North Texas Gamers' March 12 2016 Game Day Photos

We had regular gaming and a Twilight Struggle Tournament with 10 entrants. North Texas Gamers' March 12 2016 Game Day Photos

Sept 25, 2010 Frisco Library Game Day

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.

Gaming this weekend

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!

Latest Aquisition - Federation Commander: Romulan Border

I expanded my Federation Commander collection with Romulan Border. The second module in the Federation Commander series from Amarillo Design Bureau.

This module adds the Romulans and Gorns along with some new Federation ships that served on the Romulan border. In addition a new "monster", the space dragon, is also included along with the standard 6 map panels. The updated rulebook includes rules for plasma torpedoes and the infamous Romulan Cloaking Device(Wikipedia, Memory Alpha).


Federation Commander is a simplification of the old Star Fleet Battles system. What is interesting is that it includes two different scales, fleet and squadron, for each ship. Fleet scale is if you want to control a lot of ships, ie fleets, or run quick battles, and the squadron scale is the same as the scale of the original Star Fleet Battles. I've attached an overview/review of the system I wrote when I first purchased the first module, Klingon Border.

Federation Commander: Klingon Border Review
I played Starfleet Battles (SFB) way back when and enjoyed it immensely. Between it and the Squad Leader series it was the most played games in our game group in the 80's but as both systems started adding weight in the rules department it became more of a chore and less fun. The game system has been trimmed down to make the playing time much shorter which is a good thing in my book. The ~1.5 in thick game box is packed full. There is no extra space in this puppy with 16 double side ship displays, 6 double sided thick map panels, 2 counter sheets, two 6-sided dice, a grease pencil, 52 page rulebook, two player aid charts, two sheets of miniatures movement templates, and a plastic baggie with paper clips to use on the ship system displays.

COMPONENTS
The component quality is a mixed bag. First off on Amarillo Design Bureau's own site they say Federation Commander "uses the best concepts from the best-selling space combat game of all time with Euro-Game production values and ease of play". Euro-Game production values are high so some of the component decisions by ADB do not support this statement. "Ease of play" is greatly increased over the original Star Fleet Battles and Star Fleet Battles was/is probably "the best-selling space combat [board] game of all time" so 2 out of 3 is not all bad; or is it?

Two ~3/8 inch six sided dice are included; functional and nothing bad or good to say about them. I like a little more heft in my dice so would have liked them to be a little bigger. [Edit: the Romulan Border package contained larger dice; bump up my rating to 6.]
Euro-Gamer: 5, Wargamer: 5

The rulebook is your typical wargame black and white print with some nice illustrations and a good index. The downside is the paper feels a little thin for your typical rulebook. The Euro crowd would be disapointed expecting a full color rulebook. [Edit: The Romulan Border rulebook has a thicker cover. It is your standard SFB blue cover with black ink. The rulebook edges have been trimmed to be even, but it is still black and white.
Bump up Wargamer rating to 6.]
Euro-Gamer rating: 4, Wargamer rating: 5.5

There are two different sizes of ship counters included in the game, 1/2 inch and 1 inch. For the wargamer this would be a thumbs up to ADB for including both sizes of counters. The typical Euro-Gamer would be asking where are the plastic ship bits? In this day with game companies like Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight Games, and Eagle Games [Edit: now out of business] making games that come with 50, 100, or 200+ plastic miniatures the Euro crowd has high expectations The 1/2 inch counter graphics for the most part look better than the graphics from the original Star Fleet Battles(SFB) games, as they should, but the 1 inch counters while they look good do not look as nice as the 1 inch counters that came with the SFB Megahex module H1 I bought way back when. The graphics on my old H1 module counters appear more realistic and crisper.
Euro-Gamer: 3 (Where are my plastic miniatures?), Wargamer: 6 (thanks for including the two different scales of counters but the graphics are so-so)

The mapboards consists of six 8.5x11 inch double sided thick (~1/8 inch) map panels. One side consists of 1/2 inch hexes and the other side uses larger hexes to accommodate the 1 inch counters. The map background is no longer your basic black from the original SFB; it consists of a photo quality starfield interspersed with small galaxies - a nice touch. If you're going to make a game board for a Euro-Gamer it better be mounted and it better not have valleys in the folds so ADB satisfies here but the production quality could have been better. There are two problems with the map, (1) the mapboards were slightly warped (concave/convex depending what side you're looking at) and (2) there is a visible gray border on the larger hex sized side. This is due to the map panel graphics not lining up between the two sides. The rulebook specifically mentions problem (1) and how to remedy it and (2) is more of an aesthetic nit but since they took the time to print such a pretty galactic background on the mapboard it is a shame it is broken up by a thick gray line on some of the panels. [Edit: ADB has fixed the registration problem but my Romulan Border map panels now have another problem. All along the edges the graphic is flaking off on the large hex side. It looks like the die cutter may have been getting dull on this batch of boards.

