Monthly Update - Wargame Complexity | SDHistCon | Wargaming & Board Games Channel Update | Aug 2026

0:00 Hi everybody, I'm Sil Blitz and welcome to the monthly update for August 2026. The baseball season is red hot. NFL training camps have just started reporting and it is hot outside. So, I thought I would do today's episode by the pool. Now, if you're not familiar with this video, this is a video where we talk about stuff I've played over the previous month, uh, new games that are in the house, and we also usually do a wargaming deep thoughts conversation towards the end. Today's topic is going to be on war game complexity preferences. And let's not forget, we're also going to be giving away a $100 store gift certificate to Noble Knight Games. Now, if most people are familiar with who Noble Knight Games are, but they are a for people who aren't, they are a board game retailer in Wisconsin that ship all across the United States and to most countries across the planet. They have a massive selection of new and used war games. So, if there's something you're looking for, chances are they may have it in stock. Or if they don't, you can click on the little button that says notify me when it's back in stock, you get an email and you can order it that way. A link to Noble Knight Games is down below in the video description. And thanks to everybody who has used that link to purchase something as it does help out the channel. Let's jump right in and talk about games I played. This segment of the video is going to serve a double purpose because SD Histcon Minnesota version had its first Minnesota conference here in the early part of July. So, we're going to play a lot of games and talk to a lot of people at that. So, I'm going to focus on recapping that as I talk about games I played and we'll jump right in and get

1:31 started. So, the conference was 2 days, but the day before the conference we some of us thought, well, that's kind of short. It would be nice to have a third day of gaming. So, I reached out to Patreon members and the you supporters of the channel who are on the Patreon and said, "Hey, anyone coming that wants to get together and play a full day of games the day before the con. So, we ended up with about 15 people or so playing games all day the Friday before, at least up until the time where they had the the evening mix or two." So, I think we wrapped up about 4:30 or so. So, we had a day of gaming before the SD Histon started. That was a ton of fun. um vocal run came by as an esteemed guest and taught uh people Masher. So I got a chance to play uh Operation Masher again, which is quickly evolving into one of my favorite games. We had a really we played uh four players, so it's a two-player game. We played two teams. We just teamed up and we're kind of making our own decisions as we were going through. Um, once again, as the US forces, I managed to make all the same, well, Grant and I from Pushing Cardboard played together and we managed to make all the same mistakes that the US forces made in early operations in Vietnam, too. So, I still have a lot to learn about that game, but it's just a fascinating game. It's the third game in Vocals Recon series, and I've talked about it a lot on the channel, but I'm really enjoying the opportunities to play that. In the afternoon, we had a fiveplayer game of a sovereign Shogun set up. And this was a teaching play of Sovereign Shogun. Uh it was really good and it was getting just to the point

3:02 where there's no other way to put we were ready to rip each other's throats out, right? Cuz we were all bunch we're just getting to the point where we're doing that and then we had to go for the evening uh mixer. So I've still yet to play a big game of sovereign Shogun. really want to get one of those in because we were just at the point where we could really start to to crush each other because we had expanded as far as we could in the teach and play the early parts of the game. So, uh that was really fun. We we started it a little bit late. Um Operation Masher took a little while to lose Vietnam, a little longer to lose Vietnam than I think we anticipated. So, we our sovereign Shogun game was a little bit condensed which left us I think about an hour shot short before we would have gotten to a resolution on that one. Uh then we had the evening mixer on the Friday of SD Histcon. That was wonderful to see people. So many people there. It's great to see people and just you get a chance to talk about war games for so much.

