Monthly Update - SDHistCon - Wargaming & Boardgames Channel Update | November 2024

0:00 hi everybody I'm Zilla Blitz and Welcome to our November monthly update where we talk about stuff in tabletop wargaming and board games that I've played over the past month and a half new games that have arrived in the house and this is a special edition because I just came back from SD histon in San Diego where we had 3 and 1 half days of marvelous historical gaming so lots of things to focus in on what I played uh at kind of relating to that convention and also one more thing we are giving away our $50 Store gift certificate to Noble Knight games at the end of this video for those people that entered into the Beautiful War Games competition from about a month and a half two months ago so I haven't forgotten it we're going to give that away at the end of this uh video related to Noble KN games they are a sponsor of the channel and they just started their holiday sale yesterday so if you're look this is their their biggest sale of the Year literally everything on their site is on sale so if you're looking for new and use board g board games War Games role playing supplies if you name it they have it and this is their mega sale uh there's a link Down Below in the description to Noble KN games and if you do use that link thank you because they get a little bit of a kickback to the channel and every little bit helps uh support the efforts to make historical board gaming videos so thanks to everybody who uses those links and again we'll give away our $50 gifts give it to Noble KN games at the end of this video I want to start this monthly update with

1:30 stuff that I played in particular I want to talk about SD histon where I just came back again from three and a half days of marvelous gaming in San Diego a huge shout out to Harold Buchanan and all the staff of SD histon who put on an intentionally small event of about 150 people if you have never been to a wargaming conference or historical gaming conference would like to check one out people there are super friendly it's just an amazing time with so much going on so let's talk about stuff I played there started out onid Friday morning with a teach in play of Wolfpack from the designer Mike berelli from GMT games we hunted well sinking a bunch of Allied Shipping I did manage to sync my ubo on the very last thing hint to those that get the game and are playing the game save a tactical point for the ride home it's all I'm going to have to say if you know what I'm talking about you know what I'm talking about it's actually very important we had a marvelous time playing the game I'll talk about that uh in future uh episodes on the channel but it it's a it was really fun lots of agency in this ubot simulator next up on Friday was an afternoon game of task force from vuka Sims with Grant from pushing cardboard I have wanted to play this two-player for the longest time we played the Midway scenario and I think I we'll talk more about I think Grant and I are going to get together and kind of do an Impressions video of the game uh but this was really cool I it was it exceeded my high expectations for the

3:00 game we had an epic Midway battle that just saw carriers on both sides going under the water it was you know hay makers just like you would expect in carrier ship fighting so we really had a great time playing that Saturday morning started out with another fun event it was a teaching play of Rebel Fury from Mark Herman I got R Rebel Fury a while ago hadn't had a chance to get it to the table yet and what better way to learn it than to get taught by Mark Herman who is actually in addition to being an excellent designer he's also an excellent teacher we were up playing in no time a Chad and I played the Wilderness scenario lots of back and forth in the woods and it was it's just a fun system I'll talk more about that one coming up on the channel as well but I really enjoyed playing Rebel Fury the afternoon I was supposed to play Red Dust Rebellion I was really like looking forward to it uh but the person who was leading the beginner game for that uh got the flu so that got knocked out instead serendipitously played a micr verse an upcoming game from Sam London designed by GMT games this is amazingly fun it's a 4X game that plays in about 15 minutes per player and you can go anywhere from I think two to eight players although it seems to be best at kind of that four to six range what a fun game this game is going to be a huge hit really enjoyed playing that um and Sam let a teach and play of that one in the afternoon the evening was another thing to check off my gaming bucket list uh played 1846 Andrew Heim led us through a learning game of that Andrew Boltz joined us in

4:32 that game and then also John Wolf a fellow motan was there so four of us played an 1846 train game um they were very gentle to uh both John and I who hadn't played the genre before uh Andrew bols run ran away with the game with the massive score but Andrew Heim is a fantastic teacher and we had just a fantastic we clo closed the place down I was there until 11:00 p.m. playing 1846 but those train games are really fun I'll talk more about those coming up on the channel in other ways but I really excuse me really enjoyed my time with that one Sunday morning started off with some random conversations I really as much as I enjoy playing the games at these conferences it's really fun to just walk around and talk to people about the games they're playing and talk to how their their own wargaming experiences and historical game experiences are going but I did drift into a game that Florence was teaching from nuts publishing called G eclair now there I think there's going to be an English name for it it's coming out in the spring I think of next year it's a France 1940 type of World War to invasion game that I would call war game adjacent right so it's it's got a very kind of easier mechanics takes about 15 minutes to learn took us about 45 minutes to play but a really fun Recreation of uh the German invasion of the lower countries in France in 1940 um I played as the lower countries and got my butt kicked by Douglas but we had a really good time playing that game after G eclair in the afternoon on Sunday uh I set up an advanced copy of purple hay and David cisin and I went through this kind of wonder to four player T Vietnam more tactical roleplaying game um it's