Click on each image for a larger view. The first picture is of the six board panels I received in Romulan Border. As you can see the edges are quite ragged - at least to me. I sent ADB an email with pictures and include their reply below.

"What is happening is that the boards are so thick that the cutting blade doesn't get all the way through before the thickness of the blade forces the panels apart. Not much to be done about it; the only cutter that had a special narrow blade belonged to a company that went out of business and sold the cutter to Argentina.

I have seen this produce a slightly rougher than normal edge but haven't seen any exposed cardboard.

I can send you more maps but they'll be the same as what you have."

The second picture is a comparison of a Klingon Border map panel on the right, showing the gray printing on the edges due to the registration error and the Romulan Border map panel on the left. Note: that on the KB map panel this side is where the cutter first touched the panel unlike on the RB map panel which is where the cutter exited but I have looked at all of my KB panels and the two panels I got with Klingon Attack and the the cutter exit side looks no where near as bad as the Romulan Border map panel edges do.


I would have bumped up my rating for fixing the board warp and the registration problem but the flaking graphics killed that. Lower my rating to 4.]

[Edit 07/09/07: After an exchange of emails with Steve Cole of ADB to clarify what I was un-happy about, Steve sent me some map panels (twelve, woo-hoo!) which I received on my return from out July 4th holiday. These are first edition boards with the grey borders but the smoothly cut edges. I'm now a happy camper. To be fair to ADB about their map panels Steve informed me that they have tried out different vendors and are still looking for the one who can produce them to ADB's satisfaction. I wish them good luck in their continued search. Thanks Steve and ADB for the great customer service! Customer Service Rating: 10]
Euro-Gamer: 4.5, Wargamer: 5.5

The double sided ship system displays are where the game has made the most improvement over SFB. The displays are color coded and laminated. Each ship included in the game is represented by two different versions, the "squadron" and "fleet" displays. The squadron display side would be equivalent to the normal old SFB ship system display (SSD) while the fleet side represents the ship with half the values from the squadron side. The rulebook says you can use either side to play, player preference. The fleet side can be used for players who want a quicker game, those just learning the game, or those playing larger fleet battles.
Euro-Gamer: 7, Wargamer: 8

There are two identical player aids included with the game. Most games these days will usually include player aids for all players so this is expected by both the Euro and Wargamer crowd. What makes these nice in terms of the wargamer is that they are both in color (expected by Euro-Gamer) and laminated. The play aids are double sided and include the sequence of play, the weapons tables for the starship weapons included in the game, and the damage allocation chart. [Edit: Romulan Border includes a plasma torpedo playaid. One side contains info for Plasma torps and the other side has a summary of the Impulse Procedure, the Phaser-4 table, and a log for keeping track of drones.]
Euro-Gamer: 7, Wargamer: 8

The package includes a single Grease Pencil [Edit: Newer editions substitute a white board marker for the grease pencil.] used to mark on the ship system displays during play. Boxes are crossed off to indicate damaged systems, fired weapons, and damaged drones and shuttles among other things. It is nice that they included the grease pencil but if you are going to include it you might as well go all the way and at least include two of them since your going to play this game with at least one other person.
Euro-Gamer: 4 (Where is the other pencil?), Wargamer: 6 (Wow! they even included a grease pencil) .

To round out the package ADB included a baggie with standard paper clips and two card stock sheets of movement templates. The paper clips are an alternative means to recording energy expenditure of your ship during the turn. Each ship system display includes a numbered track(s) on the right side of the ship card where you can use the paper clip, grease pencil, or tokens to indicate how much energy your ship has remaining. The movement templates are for ship miniatures use for those who like to play the game on the table top sans hex map. The templates are scaled to 1 inch per movement point and the rules state you can download other scales from the ADB website.
Euro-Gamer: 4 (Where are my plastic ships), Wargamer: 5.5

