Some other new stuff come in

A few other new arrivals of note:

Victoria Cross II (shown above). This is a redo of the venerable (and inaugural) Worthington Games title. Major difference sin presentation include an overhead view of the Rorke's Drifty battlefield (instead of the perspective view used before ) and cardboard counters in place of the wood block. sticker combo of the earlier version. Major content differences include the addition of the complete Battle of Isandlwana as wella s the original battle of Rorke's Drift. I played the Isandlwana battle and got crushed as the British! Very historical, I'll need further plays to assess whether the British have a decent chance or I just played very badly the first time!

Napoleon's War II: The Gates of Moscow. Been awaiting this one and I expect to try it it next week. No surprises in the presentation.

Got some custom dice for Twilight Struggle and for Labyrinth. No special reason aside from the fact that they look cool.

Two cases of War at Sea's newest expansion, Surface Action. This was a very successful case purchase, as I got all 16 rares between the two cases. Some intersting models and intersting additions to the game system. The game badly needs some additional "official" scenarios that will play off some of the new special abilities and units. Right now the Standard dueling force scenario is really the only one well supported. THe Convoy scenario is still broken and virtaully unwinnable for the convoy player. Fixing that scenario and adding one for amphibious landings would be a big boost.

Labyrinth first play

I got the chance to try out Labyrinth yesterday. First thing I have to admit is that I really feel at sea with this game, similar to Twilight Struggle. There are no flanks, maneuvers or determined charges in this sort of war. It's clearly going to take a few games before I have much of a clue what to do.

That said, it was a lot of fun and very interesting. Compared to Twilight Struggle I think it's a little bit less complicated, but still seems pretty deep. It seems a little easier than it is in TS to avoid handing your opponent free events when you play operations because many of the events have conditions that must be satisfied in order to be triggered.

My first play through I played the Jihadists and I was pretty successful in bringing ing about Islamic rule, but Glen's US was pretty quick to stomp each one out and the US ended up winning by having more than twice as many resources under Good Government than I had under Islamic rule. Next time I'll spend more time recruiting and laying the proper groundwork.

I have to say that the components are absolutely gorgeous. There's a full-colr game rule book, a full-color Playing Book which includes a long and well-explained example of play, a nice mounted board, stiff and thick cards, counters, 15 desert tan colored blocks to represent the US troops and 15 black wooden Jihadist pieces with a crescent and star to represent Jihadist cells -- all of it packed inside one of GMT's famous "armored" game boxes that should stand up to considerable handling as geeks take it here and there for game session.

Altogether top notch in every way.

I broke down and got it

Yeah, I'm weak.