3:52 This will be part of the wargaming deep thoughts conversation too. I'm curious about a couple things on this too. But let's get to the con in general. First day was a four-player game of armed conflict. This is the game from Bohome Games. It's releasing very soon. I think production is either complete or close to complete or it's on the ship or something like that. But it's coming coming soon. Uh hypothetical game set a future war post World War II somewhat modern war. We've got fictional cities battling it out on a board. Um and it de you it works out so that you form alliances. So we played four players. So we had 2v2. What was really interesting about this game was when I've tested this previously and played with smaller player numbers. The game was very fluid. But this time the alliances aligned along the narrow edge of the map. So, we had a narrower space to hit our opponents with. And this game felt very much more like World War I where we had just a lot of troops congested in the middle and you're trying to blow holes with artillery and infantry charges. So, this game, the game play morphed with this version of the game and I wonder makes me curious to see how is it going to be like with six players, what's it going to be like with smaller player or when the the alliances align a different way. So I think the gameplay in this one can be quite different depending upon how alliances form and how player counts work out. So it was fascinating to see this game work out where really it's like we have to artillery was king trying to blow holes in the enemy lines there. So that was a lot of fun. in the afternoon on the first day on Saturday

5:23 we went to politic politic and originally I was going to play and teach as a part of a fiveplayer game but I hadn't touched the game for about two three weeks and so I was a little bit fuzzy on some of the rules and concepts so I thought it would be better that I just facilitated the game so while I didn't play the game of politique I facilitated a four-player game of politique that was really fun it was fun to teach people the game was fun to see the gameplay evolve and when the more I've seen this game the more you see the pattern that players go through which is They're kind of wrapping their heads around the rules, which takes about an hour. Then they are able, there's this functional space where people are able to do things, but they don't quite know how to accomplish what they're trying to accomplish. And then the light bulbs start to click off and everybody knows how to do what they're trying to do, and it just goes back and forth at a furious pace. So, I think this is the type of game where you play one learning game and then you really the game just explodes into a lot of fun. And for people that aren't familiar with it, I've mentioned it on the channel a few times. This is another game set in a fictional world, a game of global domination. It's a two to six player game and you have you're the leader of a country basically and you lead it on economic, political, and military lines.

6:35 Massive card set, just a beautiful game. So that was really fun to see that one in action. Looking forward to playing that one again and looking forward to when it comes out in the future. In the evening on Saturday with uh SD Histcon staff and a few other people, we had a cooperative game of the fate of the fellowship Lord of the Rings. Now, this was my second experience with the game. The first time we played it, I played it was asynchronously on Board Game Arena and I hadn't read the rules. Uh it it was I wouldn't say asynchronously on board game arena is the best way to play it because so much of the game really involves talking to each other and coordinating and doing teamwork. Um Andrew Bookholtz from SD His staff was facilitating the teaching of that game. I had looked at the rules, but I needed a little bit of help getting up to speed with things. But we did destroy the ring and we saved the world and it was so awesome. Here here at SD His North, we've had this epic game of Fate of the Fellowship. Uh, we've everybody has been moving around killing some orcs. Uh, having great fellowship in Rivendell. We finally got Frodo and Sam to Mount Doom.

7:40 We've completed all of our other objectives.

7:43 Now we attempt to destroy the one ring. We turned in these five, count them, five rings cards.

7:52 Going to rule. And how this works is that Frodo spends the five range and then has to survive a final search roll. Search roll here. There are no enemy troops, so nothing for that. There are five Naz, so there are going to be five of these black dice. We would add one more for each missing hope, but we have done such a good job of preserving hope that that doesn't happen. Here are our five dice. That would be lose to hope. However, we can counteract that by using Sam's ability, Sam's aid. It's been hard to avoid it. So, we keep our aid hope and we win. Congratulations.

8:38 We have saved Middle Earth.

8:41 It's a crunchy euro for sure, right? And you But the challenges the game throws at you and the tools it gives you to solve those problems feels very epic and fun. I mean, you're constantly getting new obstacles thrown in your way and you're constantly getting these tools that you try to put these things together and figure out how you can solve the problem and save the whole the Lord of the Rings world there. It was I it was a great time. I really had fun. I definitely want to play that one again. The second day of the con, the Sunday of the con started off with what might be I mean I've really enjoyed all the games so it's hard to pick up. It's like again picking among your children. But to get to the point, we played a five-player game of Baltic Empires, the game from GMT Games. Um, uh, John Wolf taught us the game and taught us how to play and we got right up to speed and got playing. This was really fun. I I like this game for so many reasons. It has one of the thing I like in PC games that I don't see that I haven't had a lot of similar feelings with in board games is the world building. like you're you're building a expansion on a map and you're taking control of areas and developing an economy and building up an empire before you start to crush clash against other forces. Uh this game I think we had a really nice subtle touch of that cuz sometimes that can get to be too much and it becomes too much of the game. But in this it feels like it's got a really nice balance of just negotiating with other players, military actions and at the same time trying to build up your economy and build up your

