On Board Wargaming

High Frontier

2011-04-08T19:04:00.003-06:00

Two of my current favorite games are from smaller game publishers. High Frontier is one of those games. I don't know what it is, maybe my engineering background or interest in Sci-Fi and science in general but the game just fascinates me. I bought the game and expansion at BGG Con 2010 just based on the few things I had read about it on BGG.

After playing the game a few times I wanted to contribute so I downloaded the VASSAL module for it on the High Frontier Yahoo Group and added to it. Hopefully my additions helped to make the module better.

I recently purchased the new expanded map that includes the remaining planets in the solar system. I haven't had the chance to play on it yet but am looking forward to it.

2011 Gaming So Far

2011-04-08T18:44:00.010-06:00

Man, I haven't posted here for a while. I have been playing games really I have and to prove it here are some slideshows of game days we've had this year.

JAN 22 2011 Game Day

FEB 12 2011 Game Day

FEB 26 Game Day

MAR 26 Game Day

Games played at Madness Games & Comics

2011-04-08T18:27:00.004-06:00

A few weeks ago on March 26. We had a game day at Madness Games & Comics in Plano, TX.

It was a good turn out for the game group, ~23 people showed up for gaming.

I played a 4-player game of Friedrich (as Prussia) and Russia managed to win during Turn 13.

We then played a 4-player game of Battle for Baghdad and the US player won by satisfying

his special victory conditions.

I like both of these games but thought Battle for Baghdad dragged a little longer than I would have liked. It may

have been because I had brain burn from playing Prussia in Friedrich!

Sept 25, 2010 Frisco Library Game Day

2010-09-25T20:58:00.003-06:00

It has been a while since posting but here is quick run down of what we played today.

Sixteen gamers braved the inclement weather and showed up at the Frisco Public Library for boardgaming today.

The following games were present:

Fall Blau - Greg Blanchett's playtest

Command and Colors: Ancients

Sara and Emily Blanchett squared off again for their regular match.

Federation Commander: Klingon Border

Doug Erwin brought his minis and played with Marc Greenspan on Doug's nice looking Hotts Space Map.

Beda Fomm

Brian Marrs(British) vs Steven Sheasby(Italians)

Age of Conan - 4 player game

Mark Bausman

Mark Woodson

Jenny Ramsey

David Harrod

Battle for Baghdad - 5 player game

Mervyn Dejecacion - USA (winner)

John Boone - Shi'ite

Greg Turner - Sunni

Kent Wayne - New Iraqi Government

Steve Gallob - Jihadists

Battle for Baghdad was a wild game and lots of fun. The guys who played it want to play it again.

A lot of things happening since my last post. We were meeting twice a month, at the Frisco Public Library and The Gamers Realm, until The Gamers Realm shut down. The library game group has grown quite a bit and we have been averaging 20+ gamers showing up for a library game day.

Game Day at The Gamer's Realm - 3/27/2010

2010-03-27T19:35:00.005-06:00

Mervyn D, Andy L, and Greg T around the table for Conquest of Paradise. Mervyn and I had not played the game since Jan 2008. This was a really fun game - we should get this one to the table more often.

After finishing our Conquest of Paradise game, Nevin Ball, Mervyn D, and I played Runewars. This is one of my current favorites.

In the other room, Mark Woodson, Tom H, Ken Burt, and Mark Bausman played Twilight Imperium 3. They were still playing when we left.

Game Day at Gamer's Realm 2/27/2010

2010-02-27T08:20:00.001-06:00

Our first game day at the new game store The Gamer's Realm in Richardson, TX. John Boone, Matthew Schemenaur, and Mervyn Dejecacion play Runewars.

Late in the game, the Elves are fighting a two front war vs the Matt's Humans and Mervyn's evil Uthuk . The game ended when the Elves managed to acquire 2 Dragon Runes in the same turn for 6 total required for the win.

In the other room, Mark Woodson, Mark Bausman, Andy Linman, and another player whose name I didn't get play Samurai Swords while Ken Burt watches. I heard they had to stop before finishing the game but it sounded like Mark Woodson was winning.

After finishing our Runewars game, Matt and I played his copy of Panzer General. Matt took the US and I the Germans. Matt's Americans ran over my poor Germans and captured my HQ for the win. This is an interesting card base game where the cards represent both your fighting units and the combat actions they take. The action cards and unit cards each have a cost that the player must pay to use the card. The cost is paid from a player's Prestige point track. Prestige points are gained from the territory a player controls, winning battles, and from event cards when played, so the game comes down to who can best manage their card hand and prestige supply to have enough to go on the offensive and yet have enough for the inevitable counter attack.

Frisco Library Game Day - Dec 19th, 2009

2009-12-20T19:03:00.002-06:00

I've been delinquent with posts here. Hopefully, I can catch up on some recent gaming activities over the holidays.

We had our last game day at the Frisco Public Library this Saturday, Dec 19th, 2009. Here is a slideshow with some pictures from the event.

Some highlights:
GMT Games donated a copy of Command & Colors: Ancients to be given away. Tod Wolf was the lucky winner.

From 2009_12_19: Frisco Library Game Day

We also had a White Elephant Game Exchange. You can see many of the games on the table in the background of this picture.

From 2009_12_19: Frisco Library Game Day

We also had the largest turn out for a library game day this year - 20+ people showed up for gaming!

My Boardgamegeek Con Game Schedule

2009-10-16T11:56:00.002-06:00

I concentrated on setting up multi-player games for BGG Con 2009.
Thursday: Britannia 1 - 6pm
Friday : Hell of Stalingrad 9am - 2pm
Friday : Successors III 3pm - 8pm
Saturday: Sword of Rome 9am - 4pm
Saturday: Friedrich in the afternoon sometime

Open Times: I'd be looking for 2-player or lighter filler games to relax.
Thursday: morning before noon
Thursday: evening after 6pm
Friday : evening after 8pm
Saturday: late evening depending on Friedrich start/finish

Saturday is my heavy game day with Sword of Rome followed by Friedrich.

Looking forward to the con!

Boardgamegeek Con Wargame Meetup List

2009-10-01T07:09:00.001-06:00

A geeklist thread has been started to help in coordinating meeting to play wargames at BGG Con this November.

Upcomming Local Gaming Events

2009-10-01T07:07:00.001-06:00

Follow the links for more information.

Dallas Games Marathon - Oct 16-18
Frisco Library Strategy Boardgamers - Nov 14
BGG Con - Nov 19-22

New webpage for our library group

2009-09-30T20:13:00.003-06:00

I added a new webpage for our local group that meets at the Frisco Public Library for boardgaming sessions. The link is here and is included in my web links in the side bar. Its main goal is to facilitate game match ups before the game day.

Space Hulk 3rd Edition

2009-09-26T22:23:00.000-06:00

After playing Britannia at the Frisco Public Library, I played three games of Space Hulk, 3rd edition with Cody. We played the first scenario, Suicide Mission, three times. We played the Marine activation points wrong the first two games. In those two games the Marines never made it past the first room (actually some Marines were still in the starting hallway) before the Genestealers were upon them. I erroneously thought the number of command points drawn were all that the Marines had instead of the each Marine having 4 command points plus the bonus command points from the chit draw.

In the third game Cody took the Marines again and at least got his men past the first room and down the hall before the Flame thrower guy got killed ending the scenario.

Sept 26th - Frisco Library Game Day

2009-09-26T21:23:00.012-06:00

Ten players showed up for boardgaming today at the Frisco Public Library.

Four of us played Britannia. The first three places were competitive. I brought up the rear way behind. Here are the scores with the highest score of each nation listed for each player.

Mark Woodson - Red - 263 points (Saxons - 185 pts)
Steven Sheasby - Yellow - 261 points (Romans - 147 pts)
David MacAlpine - Blue - 200 points (Picts - 74 pts)
John Boone - Green - 142 points (Welsh - 74 pts)

The Saxons and Romans scored more points by themselves than all my guys did combined.

On the first turn, the Romans will invade England from the South.

The Roman-British fill the void left by the Romans, but only temporarily...

The Saxons take over where the Romans left off, once they annihilate the Romano-British.

It is turn 15 and the Saxons are unstoppable in Southern England and they rule for many years as Bretwalda and King.

William the Conqueror cuts a path through Saxon England and eventually will rule as King..

Al Hay and Brian Marrs played No Retreat....

BRIAN MARRS: I played the Soviets to Al's Axis. The Germans did the usual slice and dice number on my Soviets on the first turn. I started to form what I thought would be a good line of defense, but then Al played some kind of Operational Reserve card that allowed one of his panzers to advance farther than I had anticipated was possible.

By the start of turn 3, Al actually had captured enough cities for a sudden death victory, but I had a card that cancelled the victory and so we played on. I got blown out of Moscow and figured I was pretty much toast. But then the mud and snow turns arrive and my lines start to at least stabilize.

The Germans in Moscow were the most advanced units in what was becoming a bulge in their line. The winter offensives put my Soviets in position to cut Moscow off from supply, although it was a weak ring at this point. The Germans easily reopened supply on turn 5, but by the start of turn 6, they were once again cut off.

Al once again attacked to open up a supply line, but with worse odds than on the previous turn. The Germans had a 1 in 6 chance of blowing the attack and as luck would have it, he rolled a 1. There were 4 units in the Moscow pocket that vaporized from lack of supply. We called the game at this point.

...followed by Storm Over Stalingrad.

Tom and Glen Richardson played a couple of games of War at Sea.

A close up of the action in the Atlantic and Med.

TOM: Played two games of War at Sea, switching sides for the 2nd game. Glen was just learning the game, whereas I've played quite a few times before.

In the first game, Glen's Axis forces attacked in the South Atlantic on Turn 1. Luck caused the battle to go the Allies way, and the Axis was not able to fully recover from that. We went about 7 turns before calling it an Allied win.

In the second game, I played as the Axis. Early on I attacked only where the Allies were weakest, and by mid game my forces were strong enough and Glen's forces weakened enough that I was able to break out through the North Sea and Barents Sea into the Atlantic. After Turn 6, we called it an Axis win.

GLEN RICHARDSON: We played two games and he placed his Das Boot in my Rear Admiral, if you get my drift!

Mick Mickelsen and Matt Kelley played 1805: Sea of Glory.

August 15th 2009 - Frisco Library Game Day Pictures

2009-08-15T15:08:00.002-06:00

Some pictures from the August Game Day at the Frisco Library.

Five-Player Starcraft. Mark Simonitch would eventually win as the Arcturus Mengsk faction.

JOHN BOONE: Called the game a early but Mark Simonitch was cruising to a win. His Stage II two extra Conquest Point markers were a big help gaining him 4 CPs in two consecutive turns. Mark S - 11 pts - Red Terrans Mark B - 8 pts - Green Zerg John B - 8 pts - Orange Protoss Mark W - 6 pts - Blue Terrans Mervyn D - 5 pts - Purple Zerg Mark B was the only player to select his Special Victory condition as his Stage I Leadership card, so everyone kept an eye out on him making sure he wasn't going to get 3 bases on three different planets. The combat system to the game takes to long to resolve, especially for new persons to the game.

Joseph and David battle over the streets of Stalingrad.

Ken and Steve play out the 1960 Presidential election.

Sean and Steven re-fight the US Civil War.

Al and Glen fight a fictional street battle from WW2.

The mean streets of Sniper Town.

GLEN RICHARDSON: WW2 Germans vs Americans Squad on squad fire fight, in a small village. Americans(Al) initiated combat,with an excellent first shot. From there on luck left Al. He usually moved second, and was rarely in a position to inflict casualties on the Germans. Dice went cold on him. I was able to take up good defensive positions, and quickly began inflicting casualties on the American forces. In the end Al conceded, as I had already inflicted 25% casualties on his forces, which demoralized Al's forces (and I think himself, to a degree) : )

July 25th 2009 - Frisco Library Game Day

2009-07-25T16:39:00.001-06:00

Another Game Day at the Frisco Library with a few regulars and two first timers showing up.

Nevin Ball, Mark Bausman, Mervyn Dejecacion, and myself played A Game of Thrones.

Here is a picture at or near the beginning of the game. It looks like Mervyn is up to no good.

At one point, as House Stark I managed to acquire the Iron Throne, the Valyrian Steel Blade, and the Messenger Raven, but I didn't do much with them that turn sadly.

In Turn 9, 4 of the 5 players had a chance to win depending on how our orders resolved,

but Mark Bausman came out victorious with the most City/Strongholds held at the end of the game!

JOHN BOONE: I think everyone had played the game at least once except for Mark so we had a little refresher rules session at the beginning. A random draw of the houses resulted in the following distribution: Sorry I don't know the house names so I've used the player colors. Mark B (Green), Mick M (Yellow), Nevin B (Red), Mervyn D (Black), and John B (White "Stark"). In the first couple of turns Nevin and Mervyn went head to head but soon formed an alliance under Mick's urgings. I moved north to occupy the two power spaces and south and east grabbing supply spaces. Mick expanded westward and Mark eastward. Nevin's memory of our last game where I as White expanded unchecked to win came into play as he and Mervyn arranged a sneaky sea invasion by Nevin's forces taking my home area around turn 4. On the next turn, of course I kicked him back out. The sneaky Red player would do this again on turn 9! Mick gained the lead first with 5 city/strongholds but Mark would take it from him later in the game with a Mark/Nevin alliance. Mervyn's 3 ship fleet made tried to make Mick's life miserable on the south and east coasts but Mick always seemed to have just enough to keep Mervyn out; eventually Mervyn's fleet would head back west. On the last turn the game was still up for grabs with 4 of the 5 players still having the possibility of winning. In the end Mark's Green forces came out victorious with the control of 5 city/strongholds. Congratulations to Mark for the win on his first time playing. We will have to keep an eye out for you next time! Other things of note, was that the first supply card did not come out until turn 7! I thought Mick did well with his limited supply up to that point.

Eric Nicely finally showed up at one of our meetings after two aborted attempts. Eric and Sean Harris fought the Battle of Antietam in Glory III from GMT Games.

SEAN HARRIS: We played the short scenario of antietam. It was 4 turns long. The union suffer heavy losses due to failed charges in the early game and could never recover from it.

Another first timer, David Taylor played regular David Harrod in Twilight Struggle. This is another game by GMT Games. They are putting out a deluxe edition this year with a mounted map and new artwork I believe.

Regulars, Brian Marrs and Joseph Acker squared off in Warriors of God, a game by Multi-man Publishing.

It has a nice looking period map.

BRIAN MARRS: I think everyone had played the game at least once except for Mark so we had a little refresher rules session at the beginning. A random draw of the houses resulted in the following distribution: Sorry I don't know the house names so I've used the player colors. Mark B (Green), Mick M (Yellow), Nevin B (Red), Mervyn D (Black), and John B (White "Stark"). In the first couple of turns Nevin and Mervyn went head to head but soon formed an alliance under Mick's urgings. I moved north to occupy the two power spaces and south and east grabbing supply spaces. Mick expanded westward and Mark eastward. Nevin's memory of our last game where I as White expanded unchecked to win came into play as he and Mervyn arranged a sneaky sea invasion by Nevin's forces taking my home area around turn 4. On the next turn, of course I kicked him back out. The sneaky Red player would do this again on turn 9! Mick gained the lead first with 5 city/strongholds but Mark would take it from him later in the game with a Mark/Nevin alliance. Mervyn's 3 ship fleet made tried to make Mick's life miserable on the south and east coasts but Mick always seemed to have just enough to keep Mervyn out; eventually Mervyn's fleet would head back west. On the last turn the game was still up for grabs with 4 of the 5 players still having the possibility of winning. In the end Mark's Green forces came out victorious with the control of 5 city/strongholds. Congratulations to Mark for the win on his first time playing. We will have to keep an eye out for you next time! Other things of note, was that the first supply card did not come out until turn 7! I thought Mick did well with his limited supply up to that point.

July 18 Gaming at the Boone Casa - Blackbeard and Age of Empires III

2009-07-18T16:12:00.001-06:00

Mick Mickelsen, Nevin Ball, and Al Hay came over to play Blackbeard from GMT Games.

Of course if you're going to play a pirate game you must have provisions,

and more provisions,

and grog.

The game ended much too quickly with the pirates doing hardly any piratey deeds.

Mick really kicked our booty in the final scoring.

My useless pirate who stayed in port more than at sea.

Afterwards, we played Age of Empires III. Mick got the pirate building in this game and won this one too.

Impromtu Gaming Session

2009-06-22T11:36:00.005-06:00

On Saturday, June 20th 2009, we played a 4-player game of A Game of Thrones. None of us had played before, but I had read the rules the previous night. A random drawing of Houses resulted in Nevin playing Tyrell, Mervyn playing Baratheon, Cody playing Lannister, and myself playing House Stark. The game is ten turns long after which the House with control of the most Stronghold and City Areas is the new King and wins the game. The game may also end early in an automatic victory to the player that manages to control seven Stronghold or City Areas at any point before turn ten ends.

Supply, or lack thereof hindered Mervyn and me from forming more than two armies until turn 7 while Cody and Nevin traded punches in the center of the map; the first supply card showed up on turn 2 but we were not prepared for it and then the 2nd Supply card did not show up until turn 7. Mervyn and Cody then ganged up on Nevin as I made my way down the East side of the map from the North. Turn 8 ended in a Stark victory when I grabbed the Neutral stronghold on the East coast and an open city in one March order.

I'd like to try this one again with 5 players. The 5th player(I forget the house name) is a neutral house in the 4 player game so Stark can ignore him.

Next up was Kingsburg. Nevin took the lead early and lost it only to Cody for a short period before regaining it as he cruised to victory with 40pts followed by Cody with 36pts and Mervyn and myself with 30pts.

Nevin(Borgo), Cody(Hegemony), and myself(Outpost) finished with a three-player game of Neuroshima Hex!. After all the nuclear dust settled, Cody came out on top followed by Nevin and myself last.

On Sunday, I taught Claire how to play Ace of Aces. She said she enjoyed the game even though her dad kept shooting her down.

D-Day, June 6th, Game Day at Frisco Public Library

2009-06-16T12:50:00.009-06:00

On Saturday, June 6th, we had our third game day at the Frisco Public Library. Thirteen people split up into five groups and played the following games:

FOR THE PEOPLE
Joseph Acker and Sean Harris managed to get in two games of FTP.

Sean: I got schooled in the ways of how the south lost the war.

JUNTA
The group of Al Hay, Mark Bausman, John Boone, Nevin Ball, and Mark Simonitch played Junta.

The game was very fun and the the table was loud with the trash talking. I believe the government changed 5 different times during the game. Nevin and Mark ended up tied for first place followed by Al, myself, and Mark.

Al left after the game finished so that left the remaining four for a game of Small World.

SMALL WORLD
Nevin, Mark S, Mark B, and I then played Small World. Small World is based on the earlier game Vinci.

Where Vinci had nameless empires, Small World adds a little flavor by using fantasy races each with their own special power mated with randomly drawn additional special ability. Some of the combinations that came up were Commando Hobbits, Berserk Humans, and Diplomatic Skeletons.

I owned Vinci before and traded it away as too dry so I was surprised by how much I liked Small World. It played quickly and the race/power combination's that turned up were fun. This must have been Nevin's day as he came in first again followed by Mark Bausman, myself, and Mark Simonitch.

HAMMER OF THE SCOTS
Steve Gallob and Tom first played Hammer of Scots where Tom's English defeated Steve's Scots.

TWILIGHT STRUGGLE
They then played a game of Twilight Struggle. I'm not sure how that one turned out.

WATERLOO
Mick Mickelsen brought the new Waterloo game by Martin Wallace and he and David Harrod gave it a try. I believe they played it twice both games ending in Mick's French being defeated.

Mick: The first game of Waterloo was a learning game. The British cavalry broke through the French columns causing great chaos. We rebooted. I continued as the French. They did better but still had made no significant progress when the Prussians started to arrive. Neither David nor I could see a clear path to victory for the French. Plan to double check the rules to make sure we were playing correctly. We then played Twilight Struggle. I played the USSR and David had the worse luck on the card draw. USSR seemed to control most of the map most of the game.

TWILIGHT STRUGGLE
Afterwards, they played Twilight Struggle.

UNHAPPY KING CHARLES
Brian Marrs, as the Royalists, took on Steven Sheasby's Parliamentarians in Unhappy King Charles.In the end the King got to keep his head by surviving till game end for the victory.

Brian: I had the Royalists versus Steven's Parliament. For most of the game, we fought over the Midlands and South regions. I briefly laid siege to London but the dreaded 1-6 die split went against me and I had to retreat.

The Scots made a brief appearance in the North, but Newcastle, with 3 brigades of Veterans won the first battle, and then I hit him with a card that not only drained 2 cards from his hand, but also 2 brigades from the Scots. That left them easy prey for Newcastle to finish him off.

The New Model Army(NMA) became available during the final two turns of the game. Steven received relatively few Operations cards and was unable to get the NMA into action. Cromwell spent some time chasing after Hopton in the South but could never quite catch him. Meanwhile, Byron was running amok in the East region converting spaces as he went.

In the end, Parliament controlled the South and Midlands, while the Royalists controlled Wales, North and East. I think Parliament controlled 3 resource areas and the Royalists controlled 5. Charles was happy and got to keep his head.

Plenty of tables at the Frisco Public Library McCallum Meeting Room.

Catching up with recent gaming activities

2009-05-08T09:48:00.004-06:00

On Saturday, May 2nd, the North Texas Wargamers had our second meeting at the Frisco Public Library. Twelve people showed up for some boardgaming goodness.

Nevin Ball and Erik Nicely were going to play Panzerblitz: Hill of Death but Erik had bad directions and didn't make it so Nevin took off early after playing a single game of Neuroshima Hex! with Sean Harris. Sean's report on Neuroshima Hex!:

This is a great little wargame. Each game is different. I was blue and Nevin was green. Nevin had some early good draws and hit my HQ pretty good. I came back in the late game but I could not catch up. This is a great short wargame and can play up to four players. The randomness of the draws just adds to the strategy.

Other games played that day included:
1. For the People

Joseph Acker - CSA
Al Hay - USA

A brief synopsis by Joseph:

In summer of 1861 there was Foreign Intervention in favor of the C.S.A. Robert E. Lee captured Washington D.C. in the spring of 1862, giving the C.S.A. a sudden death victory due to Strategic Will.

2. For the People

Brian Marrs
Sean Harris

Sean Harris' report:

This was a learning game for me. so I basically got stomped, but I did learn alot. And apparently Brian is one of the really good players of For the people. So it is always good to get stomped by the best. I just hope he does not get tired of playing with rookies like me.

Brian and Sean had planned on playing a different game, Bloody Roads South, and in fact had set it up but there was some confusion of trying to play the game with a newer version of the rules so they decided to play For the People instead. For the People was the most popular game at this meeting; it was played three times Saturday.

3. Age of Conan

Ken Mikolaj
Mark Bausman
David Harrod

I'm not sure how the factions were divided up but Mark said Ken won this one. This is one of my current favorites.

4. Fall Blau playtest

This is Greg's WW II Eastern Front game he has been working on. What better way to work out the kinks than playtest it with game designer Mark Simonitch!

5. Unhappy King Charles

John Boone - Parliament Player
Steven Sheasby - Royalist Player

My thoughts:

This was the first game for both of us so there was a lot of rulebook page flipping for the first couple of turns and I'm sure we still got a few things wrong and missed others - just like every game you play for the first time.

We had one and half turns left to go but called it after Steven lost a general in the midlands( I intercepted and he accepted battle) leaving only King Charles on the map in the North region facing off with the Lord General with his 6+ brigade army. At this point, we agreed it was time for the Fat Lady to come out and sing. In the previous turn, Oliver Cromwell decisively defeated Prince Rupert in the South which allowed Parliament to clean up down there taking all South areas except one.

