I will, to the degree that I can. I'm hesitant to recommend books I haven't read yet, or at least haven't read enough to know that I really like them. But I want to start making this possible where I can, for sure. :)
Great job, this is one of my favorites. The game moves fast once you learn the rules. There are a lot of helpful files on BGG too, and a tons of videos.
Very nice Video. I have an alternate storage solution using cube 4 me. But not that specific set. Those trays come in thin and deep versions. You have the trio of thin 20 compartment solution. I purchased three thin trays for 12 compartments each (cube4me). I use one tray for Allied at start forces amd markers, another for Japanese starting forces and markers and the third tray is for the reinforcements using one compartment per turn (2 thru 11) and one compartment for units that come into play via card events. One is left empty. I feel my solution is more functional based on my play experience on how you use the counters during play. Also by stacking three thin 12 compartment counters I can now use a card deck for each side's cards and don't need to break them down into stacks to fit them in the box.
Thanks very much for sharing this (I saw it on Twitter too). This is much better than what I've done, which is to put the counters with like counters. I'm most definitely going to give your suggestion a shot when I get into playing the game. Very good thinking!
I usually stay away from strategic games but this one looks manageable size wise. It is great that they have a built in solo system (wish more did!). I'll be very interested in seeing how long a scenario takes.
I was looking for that information on the box but didn't see it. I think the South Pacific scenario is probably quick, but I bet the full campaign game is 6+ hours? At a guess. :)
@@ZillaBlitz The description in the CoolStuf page shows a playing time of 360 tp 450 minutes! I am guessing that is the time needed for the whole '41-'45 campaign.
I can't wait to play it, either. There is a bit of a backlog in front of it though. So many games, so little time. :) This year, though, FOR SURE. :) Have you played it?
I just opened mine tonight--WHAT A JOY. I ran my hands and fingers over the beautifully produced guides, pieces, and boards like they were some lost ancient artifact. This is a masterpiece of historical poetry... disguised as a war game!
I am more of a 'Tactical Game gamer' but this one looks interesting. My dad was in the Burma campaign, so I might have to check this one out (Someday - getting too much of a backlog myself. Not to mention shelf space ....) I ordered the cube4me set for the Lanzerath Ridge I have coming and think I might be getting more - it looks like they work better than the GMT or DVG trays.
I'd be interested to hear how you like the storage solutions. I'm not a huge fan of the traditional deep tray: my fingers are somewhat large so I often have trouble getting counters out. But these are super easy. I'm impressed, and yet I'm very curious to see how it works for the next game: Julius Caesar, with it's 7.5 counter sheets. :) And yeah, I'd definitely put this game in my top 10 "Haven't Played Yet but Think is Really Good games". I'm really looking forward to it. :)
Thanks psul! Francisco Colmenares recommended the same sort of thing, and I think it's a great idea. That's the way I'll be going once I start getting into playing the game. :)
I have the game on my wish list, just a question of when I get to buy it. Cube4me trays are excellent, I had a problem fitting Almoravid, but after looking on the site copied as pictured and it now fits. Excellent unboxing. Thank you.
GMT Games announced that they'll be having their somewhat annual sale soon, so you might want to wait for that to see if Empire of the Sun is in the sale. I'll be looking at Julius Caesar and Cube4Me next, so that'll be a big challenge!
@@ZillaBlitz I bought trays for SPQR and they make setting up so much easier. Based on that I bought Julius Caesar & ordered trays as well as those for Zero Leader & Valiant defence series (DVG)
You get visual insteuctuons where to put the counters in the tray. You should have visited their site Zilla and checked how they sorted out Empire of the Sun for their trays. If you would have ordered them yourself, you would have seen it since to button to order is next to the pics. :)
Aha! I see now, thanks! To my defense, the first set I did was Command & Colors Ancients, and you can't see the individual tray breakdowns on the website unless you start to click on more images past the 3-4 you can see on the website. So I'm not sure I would have realized they had individual tray breakdowns available even if I had directly ordered from the website. But for sure, they are very helpful now that I know they are there, thanks very much. They'll come in handy for Julius Caesar! :)
I received a free copy of the 1st edition. I need to get it to the table. I also need to check out those trays since the GMT ones are on permanent backorder.
