Thursday, May 31, 2007

I'm playing games faster than I can write about them. I guess that is a good problem!

Nevin and I went to Mervyn's house this time for some face to face gaming. Mervyn had designed a three player Wizard King's scenario. Mervyn's Barbarians and Orcs were on the defense against my Feudal army and Nevin's army of Dwarves.



Our objective was to capture 6 points of Mervyn's cities by the end of turn 6. All the cities on map 5, NW corner, were objectives (worth VPs and produced double gold) in addition to Neya on map 10, NE corner. Khax on map 11, SW corner, wasn't worth any victory points but is was a normal gold producing city. All other cities not mentioned did not produce gold and were not worth any victory points. This made it very tough for the attackers as after we ran out of reinforcements we couldn't rebuild our damaged units due to lack of production cities. Also, once a unit was destroyed it was gone from the force pool and we could not rebuild it.



I started off with 80 points of Feudals and received 10 points of reinforcements on turns 1 and 2 (we forgot to take them on turn 2 so it ended up being turns 1 and 3).



Nevin started with 48 (correction, 60 pts) points I believe but got 20 something points of reinforcement for two turns. I forget what Meryvn started with; I think 100 points of Barbarians and 50 points of Orcs. On turn 4, he got 3 Viking ship blocks. If we would have managed to capture Neya we would have received 50 points of Amazon reinforcements.



The battle started off well enough for Nevin and I. I managed to take Khax early but its 2 points of gold a turn was a mere trickle compared to the double gold Mervyn was getting from map 5 to rebuild his damaged units.

Nevin managed to knock the Orcs down to 3 blocks but they were all holed up in Neya and the Vikings managed to sail in and reinforce them. Due to the entry restrictions Nevin could only hope for parity of forces in the attack if he got that at all. I had the same problem as I didn't have units that could scale mountains and there were two choke points on map 5 that Mervyn could defend real well. Again, because of the entry limits to attack I could not bring enough units in to defeat his forces.



At the end of turn 5 it was obvious we were not going to be victorious so we called the game. Next time the Feudals and Dwarves will have to swap places as their mountain units could bypass the choke points on map 5.



We then played a 3-player game of Wings of War with Nevin's minis again. Mervyn (Sopwith Camel) and I (Eddie Rickenbacker, Spad XIII) vs Nevin (Red Baron, DR-1 and Ernst Udet, D.va). Nevin was out for revenge from our last game and sent both of his planes against me. After the first turn Eddie and the Red Baron were trading shots again. But it would be Mervyn credited with the first kill as his Sopwith Camel came to my aid and shot Herr Baron down on his third damage card.



Nevin's remaining plane was peppered by Mervyn and I but continued to fly while filling Meryn's plane full of holes. Nevin finally got his revenge when my plane exploded with a mere 9 damage.



The battle appeared to be even as both the remaining planes had accumulated a lot of damage cards. A final head on pass, a trading of a hail of bullets, and Ernst Udet came out the victor after Meryvn's plane accumulated just enough hits to send his plane down in flames. Our aim must have been off as Nevin's plane had a mere 8 damage in about a dozen+ damage cards.



The minis definitely make the game more enjoyable.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Shifting Sands and Wings of War Minis

Both Nevin and I had the day off today so he came over to play Shifting Sands. I'll post more details later but Nevin's Axis ruled in North Africa. It was getting late so we called the game on turn 7 with the victory points sitting at 12.

We then played one quick game of Wings of War with Nevin's new minis. I took Eddie Rickenbacker's plane versus Nevin's Red Baron. A couple of gun jams for the Red Baron at the wrong time let Eddie survive long enough to shoot him down on a head on pass.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Doh! I've Enabled Comments

The title says it all. I've enabled comments in the blog settings so post away.

Successors III and Friedrich

Mervyn and I went to Mark Simonitch's house today for some Saturday afternoon wargaming. We started off with a Successors' III playtest and then finished off with a quick game of Friedrich. The random general distribution was a follows (Lysimachus and Leonnatus are not used in 3-player games):
John Boone : Antipater and Peithon
Mervyn Dejecacion: Perdiccas and Craterus
Mark Simonitch : Ptolemy and Antigonus

As I started with the lowest VP total at start I chose Mervyn to go first and I would go last. The first turn was pretty much a land grab using the looser rules for placing garrison markers in the 3rd edition. Now you are not limited to only placing garrison markers within 2 movement points of your garrison markers that existed before the start of the Tyche segment. This makes it possible to string them out from markers just placed. Additionally each marker need only be within 2 MPs of one just placed. After claiming most of the areas in turn 1 The victory points were Mark - 21, John - 22, and Mervyn in the teens but he ended up with the most Legitimacy. All players still had Champion status.

