| Well, thanks to holiday business, the group of players for this month slowly winnowed down, until there were two. Patch made it over yesterday, and we had a day of Commands & Colors: Ancients again.
I may be gamed out on this for a little bit. Certainly, I was feeling that way before hand, now I'm actually a bit jazzed for it again. Go figure. While I was down south, I taught my Dad, and had three games with him. As I expected, he doesn't consider it a great game, but its shortcomings are made up by its simplicity and speed. I also taught it to Mike, I see him and Elaina every year on the way back from my parents. He keeps looking at the games I bring down for my Dad longingly, but he's never had a chance to play a wargame. Between the explanations and some analysis paralysis it was a long night, but he had fun and was really getting into the swing of it for the second half.
After the teaching, I was a little burned out, but playing Patch has put me back in form and eager for a bit more. I also noticed that I habitually state which results are needed in an attack now....
Also, all I had down south was the original set. I ordered the first expansion on sale a week or so before, but it didn't ship 'til the day before I left. I had Expansion 4, but there's only one battle playable without some of the other expansions, so I didn't take it with me. So yesterday, Patch and I broke in both sets.
( Marathon Run to Carthage )
The unprecedented 33-18 banner total for the day was mostly powered by the Hormuz set, where good card combinations (such as two Mounted Charges in a row) did Patch in quickly. Overall though, it was a fun day with some really tense moments.
I'm basically free all of next week, but it looks like I may not get in any more gaming until late January. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| As you may remember from a previous post, I went squee over Playmobil Roman Legionaries.
Time for further fun with them. A person on BoardGameGeek has started doing game reviews... using the Playmobil Romans, in the person of Centurion G. Maximus and the Imperial Reviewers Legion. Even if you don't care about the games, I suggest you check them out, as they're very clever.
http://boardgame.geekdo.com/geeklist/49516
It's a pity he doesn't have any wargamers in his group, but the good Centurion definitely thinks of everything in military terms. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Well, the annual trip south to visit my parents has been going well. Case in point: I finished a game of Pursuit of Glory with my Dad yesterday.
I've had it for a year, and have been playing a game (by Vassal/email) for most of that time, but this is the first one I've finished. I consider the Central Powers to be slightly tougher to begin with (more things to juggle at once), so I took them.
( Read more... )
At the end, VPs were at 10, and we split the oil fields. A very close-run CP Victory of Endurance. I totally muffed the LCU limitation at one point (5 LCU in Mesopotamia; I hastily moved them out rather than blow the game with their elimination); I always forget it when in the heat of reorganizing the defenses... Other rules muffs were smaller and probably more evenly split. So an AP victory may be deserved (especially with that score!), though I may have done about as well without that problem. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Mark came over Saturday for our monthly FtF gaming. This time was his choice, and he went for Spartacus, which he got a couple months ago. No complaints here, didn't get it only for money reasons, and it looks very good.
The subtitle is more accurate than the main title: Crisis in the Roman Republic 80-71 BC. Spartacus' slave revolt is the part that's popularly remembered, but it happened towards the end of an ongoing military crisis where Rome was dealing with a well-lead revolt in Spain and a war in Asia Minor.
I was nowhere near top form for almost the entire day. A bit fuzzy-headed combined with a new game was sadly not a good mix. (I was feeling poorly Sunday too, obviously fighting off something.) Even without that I must say I was having trouble getting a good picture of the game in my head. There are some very fiddly bits with the rolls for interception, avoidance, and withdrawing, which a player aid would be handy for.
Suffice it to say that we didn't get very far in our game. Definitely want another crack at it, as it is a good system, and 'is that up or down?' trouble aside, very interesting.
But for what we did manage: We went for the second scenario, which starts just before Mithradates declares war, and the true crisis starts. I had Sertorius, and the year was a mixed bag. I was able to win against Pompey in western Spain, but the force holding down central Spain against Metellus was defeated and nearly wiped out on a rout. Things slowly went from bad to worse there for the rest of the year.
For the second turn, I lead off with Mithradates declaring war. The way the game works, there's only limited actions available there the first turn. I advanced out at the end and took over a couple provinces. In Spain, things continued to go poorly, though the threat of Sertorius's army kept Mark from getting too dangerous, as I shifted back and forth to threaten Metellus, and then Pompey as the two Roman armies shifted close to each other. Raiding allowed me to break his grip on Further Spain as he moved out of the area. The previous turn saw a small erosion of Roman Stability, this turn it took a serious turn for the worse.