The early pattern was that Parliament controlled the South West (East and most of the South Region) while the Royalist controlled the North West (Most of the West and North Regions) and we split in the Midlands Region.

Most of the fighting occurred in the line from the South-Midland-North Region. There is a possibility for auto victory for each side. The Royalist player automatically loses if King Charles surrenders but he was hard to run down up in the North in our game and bringing in a large enough army to have a chance to do anything requires 3 OPs cards or Minor/Major Campaigns. The Parliament player can lose of the Royalists manage to take London and hold it for two turns but I would think this would be hard to do.

Battles end up bring indecisive affairs for the most part, either not occurring at all because one side disperses leaving the field of battle or in battles that do actually happen resulting in "draws" with loses of one or two brigades at most. Even Major and Decisive victories only result in the loss of two brigades at most but they also allow drawing strategy cards from the deck (Major -1 card, Decisive - 2 cards) which the victor must either discard or play immediately to finish off their turn.

I had fun playing it and want to play it again.

ps - Steven thinks my Alien Dice are loaded. I rolled a few opportune sixes in the game but, I also rolled consecutive ones on the siege I was doing up North too Steven.

Some groups finished their first game and started another.
6. For the People

Joseph Acker - USA
Al Hay - CSA

Joseph and Al switched sides and played FtP again they enjoyed the game so much!
Again, Joseph's thoughts:

By end of spring of 1862 the Union had taken West Virginia and Missouri. There was a small Union force in Columbus, GA and another one in Little Rock, AK. The Union also had taken much of Virginia; the C.S.A. still held Richmond, but prospects were very grim, and the C.S.A. conceded.

7. Warriors of God

Brian Marrs
Sean Harris

Brian's thoughts:

We had to end this early due to time. I was really impressed with this game. The leaders mortality adds another dimension to this lite wargame. It insures each game is different. I lost on points but I would play this again in a heartbeat.

8. Twilight Struggle

Ken Mikolaj
David Harrod

This one seems to be a popular game with wargamers and eurogamers alike.

So ended another good gaming session at the library with plans for another sometime in June.

Teaching Claire Memoir '44

2009-05-03T13:03:00.003-06:00

Inspired by Memoir 44 History Club I decided to ask Claire if she wanted to learn Memoir 44. She said yes so we played the Sword Beach scenario from the base game. Claire picked the Germans and I took the British. To minimize the complexity I removed all the special wordy cards from the deck. I also played a random card from my hand each turn.

Here is a picture early on in the game.

Claire did well but didn't have the cards to stop my advance and the British won 5 medals to 3.

North Texas Wargamers at Frisco Library - 3/14/2009

2009-03-18T11:58:00.006-06:00

On Saturday, March 14th, twelve of us showed up at the Frisco Public Library for a meeting of the North Texas Wargamers. The Vivian Stark McCallum meeting room was the place to be from 10 AM to 3 PM for some boardgaming goodness.

The meeting room is quite nice with plenty of space and enough tables and chairs to hold a dozen more gamers comfortably. After a half hour of catching up, since we haven't had a meeting in a while, we divided up into four separate games:

1. Successors (GMT Games edition) - John Boone, Mervyn Dejecacion, Nevin Ball, Steven Sheasby
2. Storm Over Stalingrad (Multiman Publishing) - Al Hay, Greg Blanchett
3. The Napoleonic Wars (GMT Games) - Joseph Acker, David Harrod, Ken Mikolaj
4. Twilight Struggle (GMT Games) - Sean Harris, Steve Gallob

With the exception of Successors, the other games finished early allowing another round of games which included:
1. 1960: The Making of the President (Z-Man Games) - Joseph Acker, Ken Mikolaj
2. Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! - Russia 1941-1942 (Phalanx/Academy Games) - David Harrod, David MacAlpine
3. Manoeuvre (GMT Games) - Sean Harris, Steve Gallob

As you can see games by GMT Games were in the majority which is expected given the group's interest in historical board wargaming and the proliferation of games put out by GMT Games since their founding in 1990.

Sometime during the gaming festivities, John Kranz, founder of the ConsimWorld website, showed up to meet the guys. John relocated to the Dallas area from Arizona where he has hosted the annual ConsimWorld Expo for board wargamers in Tempe, AZ.; this was his first time to show up at one of our gatherings and hopefully not the last. Below are some after action reports (AARs) on some of the games played.

1. Twilight Struggle - A card driven game (CDG) simulation of the 40 year Cold War between the two Super Powers, the United States and the former USSR. I did a more exhaustive write up of the mechanics of game play in an earlier post here for those interested.

From Sean Harris' point of view:
"[The] U.S. was behind throughout most of the game. Every major area was very chaotic but the Russian got some key [victory points] in the Early war and Mid war. The U.S. did not make any headway in the Middle East until it did not matter. The U.S. got hit with Quagmire [an Event Card] and that made Russia's progress in Central America fairly easy. The late war began and Russia won on turn 8."

2. 1960: the Making of the President - Yes, a boardgame about the 1960 Presidential Election between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. Why play a game on a subject when you already know the outcome? So you can see if you can do better of course! This game is from one of the designers who designed Twilight Struggle, Jason Matthews.

Joseph Acker's perspective:
"[The game] went the full distance. Nixon took the lead in the early rounds, pursuing a strategy of ignoring the East and focusing on the South and the Midwest. Kennedy was fortunate to win two of the three debate rounds and was then able to dominate the last two rounds, especially the last round with a final whistle stop campaign. The final result was fairly close but a definite win for Kennedy."

3. The Napoleonic Wars - Another card driven wargame - this time in the Napoleonic era when all of Europe tried to stop the steam roller of France under its greatest general Napoleon Bonaparte.

Joseph Acker's perspective:
"Nappy lasted one turn. France had the Capitulation card, so he gambled and made too strong [a move] on Vienna which was defended by a combined Austro-Russian grand army. Kutuzov routed Napoleon in both attacks, and Russia gained a resource each time. England and France both conceded the game [Russian victory?] at the end of the turn since France was badly weakened and had no hope of gaining an ally since it was a three player game."

4. Storm Over Stalingrad - World War II epic battle for Stalingrad. Not a card driven wargame but uses the same Area-Impulse system made popular in the games Breakout Normandy, Storm Over Arnhem, and Monty's Gamble Market Garden.

Greg Blanchett's perspective
"It was Al's first time playing so we did a standard bid of three [victory points?] and let him play the Soviets. I had hot dice on the first turn but things turned sour. Cards were not shuffled enough and I didn't take Mamayev Kurgan [an important objective] as I should have. He had four VP areas left and I was closing to take take two more on the last turn... If I had drawn an Overrun card it would have been possible. Al played a good game, exploiting the system to its gamey reaches..."

5. Successors - My favorite multi-player card driven wargame, recently redone by GMT Games. I have both the new edition and the original Avalon Hill Game Company edition. This is a multi-player game covering the wars of Alexander the Great's Successors after he died unexpectedly in Babylon leaving no direction and no apparent heir. My past entries about Successors are here. A random distribution of generals resulted in the following assignments:

Mervyn - Antipater(2L,2R,Macedonia - Pella); Lysimachus(2L,2M,Thrace)
Nevin - Antigonus(2L, 2M, Phrygia - Celaenae); Leonnatus(2L,2M, Hellspontine)
John - Craterus(2L, 2R, Cilicia); Peithon(2L, 2M, Media - Ecbatana)
Steven - Perdiccus(4R,2E, Babylonia - Babylon); Ptolemy(2L,2M, Egypt - Memphis)

Note: Numbers are the number of combat units (CU), L = Loyal Macedonians, M = Mercenary troops, R = Royal Macedonians, E = Elephant troops. Names in parenthesis are starting Province - starting location.

My perspective:
Turn 1- The usual first turn card play to place Political Control (PC) markers to expand everyone's holdings and no battles except Mervyn's run in with the Independent Army in Greece. I grab one of Alexander's heirs, Heracles, in Damascus.

Turn 2 - Steven buries Alexander in Babylon instead of trying to run the gauntlet to Pella. This effectively makes this a "crown the Regent" or "try to get the most territory, i.e. victory points, game". Mervyn spends most of the early turn capturing Greece and goes in to the lead in victory points (VPs). Mervyn also cashes in VPs for most fleets with control of the Macedonian and Athens fleets. Nevin raises a force in Persis province and builds a Loyal Macedonian there trying to be a pain in my backside threatening possible move against me in Media or against Steven in Susiana and eventually Babylonia. Mervyn then grabs Olympias from under Nevin's nose and marries her to one of his Generals strengthening his legitimacy bid as the rightful heir of Alexander's empire. Nevin is greatly disturbed Mervyn is messing around in his provinces. Nevin, in the later half of the turn, combines units from both of his Generals and defeats both of Mervyn's Generals piecemeal sending them to the Dispersed box. Now Macedonia lays completely open to Nevin. Nevin marches victoriously in to Pella but doesn't have time to take it by turn end. Steve is content not moving his Generals most of the turn but instead sends a small force to try to take the West African province of Cyrene. I gain control of the Phoenician and Cypriot fleets trying not to fall too far behind Mervyn's naval supremacy in the Med. Peithon hangs out in his own province of Media for most of the turn eyeing Nevin's force south in Persis but then heads west to Mesopotamia to attempt to break the PC marker stalemate there. Craterus ends up in Cyprus, gaining the Cypriot fleet, then goes to Rhodes thinking either to attempt to get the fleet in Rhodes or move against Nevin or Steven. When I'm in Rhodes, Ptolemy(Steve) starts invading Phonecia for easy pickings and I eventually lose the Phoenician fleet. Perdiccus(Steven) defeats Peithon(me) in Mesopotamia (Arbela), kills Peithon and sends my 3 Loyals to dispersed box; this is when I definitely decide to go against Steven and march to Egypt. In this battle, since I had more Legitimacy than Steven his 4 Royal Macedonian CUs (8 combat strength) would sit out the battle; this would give me an advantage in combat strength provided Steven rolled average for his Elephants. Steven rolls a twelve giving him 8 combat strength of elephants and I end up losing the battle. Moving into Rhodes in the first place was part of the possible circle back and head to Egypt plan but since Nevin had so thoroughly spanked Mervyn in Thrace I was having second thoughts about our alliance. Once Steven hit me in Mesopotamia and Cyprus I decided to continue with my first choice and go after Steven - 6 VPs in an undefended Egypt is just to good to pass up. At the end of the turn, I'm still low man on the totem pole for VPs so make Steven go first again. I believe Nevin is now the Usurper.

Turn 3 - Ptolemy (Steven) starts moving back toward Egypt. Mervyn spanks Nevin's big force in Pella (Antigonus) sending it to dispersed box and Nevin captures the rest of Hellespontine for 2 more VPs. I successfully seige Egypt's capital, Memphis, denying Steven the 6 VPs for Egypt. We have to call the game after first round of cards of turn 3 as our time for the room is up.

The game is pretty close at this point, Nevin leads in VPs but he and Steve are low in legitimacy, after giving up their Champion status, and are now Successors. Mervyn and I keep our Champion status since we are such nice guys! Since I had higher legitimacy than Steven I think I could have defeated Ptolemy this turn (he's not going to roll double sixes for elephants again is he?). With my combine legit and VPs I think I would have had a chance for a Regent victory at the start of turn 4. I definitely want to play this one again.

Game Day at Mark Woodson's House, Saturday Feb 28, 2009

2009-03-07T15:42:00.004-06:00

News spreads quickly throughout the Empire that the Emperor has died. The circumstances are still unclear but he was involved in an "accident" leaving a power vacuum in the Empire. Now the nobles of the various houses have begun their struggle to position themselves to become the Galactic Emperor.

From 2009_02_28 - Galactic Emperor

Of all the noble houses, only four have a real chance to gain the throne, House Woodson, House Dejecacion, House Bausman, and House Boone. All factions have established their power bases on Omega Sector systems to use as jumping off points for further exploration and expansion into the newly discovered Omega Sector.

It's Hard to Conquer the Galaxy on $5 a Day!

From 2009_02_28 - Galactic Emperor

Another game of Galactic Emperor at Mark Woodson's house. We had played before at Mark Bausman's place back in November of 2008. This was my second time playing and the game ended up pretty close in the final scoring. Mark Bausman pulled out the win, his first he remarked, with 51 points followed by Mervyn and I tied at 49 points, and Mark Woodson in 4th place with 47 points. Mark B was able to score 13 points in the final scoring round for a come from behind win.

From 2009_02_28 - Galactic Emperor

After Galactic Emperor ended, we played a quick 4-player team game of Neuroshima Hex!, Humans (Outpost and Hegemony) vs. Mutants (Moloch and Borgo). Mervyn (Moloch) and I (Borgo) ganged up on Mark B's Hegemony HQ and destroyed it for the team win. Mark Woodson's Outpost HQ was undamaged at game end. At one point, Mervyn and I were scoring a combined 7 hits on Mark's HQ every battle. At that rate, it didn't take long to knock it down to 0 damage points!

Saturday, Feb 21, 2009 - Hammer of the Scots

2009-02-22T19:36:00.017-06:00

Nevin called me on Thursday evening and asked if I had 3 hours to spare on Saturday for a quick game. After confirming with Dana that I did, 8^) , we agreed to meet at his house, at noon, for a game of Hammer of the Scots. I had not played the game in about 2 years but the rules are short so I gave them a quick read through Friday evening. When I arrived we rolled for sides and I drew the English against Nevin's Scots. For those unfamiliar with the game, Hammer of the Scots falls into the block wargame category made popular by Colombia Games. Block wargames use blocks, surprise surprise, to add an element of the fog of war to the game. During the game the blocks are faced such that only the owner of the unit can see the units current stats. The block's current stats are revealed, in the case of Hammer, only when a battle is resolved. Hammer of the Scots is a game about the Scottish rebellion, think Mel Gibson and Braveheart, against the English in the 13th century. The game has two scenarios, "Braveheart" and "The Bruce", and a campaign game, where both scenarios are played back to back. The "Braveheart" scenario is the first, chronologically, of the two and occurs while William Wallace is still alive while "The Bruce" takes place after Wallace's execution when Robert the Bruce takes up the mantle for Scottish independence.

Braveheart - FREEDOM!
Nevin and I decided to play the first scenario and setup according to the rules. We made our first mistake when both of us left off one of our starting nobles from the map. Nevin forgot the Bruce noble and I forgot to place Dunbar I believe. After setup, Nevin dealt out the first hand of 5 cards each and we were off. Each turn of Hammer represents the passing of 1 year which is divided up into 5 game turns that consists of the play of one card face down from each players hand, in the Card Phase, and then revealed simultaneously. Each card in the deck will either be a number card, numbered from 1 to 3, or an event. The person who plays the higher valued number card or event card goes first with the English player winning ties; although, I don't know if "winning" is the correct term as oftentimes it is a disadvantage having to move first. The revealed cards are then resolved in the Movement Phase. If an event card was played, read the event and resolve it as instructed on the card. If a number card was played then you may move some or none of your units on the map possibly initiating battles. Before explaining movement I will have to talk about the map for a bit.

From On Board Wargaming

The Map and Movement - the Scottish Highlands are a B*$!#h to Take!
The map is a representation of Scotland and the Northern part of England that borders Scotland. Scotland itself is divided up into areas with either a red or black border. Most of the areas are marked with a heraldic shield indicating which noble controlled this area; this is the Noble's home area that they will return to during the Winter phase. All areas have a stacking limit indicated by a number in a black castle icon withing the area. The stacking limit is the number of blocks that may remain in an area during the Winter phase. Lastly, some areas also contain a major Scottish Cathedral indicated by a white cross in a blue circle; these areas increase Scottish stacking limits by one. Areas sharing a common border are adjacent for movement purposes. All blocks within an area's boundary, within Scotland, are considered one "group". On a numbered move card, the number indicates how many "groups" of units a player may move in that game turn. For example, If I played a "2" card I could move units from two separate areas during my game turn. All units, except the Norse unit, have a movement rating printed on their block either a 2 or 3. This is the maximum number of areas a unit may move when activated to move. Moving into enemy occupied areas and crossing red borders causes a unit to immediately end its movement. Units starting in England have special movement rules in that they are treated as "groups" individually so a "1" movement card would allow only one unit to move across the border into Scotland. Black and Red borders also regulate the number of units that can cross that border in a game turn. Six units may cross a black border in a game turn while only two units may cross a red border. The red borders represent the more difficult mountainous terrain limiting the number of units that may cross it and how far they can move. If your units are moved into an area containing enemy units a battle will be initiated. The battle is resolved after both players have resolved their cards for the Movement Phase of the game turn.

Battles - How William Got His Groove Back
Eventually hostilities will occur between the players; these battles are resolved in the Battle Phase of the game turn. It is one of the ways to get Nobles to switch to your side. If multiple Battles need to be resolved the first player designates the order. Battles last for three rounds. If the attacker has not eliminated the defender after three rounds the attacker must retreat and the battle ends. All units have a combat rating and a current strength. Combat ratings are a letter number combination such as A3 or C2. The number is the number that must be rolled less than or equal to on a six-sided die (d6) to "hit" the opponent and the letter is when it fires. "A" blocks fire before "B" which fire before "C" rated blocks. Withing the same letter rating the defender fires before the attacker. So a typical round would go as follows, Defender "A" blocks fire first, the attacker assigns hits, Attacker "A" blocks fire, the defender assigns hits and it continues with the "B" and "C" rated blocks; that completes one round of combat. When it is a block's turn to fire it may instead chose to retreat. Blocks must retreat to friendly or empty areas obeying border crossing limits in a combat round and they may not retreat across a border last used by the enemy to enter the battle area. A block's strength can range from 1 to 4 "pips". As a unit takes damage it is rotated so the number of "pips" uppermost represents its present strength. A one pip unit taking one more hit is eliminated and removed from the map. If the unit is a Noble it switches sides at strength "1" and comes back into the battle as a reserve unit. If the unit is not a Noble block it will either be permanently eliminated or be returned to the players draw pool depending on the rule for that unit, i.e. if the William Wallace block is eliminated it is gone for the rest of the game. If multiple groups of blocks on a player side enter an area across different borders one of those groups will be designated the main force and the rest will be reserves which enter the battle in the next round. After a battle has been resolved, the victor may "regroup" his surviving units. Regrouping allows the player to move any number of his surviving units to any adjacent friendly or empty areas within the border crossing limits. Regrouping is optional. After all battles have been resolved in the Battle Phase a special Winter Turn occurs.

From On Board Wargaming

Winter Turn - All Good Things Must Come to an End
In the Winter Turn, all nobles return to their home areas on the map, armies are checked for over stacking in all areas in Scotland, players may then receive replacements, and a new hand of five cards are dealt out for the next year turn if no one has won and the game has not ended. At the beginning of the Winter Turn, all English controlled nobles are returned to their home areas. If a home area is enemy occupied the noble switches over to the Scottish side, at current strength. All Scottish nobles are then returned to their home areas and likewise if their home area is enemy occupied the noble switches sides. If there is a Scottish King on the map he may withdraw to any friendly or neutral (empty) area on the map with a Cathedral, disband, or remain where he is. The English player may then disband some of his units (except nobles). English Archers, Knights, and Hobelars must disband; English Infantry have the option of disbanding or remaining in Scotland within an area's castle limits. If Edward I is in Scotland he may "winter" there; if he does all red blocks stacked with him, except nobles, may remain in Scotland regardless of the castle limit of the area. Edward I may not winter in Scotland in back to back turns. If Edward does not winter in Scotland he must disband. The Scots player now winters his remaining units. If Wallace is on the map he may remain where he is or move to Selkirk forest where he may gain up to 2 replacement points. The Scottish player now disbands all of his units that exceed an area's castle limits. Both sides may now use replacement points on existing units (both sides) or to bring on new units (Scottish only). After replacements, the English player conducts his feudal levy of troops in England, provided Edward I is not wintering in Scotland. Finally a new hand of cards for next turn are dealt out to both players.

Highlights and Mistakes - William Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Unfortunately, we did not get to finish the scenario; we had one more year turn to play through but we ran out of time and I had to leave. When we stopped, we both controlled 7 nobles apiece. William Wallace had been eliminated but Nevin had crowned John Balliol King so it was still a close game and could have gone either way. For some reason Galloway just did not want to switch over to the English. He always managed to survive the battles and finally switched sides after a successful play of the Herald Event. Edward wintered twice in Scotland with a good size force but in both instances the year ended on the first game turn due to event cards being played by both sides. The army must have thought they were on holiday. There was only one big, at least 6 blocks on a side, battle, initiated by the English. It occurred in Fife on the next to last year turn; I was hoping to kill some nobles so they would defect to my side but it ended in a stalemate with both sides units badly injured and the English retreating back to Mentieth.

As usual with games we haven't played in a while, or in new games we play for the first time, we missed some rules. Here are the ones I, as the English player, played incorrectly and some that may have been played wrong.

1. Units can not winter in England. They must disband at the end of the turn.

2. The English King must disband at the end of the turn if he does not winter in Scotland.

3. If Edward I winters in Scotland the English player does not get a levy in England for the next turn.

4. Losses due to the Pillage Event Card are distributed exactly like combat losses, i.e. they must be applied to the strongest units.

5. English levy units entering Scotland from England do not have to stop when crossing the black border lines. They only have to stop moving when they cross the Red Dotted border line. I played this wrong the whole game and it slowed down my levies moving into Scotland.

Thoughts for the English - What John Would Do Next Time
I think the only thing I did right as the English in this game was maintaining control of Mentieth. Mentieth is the gateway to the North or South of Scotland depending which way you are going. Of course Fife is another nice area to control.

1. I would try to convert Bruce and Galloway quicker next time as the English. They were a constant thorn in the English side. Once they are converted, I would move them out of their home areas and combine them with other English blocks. I think Nevin drew the Herald Event at least three times in our game and Galloway or Bruce seem to be his favorite target; fortunately for me he failed all his rolls but if he was successful and they were stacked with other English at least there would be a chance to convert them back in the ensuing combat.

2. I did not bring infantry out of England quick enough early in the game. Of course I was playing the movement rule for crossing the Scot/English Border incorrectly but I was still too slow. You need these guys to occupy enemy noble areas so the Scottish nobles will convert during the winter turn. I never really got a chance to use them in this capacity. Most of the time they moved into Dunbar and then moved into Mentieth.

3. I would put up more of a fight when the Scots go after the English nobles starting in Argyll and Atholl. Once they are converted it is tough to get back in there with sufficient strength to battle them do to the red borders.

It was a fun game and I hope to pull it out more often than every 2 years.

Saturday, Feb 14, 2009 - Starcraft and Neuroshima Hex!

2009-02-15T12:01:00.014-06:00

On Saturday, Mick, Nevin, Mark, and Mervyn came over for a game of Starcraft: the Boardgame with the Brood War expansion. A random draw of factions and player order resulted in the following player assignments and play order:
1. Nevin - Aldaris (Protoss) : Home Planet - Tarsonis
2. Mick - Arcturus Mengsk (Terrans) : Home Planet - Chau Sara
3. John - Tassadar (Protoss) : Home Planet - Halcyon
4. Mervyn - Jim Raynor (Terrans) : Home Planet - Braken
5. Mark - The Overmind (Zerg): Home Planet - Victor V

"STRATEGERY" in Progress

At the beginning of the game, every player must chose one of his Stage I Leadership cards to start the game with. Nevin was the only one to chose his special victory condition requiring all the other players to accumulate 20 Conquest Points to win the game. Nevin would win by accumulating 15 Conquest Points or win at game end by default. Mark chose "The Overmind" leadership card which gave him an extra Conquest Point every turn as long as the Overmind was in play. I chose the "Warp Gate" which let me move all units in the area with the Warp Gate to any other area that was friendly to me or empty at the end of the Regrouping Phase. Mervyn chose the "Storage Facilities" which gave him 3 resource tokens at the start of the game and allowed him to collect up to 3 more resource tokens at the start of the Regrouping Phase provided he had unused workers remaining in his worker pool (this is a nice ability for the Protoss whose units are expensive). Mick chose "The Sons of Korhal" ability. This allowed him to use the star order token. When executing it, he could chose to use it as a Mobilize, Research, or Build order and he could chose to treat it as a special order provided he fulfilled the other requirements for using special orders. Nevin's special victory condition was going to make it tough for any of the other players to win and increase the game's playing time.

