Hexed And Countered

Tag: Playthrough

  • Thirty Years of Misery (VUCA Simulations) — Round 1 Gameplay & Walkthrough

    Thirty Years of Misery (VUCA Simulations) — Round 1 Gameplay & Walkthrough

    A first look tells you what’s in the box; a walkthrough tells you whether the system breathes. This is Round 1 of Thirty Years of Misery: 1618–1648, Brian Asklev’s design for VUCA Simulations, and it’s where the Thirty Years’ War stops being a handsome map and starts being a set of hard decisions.

    Getting the first round moving

    I take the opening round slowly and talk through the sequence of play as I go, so it’s clear why each step happens rather than just what the result is. Learning a new system solo means you’re refereeing yourself, and the value of a walkthrough is watching someone make — and occasionally fumble — those first calls in real time. Round 1 is where the shape of the war starts to reveal itself and you get a feel for the tempo the design is asking of you.

    First impressions in motion

    Seeing a game played is worth more than any rules summary, and this is where Thirty Years of Misery either earns its place or shows its seams. I keep an eye on how cleanly the turn flows once you’re past setup and whether the decisions bite early or take a while to matter. This is a full walkthrough running over an hour, so it’s the deep end rather than a highlight reel — the honest pace of actually learning the game. Round 2 continues from here.

    Round 2 picks up where this leaves off. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

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  • Thirty Years of Misery: 1618–1648 (VUCA) — Round 2 Gameplay & Walkthrough

    Thirty Years of Misery: 1618–1648 (VUCA) — Round 2 Gameplay & Walkthrough

    Round 1 got the pieces moving; Round 2 is where a wargame usually tells you what it really is. This is the second gameplay round of Thirty Years of Misery: 1618–1648, Brian Asklev’s design from VUCA Simulations, picking up the Thirty Years’ War with the opening moves already behind us.

    Building on Round 1

    With setup and the first round out of the way, this session moves faster and digs further into how the system develops over time. I keep talking through my reasoning as I play solo, because the interesting part of a game like this is rarely a single die roll — it’s the accumulating pressure of decisions across rounds. If you watched Round 1, this is the payoff; if you’re jumping in here, I recap enough to keep it followable.

    How it’s holding up

    A shorter session than Round 1, this one is about momentum — seeing whether the design keeps its grip once the novelty of setup wears off. I stay honest about what’s working and what feels fiddly, because that’s the only useful thing a walkthrough can offer over a glossy overview. By the end of Round 2 you should have a real sense of whether Thirty Years of Misery is a game you want to spend an evening with.

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  • Old School Tactical Vol. 5: First to Fight — Scenario 1 Gameplay, Part 1

    Old School Tactical Vol. 5: First to Fight — Scenario 1 Gameplay, Part 1

    Time to get Old School Tactical Vol. 5: First to Fight onto the table. This kicks off a solo playthrough of Scenario 1 from Flying Pig Games’ Poland 1939 expansion — the opening days of the war, where a Polish garrison has to hold against the German push.

    Setup and the opening moves

    Part 1 covers the rules in play, the pre-turn setup, and the early action: hidden sniper mechanics, smoke deployment by the German pioneers, the combat calculations, and even off-board naval bombardment from the battleship Schleswig-Holstein — the very guns that opened the war at Westerplatte. It’s a good showcase of why OST stays approachable without being shallow: the fiddly bits are there, but the decisions read clearly. Part 2 follows.

    Part 2 continues the scenario. Subscribe to follow the fight for Poland.

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  • Old School Tactical Vol. 5: First to Fight — Scenario 1 Gameplay, Part 2

    Old School Tactical Vol. 5: First to Fight — Scenario 1 Gameplay, Part 2

    The bunker assault heats up. This is Part 2 of the Scenario 1 solo playthrough in Old School Tactical Vol. 5: First to Fight (Flying Pig Games), and the Polish defenders are not going quietly.

    Into the bunkers

    Turns 6 and 7 push the German forces forward against determined resistance. Hidden snipers spring their ambushes, pioneer squads lay down smoke to cover the advance, and the fighting collapses into brutal close-combat melees around the fortified structures and bunkers. This is squad-level tactics at its most tense — the kind of grind where a single bad activation can stall an entire assault.