In turn 2 Mervyn picked me to go first and I started a campaign in the 6 VP province of Greece but it was cut short when Antipater had to return first to Macedonia (after first defeating the Greek Army) to deal with the Autariatae and then Thrace to face the threat of Antigonus who moved into the Hellespontine. Peithon sat for most of turn 1 and 2 in Atropanene facing a threat from offshoots of Perdiccas' army. Mervyn sent Craterus to Phoenicia to contest some of Mark's holdings while starting Perdiccas' march towards Pella with Alexander's body. Seeing this Mark used his naval dominance (3 fleet points vs 1 each from Mervyn and I) to attack Perdiccas (11 strength) in Celaenae (From Tyre through Cyprus, Pamphylia, and on to Celaenae). After asking Mervyn "you only brought 11 strength points into my province?", Mervyn rolled an 11 and defeated Ptolemy's and Antigonus' (Mark) army of 19 strength points sending them both to the displaced box. I decided to go after Perdiccas with my 18 strength (oops only 14 after the Royals refused to fight) vs Mervyn's now 10 strength army. A few die rolls later and victory was ours as Perdiccas went to the displaced box! I now had AlexIV, Heracles, and the body. It was now Mervyn's turn and he sent Craterus against me but now I had the legitimacy lead and his Royals sat out the fight. In the end I was the only one with Major Generals still on the map. On my final card play of turn 2 Antipater returned to Pella with the body and won the game with 19 Legitimacy points. The game ended so quickly we had time for another so we set up Friedrich. I would like to play this one again as we didn't get a chance to see/use most of the new cards.

Some of the differences in Successors III I remember:
1. Map changes in Europe for Greece, Aetolia, and Macedonia
2. Approx dozen new cards with changes to existing cards
3. Looser garrison marker placement with Tyche cards
4. Using Tyche card Ops value to move a general. Number of Ops is number of movement points. [Edit] Actually this is how it is done in 2nd edition and currently in the playtest. Mark had mentioned before about using the OPs number as a movement die roll. So if you had a 3 rated general playing a 4OPs card would allow him 4 MPs, a 3 OPs card would give him 3 MPs and a 1 or 2 OPs card would give him 2 MPs. This version is what I was thinking about.
5. Asia Minor fleet requires control of only Caria.
6. Legitimacy for burying Alexander's body is tallied different. If buried outside of Pella you still earn 2L but it is now tied to the location, so you can lose it! If buried in Pella you get an additional 8L that you can't lose.
7. There is a new heir for Antipater, that has the same rating, when he dies on turn 3. Can't remember his name.

In Friedrich the sides were randomly drawn:
John B : Prussian/Hannover
Merv D : Russia/Sweden/France
Mark S : Austria/Imperial Army

Merv and I had not played the game since BBG Con 2006 and Mark had not played it even longer. This game ended before we even made it to the third card deck, turn 4? I believe. As I have won with France twice I'm always watching out for him when I play Prussia so I was weaker than I should have been on the Austrian front. Too aggressive play on my part allowed Austria to surround my 9 strength point army (in diamonds) and destroy it when I could not retreat. The Imperial Army then finished off my 8 strenth point army again in diamonds when I had no more diamonds to defend. With 17 points of army strength gone and no army in the immediate vicinity of Austria to defend objectives we called the game.

Maybe one day one of us will have played enough times to win with Prussia.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

What I'm playing now

Since I have my internet connection back up at home I thought I'd make a quick post. Currently I have two play by email (PBEM) games with Cyberboard, The first one is a re-match with Mark Simonitch of Empire of the Sun. In our first outing, and my first time playing, Mark's Japanese achieved victory at the end of turn 5 when Allied progress of war went to zero causing the allies to make peace with the Japanese. I'm playing the allies again in this game trying to make a better showing this time.



My second game is Bonaparte at Marengo with Brian Mullin. Brian by the way also helped design the cyberboard gamebox for Bonaparte at Marengo. We are playing in a ladder tourney. In this game I'm playing the Austrians against Brian's French. The game is half-way through the 5PM turn with 4 more turns to go after this one. This one looks like it will go down to the wire. I have 4 turns left to get 4 more hits on the French in order to drive their morale level down to zero for the victory. This is my sixth ladder game, the forth time as the Austrians, with a win I will be at 3 and 3.



I will get a chance to play something face to face this Saturday when Mervyn and I head on over to Mark Simonitch's house. We haven't decided what to play yet - maybe some Successors III playtest.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Picked a fine time to start

Well it seems like I picked the perfect time, not, to start a blog. We are in the process of moving. I thought I would be moving closer to work but I then found out that our group may move to another building. The new house would still be closer to work, just not as close as I thought. We are in the new house but the internet will not be connected until Saturday, 5/19, at the earliest.