many and then you're like oh all my stukas got shut down wait we don't make stuggers anymore those never get replaced oh no yeah and so you're like huh i only have these dorniers and youngest 88s and they're not nearly as good yeah yeah and so like your resources get whittled down over the course of time and you know raf's like just trying to hang on and then like kind of can they get enough together and so that attrition like you talk about the the arc of this campaign is so good and i i played the whole thing solitaire 10 out of 10. yeah absolutely love that would love to play like a big ongoing and you know i own the game i've never played a solitary yeah we we got another copy and a trade yours is a newer version mine's like you have the west end games version or is it like the no there's a million versions of it the newest one is like 120 bucks it comes in like a four inch box and it's got all mounted maps in it okay mine is the old paper maps to it i think mine's the paper maps but it's a game that i would love to play a little more solo i just haven't and you can it's got like three modes in it which is very cool really really like that game it's more like if you play as um as like the british you kind of picture it as like almost like a tower defense game yeah they're just coming at you and you you got to hold down you've got to like get my defenses up and repair what i got it's kind of feels like that but the the course of the game and you'll be in like these negative victory points and it's like out of it and then like you you like get into the red and like yeah yeah it's great i love that game so other dvg has a whole line of um air leader you know phantom leader you've played vietnam i love phantom lead love it zero leader is their newest you played it shot a video review of it corsair leader we've played um corsair leader and zero leader can be played together opposed yes i'd love to maybe sit down and try that out one time i think someone's asked us i'm curious to see what that's like yeah i'm not sure what it's going to be like they wrote some rules for it and see if it works but they've got like i just picked up hornet leader and israeli air force leader as well thunderbolt apache leader is another one that you've played yeah those are and so those all share again the same core system where and that's more of like i have a squadron of pilots with their little planes and they have different some people some are all experienced some are elite and i'm like going through a campaign of missions i launch one mission i don't have to send everyone i'm only gonna send three or four guys because they get stressed yeah and they go out and they they gain a stress or two and once they get stressed they don't perform as well yeah so you're you're basically you're the keg in that situation because you're really managing your squadron is a huge part of that game yeah like it's the best part of those you do the tactical mission execution which is fun and you'll do a bunch of them but like desperately trying to keep your pilots operational and your planes operational is a is the really cool logistical kind of side of that thing yeah you get to fly on the missions and there's cool stuff in events and you know shooting things down that's that's awesome but yeah that that managing of that stuff on what's a kind of a personal level all your pilots have names and when they die yeah he's sad yeah and you get like the newbie in the squadron and he's not very good yeah everyone hates him like that that's a very enjoyable series now something like corsair leader and zero leader if you are strapped for cash you don't need both of those okay right they cover the same they're both very similar yeah it's like just from the one japanese perspective you don't want to collect them all there's nothing wrong with that yeah yeah like phantom leader hornet leader israeli air force leader it's all jets you're all executing missions fairly similarly so like pick one that you think will be interesting and like just dive in because those games also have a ton in them yeah like you're looking at like five six campaigns you twice as much as yeah usually twice and then each campaign can be played like a short campaign a medium campaign and a long campaign so like you can tailor it to what you want yeah and there's like massive stacks of cards of millions of different like planes and fighters and loadouts and skill levels like it'll never be the same type of thing you know so that each one of those boxes a ton in the game but but those those leader series i've enjoyed not only the air ones but the you know sherman leader and gato leader and they're just all interesting and different i have a b-17 flying fortress leader i've messed around with it i've just never never played it but yeah there's a lot of a lot of coolness there there now i know from legion war games one of your favorite series is uh target for today target for tonight yeah target for tonight was one of my favorite games love it it was really really good so those are all i have not played those they're they're narrative driven solitaire guys yeah they so those are both kind of successes to b17 queen of the skies yeah which is like the original air war solitaire game from which things like the hunters is based off yeah yeah like it's they're all based off of that kind of a system yeah and that one is like again it's this narrative i've got a plane i got a bunch of guys in my crew they've got names they've got positions in the plane i roll a dice this is where we're going today and then i fly through those zones does anyone shoot me down like do i find anything oh some measure submits are attacking me i put them on my little board okay i can attack them with this waste gunners truck some dice do i fend them off no no they strafe me with cannons i'm dead yeah oh like or you make it there and it's like okay what kind of shape is my plane in i chuck some dice did i do some bombing great i fly home and it's again you're doing that over the course of a campaign you're trying to get through your 30 missions of memphis basically and it really is it's chart to chart to chart to chart it's like weather chart and target chart and i mean it just yeah oh there's contrails yeah cool