6:04 really kind of an RPG there's tactical combat involved it's also kind of a Choose Your Own Adventure um Dungeons and dragonesque type feel to this narrative generating experience with a big campaign rapper around it I wouldn't say it was really kind of a learning game it was like let's see how much we can learn as we try to play the first mission feel really comfortable we got the mission envelope pretty good it was a really cool story that it generated I don't want to give away any spoilers yet I will be making some video content about the game uh later this month as well uh so that'll be more on that coming up but it was really fun I think we got about two-thirds of the Tactical combat wrapped our heads around that really had a fun time spending about two two and a half maybe three hours with that and those are the big highlights from the SD histon I played a few other sampled a few other games and talked to people about other games but those are the ones I spent the most substantial time with at the conference really had a marvelous time again thanks to everybody who put that together and everybody who attended and makes everybody feel so welcome there it's just a really cool time highly recommended in historical board gaming conferences um other stuff I've played over the past month and a half October was a horrendous month for playing games and creating videos I'll talk more about that in a little bit but uh since the back end of October things have gotten a lot better I played some undaunted talk about that with the shelf of Cham challenge momentarily Lewisburg 1758 played a two-player game with Mike Strand from uh solo battles we had a really good time playing that there's a video up about that on the channel and then I now playing Phantom fury it's on the table from nuts publishing about the US Marine attack on fuah I got my

7:36 absolute butt kicked in the first game and uh looking forward to kind of Revenge in our second game here and also playing a bunch of memoir 44 now on board game arena with h patreon members of the channel here so I think we've got a couple games going on that John Wolf has absolutely kicked my butt as I was learning the game I think I I lost three or four games to him in a row um and now we've got a number of people playing that it's a fun game a simple game but it's really fun to go in and make a move every now and then so that's it there's a bunch of other stuff in October some little games some non-historical gaming games that I was playing uh but again October was a little bit of a challenging month I'll talk about that momentarily uh but that's a rough update of things played since we've been last B together and talking about stuff I played I mentioned that October was a challenging month I want to do a channel update right now um October was indeed a challenging month for the channel I produced five videos which is the the fewest video I've produced probably since I started doing this on this channel um it was a a there's kind of just a lot of things going on but we've had some unexpected uh Financial expenses over the that kind of hit us early in the fall and uh I'm very everything's okay there's it's no catastrophe it's no disaster and things like that it just meant I had to adjust and pick up some extra work on the side to make sure that everything was was balanced out and so that just means that it it cut off kind of an hour two hours of time I could spend on the channel on weekdays and pushes everything to the weekends and then we just had a run of weekends in October where they were just taken up with other things so that basically meant that the time I could

9:06 focus on the board gaming stuff which takes really kind of the most energy in the most cognitive space was a little bit limited was very limited so that just kind of reduced the numbers of videos yeah going forward the everything looks really good going forward got a little bit more of a stretch to kind of make sure everything works out but then things should go back to normal and I shouldn't have that extra pile of work on my life so uh going forward I'm excited and Hope F and energetic that uh things will get back to normal in terms of video production I look forward to that and in terms of how that impacts the channel numbers if you don't create videos there's nothing for people to watch so views went down from 77,000 to 61,000 in October um still I'm happy with those but but I I'm really excited to get back to making more content and playing more games that's really the trickier part is that um you know when you make a video for the game you got to learn the game play the game well enough to be able to make a video for it and then make the video so it just ites takes a while to make these and with that chunk of time knocked out and then when weekends get knocked out it was a little bit tough but my energy and my enthusi for enthusiasm for it has not waned and I'm really excited that life looked like it's going to get back to normal as we drift into the fall more a quick word about the the very lame shelf of Shame challenge although I to my defense undaunted nor Normandy here is almost done I played it a couple times in the two-player version and I'm comfortable with that I want to play it solo and that's using the reinforcements game and then DM Tim one of the patreon members pointed out that there were some issues with the original first edition of the reinforcement solo cards and you