The View from the Trenches - During Turn 4 Planning Phase, I believe

The set up of the map dictated where the early battles would be fought and in this case it was divided along two major "fronts". In one front, Mark and Nevin would be the major combatants and in the other Mick, Mervyn, and I would fight over planets.

In the beginning, Mark's Overmind token allowed him to take the lead in Conquest Points but it did not take long before Nevin's units invaded and destroyed the Overmind taking away Mark's bonus Conquest Point ability. While Nevin and Mark waged war against each other, Mick and Mervyn fought on Antiga Prime allowing me to expand to Hydrax peacefully and eventually the space area of Erebus Station. Mick would land on the land portion of Erebus Station where we would maintain a truce until turn 5. Mick's initial battle went badly forcing him to retreat to an empty area of Antiga Prime but at the end of the turn a "navigational error", played by Mick, caused Mervyn to lose his way back to the planet when Mick swapped the Z-axis end points between Antiga Prime and my home planet. After a second round of battle, on the following turn, this left Mervyn with a lone isolated unit on Antiga Prime and Mick with a gleam in his eye thinking of future clean up operations on Antiga Prime. After the "Navigational Error", Mervyn had "backdoor" access to my home world, Halcyon.

During the turn 3 planning stage, I told Mervyn I was going to trust him not to invade my home world so I could consolidate my holdings on Hydrax. Mervyn did not attack my home world but he did contest Hydrax. I can't blame him as that was the only logical expansion route off his home world, Braken. Turn 3 saw more fighting between Nevin and Mark, and Mervyn and I. Nevin and Mark fought to a standstill on Dylar IV while I managed to defeat most of Mervyn's forces on Hydrax. Turn 3 saw the appearance of the Stage II event deck and during the end turn Regrouping phase everyone chose to play their "Hero" Leadership card.

A Hero has abilities specific to that faction and the following additional abilities common to all heroes, immunity to splash damage, immunity to mind control, and immunity to technology card abilities that destroy units outright. I placed my hero, Zeratul (Dark Templar), on my home planet in the area where the Warp Gate was located so I could warp him off planet if need be during an end of turn regrouping phase. I think it was at the end of turn 3 that I used a "Navigational Error" event card to swap Mervyn's and my z-axis routes back to how they were at the beginning of the game giving Mervyn a chance to come to the aid of his lone unit opposing Mick on Antiga Prime.

More fighting ensued during turn 4 between Nevin and Mark, and Mervyn and Mick. I landed on Mark's home world intending to attack his lone hero but he had evacuated his planet before my troops landed. At the end of turn 4, all factions were on at least 3 different planets but I had a slight lead in Conquest Points and so was attacked by Mark, Mick, and Nevin during turn 5. Turn 5 would be our last turn of the game as both Mick and Mervyn had other commitments that evening so we called the game at the end of turn 5 in favor of Nevin since none of the other players were anywhere near the 20 Conquest Points required to win.

After the Starcraft game ended, Nevin and I played a two player game of Neuroshima Hex! and then we played a 3-player game with my son Cody. In the first game, my human Outpost faction was victorious over Nevin's Moloch cyborgs. In the following game, my Hegemony human gang HQ was completely destroyed and Cody's Outpost humans squeaked by with the win beating Nevin's Moloch by one point. We played the new Z-man Games version that included four different factions, the Moloch, Borgo, Hegemony, and the Outpost. The game consists of laying tiles on a hexagonal grid map trying to score the most damage on the opponent's Headquarters (HQ) tile by game end. So how do you do all this?

Two-player game in progress - Outpost vs. Moloch

Each faction's playing pieces include one HQ tile and 34 other army tiles divided up between Instant Action tiles and Board tiles. The Board tiles are units representing either "combat" units or "modules" that enhance a units abilities or give them additional abilities. Instant Action tiles, as their name implies, are not played on the map but cause a certain action to occur immediately when played. Examples of Instant Actions are Battle, Move, Sniper, Push Back, and Air Strike.

At game start, each player shuffles their 34 tiles and places them in a stack. This will be their draw stack used during the game. After setting up your draw stack, each player's HQ is placed on the map starting with the first player. The are no terrain effects on the map in the base game so all hexes are the same. For a two player game, only the 19 hexes in the center of the map are used. The other hexes are reserved for future scenarios. After the HQs are placed the first player then starts the game by drawing the top tile from his stack and revealing it. The player then has three options, play the tile, discard the tile or save it for a later turn. The second player then takes his turn by drawing the top two tiles from his stack and either plays it, discards it, or saves it. Play then passes back to the first player but from then on the players will draw a number of tiles until they have three revealed tiles. Once this happens a player on their turn will first have to discard one of their tiles and then takes their turn as before, i.e. discard, save, or play a tile. This turn sequence continues until all players have drawn all of their tiles from their respective draw stacks at which point the game ends and a winner is determined. The fun part is deciding where to place your tiles to do the most damage to the other player when a battle occurs and the resolving of the other instant actions.

Three-player Death Match

Combat units will have at least one of the following combat abilities, Melee attack, Ranged attack, Net, or Armor. These actions will be assigned to a specific hex side of the combat unit. This indicates in what direction that ability can be used. Combat units, if it has an attack type ability, will have an initiative rating which determines when it fires during a battle resolution . Units that have a better (higher) initiative rating can destroy enemy units before they have a chance to fire. Melee and Ranged attack are the abilities that cause damage to enemy units. The Armor ability provided protection against ranged attacks, and the Net ability prevents an enemy unit from doing anything. Finally, a combat unit may have one, or more of the optional abilities: Mobility and Toughness. Mobility allows a combat unit to move during the owning players turn. Units without Mobility can only move when a Move Instant Action tile is played on that unit. Each Toughness icon on a combat unit increases the number of hits required to destroy a unit by one. Units without a Toughness icon require only one hit to destroy. So how does a battle begin?

Battles are initiated when a player plays a Battle Instant Action tile, the 19 hexes of the play map are filled with board tiles, or at the end of the game (the final battle) when the last tile is played, discarded, or saved. All units with the same initiative fire simultaneously, with higher initiative ratings firing first, and all fire from the same initiative is resolved before going on to the next lower initiative rating. Combat units and modules are removed, at the end of the initiative phase they were fired at, if they take hits equal to their wound rating. Hits on HQs are recorded on the score track on the map board. HQs start on the 20 space of the track with each hit deducting a point of their total. It they go below the 1 space the HQ is destroyed and that player is eliminated from the game. If this was a two player game then the game is immediately over and the other player wins. The game has quite a bit of strategy trying to figure out how best to use the Board tiles and Instant Actions you've drawn and plays quickly so if you are eliminated in one game you have plenty of time to get even.

2-10-2009 Wordle Image of Blog

2009-02-10T14:09:00.000-06:00

GiftTRAP: The Hilarious Gift Exchange Challenge

2009-02-03T12:19:00.004-06:00

I received a copy of "Gift Trap" from my sister over the weekend and Cody, Christine, Claire, and I had a chance to play it twice this past Sunday. The game is quick, about 30 minutes, and the kids and I enjoyed it.

The full title of the game is "GiftTRAP: The Hilarious Gift Exchange Challenge". The games plays with 3 to 8 people and plays best with people you know a little something about. In the game, you score points by giving the gifts others like and getting the gifts you like in return; it's that simple. The game is played in multiple gift giving rounds until one person wins by moving both of their scoring pieces to the GIFTED space.

A round starts with the first player drawing a number of gifts, from one of the four categories, equal to one more than the number of players and placing them in the numbered squares in the middle of the board. For example, in our game we had 4 players so 5 gifts were drawn and placed in spaces 1 to 5. There are four different groupings of gifts to choose from but the rules don't mention how they are differentiated.

After placing the randomly drawn gifts on the board, each player simultaneously decides how they are going to divide the gifts up between the other players. Each player places a numbered GIFT marker, number side down, in front of each of the other players with the number corresponding to the gift you think they would like. So if the "Racing Pigeons" gift, an actual gift, is on space 1 and you think Joe would like it, you place the #1 GIFT marker in front of Joe. In our 4-player game each player gave out 3 gifts. Once this phase is completed, each player then rates the gifts on the board on how they prefer them with another set of markers labeled "GREAT, +3", "GOOD, +2", "OK, +1", and "NO WAY, -4". This is done simultaneously with the rating side of the marker placed face down on the gifts one is rating so all players preferences are secret. Since there are only 4 markers, some gifts may go unrated. The unrated gifts are the ones you are lukewarm about. Once all gifts are rated, the scoring phase begins.

Scoring is done one player at a time starting with the first player. The first player turns over all of their rating markers they placed on the gifts revealing what they thought about each gift. They then turn over the gifts they were given by each player and compare what they got to how they rated that gift and move theirs and the giving player's scoring markers on the board. For example, if Player Two gave Player One gift #3 and Player One rated gift #3 with a GREAT Player One's "GET" score marker would move forward +3 spaces and Player Two's "GIFT" score marker would also move forward +3 spaces. On the other hand, if the gift had been rated "NO WAY" the score markers would have been moved -4 spaces backward. Unrated gifts score a minus 1. Once all players have scored, if one of them has managed to get both of their scoring markers in the "GIFTED" space they win the game otherwise another round starts with the honor of being the first player passing clockwise to the next player.

As you can see, winning requires giving the gifts people want and getting the gifts you want.

The game is quite entertaining and fun and has won many awards including:
Best Party Game of the Year 2008 - Games Magazine
Top 5 Party Games 2006 - Majorfun.com
Game of the Year 2007 - Faidutti.com
Best Game from a New Publisher - Boardgame Podcasters Awards
Top Ten Games for 2006 - Chicago Tribune
Featured in 'Good Gift Game Guides 2006' - Seattle Morning News
Best Party Game 2009- Creative Child Magazine

What Wargames I'm Interested In for 2009

2009-01-12T17:15:00.004-06:00

Happy New Year and may your 2009 gaming be better than 2008! After perusing the latest new releases and pre-release offerings from the various wargame companies I thought I'd list the new titles that interest me. In 2008 my interest in pre-WW2 games was re-awakened so I will list those titles first but in no particular order of preference and save the WW2 offerings for last.

1. Unhappy King Charles (GMT Games): A two player card driven game (CDG) on the English Civil Wars. From what I've read and seen my first impression is that it is a return to the concepts, shorter rules and quicker play times, of the earlier CDGs like We the People and Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage. This is what I find attractive about the game along with its subject matter. As I get older, I prefer face to face games and hence games that can be finished in one sitting preferable in 3-4 hours. This one looks like it will satisfy that itch. The game is designed by Charles Vasey.

2. Washington's War (GMT Games): Another two-player CDG in fact a remake of one of my favorites, We the People, and thus, must be on my must buy games of 2009. Not just a reprint but a revamping by the original designer, Mark Herman, one of the top wargame designers in my opinion. As you can deduce from the titles of the game it covers the American Revolutionary War. The original, We the People, introduced a couple of new systems one of them the concept of Battle Cards to resolve combat instead of rolling dice on a combat results table (CRT). From posts on both Boardgamegeek and ConsimWorld, people either love Battle Cards or hate them. Washington's War will not use Battle Cards; instead using competitive die rolls with a multitude of die roll modifiers (DRMs) based on army strength, leadership, naval support, etc., to determine a winner and then another set of die rolls to determine losses. It will be interesting to see how this works but I was in the "love it" camp of the old Battle Cards system.

3. Great Campaigns of the Thirty Years War (GMT Games): A two-player game of operational warfare in the 17th century taking place on a point to point map of southern Germany. Turns represent a month made up of a number of impulses representing about a week each. The playing time is listed as 5-6 hours (full campaign?) so it may not see the table that often but it is another low complexity game. The listing for it does show some battle games will be included so hopefully it may have some good quicker battle games to play when you don't have time for the full campaign. The designer is Ben Hull famous for his Musket and Pike battle series which is another set of games, taking place in the same time period but on the tactical scale, I like but haven't had the opportunity to play in a while.

4. Sekigahara: Unification of Japan (GMT Games): This is a two-player block game of campaigns to unite Japan in the 1600s. The designer is Matt Calkins a fairly new game designer I'm guessing as I've haven't heard of him before. I really don't know a lot about the game but its pluses are it's a wargame, it's supposed to play in 3 hours, it's a block game, the components look very nice, and it's about feudal Japan. What more do you want? Ok, good game play would be nice so I hope this one doesn't disappoint. The combat system uses cards for resolution instead of dice.

5. Spartacus (Compass Games): Finally, a game not being produced by GMT Games; although there is nothing wrong with that! GMT Games seem to be the most prolific of the wargame publishers and what is great about them is that their quality of output doesn't seem to be affected by the quantity of games they put out each year. Bravo to them! It will be interesting to see if the current economic situation will put a damper on their output. Anyway, back to Spartacus. Spartacus almost flew under the radar for me, mainly because it is being published by Compass Games. Compass is a fairly new wargame publisher who's most successful title seems to be the solitaire game of the WWII allied submarine campaign in the Pacific, Silent War. Spartacus is a two player CDG (I must like CDGs) pitting the Sertorians against the might of Republican Rome around 80 BC. The Sertorian player's goal is to conquer Rome itself or simply break up the Roman Empire while the Roman player tries to hold the empire together both militarily and politically. The game designer, John B. Firer, worked with Mark Simonitch on the second edition rules for Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage and the third edition of Successors both favorites of mine. On the strength alone of that pedigree, Spartacus deserves a look from me. The point to point map covers Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Asia and the combat system can use either Battle Cards (optional) or conventional die rolling.

Finally, we come to the offerings covering World War 2. I have three games each one covering a different theatre of the war, purely by chance, the Pacific, the Eastern Front, and the Western Front.

6. Kawaguchi's Gamble: Edson's Ridge (Multiman Publishing, MMP): MMP's claim to fame is getting the rights to continue publishing Advanced Squad Leader modules and supplements after the old Avalon Hill Game company folded and was bought by Hasbro. Within the last 4 or 5 years they have also started publishing both new games and reprinting games from both the Gamer's line, which merged with MMP, and the International Gamer's Series which is the brain child of Adam Starkweather, whom I had the privilege of meeting back in 2004 at ConsimWorld Expo when he was still play testing his monster baby, Devil's Cauldron: The Battles for Arnhem and Nijmegen. Kawaguchi's Gamble is a two-player game of the battle for Edson's Ridge on the island of Guadalcanal during WW2 1942 designed by Ken Dunn. Ken Dunn is also the designer of the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kits which have helped to introduce new players to the ASL series of games. Kawaguichi's Gamble uses the area-impulse mechanic first introduced by Avalon Hill in the game Storm Over Arnhem and continued with great success in Breakout Normandy and most recently in Storm Over Stalingrad published by MMP. The area map depicts Edson's ridge and the area surrounding the jungle south of Henderson Airfield. The 5-turn game playing time is listed between 2.5 to 3 hours and pits 3 battalions (3000 men) of Japanese attempting to retake Henderson Airfield but first they must get through the 800 US Marines, on Edson's ridge, in their way.

My last two games on my list are both designed by Mark Simonitch. Mark wears many hats being one of the principles of GMT Games, their lead artist, and a game designer. Other designs by Mark include Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage which was reprinted in 2007 by Valley Games, Successors which was reprinted in 2008 by GMT Games, Ukraine '43(GMT Games), and Ardennes '44(GMT Games).

7. Caucasus Campaign: The German-Russian War in the Caucasus, 1942 (GMT Games): The Caucasus Campaign covers the German-Russian war in the Caucasus in 1942 when Hitler sent two German armies to seize the desperately needed oil fields in the Caucasus to support the German war machine. It is a standard hex and counter wargame that will include both a tournament scenario listed as taking 2 hrs along with the full 14-turn game that is listed as taking 5 hrs to complete.

8. Normandy '44 (GMT Games): As you can guess by the title Normandy '44 covers the allied invasion of Normandy France in 1944. The 2-player, hex and counter game covers the first 21-days of the invasion at the regimental scale using a simplified rule system from Ardennes '44.

Well that's my list for now. Maybe later I can think of a couple more games to round out my list to ten.

New Games for Christmas 2008

2008-12-27T12:51:00.013-06:00

Santa left me two games under the Christmas tree this year and I tore into them on Christmas morning.

Manoeuvre is a quick playing low counter density game using a variable map and cards. There are eight nationalities in the game: France, Britain, Russia, Spain, Austria, Turkey, Prussia, and the US. Each nationality has their own deck of 60 cards tailored to the characteristics of that nations fighting style and leadership in the time period (Napoleonic Era) the game is based on.

Brood War is an expansion to StarCraft: the Board Game. I got Star Craft last Christmas. Brood War adds new unit types for all six factions in the base game. The Terrans get two new unit types, Medics and Valkyries. The other factions each get three new types; the Protoss have Dark Templars, Dark Archons, and Corsairs; the Zerg receive Lurkers, Devourers, and Infested Terrans. Each faction gets 17 or 19 new combat and technology cards to add to the base game. The new combat cards provide attack values for the new units, while the technology cards provide new techs for the new units. Some of the new abilities include "Collateral Damage", "Recharge, and "Mind Control".

Brood War comes with 4 sheets of new goodies; Six more "planets", Installations that are placed on planets like Bases but provide new abilities to the faction that can build them, three new module types, a new "Defend" order, new Building tokens, Hero tokens, and more.

What I really find interesting and can't wait to try out are the new Leadership Cards. At the start of the game and at the start of each turn that begins a new stage players will select from their hand of Leadership cards one of them to play for that stage. Since there are three stages, players will get a chance to play 3 Leadership cards during the game. Each faction's Leadership cards are specific to that race and some of them seem to be pretty powerful and cool. No longer is a special victory condition automatic during stage 3 of the game. A player will have to select the Special Victory Condition Leadership card at the beginning of the game otherwise the only way a player can win is by the Conquest point method. There are three stage I Leadership cards for each player, one of which is its special victory condition. In addition, each stage I Leadership card has a different starting force mix. I'm looking forward to trying this out.

TOMB - A Description and Mini-Review

2008-12-23T11:33:00.034-06:00

TOMB: Recruit a Party. Kill the Monsters. Take their stuff!

Dana bought me TOMB for my birthday so I could play it with the kids. It was a fun game but, I don't see how it is possible to finish it in an hour, which is the playing time printed on the box! Claire, Cody, and I played it on Sunday; I think it went at least 2 hrs before we quit to go get something to eat. I had not read the rules before we started to play so that added to the play time but I think it could have went 3+ hours before we would have completed the game.

The game box says to "Recruit a party. Kill the Monsters. Take their stuff." And that is basically what you do in the game trying to collect the most experience points (XP) from killing monsters and taking their treasure by game end. The game ends once all of the crypts on the game board have been explored and cleared out.

SET UP: To setup the game you pick which dungeon map, of two, you are going to play on then each player draws three cards from the Crypt deck. Starting with player one, determined by die roll, and going clockwise each player places one of his/her drawn Crypt cards in one of the cypts on the board and then draws another card from the Crypt deck. This continues until all the crypts on the map are fill. Each crypt on the map has a size rating, the number of Crypt cards it takes to fill it, ranging from 1 to 5. A Crypt card is either a Treasure, a Monster, or a Trap. As there are 200 cards in the Crypt deck, way more than you will use in a single game session, each game will have different traps, monsters, and treasures on the board. As you can see, each player, depending on their memory, will have a little idea of what is in the crypts but not the full picture.

Once the map is populated you set up the Inn board which consists of shuffling the four decks that your party may draw from when they are at the Inn. The four decks are ITEM, TACTICS, PRAYER, and the SPELL deck with 25 cards in each deck. The ITEM deck consists of, as you guessed, items that you assign to a specific member of your party. Most of the items will fall into the categories of weapon, bow, helm, armor, glove, or shield. There are a couple of items such as the torch and caltrops that don't fall into any category. The rules state that a character can have only one item of each type attached to it. So your brave fighter will not be lugging around 3 swords, two bows, and two suits of armor; no overloading your characters which appears to be standard in other dungeon crawling type games.

TACTICS are cards that grant special abilities to your party. Some of the cards are "use once then discard" and others can be used over and over by your party until lost (by the character that it is assigned to dying). The Tactics effects can affect all aspects fo a player turn, combat, recruitment of new characters, movement, etc.

PRAYER and SPELL cards can be used by Cleric and Wizard characters or characters that have a non-zero value for Holiness (PRAYER) or Magic (SPELL). Each player then picks a party counter to represent their band and places it in the Inn. Each Prayer and Spell card describes what effect it has on the game, when it can be used, and if it is a one and done type of card or if it can be used repeatedly by a character it is assigned to.

Ok so how do I recruit my party? There are 84 possible character chits that you are able to recruit but only a small subset of these will be used during a game. The character chits are placed in a bag for random drawing during the course of the game. When a player's party is at the Inn, one of their available actions for a turn is to recruit a new party member from the available characters at the Inn. Now the game is ready to begin, but before we begin let me tell you about the dice.

THE DICE
The game provides three colors of 10 sided dice, green, blue, and red of which the faces are either blank or are imprinted with a axe symbol. Rolling a blank face is a failure or miss and rolling an axe is a hit or success. The green die has an axe on 3 of the 10 faces, the blue die has 5 axes, and the red die has 7 axes. Obviously you want to be rolling the red dice as much as possible. All game elements where success is not automatic require rolling a die or dice of a certain color or colors to determine the outcome. The color and number of dice rolled is dependent on the character attempting the roll and his or her ability that you are rolling against. Character abilities can be modified by the items/treasures it is equipped with and by Prayer, Magic, and Tactics cards that have been played.

THE CHARACTERS
There are 4 base character types in Tomb, Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard. There are also characters who are a combination of the base type, Cleric/Fighter, Fighter/Wizard, Fighter/Rogue, Cleric/Rogue, Cleric/Wizard, and Cleric/Fighter/Wizard. Each character is rated for 4 abilities, Attack, Skill, Magic, and Holiness. Fighters tend to have better Attack abilities, Rogues better Skill abilities, Wizards are highly rated for Magic, and Holiness is the high ability for Clerics. Each of these abilities are rated with a number and color of dice that a character will roll when using that ability, for example a fighter may have an Attack rating of 3 red dice while a wizard may only rate 1 blue die for Attack. All characters have a hit point (HP) rating; this is the number of wounds needed to kill the character. Finally, each character will also have a special power listed on its card. These powers can be extra movement points while in the tomb, bonus hit points, bonus dice, bonus card draws, etc, etc.

A GAME TURN
Once the Inn is setup, the second player starts off by deciding what they will do, ie first player to place an item in the Crypts during setup goes last. On their first turn, a player pulls 5 characters from the character bag and chooses 1 of them to join their party. The other four go to the Inn where they can be recruited in later turns. Once this first turn of recruiting has taken place by all players a regular turn is started. Each player may do the following on their turn in order:
1. At the beginning of a turn, take as many Free Actions as one likes. Free actions include redistributing cards attached to their characters, healing all characters in your party of all wounds if they begin the turn at the Inn, and using React(ion) Cards.
2. Perform One Standard Action. Standard Actions are Act, Draw, Heal, Move, Pickpocket, Play a Card, Recruit, Return to Inn, and Raid.