that means the enemy can see me yeah yeah yeah like so all of those are what it is you know that's not for everyone yeah right but to me that they're almost little micro role-playing games the more you put into it the more fun and ex rich of the experience you're going to have well you name your pilots and yeah you know you care about them a little bit and greg does a great job in his games giving you the dress-up doll yeah you know you put medals you put skills you but there are all those narrative-driven games you're right you get out of it what you put into it yeah if you go into it and you're just rolling dice you're not going to enjoy it we've we've seen some other reviewers not enjoy those kind of games that's okay it's not you know because it is if you would not invested in it you're rolling dice and looking at the rest on a chart yeah rolling dice yeah that's boring yeah but like the to me and and legion does a really good job with this they have like some auxiliary charts oh i got damaged cool but then you roll what the damage is yeah and where it is and so you it's a bit more visceral it's a bit more like oh i can visualize oh i got strafed along my wing and it's like all of these bullet holes and then i'm like in my and then i'm picturing it and then it's like i'm making the stupid engine noises in my basement like you get into it a little bit more and i you know i enjoy those kinds of things and those games have some pretty cool tension in them as well yeah and i think one of the last ones that i've got is guys above the right and i also have storm arthritis yeah so those are can be played solitaire and i've played a lot of that solitaire they could also be played cooperatively yes i don't you can't play it competitive or if you can someone's probably designing rules i would not recommend it yeah yeah uh so those uh those are designed by jerry white and he's he's done a number of games he did atlantic chase and he did uh he's a fantastic yeah he did the enemy post ahead as well damn buster's rage which those are those are very cool but uh sky's above the reich is much is you know it's a similar kind of concept you have a squadron of german meshes myths and wolves and you're trying to shoot down b-17s uh but it's very different in its style they're like printed on this map and there's all these different zones and you're flying around the edges abstractly to then get into these like diving or you know uh climbing attack patterns and then they've got all these like fire fields of fire and oh yeah it's great and then there's some abstract kind of um defense fighters going on as well that's a very cool game and those games have been very well received received i think people have really enjoyed them they're nice games that they're i think the next one that's being worked on is skies above britain yes gmt so it's battle of britain i'm very excited for because i think it has to be quite different yes and it i think if you read that on gmt's it's it's very different and what they've shown is like looks pretty different yeah like you know some core elements are going to say but i'm like i'm always interested to see how they're going to change and what they're going to do with it those those are premium quality games for sure insane productions off the chart i think they're well jerry's a great designer and it's the same you know similar type of thing though like you're trying to play through a number of missions in a campaign and at the end of that how many of your dudes are alive what kind of you know and that's how you're going to measure your kind of success so that one those of yeah that's a good game it's enjoyable and again it's very different in style for a lot of the other ones as well yeah which is nice so i think so if you can't tell we really do enjoy air war games we've played a lot of them and i think if there are new ones coming out we're always into them and interested in them and i just think they're very yeah very good games there's many that we still like to play yeah and i like those the ones where like i own them and i'm like at some point i will play this yeah yeah because i want to i don't know i grew up on air war movies things like battle of britain 63 squads and all that kind of stuff i really enjoy that i don't know i just think warplanes flying around it just looks and sounds very intense and playing those out it's you know because flight is such a tricky thing to kind of simulate at times and how far you go into that and all that kind of stuff is an interesting design choice but like nothing like flying planes around shooting stuff down yeah nothing quite like yeah i don't know i really really like this and i think there's a lot of games out there there's something for everybody whether it's simple card games more involves simulations that are very crunchy narrative driven games that are like we said more in the theater of your mind and i i just think there's a lot out there and if you're interested in that subject buy one and give them a try there's a lot of good ones a lot of good ones yes so air wall games ton of it out there if you have any questions post them in the comments if you have any good air war game suggestions yeah that i we haven't talked about maybe that's a uh theme we could maybe because there's at least four or five that i know we haven't played yes that are that are well known that we probably need to play yeah and there's you know like redstone i want to play they're going to expand you're coming out i know i haven't played this well and there's a guy that's been contacting us about us a solitaire version he's putting together which if he can put together a solid solitaire version because it has some like solo options and stuff in there but i'm like the game's real complicated yeah yeah if i can find something that's like clean and clear easy to use yes so air wall games like that's like right up my alley if you make a wall game i'm gonna play it straight yeah so i appreciate you guys tuning in i'm alexander from playstate.com and i'm grant you

Channel: The Players Aid

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Keywords: players, aid, game

Id: fcbzSBgjxk0

Length: 69min 39sec (4179 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 07 2021