10:11 world. It's tough to get those feelings in a game that plays, excuse me, as fluidly as Baltic Empires play. So, nothing but good things to say about Baltic Empires. We had a magnificent time playing. It was just so much fun to see this game unfold. And I feel like it's got a ton of depth, too, because I was playing as the Swedish forces, but you know, you got five different forces. There's a four-player way to play. Uh it it just feels like this is a game you could spend numerous games playing each one of the the different nations in the game and still have a fresh take on the game. And of course then it depends on who you're playing with and how they play. Really good time. I really liked Baltic Empires. Second to last game at the conference was Crisis 1914, which is the World War II political game where you're trying to balance uh world tension and and build your influence up without triggering the start of World War I. It's a fascinating card- driven game. We've got a chance to play with Lid David, Liz Davidson, David Thompson, Luke Everson, and Grant from Pushing Cardboard. Again, we had a marvelous time, fun to play that. There's such great people to play with. I really enjoyed playing that game together. And that was a great afternoon on Sunday of the conference. Last game of the conference was a Sam London teaching play of Microverse, a game I had a chance to play a couple of years ago.

11:25 Once got a chance to play with Kevin Bertram from Fort Circle Games and David Thompson jumped in that one as well as well as a couple of other people. And we had a great time. It's a very This was a very short game the way it worked out, but this game is so fantastic. One of the neat things about it was Sam just said, "Tell me what kind of space race you want to play." And then he would just reach into the box and pull out one of those space races. Now, he had I I forget I don't know how many races are going to be in the beginning game, the first game. Uh but I think he's got something like 80 designed for this game. And so I just said, "Give me the Reavers from Firefly." and he's like, "Oh, here this." He tell me what they're like. It's like here. And he just gave me this race and it was exactly like how the Reavers would would how the Reavers were in Firefly. So, just a fun game. I really enjoy this one a lot. And that wrapped up SD Histcon. It was again, as always, thanks to the staff of SD Histcon and all the people and the volunteers who helped make the conference such a fun time. It's just such a great time. And and in addition to playing the games, it's just so great to walk around and chat with people and talk to people and see everybody having fun playing games. So, I hope they come back and do it again next year because it was also very nice to not to have to fly to a board game conference as we usually do. So, uh again, thanks to everybody involved and thanks to everybody that I talked to and got a chance to play games with. It was just a marvelous experience and I've gone on quite a while there talking about SD Hiscon. There were a bunch of other games that I played over the course of the month. Some highlights, I'm still making my way through Infernal Machine from GMT Games. I'm up now to the mission stage. So, there's tactical combat, there's mission, and then

12:56 there's the campaign stage where you're building your company. And the way the game teaches it, it leads you through a number of scenarios about certain aspects of the game. It starts with tactical, then it adds in missions. So, I'm up to the mission phase right now. I am really liking this one. I can't wait till I get to the company part of it where you're hiring the people that are actually going to be in your submarine and you're actually bu building the submarine that you're going to send out on the missions. So the quality of the submarine that you build depends on how well it's going to function in the mission. And the missions are brutal. I mean I mean again these these are people just building the world's first submarines and trying to sink ships with them. So needless to say needless to say stuff goes wrong and you have to deal with it which is one of the favorite aspects of games that I like. I like problem solving. I love when realistic monkey wrenches get thrown in your way and asked to solve them. Passive glory.

