Saturday Sept 29, 2007 Saganami and Twilight Struggle

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

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.