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

July 25th 2009 - Frisco Library Game Day

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.

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

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

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

• Greg Blanchett
• Mark Simonitch

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

North Texas Wargamers Gameday - July 21

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.

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!