Buckeye Game Fest 2026 was a great chance to get a lot of games playtested and to try out lots of finished games (and someone else's playtest as well!)

Afghanistan: Decades of Strife, a Conflict of Wills game, was played by a tag team of David Thompson & John Lapham versus Jim Matt & myself, as David and Jim both had to leave for other events. Which was very realistic, kinda like: starting a war, then pushing that war on the back burner so you can start another war... Anyway, this game is really hitting its stride we think.

War of Giants, a Conflict of Wills game about the Vendee revolt, also made it to the table. This is Robin David's second game in the series he created, and is another game that feels about done. This will likely be the next game on Kickstarter for us.

True Command came out again, this time with an urban map of Kharkiv that is about 60% urban tiles. Plays VERY differently than the slashing manuever game the first map tends to become. Here you need to carefully plan your troops starting positions as it is much more difficult to adjust midstream. We'll add a couple more scenarios to this map before the Kickstarter. 

Brothers of the Sword, Baltic Crusades game, hit the table again. Good game experience, but this one is going to need quite a bit of work yet. We made some streamlining already, but it needs to go back into the rock polisher for a bit to smooth out some rough edges. 

We played an interesting card game about robber barons, which was an interesting take on the history. Finally, we capped the con off by playing War Stories, a WW2 RPG, with the scenario being the airborne drop into Normandy. I played a platoon leader, and we were pretty successful, despite some inter-platoon squabbling between my senior NCO and our scout (Grant and Alexander from The Player's Aid). Great game, and fun con!