Starship Nostalgia

by on April 14, 2009 at 11:12 am
Posted In: SFB

As neither of us had anything important going on for the day, Zjonni came over Sunday for some gaming. We’ve been meaning to get together for a while now for something with just the two of us, and we finally used a gaming day delay as an excuse. I ran down the list of games I thought I could teach on short notice, and he hemmed and hawed a bit.

Eventually, nostalgia won out and he expressed a desire to try Star Fleet Battles again. We’ve talked about it a bit in the past, and as he pointed out, he hasn’t really had anyone to talk to it about in the last twenty years. I’m more than happy to oblige. ~_^

So I ran him back through the basics, and it was obvious that once reminded he was remembering at least half of it immediately. We started with a classic Fed-Klingon duel (apropos as the current calendar year the group is working with is the year of the Second Klingon-Federation War), with him taking the Klingon. A bit more challenging at this point, but it emphasizes maneuver, which is something he appreciates.

I went slow and finished loading photons and overloaded one pair, expecting a moderate speed from the Klingon to start sniping at me. Well, no, speed 29, and he was practically in my face at the end of the turn. I sped up a bit, overloaded the other pair, and hoped to get in close. Zjonni misjudged/misremembered the situation, and didn’t realize that photons were auto-hit at range 0 and 1, while disruptors only do that a 0. He went slow, put up 16 reinforcement, and expected a miss or two. Well… there wasn’t much of a ship left.

Still, he had a fun time, and it didn’t take long, so we went again, but this time I switched to a Kzinti CA for a challenge that didn’t have the same kind of crunch power, and would also need to maneuver more. The CA is short of power (33, less than the Fed CA), but has four drone racks, four disruptors and usual Kzinti mix of ph-1s and -3s. I also re-introduced him to HETs (I kept it pretty basic for the first time…).

This went better, with him doing a nice job of eroding my #2 shield to nearly nothing, but then he pushed aggressively into knife-fighting range after unloading part of his weaponry. The maneuvering worked out far better for me than I expected, and I managed a range 1 centerline shot. It didn’t do as much as the Fed could, but the drones were right behind… not something I expected to see happen with speed-8 drones. He shot down two, and the fourth was actually targeted on his drone, but the one drone hit put the damage back in the Fed category. Meanwhile, I’d turned past him and was going to get away clean.

Despite the destructive results, he certainly enjoyed himself, and I’m sure he’ll get up to speed quickly. We took a break to show him around some of my SFB materials, and could have probably fit in a third game, but I figured with my luck, we’d get into a drawn-out maneuvering duel that would run overtime. So, I quickly set up Pursuit of Glory ran through the basics, and the first turn of the sample game, explaining in some detail as we went. It’s not the best intro to the constant tension the game creates, but if I get a chance to put in front of him again, he’ll have a good basis for understanding.

After that it was time for a very good dinner. ~_^

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Agathocles

by on March 29, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark made it over here today for a game of Carthage. He got me a copy for Christmas, and I’ve been eager to try it out since, so it came up as my pick for our FtF sessions.

There’s four scenarios available, and we went with the most complicated of the three ‘small’ scenarios; which still doesn’t hold a candle to the First Punic War scenario. In 311 BC, Agathocles was the tyrant of Syracuse, and went to war with Carthage over control of the rest of Sicily. In the actual event, he kept the larger Carthaginian military off-balance by swapping theaters between Sicily and Africa.

Mark (who volunteered to take Syracuse), decided to stick it out on Sicily rather than take his chances in Africa. There’s only a couple of leader activations the first turn, which we both spent taking small cities in Sicily (the Augury was a non-event). The biggest thing was that my four-point army in Sicily lost a point during a siege.

After that quiet start, the second turn was naturally a lot bigger, thanks mostly to the full complement of Leader Activation Markers (LAMs). I made a mistake at the beginning of the turn, which had big consequences at the end. I was aware, as I was figuring the political segment, that bringing in mercenaries from off-map was going to cost my overall leader his only LAM. But, by the time we were done, I’d forgotten all about it.

The Magonids stayed in power, and the political outlook remained Cautious. I hired mercenaries, and got a good roll for the Iberians and Celtiberians. Mark took 8 points of Sicilians for his reinforcements.