I really like this compared to traditional trays. They hold a lot, make the counters quite visible, and take up little space in the box. I was skeptical at first, but a big thumbs up after getting a chance to use them on two games now. Next up will be Julius Caesar and its 7.5 counter sheets, so we'll see how they do on that game. :)
Nice! I've been driving more often, but I usually talk to myself and practice sections of upcoming videos while I drive. I might want to explore listening to books some too.
@@ZillaBlitz I do the same thing...lol When i drive from SD to the Bay Area, it's a 6-7 hour drive, i design games in my head, plan channel stuff and listen to audio books. =)
I wonder if the thirds tray was for the Startup counters? Now you've opened this, if you stick to your rules, I look forward to you getting it to the table soon 😁
I'm not sure on the third tray, but I could definitely have thinned out some of the compartments to get everything single stack, which would be nice too. You're absolutely correct in that I usually only unbox something right before I play it, but I wanted to unbox this game so I could explore the Cube4Me storage. So this one is somewhat of an exception. I will likely play late December, but I'm not sure when I'll be making video content for it. The backlog of projects is fairly large. :)
Thanks! It won't be for a while, to be clear. The current video list backlog is quite long. I hope to learn and play in the upcoming months, but I'm not sure when I'll be able to make a gameplay video series for it.
Fun fact Zilla. The only historical books I have read were written by historians of two thousand years ago and Julius Caesar himself. I am slowly but surely counter clipping for Victory in the West 1940 by GMT games from 1992. The game deals with the entire 1940 fall of the west. I need to get my self one of those clippers the big channels use from Oregon laminate. I've got to figure out how I am going to store Great Battles of Julius Caesar Deluxe and Musket and Pike dual pack both games are counter heavy to say the least! Do you put your cards in sleeves? I got OSG Napoleon's Last Gamble over the summer among other games and that one had two decks of cards and I sleeved them. I am very anal about how I store the games. I use tackle boxes mostly and I have to store them outside of the boxes.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing Nordic! I have one more Cube4Me storage solution to look at, and that's for Julius Caesar. I'm very curious to see how the 7.5 counter sheets work with that. That'll probably be coming up fairly soon. And I've not generally sleeved cards except for a couple of games (D-Day at Omaha, for one). I might start doing so more often, but I'm not sure.
@@ZillaBlitz I am looking forward to seeing how you plan to store Julius Caesar. That is truly a monster game in all sense of the term. You should get what is called penny sleeves and you can get them from any store that sells magic the gathering, pokemon cards etc. They should be fairly cheap under $2 for a hundred.
Ha! From everything I've heard about this one, though, it's really a fantastic game, both 2-player and solo. If I had to cull my collection down to 10 games or less, this would be in it, even though I've yet to play it. :)
@@ZillaBlitz I think it might be going to the top of my wishlist. I also really want to pick up the new printing of Combat! later this month, but dang is it expensive.
Yes, I was a huge fan of Sniper! I wasn't super interested in the 1st release of Combat!, but when they added Combat 2 with a campaign feature, then they had me. I'm waiting for my copy, hoping that it'll arrive before my December holiday. And yes, it was pricey, even with their sale.
Yes, I bought 2 when it came out, once I saw that it had a campaign game. But 1 was sold out by then, so I pre-ordered the reprint on Compass Games site. I have 2 just sitting here waiting for its brother to show up. I think I saw on their site that it was coming out Nov. 30-ish.
