Once I Had an Empire…

by on March 1, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Yet another successful game day yesterday. Got everyone over (6 people total) for Advanced Civilization on Sunday. Overall it went smoothly, and a great time was had. Someone really needs to reprint the darn thing.

In the initial picking, I was fourth and took Africa. I know I’ve played Africa before (in the dim time), and have vague memories of being pretty squeezed. So I played to an aggressively expansionistic policy, which went pretty well. Jason took Egypt, and maintained a compact, if dense, civilization the entire game.

Dave took Italy (he had the final choice), and was squeezed between me and Mark’s Thrace the entire game. Early on, he had more than enough trouble with a very aggressive Thrace that I easily settled Sicily first, and he didn’t try anything there until my first wave of disasters, and in the long run ended with control of much of southern Greece.

Zjonni took Crete and followed a course that I suggested might work (it had popped into my head the night before). I’m only used to seeing Crete build a ship on turn 4, sacrificing population to spread off-island. Building a city instead sacrifices more population, but there’s enough to maintain the city, and the taxation pays for the ships, meaning that there’s no continuing drain on the population for more shipbuilding, and you start building up trade cards slightly earlier. It’s probably best to migrate on 4 and build a city on Crete on 5, but I hadn’t thought it through, and was surprised when Zjonni actually did it. Any rate, after a slow start he went into Asia Minor, mostly staying out of the Italy-Thrace war.

Patch took Babylon, and spread far and wide with no immediate neighbors. We really need to stop letting him do that. However, he was a little slow building the initial cities, and got slammed by two Barbarian Hordes during the game, which slowed him down.

I note with some amusement, that except for trading out Assyria for Crete, this is exactly the same set of countries as our last 6-player game. It seems to me that having Assyria/Asia & Illyria instead of Italy & Thrace might be a better balanced set.

Between Sicily and the bulk of Sub-Saharan Africa, I established the first dominant empire, generally keeping one city ahead of anyone else, and getting some good trade sets to get set with good advances and make it into the Late Bronze Age. I dodged the first calamities and got up to seven cities for two turns before they caught up to me. I had been successfully cycling tokens in and out of stock, taxation and population, I was exerting pressure on the Nile valley, my attempt to colonize Cyprus failed, but I ended up with small colonies in Greece and the Sinai.

So I was the perfect target of the first Civil War of the game. Crete got a valuable shot in the arm, but the resulting possessions were too scattered to easily manage. After that, I recovered some, but then kept taking calamities that kept me off-balance while Egypt finally got its act together. I still had some high-value cards that allowed good trading opportunities, but I ended up keeping a Resin card until near the end of the game. Right at the point where my fortunes were lowest (soon after a Treachery and a Slave Revolt), Crete was hit by a Civil War… and I was the beneficiary. I got two cities (one of which had been mine…), and scattered possessions in th

Sadly, that happened a little too late in the day for me to get some real momentum back. After being the one in the lead of Civilization cards for much of the day, others were catching up. Patch got his eighth (out of nine needed to enter the Early Iron Age) on the last turn. So did I, because it was the last turn; otherwise I would have been better served to sit on my poor trade cards, used the Grain I had to soak up some of the Famine I was dealt, and hope for a real hand to buy two better cards on the next turn.

Final Scores:

Side Player AST Cities Civ Cards Cards Treasury Total Place
Africa Rindis 1000 250 580 3 1 1834 2
Italy Dave 900 300 300 25 5 1530 5
Thrace Mark 1000 200 410 1 0 1611 4
Crete Zjonni 1000 300 205 0 1 1506 6
Babylon Patch 900 400 590 13 0 1903 1
Egypt Jason 900 350 375 18 8 1651 3

For the fourth time in a row, I came in second. Patch has won three out of four games. The one time he didn’t win is the one time I had a civilization on his border. I think he’s been getting lucky with non-aggressive neighbors.

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I am (not) Spartacus!

by on February 17, 2010 at 11:21 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark managed to make it over on Sunday thanks to the long weekend. The game was his choice, and he went for a second try at Spartacus, since we’d had trouble with it the first time. It went a lot better overall, but we still got zapped with a technical problem at the end.

Some of the aspects about when to use initiative ratings, battle ratings and so on finally resolved themselves out in my mind, and the system is finally coming together for me, which is good. It’s a very interesting game, and a period that I find very interesting. Mark was wanting to do the long scenario (which I would like to try), but knowing that the game was originally designed around the medium scenario, and that it would still take the entire day or more, we eventually went for that.