ACT - A player may use a Turn Action on a Character card (chit), other Card, or a Space on the Board with an associated "Turn" Action. Character Cards, Cards or Spaces may have a special ability associated with them. If that ability is labelled with the word "Turn" then that means it takes the whole turn to use that ability thus you may use one "Turn" action per player turn.

DRAW - If a player starts their turn at the Inn they may draw a total of two cards from the four draw decks on the Inn board. Weapons and Item cards must be assigned (attached) to characters in your party when drawn. If a weapon or item can't be legally assigned to a party member then it is discarded. All other card types drawn go in to your hand, which has no hand size limit, until played at which point they will either be discarded once resolved(one time use cards) or attached to one of your party members (cards that can be used again and again until lost).

HEAL - Parties that are in the tomb area, ie not at the Inn, and have at least one Cleric in their party may perform a Heal Action to attempt to remove wounds from characters in their party. Roll dice of each color equal to the total of all Holiness of all characters in your party. Each success (axe) rolled allows the removal of one wound from a character. The player may spread the healing love around in his party as they wish.

MOVE - All parties start with a base movement point(MP) allowance of 10 MP. The base can be adjusted up or down by character special abilites, treasure, or other items in the game. Each MP allows a party to move one space horizontally or vertically on the tomb map; there is no diagonal movement allowed. In order to enter a crypt a party must stop on the tomb door square at the end of a turn. On the players next turn the party may then enter the crypt.

PICKPOCKET - A party must have a Rogue, and be in the tomb area. There is no pickpocketing allowed in the Inn. The player chooses one of the Rogues in his party and a target item or treasure from another player's party. The targetted item/treasure must be in another party in the tomb and be within the movement limit of the Rogues party in the tomb. The targetted party player then choses one of his characters in the party to attempt to "catch" the Rogue in the act. Both players then roll the number and color of dice from their Skill ability with the targetted player winning ties. If the Rogue wins, he steals the targetted item/treasure and must assign it to the Rogue. If this is not possible the item/treasure is discarded. If the targetted player wins then the character gets one free attack roll against the Rogue. The Rogue suffers any wounds from this attack and may be killed. If the Rogue survives he/she is returned to your party.

PLAY A CARD - Some Prayer, Spell, and Tactics cards are marked as a Turn Action. These cards may be played in the Inn or Tomb (but not when resolving a Raid) and counts as the player's action for the whole turn. Some cards are marked as Battle Actions. These cards can only be played during combat and counts as the characters action for that combat turn. Cards marked at React Actions can be used in addition to any Standard Turn Action.

RECRUIT - While at the Inn, a party may spend its whole turn recruiting a new member to its party. A party is limited to a maximum size of 5 characters unless some special ability/item/treasure allows differently. New characters are recruited from the available characters in the Inn; if there are no characters in the Inn then you are out of luck. Newly recruited Clerics and Wizards allow drawing one card from the Prayer or Spell deck respectively. If a character has both Magic and Holiness then they allow drawing a card from each of the Prayer and Magic decks.

RETURN TO INN - If a party is in the tomb it may use its whole turn to return to the Inn. This can also be done during combat, as a character's battle action, if the battle is not going well for its party. Once at the Inn the player may choose to bank any attached treasure cards.

RAID - At the start of your turn, if your party is on a crypt door, it may enter the crypt to attempt to kill monsters and take their treasure. Crypt encounters are resolved in the following order, Traps, Monsters, and Treasures. Each crypt is labelled with either an L or an R at the entrance. When a player enters the crypt the player to the L(eft) or R(ight) of that player takes up all the tomb cards in the crypt and becomes the Crypt Master (CM) for this encounter. The CM decides the order of how Traps are resolved and once all traps are cleared the combat decisions for all the Monsters in the crypt. If all Traps and Monsters are defeated the Treasure is awarded to the raiding player. At this instant, the raiding player must either bank a treasure or attach it to one of his characters in the party. Only banked treasures and treasures attached to surviving party members at game end cound for XP at the end of the game. Once a treasure is banked it can't be stolen or attached to a party member. The downside is that some treasures have great special abilities but if banked can't be used. If you attach a treasure to a party member you can use the special abilities of the treasure but the treasure can be stolen (pickpocket) or lost if the character holding it dies. The CM then controls the resolution of the raid starting with any Traps.

TRAPS - When resolving Traps, the CM reveals how many characters can attempt to defeat the trap and what attribute is used, that's it. The raiding player doesn't know what the effect is for failing or what the target number (TN) is for success. The raiding player then rolls the number of dice allowed by his/her character abilities. The CM then determines of the trap is defeated or not. If the attempt failed the raiding party suffers the effects of failure listed on the card and if successful the CM reveals the effects of success. Whether the party fails or succeeds, the raiding player must decide if they will continue resolving any further encounters or retreat back to the crypt entrace space. If the party retreats the encounter is over, the CM replaces all cards back into the crypt space, and the next player takes their turn. If the raiding player continues and all traps have been resolved then the CM continues the encounter by revealing all Monsters in the crypt.

MONSTERS - All monsters in a crypt are revealed after any trap encounters have been resolved. A monster encounter is resolved started with the CM chosing a single monster to act. The raiding player then choses one of his party members to act and this continues until all monsters and party members have had a chance to act; this is one combat round. If there are any survivors on both sides a new combat round it started. Combat rounds continue until on side it defeated or the raiding party decides to retreat back to the Inn. The normal sequence of a combat round can be altered by character special abilities or played cards during the monster encounter. A monster may either perform a normal Attack or perform a Battle Action using Inn cards assigned to it or use its special ability. Characters may either Attack, perform a Battle Action, or Flee back to the Inn. If the raiding party manages to defeat all the monsters in the crypt they are finally awarded any Treasure cards that are in the crypt.

TREASURE - Treasure always has an experience point value (XP) and may have special abilities associated with it. All treasure awarded must either be banked for XP or assigned to a party member. Once the raiding player has decided what he/she will do with each piece of awarded treasure their turn is complete.

This completes the description of all things you can do in a turn. Now I will go over the combat system in a little more detail.

COMBAT
Each monster and character has an Attack rating on their respective card or chit. This rating lists the number and color of each die that a character or monster will roll in an attack. For example, Squire Orban, a fighter, has an Attack rating of 2 Blue dice while a monster, such as Skrit Yscar has an Attack rating of 2 Green, 1 Blue, and 1 Red die. In addition, each character or monster may have a special ability that aids it during combat. Skrit Yscar's special ablility allows it to attack each party member in a combat round. This a a pretty good ability as normally one may only attack one monster/character in a combat round. For each success (axe) rolled in an attack one wound is inflicted on the target monster or character. If the number of wounds equals or exceeds the monster's or character's hit points (HP) that monster or character is dead. Killed monsters are awarded as XP to the player; killed characters are placed in the dead pile and the player losses all items and treasure attached to the killed character. When a monster attacks, the attacked player gets to choose the target of the attack but when a player attacks a monster the player gets to pick the target of the attack. Presumably the player's party has more coordination in the defense and attack during a combat round.

Now after playing it only once, what do I think about it? Overall, I would give the game another shot. My kids enjoyed playing it so it will probably make it back to the family gaming table.

LIKES
1. The great variety of characters, monsters, traps, and treasures.
2. What is novel in this game is that each player has a chance to play the Crypt Master(CM) in this game unlike in other games, such as Descent.

DISLIKES
1. The rulebook - there is already a long FAQ for this game. It appears the game had a poor quality control in the editing - The Map board and some cards use terms that were changed at the last minute in the rulebook, Bar and Blacksmith cards instead of Tactics and Items cards.
2. There can be some long down time for the other players while one player is resolving their turn.

Sunday, Dec 14th 2008 - Kingsburg

2008-12-14T15:15:00.007-06:00

This morning three of the kids and I played Kingsburg for the first time. I bought the game the day before on advice of Nevin and read the rules last night.

Cody - Red Lion
John - Black Hawk
Claire - Green Dragon
Christine - Yellow Stag

Description from Boardgamegeek:

In Kingsburg, players are Lords sent from the King to administer frontier territories.

The game takes place over five years, a total of 20 turns. In every year, there are 3 production seasons for collecting resources, building structures, and training troops. Every fourth turn is the winter, in which all the players must fight an invading army. Each player must face the invaders, so this is not a cooperative game.

The resources to build structures and train troops are collected by influencing the advisers in the King's Council. Players place their influence dice on members of the Council. The player with the lowest influence dice sum will be the first one to choose where to spend his/her influence; this acts as a way of balancing poor dice rolling. Even with a very unlucky roll, a clever player can still come out from the Council with a good number of resources and/or soldiers.

Each adviser on the King's Council will award different resources or allocate soldiers, victory points, and other advantages to the player who was able to influence him/her for the current turn.

At the end of five years, the player who best developed his assigned territory and most pleased the King through the Council is the winner.

Many alternate strategies are possible to win: will you go for the military way, disregarding economic and prestige buildings, or will you aim to complete the big Cathedral to please the King? Will you use the Merchant's Guild to gain more influence in the Council, or will you go for balanced development?

At the end of each year, during the Winter phase, a random invader will attack the kingdom. In the first 4 turns the invaders did not do any damage to any of the players. On the final game turn, a strength 8 Demon hoard attacked. Only Cody managed to defeat them (I rolled a '1' for King's Troops) with Claire tying them and Christine and I being defeated losing a Cathedral and Town Hall in the process. After the adjustments to the Victory points, Cody won by a large margin.

Cody - 40 points.
John - 26 points
Claire - 23 points
Christine - 20 points

The kids said they enjoyed the game so it will be played more at the Boone House.

Saturday, Dec 13th - Senji and Citadels

2008-12-13T17:48:00.011-06:00

The day started off with a trip to Madness Comics and Games down in Plano. They are having a buy 2 get one free sale so I met Mervyn Dejecacion and Nevin Ball down there. Since we always usually play each other we coordinated our purchases so as not to get duplicates. I bought Kingsburg, having never played it but Nevin said it is good, Mervyn got Android, and Nevin picked up Neuroshima Hex!. Merv and Nevin then followed me back to my house where we waited on Mark Simonitch to arrive to play a 4-player game of Senji.

Mervyn and I had played a three player game with Mick Mickelsen at BGG Con 2008 and decided it would play better with more people. BGG Con was our first time playing it so we played a couple things wrong but still were willing to give the game another go. After today I can say that it does definitely play better with more people. A random draw of the factions resulted in Mark being Purple, Nevin being Black, Mervyn Red and I Green.

The object of the game is to be designated the daimyo by the emperor at the end of the game. The daimyo is the person with the most honor at game end which ends once someone achieves or exceeds 60 honor points. Mark started off with an 8 honor Samurai so had first crack of hosting the emperor. In Senji, the player hosting the emperor decides the turn order of many phases so it is a powerful position and the rules even state "you must not let a player host the emperor several times in a row or he will soon be victorious. You have been warned!"

Mark soon added on to his lead and was able to host the emperor for 3 turns. I had tied him for honor at the end of turn 2 but the hosting family gets to decide the tie breaker. Around turn 3, one could see how the players were going to try to achieve their goals. Mark and Mervyn were heavy into collecting Hanafuda cards which are basically the resources in the game. Nevin was pursuing a balanced strategy of collecting resources and building up to attack, and I was going for a military strategy forgetting about collecting resources. In the first turn, I lost one of my initial provinces and being sandwiched between the other three players on the map I had to build up my forces, forced into forgoing collecting resources.

At the end of turn 3, I had claimed the right to host the emperor and I kept it until the end of the game. By this time I had honor somewhere in the forties with the other players in the twenties and lower. My fear was that Mark or Mervyn would make a big jump in the end with their Hanafuda card resource strategy if I couldn't end the game quickly by military victories. As the game went on my forces were slowly depleted and Mervyn moved up to a close second place with Mark and Nevin taking 3rd and 4th, 25-30+ honor points behind.

On the final turn, I was at 57 points but did not seen any good attacking prospects. Merv made a last ditch attack on Mark and closed in to around 53 points. During the Autumn phase Mark made his move turning in resources (Hanafuda cards)worth 26 points and some family members for another 6 or 7 points to jump to 69 honor points. Mervyn could only turn in a set worth 4 honor, ending up with 57 honor, and I could only muster up 4 honor with family members to end at 61 honor. I believe Nevin ended up somewhere in the forty range.

It was a great game and a nice come from behind win by Mark. I definitely want to play this one again.

As Nevin had only and hour left to kill, we played Citadels to end the evening. I completed my 8 buildings first and managed to score enough for the win with Mark a close second.

Saturday, Nov 29th: FAB Bulge

2008-12-10T21:44:00.002-06:00

Claire and I went over to Nevin's house on the 29th of November. Claire played with Jessica while Nevin and I played the tournament scenario for Fast Action Battles: the Bulge. It wasn't very fast; it took us 7 hrs to play the 5 turns in the scenario. On the last turn I managed to put some of Nevin's German units out of supply to turn a German victory into a margin allied victory. The picture is of the end of the scenario with all the units turned up.

Boardgamegeek Con 2008

2008-11-28T16:13:00.005-06:00

Nov 20-23rd was the 4th year of Boardgamegeek Con. I've attended, since it is here in the DFW area, for all 4yrs and it keeps getting bigger and better every year. This year it seemed that the number of wargames played took a large leap from the previous years past, which is a good thing in my opinion.

I like to play the longer games at the con and try to make a geeklist after the con every year. Here is this years BGG Con 2008 geeklist and links to the past 3 years geeklists too, 2007 (Kuhrusty took up the mantle that year),2006, and 2005.

Mark Woodson, a local in our game group, created a geeklist this year too, BGG.CON@WAR geeklist.

The other two non-wargames I played at the con were Ghost Stories and Dominion. Both seemed to be popular games at the con. I liked Dominion but did not like Ghost Stories; it seemed boring to me.

I was so busy playing games that I didn't browse the vendor boths until Saturday afternoon. I bought, Senji, Formula D, Caledea, and a used copy of Mustangs in the Saturday morning flea market.

Galactic Emperor - Saturday 11/15/08

2008-11-16T08:45:00.003-06:00

Played Galactic Emperor (GE) at Mark Bausman's house today with Mark Bausman, Mark Simonitch, Mark Woodson, and Robert(Bob) Woodson. Mark had hosted GE before but this was the first time I was able to make it to his house.

Galactic Emperor is a space exploration and conquest game from CrossCut Games and their first foray into boardgames. I give their first attempt two thumbs up.

On first playing, it reminds me of Twilight Imperium III (TI3) "light". This isn't a bad thing in my opinion as is seemed to play faster and I don't think the turtling that seemed to be more apt in TI3 is present. I have not played TI3 with the Shattered Empire expansion, but I heard it fixes some of the problems with turtling in TI3.

Being the newbie to the game I consistently came in last in the scoring rounds through most of the middle game so lucked out by not being a threat. In the turn before last I was able to score 3 points for destroying 3 Empire tokens and then scored 9 more VPs in the final turn scoring round to come in second, 1 point behind Bob's 39VPs.

Half way through the game, it appeared to me that having a good supply of Food producing planets is a good idea as Bob was never strapped for money. In the end this was the margin of victory as the player with the most money at the end of the game is awarded 2VPs.

RISK again on Saturday - with Cody, Claire, and Catherine

2008-11-08T17:30:00.002-06:00

The kids wanted to play Risk again today. Dad was almost knocked out early after my victory Friday but managed to stay in the game. We called it after Catherine knocked off Claire in her last redoubt in Australia. After taking Claire's cards Catherine was entitled to place 95 armies!

Early on in the game, Claire managed to take Australia, while Cody grabbed South America. Catherine was Queen of Asia for a turn and I took North America for a couple of turns. North and South America changed hands quite a few times before Catherine finally took control of Africa and South America at the end before knocking off Claire.

RISK - With Cody and Claire

2008-11-07T19:54:00.002-06:00

Claire wanted to play Risk last night so we pulled out Cody's copy and had a 3-player slugfest. My Red Army came out victorious launching their attacks from South America and Australia.

No Gaming Just a Bit of Reading

2008-10-30T17:28:00.003-06:00

Since our last outing with Descent at Mervyn's house when we finished clearing out the dungeon we started in my last post I haven't done any gaming, other than with the kids. I have been reading a bit of R.A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels.

Where We Left Off Last Time

2008-08-16T10:09:00.003-06:00

Not knowing better we stopped playing in the middle of a dungeon level.

New Podcast - The Noise Before Defeat.

2008-07-21T18:44:00.001-06:00

There is a new wargaming podcast, The Noise Before Defeat. Wow that brings the boardwargaming podcasts that I know about up to 4.

New Campaign Started - Descent: the Road to Legend

2008-07-21T18:39:00.002-06:00

This past Sunday, Nevin and Mervyn came over and we started a Descent campaign along with Cody my son. Mervyn will be the Overlord and he chose the Great Wyrm? as his Avatar. We saved the game at the second level of our first Dungeon. The first level leader just would not die; he respawned at least twice before we finally dispatched him.

Seth Owen's Pawnderings Blog

2008-07-12T09:39:00.002-06:00

I added a new link to Seth Owen's blog Pawnderings. He writes more about gaming than I probably ever would and I like reading his stuff. Go check it out.

Saturday, June 15, 2008: Successors III Playtest and a little bit of Fury of Dracula

2008-06-15T10:44:00.003-06:00

Mark Simonitch has been putting the final touches on Successors III which is expected to come out this summer (July according to Mark, I think). I hosted the final playtest at my house on Saturday. To feed the brave army commanders, Nevin Ball, Mervyn Dejecacion, Mark Simonitch, and myself we had a Chick-fil-A chicken wrap platter, a chicken nugget platter, M&Ms, Chips, Pretzels, bottled water, sodas, tea, and beer.

We played the first two turns taking notes as this would be the example of play in the Successors III rulebook. Nevin provided some great combat examples illustrating how one's fortune can turn with the roll of a die and the play of an event card in two separate battles! Way to go Nevin!

We then played a few turns of Fury of Dracula. Since I and Mervyn had not played it in a while and Nevin and Mark had not played it at all we stumbled through the turns and decided to quit while we were ahead. I did manage, as Dracula, to move such that I had no legal move at one point! I thought we had broke the game, but later found out, after re-reading the rules, that there is a rule that covers that, the "cheating rule".

What is this cheating rule you ask? In the rulebook on page 13:

Crossing His Own Trail
In the unlikely event that
Dracula maneuvers himself into a position
where he has no legal move, he is punished as
though he were caught cheating (see
“Cheating,” on page 25) and then takes his
turn as normal (assuming he didn’t lose the
game).

And then the cheating rule itself on page 25:

Cheating
Hopefully, the Dracula player will never cheat
on purpose. But if he makes a move and later
finds out that he accidentally moved along a
rail route or made a similarly illegal move, it’s
important to undo the damage and get the
game underway again. However, Dracula also
needs to suffer a penalty to make up for the
Hunters’ lost time. We suggest the following
penalty for a Dracula player who catches himself
(or is caught) cheating. Although it may
seem severe, the hope is that the Dracula player
will quickly learn to be more careful in the
future.
• Dracula immediately clears his Trail down
to one card and reveals his current location.
• Additionally, Dracula loses Blood as
though he had just suffered a “Killed”
result in combat. However, if this would
reduce him to 0 Blood, it only reduces
him to 1 Blood instead.

I would still like to give this game another go in the future.

Antike

2008-05-22T11:48:00.004-06:00

Back in April I briefly mentioned we had played a couple of games of Antike. And as always here is my late list of things we played wrong during the game.

It appears that we did not play the movement and combat portion of Antike correctly after reading the rules and looking at some conquest combat examples on BGG. Some of the things I caught:
1. There are two phases to a Maneuver on the Rondel, a Movement Action and a Conquest Action. Each one requires a movement "point" to conduct. During Movement Actions you can move units but then you may also battle enemy units (Legions and Galleys) in the region you just moved into. These movement/battles are not simultaneous so you could clear a region of enemy units first to allow further movement through that region with other units in the same Maneuver action. Secondly you may conduct a Conquest Action following the Movement Action. This is how you convert enemy cities. This is important as in the beginning, before anyone has purchased Wheel, Roads, Sailing, and Navigation, it would take you two Maneuvers to convert an enemy city; the first one to move into it and battle any enemy units and then the second maneuver to conquer the city itself provided you had any survivors and sufficient strength! This makes researching the bonus movement type Know-Hows very important!

2. When not trying to Conquer an enemy city (during the Conquest Action of the Maneuver), ie battles after Movement - Legions only eliminate Legions and Galleys only eliminate Galleys. This is another important subtle distinction especially for coastal cities. For example, if an enemy city is occupied by both Legions and Galleys (only possible in coastal regions) and you move a fleet of Galleys into the region the subsequent battle will only eliminate enemy Galleys and leave all Legions unaffected. Provided you had any Galleys remaining from the battle and suffcient strength you could then conquer the city during a later Maneuver or during this Maneuver provided you had movement points left over for your surviving Galleys. When doing a Conquest Action, the restriction of "Galleys eliminate Galleys" and "Legions eliminate Legions" doesn't apply.

3. I don't think we violated this one but it could have come up. Legions may not be built in regions that are completly bordered in blue, ie Islands. At first thought one may think I would never do that since they would not be able to leave the island (Galleys don't transport Legions in the game) but you may do it to add more defenders to an island especially if all your Galleys have been built and are on the map elsewhere.

That's about it but these little rules discoveries just made the Maneuver portion of the game a little bit more interesting.

Vikings and Germans and Brits, Oh my!

2008-05-21T20:20:00.007-06:00

Nevin came over on Sunday, 5/18, and we played his copy of Fire and Axe: A Viking Saga. Something is just not right with a Viking game when the winner, Nevin, is the Viking player who does more settling and trading than raiding! And you call yourself a Viking!

Nevin came in first with 200+ something points; I squeaked by Cody for second place by 1 point with 184 points to his 183. Both Nevin and Cody did more of the trading/settling actions while I concentrated on trading and raiding. I really thought Cody was doing well as he was the king of completing Sagas. Mid-game it looked like he had 6-7 Sagas to my 2 and Nevin's 2-3. I successfully raided 9 of the 12? towns on the map including both Paris(8VP) and Constantinople(12VP) but Nevin cashed in on Rome for 20VP with a Rune card that doubled its VPs. As far as settling, my son, Cody concentrated on the North West part of the map while Nevin controlled the North East map section. I had a toe hold in South Britain but Nevin eventually stole two of my settlements in England through Rune card play. At game end, I had a mere 3 settlements. In the end, it just didn't seem like it was worth pursuing a raiding heavy strategy but I had fun. Aand it was in true Viking spirit!

As always, after a first playing I like to go through the rulebook and see what we played wrong. Unfortunately, the rulebook is not available for download so I had to settle for the various rules summaries available on Boardgamegeek. Some of the items I noticed are as follows:
1. When you return to the Wintering space, your ship can only keep 1 crewman. All other crewman and goods must be removed from the ship.
2. I'm thinking you may only play Runes during your turn.
3. Plus, Runes may not be played while your ship is in one of the home ports.
4. The Difficult Sailing penalties must be assessed at the end of each days movement, not at the end of the total move.
5. A player may not settle a port in a region until the town in that region has been successfully raided.

On Saturday, 5/17, Mervyn and I played "A Veritable Bloodbath" scenario from Combat Commander: Mediterranean. My Brits were on the attack against Mervyn's Germans (conscripts and Volksgrenadiers with wire and trenches defending a few buildings) It came down to whether or not Merv could make the the Sudden Death die roll, end the scenario and win by VPs. He had two chances (he had the initiative card) but missed both rolls and on my first card play of the next turn my British advanced into melee against a lone German squad and eliminated him for the Surrender win. The only thing that kept me in the game was the damage I was doing with my Heavy Machine Gun on my left flank. I believe it accounted for 5 of the 6 casualties I needed for the Surrender win.

