Victory Games Central America punched

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All completely punched. It took about a week of punching out 50-100 counters at a time. The game has 780 counters, so that's non-trivial.

One benefit of punching and clipping counters is getting familiar with both common counters, because there are so many of them, and uncommon counters, because there are so few.

Here's a picture of the order of battle for Scenario 1:

OOB for Scenario 1

I put the counters into their own ziploc bag for easy access for a quick solo game. The full campaign runs 10-20 hours, which is not bad at all for this size of game. Comparable titles such as Victory Game's "Vietnam" can run 100-200 hours.

Next step

The set up for Scenario 1 is really easy, but once it's set up, I'm very sure I'll have no idea how what to do next. Since this is as much about learning the rules, the next step should be combat. Even if it makes no sense from a tactical point of view, learning the rules is pretty important.

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What to play next?

Deciding what to play next is always a tough call when faced with a closet full of games, all of which were purchased with intent to play. Here's one I'm dealing with the decision.

  • Something New: this means both something new to me and a game which has been published recently, within the last two or three years.
  • Something Classic: I've acquired a number of games properly considered "classic" which haven't yet been played. The current example would be PanzerGruppe Guderian.
  • Something Again: mastery requires constant practice, which means playing games many, many times to allow nuance to appear.
  • Something Vietnam: as I'm on a Vietnam binge. I don't have all the Vietnam games ever published, but I can say that I have a lot of them, and probably more than most people.
  • Something Obscure: as it's fun to poke around in the dustier corners of game design.
  • Something Different: break away from the same old publishers and try a game from one of the new kids on the block. Or, conversely, dip into legacy with a classic tried and true.
  • Something Light: once in a while it's nice to actually finish a game all the way through in one sitting, in an hour or two.
  • Something Heavy: if possible, it's nice to set up something big and complicated which can be left out for days or weeks or even months, for a leisurely stroll through a very large or long game.

There are surely many more ways to choose, but the above method keeps me busy enough, helps me get both breadth and depth into my play, and provides me with a sense of progress.

The odd man out

When there is an odd man out:

  • Have a solo game ready to play.
  • Keep score or advise on a game in progress.
  • Referee a game in progress.