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Wild Blue Yonder Campaign Tutorial (Part 3 of 3): Mission 2

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A few of the bombers found in Wild Blue Yonder.

To start the second mission of this campaign, you’ll probably want to reshuffle the action decks before going back to 24.3.C.1 to generate a new mission. I’ll go through this part quickly, since we already covered mission selection in the first article. The Axis player draws an IN MY SIGHTS (1B) card and cross references it to the Mission table under Stage I to get the number 1. Looking this up on the Mission Target Matrix, we see that the target will be Ground Forces on the 3A Target Card. The strike aircraft will be German JU87B light bombers (the “GE” is telling you to use the German ones, not the Italian planes).

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Commands & Colors: Medieval Belisarius Campaign Part 2 – Melebasa (528 AD)

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Below is the second in a series of articles from The Boardgames Chronicle playing through the Belisarius campaign in Commands & Colors: Medieval. You can find the first article in the series here. Enjoy! -Rachel

The Campaign

My series of articles describing the story of General Belisarius continues. He was the greatest general of the early Byzantine era – by many regarded as the greatest Byzantine general ever – and his feats against the Sassanid Empire are neatly formulated in multiple scenarios of Commands & Colors: Medieval. That is definitely an add-on bonus to the already good game – we have the possibility to not only to play interesting tactically scenarios, but also to see and feel the historical flow and developments of the Justinian and Belisarius era.

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Wild Blue Yonder Campaign Tutorial (Part 2 of 3): Mission 1

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In our last article, we set up the first mission. In this article, we will look at some examples of play. The first two turns of the first mission and most of the third will play out like a regular dogfight, and have been skipped over in this play-through. Let’s say that the turn order is one element of Hurricanes, then the German planes, then the other Hurricane element. You will be using the campaign sequence of play shown on the back of the campaign book, but you’ll notice that most of the steps that have been added to the basic dogfight sequence can be skipped in this mission. The only other thing to note is that the Allied player needs to have his planes at Low or Very Low altitude by the start of the Over Target turn in order to strafe [21.7].

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Commands & Colors: Medieval Belisarius Campaign Part 1 – Thannuris (528 AD)

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Below is the first in a series of articles from The Boardgames Chronicle playing through the Belisarius campaign in Commands & Colors: Medieval. This series can also be found on The Boardgames Chronicle’s blog here. Enjoy! -Rachel

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The Arjuna Chronicles #11: Arjuna Wrap Up and Design Notes

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We hope you have enjoyed this series and that it gives you a clear picture into how Arjuna works. In this installment, we will wrap up the session with some suggestions on how to lay out your play area, a brief set of Arjuna design notes, and a peek into the development process of Arjuna, complete with some pictures of older versions of the system.

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Wild Blue Yonder Campaign Tutorial (Part 1 of 3): Setup

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Introduction and Overview

If you are new to Wild Blue Yonder, it might be hard for you to break past the wall of rules to get into the campaigns. This short series of articles will help you dive straight into the easiest campaign (Rommel Attacks), and you can read the pertinent rules as you go. You will need at least a basic familiarity with the dogfighting rules, as I won’t cover those. At some point you will still want to read the campaign rules, as I won’t be able to cover every nuance, but by the end of this article series you should have a solid start on the important parts.

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Luther’s Baptism of Fire: The Leipzig Debate As Seen Through Here I Stand

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Below you will find another fantastic article from Clio’s Board Games, this time discussing The Leipzig Debate and Ed Beach’s Here I Stand. You can also find this article on Clio’s blog. Enjoy! -Rachel

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The Arjuna Chronicles #10: Independence Day Defiantly Declared

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Gandhi includes a brand new Solitaire system, called Arjuna, that replaces the flowcharts that have become a staple of the COIN Series. Players who play COIN Solitaire have asked many questions about how the system works – and don’t fear! – COIN Series Developer Jason Carr is here to walk through the design, ergonomics, and play of Arjuna. This installment shows Arjuna in action in the late campaign.

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Labyrinth: The Forever War – Challenges in Designing a Simulation Game Based on Current Events

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Labyrinth: The Forever War is the second expansion to Labyrinth: The Global War on Terror and follows five years after publication of the first expansion, Labyrinth: The Awakening. Like its predecessors, Forever War adds 120 new event cards to the Labyrinth game system, and like Awakening, covers five years of current events (roughly 2015 through 2019). Forever War achieved its P-500 number in just over 2 days on the market, suggesting there is a demand for inexpensive expansions that add value to a base game, and a desire for games that explore recent political and military events. This brief article will provide some insights and considerations when designing a simulation game based on current events.

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Weak Arms, Deep Pockets, and Big Mountains: British/Piedmont Play in Clash of Sovereigns

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Like his Prussian/Spanish player foe, the British/Piedmont player has a multi-faceted and sometimes schizophrenic role in COS. But unlike the Prussian/Spanish, the British player has growing roles and goals through the campaign. Unfortunately, the same similarities can’t be said for the Prus and Brit armies 🙂 ; the British and “Pieds” vie for having the weakest armies (by numbers) throughout the entire game. Much of the time, the British are holding on and serving as the high quality lion’s share of mixed Pragmatic armies in Flanders. The Piedmontese are usually only a secondary ally to the Austrians in the battle for Italy. Yet in late game, both these forces can make incisive gains on a weakened Bourbon foe. The British player may be nipping at the edges on map, but looms gargantuanly large in overall Pragmatic alliance success.