The plan was to continue harassing small Sicilian cities with Hamilcar, while Hanno (the overall commander) brought absorbed the new troops into the I Army and let the Carthaginians go as a garrison for the city (illegal, Hanno doesn’t get a LAM). Then he’d shuttle the troops over to Sicily escorted by the main naval fleet, commanded by Bomilcar (illegal–I can only have one army outside of Carthage and only one in Carthage–in fact, getting new troops out of Carthage requires a special rule–CR 6.13–which I had also forgotten about).

Even so, the plan had problems when I did think it was legal. Bomilcar attempted a revolt in Carthage (random event), as was killed, leaving no commander for the naval escort. Meanwhile, Agathocles took Lilybaeum, the best Carthginian port in Sicily. Thinking that Hanno was about to cross over, Arcagathus gather the navy together, and attempted put the fleet to sea in front of Lilybaeum to intercept the transports. They ended up scattered, which nullified their effectiveness, and for a few minutes we had Hanno disembarking in Drepanum–until I remembered my gaffe with the LAM.

Worse for Mark, the fleet had to roll for a major disaster getting back to port at the end of the turn. The distance was 0, but there’s a +20 distance penalty for the scatter, and an ’03’ roll sank the entire force.

Turn 3 saw both of us continue to recruit troops–I had somewhat expected Mark to try to replace his navy. The Magonids stayed in charge, but the political climate went to interested. Allowing both turns’ troops to be formed into a new army to be shipped overseas (…I’m not sure I did that entirely legally…). Mark took another 11 points of Sicilians. Since I lost a leader last turn (the unlamented rebel, Bomilcar), I got two new ones, which could command the navy and the new army.

Agathocles lead off the turn by besieging Drepanum. Himilco (the new leader for the III Army) crossed over and landed outside Lilybaeum. Hamilcar moved into East Silicia and attacked Agatharcus, who had been securing the few neutral cities on that half of the island. While Hamilcar was outnumbered 3:1, his efficiency rating was a +3, and overall, the modifiers were even–short of the leader adjustments, and I had the better leader. Sadly, I rolled poorly, giving a flat roll, and 15/15 losses. This caused a drawn battle and 1 loss on both sides.

Then Agathocles broke off his siege to attack Himilco’s army before it could attempt to retake Lilybaeum. After some thought, I decided to give battle, as the odds were close, and I was only one leader class down. I again blew my leadership roll, and got a 10/20 loss. Worse, Himilco was wounded and therefore unable to do anything with the rest of the turn. Ironically, he retreated to Drepanum, the two armies having swapped locations.

The last major event of the turn was Ophellas turning up in Tripolitania, allied to Syracuse (random event) and intent on adding more of north Africa to the Ptolemaic kingdom. He took Gigithis before running out of steam.

Mark had to quit a little early, so that’s as far as we got. We’re going to continue via Vassal, as we have no idea where the scenario is going to go in the next two turns. We’re definitely liking the game, and hope to get in some more soon. Next session will be his pick, and he’s still thinking about what he wants to play.

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Am I not a loyal member of the Red—(bang!)—White! White Party?!

by on March 10, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

On Sunday, the gang was over for a day with a fairly unique design from the heyday of SPI—Russian Civil War. You don’t represent any one particular person of any faction, but instead promotes the same kind of chaos of the actual event by giving everyone control of parts of the various factions involved.

It was looking like we’d have six people—a new record—but Mark had to pull out due to a family crisis, and he was also Jason’s transportation. So, me, Patch, Zjonni and Dave gathered to guide the future of the Russian state.

The initial draw saw Dave get almost entirely Red leaders, and Patch get more White leaders than anyone else. Zjonni and I’s pulls put us more on the borderline, though I ended up with 5 Politburo markers (the highest of anyone, and enough to form a quorum with any one other person), and Zjonni ended up with the Czar and the gold.

The initial turn was mostly marked by Red Russian attacks on the interventionist forces, generally by use of subversion, which avoids the negative results of a poor roll. There was also the fact that Dave’s random event roll gave him double strength for subversion, allowing him to rack up quite a score with them.

I (as the second player) noted that there were a bunch of leaders about without any troops. They still have combat value, but it tends to be pretty minimal, so I started consolidating my troops, attacked some interventionist troops to start getting Red victory points, and used my White troops to pick off Red leaders for some White victory points. And, just to make sure everyone was saved of no end of trouble later, I made sure one of my attacks picked off an unsupported Stalin….