    Start with Part 1 if you missed it, and subscribe for more OST.

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  • Cuius Regio: The Thirty Years War (GMT Games) — Scenario 1: 1618 Turn Gameplay

    Cuius Regio: The Thirty Years War (GMT Games) — Scenario 1: 1618 Turn Gameplay

    A first look tells you what’s in the box; the gameplay tells you whether the system holds together once the counters are on the map. This is Scenario 1 of Cuius Regio: The Thirty Years War, Francisco Gradaille’s operational-level design for GMT Games, played at the table — and it drops you straight into 1618, where the whole conflict began.

    The war’s first crisis, 1618

    Scenario 1 is the natural entry point into a game that can otherwise stretch to a 30-to-40-hour grand campaign. Starting in 1618 means starting with the Empire already fracturing along religious and political lines, and this playthrough works through the opening turn to show how Cuius Regio handles movement, army management, and the sequence of play at a scale that spans the whole Holy Roman Empire. Rather than front-loading every rule, I let the turn structure explain itself as it comes up, so you can see where the friction actually is — how far forces really reach, what a combat costs you, and how quickly a promising position can come apart. I covered the components and rules in the first look; this is the design in motion, and it’s the honest test of whether it earns the table time it asks for.

    The campaign continues from here. Subscribe so you don’t miss the next scenario on the table.

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  • Battle Brothers — The Hexed: Grave Robbers and Farmstead Ambush

    Battle Brothers — The Hexed: Grave Robbers and Farmstead Ambush

    Battle Brothers doesn’t hand you anything. Overhype Studios’ turn-based tactical RPG is a mercenary-company sim where one bad positioning call can cost you a veteran you’ve spent hours leveling, and this episode of the Hexed campaign is a good reminder of why I keep coming back to it.

    Grave robbers, Nachzehrers, and early perks

    Fresh off sending Hoggart to an early demise the company rides out of Sandheim to deal with grave robbers, which in practice means a scrap with a pack of Nachzehrers: the undead that claw their way up out of the graves and hit harder than their ragged look suggests. Between contracts I spend time on the part of Battle Brothers that quietly matters most: leveling up the brothers and choosing early perks. Those first picks set the tone for a whole campaign, and I talk through why I lean the way I do. A stop in Scharensteyn to recruit fresh blood rounds out the roster before things get messy again.

    An ambush and the case for playing cautious

    The farmstead is where the episode earns its title. A crumbled-farmstead ambush against brigand thugs is exactly the kind of fight that looks routine and then punishes any brother left standing in the open. Poor Ragan… may his death teach us all not to hang a Brother out to die surrounded by brigands.

    Battle Brothers rewards patience, terrain, and a willingness to retreat, and it’s honest enough to let a careless turn end a run. That tension, building renown one survivable contract at a time, is the whole appeal for solo players who like their tactics with consequences.

    New episodes of the Hexed campaign land on the channel regularly. Subscribe to follow the company.

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  • Old School Tactical Vol. 5: First to Fight — Scenario 1 Gameplay (Part 1)

    Old School Tactical Vol. 5: First to Fight — Scenario 1 Gameplay (Part 1)

    A first look tells you what’s in the box; a playthrough tells you whether the thing actually works on the table. This is Scenario 1 of Old School Tactical Vol. 5: First to Fight – the Battle for Poland 1939 played solo, and it’s where Flying Pig Games’ tactical system meets the opening days of the war.

    Setting up Scenario 1

    I walk through the rules and the pre-turn setup before the shooting starts, and Poland 1939 brings some specific wrinkles worth slowing down for. Hidden sniper mechanics keep the Polish defender dangerous in a way you can’t quite see, German pioneers lay smoke to screen their advance, and there’s off-board naval bombardment from the battleship Schleswig-Holstein, a nice historical touch that also matters tactically. I take the combat calculations step by step so it’s clear how a firefight resolves rather than just showing the result.