For the third turn, things really went my way. Neither of us paid much attention to Asia Minor, but I was able to advance a bit further. In Spain, Sertorius managed to beat off an attack from a heavily reinforced Pompey ('6' on the reinforcements roll, which he used to bring all six legions in that army from reduced to full strength), but was wounded in the process. I brought in the second best leader to take over. He beat off another attack, and Mark was forced to join Pompey and Metellus' armies, which I drove back into Gaul.
We ended the day with Sertorius on the offensive in Gaul and effectively in full control of Spain (there were still a couple major cities in the south, and some ports that needed claiming to make a naval voyage more risky. Stability fell to about -34, and we judged it a Sertorian win.
Further notes: The dice with the game seem to roll sub-par, especially the yellow ones. The Romans being traditionally red, this led to some poor battles for me until I swapped to some dice that we normally use with SFB (which wants low rolls, so it's not as if these are my 'roll high dice'. The meat of the battle system itself is good. I like the main results rolls, where casualties and victory are related, but aren't directly related, though the pursuit can be quite painful (which, alas, is quite historical).
I definitely want to try again with better knowledge of the game, and a clearer head. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Patch actually lives some distance away (near Sacramento), but he's in the area about every other week for an RPG group he's involved in. This Sunday, I actually got him over on one of those weekends without the rest of the gang.
We had a fun afternoon of breaking in my new set of Commands & Colors: Ancients. He's played it a time or two before, but not as often as me, and had to spend a while re-familiarizing himself with the rules. Once that was done, he picked things up really quickly.
( Ancient Battles )
Utica was the only battle that had a split decision, though I'd consider it the most obviously weighted against one side. My double win made up for the earlier shutout, and I carried the day, 23 banners to 22. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had the gang over for a playtest session of Archon yesterday. Well, part of the gang. With school and work, getting everyone together at the same time is going to be difficult until just after Christmas.
Anyway, we had four this time. Me and Mark, who had played it two-player before, plus Jason and Dave. Everyone had read the rules at some point (generally some time ago), and with the clarifications in the current version of the rules it was pretty easy to get everyone up to speed.
Choosing city-states was a bit easier this time, since the need for population growth was understood this time. I took Attica (first) and Arcadia (last), Mark took Argolis and Thessaly, Dave took Corinth and Lokris, and Jason took Aetolia and Messenia.
Play went fairly smoothly, and seemed to act a bit more like I expected. After a few rounds, RPs weren't desperately short, but no one was amassing humongous unspendable stockpiles either. Dave I think set the record for income at about 12-14 RPs late in the game.
The biggest comment from everyone is how austere the game is. Sending out colonies is pretty easy, but gaining control over the area, or doing any sort military adventurism is very difficult. Not because it's expensive in population or resources, but in actions. With a need to build multiple units (at one action apiece), and then activate them for movement, an offensive is very difficult to manage. I was the only one who conquered another city-state, and it took most of the game to get to that point. I could have managed a second at the very end, but mis-thought what I was doing, and took an army as a casualty to preserve my population/militia. That left me with the potential to take another province, but not enough actions to recruit the force needed.
While that is accepted as part of how the game is, the big concern is population growth. Population growth fuels a fair amount of the game (both in that population is needed to do things, and that having too much population needs to be avoided), but the random mechanism for it is proving too chaotic for most everyone.
Having the last pick for initial city states ended up with me taking land-locked Arcadia. This meant that my colonization was powered purely by Attica (Athens). However, with my other distractions (building an army), and a three turn period where I could do almost nothing (kept getting 'play now' cards which drained my hand of actual actions), my colonization efforts never got going.
Final scores: Dave 34 VP (city state w/temple, city state w/democracy, 5 controlled colonies, 16 RP), Jason 34 VP (two city states, 3 controlled colonies, 22 RP), Mark 24 VP (city state, city state 2/democracy, 3 controlled colonies, 11 RP), James 19 VP (2 city states, 1 city state w/democracy, 9 RP).
Playing time came out to about 3 hours, perhaps a bit less.
Not sure when we'll manage more than 2 people face to face again, or what we'll play at this point. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had Mark over yesterday for gaming.
This time, at long last, we did a playtest game of Archon. It's designed by Richard Berg, and is scheduled to be included as a separate game in The Glory That Was Greece, Volume III of the Ancient World series.