We then played a quick game of Wings of War: Dawn of War. This is the WWII version, with a German and Italian plane (me) against Merv's Spitfire and Hurricane. The Spitfire, especially the naval version can put out some firepower. I decided I was going to keep my planes together and gang up on one of Merv's planes. Merv had the same idea but his formation split after the first pass so I was able to concentrate both planes firepower on one if his and shot it down with 22 damage points.

Unplayed Games - the Short List

2008-05-21T07:12:00.003-06:00

Mervyn had posted on Consimworld the question of how many unplayed games do you have in your collection? Most of the responses were quite a lot some over 100 games. I looked at my games I have registered on Boardgamegeek and my list, not counting old Strategy & Tactics/Ares Magazine games was 30 games. After removing the ones I probably would never play I came up with the short list of ten games I may play separated by how long I've owned them.

Recent to 2yrs:
FAB:Bulge
Axis & Allies: Guadalcanal
Federation Commander: Romulan Border
Sword of Rome: 5th player expansion

2-8yrs:
Savannah(GMT)
Age of Napoleon(Phalanx)
Grant Takes Command(MMP)
Breakout Normandy(AH)
Monty's Gamble: Market Garden(MMP)

8+ yrs:
the Civil War(VG)

Happenings for the past 3 months

2008-04-25T22:18:00.003-06:00

Not much gaming going on lately, other than some light games with the family. The last face to face wargame I played was a 3-player playtest of Successors III with Nevin Ball and Mark Simonitch back on March 15th. Mark said we would do it again once he has his new map and counters ready. Mark has been posting his map and counter work recently on consimword and it is looking very nice. Prior to that we did a 5-player game of Age of Empires III at Mark Bausman's house,on March 1st, but that is about it for face to face. Oh we did get in two back to back games of Antike back on February 17th. The first one was 5-player and the second 4-player. I enjoyed the game and ended up picking up a copy but haven't played it since.

I did finish off the last novel of the main series of David Weber's Honorverse, At All Costs about a month ago. I didn't know if I wanted to start reading his sub-series works but decided to pickup one of his newer novels, Off Armageddon Reef, the first book in his Safehold series. The next book in the series isn't due out till later this year; I'm looking forward to it.

I then read 1632 by Eric Flint and Von Neumann's War by John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor.

Since I didn't have a chance to get to the bookstore my wife brought me a couple of books from her workout place; I guess they have some sort of paperback loan library. I ended up reading one of them, Deep Fire Rising, by Jack Du Brul. I enjoyed it and may look for more of his books in the future but for now I just picked up 1633, the second book in Eric Flint's Ring of Fire series.

Bonaparte at Marengo: Ladder Round 9, 4/21/2008

2008-04-25T11:14:00.009-06:00

In Round 9 of the BaM Ladder Nick Avtges accepted my bid for the French at Morale 16. I have played as the Austrians 5 times before on the Ladder but this would be only my third play as the French. The game ended at the end of the French turn 14 with the Austrians resigning after thinking there was not enough time left to either capture two victory locations or demoralize the French.

French At Start:
Ladder Game 9 had me with the French this time at 16 morale. The initial French deployment had two of the French cavalry camped out in the rear areas in locales 23 and 64. The third cavalry unit was in Marengo.

French 6 AM End:
The Austrians need to push hard from the very beginning in order to have a chance to win. Seeing that I had only 1 French cavalry unit up front I figured it would be best to try to delay the Austrian push so I could start moving my other cavalry units forward by attacking into locale 2 with my lone cavalry unit in Marengo.

French 8 AM Start - Pretty Horsies All In a Row:
I didn't delay them much and my straggler cavalry units are still sound asleep. Nick pushed forward with 5 calvary units all along the Fontanone. This was the first time I had seen this and the French were worried about a quick Austrian breakout.

French 9 AM - the Battle of Marengo:
The French pulled back from the Fontanone except in locale 9, while the straggling cavalry began to move forward. The Austrians advanced across the river with 4 of their cavalry units with two going into Marengo. I believe this was one of the most important turns as the French infantry unit cleared the Austrian cavalry from Marengo with an assault. The lone French infantry would hold Marengo for quite some time afterwards.

French Noon Start - Austrian Bulge:
The French cavalry have finally made it to the front lines, or is it that the front lines finally made it to the cavalry. It looks like the cowboys (French cav) are herding the cows (Austrians) down the middle. I like the fact the Austrians are pushing down the middle as it takes up a lot of command points but I don't like the fact that there are only single units forming the line for the French. The saving grace is that they are cavalry.
ps. The Austrian guns have not fired in the game yet.

French 1 PM End - Expanding the Bulge:
I finally had a couple of spare commands to pull the infantry back into reserve in locale 9. Hopefully they can catch up with their bretheren. French fall back slowly, what else can they do?

French 4 PM Start - The Final French Fade Begins:
Up to this point I was trying to hold as much as possible and the line had stabilized by 4 PM. At this time, with reinforcements coming in the next two hours, I think it is time for the French to head for the hills.

French 5 PM Start - Austrian Cavalry Machine:
Down south Nick has set up his Cavalry Steam Roller. In the remaining turns all I can do is block, fallback, and retreat with my cavalry unit down south. I looks like I'll be giving up a blue start location. Hopefully I can hold the other two. It has been quiet up on the North road so far but I can see an end around coming up if I don't get more troops up there. At this point I'm unsure about where I want to send my artillery unit so he camps out in locale 63.

French 6 PM End:
I decide to give up the south end of the map and send all my 3 strength infantry units up North to help cover the green and red stars.

French 7 PM End: - the Austrians Resign:
At this point, Nick resigns seeing that he doesn't have enough commands and time left.

Another enjoyable game for me. As always different from all the other games I've played. The 5 cavalry line was quite a surprise and shock and I look forward to using it myself in the future.

Shifting Sands - Sonnenblume Scenario

2008-02-12T19:19:00.001-06:00

Greg Denysenko decided to resign after my first card play of turn 8 in our Shifting Sands, Sonnenblume Scenario cyberboard game. Rommel flank attacked (automatically successful do to the event card) a reduced Common Wealth division and battle group from El Agheila completely eliminating both units and then advanced into an empty Tobruk. Greg then resigned as he didn't think his hand would support gaining enough VPs by the turn end for an Allied victory. Never did I feel, as the Axis, that victory was a sure thing as I felt the Allies had plenty of units to cause grief for the Axis every where. I almost didn't open up the Middle East but was too tempted by the VPs available there and I thought that the Italians would not survive long in East Africa.

February 2, 2008: 4-player Starcraft: The Boardgame

2008-02-03T16:35:00.000-06:00

This saturday, Mark Bausman hosted a 4-player game of StarCraft: The Boardgame from Fantasy Flight Games. A random draw allotted the factions and turn order thus.

Queen of Blades (Zerg) : Tarsonis : Mark Woodson
Arcturus Mengsk (Terran): Antiga Prime : John Boone
Jim Raynor (Terran) : Bhekor Ro : Mervyn Dejecacion
Tassadar (Protoss) : Dylar IV : Mark Bausman

Antiga Prime, Home world of the Terran Arcturus Mengsk Faction:
[Admiral, Naval Intelligence, (ANI)]"What will we do my Lord? The latest intel briefing confirm the Tassadar are on Dylar IV in strength."

Arcturus Mengsk sat in his personal booth at his favorite restaurant. He had finished his meal when the ANI joined him and had just finished reading the fortune in his cookie - You will obtain your goal if you maintain your course. How appropriate Arcturus Mengsk thought but then he realized these things were always written generic enough to apply to anyone and a brief smile crossed his lips at the Admiral's question.

[Arcturus Mengsk, (AM)] "What we have always done - survived. We will prepare our defenses and defend our home world as we always have. What is the latest intel on the Zerg on Tarsonis?"
[ANI] "My Lord, the latest intel confirms the Queen of Blades is expanding toward Helios. Raynor is also on Helios."

[AM] "Raynor! Has that been confirmed?"

[ANI] "Yes my Lord."

[AM] "Good. That may be to our advantage. Let them fight each other for a change. Does the Committee agree with my view of staying out of Helios?"

[ANI] "The Joint Chiefs do but the Production Ministry says we need to expand. If the Tassadar are on Dylar, and it seems that they are, we will need to expand our production for defense but we are limited by the cystal resources we currently have. Gas will not be a problem until we start ramping up production on our heavy units."

[AM] "I realize that but sticking our noses in Helios is asking for too much trouble. I don't want the Zerg and Raynor on our backs along with the Protoss. No, I want to stay out of Helios for now. Besides if Raynor and the Queen of Blades are both on Helios we should be able to go into Braken unopposed."

[ANI] "Yes my Lord, but Helios would definitely help out with our resource shortages and allow us access to Bhekar Ro, Pride Water, and eventually Abaddon."

[AM] "A true statement and the benefits are tempting but just don't outweigh the risks right now. Have patience Admiral. Once Raynor and the Queen have depleted each other's forces on Helios we can "liberate" the system. Besides Tassadar may clean up Helios for us and if he does Dylar IV may open up for our "liberation" forces. I've made my decision. I'll tell the Committee we stay out of Helios - For now. I'll inform the Production Ministry to start transitioning to a war status at the next Committee meeting. I want our Marine and Firebat forces as close to 100% operational as soon as possible."

[ANI] "As you wish my Lord."

Antiga Prime, Palace of the Capital, Committe Meeting Room (Mid-Game):
[AM] "Status of the Fleet deployments?"

[Admiral, Joint Chief of Fleets (JCF)] "My Lord, we have not opened any transport routes to Tarsonis, Helios, or Dylar IV and the enemy has not been detected in any of the routes between those planets and Antiga Prime or Braken for that matter. Fleet transports have been reinforcing Braken routinely and we have enough reserve capacity to bring back ground forces from Braken to the the Capital if the need arises."

[AM] "Secretary of Production, what about our manpower and equipment levels?"

[Secretary of Production, Production Ministry (SPM)] "My Lord, our factories are at 80% production levels but we are limited by our work force and crystal resources. Even so our isolationist policy has given us time to attain and maintain light ground forces readiness levels at 100%. Wraith levels are now at 66% readiness."

[AM] "And status of heavy ground forces?"

[SPM] "With our crystal shortage we are at our limit just keeping the light ground forces at 100%. As you know we still have only one Ghost Battalion. Work on converting the civilian factories to military use has been delayed and the starport is still only able to produce Wraiths. Landing on Dylar would help out a great.."

[AM] "That is enough Production Minister! We are not landing on Dylar! You will have to do the best you can with what we have on Braken and Antiga Prime!

[ANI] "But Lord Mengsk, the latest intel reports confirm the Protoss have only two battalions of Zealots on Dylar IV now. If you strike now the JCF assures us of a victory!"

[AM] "And did they forget about Helios? Didn't the JCF predict Raynor and the Zerg would annihilate each other on Helios 6 months ago? Tell me Admiral the latest intel on Helios?"

[ANI] "Regrettably my Lord the Queen of Blades and Raynor seem to be happy to share the planet. There were a few skirmishes at first but they are both in force on the planet now and seem happy to maintain the status quo. Raynor is also reported to have landed on Pridewater but the initial reports have not yet been confirmed. If he is there then Raynor's economy would be very strong."

[AM] "Isn't Tassadar on Pridewater?" What does this guy have on the Queen and Tassadar that they let him run wild all over this sector? The Zergs and the Protoss should be eating him for lunch!"

[JCF] "It seems he has been very good at the negotiating table my Lord. There have been a few battles between Raynor and the Zerg and Raynor and Protoss but not any full scale war. Regretable indeed my Lord."

At this time the Queen of Blades is leading Arcturus Mengsk by 1VP with Tassadar third and Raynor last. The Zerg have satisfied their special victory conditions as have Arcturus Mengsk. Raynor needs one more territory and the Tassadar are far from satisfying their special conditions.

Antiga Prime, Palace of the Capital, Committe Meeting Room (Near End-Game):
[ANI] "The Zerg and Protoss are fighting on Abaddon and there were reports of fighting on Pridewater but the current troop deployments are uncertain. Raynor has finally been confirmed to be on Dylar IV and I'm afraid that suggests they have some type of alliance. Additionally, space sensor command confirm enemy activity on the space routes from both Helios and Dylar IV"

[AM] "Very well. I hope someone here has good news."

[JCF] "If I may interrupt the ANI, I do have some good news my Lord. The final tests were completed last week and the Admiralty and I both concur that the space defense system is ready to be activated for full operational status."

[AM] "That is good news. I don't like the fact Raynor is still on Helios in force and now on Dylar with the Protoss. Something is cooking and I don't like the smell of it."

[SPM] "My Lord, the Wraith fleet is also at 100% operational status but one of your Wraith battalions is on Braken."

[AM] "JCF I want to be able to recall that Wraith battalion immediately if need be and I want to open up the transport routes to both Helios and Dylar IV just in case we see an opening for attack into those systems."

[JCF] "Yes my Lord."

The End Game
Both Jim Raynor and the Tassadar stacked orders (presumably mobilize) on Antiga Prime so I placed two mobilize and a research order on Antiga Prime waiting for the inevitable attack. Jim Raynor did attack Antiga Prime destroying a Marine and Firebat (with ground splash damage) but the Wraith survived. I had a mobilize order on Antiga Prime but decided to pass and draw an Event card trying to get to the Third Stage and was successful. Tassadar had a mobilize order on Antiga Prime but only two Zealots that could land on the planet so would be unable to defeat my Wraiths. Arcturus Mengsk won the game by completing his special victory conditions at the third stage. The Queen of Blades lost her third VP space during the fighting on Abaddon and Jim Raynor lost resources earlier on Pridewater.

This was the second time in a row Arcturus Mengsk won with its special victory conditions. If the other players are not careful I think this faction has the easiest chance of victory in a multi-player game. I had the rather boring, military wise, strategy of arquiring one more planet adjacent to my starting planet then building up on both of them and not going anywhere else. The last three turns my four orders were a build order and a mobilization order on both connected planets. That allowed me to build then counter attack if one of my planets was invaded.

Incidentally the fortune cookie was real. Mark Woodson was eating Chinese food when I arrived and he gave me his cookie. That was the fortune inside it.

Saturday, Jan 19, 2008 - Battles of the Third Age, Rohan Battle

2008-01-27T22:22:00.000-06:00

Before Meryvn came over for our Conquest of Paradise game Nevin and I played the Rohan Battle scenario from War of the Ring: Battles of the Third Age. Nevin took command of Saruman's forces and I took Rohan. The game went to position 12 or 13 of the Fate Track when Saruman cried uncle after his forces attempting to take Helm's Deep were decimated by the Ents storming out of Derndingle (Fangorn) and then regrouping in the Deeping Coomb forming a defensive barrier to future Shadow attacks. Before the Ent attack the Shadow forces were making good progress first eliminating Eomer and his forces on their way to Helm's Deep and overrunning the forces in the Fords of Isen and the East Fords. Theoden appeared in Edoras and Aragorn in the East Entwade both prepared to march to relieve the siege of Helm's Deep before the Ents appeared.

Posts on Boardgamegeek say that the Rohan player has little chance if the Saruman player chooses the third position exclusively, The Pits, on Shadow Box after the first few turns. I'd like to play this one again to test this out.

Saturday, Jan 19, 2008 - Conquest of Paradise

2008-01-24T19:35:00.000-06:00

We were supposed to go out of town this weekend but our plans changed Friday. I gave Nevin and Mervyn a last minute invite for some gaming on Saturday and they both accepted. We decided to play Nevin's recent game acquisition, Conquest of Paradise (GMT Games.

Conquest of Paradise (CoP) is a game of Polynesian empire building around 500 AD in the central Pacific Ocean for 2-4 players. Each player represents one of four starting Home Island Groups, the Tonga, Samoa, Hiva, and Raiatea and attempt to expand their empires by exploration, colonization of island groups, and cultural advancements represented by the purchase of the Arts and Culture cards.

How to Win
Victory is measured by the accumulation of victory points by controlling Villages, Island Groups, and Cultural advancements at the end of each game turn which represent a span about 5 years. The game ends once a player or players meet or exceed the victory point goal for the game. In a three player game the victory point goal is 25 victory points.

The Map and Player Home Islands
In our game, Mervyn controlled Hiva, Nevin controlled Tonga, and I ruled Samoa. The map is divided up in hexes that represent ~600 nautical miles of the Pacific Ocean with some already known island groups printed on the map and the remaining hexes where explorations are possible marked with a light blue squares. The map location of the starting home island for each player marked on the map. Samoa and Tonga start adjacent to each other with Hiva 5 hexes (3000 nm) East. In addition to the players starting home islands, the map is printed with known pre-existing Independent Polynesian empires. These island group empires may be conquered by the players. All of these known independent island groups are West of the players; the closest one being Fiji which is adjacent to both Samoa and Tonga.

The Turn Sequence
A turn in CoP represents the passage of 5 years and consists of the following steps.
1. Turn Order Step
During the Turn Order Step the player with the lowest Victory Point score becomes the first player. The rest of the turn's steps are then resolved starting with the first player and rotating clockwise. [OOPs] Looks like we did this wrong. The player with the lowest VP score gets to do the following: (1) Chose who will be the first player this turn and (2) what direction the turn order rotates, clockwise or counter-clockwise. [/OOPs]

2. Exploration Step
During the exploration step, in turn order, and if the player's Explorer canoe was not lost last turn, a player can explore the ocean to discover new islands to colonize using their Explorer canoe. The explorer canoe can pre-move to any one of the player's controlled island groups. From that island group the explorer may move into an unknown hex, draw a Discovery marker randomly and place it in the hex with the Knot side up. If the tile drawn is an Off Course marker then the player to your left picks an adjacent, unknown hex, where the actual exploration takes place. The player then draws a new Discovery marker. If the cumulative knot total is 1-4 then the player may move into another unexplored hex. If the total is 5 then the exploration is over and the players Explorer canoe is placed in front of the player off map. If the total is 6 or more then the exploration is over, and the Explorer canoe is placed in the Lost Box. Lost explorer canoes are not recovered until the end of the next Exploration Step so you effectively will not be able to do exploration the turn after you are lost. After the player has finished exploring the tiles are flipped to reveal what they were, Open Ocean or an Island. [OOPs] We did this wrong too. If the player drew an island Discovery marker they immediately draw from the Island Group pool, look at the island and decide if they will place it face up or face down, then place the Discovery marker, knot side up, on top of the island tile. [TIP] There is a bit of strategy here deciding whether or not to reveal an island group immediately after discovery or to keep it hidden. If it is left on its hidden side, where it is still Unknow to players who don't have their Discovery Marker on it, a player can't not move his Transport or War Canoes on to or through that hex so it is effectively a barrier to their movement.[/TIP]If an Off Course marker was picked, after the new hex is determined the Off Course marker is removed from play to allow the player to try to explore that hex again if they wish.[/OOPs]

3. Movement and Battle Step
In turn order, each player may move their units on the map. There are two types of movement in this step, Transits and Movement. A Transit is a pre-move of units within the sphere of a player's empire connected by Transport Canoes. What are Transport Canoes you ask? Regular canoes can be used in two modes. If used as part of the Transport Canoe Chain is it turned face up in the island group hex it occupies. In this mode it represents the transportation infrastructure of your empire. All of your island groups connected within the Transport Canoe Chain can be moved to during the Transit pre-move portion of the Movement & Battle Step. Canoes part of the Transport Canoe Chain can not themselves move in the Movement & Battle Step. Any of your unit types, Colonies, Warrrior Bands, Transport Canoes (not part of the Transport Canoe chain), War Canoes, and Rumors can be moved using Transit. [OOPs] I don't know if Mervyn or Nevin did this wrong but I did. I thought I needed Transport/War canoes to move my Colony and War Band units during the Transit move.[/OOPs] After the Transit pre-move regular Movement takes place. Regular Movement is used to move units beyond the boundaries of your empire. In Movement only Transport canoes, War Canoes, and Rumors can move by themselves; Colonies and Warrior Bands are required to be carried by a canoe. A canoe can transport one unit. A Transport canoe can carry a single Colony or War Band while a War Canoe can carry a single War Band.

Ok now to the important part for us wargamers, how do you attack? Transport canoes, with or without a War Band can not enter another players Island Group hex or a hex containing another players War Canoe; they must be escorted by at least one War Canoe to enter. So after all your Movement is complete and you have at least one War Canoe in a hex with another players units or Island Group hex a battle takes place. Yes! Battles are really simple although we managed to do the first one incorrectly. 8^) Basically the attacker rolls a D6 and looks up the result on a table. The result is either an Attacker retreat or eliminated or a Defender retreat or eliminated. The attacker keeps rolling until one side has no more front line units; that side loses and the other side wins the battle. If the attacker loses he retreats from the hex otherwise the defender retreats his forces from the hex and the attacker remains in the island group. In addition the attacker has an option of either eliminating all the defender's villages from the island group or eliminating all but one village by eliminating one of his surviving front line fighting units. This village then becomes his and the island group is then controlled by him.

4. Building Step
During the Building Step, all players simultaneously purchase new units, using the Build Points (BPs) they have for the turn, and place them on their island groups that paid for them. They may also purchace one Arts and Culture card (two BPs) which may grant them additional VPs, when revealed, a special benefit either one time or for the whole game, or both.[OOPs]We were reading the text to determine if the benefit was one time or lasting but we should have been looking at the color of the VP bonus text. If it is blue it is a one time bonus and if it is red it is an effect that lasts for the remainder of the game.[/OOPs] Each island group you own generates one BP for each village on that island group. If an island group is connected to another island group(s), via your Transport Canoe chain, the player can pool the build points from the islands to build units on one island group or more connected island groups. Oh there is one important fact I have yet to mention; there is a Fog of War element in the game in that all player's units are placed on the map with their back side facing up so the other players don't know what they are until revealed.

5. Victory Step
At the end of the turn, each player adjusts their victory point marker to indicate the victory points they currently have; note that VPs are not cummulative. Victory points are gained for controlled island groups, villages, atolls in your transport canoe chain, and revealed Arts and Culture cards that award VPs. If one or more persons has reached the VP goal for the game the game ends if not a new turn is started at step 1.

Our Game
Since Nevin and I were practically on top of each other at start I decided to build War Bands in my home island when ever possible to dissuade Nevin from attacking and I imagine Nevin's large stack was composed similarly. Nevin was the first to go on the war path attacking Mervyn with two War Canoes carrying a War Band apiece. Mervyn repelled the Nevin's invaders with no losses to either side and a few turns of peaceful expansion followed. [OOPs] It seems we interpreted the combat explanation incorrectly as Nevin had only two units in his front line instead of four.[/OOPs] Each of us started off exploring towards each player's side of the board so as not to intrude into enemy territory early on and both Nevin and I avoided going East towards the independent island groups. Toward middle game Mervyn's luck with the exploration tile draw gave him a slight lead in VPs with me in second and Nevin third. To prevent us from gaining more VPs Nevin played Severe Deforestation on us removing the village counter on the brown box of both Mervyn and my home island group. [OOPs] Severe Deforestation doesn't also remove the Improved Agriculture marker. In fact, no event can remove Improved Agriculture from a space once it has been purchased. [/OOPs]

As mentioned earlier, Mervyn was very lucky during his exploration and by game end he had constructed a contiguous island group of ~11 islands (no atolls) and Nevin added another 2 islands to that group in his exploration! While the game progressed Nevin remarked that the Hiva lived on Pangea. And so came to be the founding of the great Pangean Empire.