Ha! Tutorials take so much time to do, and it'd be a major project for a game like this. I want to do an AAR at some point, and something like that usually involves a rule overview. But a full tutorial would be an adventure, for sure. It'll be a while, though, to be honest, before I can make a video series on this game. I hope to play it sooner, but the current video list is really long. :)
Look’s a bit like a tone down version of the old Victory Game The Pacific War…that had way more counters of course and was a much more complicated and time consuming game but the solo part of this one are very interesting
Yes, kind of? I think this game captures the strategic level of the Pacific War, and Pacific War (there is a new version out, and there is an unboxing video linked at the end of this video) captures the depth of the various operations better. Pacific War can be played strategically but it's a bear to do so. :)
Oh and thanks for listing and talking the three books from Ian Toll, of course you are making spend but I can’t resist these type of books. I never heard of them so thanks for the heads up on these, can’t wait to read them
Sure thing, and if you like history books I think you'll love that trilogy. Toll's stuff is great, and I'd be curious to hear how you like them. I read them with two other friends as part of a book club and we really enjoyed reading and talking about them.
LOL I have all those books. 'Zilla need your advice. I want a board wargame on specifically the Guadalcanal campaign air/land/sea. Incuding the naval battles off the island I would want an operational lvl game with 5/8th" counters. Can you help me...
Hmm. The only one I can think of is Pacific War, but that has 1/2" counters I believe. Most of the others I know of only have one dimension, not all three. I haven't played the Pacific War operation yet, but I've heard it's fantastic.
@@ZillaBlitz I mostly like European WW2..but Guadalcanal fascinates me. Edsons Ridge. Santa Cruz. Adm. Callaghan taking on 2 battleships with only ctuisers...Battle of Savo Island...Tokyo Express... Cactus Airforce, all of it.
Good to know, thanks! My apologies on Omaha. Shortly after I made those plans, the channel had an unexpected burst of growth, and as part of that I received a good amount of review games and products to create content for. I want to play those first, which means that some prior plans (submarines, Omaha) have been pushed back. I'm enjoying progressing through the review content now, but to be honest, there is still a good amount left.
I would love to say that it'll be soon, but unfortunately, it won't be for a good while. I have a small collection of review games to play through first. I do hope to play the game in December, but it would be after that before I think I'd have time to create a video series for it. I do think, however, that the AAR style of video I created for Save: South Vietnam will work nicely for this too (6- to 10-hour campaign), so I have an idea how I could approach it.
Yes, thanks! They have sent along Antietam, and I just started shooting the unboxing on Sunday. I hope to have the unboxing up in a few days. I've got a few other review games to play before playing Antietam, but it should be coming up this month. Thanks again! :)
@@ZillaBlitz Look forward to see it! Have a look at Boom Simple Pub battle here on youtbe he is a friend I used to play with - but now I have a son, so harder to spare the time
@@YOUPIMatin123 Yes, he reached out as well and is the person who helped facilitate the connection to Command Post Games. I've watched a good number of his videos now, I really love the style he has. Marvelous stuff, and I'll be mentioning his channel as I create content for Antietam, for sure. :)
![Pericles: The Peloponnesian Wars [REVIEW] (GMT Games, 2017)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/icEUlRPTHyo/mqdefault.jpg)
I love the idea of pairing a book or books with a game. Please keep doing this.
I will, to the degree that I can. I'm hesitant to recommend books I haven't read yet, or at least haven't read enough to know that I really like them. But I want to start making this possible where I can, for sure. :)
This game and For the People are my absolute favorites from Mark Herman
Oh, now I'm kicking myself for not picking up For the People recently. Oh, well.
Very insightful statement and encouraging statement, “ complexity eliminates ambiguity”.
Thanks! That topic could probably be a whole video to itself. :)
Great job, this is one of my favorites. The game moves fast once you learn the rules. There are a lot of helpful files on BGG too, and a tons of videos.
Thanks! And good to know about the pacing. I'll definitely be looking for learning support! :)
Very nice Video. I have an alternate storage solution using cube 4 me. But not that specific set. Those trays come in thin and deep versions. You have the trio of thin 20 compartment solution. I purchased three thin trays for 12 compartments each (cube4me). I use one tray for Allied at start forces amd markers, another for Japanese starting forces and markers and the third tray is for the reinforcements using one compartment per turn (2 thru 11) and one compartment for units that come into play via card events. One is left empty.