Mark took the Republicans again, and the first two turns of the game were very punishing for him. We had a few battles, most of which were nearly even on the modifiers, and he lost every one, starting with Pompeius’ initial move into Spain. The strength of the legions whittled down quickly, and I kicked out Metellus’ army in southern Spain during turn two. I ended up with complete control of Spain, but the remaining Roman army was blocking the passes out and into Narbonese Gaul.

As the fencing there started, Mithridates became active and moved into Bithynia. This also started well, as the available Roman forces are no match for the size and bulk of the Pontic army, and the remnants of the Roman force ended up hiding out in Cyzicus.

During the fourth turn (what would be turn 8 of the full game—73 BC), things were shifting towards the Romans. Mark had had poor reinforcement rolls for the previous two turns, hurting his ability to recover from the defeats, and finally got a ‘5’ this time. The Roman army in Europe promptly marched across the passes into Spain, intent on raising havoc. He was apparently expecting me to send Sertorius into Narbonese Gaul, where it would become a contest for who could do more damage faster. I would rather defeat the Roman army and then cause problems unopposed. However, I lost two battles in a row, with such poor rolls I didn’t even cause damage to the Romans.

At the same time, things were going poorly in Asia Minor. Galatia allied with Rome, and the army I had on hand promptly was defeated twice by the Galatians. My army leader was wounded in the first fight, and the spoils of war gave him Cappadocia. I was having trouble finding enough actions to do much about getting control of Asia province, so this emergency was a real problem.

We had to pack up for the end of the day with a few actions to go in the turn. Spartacus had arrived, but I had yet to bring in the Servile units, and Mark seemed to be holding off on Crassus until I did so.

The plan was to transfer the game to the Vassal module and continue there. However, after loading everything in, I hit save, and the module crashed! I got an error log file (which I need to send over to the Vassal group), but no actual error message. I hit the save button for the file, and the module disappeared. Since we had packed the game up as we were transferring it, it was impossible to do over (and we were out of time, and it’s Mark’s game).

Despite my strong start, I have no idea where the game was headed as of the last turn or so, so I have no real idea who was winning.

Next time is slightly in the air, but there’s a decent chance that we’ll be starting the First Punic War Scenario from Carthage.

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Elephant Chaos at Babylon

by on January 31, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had the gang over for gaming yesterday. Well, part of it. Me, Mark, Jason and Dave played Successors. Considering that I’m the most experienced (with four plays under my belt), Jason and Dave haven’t played it before, and Dave’s been too busy to look at the rules ahead of time, it went very well.

Random draw got me Peithon and Antipater – Media and Macedonia. That’s three games where I’ve drawn Antipater. As usual, the person who got Egypt was the Usurper (Mark got Ptolemy and Craterus). With such a spread out position, it was obvious I would be fighting two very different wars. Worse, Jason got Lysimachus and Leonnatus – Thrace and Hellespontine, so he had a nice concentrated position right on my border. One of my first card draws was Thracian Mercenaries, which requires owning a space in Thrace to use for the event. So I went to camp in a corner of Thrace so I could get some more troops and withdraw. And Jason immediately went after me and defeated Antipater. Thankfully, various tribal activations, and what the others were doing kept him distracted enough that he didn’t get to take Macedonia from me on turn 1.

At the other end of the board, Dave had gotten Perdiccas and Antigonus – Babylon and Phrygia, and his first goal was to secure Syria and claim the King of Asia title. While others were spending card points on new troops, I mostly went for political control and moved Peithon west to remove the Independents in Atropatene and get into Armenia.

During turn 2, various flailings continued in Asia Minor, but I defeated Jason’s army with the returned Antipater and started taking Thrace and Hellespontine. Meanwhile, Dave had lost the fight for control of Syria, but had managed to collect a great deal of legitimacy, and all the heirs (having turned south to take Damascus). In fact, we realized that he would fairly handily win the regency test at the beginning of turn 4.

Well, that couldn’t be allowed. Dave mostly ended up holed up in his major cities desperately protecting his various treasures (including Alexander’s Tomb, which he had immediately set up in Babylon). Mark moved both of his major generals into Babylonia and Susiana, limiting Perdiccas’ options. Peithon had finally gotten through Armenia and I started taking control of Mesopotamia.