Nevin's exploration eventually forced him to explore towards Mervyn's Hiva Pangean Empire leading to two or three more battles between them. Fortunately for me I managed to stayed away from Pangea for most of the game and decided to expand Westward, late in the game when I could go no where else, into the Independent Island Groups first conquering Kiribati and then Pohnpei via Nauru (last turn of game). Mervyn looked like he may expansionist ideas toward my Samoan Empire so I stuck a War Canoe in the closest approach between him and I as a sort of destroyer picket while I headed East [TIP]This is another tactic to be aware of since War Canoes must stop when entering a hex with enemy War Canoes you can place them in enemy avenues of approach to your empire to give you at least an extra turn to prepare for the attack.[/TIP]. I had kept the majority of my Arts and Culture cards unrevealed so I figured I could end and win the game when I conquered Pohnpei but after the tally Mervyn's Hiva Pangean Empire claimed victory by 1 VP at 29VPs. Incidentally even if we had tied Mervyn would have still won the tie breaker by the large overwhelming number of island groups he controlled.

A lot of comments, on Boardgamegeek, have been made about the component quality of the game but as a wargamer the game is of typical good GMT wargame quality. I enjoyed the game and would like to play it again.

Combat Commander: Battle Pack 1, Paratrooper, Sunday 1/6/2008

2008-01-07T12:04:00.001-06:00

My son and I tried out one of the scenarios from Battle Pack 1: Paratroopers the first scenario pack for Combat Commander: Europe. By the title of the scenario pack you can correctly assume all scenarios have paratroopers on at least one side and some have them on both sides. The pack includes two new double sided maps and 11 new scenarios.

I forget which scenario number it was but its title was "We Go!". It pitted the American 102nd airborne vs the Germans at St. Mere Eglise, France, 6 June 1944. The German forces set up first protecting three victory point objectives on the map. Two objectives were fairly close together, a single-hex (3VPs) and a double-hex building (4VPs) in the middle of the map and then a forest hex (5VPs) that sat along side a road intersection leading into the town. Once the Germans were set up the Americans parachute onto random hexes on the map. If they landed on, adjacent, or within line of sight of any Germans they landed on their broken side. Since the scenarios starts at night both sides were limited to two orders per turn. On time 3 the Americans get to increase their orders/turn to 3. On time 2 the Germans get reinforcements consisting of one squad, a leader, and a light machine gun (LMG). Additionally, at the beginning of the scenario, time 0, the Germans can not move until time 1.

Cody's airborne troops landed all over the map with three squads and a leader landing broken but were rallied on his first turn.

What's all this time 0, time 1, etc stuff? Combat Commander(CC) keeps track of time in a different manner than other tactical wargames or most wargames in general. Usually time is divided up into discrete turns such that one turn representing a discrete interval of time passing in the game world. A turn can be either one side completing its actions or both sides completing their actions according to the sequence of play. In CC the amount of time that has passed between activities (orders/actions) is variable and is controlled by the "Fate" card decks of both players. If a player draws all the cards in his Fate Deck a Time Event occurs. One of the things that happens is the time marker is advanced one space on the Time Track, ie from time 0 to time 1. There are also Time Events associated with some of the Fate Cards. If one of those Fate Cards is drawn while resolving a die roll a Time Event occurs. Each scenario will list when the scenario may end, when and if reinforcements come into play, etc according to the Time Track, ie the Allies get reinforcements on time 3.

Back to the action.
Cody had the first turn and a Recover Order in his hand so all his elite units that landed adjacent to the Germans rallied easily and all were flipped back over to their good order side. Rats! no easy pickings for me on my first turn. In CC units must be effectively broken twice before they are eliminated under normal fire attacks so it requires at least two Fire Orders to eliminate a unit. Cody's best leader Lt Wray was activated for movement and headed in the general direction of building 2J8, map 2 hex J8, in the area where most of his squads had dropped. Cody's other leader was all by himself in the fields of 2B10; he would not activate him for movement until a few turns later. In my first turn the squad/LMG and leader in building 2D3 fired on the squad in 2E4 for no effect. The Time Marker stayed on time 0 for quite a few turns so all the Germans could do was conduct Fire Orders on the Americans, when it was possible, while Cody slowly organized his dispersed squads around Lt Wray.

Once Lt Wray organized his forces the Americans became unstoppable. The US units have great morale even when broken. I ambushed one of Cody's squads and he still managed to kill my guys in Melee. I had one squad left when the Germans finally lost do to reaching their surrender level. The Germans managed to kill three US squads but two of them came back on the board do to the "Walking Wounded" event coming up twice for Cody. The US forces managed to take all of the VP spaces and the lone German took back the Woods VP space before they surrendered.

Six-Player Starcraft, Saturday 1, 2008

2008-01-06T09:38:00.000-06:00

We had six people show up for Starcraft: the Board Game on Saturday. A random draw assigned the factions.
1. Queen of Blades (Zerg) - Troy Adlington
2. The Overmind (Zerg) - John Boone
3. Tassadar (Protoss) - Mark Bausman
4. Aldaris (Protoss) - Mervyn Dejecacion
5. Jim Raynor (Terran) - Mark Simonitch
6. Arcturus Mengsk (Terran) - Nevin Ball

Once the Third Stage deck showed up Nevin had satisfied his faction's special victory condition, controlled every area on two planets, for the win.

Sunday, 11/04/2007 - Spongebob Monopoly with my Daughter

2007-11-04T23:55:00.000-06:00

I'm not a big fan of Monopoly but I do like Spongebob and my 6yr-old likes Monopoly so after church my wife, son, daughter, and I played her copy of Spongebob Squarepants Monopoly. The one thing I like about Monopoly is it teaches the kids math skills. We make our 6yr-old do the math and she is getting pretty good at it. I seen that they have a version that does the math for you - a bad idea in my opinion. I think these electronic games are doing too much for the kids these days.

Saturday, Nov 3rd, 2007 - Finally Some Face-to-Face Gaming

2007-11-04T23:35:00.000-06:00

I had not played a face-to-face game since the end of September so was glad I could make it this weekend. Mark Bausman hosted the gaming on Saturday. We started off with a 5-player game of Age of Empires III attended by Mark Bausman, Al Hay, Mervyn Dejecacion, Mark Woodson, and myself. When we got there Mark B announced that the winner would take home a copy of Crusader Rex. In the end it was my early colonization strategy vs Mervyn's Trade Good/Privateer/Building strategy. I barely beat Mervyn by two points. I've only played this game three times but it has become one of my favorite non-wargames.

Al and Mark W. had to leave after the AoE III game so Mark B, Mervyn, and I played Ivanhoe. I took an early lead winning the first four tournaments needing only the jousting tourney for the win but I didn't have the cards to continue so watched Mark B and Mervyn beat on each other as I rebuilt my hand. Meryvn and Mark won a tourney a piece and I then managed to sneak in and take the jousting tourney for the win.

Finally Mark B and I finished off with a game of Starship Catan. It took longer than I thought it would, having never played it before, but I managed to win this one too.

Lady Luck smiled on me this weekend with the wins but the chance to play with the group was the best part.

I'm Proud of my Wife

2007-11-04T23:30:00.001-06:00

Last Sunday my wife completed the 60 mile, 3-day, walk for breast cancer. 16 of her 20 team members took part in the walk and it was very emotional at the closing ceremonies with my two daughters telling their mother they were proud of her.

Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk

2007-10-16T06:37:00.000-06:00

My wife, Dana, has been working on her goal of doing the 3-Day Breast cancer walk on 10/26 to 10/28. If you think this is a worth while goal consider making a donation.

I will be walking in the 3-Day Breast cancer walk this Oct. This has been something that I have wanted to do since last year. I have been in prayer about this and decided to take this journey.So, I am asking my family and friends to help me out through prayer & donation. I will walk a total of 60 miles; 20 miles per day. I have already started my training and I am feeling good about it.So, join me in this journey with your prayers and donation. I know we can
make a difference in someones life.

Love to all.......Dana
Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support The Breast Cancer 3-Day
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may not appear to work. If so, copy and paste the following into your browser:
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Dana Boone

Thank you,
John Boone

Saturday Sept 29, 2007 Saganami and Twilight Struggle

2007-09-30T10:07:00.001-06:00

I went over to Joseph Acker's house and played a three player game of Sagnami Island Tactical Simulator. Joseph and I each took a People's Republic (Peeps) heavy cruiser against two Silesian Confederacy heavy cruisers commanded by Joseph's son, Benjamin. We rolled for crew ratings. My ship had an average crew all around, Joseph had a poor crew, and both of Benjamin's CAs had an Elite Electronic Warfare Officer giving them a +2 ECM modifier. This would make our already less capable missiles less chance of penetrating the Silesian cruiser's missile defenses.

Both sides started with their respective cruisers in the same hex on opposite sides of the map with vectors in the general direction of the opposing forces. Benjamin decided to start +20 levels above the map plane. Benjamin did not want to allow the Peeps to get into energy weapon range, which we never did. The Peeps spent the whole game climbing to get to the same level as the Silesian. The Silesians had the better missiles and it showed as Benjamins first few salvoes pounded on his dad's cruiser eventually causing him to rotate his ship to present his "wedge" to the Silesians. Benjamin then switched his attack to my cruiser heavily damaging my starboard sidewall and taking out 8 missile salvoes on my starboard side missile magazine. Fortunately for me I rolled well with my damage control parties and managed to fix all my magazines and two of three sidewall hits. At this time the Peep missile attacks were practically ineffective only penetrating a couple of times for relatively minor damage.

As the range continued to close it appeared the Silesians were going to be able to pound the Peeps with its missiles but then Benjamin made an error. At the end of one turn he had presented his bow toward our broadsides. Because of the range this would allow us to fire twice at his open bow which we did concentrating all missile salvoes for two consecutive attacks on one of his cruisers. The CA blew up during the second salvo and the remaining Silesian CA surrendered.

Joseph and I then played a game of Twilight Struggle. We randomly chose sides and I ended up playing the US against Joseph's USSR. It seemed to be going OK the Russian's had the lead in VPs but they always get a lead in the early game but it seemed manageable. Then turn 4 started and Joseph's Soviets steamrolled over the US. I had to score Europe (-5VPs) then he scored SE Asia (-7VPs) and a couple more VPs from events gave him the -20VPs for a USSR Auto-Victory.

Quick Post

2007-09-26T19:29:00.000-06:00

On Sept 7 and 8 I attended the Dallas Games Marathon.
Friday evening, 7th, I played War of the Ring with the expansion with Alan Richbourg. After a 5+ hour struggle Alan's Fellowship managed to dunk the One Ring in the fires of Mt Doom for the victory. Frodo ended up with less corruption, 5, than he started with, 8, as I managed to pull out all four of the Fellowship tiles in four consecutive draws! The Shadow ended with 7 victory points when the ring was destroyed.

Saturday afternoon, Joseph Acker taught me Saganami Island Tactical Simulator. The game is based on the Honor Harrington universe created by the author David Weber. By the way he is also one of the designers of the Star Fire game.

This past Saturday, 9/22, Nevin came over and we played two scenarios from his latest game acquisition, Last Night On Earth. In the first scenario, Die Zombies Die!, it was Cody and I each playing two townsfolk against Nevin's zombie horde. We had 16? turns to kill 15 zombies otherwise the zombies won. It was not looking good for the townsfolk but the Sheriff Anderson went wild with the meat cleaver near the end and then Billy finished off the final zombie with the shotgun for the win on the last turn.

In the next scenario I took the zombies and Cody and Nevin had to defend the manor house. This time the zombies won by getting nine zombies into the manor. This is a quick fun little game.

Empire of the Sun - Cyberboard

2007-09-03T19:26:00.001-06:00

Mark Simonitch and I are on Turn 5 of our Empire of the Sun Cyberboard game. Mark just finished his round 4 card play shifting some ground, naval, and air forces closer to the Dutch East Indies. I've landed on Bandjermasin, Borneo and need three more landings to satisfy my Progress of War this turn.

Mark has 5 Japanese armies in Borneo. All my Allied forces can do is stall them if he decides to go on the offensive up there.

Turn 5 Japanese Round 4 Finished

Twilight Struggle - John (US) vs Brian Marrs (USSR)

2007-09-03T11:16:00.000-06:00

After our Shifting Sands cyberboard game concluded Brian and I decided to give Twilight Struggle a go using the Vassal module for it. The Vassal module is a beautiful piece of work by Tim McCarron but be advised it requires a good PC to run it. I'm using a 733 MHz PC with 512 MB and it is very sluggish. Additionally the current version will not work with the current version 3 of the VASSAL engine. I was using VASSAL version 2.9 something.

Brian opened up the can of whup arse on me on turn 2 adding 16 VPs to his total ending the turn with the VP track at 18 USSR VPs. On the turn 3 Headline Phase a favorable Indo-Pakistani War gave the Soviets the final two VPs required for a Soviet Auto-Victory. All three Early War Scoring cards showed up in turn 2, Brian held the Middle East Scoring card and I held, too long it seemed, the Europe and Asia Scoring cards.

Soviet Auto-Victory, Headline Phase Turn 3!

Nice game Brian.

After the slaughter, Brian and I switched sides and started a new game. This time we are using the Cyberboard gamebox instead of the Vassal module. Much easier on the old PC.

Nexus Ops

2007-09-02T20:09:00.000-06:00

Nevin came over on Saturday, 8/25/07 and we played a 3-player game of Nexus Ops by Avalon Hill. The players represent corporations competing for control and thus the Rubium ore discovered on an un-named moon in some remote un-named planetary system. The corporations were played by the following players.

Cody Boone - Black Helix Enterprises (Blue) = 12 VP John Boone - Zyborg Technologies (Green) = 11 VP
Nevin Ball - Galactic Syndicate (Red) = 7 VP

Cody won the game at 12 VPs scoring his last two VPs needed squeaking by his dad.

The Object of the game is to be the first player to attain 12 victory points. As soon as one player reaches 12 victory points during their turn the game is over.

For those not familiar with the game, there is no difference between the different player sides other than the name and color of playing pieces. All sides can build the same type of units during the game. This was the first time Cody and I played the game but it seemed like it would be more interesting if the different corporations had a special ability ala Twilight Imperium. None the less it was a fun game.

We rolled for sides and I came up as first player. The first player starts with 12 Rubium to begin the game and each subsequent player gets 3 more Rubium than the preceding player so Nevin was second with 15 Rubium and Cody was third with 18 Rubium.

Nevin Contemplates His First Unit Purchases

Turns are not simultaneous; each player completes the steps of the turn sequence and then the next player takes his turn. The steps of a turn consists of a number of phases conducted in the following order; 1) purchasing new units, 2) move units, 3) conduct attacks, 4) collect income, and 5) draw a secret mission card (if you control the Monolith draw two Energize cards.

An Evil Plan Formulates!

Purchase New Units
During this phase, the the active player purchases new units paying for them with the Rubium they have collected from their mines or due to non-played discarded Energize and Secret Mission cards. Purchased units are placed in any of the players three home spaces. You can place units in your home spaces even if they are occupied by enemy units.
Note: You may discard Energize and Secret Mission cards from your hand anytime during your turn to gain 1 Rubium per discarded card. Discarded cards go face up next to the appropriate deck.

Move Units
After all newly purchased units have been deployed, the active player may move any of their units on the board at least 1 space. I say at least one space because some units have special abilities which increase their movement allowance and certain Energize cards increase the movement allowance of a specific creature type.
1. The Rock Strider can move two spaces if one of the spaces moved to or from is a rock plain.
2. The Lava Leaper can move two spaces when moving from a Lava Pool.
3. The Rubium Dragon, when starting from the Monolith, may move to any space on the map.
If a unit starts in a contested space, the unit may only move into a non-contested space. This move is called a Retreat. Additionally some spaces are off-limits to some unit types. For example, humans, fungoids, and crystalline units may not enter the monolith space.

Conduct Attacks
After moving all of your units you wish, any of your units in a space with an opponent's unit must conduct an attack. Similar to Axis and Allies, each unit has a hit number that must be rolled, on 1D6, to cause 1 hit. And like Axis and Allies, units attack in a specific order so it is possible that a unit is taken as a casualty before it has had the chance to fire. Within the same class, all units attacking and defending fire simultaneously. Losses are chosen by the owner of the unit hit, unless the hit was scored by a Lava Leaper with a die roll of 5 or greater. After all units have fired and losses taken, if both sides still have units occupying the space it is considered contested. If only one side remains in the hex it is considered owned by that side. Note that some Energize cards can be played during this phase. In fact, even players not involved in the battle may play Energize cards to help out one side or the other. The loser of the battle draws an Energize card as compensation for their loss. Some units have enhanced or degraded combat abilities depending on the terrain they occupy.

Collect Mine Income
Once all battles have been resolved the phasing player collects Rubium from all his mines that 1) are occupied by one of his humans, fungoids, or crystalline units and 2) that mine is not contested. Each mine will produce from 1 to 3 Rubium. Note that only the three weakest units can operate the mines to collect Rubium.

Draw Cards
After collecting your mine income the phasing player draws one Secret Mission card. Additionally if the phasing player has sole control of the monolith they also draw two Energize cards. This ends the phasing player's turn and the next player then takes their turn.

Energize Cards
Energize cards give the side playing them special abilities, that may break the normal rules when played, last for a specific amount of time either during your player turn or a battle, or award an instant effect, ie. "Destroy 1 Fungoid". Energize cards are divided up in to two types, ones that are played at the beginning of your turn and ones played during a battle. Of the ones played for battle some are required to be played at the beginning of a battle and some may be played during the battle after seeing the result of a die roll.

The Game Gets Interesting

How to Win
As stated previously, the first player to reach 12 victory points ends the game and is declared the winner. Victory points are awarded by play of Mission or Special Mission cards during the player's turn whenever they satisfy the conditions of the card. Mission and Secret Mission cards can only be played during your turn so if you satisfy a condition of a Secret Mission card during someone else's turn your out of luck. All Mission cards and most Secret Mission cards involve winning a battle. For each battle you win, you can play only one card with the victory point total listed in red.

The game also ends when one player is eliminated, ie. losses all of their units on the map. As soon as this happens the winner is declared from the remaining players with the most victory points.

All Mission Cards have their victory point total listed in red, are worth 1 victory point, and all are awarded by winning a battle.

The majority of Secret Mission cards are awarded during battle, but not all. Some require dominating, having more control, a terrain type, ie Rock Plains. These type of Secret Mission cards have their victory point total in white.

A fun game I would play again.

Jeff Kuhn's War of the Ring Cyberboard Gamebox

2007-08-21T18:24:00.000-06:00

I "met" Jeff Kuhn through his posts on the ConsimWorld website and Boardgamegeek. A little over a year ago I had the chance to play a game of War of the Ring with him using the Cyberboard gamebox he had created for the game. His gamebox, graphically, looked quite a bit better than the one I had previously found and was very pleased with his work.

After we finished our game, he won, we discussed what changes he could make to the gamebox to improve it. Version 5 was completed with larger pieces that were more easily distinguishable but Jeff was still looking for ways to improve the map at the time.

Jeff recently sent me his latest, version 6, gamebox incorporating the expansion and a newer map graphic.

He will soon be releasing it to the public, after removing the card text, and hopefully it could be used in the upcoming War of the Ring Tournament being talked up on Boardgamegeek here.

I've attached more pictures. Click on them to enlarge.

The Card Track

The Fellowship

The Hunt Tiles

Rivendell

The DEW Line

Orthanc and Rohan

I'm not sure if I will be in the tourney as I'm involved with other PBEM games now but if anyone wants to do a casual game using the gamebox drop me a line.

John

North Texas Wargamers Gameday - August 18th, 2007

2007-08-19T12:57:00.000-06:00

Another good turn out for the North Texas Wargamers gameday this Saturday. There were thirteen people with about 7 different games played.

First Round of Games

1. Blue vs Gray (GMT Games)

Brian Marrs and Steven Sheasby played a card based game on the American Civil War by GMT Games, Blue vs. Gray. They were still playing it when everyone else left. Not sure if that was one game or multiple plays. Brian Mars gave a description of how both of their games went which I've quoted below.

Steven and I played two games of Blue vs. Gray. I took the CSA in the first game and managed to grab enough northern cities in the west to end the game early (British recognition of the Confederacy).

We switched sides for the second game and it took awhile to get the northern steam roller going. But once I had built up my armies I marched down the Mississippi and also grabbed Atlanta. Steven was almost ready to give up at that point, but decided to stick it out for another turn or two to see what happened.

He built up a pretty good sized army of his own in the west, and with a couple of good die rolls, kicked me out of Atlanta and bloodied my army pretty severely. By this time, the 1864 elections were getting very close and I needed to have 4 VP's to keep Lincoln in office. I had 1 VP for a full blockade, 1 VP for cutting off the Mississippi, and 1 VP for controlling the Shennandoah valley, so I just needed one more VP.

The Western army under Sherman was too far away from Atlanta and facing a rather large army under Hood. I had just put Grant in command of rather sizable Eastern army and was facing a somewhat depleted army under Lee, so the time had come to attack Richmond, which would give me my fourth VP.

Steven played "The Slows" card on me which reduced Grant's initiative from 2 to 1. This meant that Lee would win if the battle result was a "General's Battle". The dice were rolled and sure enough, Lee won the battle (I think it was a 1/3 chance of losing the battle outright or to a General's Battle). The 1864 elections put the Peace Democrats in power and the game ended.

It was a good, close game, and I find that I like the game more each time I play it.

2. Duel in the Dark (Z-Man Games)

Chris Trimmer and Brett Orr played Duel in the Dark. It is a new game by Z-Man games depicting the British night time bombing raids over Germany in World War II. A light wargame with Eurogame components. It looked interesting.

3. Age of Empires III: Age of Discovery (Tropical Games)

I played a 5-player game of Age of Empires III along with Mervyn Dejecacion, Mark Bausman, Mark Simonitch, and Mark Woodson. This was my second time playing this one and I enjoyed it again. Mervyn ended up schooling us all with a commanding first place finish at the end followed by Mark Woodson who made a large leap from the back of the pack in the final round. I finished third with Mark Simonitch and Mark Bausman taking 4th and 5th place.

I had intended to pursue a military strategy in the New World hoping to pick up at least one of the soldier producing buildings. Un-fortunately Mark Woodson managed to pick up both of them during the course of the game. He became the building, money leader, and a five-ship Privateer building owner. I expected him to jump out to first place during the final game scoring but I purchased the Navy building in the last turn stealing 20 VPs from him. I still stayed with my soldier strategy but had to acquire them on the Specialist track. After the Second Age scoring Mervyn was at 30 VP (Missionary Strategy), I was at 27 VP (Soldier Strategy), and the rest of the pack were down in the low teens or less. Mervyn had one of the Missionary buildings which helped him out quite a bit as he pulled away during the final round with a strong scoring for colonists. I just didn't have enough soldiers on the map, and in his areas, to contest his control. I believe I attacked at least one person every turn.

4. Arkham Horror (Fantasy Flight Games)
The final group of four of Al Hay, Steve Gallob, Steve's friend (another first timer), and Emily Blanchett tried their hand at Arkham Horror. I believe the group succumbed to the Horrors of Arkham and lost.

Round Two Games
After the Age of Empires game ended we broke up into twos. Greg Blanchett showed Mark Simonitch his playtest game, Fall Blau, he is working on while Mark Woodson and Mark Bausman played EastFront one of their favorites.

Since Mervyn had only about an hour before he had to leave he and I played the Wizards & Lore Aquitaine, 1369 scenario from Battlelore. Each side had a level 1 Wizard in their war council and the sides forces contained only human units. Mervyn was the attacker, Sir Robert Knolles, and I defended, Sire Bertrand Du Guesclin. Both sides required six flags for the win. This was the first time Mervyn played but he owns Command and Colors: Ancients so was familar with the basic system. Sire Bertrand's forces won 6 flags to 2. After Mervyn left, Mark Simonitch and I played the same scenario this time with Mark taking the forces of Sir Robert Knolles. As with all card driven games especially this one you play where you can. Most of my card draws were in the center followed by the left side. Mark smashed my center while I killed his right flank (my left). The game stayed close with the final score 6 flags to 4 in my favor, but it could have gone the other way if I did not get my last flag in the center as I had two single man units on my left that he could have picked off during his follow up turn, if he had the cards to do so.