An interesting mechanic is that for the first few turns, any eliminated troops (but not leaders nor interventionist forces) come back at the end of the turn if their home province isn’t occupied by someone else. I got control of the trans-Caucasian separatists, and since no one was really interested in their homeland, I sent them on a couple of low-odds ‘suicide missions’ as they’d just come back at the end of the turn (and be automatically under my control again…). Considering that the CRT can be extremely bloody, the ability to make a couple of ‘safe’ low odds attacks can be useful.

Random draws for control of various interventionist or separatist or interventionist withdrawal markers came slowly, with them tending to gravitate towards me. When I got control of the Japanese and US forces in Siberia, the Reds evacuated as quickly as they could. Three units of ‘6’ each is quite a deal in this game, and that just the Imperial Japanese army. (There are US units elsewhere, but they had been eliminated by the point the marker was drawn. See Dave’s antics above.)

Overall, the limiting resource in the game is leaders. Without leaders, neither Red nor White units can do anything. The Reds start with more troops, and more leaders than the need. The White Russians pretty much have just enough leaders for their troops. After a couple turns of attrition there were a number of uncontrolled White units sitting around, and not enough White leaders to do anything with them.

I had been walking the line, gathering White and Red points, and thinking that I was going to have to commit to the Red Cause soon to have any hope of catching up with Dave with a Red win looking extremely likely, when a few things happened. First, my most powerful Red unit was wiped out in a plague. Second, Patch’s White forces accidentally (as in he’d forgotten the rule) activated a rule where no Red units come back if there no Red units in either Petrograd or Tver and there were enemy units there. Patch’s ongoing White offensive had culminated in a battle where he wiped all the Red unit out in Tver on turn 2. Third, the first purge of the game happened.

Since the target of the purge was me, it served to further erode my hold over the Red Army, and made it harder to win that way. At this point, it was getting obvious that my only hope at all was to throw in with the White coterie. I did have some hope left for a Red win, as I did control Trotsky, one of two ‘3’ Red leaders. However, my mind got stuck with the idea that the other, Lenin, was controlled by Dave, when he was actually controlled by Patch. This left me at a disadvantage when it was decided that one of the two needed to die (which would also prevent Red units from returning for a turn).

And since I didn’t have any of the assassin chits, and the bulk of them were controlled by Patch, it was Trotsky who had a fine (if poisoned) last meal. And this pretty much broke what power I had left in the Red Party.

The rest of the game consisted of the three of us trying to figure out how to take out the rest of the Red forces without weakening the White forces enough to be vulnerable to a counter attack from Dave. Dave eventually knocked Zjonni out of the game, and got a hold of the gold (the Czar had escaped overseas), and used it to hire a couple of Polish units that had activated and made it into the Ukraine. Patch and I followed with the last major White armies, and I did a spoiling attack in the hope of an exchange, which I got. This knocked me out of the game, but made a White victory more likely.

This brought it down to one final combat. One roll, to determine the future of Russia. The odds now were with Patch, barely, and brought the sought-after White win.

We totaled the points for both sides, as it’s very instructional:

Player White Red
Patch 45 13
Rindis 31 21
Zjonni 28 11
Dave 3 54

As you can see, I managed second on both sides. Especially with some of my chit draws, I had a fairly strong position, but lack of decisive action one way or the other doomed me to second.

Right now, the plan is to play Civilization, or Advanced Civilization next month.

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Guerra a Muerte

by on February 24, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had Mark over last Sunday for some 2-player wargaming. It was his turn to pick, but he gave me a choice: Guerra a Muerte, Men of Iron or War Galley; the latter being the only one he’s gotten to the table before. Being more of a strategic gamer than tactical, and always up for a game on a bit of history I don’t know much about, I selected Guerra a Muerte, which is on the breakup of Spain’s empire in the New World.

We went for the intro scenario, which is just 5 turns of the full game, and didn’t even make it that far. It’s understandable with our first time out with a game, though I had hoped we’d get slightly further than we did. At any rate, I had a pretty solid grip on the situation at the end of turn 3 as the Patriots, and Spain would have had a hard time making a substantial comeback.

There were the usual first-time questions, and unfortunately, it lived up to my usual idea that magazine games tend to have poorer-written rules than normal. One goof up we did probably helped me fairly noticeably. The Patriot player is really four different groups, and we didn’t do the split up of funds correctly (I didn’t realize some of what the rules were trying to tell me for a bit), which helped fund the El Plata patriots.

The schedule of reinforcement threw us at first too, as while they’re marked with turn numbers the rules don’t talk about the meaning of the designation.