We didn’t quite have enough time to finish turn 3, but what there was was exciting. Mark sprung his plan of launching both his armies at Babylon, trying to get the losses from one to weaken Dave for the other to finish it off if necessary. For the first battle, Craterus launched Mark’s best army at him, a good number of elephants present. Dave produced Anti-Elephant Devices. Mark canceled it with Hubris (which, I now note, is illegal, that only cancels Events and Bonus cards, not Surprise cards). And then Mark rolled poorly on the Elephants anyway and they did nothing. The battle ended up drawn, with Dave beating the attack back, and Craterus died. Then Ptolemy tried from the other direction, and was defeated. Then Mark tried again with Craterus’ army under a Minor General, but could not get a high die roll, and he lost that too, giving him very little on-board presence for the rest of the turn.

He came close, and it was not a bad idea, but I think he should have cut his losses after the second attack and kept some pressure on the board through the remaining Minor General.

Dave had received Demetrius at the start of turn three and installed him in Damascus. Shortly after this, Plans of Their Own came up and Olympias was moved from Greece to Halicarnassus. Dave immediately leapt out of Sardis with Antigonus and took her with play of Olympias. That boosted his Legitimacy to 17—one short of an auto-win. Also, since the regency test is the total of VPs and Legitimacy, this meant it could be hard to beat him even if his VPs were at a relatively low point.

Meanwhile, Antipater had crossed the Bosphorus at the end of turn 2. I considered this a problematic move, since it was leaving Macedonia fairly open. Sure enough, at the beginning of turn 3, Jason recovered his dispersed forces and immediately crossed into Europe, set on taking Thrace and Macedonia, and even successfully sieging Pella. Burning ops for movement, Polyperchon (replacing Antipater at this point) crossed back, attacked the minor army in Thrace, who successfully Avoided to Pella, and then made it to Pella to win a battle there.

Burning more ops points for movement, I moved him back into Asia Minor, and attacked Antigonus, who Avoided back to Sardis. Time was running out for us, and the end of the day was occupied by me by moving to break Dave’s control of Phrygia and Coele Syria, so I could fight him on better terms. I beat Demetrius’ army and on the third try took Damascus itself, gaining me Heracles, the Heir who was about to come of age.

With everything that had happened during the first half of turn 3, Dave’s edge had seriously eroded, and it turned out that I was now in front for the Regency test. Since I had the Heir that mattered for that in about one more round, and had the best intact military. I was judged the winner.

Everyone had a great time, and I was very glad to get such a great game to the table again. I’d say my win was in great part due to my greater experience with it. I lost one battle early on, but Jason never really followed up on it, and I was able to avoid relying too heavily on Mercenaries. An interesting note—I usually build more troops through cards than the other players, but everyone else built at least a couple, and I never built any. Early on, I was busy extending political control, and later I was having to really balance events and gaining extra movement.

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FC2010 Sickness Shuffle

by on January 25, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Posted In: Conventions

Well, lived through another Further Confusion. That shouldn’t be any kind of challenge, but then we keep getting sick in the middle of it….

Actually, we pretty much all got sick before the con, which should count as good planning, other than the fact that we were still recovering when going into the high-stress environment of the con. For the second year in a row, we hosted doronjosama at our place during the con, which is fun, we don’t see enough of her. We got her at the airport Wednesday night, and pre-con stuff was done while I went to work. -bleh-

Friday was pretty good, Radio Comix did good business, everyone had fun, and… tried to figure their way around the new hotel the con is in. The Fairmont is a bit more plush than I’m used to, with kind of a lobby in front of all the bathroom areas (carpeting, decorations, I thought I’d gone into a regular hotel room for a couple seconds the first time). Still, I think they’re not quite used to a convention that packs in this number of people, and the logistics got behind (like trying four different water coolers to find one that still had water). Our panel that night was “Where Does it Come From?”, which went very well, though we had a bit more topic drift than usual. Dinner was at the Pita Pit, which I highly recommend.

