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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2009 Wrap Up

by on January 14, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Posted In: Life

I usually like to write a post around the new year talking about how the holiday season went and taking a look at what I did in LiveJournal over the past year.

I’m also somewhat distractable, so it’s waited until now. We should probably take down the tree as well.

I should mention that I’ve been somewhat immersed in three different computer games since visiting my parent’s. I helped get Europa Universalis: Rome going on my dad’s machine, and, well… a copy is sitting on mine as well now. I’ve always liked the strategic empire-building stuff of the original, and add in the Roman Empire, and… I need to buy my own copy.

I showed off Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe an Open Source clone of a mid-90s game to Mike and Elaina and Rowan, and got sucked back into playing with it again. They’ve recently gotten to replacing all the sounds and graphics of the original, so it’s full clone now. If you like railroad-building type games, I recommend you try it out.

And Smudge and I have been trying out a free/subscribe MMORPG from France called Dofus. Kind of interesting, since it’s a French take on the genre, as well as a French take on an anime artstyle. The game itself is not bad, and is not too demanding on the system, and has a fair amount of free content to try it with. The combat is, unusually, turn-based, and kind of FFT-ish, which is nice.

Anyway, the week off between Christmas and New Years was fairly quiet. Smudge’s parents visited us for Christmas (instead of the other way around, thanks to the weather), and we had Kris Kruetzman over for X-mas dinner. Presents were even quieter than normal, but I did get The World of Late Antiquity and Eleanor of Aquitane from my parents.

And Baron paid for all of us to see the Star Trek Exhibition at the Tech Museum. It was both more and less interesting than I anticipated. The bulk of it was on the original series and The Next Generation, with the rest being on the other series, and barely even touching the movies era. The most interesting parts actually turned out to be the costumery, but Smudge provided the interest there. Turns out the patterns for the original series uniforms are much more complex than you’d think. Other things, like the reproduction of the original bridge were marred by some obvious mistakes (the viewscreen was all wrong—looks more like the ones you see in auxiliary control once or twice).

Jason came by for a day of gaming while I was off. Introduced him to Pursuit of Glory. He liked it, but apparently not as much as me and Mark. If I can recall exactly what happened, I need to write about that too. Sadly, too much holiday crazyness for much of anything else.

As for what I actually wrote about last year: I had 30 posts, down 11 from last year. Tag count: 26 gaming, 4 c&c ancients, 4 pursuit of glory, 3 adciv, 2 archon, 2 life, 2 micca, 2 playtest, 2 russian civil war, 2 sfb, 1 asl, 1 blackbeard, 1 carthage, 1 f&e, 1 gcacw, 1 goriki, 1 guerra a muerte, 1 haruhi, 1 meme, 1 mmp, 1 news, 1 onward christian soldiers, 1 playmobil, 1 red vengeance, 1 rome, 1 spartacus, 1 winds of war, 1 wow.

I write about what interests me. Gaming. -.-; Well, I can can say what I’m playing has gotten a lot more diverse. Not really happy that SFB playing has fallen off as far as it has, but it’s proving hard to get just the parts of the group that are interested in it together.

Also, about a year ago, I decided to start reading my way back through my collection of historical books, in order of when the book starts out at (in part to help with a project that I really need to do more work on). I got from ca 2500 BC to just before AD 400. A lot of that was Osprey books, and I’m encountering more and more of my ‘meaty’ books a the moment. I’m guessing I’ll be studying the Crusades around the end of the year, but we’ll see.

Oh yes, a few months back, Board Game Geek finally opened their long-anticipated sister site RPG Geek. That immediately got me thinking about RPGs seriously again, and reading through books, and buying new ones…. I just have way too many hobbies.

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