The general idea is a simple card-driven game of the rise of the Greek city-states, and their colonization of much of the Mediterranean Basin. Each player starts with control of two city states, and tries to gain control of other ones and/or colonize and control Ionia, the Dardanelles/Bosphorous, Crete, the Nile delta, southern Italy and Sicily (the Greeks also reached much of the Black Sea coast and France, but these are deliberately left out of the game). Somewhat like Berg's recent Blackbeard, the game consists of a single run-through of the deck, which certainly keeps the length down.
Mark and I had read the rules many moons ago, but had forgotten pretty much all of it by this point, so it was the blind leading the blind. Still, it wasn't too bad, and the game actually went about the predicted amount of time (4 1/2 hours for the first play—it should drop to 3).
We started with fairly basic choices for city-states. I took Attica for the resources, population and navy (and supplemented it with Argolis for it's navy), while Mark took Laconia (for the home defense, it took a bit to realize that wasn't going to be starting armies) and Boeotia.
This was technically the start of a resource imbalance that wouldn't show up for a bit. Shuffling didn't go so well, so a lot of card pairs were still clumped together. I expect that'll sort itself out next time. We got drought for the first couple turns of the game, which seriously cut short our available resources. In fact, a couple of cards that demanded naval maintenance wiped out my treasury, and then the navy. So much for that advantage.
However, once the long drought was over, I quickly started getting resources faster than I could spend them. It's not that there was nothing to spend them on, just that spending them takes actions, which are very precious. Much of the middle game was spent trying to figure out how to actually be able to take a neutral city state (purposefully made difficult). We each managed one (Corinth for me, and Phokis for Mark).
The main driving force in the game is population. It grows steadily, if randomly, through the game, and having too much can be as much of a problem as too little. The die rolls really favored me, with Argolis gaining population faster than anywhere else. Of course, this 'forced my hand' somewhat, as I needed to found colonies and maintain a standing army to take up all the spare people.
We only really understood some bits in the rules about controlling colonies for VPs very late, and the end of the game was a scramble to establish control of what we had established. Overall, Mark did somewhat better than I. I abused the fact that I went last to get more than he did, but he was a bit better organized and burned some of my colonies, whereas I never did return the favor. With an extra turn, he would have done much better.
By strict VPs, it was a blowout: 91 to 49 in my favor. Much of that was the middle part of the game where I was consistently drawing 13 to 17 RPs a turn (RPs left over at the end become VPs). I horded them at first, and then realized I couldn't spend them fast enough anyway.... Without the RPs, it was much closer, 17 to 16 in my favor, and again that was mostly because I went last.
Anyway, we think it shows some real promise, and we hope to try a multiplayer session of it soon! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had the gang over for gaming yesterday. We played the ever-popular Advanced Civilization with five players, and had a good time of it.
( Read more... )
We need to sort out who's available when, since it looks like we have some crowded schedules next month. Not sure what we'll play, though my playtest copy of Metropolis Archon has finally arrived.... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had Mark over today for wargaming. It was his turn to pick, and he had originally wanted to do Spartacus, which both of us think looks interesting. But, he hadn't gotten a chance to get it to me ahead of time, and we're trying to avoid one of us teaching the other cold during these meets.
So, he's now loaned it to me for a couple months down the line, and he brought over his Commands & Colors: Ancients collection, to celebrate the imminent arrival of my own copy (should be here within the next couple weeks).
( Chariot Hit and Run )
That put us at 19-21 for the day, but at least I won one of them, and perhaps the one needing the most finesse. Next time between us is my choice; I was planning on Unhappy King Charles, but my playtest copy of Archon Metropolis Archon just came in, and we'll probably do that instead. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had Zjonni over Sunday for some gaming and dinner.
That is, he came over and cooked dinner; he usually stays over for dinner with us on game days. Like my roommate Barron, he enjoys cooking, so this time he returned the favor by fixing us a dinner. As he's between semesters at school, I'm the limiting factor on available free time right now, and there was a nice long day to spend on both gaming and cooking.
Important things first. It was delicious.
Zjonni decided when he came over that he was in a mood for something that had more than just a couple units on the board, which left out the usual SFB. He was also feeling somewhat out of it, and so didn't want to go into the brain-burn of ASL. So, we settled on Pursuit of Glory, which I had at least introduced him to before. He decided to take the Allied Powers, which seemed easier to get going with (I agree), and I refreshed him on the basics as we set up.
The day went fairly well, with us getting to about turn 5, which is the most I've managed in a single session so far, and with someone who hasn't really played before, yet.