13:46 So, when passive glory first came out on Rally the Troops, I I think I started seven games was a little bit ambitious and I've been not the best opponent. I apologize to all the people I've played against because there were a few times. Yeah, more than a few times. There were a number of times where I kind of drifted away from the games for maybe a week or so and then came back in more than a week or so. Maybe a couple weeks and came back in and made a move. So, the the games have been kind of stuttering along for I maybe it's been a year now. I don't know when Paths of Glory came out on Rally the Troops, but it's been a while. But finally wrapped up the last two of those seven games that we started. I was starting to think the games of Paths of Glory that had started were going to last longer than the actual World War I. But wow, I really like that game now. I mean, some of the stories that it tells at a strategic level are just fascinating. And each game feels like each one of the seven games to me has really felt like, wow, this is a completely different World War I history. And somehow the game rules and system holds it together. So I had a great time playing Paths of Glory. I want to fire up a couple more, but not seven at the same time. That was a little bit ambitious. And then in the crunchy Euros phase, crunchy Euro games phase, there's a couple of games I've been really enjoying. I finally think I understand how to play Ark Nova. I've played it about five or six times on board Game Arena. I've gotten crushed every time. I basically build zoos with like worms and chickens and stuff. I mean, that's I just didn't know what I was doing, but finally it clicked and I finally got tigers and other cool stuff

15:17 in my last zoo and it's just been really really fun to play. So, I'm looking forward to playing more of that and really enjoying Terraforming Mars still, too. A lot to learn. I feel like I know a couple of pathways to victory in that game, but if I get the wrong cards, I don't know what to do with them. So again, I feel like that's a really good game that gives you a lot of different ways to succeed and you can just play into this and play into this and play into this and just keep learning how to get better. So I've been having a lot of fun with that one, too. So yeah, July had just a ton of fun gaming. I'm looking forward to August and more fun gaming in August, too. As always in these monthly updates, I'd like to take a moment and thank the Patreon community and all the supporters of the channel in addition to everybody who takes a moment to like and subscribe and give a thumbs up to the videos. Uh support's greatly appreciated. I was talking to a bunch of people at SD Histcon North and just saying uh the community in this hobby and the support and just the the people that reach out and just enjoy the love of playing games together has been the biggest surprise for me in this journey.

16:18 I thought I was going to enjoy games. I didn't realize there'd be so many other people to enjoy game playing with. So, thank you as always for all your support. Um, it means the world to me and I appreciate it very much. New one in the house. Every time I do this, I think there hasn't been much that has come in since the last time I did one, but there has been a small little family of things that have come in. Let's jump right into them. And some of them I'm going to mention just briefly because I'm going to talk about them more in upcoming upcoming war games. This is one, Flying Fortresses, B17 Missions Over Europe from Warthingington Publishing. Uh they ran a Kickstarter on this a few months ago and they they produce stuff fast. So this is already out and they sent along a copy a review copy of this to check out. So I'll be creating some content for this at some point in the future and I'll talk more about this in upcoming War Games. The next issue also new and in the house. I mentioned this one in an upcoming War Games a couple of months ago. Assault Red Horizon from Sound of Drums. So this is tactical World War II combat. This is the revised edition, second edition, completely redone. And you know, I've played the original Jella Beach Head, which was when Wolf Gang Klein and Eric Grunkle were publishing these games through their own company. They since uh join forces with Sound of Drums, who has taken the graphic design and the production values and just brought their expertise in that part of the war game hobby to the production value. These games are just a a step above and evolved as well as the rule sets and the attention to detail, attention to gameplay. I know that Wolf Gang is one

17:49 of the hardest working designers I know. So, it's great to see this series continuing on and growing and getting bigger and better and just making progress. I mean, it's really fun to see. I can't wait to dig into this one. And just to clarify, too, Red Horizon is Eastern Front uh Tactical Combat World War II. So the jelly beach head is the US forces and then they added the primol I might get that wrong bridge uh for the British forces in World War II. So and I'm sure there are plans for more in the future. And again one of the big things with these games are they have a campaign in here. So it's not just necessarily tactical combat system but there is a linked and splitting and dynamic campaign in each one of the games which is a ton of fun. So looking forward to exploring the new version of this. Another one that I'm going to be mentioning on upcoming war games. So, I'm just going to mention it briefly here. Urban Operations, uh, the second edition, another second edition from Nuts Publishing. Tactical Combat in the Modern Era. So, again, another tactical combat game. Bunch of campaigns in this one. A lot of cool things to look at.