I stood almost all day Friday, which was a mistake, since my feet and legs are still recovering. So I took it easy the rest of the con, which meant loafing around the computer area keeping up on my reading. Took a look at the various furry prose-publishers around, and wondering if any of them were any good, I realized I needed Fred Patten’s reviews. *sigh* Wish you were here Fred. Baron didn’t look well to begin with Saturday morning, and looked worse as the day went on, and he drove himself home before he got so bad he couldn’t drive. Dinner was at Gordon Biersh—or it should have been, Smudge and I had appetizers and had to leave Elin and Team Shuffle (the Japanese crew Elin manages for their con appearance here) there to make our panel. Nobody’s fault really, but there was a Sharks game that night, so every place in downtown was slammed. The calamari I had was good, and I understand the dinner was excellent. Our panel was a repeat of “Fashion Tales”, which went very well. It’s a subject that’s weaker for me, but I had a few good points to put in.

On Sunday Baron stayed home, and Smudge wasn’t doing too well. And she got worse as the day went on. This created a problem, since Dave and I aren’t really qualified to drive something as big as the van, which was needed to haul out the Radio Comix stock after the dealer’s room finished that night. We got a Smudge a ride home with Drew and arranged for a friend to do van driving. After a discussion with Dave, we decided to go on with that night’s panel anyway. I wasn’t feeling entirely well, but figured I’d least make it through the day. And then Baron showed up! He had been planning on driving in, when Drew showed up with Smudge, and rode in with him instead. I was dubious about this, since he wasn’t doing so well, but thankfully he got better as the day went on. The traditional “Coffee, Tea and Memes” panel was a bit slow, thanks to being scheduled opposite of Furry Night Live, which not only drew people away, but caused a line to be going in front of the door to the room, which was probably off-putting. Of course, we’re probably one of the few things you can put opposite of it and get anyone at all. Dinner was cookies at the panel (there was a lot to do beforehand). Despite a little confusion, breakdown went well, and Baron drove us home.

I got myself some bookmarks (becoming a habit, but I cycle through them with different books, so the variety is nice), issue one of Scavengers by Flinters (I followed it on FA, and figured I owed him for the entertainment), The Van Rijn Method (collection of classic SF by Poul Anderson), Black Dogs by Ursula Vernon (I like to get something by the author guest of honor, which I guess is Ursula this year; Sofawolf Press is also a GoH and published the book, and this is one of the few things in their catalog that looked interesting to me), and Mel White’s latest little prose piece A Servant of the Consortium.

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It’s Unhappy to be the King

by on January 18, 2010 at 10:58 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Well after not hearing from Mark for over a month (he was really slammed by work), he made it over Saturday for a FtF session. It was my turn to choose the game, and I wanted to try out Unhappy King Charles!, which I got last summer.

Part of what interested me in it was reports that it’s a very unusual wargame, and does a good job at capturing the feel of the English Civil War. This means that it does have some unusual rules, and I last went through them in… mid-December. I just could not find the mental energy to pick them up again last week.

So… there was a little more frustration in the day than there absolutely needed to be, but it went well regardless. It’s a Card-Driven Game with the most complicated deck construction I’ve seen. The deck is split into Early War, Mid War and Late War segments (seen that before), but there’s a “Mandatory” card that goes at the beginning of each one, and making sure that ends up in the right place creates some procedures that seem complicated until you get what the point is.

After some ‘I don’t know, what do you want’ dickering I ended up with the Royalists. Since they start out with some veteran brigades, they technically have the advantage at the beginning of the game, with the Parliament gaining power (and the New Model Army) later.

We got just about halfway through the game (more than a turn into Mid War) and plan to finish it in Vassal. I have to say things have not gone very well for me. I’ve lost the South completely, the Scots have shown up to contest the North, and I’m 0 for 3 on the sieges I’ve tried (including a very painful loss at London which I had nearly taken when the army melted out from under me).

Most of the fighting has been over the Midlands where I lost Shrewsbury early, but I’m now hoping to take it back. Three different battles ended up being very close affairs (Drawn Battles), but all going Mark’s way in the end, and costing me precious veteran brigades. Followed by the failure to take London, I was getting pretty discouraged, I wasn’t getting anywhere, and time was slipping away.

However, I had gained most of the East (consolidating this is what drew me to London), and after being ejected from London, I managed a battle where I surprised him with the the strength of my troops (and a Battle Card) and got a decisive victory to destroy an army. Pity they were only militia (one of which is now in my army). It’s not a strong position, and I still need to find a way to make true positive motion, but a little pressure is off.

So now I have the mutually uncoordinated goals of getting rid of the Covenanters (Scots), taking Peterborough to consolidate the East, taking Shrewsbury and surrounds, and doing something about the South. And of course, keep Mark from causing more mischief.

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