10:36 can get those replace so I've been in touch with Osprey games about that I'm just kind of waiting for those to show up before I play soliter and then I can check off undaunted Normandy and you'll notice here down here right beside me here there's a little green box for path of Glory um I've read the rules and I'm setting that up now and I'm going to play with a Stuka Joo solo card system to check that out with Paths of Paths of Glory so really looking forward to that so making ress I mean I'm not going to get through everything by the end of the year but I'd love to be able to get through at least two or three more of these maybe four more of these um and I I think things are going to pick up now I'm eternally optimistic right um it's not that I'm not playing stuff well it was in October but now it's not it's just a matter of focus focus I'm talking to you out there hissy cat Focus new section on this monthly update random news was that SD histon and two or three people said wow I really like that you live by a river I wish I could live by a river too um I just want to make it really clear this is this is not where I live this is a green screen video laid on top of a green screen uh so behind me actually is a table with some games on it with Phantom fury on it lights uh this is a home work office so I've got a desk that I'm sitting at with a camera in front and then another desk over there so I don't want to make you look at something really ugly for half an hour so um I use some green screen stuff with this on it I can show you here's a green can see you can kind of see right through it if I do like that which is always kind of cool so yeah this isn't my real stuff second news item uh I shoot the tabletop videos on an iPhone um I've been shooting them on an iPhone 11 if you know the iPhone math that's 5

12:07 years old yesterday I ordered an iPhone 16 and it's arriving tomorrow and I couldn't be happier my current battery on this iPhone lasts about an hour of shooting and about five hours if I don't do anything with it so the battery is just about dead the phone is completely full so when I shoot a video I immediately have to transfer it off to uh editing and just kind of go back and forth like that and it doesn't have a digital Zoom it doesn't have an optical zoom so I whenever I change the focus the zoom on the shot on the table I literally change the arm and move it all the way down so if I want to shoot a close-up I put the phone like that far away from the table here now the new iPhone will have an 5x optical zoom which means I can just leave it in one place and zoom in it's going to make workflow so much easier it's going to improve the quality of the videos so much it's going to have stored so I don't have to constantly transfer the off I couldn't be happier so I'm really excited and it's long overdue to get a new phone connected to that I'm always like to take a moment in these videos to say thank you to uh the patreon sponsors I use the patreon funds to update and upgrade equipment for the studio and add stuff to the studio to improve the quality of the videos and uh the part of the funds I mean a phone is part personal and part used for the the videos and things like that but I did take a a part of the patreon funds to get that I'm so excited to have better equipment to shoot t tabletop videos now um with that a special word of thanks to Brian Miller and Jim anley pardon if I if I messed up the pronunciation on that new patreon members over the last month

13:40 and also I should mention we've started up the patreon Discord for paid members got about 30 20 30 maybe active people in there um we're playing some games talking about wargaming historical gaming and other related things so um if you are interested in joining the patreon um the support is greatly appreciated and there's a link down below and thank you as always too um patreon members many of whom have been here for over two years and your support is I'm I'm always humbled and greatly appreciative of all the support that's provided for to help uh make more historical videos so thank you to all our penultimate segment what's new and in the house uh there's a couple months worth of stuff here and it's the fall winter season tends to be pretty busy for new releases and stuff so there's a good amount of stuff to go through let's uh jump in and get started uh something that I got uh from the GMT sale I picked up two things which was 1846 the XX game this one is still in a trink wrap we played at Andre heims copy up out out in San Diego so I have to fly with mine I really liked uh as I mentioned earlier I really like the exposure to the 18xx series and look forward to getting Beyond knowing how to play and to learn how to play better or play a little bit decently at the game also with the GMT sale this was more fomo than anything else because I feel like these go out of stock and then they they get really really expensive and I know that I'm going to like the series when I get around to playing it uh next we Poland this one in particular uh in I think there's six games five games in the series now uh this one was a particular interesting area geographically for me to want to explore so I know I'm going to get it to the table eventually and I wanted to get it before it went out of