18:48 Uh, this one just out now from Nuts Publishing. I'll be mentioning this more in upcoming War Games and showing some of the components, too. Two of the coolest things that are new and in the house over the past month. I want to mention right now, check it out. This is a dice bag in the Zilla Blitz uh icon. This was created by Jim R's wife. He's a Patreon supporter who is at SDHCON North and he gave it to me there. His wife is learning how to crochet and so she made made this dice bag. It's my icon. This might be I think seriously like the best thing I've ever gotten in my life. I mean, this is so awesome. Also, Dave L is a new uh Patreon supporter and we were chatting. He came to SD His North and he brought me a gift as well. 2004 Boston Red Sox for the APBA baseball game. Now, if you're not most people grew up playing Stratamatic baseball, you know, tabletop baseball game. I grew up playing APA baseball. I just love the game. I played I used to create leagues.

19:44 I had an aging system, a drafting. I did all kinds of stuff with the game. Haven't played it for a while and but Dave brought the 2004 Red Sox as a gift for me. Pedro Martinez was a B. I mean, why is he a B? I feel like you always feel like your team should be better. A Curt Schilling in here, Bronson Aoyo. Oh man, so many David Ortizes here. This is so cool. So I can't I'm going to have to break the game out. I still have a couple of boxes worth of seasons down below in the basement. So I'm going to have to get those out and dust them off and fire up a game of APA baseball now. But thanks for those gifts to both Jim and Dave. So whenever you go to a conference, it's really tempting to pick up either games on the auctions or trade games or buy used games. And I usually have very good iron discipline at conferences, which is unusual for me to have any discipline at all with games, but uh Ryan, a local resident, was uh letting go of his Crusader Rex copy. So, I picked up a copy of this two-player block game. Was this the original block game? I'm not sure, but I'm excited for it. Crusades third Crusade, 1187 to 1192. Two-player game. Very straightforward and simple uh game, but I've heard so many good things about it.

20:50 Also, another game that I've wanted to get my hands on for a long time. time. I think there's two or three of them in the series. Is For what remains, Streets of Ruin for this one, but there's I want to say there's two other games in the series. They're all For what Remains something else after that. Uh Sci-Fi Tactical Combat by David Thompson. I've heard really good things about this one as well. Again, Ryan had this one uh used. He was moving along. So, those are the two things, the only two things I picked up at SD Histon North. Last but not least, one I am pretty excited about, Dawn of the Zeds. This is a prototype of the designer edition that's coming out from Blue Panther Games in the fall and you can pre it's on pre-order right now so you can pick it up. Uh but this is a prototype version of that game. I'm going to give this explore this one and create some content for this one this one in the future. So really excited to take a look and check out Dawn of the Zeds by Herman Lutman.

21:37 This is going to be a lot of fun. And so this is basically his classic Dawn of the Zeds game with taking a lot of the information and stuff that he's learned over the last year since he first designed this and adding them in and refining the gameplay and then they're upping the design and everything. So ah this one this one looks really good. So this will be on the channel coming up soon too. So that's it for what's new and in the house since the last time I did a monthly update. So very modest additions I think to the the gaming front here. It's time for wargaming deep thoughts. These are the conversations where I kind of talk a little bit about sometimes the community poll things or just things that are bouncing around in my head about our hobby. I want to do one short one and then one that's a little bit longer. Uh the first one was a question I put up a poll question I put up on the community post section of the channel uh about a month or so ago and oh actually it was about two weeks ago. It was not that long ago and the question was this. In the last 5 years have you attended a board game conference? And I was curious what the percentage was. I I thought I think actually I thought the answer might be around this much, but I'll give you a second to see if you can guess. This was answered by about 860 votes so far. So, uh, what do you think the percentage would be? And here is our answer. So, 25% exactly on 25%.