Mark took some detailed notes, and hopefully he’ll write them up soon. But the initial fighting was in the south, as El Plata starts with about the only Patriot regular troops. At the same time, the only leaders are in Mexico, and even though the imposingly large stacks are all Militia (only worth one each), I managed to take Vera Cruz from a small garrison. (I do generally like how combat and sieges work.)

On the second turn, El Plata had enough resources to reform the part of the army that the Royalists smashed the previous turn (if we’d done the resource split correctly… I think they’d have still had enough, but it would have emptied the bank for next turn), and the Mexican forces got a bunch of regulars in. I managed to force the Royalists in the south back into Montevideo and consolidated my hold on Mexico in the north. The Peruvians were doing well on the coast, but had lost the interior of the Andes.

The third turn saw Spanish forces start arriving, along with Grand Colombian regulars and Bolivar. The Colombians had already purchased artillery to help defend Cartagena, and now with plentiful local superiority, Bolivar moved to assault Maracaibo.

And that’s about where we had to call it. The final count was about 22 provinces controlled by the Patriots (needed 12…). Obviously, we need to consider just what the Royalists need to do better. I certainly hope we do get to try it again before we forget everything about the game, but there’s a lot of games on the shelf eager to get a turn.

I offered Mark three choices for next time (as it’s my ‘pick’): Fire in the Sky, Stonewall’s Last Battle (I really want to try out the GCACW system since Battle Above the Clouds is on preorder), or Carthage. It looks like it’ll be Carthage.

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Computer Woes….

by on February 9, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Posted In: Life

It all started last November.

Shortly after that adventure, I started having problems with Haruhi again. Occasionally, she would have trouble making the leap from BIOS to OS. Sometimes the initial boot would go fine, and when it got to the point where the initial Windows 2000 start screen should come up (the text mode one right before the initial graphic screen) nothing would happen, and I’d have a blank screen—that the monitor still reported had a signal coming through.

This initially happened during my visit at my folk’s place. It eventually settled down, and stopped doing it… for a while. By mid-December, it had gotten fairly common, only to stop again during my two weeks off at the end of December, which I figured was probably lulling me into a false sense of complacency, but I let it go. As it turned out, I was right.

The general diagnosis was that either the boot sector of my main hard drive was damaged, or the drive controller on the motherboard was having trouble. …I wasn’t especially eager to consider replacing a motherboard.

Last Monday, Micca acted up. He’d been slowly accumulating a couple of boot-quirks, but was working fine. Then he suddenly started throwing multiple error messages on boot. Clearing those was possible, but they’d come back after a minute or two. After some fiddling around, I found that IE was not in good shape, and fixing that stopped the error messages. …And let some adware that’d gotten in somehow start IE every minute or two…. >.< Either the system was broken in other ways, or the adware was particularly bad, since I had trouble downloading anything to remove it. In the end, I did a wipe and reinstall of Windows (which is why we keep our data somewhere other than drive C…).

Meanwhile, Smudge was on my computer, and WoW died. Bad. When I finally got to the point where I could look at it, it seemed a fairly simple fix, and I got Haruhi back in shape. Wednesday, I tried to use Excel and the wheels came off the wagon. The system struggled valiantly on, but it was obvious that something bad had happened. The biggest shock was when I looked at the file system and found most (but not all) of the contents of my F: drive residing on D:…. I’d gone a bit overboard when setting up Haruhi for projects that never happened, but this was really, really bad, and indicated that both physical hard drives were corrupted.

The next few days were spent moving as much as I could onto the house NAS for later recovery. As you might imagine, a fair number of corrupted files showed up, though generally not in the most critical places.

As of Friday, I was building a new temporary replacement machine: Goriki. This was based off of the parts from the machine that Drew donated that hadn’t been used in Haruhi. Assembly and install went pretty well, and I was at least partially back in business that night. Sunday, I swapped the RAM and processor over from Haruhi, making it almost as good as she was. Sadly, there’s no SATA on that motherboard, so I’m stuck with a CD drive.

While all this was going on, there were rumblings from a friend of bringing over some leftover computer parts from the last time he was trying to diagnose and fix a problem. With Haruhi having just gone down for the count, I sort of pressured that into actually happening, you know, soon.

He never does things by halves. I need some RAM, and some cables, and perhaps a new drive, to put it all together. I’ll be doing more with that over the next couple weekends. The part that I was not expecting was the two monitors, a 22″ widescreen and a 24″ widescreen.

So, I’ve claimed the 22″, Smudge will probably end up with two monitors, and I’m not sure about the rest of the shakeout past that.

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