GAME PLAY vs Star Fleet Battles
ADB says this game is not meant to be a replacement for Star Fleet Battles as they are still supporting and making new products for SFB but the comparisons are inevitable for a game that is based on SFB and still shares many mechanics and game history with it. What did they do to make it play faster than Star Fleet Battles? Short answer, a lot! If you want the whole list you can go to ADB's website here, http://www.starfleetgames.com/fc/ . If you've never played SFB before you don't need to bother going to the above link as some of the acronyms and rules references will probable confuse you. In fact if you've never played Star Fleet Battles before you can just skip this paragraph and be glad ADB did make these changes in Federation Commander. The biggest short cut ADB did was to make the energy allocation process a whole lot easier from Star Fleet Battles. Basically the Energy Allocation Phase in Federation Commander consists of deciding what your base ship speed for the turn is going to be and, if you have them, how much energy you are going to put into charging photon torpedoes [and plasma torpedoes]. That's it; all other energy allocation expenditures are decided on the fly during the Impulse Segments of the turn. Deciding how fast you are going has been made simpler further still by limiting you to four base speed choices, 0, 8, 16, and 24 hexes per turn. The second major change to speed up the game is a new Damage Allocation Chart (DAC) and procedure on how to use it. Long gone is the method of rolling two dice for each hit obtained on the DAC; it has been replaced with 1 die roll for each group of 10 hits that get past the shields. This definitely cuts down on the wristage on those 50 to 100+ internal hit salvos! These two changes greatly reduce the time to play and as stated above if you want to shorten the time even further use the fleet ship system display. The sequence of play has been changed to quicken the game also. Although there are still basically 32-movement impulses they have been grouped into 8 Impulse segments with 4 sub-pulses of possible movement in each. Firing of weapons and use of other systems happens after the four sub-pulses for movement have been completed cutting down your firing, tractor beam, and transport use decisions to 8 times per turn vice the 32 times in SFB.
Euro-Gamer: ? (Who cares! I probably would not play SFB anyway) Wargamer: 8

In the next section I will describe the turn sequence of Federation Commander.

Federation Commander Turn Sequence
The turn starts off with Energy Allocation; all players determining how much power each ship will have for the turn and then decide what the "base" speed of their ship(s) will be moving at this turn. Note that during the Impulse Procedure portion of the turn the player can increase or decrease the speed of the ship from this base value. After announcing your base speed players can begin "preloading" multi-turn arming weapons; for Klingon Border this only applies to Photon Torpedoes. Players then decide if they wish to spend energy to regenerate damaged shields and then finally decide if they wish to power tractor beams that were powered last turn. That completes energy allocation; all other energy point expenditures occur during the Impulse Procedure segment of the turn.

The Impulse Procedure segment of the turn is where all the good stuff happens. It is divided into 8 Impulses. At the start of each impulse players will have to decide if they are going to accelerate or decelerate from the base speed they chose during energy allocation. This happens at the beginning of every impulse so a ship can theoretically increase or decrease its ship speed by +/- 8 hexes per turn from its base speed. This flexibility in speed does not come without a price; each increase/decrease in speed costs the energy equal to move one hex. After deciding whether or not to change speed there are 4 sub-pulses of possible movement. Ships moving at a speed > 24 hexes/turn will move every sub-pulse while those only moving 8 hexes/turn will move only in the 4th sub-pulse. So, although there are only four base speeds a ship could move anywhere from 0 to 32 hexes per turn. After all four movement sub-pulses have occurred ships that have been intercepted by seeking weapons may defend themselves during the Defensive Fire Phase.

During the Defensive Fire Phase ships may use Anti-Drone Defense (providing this system ia on the ship), fire phasers at the drone(s), and finally use a tractor beam on the drone. These steps are taken in the order listed. If a drone does survive the defenses it hits the ship and does damage to the shields and possibly causing internal damage to ship systems. Finally, ships that will use evasive maneuvering are announced and paid for during this phase. Offensive fire then takes place.

In the Offensive Fire Phase all ships can fire on other enemy ships, shuttles, and seeking weapons that are within range and firing arc. All fire must be predesignated, simultaneous, and paid for when used.

After the Offensive Fire Phase is the Other Functions Phase where ships can drop/raise shields, use Labs, Tractor Beams, and Transporters. The last phase of the Impulse Procedure segment is where ships can launch seeking weapons and launch/recover shuttle craft. After the Impulse Procedure is repeated eight times the End of Turn segment is performed.

During the End of Turn Segment players can carryover unused energy equal to the number of undestroyed batteries to the next turn. All other excess unused energy is lost. The players can then conduct repairs to damaged systems using the ships damage control rating. Depending on the rating and the repair cost of a system it may take more than one turn to complete a repair.

That is a complete turn. It sounds like a lot going on but it goes by relatively quickly as some phases can be skipped because nothing is happening then.

Amarillo Design Bureau emphasizes these Key Points:
A typical duel takes one hour, not four hours.
The largest fleet battles take four hours, not four days.
Energy is spent "on the fly" via a marker on a sliding scale.
Damage allocation involves 95% fewer die rolls.
Each turn has 75% fewer decision steps.
Ship diagrams are laminated (multiple use, no photocopies!).
The rulebook is 5% as big; they can learn it in 30 minutes.
Expansions include more fun, not complex new rules.

Overall I like the new Federation Commander.
Euro rating: 6. Wargamer rating: 7.5

One other thing I forgot to mention is that the artwork for the box cover is really first rate. All of the covers I've seen so far are really nice.