22:53 Which is about what I thought. I imagined that one in four viewers of the channel would have gone to a board game conference. I mean, there's a certain amount of, I think, investment in the hobby that comes with saying, I'm going to go to a board game conference and play board games for, you know, 2 days or 3 days or a week for some of the ones that are longer. So, I wasn't sure. I don't think that's something that everybody can do or everybody has the capacity to do in their lives. If you've got kids and you're busy with work and all these kinds of things, it's it's hard to carve that time out. And if you do, you're probably doing things with your family. So, it's a little bit tricky, I think, to to to carve that out. So, I was guessing it'd be about a quarter. So nothing surprising here. I I am curious though if you are in a place in your life where you could go to a board game conference. What's holding it back? What's holding you back? Is it you know the cost of them? Because it it does get I mean if you have to travel to a conference, you know, it's it's at least $1,000 for me if you have to fly, right? So, if you fly and then you're talking about hotels and then food and meals that are going to be out rather than in, you know, it's about $1,000, I think, for me to go to a conference. So, it isn't something you just at least I can do on a whim and just say, "Ah, I'm just going to go." Uh, so I I imagine that's a factor for people. Um, is it reluctance or other things though, too?

24:10 Because I I do think, you know, having been having gone to my first board game conference when I got back into the hobby like 5 years ago, I think it was 2 years or so after that where I finally went to an in-person conference. And to be fair, we're still in the tail end of COVID when I started picking this up. So, there wasn't the opportunity to go. But it really changed the hobby for me because you meet so many people that are, you know, war game enthusiasts or board game enthusiasts and then you can play with them digitally and have, you know, kind of build relationships and friendships with people over time in different places. So, it's really boosted my hobby and so I would encourage anyone to take that step. It's a little bit nerve-wracking if you haven't done it and you're going alone. I totally get that. I was really nervous at my first one. Uh but uh once you go and once you're there and you realize how friendly people are, it's just a a fantastic time. So I'd be curious to hear what reasons are holding you back or what experiences you might have had that maybe said never again or did you go and like them about conferences. So a very brief wargaming maybe that's not so much wargaming that's kind of wargaming semideep thoughts but our next topic is most definitely wargaming deep thoughts.

25:22 So, this is another poll question that I asked on the channel a little while ago, and the answer did surprise me, and it actually has got me thinking quite a bit. Uh, so about 900 people replied so far to this question. It says, "All things considered, what level of complexity do you prefer in your games?" And there were four choices, more complex than simple, more simple than complex, right in the middle, and then no preference, all levels are fine. Now, I think if I were to answer that question, I might be more complex than simple, but also no preference. All levels are fine. But the answer did surprise me. So, I'll give you a second to ponder this one, or you can pause the video. What do you think was the highest percentage? And what do you think might the numbers be for these four answers? More complex than simple, more simple than complex, right in the middle, or no preference? All levels are fine. And here indeed are the answers.

26:18 So, right in the middle was the winner so far with 42%. Which means medium complexity games are by far the most preferred games. Well, not by far, but they're the most preferred games among viewer amongst viewers on the channel. But this next one really interested me, which was the second highest category, and I don't think I would have predicted this, which was more complex than simple, 33%. So only 9% back behind the right in the middle were people who preferred the games more complex than simple. I predicted that the answer would be the opposite. I thought right in the middle would be 40% then more complex than simple more more simple than complex would be about 30%. More complex than simple would be about 10% and maybe all no preference would be about 10%. So the more complex than simple and the more simple than complex surprised me. Uh so that that that's actually and really for me as someone who looks to play games and create content about games. Uh this has been really helpful because I have been I think leaning a little bit towards more simple games or simpler games over the past year in terms of the content that I create. And this makes me think that there's more opportunity to create uh war game war game videos about war games that are more complex. And so with that, I have two questions. Uh question number one is if you and you can just drop

27:50 these down in the comments if you feel so inclined to do so. Are there one or two or maybe three war games in particular that fall into that more complex than simple category? And however you define it, I realize everybody probably defines this on their own, so it's a little bit of a vague question. I mean, all these are funny fuzzy just for fun, right? But what are a couple of games that you would love to see covered on the channel that fall into that more complex than simple category? And anything is fine. And the second thing that I'm interested in, feel free to answer both of these or of course none of these, whatever, if you just feel inclined to answer, is the the why behind it. And and I don't mean that in like why, what's wrong with you. That's not that's not the point at all. It's more I'm very curious what drives you to prefer medium complexity to high higher complexity war games rather than simpler war games.

