Galactic Emperor - Saturday 11/15/08

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

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

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

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

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

New Podcast - The Noise Before Defeat.

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

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.

More Summer Reading

Nothing too heavy at the moment.
Sci-Fi:
I started 1634: The Galileo Affair by Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis. I'm about 1/3 of the way through with it but it has not grabbed me as much as his first two novels of the series. I may not finish it.

WWII Historical Fiction:
I picked up Jeff Shaara's The Steel Wave from Sams Club about a week ago. I have not read his first book in the series The Rising Tide . I seen it in paperback at Walmart the other night but did not buy it as I'm not sure if I like his style of writing yet. His father's Killer Angels was one of my favorites though.

History:
Cannae 216 BC by Mark Healy from the Praeger Illustrated Military History Series. Finished this one last week after buying it at Half-Price Books along with a few other titles.

Rome's Northern Frontier AD 70-235, Nic Fields, Osprey Fortress Series. Half way through this one.

Troy c. 1700-1250 BC, Nic Fields, Osprey Fortress Series. Not started yet.

These last two I just bought today from Half-Price Books.

Rome and Her Enemies: An Empire created and Destroyed by War, Jane Penrose editor, Osprey

Hannibal: Enemy of Rome, Leonard Cottrell. Just started this one tonight.
7/19/08: I finished this one last week. I found it fascinating that Hannibal spent some 15 years in Italy and all that time he fought only 3 major battles.

Seth Owen's Pawnderings Blog

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

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.