The opening moves were pretty standard, I ended up with no real Combat Cards on turn 1, so I only spent 6 cards, and missed drawing one on turn 2 (I try to avoid that). Naturally, the missing card was Reserves to the Front and I got clobbered pretty hard by Enver Goes East. I did get the jump on neutral Persia, and it was only towards the end that he started pressing into there. However, I was slow in Palestine, and he occupied the Sinai before I did much there. In fact, I never really paid that front the attention it needed, and spent too much effort with Russia.
The Russians front was reasonably active, with me having to patch several holes. In fact, at the end, I missed one and he started a grand flanking maneuver. While I was preventing that from going any further, Kitchner's Invasion landed hear Homs.
At the end of things, the numbers looked good for me: 17 VP, 8 Jihad. But I was in deep trouble in Palestine. Elsewhere, things were better, and in fact, I was doing a good job sweeping up in Serbia.
Oh, I should mention that Churchill Prevails hit on turn 2, and the British navy destroyed everything in sight, including the Bosporus forts. First time I've seen it get past the second or third fort. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had Mark over yesterday for our sorta-monthly FtF session. It was my choice this time, so the venue was Federation & Empire. We've been playing (or failing to) this game for quite some time now, but Mark's been struggling with a lot of the details, of which there are many, and which are different from pretty much any other game.
( For the Glory of the Empire! )
From the looks of things, next time we get together will be Spartacus | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Had the gang, or at least some of it over yesterday to try out GMT's Blackbeard, which Mark got some time ago. Due to schedule constraints there were four of us (the game supports up to five), me, Mark, Jason and Patch.
I'd played the AH Blackbeard a time or two ages ago, and while I remember that I generally liked it, I don't recall much else. It didn't take me long however, to realize that while this version is technically related to it, the relationship is quite distant. Offhand, I'd say the new one is much more historical and has a better flow as a game.
However, we stuck with the short game, and there are some definite problems with it. While the playing time is quite good (about 2-3 hours with four of us who weren't overly familiar with the game), it seems to be way too short to feel like anything much has happened. You basically end up going through the deck of events once (possibly even 20 cards short of that), and it seems to us as if that's just enough time for a pirate to loot a couple ships, rack up some notoriety, and retire—if he's lucky. One additional note—a couple of us didn't notice the lines separating the sea areas until they were forcibly pointed out to them. I don't understand why, they were instantly obvious to me.
( Yo Ho! A Pirate's Life For Me )
Plans for next month are, so far, uncertain. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had Mark over today for our monthly wargaming session. It was his turn to pick, and he decided to go with a couple of shorter games to give us some greater variety.
We started off with Winds of War a 'bonus' game from Against the Odds, that started on a bet. Namely, a "I can make a game on anything" bet. The eventual result was a game on Japan's attempt to bomb the US with hydrogen balloons during WWII. It's... not much of a simulation, but it isn't bad for a game that takes an hour or so.
( Winds of War )
After that, we went to the main event of the day: Red Vengeance, a fairly simple game on the last year of the Eastern Front in WWII. It's an old-fashioned hex-game with 'buckets of dice' combat resolution—a combination I'm not used to.
( Long Vengeance )
The game claims a 60-90 minute play time. So far, not so. We did about 4 turns out of 11 in three hours before Mark had to pack it up to go home. I figure we were picking up speed, but you'd have to be pretty darn fast to get to the speed they're expecting (sounds familiar...). At any rate, I had demolished a fair chunk of his forces, and while that's not what victory really consists of, I think we agree that I was winning, though the speed I would really make through the winter months could determine a lot in the way of VPs.
Anyway, it was actually a reasonably fun game, and we'd like to give it another workout soon. Next month is my choice, and it'll either be Metropolis playtest, or Federation & Empire. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| With today (the 4th) being a Saturday, I got yesterday off for the Federal Holiday. Zjonni also had the day off from college, so he came over for some gaming yesterday. As he wasn't entirely on top of things, he decided to go for Star Fleet Battles over learning any of the other games that I've given him some intro to, but he hasn't played yet.
( Read more... )
At any rate, two games, a lot of fun, and Zjonni is getting up to speed very nicely. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Well... today was meant to be a playtest of the game Metropolis (about the rise of the Greek city-states), but I haven't received all my playtest materials yet. So, we went to Plan B: Advanced Civilization. Sadly, Zjonni has two finals to take tomorrow, and, I think, a paper to write, so he could not make it, leaving us with only 5.