    How it plays solo

    Old School Tactical has always been approachable without being shallow, and that holds up here. Solo, the system runs cleanly once you’ve internalized the sequence of play, and the 1939 material gives you asymmetric problems like a Polish force fighting for time against a German attack with more tools. This is Part 1, with the scenario still developing; Part 2 is where we see how the fight actually turns out. If you’ve been curious whether the Poland expansion is worth it, watching it played is the best way to judge.

    Part 2 picks up right where this leaves off. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

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  • World War I: Deluxe Edition (Decision Games) — Gameplay (Part 1)

    World War I: Deluxe Edition (Decision Games) — Gameplay (Part 1)

    After the first look, the real question with any strategic-level wargame is how the first turn feels, and in World War I: Deluxe Edition from Decision Games, the first turn is 1914, with all the weight that carries. This is Part 1 of the playthrough.

    The whole war, from turn one

    The Deluxe Edition covers the entire Great War at a strategic level, and I start with a full top-to-bottom look at the map so the geography makes sense before any units move. From there it’s into the summer impulse phases of 1914: the German invasion of Belgium, the thin but critical Eastern Front, and the mobilization of the Balkan states. Even this early, the game is asking real questions: where to commit, when to accept a risky combat differential, and how to spend mobilization points that never quite stretch far enough.

    Early impressions in play

    What comes through in Part 1 is how much the opening moves shape everything after. The decisions aren’t flashy, but they’re consequential, and the system does a good job of making 1914 feel like a genuine fork in the road rather than a scripted opening. If you want the components-and-rules overview first, I covered that in the first look. This is the game in motion, heading toward the winter of 1914 and the hard choices waiting there.

    The campaign continues in future parts. Subscribe to follow it through the war.

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  • The Lamps Are Going Out — World War I (Compass Games) — Gameplay

    The Lamps Are Going Out — World War I (Compass Games) — Gameplay

    Grand-strategic World War I games ask you to hold the whole continent in your head at once, and The Lamps Are Going Out (designed by Kirk Uhlmann and published by Compass Games) is one of the more ambitious takes on that idea. This episode walks through the opening turns of 1914.

    1914 and the plans that shaped it

    The playthrough opens with the historical framing the game leans on: the German Schlieffen Plan and the French Plan 17, both of which the system models rather than just references. I go through the map and its production centers, the seasonal turn structure, and the core mechanics of movement, naval blockade, and ground combat. Event cards (like First-Line Formations) add texture to each turn, and production points are the currency that fuels the whole war effort.

    Blockade, the Big Push, and playing it solo

    Two things stand out early. The naval side is more than set dressing; the North Sea blockade and the naval combat give the Allies a slow, grinding lever to pull. And ground combat, resolved through “The Big Push” and its dice-off, captures the costly, incremental nature of the fighting without drowning you in detail. The German forces push into Belgium while the Western Allies attempt a mandatory and genuinely awkward counter-offensive in the Rhine. Solo, it’s a lot to track at first, but the structure is logical once it clicks, and Part 1 lays the groundwork for the campaign to come.

    The war unfolds across the playthrough series. Subscribe to see where it goes.

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  • Battle Brothers — The Hexed: From Arena Wipe to Bounty Hunt (Episode 1)

    Battle Brothers — The Hexed: From Arena Wipe to Bounty Hunt (Episode 1)

    Every Battle Brothers campaign starts with optimism and a roster that has no idea what’s coming. This is Episode 1 of the Hexed — a fresh mercenary company in Overhype Studios’ turn-based tactical RPG — and it does not go smoothly, which is exactly why it’s worth watching.

    From arena wipe to starting over

    The southern city-states and their arenas are a tempting way to make early coin, and they’re also a fast way to lose your whole company if you overreach. We find that out the hard way via an arena wipe early on. With everyone dead, I soldier on… by starting over.

    Rebuilding and the first real bounty

    With a clean slate, we rebuild the roster, gear up the brothers, and start taking contracts the company can actually survive. The episode’s throughline is hunting down Hoggart the Weasel: a bounty target that gives the young company its first taste of renown. This is the loop that makes the game sing for solo play: recruit, equip, take a job that’s slightly beyond your comfort zone, and see who’s still standing afterward. Consider this the setup; things only get harder from here.

    This is the start of the Hexed campaign — more episodes to come. Subscribe to see how far they get.

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