After the Arkham Horror game ended, Steve and Al played a game of Blue Moon. I just caught this out of the corner of my eye and don't know much about the game myself.

Shifting Sands - The Italians Rule in East Africa

2007-08-13T23:12:00.001-06:00

The previous post begins here.

Turn 1 Axis Action 3 - Invasion of Greece for 3 OPs
In Libya, The 3 Italian Infantry divisions in Sidi Azeiz pull out, moving to El Adem (4th BS), Gazala (2nd Libyan), and Sidi Mufta (1st Libyan) to re-establish their defensive line.

In East Africa, the Italian Africa Divsion and Italian infantry battlegroup, in Jijiga attack the reduced British battlegroup in Berbera, eliminating it, but suffering a loss (1LF) themselves. After their victory, the reduced Italian battlegroup marches into Berbera (1VP) furthing the Axis cause. Also in East Africa, the Italian GDS Division supported by two Italian infantry battlegroups in Keren attack a British infantry battlegroup in Kassala destroying the British battlegroup with no loss to themselves and march victoriously into Kassala.

Turn 1 Allied Action 3 - Minefields for Redeployment (3 RD points)
Fearing the imminent fall of Khartoum (and another loss of 1VP) and the threat of an Egyptian Uprising, the Allies call on their Free French and Polish allies. A Free French and Polish battlegroup are redeployed (from the Allied reserve box) to Khartoum joining the reduced British battlegroup that redeployed to Khartoum from Gallabat first.

Turn 1 Axis Action 4 - Italian Reinforcements #7 for 3OPs
In Libya, the Italian command orders the 2nd BS Division, in Buerat, to Tengeder and the 1st BS Division to Agedabia.

In East Africa, the Italian Africa Division joins the Italian battlegroup in Kismayu preparing for an attack on Nairobi which is lightly defended by a reduced Commonwealth battlegroup. Concurrently, the Italian battlegroup in Gondar is ordered to Gallabat to support the attack on Khartoum.

Turn 1 Allied Action 4 - 1OPs
Wanting to conserve resources (cards) the allies can only move a Commonweath battlegroup to reinforce Nairobi preparing for the attack that is sure to come.

Turn 1 Axis Action 5 - Graziani for Redeployment (2 RD points)
The Italian battlegroup in Ghimbi, E. Africa, redeploys to Gallabat with an Italian Armor battlegroup, from the reserve box, bringing overwhelming force for the upcoming battle for Khartoum.

Turn 1 Allied Action 5 - Taranto Raid for 4OPs
The Allies, hoping their forces in E. Africa are sufficient to hold for at least a little while, concentrate their operations in Libya. The reduced 4th Indian Commonweath Division moves from Sidi Omar to the Southern Flank (via Sidi Azeiz, Sidi Omar, Southern Flank, Bir El Gubi, Southern Flank) protecting against a flanking movement into Egypt by the Italians. The emboldened (Victoria Cross combat card) Allied units in Halfaya (British Infantry and Armor battlegroups and a Commonweath battlegroup) attack Bardia fortress which is defended by the Italian 62nd and 63rd Infantry Divisions and an Italian Armor battlegroup. The Allies win a minor victory forcing the Italians to flee Bardia. The reduced Italian Armor battlegroup retreats to Gambut along with the reduce 63rd Infantry and 62nd Infantry divisions (3LF). Fearing a counter attack the Allies order the reduced Commonweath battlegroup into Bardia while the reduced British infantry and armor battlegroups remain in Halfaya (2LF).

The Axis have one action round left for turn 1. Can the Allies in East Africa hold? Will Bardia fall to an Italian counter attack?

To be continued....

Shifting Sands - Brian Mars (Axis), John Boone (Allies): In the Beginning

2007-08-08T21:47:00.000-06:00

After my ignominious defeat, as the Allies, in my first game of Shifting Sands with Nevin Ball I decided to give it a go again with Brian Marrs using Cyberboard. In my first game I played defensively as the Allies at the Egyptian-Libyan border waiting for Rommel to appear. This time I decided to be more aggressive from the start.

North Africa Map, at Start

I had recently read posts on Consim World about the Tripoli or Bust gambit where the Allied player goes OPs heavy in North Africa trying to get to Tripoli (at least El Agheila) early in the game trying for an Auto Victory. Steven Hope on Consim World, post 6367 in the Shifting Sands folder, had outlined a few conditions on when not to try the Tripoli or Bust strategy some of which I list below.

1. Allies do not get a Reinforcement Card on Turn 1.
2. Drawing Matildas and Compass on Turn 1.

Allied Hand Revealed

TURN 1
I did not get a reinforcement card on turn 1 but I did draw Matildas. Brian also managed to play Code Book Stolen as his second action leading off with the Italian Africa Division Reinforcement card placing the division in Addis Ababa with the Italian GDS division. Brian had a little bad luck himself drawing all 3 Italian reinforcement cards in his first hand.

Eventhough I did not draw a reinforcement card, I decided I would still be very agressive in North Africa while still covering all VP spaces in Egypt to protect against an Egyptian Uprising.

My first play was "Orders from Rome" as a Redeployment card. I bought a British Armor Battlegroup and Commonwealth Infantry Battlegroup (BG) out of the Reserve box to Halfaya and moved the British Inf BG to Sidi Suleiman from Suez in order to get ready for the Italian push into Egypt.

Brian's Italians stole the British code book and decided to go on the offensive in East Africa moving the Africa Division to Jijiga, the GDS division to Keren, and an Italian battlegroup to Shasha Manna. My second card was "Naval Shore Bombardment" for 2OPs to move the 4th Indian Division (Mersa Matruh, reduced) and the British BG in Sidi Suleiman to Sidi Omar. Who would pull the trigger first and where?

Opposing Forces Line Up for Battle

To be continued...

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

2007-08-07T21:20:00.000-06:00

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

Current Reading Influences Current Game Interest

2007-08-06T21:45:00.000-06:00

No gaming this past weekend as we dropped off the kids at the grandparents this Saturday.

After finishing reading Fire in the Sky, covering the World War II air campaigns in the South Pacific, by Eric Bergerud, I've been reading some SciFi. The last two books I read are from the Star Trek universe, original series timeline specifically, Harbinger and Reap the Whirlwind, both by David Mack. Harbinger is the first book in the Vanguard Series and Reap the Whirlwind is the third book. Vanguard is a Watch Tower class Starbase in the unexplored Taurus Reach which lies between the Federation, Klingon, and Tholian Empires.

Continuing with "David" authors, I picked up Echoes of Honor, by David Weber at Half Price books this Sunday. This book is part of the Honorverse and the first one I've started reading and yes, again like the Vanguard Series, I'm jumping out of order. I also found that some of his books are available online here.

The SciFi theme influenced me to pull out the old SPI game Sword and the Stars from the closet and I have been reading the rules. Sword and the Stars exports the older SPI Empires of the Middle Ages (recently re-published by Decision Games) game into Space.

Alan Richbourg's Painted War of the Ring Game

2007-08-06T21:35:00.000-06:00

Alan Richbourg sent out some pictures of his newly painted pieces for War of the Ring. With his consent I have posted his pictures below.

Click each image for a larger picture.

The pieces out of the box are either blue, for the fellowship, or red, for the shadow forces. In the case of the fellowship a frequent complaint is that it is hard to differentiate between the units for Gondor and Rohan and to a lesser extent between Elvish units and Northmen.

Gameday, Saturday, July 28th

2007-08-06T17:36:00.000-06:00

Four friends were able to show up for gameday on Saturday.
Mark Bausman
Mervyn Dejecacion
Al Hay
Mark Simonitch

The following games where played.
1. Imperial - 5 players
Starting with control of the following nations
Mark Bausman - Austria-Hungary
John Boone - Italy
Mervyn Dejecacion - Britain and Russia
Al Hay - France
Mark Simonitch - Germany

Imperial is a game about money. The player with the most money, in bonds and cash, at the end of the game wins. Players represent financial investors that influence the running of the major European countries during the late 19th and early 20th century. Although all players start with a majority interest, in terms of bonds, of at least one country at the beginning of the game control can be taken away from the players during the course of the game.

The Map and Setup
The map is divided into both land and sea areas. Each nation is composed of 5 areas called home provinces. Each home province contains a city color coded to indicate which type of factory, armaments (brown)or shipyard (blue), that may be built in that province. There are an additional 15 land regions that do not belong to any of the player nations at game start and also 9 sea regions. Note the difference in terminology, provinces are land areas originally owned by one of the six nations; regions are land or sea areas that are neutral at game start. I will use area when taking about regions and provinces and region or province when being specific. At game start, players are randomly dealt a starting nation flag. Each nation starts with an armaments factory and a shipyard factory to place within their home provinces. On the back of each flag is listed the bonds a player must purchase to start the game with. All players start with a piece of their color in the center space of the circular track on the map called the Rondel and two additional markers in the lowest starting boxes on the Power Points and Tax Charts tables.

A game turn consists of individual player turns starting first with Austria-Hungary and proceeding in order through, Italy, France, Britain, Germany, and finally Russia. While Austria-Hungary starts first, the player on his/her left starts with possesion of the Investor Card. As mentioned earlier a person can lose control of their starting country and in fact have no country under their control and thus effectively no turn while another person may have two, three, or more countries, ie player turns.

As this is a game about money, control is measured by who has the most money invested in a country through the purchase of the countrys bonds. That player will decide, when it is the country's turn, what action that country will take on the Rondel.

The Rondel
At game start, all players start in the center of the Rondel. On the player's first turn they must decided which field to enter and take that as their first action. There after, on subsequent country turns, the controlling player must move the country piece clockwise around the Rondel from 1 to 6 fields and take that action for the country. A player can move the country's piece 1 to 3 fields for free but moving 4 to 6 fields cost $2 Million each. For example, it would cost $6 Million dollars to move 6 fields. There are six different fields on the Rondel representing the six different actions a player may perform in a turn.

The Maneuver field allows the player to move all of the active country's units. There are only two types of maneuver units in Imperial, Armies, and Fleets. Army units moving on land may move to an adjacent land area. Fleets moving from port or from another sea region may move to an adjacent sea region. Army units may also move by sea (convoy) to a land area if all sea regions along the path taken have a fleet of the same nationality of the army unit. During maneuver all fleets of the active nation are moved first, if desired, and then the armies are moved. Because of this orde,r a fleet may first move into a sea region and then an army may use that fleet for a convoy move. If a fleet moves into a sea region, or an army into a land region, that is not occupied by any other player nation the player may place one of his round tax chips in the sea or land region indicating ownership of that region. Players may never place tax chips in others nation's provinces. If a fleet or land unit enters an area occupied by other players units a battle may take place.

Battles are not mandatory. The active player first states if he wishes to battle one of the other players occupying the area. If the active player does not wish to battle the other inactive nations in the same area may choose to battle. If no battle is desired nothing happens and all units remain in the area. If a battle is chosen units of the two battling nations in the area are removed on a one for one exchange rate until no units of one or both sides remain. If only two nations occupied the area at the start of the battle and one nation has at least one unit remaining while the other nation does not at the end of the battle a tax chip, of the winning nation, is placed in the area. Land units that move into another nation's province, that contains a factory, must state whether they wish to deny use of that factory to the owning nation or remain peaceful. If the use of the factory is denied it may not be used for any action that requires the use or presence of a factory. Another nation's factory may be destroyed by three enemy armies occupying the factory province. An army in another nation's province may also deny use of the rail movement ability through that province. Rail movement is a special move that may be used by land units within it own home provinces. Rail movement allows a land unit to move anywhere within its home provinces. This rail move may be used before or after a normal land or convoy move in the same maneuver action.

The Factory field allows the player to build a factory, armaments or shipyard, in the active country for $5 Million. The correct factory must be built, ie brown city provinces may only have an armaments factory and blue city provinces may only have a shipyard factory. A factory provides two benefits. Each factory is worth $2 Million dollars during a Taxation action and factories are used to build armies and fleets during the Production action.

The Production field allows the player to produce one unit in each unoccupied (by an enemy army) factory space of the active nation. There is no monetary cost for this action. Army factories produce army units and naval factories produce naval units.

The Import field is another action that allows build up of a nations units. A maximum of 3 three units (armies or fleets in any combination) may be purchased and placed in the home province of the active nation. It costs $1 Million dollars per unit to perform this action. The purchased units may not be placed in enemy occupied home provinces and fleets are restricted to provinces with blue cities. The last two actions are probably the two most important ones in Imperial, Taxation and Investor.

The Taxation field allows taxing of the active nation to raise money for the nation, pay for its military, increase the country's value, and possibly pay a bonus to the player controlling it. Taxation is a thee step process. First each unoccupied (by enemy units) factory is worth $2 Million dollars and each tax chip is worth $1 Million dollars. The active nations marker is moved to the appropriate space on the Tax Chart. If the marker position moved up on the Tax Chart this difference is awarded to the controlling player, $1 Million dollars per space moved upward from the previous position, as a success bonus for running the country well. Secondly, all military units of the active unit must be paid, if possible, from the tax revenue raised. Each fleet or army costs $1 Million dollars. Any monies left over is added to the treasury of the active nation. Finally, the marker of the active nation on the Power Points track is moved a number of spaces indicated by the current position of the active nation on the Tax Chart. Movement upward on the Power Points track is very important for two reasons. First, the farther along the track a nation is the more it is worth during the end game scoring and two, the game ends immediately when the first nation occupies the 25 point space of the Power Points track. Maximizing the benefits of taxation requires building factories, increasing land and sea holdings, and having a small military at tax time.

The Investor field action consists of the following steps, paying interest to all bond holders of the active nation, activating the investor card, and activating all players who control no nation for investing. All nations who hold bonds from the active nation are paid interest on those bonds from the treasury of the active nation. If there is not enough money in the treasury the controlling player must make up the difference from his own treasury. If this is not possible the Investor action may not be chosen. After paying out interest, the holder of the Investor card is first paid $2 Million dollars from the bank and then may invest in any one nation by either taking a new bond or upgrading an existing bond by paying the difference in cost between the current bond and the new bond. Once the Investor is finish he passes the Investor card to the player on his left. Finally, each player who does not control a country is allowed to invest once. If during the active player's turn he does not land on the Investor field but passes over it he still triggers the ability of the Investor card and the investor ability of players with no control over a country.

The game continues until one country is advanced to the 25 point space of the Power Points track during a Taxation action. When this occurs the game ends immediately and proceeds to the end game scoring procedure.

End Game Scoring
Each player's victory point score is based on the interest value of each bond he holds multiplied by the country's factor on the Power Points track. To this sum is added the player's cash, in millions of dollars, in his personal treasury. The player with the highest total wins.

Our Game
In the beginning, Mark Bausman, starting with control of Austria, expanded his holdings into the region around the Black Sea. Italy moved into Eastern and Central North Africa with France landing in West North Africa. Mervyn, controlling Russia, expanded into Sweden and Denmark. As a first time player one needs to get over the fact that one might not hold a country for the whole game but one still has an affinity for their starting country and as Italy I felt threatened by Austria and France after they blocked me from expanding any further from my two holdings in North Africa. Austria, as my neighbor seemed to be the immediate threat so I built up units to protect against and later attack Austrian holdings near the Black Sea. Mark Bausman later took control of Russia from Mervyn making Italy more nervous but fortunately Mervyn took it back again . Mark Simonitch later took Austria from Mark Bausman leaving Mark Bausman a man without a country. In the end this seemed to work out as a viable strategy for Mark. I accidentally took control of Russia from Mervyn. Accidental in that I only wanted a large bond from Russia since it was so rich and wanted to cash in on its next payout but not really wanting control since Mervyn was handling it well and from my history with Italy I would probably ruin it. Germany temporarily expanded its control into Western Russia but Russia later re-established its border and took back territory Austria had taken in the Black Sea area. At this point, Mark Simonitch then took Russia from me and Mark Bausman and I controlled no countries while Mark Simonitch controlled three, Germany, Russia, and Austria. On my next chance to buy a bond I took back control of Russia. At some point, feeling Italy was cramped from Austria on one side and France on the other, I decided to attack France's holdings in North Africa with the intent to reduce my armies before taxation. On France's next turn with the Investor card Al stopped Italy's aggression by buying control of it. Italy did not do very well for the rest of the game, as if it was doing great before then under my control, as Al spent all his time trying to improve France's position making France very attractive. Mark Bausman spent a good portion of the game with no controlling interest in a country which allowed him to make frequent small bond purchases. Near the end he took control of Russia. Mervyn ended the game when he took control of France and advanced it to end the game. The final point tally is shown below in descending victory point order.

First off I have to say, html tables are a pain in the arse on Blogger. This is the third time I've tried to post these, finally having converted them to PNG files.

2. Age of Empires III: the Age of Discovery - 4 players
Mark Bausman - Score: 63
John Boone - Score: 105
Al Hay - Score: 59
Mark Simonitch - Score: 92

Between Imperial and Age of Empires III, as a first time player of both games, I felt this one was easier to grasp. Each player represents a group in Europe attempting to discover and explore, first the new world, and later other parts of the world not represented on the board. The game consists of three ages with scoring rounds at the end of each age on turns 3, 6, and 8.

Each turn, all players start with 5 colonists, plus any specialist gained from the previous turn, with which to conduct his actions for the turn. In turn order, each player will assign one unit to one of eight tracks/boxes, Initiative, Colonist Dock, Merchant Shipping, Trade Goods, Capital Buildings, Discovery, or Warfare. As you can see there are more choices than you have units so you have to weigh the benefits of performing some actions while foregoing others. The turn rotates through this stage until all units have been placed; you can't save units for the next turn. After all units have been assigned each box it resolved one at a time.

Initiative
There are 5 spaces on the Initiative track numbered in turn order 1 to 5. Players may chose to place a colonist on the lowest numbered unoccupied space on the initiative track to move up in turn order for the next turn. In addition players receive payment equal to the number of the space they occupy ie, space 1 gets to go 1st next turn and receives $1, space two is second and receives $2, etc.

Colonist Dock
The Colonist Dock contains spaces numbered 1 to 11 in addition to two spaces labeled X and Y. Spaces X and Y are in play when activated with the appropriate Capitial Building (Indentured Servitude and Colonization Laws Capital Buildings) along with numbered spaces up to 2 times the number of players minus 1. For example in a 4-player game, 7 numbered spaces would be available for colonists; spaces 8 to 11 are not in play. When the Colonist Dock is resolved the unit on space 1 is moved to any previously discovered colony, then space 2, and so on until all colonists/specialist have landed. There are 9 Colonies in the New World but at the beginning of the game only the Caribbean is open to colonization. All the other areas must first be "discovered" before colonists can be sent to them. Some specialist units have special abilities when they land. A Missionary generates a bonus colonist in the colony it just landed in. A Merchant generates $5 for its owner when it is placed in a colony. A Soldier can be used during the Warfare event in the colony it occupies. As Age I, II and III score for colonies the Colonist Dock is one of the more important Tracks in the game. This track won me the game as I was able to take an early lead during the Age I and II scoring rounds.

Merchant Shipping
The Merchant Shipping event box contains one ship figure which is replaced every turn. When resolved the player who contains the most points of colonists and specialist in this box wins use of the merchant ship for the rest of the game. Both the Captain and Merchant specialist units count as two colonists when placed in this box. Each Merchant ship that a player owns can be used as a "wild card" when building sets of trade goods for money and scoring in the final round. Some Capital Buildings also confer extra rewards per merchant ship owned. The Navy Capital Building awards 4 victory points per ship owned during final scoring and the Privateers Capital Building awards $1 per ship from the other players. In our game Mark Simonitch managed to collect 4 ships along with the Privateers Capital Building allowing him to gain an extra $12 for his piracy actions during the Income phase of the turn.

Trade Goods
At the start of the game and at the beginning of each new turn 4 Trade Goods are randomly drawn and placed near this track. When the Trade Goods event is resolved each player who has a colonist in a Trade Goods box gets to pick one of the available Trade Goods. The order of choice is from leftmost box to right. Building up sets of Trade Goods is one of the ways players generate income in the game to purchase Capital Buildings or train specialists. For any three Trade Goods a player receives $1. For a set of three matching Trade Goods one receives $3 and for a set of 4 matching Trade Goods one receives $6 dollars. As mentioned previously a merchant ship can be used to complete one set; it acts as a wild card. Having leftover money at the end of the game is usually not worth anything unless you also own the Wealth Capital Building which awards 1 victory point for every $5 you have at the end of the game. Other ways to generate income are by sending merchants to colonies via the Colonist Dock as already mentioned, successful discovery events and by purchase and use of some of the Capital Buildings listed below.

Conquest of the Inca Empire - One time gain of $20
Trading Post - $5 per turn Factory - $30 per turn
Privateers - $1 per ship per player
Taxation - $10 per turn
Rum Distillery - $3 per Sugar per turn

Capital Buildings
In every turn, there are 5 randomly drawn, from the pool for the current age, Capital Buildings chits. These are placed face up near the Capital Buildings track. During resolution of the Capital Buildings phase players who have placed a unit in one of the boxes has the opportunity to purchase one of the displayed Capital Buildings. Order is from left to right on the track. First Age buildings cost $10, Second Age cost $14, and Third Age cost $20.

Capital Buildings confer either some special ability, victory points at the end of the game, or money. Examples of special abilities include gaining an extra specialist type per turn, gaining a random trade good per turn, or moving colonists or soldiers between colonies. Which Capital Buildings you purchase can either help your preconceived game strategy or steer you toward one if you are not sure how to proceed.

I had purchased the Training Grounds Capital Building on the first turn which gives the player an extra soldier every turn. I think this let me gain an advantage early when I sent soldiers to colonies early in the First Age.

Discovery
The Discovery box is important as this is the only way new regions can be opened up for colonization. In turn order, players, if they have units in the Discovery Box, can send a group of units, from their units in the Discovery box, to explore one region that has not been "discovered" on the board. At the beginning of the game, the eight undiscovered regions in the new world have a discovery tile placed randomly on them. When a player choses to resolve a discovery in a region the tile is flipped and the number of natives on the tile is compared to the number of units sent on the discovery mission. If the number of natives (ranging from 1 to 5) is greater then the attempt has failed, the tile is returned face down to the region, and the player loses all units sent on that discovery (returned to the players force pool); otherwise it is successful, the player gets to place one colonist in the region, his units sent on the discovery are returned to his force pool, and the player is awarded money. The money awarded is a random base value on the chit and a bonus amount per soldier included in the discovery party. This is another good use for soldiers besides warfare. Soldiers can greatly increase the monetary value of a discovery. The newly discovered region is now open for colonization on the next turn for all players. Once all regions have been discovered on the board new discovery missions are drawn from the discovery card deck. These discoveries are more difficult as the number of natives range from 3 to 6 on the cards. Successful discovery chits/cards award the owning player victory points during the end of game scoring phase.

I had only attempted three discovery missions, all in the new world, during the game which awarded me 15 VPs at the end of the game.

Warfare
Warfare is the last event resolved. There are 4 boxes in the Warfare section of the board. Starting on the leftmost box and working to the right the player in the box can declare either a battle or a war. Battles, which cost no money, allow the player to attack one other player in a region where the player has at least one soldier. Soldiers kill off the enemy player's units on a one for one basis. If the defender also has soldiers in the region he then kills your units. A War costs $10 to declare but allows one player to attack one other player in all regions that both players occupy which contains soldiers of the attacking player. Since Warfare is resolved before scoring it allows a player to improve his scoring position in that region.