The five-player game cuts off one of the four map panels (in this case the west side), and reduces the number of tokens available to each player a little. After randomly drawing for choosing priority, I took Egypt, Patch took Babylon (which he had last time), Jason took Thrace, Mark took Assyria, and Dave took Crete (the only power in play that hadn't been last time).
( Read more... )
We still need to work out the next meet, but we'll probably try for Metropolis... if possible. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had Mark over today to try out Stonewall's Last Battle. It's part of the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War series, which has a pretty good reputation. Also, there's a new game for it due out for the first time in almost a decade, so I've been wondering how anxious I really am to get it.
This particular one is on the Chancellorsville campaign, where the Union nearly surprised Lee, and then let him take the initiative (never a wise move in the vicinity of Lee...).
( Certain Destruction Awaits )
So, a fairly convincing win from Mark, and he's looking at trying out a couple of different short games next time around. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had the gang over again for gaming. With this many people, it's not really possible to change dates at the last moment. So, of course, today is the high point of a little heat wave going though the area. And we rent a place where we aren't allowed to have a wall-mounted air-conditioner.
However, we have two decent freestanding ones, and with both of them working together the temperature stayed quite reasonable.
Zjonni has just finished moving, and came down ill during that, and is still recovering from both. So we only had five of the group over today, which was a second playing of Russian Civil War, which we were happy with the last time we played it, so Dave, Patch and I went for it again with Mark and Jason joining in this time.
( A Plague Upon Both Your Parties )
I hadn't expected this result, and as can be seen, Mark got stomped on pretty hard early, and I never got anywhere with my Red forces. Jason had actually gotten more Red kills than I had, my lead was from having more White units available, and from getting control of the gold at the end of the game (it changed hands twice on the last turn).
Everyone had a good time, and I can say it looks like the game holds up well to repeated playings. Also, the extra chaos of 5 instead of 4 players was a big help to the game.
Next time, we're looking at doing a playtest of Metropolis, a game of the rise of the Greek city-states 8th-5th centuries BC. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had Mark over today for more gaming (this is three weekends in a row with someone...). Today was his pick, and he had decided he was interested in seeing the Third Crusade scenario from Onward Christian Soldiers, which was more than fine by me, as I think it's a good scenario.
It was a rough start, as it's been a bit since either of us has played, and we also had to remember not to confuse the issue with Carthage which can be similar.
( Revolting Edessa )
So, it was another Crusader auto-victory, though this one was much earlier. At first, Mark was worried about how to deal with Saladin, and the large force he was gathering. The events conspired against me, and he took advantage of every one. I could have done better even so, my play just did not rise up to the challenge presented.
It may be a while before we get together again, Mark has a socially busy month coming up. When we do get together, it will be for some-scenario-or-other of Stonewall Jackson's Last Battle. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Had six people over for a game of Advanced Civilization today. New record for attendance (and pushing the limits of what can be hosted)! The setup was interesting as we used my Civilization set for the board and counters, and Jason's for the cards and AST (which are the parts that get replaced in AdCiv...). Anyway, Patch and Zjonni had never played before, while the rest of us hadn't played in years... decades even.
No one had any particular preference for a particular power, so we gave Babylon to Patch and Egypt to Zjonni, as they tend to be very forgiving powers, and then we ended up with Jason taking Africa, Dave Assyria, Mark Italy, and I took Thrace.
( Barbarian Horde... )
We still need to work out the details, but we're planning on the next session being in a month, and will likely be another go-round with Russian Civil War, this time with six players. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| As neither of us had anything important going on for the day, Zjonni came over Sunday for some gaming. We've been meaning to get together for a while now for something with just the two of us, and we finally used a gaming day delay as an excuse. I ran down the list of games I thought I could teach on short notice, and he hemmed and hawed a bit.
Eventually, nostalgia won out and he expressed a desire to try Star Fleet Battles again. We've talked about it a bit in the past, and as he pointed out, he hasn't really had anyone to talk to it about in the last twenty years. I'm more than happy to oblige. ~_^
( Quick duels )
Despite the destructive results, he certainly enjoyed himself, and I'm sure he'll get up to speed quickly. We took a break to show him around some of my SFB materials, and could have probably fit in a third game, but I figured with my luck, we'd get into a drawn-out maneuvering duel that would run overtime. So, I quickly set up Pursuit of Glory ran through the basics, and the first turn of the sample game, explaining in some detail as we went. It's not the best intro to the constant tension the game creates, but if I get a chance to put in front of him again, he'll have a good basis for understanding.
After that it was time for a very good dinner. ~_^ | | comments: Leave a comment |
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