28:42 What is it that simpler war games are lacking at least in how you feel about games? And what is it that more complexity in war games gives you to have you prefer that category rather than others? The other thing that I'd be curious about is what's what is a game that has been too complex for you that you're just like I this is way over my head. I I can't do that. So anyway, yeah, I was I was very I was pleasantly surprised about this one. Uh and and I don't know why I just had in my head that most of the viewers on the channel um prefer the lower complexity games than higher complexity games. And I have no idea where that came from. That's that's kind of one of the reasons why I try to ask some of these questions is to get to know you as a viewer better so that I mean I'm I'm you know I'm I'm doing this for fun, right? So I'm going to make videos and play games about games that I'm interested in playing, but it's also a combination. I would like to put stuff out there that people find interesting and are interested in.

29:44 So the more I know about you as viewers, the better stuff I think I can make. So this was really cool. And so it's it's got me really thinking about some different content to create. So I would be very curious to hear your answers to those questions. So we're nearing the end of our time together, but we have one very fun thing to do left, which is to give away store credit to Noble Knight Games. As I mentioned in the upcoming video or games video last time, um we've been talking to Noble Knight Games and they have u we're doubling the amount of giveaway each month. So, instead of it being a $50 store gift certificate, starting with this pick, this pick right now, it's a $100 store credit to Noble Knight game, which is really nice because, you know, games have gotten a little bit more expensive. Shipping's a little bit more expensive. So, this uh pretty much ensures that you'd be able to get a game. Maybe not if you live overseas because sometimes overseas shipping can be can be pretty pretty painful, but uh this would at least cover the shipping, I think, for most people. Although, I'm not sure about New Zealand and Australia. You guys are kind of far away. In any case, enough babbling. Um, to enter into this drawing, what you had to do was to comment on the previous upcoming War Games video with the game, PC game, board game that you're currently playing. So, we are going to hit start.

30:53 And this is got all of the comments from the previous video with duplicate entries filtered out. Going to hit start and we are going to get to our winner. Good luck everybody. Matt Johnson 1183 Stratomatic Baseball. I've started the last week of my 1920 pennant race uh penn pennent race playth through and history is changing. Thanks for all the work you do Matt. Thanks for the kind words Matt in stratomatic baseball just talking about that in the video. That's a somewhat very coincidental thing. But what I to speaking of this, what really surprised me in the answers to this contest, right? Cuz I read every I haven't replied to everything. Um I anyway, that's another story. But uh I read all the comments that people post on videos. What blew me away was the wide range of answers. Like I thought most people would be playing games that came out in the past month or so, but we have people like playing Stratamatic Baseball that's been around for years.

31:59 People playing games like Avalon Hill games from 40 years ago, 50 years ago, people playing games from 20 years ago, 10 years ago. The range of answers was really surprising to me. So just people seem to be, you know, they've got an area of interest and they grab a game and they play it. It doesn't matter whether it's new or old. So that was very, very refreshing to see. I think in a hobby that sometimes can feel driven by what's shiny and what's new. It seems like the viewers of this channel for, you know, in terms of the people that enter entered into this contest are playing such a cool and wide range of games. It was just really fun to read and I got some ideas for games that I might like to pick up at some point in time, too. So, thanks for all your comments on that, please. And thanks everybody who entered. We will do another upcoming War Games giveaway competition with Noble Knight Games.

32:46 next upcoming War Games. It's almost the end of July now, so it should be out in about 10 days. So, keep your eyes peeled for that one if you'd like to enter into the next contest. And there we have it. Thanks for watching everybody. If you have enjoyed this video, you might also enjoy our interview with Sam London as part of our top seven war game series. In this video, Sam talks about the top seven games that he likes to play, as well as talking about the games that he is currently designing, many of them for GMT games. So, it's a cool look at some upcoming games and a cool look into a designer's mindset in terms of what types of games he likes to play. Thanks for watching everybody. have the best of days.