15:10 stock and that the GMT sale is such a good deal when they have that 50% off for the p500 orders uh so those are the two things that I got there for that next up uh three games from Lock and Load Publications lead long awaited ju87 Stuka Ace really fun soliter campaign where you get to fight fight uh as a Stuka pilot in World War II over a number of geographic campaigns I've got some videos up on the channel about that one you like solo games where you have a career over a number of missions I I think that one's definitely worth checking out a lot of fun and then also from Lock and Load Publications first victories Wellington versus Napoleon the battles of vimeiro and Rica in Portugal and so this I've got a video up on the channel now about this uh really three games in one with the three different levels of complexity and three different rule sets to fight out the battle so looks like a really detailed and interesting uh kind of recreation of the battles in the Napoleon with a Napoleonic system and then a big one look at how big this is with all the stuff in the Box blood and fury World of War 85 the second edition in the blood and fur in the world of war 85 series I you know post World War II games are games I I haven't spent a lot of time with yet and sometimes when I do dig into them it's like wow these are complex the thing that kind of impresses me with this one because I got a chance to spend a time with the system with a very early prototype of the game uh with an earlier prototype of the game it's probably a better way to say that and I really like uh the playability of this system I feel like they do a really good job taking the complexity of post World War II combat and baking it down into a

16:42 system that really has some kind of uh momentum and smoothness to it so I will be creating some content some gameplay content for that one for the channel um at some point in the near future I've got just a lot of stuff to work through and playr at the moment couple more things in the house operation Barkley has released this is a final production copy of this I did an earlier version uh with an advanced prototype of the game there's a video up on the channel about this really fun two-player game plays fast kind of deception and poker based kind of card play about operation barklay in World War II so a really fun two-player game that plays really quickly designed by Mory suckling and then the long awaited this just came my last name begins with s my real last name so uh it takes I generally get my uh p500 ORD shipped way at the back of the order so I know most of the world has gotten this one this one just arrived a couple weeks ago I think for me uh Red Dust Rebellion I'm very much I was hoping to play this one at SD histon but again the person got sick so we couldn't play the beginner game there but really excited about this addition to the coin series and heard a lot of good things about it at SD histon so whenever you go to a historical games convention it's always the possibility of coming back with more games than you went with um I limited space in the suitcase and some self-restraint unusual self-restraint I made it so I came back with two games from SD hison the first is a game I purchased from Harold Buchanan $10 for anio there I've got kind of a a reexploration of Avalon Hill games uh that I've been really enjoying and I've never seen that one in the wild

18:13 or played it or had the chance to take a look at it so I'm excited to kind of exploring that one and then uh as we were playing 1846 and herheim gifted me a copy of 1830 that he had so I'm really excited the second 18xx game and I'm starting out on that 18xx Adventure this looks really cool and thank you Andrew for for the very kind gift next thing this I'll be creating some content for on the channel Purple Haze this is an advanced copy I think they're shipping later this month at some point or early December maybe uh but very excited to explore this one further again spent about three two three probably an hour kind of going through it setting it up and learning about it and then about two hours playing through that first mission kind of a learning experience there so I've got about three hours with the game really want to spend more time with it um I had very high expectations for this and I think it's going to live up to them but kind of a little bit of caveat that I want to spend more time with the game first but I really like what I've seen so far it's very unique and just the narratives that it's been seem really really cool so I'm looking forward more to that and some content coming on the channel on that one soon so the next thing might be my favorite thing out of all the new and in the house things in the past couple months although it is not a game but it is definitely related to this so I'm going to show this this was um a gift from hisy cat who has another YouTube channel on tabletop board gaming we've been kind of communicating for the past year and a half two years and helping each other out he uh 3D printed and then hand painted this uh dice tower now you can't really see Godzilla that gets back to

19:43 the green screen so I'll show a picture of it here but you drop the dice in the buildings and the dice come out here look at that I roll really well that's another seven I am just on fire with this Dice Tower this is so amazing I can't believe how kind it was to spend so much time uh printing that out and and painting it and all that stuff and I'm so glad it made it home without breaking you'll see it in videos but this is such an awesome thing so thank you so much to hisy cat for his incredibly kind gift and all the time he put in to make that four more things to go through the first up is into the world pole by Herman lutman this is a game that covers some of the fighting at gettsburg in a system that's kind of Miniatures hybrid of Miniatures and board games so very excited to explore this one there will be some content coming onto the channel for this one uh rela ly soon as soon as I can kind of a bunch of stuff came in in that busy October so I'm trying to catch up with everything that came in two things in from sound of drums 1793 Patriots and Traders which is a one to five player competitive and collaborative game about 1793 in the French Revolution there's an overview video up on the channel and what's really cool with that there's an add-on to their kind of crowdfunding which is an illustrated history of 1793 it's a 26 page book covering all the content in the game um the overview video is up on the channel if you want to see more but really curious to see how this one plays because it's kind of that combination of competitive and collaborative that just really gives this one an interesting design twist um and so much historical information in the game looks very playable too that