I feel my solution is more functional based on my play experience on how you use the counters during play. Also by stacking three thin 12 compartment counters I can now use a card deck for each side's cards and don't need to break them down into stacks to fit them in the box.
Thanks very much for sharing this (I saw it on Twitter too). This is much better than what I've done, which is to put the counters with like counters. I'm most definitely going to give your suggestion a shot when I get into playing the game. Very good thinking!
Just received mine today cannot wait to take some time and dig in. Great video ty
Nice! I'd be interested to hear how you like it. I've heard so many good things about it. :)
I usually stay away from strategic games but this one looks manageable size wise. It is great that they have a built in solo system (wish more did!). I'll be very interested in seeing how long a scenario takes.
I was looking for that information on the box but didn't see it. I think the South Pacific scenario is probably quick, but I bet the full campaign game is 6+ hours? At a guess. :)
@@ZillaBlitz The description in the CoolStuf page shows a playing time of 360 tp 450 minutes! I am guessing that is the time needed for the whole '41-'45 campaign.
@@8ofcups763 Oh, thanks! That's helpful to know, much appreciated. :)
I completely agree with you about good rule books. Ambiguity can kill a game for me.
Yeah, I feel like I can work through complexity pretty quickly, but a few ambiguous rules can take a long time to sort out.
@@ZillaBlitz oh absolutely.
Can't wait to see some game play!!
I can't wait to play it, either. There is a bit of a backlog in front of it though. So many games, so little time. :) This year, though, FOR SURE. :) Have you played it?
Ian Toll's trilogy is awesome!
Totally agree! I really enjoyed all three of them. :)
I just opened mine tonight--WHAT A JOY. I ran my hands and fingers over the beautifully produced guides, pieces, and boards like they were some lost ancient artifact. This is a masterpiece of historical poetry... disguised as a war game!
Very nice, one of the best games! Enjoy!
You got me interested in another game. Now I may have to check out the books too. Great video.
I think Empire of the Sun is widely considered as one of the best, and the books are simply fantastic. :)
I am more of a 'Tactical Game gamer' but this one looks interesting. My dad was in the Burma campaign, so I might have to check this one out (Someday - getting too much of a backlog myself. Not to mention shelf space ....) I ordered the cube4me set for the Lanzerath Ridge I have coming and think I might be getting more - it looks like they work better than the GMT or DVG trays.
I'd be interested to hear how you like the storage solutions. I'm not a huge fan of the traditional deep tray: my fingers are somewhat large so I often have trouble getting counters out. But these are super easy. I'm impressed, and yet I'm very curious to see how it works for the next game: Julius Caesar, with it's 7.5 counter sheets. :)
And yeah, I'd definitely put this game in my top 10 "Haven't Played Yet but Think is Really Good games". I'm really looking forward to it. :)
Organizing the counters by game turn instead of anything else is the way to go with this one
Thanks psul! Francisco Colmenares recommended the same sort of thing, and I think it's a great idea. That's the way I'll be going once I start getting into playing the game. :)
I have the game on my wish list, just a question of when I get to buy it. Cube4me trays are excellent, I had a problem fitting Almoravid, but after looking on the site copied as pictured and it now fits. Excellent unboxing. Thank you.
GMT Games announced that they'll be having their somewhat annual sale soon, so you might want to wait for that to see if Empire of the Sun is in the sale. I'll be looking at Julius Caesar and Cube4Me next, so that'll be a big challenge!
