Mastodawn

Leto Oct 6, 2024

Today was the last day of #essen #spiel24 and here is my loot from the fair. Left - used games, won on auction. Right - brand new in shrink-wrap (but some are from auction). I managed to get Panzers Last Stand for 75 euros, Nation in Arms for 75, and Storm over Stalingrad (in shrinkwrap) for 24.

Leto Jul 14, 2024

Strike - Counter Strike (GTS). Evening of lerning the rules and first play. The system is not very hard, you understand how every separate element is working, but how to win - that is the question. Very nice.

Leto Jun 9, 2024

2nd Army in trouble near Kursk. #downfall

Leto May 31, 2024

#Downfall from #GMTgames - finished 1st campaign game. It took us about 55 hours (yeah, we are AP prone and overoptimizers). Outstanding game, but not for everyone. Sometimes it's pretty fantasy, or no good options to choose from (bad or very bad), or gamey situations, and very long. And yet it plays very smoothly, almost no downtime, and, the most important thing, it's fun! We will start another campaign this weekend, I think.

Leto Apr 2, 2024

1st play of Panzergruppe Guderian (1976). This is a PnP version of the game done by an unknown and presented to me by a fellow wargamer 4 years ago with the words "because I don't have time to play it". Very nice experience. Half way through it, messed up the rules in a couple of places, but we intend to play it several times in a row.

Leto Apr 2, 2024

We played "The War: Europe" from CompassGames almost every weekend from August 2023 til March 2024. At least 190 hours total. We decided to stop in the middle of the 2nd campaign mainly because there were a lot of rules ambiguities and holes. I think the Designer tried to make a "modern" A3R and failed (but tried to fix errors, and failed again) - The current ruleset is version 4.9 and still, it has soooo many holes. And the rules are written very badly. And the designer abandoned it - as he said, he "designed this game 10 years ago" and can't help with rules questions.

Apart from that there are about 160 rulechanging special cases only in a base game and they are tied to specific game turns (some are just one-shots, others work from turn 4 until turn 7, for example) - I can't imagine playing this game without spreadsheets. If anyone wants a copy with integrated addon in very good condition - I'm selling it (I'm in Germany) - all counters clipped with 2mm round clipper, map layed under a plexi for 6 months.

Leto Feb 19, 2024

Sorry for this post, but it's not about wargames or politics. This is how I feel right now, and what I want to share.

A couple of days ago Alexei Navalny, a political prisoner, a leader of many liberal and peaceful Russian people, our hope for a peaceful Russia, died in a Russian prison. He was waging a political war against the Putin regime, and they killed him after several assassination attempts and three years in prison. Grim day.

We will not forget, we will not forgive.

Leto Dec 29, 2023

Just got a present from @Pete! Long wished Dien Bien Phu! Thanks, man! This was unexpected and I'm happy! Happy New Year! And Peace to everyone!

Leto Nov 24, 2023

Pete Nov 24, 2023

State of the Server: 1 Year in the Books

We made it through our first year. Amazing how quickly time passes! I hope everyone is having fun.

I started this instance with the very simple goal to give a little back to the community that entertained me for years. I’m amazed at what you all are capable of producing. Podcasts, videos, live shows, websites, forums, blogs, and insightful posts that really show the depth of knowledge and enjoyment we all get from our hobby. I’ll never be your equals with any of those things, but, dagnabbit I can run a server!

We had 650 sign-ups this year. Way more than I expected. Less than a third of that are active posters or checking in regularly, but that’s ok. This instance was never meant to compete with any other platform. It’s just a place that’s free to use, free of data harvesting and advertising, and just maybe a fun place to hang out and talk about gaming.

If there’s one downside, it’s that I bought a lot more this year than I have in years past. Every time someone excitedly posts their newest acquisition it miraculously makes its way into my shopping cart!

Here are some fun facts from this year:

The first person to sign-up was…@Leto !

I vividly remember seeing the notification. I posted an announcement on BGG, a little bit nervous and having no idea what to expect. @Leto signed up just a few minutes later. @Leto, DM your contact info, I’ve got a little something to send your way.

@Leto was followed close behind by @ardwulf, @Pottsie, @MeanGangrene, @carnhan, @FloydWing, and @armchairdragoons. The first few weeks was a rush of activity and many of the most active posters today were from those first couple of weeks.

The first image uploaded is attached and was my test to make sure I configured everything correctly.

The site has processed over 50 million posts, boosts, favorites, and follows to date.

As always, let me know if there is anything you’d like to see to make the experience better.

Leto Nov 23, 2023

I like to make visual guides or summary sheets when I play big and complex games. In some rare cases, I even rewrite or reorganize rulebooks. Here are my "helpers" for The War Europe - spreadsheets in MS Excel and the rules in Obsidian.

Spreadsheets help me to keep track of various game info, including turn start and turn end of different game events and special cases. It saves a lot of tablespace and speeds up gameplay.

Obsidian allows me not only to have structured rules (with my notes), but it has a nice feature "canvas", it's like a whiteboard where I can put pictures and notes in any way I feel right, to have everything grouped the way you like. Saves gameplay time a lot.