21:13 doesn't mean it's not playable but just a very intriguing design for that one and I'm excited to get to to be able to play that one soon too and second to last assault Sicily 43 Gayla Beach head I spent a lot of time with this one last summer and at that point in time I thought it was complete and done right in terms of the design and the production everything like that the designer of the game is probably one of the hardest working war game designers I know he kept improving tweaking and then sound of drums picked it up and redid kind of improved and embellished and and added to all the artwork and the counters and the design and the storage this is if you saw a lot of the videos I put up on the channel last summer this has evolved so much uh since that time and just is I think it's really going to be a tactical system that people are going to really really enjoy as they dig into this one so this U if you like tactical combat I would encourage you to check that out this production on this one is really really good and the videos are up on the channel last year it's really improved a lot uh since then and it was really good then it was a final version so it's kind of like a final version squared now so uh really excited to get that one and check out the new features in this system last but not least song for war mediteran Iranian Theater now this is from invictor Rex games and some of you who have been around on the channel for a long time may have recall that um created some content for their Kickstarter probably over a year ago now maybe a year and a half or so ago and uh the kickstarter didn't quite make it for a number of reasons none of which were in my opinion

22:45 related to gameplay this is a really fun game from what I spent time spent before on it and now they have added a couple of scenarios added a couple of options for the crowdfunding it's coming to crowdfunding uh early next year version 2.0 so this uh I'm going to create some content this one is a a prototype copy that I'll be creating some content for and then sending back to them to go on further to other places so coming up in the next month or so will be a video about song for war this is so much fun I I I know it's going to succeed in its second Kickstarter there is absolutely no way this one is not making it in its second Kickstarter um and I'll have a video up about this one sometime within the next month or so and now it's time to give stuff away our $50 store certificate from our Channel sponsor Noble night games thank you to them for sponsoring this contest um a quick side note about this contest to enter into this you had to post a comment on the upcoming War Games video uh where you posted hash beautiful WarGames and then posted a name of one or two of the war games you think had really incredible design really enjoyed reading the comments there however there was a slight problem YouTube being YouTube it didn't like # beautiful wargame beautiful war games and it was just randomly deleted leading almost everybody that posted with that hashtag um I wondered about it cuz like 2 days after posting the video there really weren't that many entries to the competition and then someone managed to post and say this keeps getting deleted so I changed it and said okay all you have to do is to post the word beautiful in your reply but I'm going to guess based on the number of entries that it

24:16 wiped out more than a hundred entries into the competition so the number of people that are in this one is relatively few compared to what we usually have there's nothing I can do about it sorry to everybody who got nuked in this one I try to be more careful in the future but again it's hard to predict what YouTube is really for whatever odd reason isn't going to like a comment it wasn't me that deleted any of the comments um and I apologize for that but we do have enough people to draw this so we have over a hundred people entered into this competition I'm going to click the start button from people who put beautiful in there the winner will get our $50 Store gift certificate to Noble night games P wait Salin I'm not sure I I don't wear Cuts here but 9238 congratulations you are the winner of our Store gift certificate to Noble KN games and again should arrive to you just in time to spend the money during their uh winter holiday sale here the big sales going on again links are down below to Noble night games if you use some of them it helps out the channel thank you very much for that we'll be back shortly with a new upcoming War Games video with another competition to get a $50 Store gift certificate to Noble KN games so if you didn't win today or one of the people that got their comment nuked in the last one um I'll make something to make sure that we don't get your nuked in this one so we'll be back in about a week with upcoming war games that brings us to the end of this edition of our monthly update I'm looking forward to having more regular content over the remainder of 2024 if you are looking to watch some gameplay I'll point you to the first episode in our Raiders of the deep series which will be coming back to the channel for people who have been asking about episode six and our sixth Patrol

25:48 that will be coming soon so uh I haven't given up on that one we will get back out into the World War I North Atlantic shortly thanks everybody for watching we'll see you again in the video soon