Al and I were the only players who started battles during the game and no one spent money to have a war with another player.

Scoring
In turns 3 and 6, players score for Colonies in the New World. A minimum of one player must have at least 3 colonists in a region to score with first place getting 6 points and second place getting 2 points. Ties for first get 2 points and ties for second score zero points. Three ways ties score zero points.

In the final round scoring, after the Third Age, players score for Colonies, Economy, Discoveries, and Capital Buildings. Colonies score as in the 1st and 2nd scoring rounds. Economy scores 1 point for each dollar gained for Trade Goods. Discovery chits/cards score the victory points listed on the chit/card. Capital Buildings score as stated on the respective Capital Building chit. Mark Simonitch came on strong in the the Third Age Scoring Round due to all his Capital Buildings but my First and Second Age score let me hold out for the win.

3. Mag Blast - 3 players
Cody Boone - Glorp
John Boone - Freep
Mark Simonitch - Alpha Mazons

We finished off the day with a game of Mag Blast. I got revenge on Cody from our first playing by taking out his Glorp Empire and then on the next turn took out the Alpha Mazons with a lucky draw of a direct hit card and catastrophic damage cards which Mark could not negate through his open green zone.

Sunday, 7/22 - Star Trek: the Adventure Game

2007-07-24T19:57:00.000-06:00

Cody and I played an older game from my collection on Sunday afternoon - Star Trek: the Adventure Game from West End Games, 1985.

It is a two player game; pitting the Federation and Klingon Empires against each other as they try to increase their presence and influence within the Treaty Zone established by the Organians. Because the Organians prevented any outright hostilities between the two empires there is no direct military conflict between the two players in the game. Each side explores the planets within the treaty zone and attempt to sway the inhabitants to become members (Federation) or satellites (Klingons) of the respective empires. Each side starts with a Heavy cruiser and three small cruisers with which to explore the treaty zone.

The game went down to the wire with Cody winning by the slimmest of margins with the Victory point marker on the zero space, Federation side up.

North Texas Wargamers Gameday - July 21

2007-07-21T22:16:00.000-06:00

Another meeting of the North Texas Wargamers this Saturday. Brian considered cancelling it as the Dallas Games Marathon was held on the same weekend but there were enough of us who could not attend the marathon long enough to justify the expense so we met for our usual time slot 11-6PM. The following games were played:

Command and Colors: Ancients
Al Hay
Greg Blanchett's daughter Emily
I heard that Al was schooled at least three times by Greg's daughter.

Wings of War: Dawn of War
Al Hay
Emily
Mervyn Dejecacion
Mervyn picked this up today at Game Chest after I bought his copy of Stonewall in the Valley from him. I had almost picked up a copy myself yesterday. Now I can play Mervyn's copy.

Twilight Struggle
Steve Gallob - United States
John Boone - Soviet Union
I had heard good things about it on Consimworld and Boardgamegeek and had considered purchasing it many times but never had. After playing it I can see why it is so popular and has bumped up a notch on my "must buy" list.

The game portrays the post World War II Cold War between the two major superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. The game covers the ~45 years of cold war in 10 turns with each turn composed of 6(early years), 7(middle year) or possibly 8 action rounds lead off with a special simultaneous card play round called the Headline phase where each card's event is resolved if possible. After the Headline phase each player, starting with the Soviet, alternates playing cards until all action rounds are complete after which there is a check for possible scoring do to military operations conducted during the turn, then getting ready for the next turn.

The engine that drives the game, as in all card driven games (CDGs), are the cards and as in most card driven games the players have the choice to either play the card for the Operations Point (OPs) value or the event.

All the events are influenced from the long history of the Cold War and are marked indicating which side can play the card for the event either the Soviet player, the US player or both players. Unlike other card driven games, Twilight Struggle adds a novel twist in that a card that is played by your opponent for the Operations Points whose event belongs to the other player causes the event to also occur with the player who played the card deciding the order the card is resolved either the operations first then the event or vice versa. I believe this is the first time this mechanism has been used in a CDG and adds greatly to the tension in the decision making process. You may have quite a few cards in you hand whose events belong to the other player and having to decide when to play them and in what order they are resolved is sometimes quite exciting to say the least. Fortunately the game adds another novel mechanism whereby you can "dump", not use for OPs or the Event, one or possibly two of these cards - the Space Race Track.

Twilight Struggle abstracts the space race between the two super powers using a track that records the important milestones of space achievement during this time period. In order to advance on the space race track, one plays one of your cards for that round and then rolls the die. If the die falls withing the required range you get to advance, if not, you remain where you are; either way the card is still spent. As you progress up the Space Race track usually the first player to the new level is rewarded either with VPs or some special ability they can use until the opposing player catches up to your level. In our game neither one of us progressed farther than "Lunar Probe".

If one plays a card for Operations Points these points can be spent on one of three activities, placing influence, attempting a coup within a single country, or attempting to realign the government of one or more countries, up to the operations point value. If using the operations points for influence each Operation Point translates to one point of influence in a country (if not controlled by the other player) that can be applied to that country in order to sway it towards your ideology. Each country has a stability rating.

The higher the number the more stable the country is and the harder it is to switch sides once it falls under control of one of the players. The stability rating is the minimum amount of influence one side needs in that country before it controls the country. Both sides can apply influence to the same country and this is what usually happens especially in battleground countries as each side fights to control it. If this is the case then the influence needed to control the country is the stability rating plus the influence applied to the country by the other player. In addition, once a country is controlled the non-controlling side must then spend OPs points on a two OPs for one influence point basis in that country.

Another use for OPs are coup attempts. Only one coup may be attempted per card play. The operations value of the card is used as a die roll modifer to the coup die roll. The die roll plus OPs value is compared to twice the stability rating of the country. If this total is greater then the coup is successful. The difference (die roll + OPs value - 2xStability Rating) is the number of influence removed from the opposing players influence in the country. If there is any of this difference left after removing all of the opposing player's influence the remainder is added to your influence in the country. As you can see, countries with high stability ratings are more difficult to have a successful coup in. If a coup is attempted in a country that is a "battleground" country the coup also affects the level of the DEFCON Track by decreasing it one level closer to Nuclear War. "Battleground" countries are those countries that were historically important during the Cold War period usually because of its strategic location or resources, IE Oil. They are used during scoring rounds to determine who has more control in a region and hence who gets the most victory points for that region during a scoring card play. Coup attempts also increase the value of the Military Track by the Operations Point value of the card used for the coup. Players also score victory points at the end of the turn if one side has failed to accrue military operation points at least equal to the current DEFCON level. For example if the DEFCON level is three and one side has 5 military operation points and the other side has two the other player would effectively net a +1 VP since the other side missed the DEFCON level by one point. The third use of Operations Points are Realignment Rolls. Realignment Rolls are used to reduce enemy Influence in a country. Each Operations Point allows one Realignment Roll in one or more countries. A realignment is less severe than a coup as it allows you, if successful, to only remove the opposing players influence but not add to your own.

A game can end one of four ways, going the full ten turns (winner determined by final score), one side gaining enough victory points at the end of a turn for an automatic victory, one side causing Nuclear War (that side loses), or by play of the Event Card "Wargames" if you satisfy its condition. Victory Points are scored for the various areas when their respective scoring card is played by a player during the action round and at the end of turn 10 when all areas are scored to determine a final victory point score.

As one can surmise the various tracks, influence, coups, realignment attempts, and events all interact in an elegant way making playing the game both a thought provoking and enjoyable experience.

I had never played before so Steve gave me the Soviets. In the game the Soviets have the early advantage but as the game goes on more pro-US cards are introduced into the mix. The cards are divided into an early, mid, and late war deck with mid and late year cards added as the game progresses. The game went the full ten turns with the Soviets coming out on top at (minus) 14 victory points. As each turn is made up of multiple action rounds, I could not possibly remember all of the goings on but some of the memorable moments from the Soviet perspective are included below.

Great Moments in Alternate Soviet Cold War History -
1. Soviets having complete Control of the Middle East during a Middle East scoring round.
2. A successfully played Arab-Israeli War converting a strong (influence 5) US controlled Israel to Soviet control after first converting neighboring Lebanon and Jordan (Egypt was already Soviet) to Soviet control.
3. Having a strong hold on North and South Korea along with Vietnam in Asia.
4. Having and playing "Terrorism" immediately after Steve played "Iranian Hostage Crisis" there by causing him to randomly discard two of his cards instead of one.
5. Being able to play "Aldrich Ames" on Steve as my Headline card of turn 10. This allowed me to view his hand and arrange his cards in the order I wanted him to play them.
As a first time player the board was a little busy for me but it was a very enjoyable game.

Marne 1918: Friedensturm
Paul Borchers
Brian Marrs
This is a new game by the French company Hexasim covering the World War I German offensive in May-August 1918.

A Victory Lost
Mark Simonitch
Greg Blanchett
Covers the Russian offensive Operation Saturn and continues through van Manstein's famous "backhand blow" on the Russian front of World War II.

World War II: Barbarossa to Berlin
Walter McGovern
Sean Harris
European theatre coverage of World War II from the Spring of 1941 to the collapse of Germany's war machine in 1945, if it goes that long.

On the Table Sunday, ASLSK#1 - Simple Equation

2007-07-16T07:19:00.000-06:00

Mervyn came over Sunday afternoon to play a scenario we had played on our last go with ASLSK, the Simple Equation scenario. It was Americans, me, vs. Mervyn's Germans. The Americans were on the attack having to capture 25 building hexes on board z but had to setup on board y.

The first time we played this scenario my Americans advanced on the wings with good results especially making good use of the wooded road on the left. This time Mervyn posted a unit to guard that approach so I decided to go straight up the middle. Mervyn had pre-planned his setup before coming over and it appeared to be a good one after the first turn as he managed to get good defensive fires on my advancing units. At the end of the turn he had already casaulty reduced one of my squads and the rest of the broken ones routed to YK6 to for a rally attempt with an 8-0 leader left behind for just such an occasion. Luckily for me with their 8 morale on the reverse side I managed to roll low enough even under desperation morale to rally all of my broken squads.
Turn two kept the Americans occupied trying to take the YI2 building position. Mervyn had set two squads with an LMG there in the beginning. I managed to break one of them and he routed away. The lone surviving squad survived my first close combat attempt and the units were locked in melee. Later that squad needing a 3, rolled snake eyes and eliminated my squad who needed a 6 to do likewise. Of course my squad failed its roll so the German's still held the building.
In turn 3 I wasted a lot of ineffective prep fire on YI2 so had to send in another squad to take the building. I was finally successful but I was taking too much time on board y. Mervyn's turn 3 prep fire managed to break my point platoon eliminating the half squad carrying the Flame thrower in YJ1. These broken units would rout back to YH3 and YL3.
My lone 9-2 leader, not wanting to leave the Flame thrower in YJ1 during turn 3 stayed and tried to pick it up. I needed anything but a 6. Guess what I rolled? You got it a six further stalling my attack. After my turn 4 movement we had to stop the game; Mervy had to go home. Half the scenario time was over and I still had not made it to board z and Mervyn's defensive fire was making it tough.
The "Simple Equation" the Americans used was to use their machine guns to suppress the Germans so the Flame thrower could make quick work of them. In this game my GIs could not do this; the prep fire with the MGs was ineffective and when I got close enough to use the flame thrower it didn't do its job either.

We will have to play this one again Mervyn!

Empire of the Sun - Cyberboard, End of '42 Turn

2007-07-13T19:05:00.000-06:00

This is the end of the first turn, turn 2, of Mark Simonitch's and my Empire of the Sun game via Cyberboard.

Click Picture for larger view.

Mark is working on the Dutch East Indies after having taken Rangoon and made a landing on Biak Is, New Guinea. The allied units in the Philippines were isolated after the FE Air Force was destroyed along with what little US Naval strength that began in the theatre. ABDA HQ established itself on Timor. The 19th Air Force managed to survive a couple of attacks, both offensively and in reaction, and is currently based in Makassar. MacArthur, SW Pac HQ, evacuated the Philippines and will be redeploying at the start of turn 3.

July 4th Holiday

2007-07-10T22:51:00.000-06:00

For the July 4th holiday we went to my sister and brother-in-law's house for a couple of days and got to see my 5 month old niece and nephew.

We then spent Friday to Sunday down in Galveston so no wargaming this past weekend. On Friday we did play a six player game of Betrayal at House on Haunted Hill with my sister, niece, and my three older kids. My son ended up being the betrayer but we defeated him with a loss of two (not counting Cody) from our party.

The only other "battle" I had this weekend was with this little guy, a bonnethead (shovelhead) shark. After releasing him I had to catch him again and bring him further out into the water before releasing him as he was a little disoriented.

Gaming this weekend

2007-07-01T21:53:00.000-06:00

Whew! A lot of gaming this weekend.

On Saturday at the North Texas Wargamers monthly meet for June we had a good group of players show up, sixteen I believe.

The following games were played:
1. EastFront II
2. Twilight Struggle
3. Imperial
4. Age of Empires III: Age of Discovery
5. War of the Ring
6. Command and Colors: Ancients

Greg Blanchett posted a few pictures on ConsimWorld,
Greg's Pictures.

I played a 4-player game of War of the Ring, Random drawing of sides resulted with Alan and Curtis as the Fellowship and Nevin and I as the Shadow.
The nations divided up thus:
Gondor and Elves: Alan Richbourg
Rohan, Northmen, and Dwarves: Curtis Kitchens
Saruman, Easterlings, and Southrons: John Boone
Witch King and Sauron Nation: Nevin Ball

In the multi-player game the players on each side take turns as the first player. In the case of the Fellowship, first player decides if the Fellowship declares. In the case of the Shadow, the first player decides how many die go into the Hunt box. In both cases they get the first action for that side. Musters were few in the initial turns so the Witch King didn't come out until turn 2 and Saruman made his appearance in turn 3. The Fellowship moved pretty well during the first few turns avoiding detection until they hit the 5th position on the Fellowship track. Not wanting to have to draw another hunt tile the Fellowship took the North Pass route. The Fellowship would never move very far from that point on chosing to split the Fellowship leaving Frodo, Sam, and Pippin? as leader.

Minas Tirith came under siege first but put up a good fight against the might of the Witch King and his dark minions. It was actually pretty close after the Grond Event failed to take Minas Tirith and reinforcements had to be called in for the dark lord to continue his siege. The Easterlings reinforced (Horde from the East Event card) their army up North and began their march for the DEW (Dale, Erebor, Woodland Realm) line while down south the Southron armies headed for Umbar planning to sail for Dol Amroth.

After the Southrons voyage from Umbar to siege Dol Amroth left Umbar bare and Moria was still lightly garrisoned the Fellowship, Alan, decided it would be a good idea to go on the offensive and attempt a military victory. Most of the companions separated from the Fellowship and joined the army from Lorien marching on Moria with Gandalf the White leading. About the same time Boromir and Strider made their way into the besieged Minas Tirith with the We Prove the Swifter event card where he was crowned king but his reign would not last long.

In my own attempts toward a Fellowship military victory it usually fails if you can not acheive it in one turn so as not to give the Shadow, who has superior action dice numbers, to react. Such was the case again when Umbar, with one lone besieged Southron survivor was relieved by a Dark Army near Minas Tirith. Moria fell to the Fellowship but it was not enough for victory.

The Shadow then kicked it into gear finishing off Minas Tirith, where Boromir and Aragorn fell, and captured, Dol Amroth, Pelargir, Dale, The Woodland Realm, and Lorien for the Shadow military victory.

Where were the armies of Rohan and Orthanc? They spent the game staring at each other building up forces. Rohan was pinned protecting its own land from an attack from Orthanc and did not help Gondor. If the horse had come to Gondor's aid it could have possibly turned the battle for Gondor during the early stages. The Dwarves too were quiet, never getting to war, while watching their neighbors in the DEW line be conquered.

Nevin then came to my house and we played a 3-player game of Drakon with my son. We made the biggest dungeon map yet in all the games we have played so far. It contained very little gold and a lot of sneaky traps. My Drakon winning streak continued to 5 games.

Lastly, we then played a 3-player scenario I created for Federation Commander: Romulan Border. Taking inspiration from the original series show "Arena", it was two Federation players vs the Gorn player. Nevin commanded the outpost, a Federation Commander Mobile Base, on Cestus III along with an orbiting Fed Frigate.

Cody played Capt. Kirk in the Federation Cruiser coming in to give aid, and I was the Gorn Cruiser protecting Gorn space from the invaders.

Both the Frigate and Outpost started with their shields down and no weapons armed. Nevin could not raise his shields until either I fired on his units or he detected me with his sensors.

Cody was limited to a speed of 8, warp 2, until either of the previous conditions for Nevin were met simulating the distress call. The Gorn cruiser had all plasma torpedoes (4 of them, two S-type and two F-type) fully armed.

On the approach, Nevin picked up my ship before I got to fire on him so his shields were raised when I launched my torpedoes and fired off my 4 phaser salvo at his base at the end of turn 1. The base fired what phasers could be brought to bear on two of my strongest torpedoes in order to lessen their effect when they hit next turn. The frigate moved off and hid on the other side of the planet at this time. At the beginning of turn 2, all players began charging their mult-turn arming weapons (Photons and Plasmas). Impulse one of turn 2 started off with a bang as 4 plasma torpedoes slammed into a single shield of the outpost causing heavy damage.

On turn 2 the Gorn ship turned toward the Fed CA while firing off a phaser barrage from the port side to finish off the outpost. There were no survivors. Nevin's FF vowed revenged and turned back to pursue the Gorn. Turn two ended with some plinking phaser shots between the combatants with no real damage and the launching of missiles against the Gorn ship. Fortunately I had one phaser left to take out the missile from Nevin's frigate. If it has hit I would have taken 12 points of damage to my front shield. The Federation Photon torpedoes would be fully charged at the start of turn 3. Plasmas normally require three turns to charge but the bigger tubes can fast load an F-type torpedo in two turns by paying more energy. I decided to do this with my two S-type torpedo tubes. Otherwise I would have to spend turn three running from two angry Federation ships with possibly overloaded photon torpedoes while my heavy weapons were still charging.

Turn 3 started off with the FF and Gorn CA in close proximity with Cody's cruiser in hot pursuit. Phaser shots were traded at some point and then I managed to get into position where I launched two plasmas at range 1. Since Nevin's phasers on that side had already fired this turn they hit doing a full 40 points of damage. The frigate was gutted. Only his two photon tubes remained for weapons and his power systems were down to around 3 points.He returned fire with both photons, one which was overloaded to +4 level. The overloaded one hit doing 12 points of damage to my shield. At this point I turned and ran as Cody still had all photons ready and some one had launched another drone missile at me. Turn three ended up with both Fed ships and lone drone chasing after the fleeing Gorn ship. At this point we decided to stop the game as the victory conditions I had made it impossible for the Federation to win. I have to do some work on this scenario.

On Sunday, Nevin came over again. We started off with Battlelore, Call to Arms expansion,

and then played an Epic Battlelore game.

Nevin won both of these contests. The first one was close but Nevin's forces really killed me in Epic Battlelore, 7 to 2 flags! Nevin had the Hill Giant but he never was a factor in the battle. One lone red unit on Nevin's side accounted for about 5 of his flags.

He was awesome and I could never kill it causing it to retreat about three times never able to get that last hit needed to finish it off. Finally on the third game we played a single map Battlelore scenario, standard Battlelore with lore using the full war council.

I finally won one.

While Nevin read the rules to Mag Blast, Cody and I played the same Battlelore scenario Nevin and I just finished. This one ended up being a mad melee in the middle section as both forces were mixed up pretty good. A couple of times I moved units and declared combat on my own forces. Dad triumphed over son in this one.

We finish the night with a game of Mag Blast. A game Nevin picked up on his way to my house, along with Epic Battlelore. We really liked this one, especially Cody when he whipped up on us with his Recyclon Empire. Long live the Glorp Empire. We shall rise again from the ashes of our defeat!

On Board Wargaming

High Frontier

2011 Gaming So Far

Games played at Madness Games & Comics

Sept 25, 2010 Frisco Library Game Day

Game Day at The Gamer's Realm - 3/27/2010

Game Day at Gamer's Realm 2/27/2010

Frisco Library Game Day - Dec 19th, 2009

My Boardgamegeek Con Game Schedule

Boardgamegeek Con Wargame Meetup List

Upcomming Local Gaming Events

New webpage for our library group

Space Hulk 3rd Edition

Sept 26th - Frisco Library Game Day

August 15th 2009 - Frisco Library Game Day Pictures

July 25th 2009 - Frisco Library Game Day

July 18 Gaming at the Boone Casa - Blackbeard and Age of Empires III

Impromtu Gaming Session

D-Day, June 6th, Game Day at Frisco Public Library

Catching up with recent gaming activities

Teaching Claire Memoir '44

North Texas Wargamers at Frisco Library - 3/14/2009

Game Day at Mark Woodson's House, Saturday Feb 28, 2009

Saturday, Feb 21, 2009 - Hammer of the Scots

Saturday, Feb 14, 2009 - Starcraft and Neuroshima Hex!

2-10-2009 Wordle Image of Blog

GiftTRAP: The Hilarious Gift Exchange Challenge

What Wargames I'm Interested In for 2009

New Games for Christmas 2008

TOMB - A Description and Mini-Review

Sunday, Dec 14th 2008 - Kingsburg

Saturday, Dec 13th - Senji and Citadels

Saturday, Nov 29th: FAB Bulge

Boardgamegeek Con 2008

Galactic Emperor - Saturday 11/15/08

RISK again on Saturday - with Cody, Claire, and Catherine

RISK - With Cody and Claire

No Gaming Just a Bit of Reading

Where We Left Off Last Time

New Podcast - The Noise Before Defeat.

New Campaign Started - Descent: the Road to Legend

More Summer Reading

Seth Owen's Pawnderings Blog

Saturday, June 15, 2008: Successors III Playtest and a little bit of Fury of Dracula

Antike

Vikings and Germans and Brits, Oh my!

Unplayed Games - the Short List

Happenings for the past 3 months

Bonaparte at Marengo: Ladder Round 9, 4/21/2008

Shifting Sands - Sonnenblume Scenario

More Reading

February 2, 2008: 4-player Starcraft: The Boardgame

Saturday, Jan 19, 2008 - Battles of the Third Age, Rohan Battle

Saturday, Jan 19, 2008 - Conquest of Paradise

Combat Commander: Battle Pack 1, Paratrooper, Sunday 1/6/2008

Six-Player Starcraft, Saturday 1, 2008

Sunday, 11/04/2007 - Spongebob Monopoly with my Daughter

Saturday, Nov 3rd, 2007 - Finally Some Face-to-Face Gaming

I'm Proud of my Wife

Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk

Saturday Sept 29, 2007 Saganami and Twilight Struggle

Quick Post

Empire of the Sun - Cyberboard

Twilight Struggle - John (US) vs Brian Marrs (USSR)

Nexus Ops

Jeff Kuhn's War of the Ring Cyberboard Gamebox

North Texas Wargamers Gameday - August 18th, 2007

Shifting Sands - The Italians Rule in East Africa

Shifting Sands - Brian Mars (Axis), John Boone (Allies): In the Beginning

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

Current Reading Influences Current Game Interest

Alan Richbourg's Painted War of the Ring Game

Gameday, Saturday, July 28th

Sunday, 7/22 - Star Trek: the Adventure Game

North Texas Wargamers Gameday - July 21

On the Table Sunday, ASLSK#1 - Simple Equation

Empire of the Sun - Cyberboard, End of '42 Turn

July 4th Holiday

Gaming this weekend