@@ZillaBlitz I bought trays for SPQR and they make setting up so much easier. Based on that I bought Julius Caesar & ordered trays as well as those for Zero Leader & Valiant defence series (DVG)
You get visual insteuctuons where to put the counters in the tray. You should have visited their site Zilla and checked how they sorted out Empire of the Sun for their trays. If you would have ordered them yourself, you would have seen it since to button to order is next to the pics. :)
Aha! I see now, thanks! To my defense, the first set I did was Command & Colors Ancients, and you can't see the individual tray breakdowns on the website unless you start to click on more images past the 3-4 you can see on the website. So I'm not sure I would have realized they had individual tray breakdowns available even if I had directly ordered from the website. But for sure, they are very helpful now that I know they are there, thanks very much. They'll come in handy for Julius Caesar! :)
I received a free copy of the 1st edition. I need to get it to the table. I also need to check out those trays since the GMT ones are on permanent backorder.
I really like this compared to traditional trays. They hold a lot, make the counters quite visible, and take up little space in the box. I was skeptical at first, but a big thumbs up after getting a chance to use them on two games now. Next up will be Julius Caesar and its 7.5 counter sheets, so we'll see how they do on that game. :)
Great review and the books are wonderful!
Thanks! And yes, I spread the books out a good bit, but really enjoyed all three of them. :)
@@ZillaBlitz so have I. I've been on an audible book kick lately.
Nice! I've been driving more often, but I usually talk to myself and practice sections of upcoming videos while I drive. I might want to explore listening to books some too.
@@ZillaBlitz I do the same thing...lol When i drive from SD to the Bay Area, it's a 6-7 hour drive, i design games in my head, plan channel stuff and listen to audio books. =)
Posts Spiderman meme
I wonder if the thirds tray was for the Startup counters?
Now you've opened this, if you stick to your rules, I look forward to you getting it to the table soon 😁
I'm not sure on the third tray, but I could definitely have thinned out some of the compartments to get everything single stack, which would be nice too.
You're absolutely correct in that I usually only unbox something right before I play it, but I wanted to unbox this game so I could explore the Cube4Me storage. So this one is somewhat of an exception. I will likely play late December, but I'm not sure when I'll be making video content for it. The backlog of projects is fairly large. :)
Nice video. Lets see when we will see playgame.
Thanks! It won't be for a while, to be clear. The current video list backlog is quite long. I hope to learn and play in the upcoming months, but I'm not sure when I'll be able to make a gameplay video series for it.
The game looks beautiful
Yes, I think the map and the counters blend together nicely, and it's got a simple elegance to the design. Totally agree. :)
Fun fact Zilla. The only historical books I have read were written by historians of two thousand years ago and Julius Caesar himself. I am slowly but surely counter clipping for Victory in the West 1940 by GMT games from 1992. The game deals with the entire 1940 fall of the west. I need to get my self one of those clippers the big channels use from Oregon laminate. I've got to figure out how I am going to store Great Battles of Julius Caesar Deluxe and Musket and Pike dual pack both games are counter heavy to say the least! Do you put your cards in sleeves? I got OSG Napoleon's Last Gamble over the summer among other games and that one had two decks of cards and I sleeved them. I am very anal about how I store the games. I use tackle boxes mostly and I have to store them outside of the boxes.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing Nordic! I have one more Cube4Me storage solution to look at, and that's for Julius Caesar. I'm very curious to see how the 7.5 counter sheets work with that. That'll probably be coming up fairly soon.
And I've not generally sleeved cards except for a couple of games (D-Day at Omaha, for one). I might start doing so more often, but I'm not sure.
@@ZillaBlitz I am looking forward to seeing how you plan to store Julius Caesar. That is truly a monster game in all sense of the term.
You should get what is called penny sleeves and you can get them from any store that sells magic the gathering, pokemon cards etc. They should be fairly cheap under $2 for a hundred.
This game looks really interesting. Every time you make a video about a solitaire playable wargame, I want to buy it. I'm going to send you a bill. ;)
Ha! From everything I've heard about this one, though, it's really a fantastic game, both 2-player and solo. If I had to cull my collection down to 10 games or less, this would be in it, even though I've yet to play it. :)
@@ZillaBlitz I think it might be going to the top of my wishlist. I also really want to pick up the new printing of Combat! later this month, but dang is it expensive.
Yes, I was a huge fan of Sniper! I wasn't super interested in the 1st release of Combat!, but when they added Combat 2 with a campaign feature, then they had me. I'm waiting for my copy, hoping that it'll arrive before my December holiday. And yes, it was pricey, even with their sale.
@@ZillaBlitz In order to play Combat 2, I'm thinking I would have to buy both 1 and 2, correct? I may need to rob a bank.
Yes, I bought 2 when it came out, once I saw that it had a campaign game. But 1 was sold out by then, so I pre-ordered the reprint on Compass Games site. I have 2 just sitting here waiting for its brother to show up. I think I saw on their site that it was coming out Nov. 30-ish.
Are we getting a how to play for Empire of the Sun from you Zilla? 🤓
Ha! Tutorials take so much time to do, and it'd be a major project for a game like this. I want to do an AAR at some point, and something like that usually involves a rule overview. But a full tutorial would be an adventure, for sure. It'll be a while, though, to be honest, before I can make a video series on this game. I hope to play it sooner, but the current video list is really long. :)
Look’s a bit like a tone down version of the old Victory Game The Pacific War…that had way more counters of course and was a much more complicated and time consuming game but the solo part of this one are very interesting
Yes, kind of? I think this game captures the strategic level of the Pacific War, and Pacific War (there is a new version out, and there is an unboxing video linked at the end of this video) captures the depth of the various operations better. Pacific War can be played strategically but it's a bear to do so. :)
Oh and thanks for listing and talking the three books from Ian Toll, of course you are making spend but I can’t resist these type of books. I never heard of them so thanks for the heads up on these, can’t wait to read them
Sure thing, and if you like history books I think you'll love that trilogy. Toll's stuff is great, and I'd be curious to hear how you like them. I read them with two other friends as part of a book club and we really enjoyed reading and talking about them.
LOL I have all those books. 'Zilla need your advice. I want a board wargame on specifically the Guadalcanal campaign air/land/sea. Incuding the naval battles off the island I would want an operational lvl game with 5/8th" counters. Can you help me...
Hmm. The only one I can think of is Pacific War, but that has 1/2" counters I believe. Most of the others I know of only have one dimension, not all three. I haven't played the Pacific War operation yet, but I've heard it's fantastic.
@@ZillaBlitz I mostly like European WW2..but Guadalcanal fascinates me. Edsons Ridge. Santa Cruz. Adm. Callaghan taking on 2 battleships with only ctuisers...Battle of Savo Island...Tokyo Express... Cactus Airforce, all of it.
Once you get activation/supply sorted it's OK. Get it on the table. Stopped holding my breath for Omaha btw.
Good to know, thanks! My apologies on Omaha. Shortly after I made those plans, the channel had an unexpected burst of growth, and as part of that I received a good amount of review games and products to create content for. I want to play those first, which means that some prior plans (submarines, Omaha) have been pushed back. I'm enjoying progressing through the review content now, but to be honest, there is still a good amount left.
Gameplay when? 😊
I would love to say that it'll be soon, but unfortunately, it won't be for a good while. I have a small collection of review games to play through first. I do hope to play the game in December, but it would be after that before I think I'd have time to create a video series for it.
I do think, however, that the AAR style of video I created for Save: South Vietnam will work nicely for this too (6- to 10-hour campaign), so I have an idea how I could approach it.
@@ZillaBlitz did you look up Pub battles btw?
Yes, thanks! They have sent along Antietam, and I just started shooting the unboxing on Sunday. I hope to have the unboxing up in a few days. I've got a few other review games to play before playing Antietam, but it should be coming up this month. Thanks again! :)
@@ZillaBlitz Look forward to see it! Have a look at Boom Simple Pub battle here on youtbe he is a friend I used to play with - but now I have a son, so harder to spare the time
@@YOUPIMatin123 Yes, he reached out as well and is the person who helped facilitate the connection to Command Post Games. I've watched a good number of his videos now, I really love the style he has. Marvelous stuff, and I'll be mentioning his channel as I create content for Antietam, for sure. :)