A Plague Upon Both Your Parties

by on May 17, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had the gang over again for gaming. With this many people, it’s not really possible to change dates at the last moment. So, of course, today is the high point of a little heat wave going though the area. And we rent a place where we aren’t allowed to have a wall-mounted air-conditioner.

However, we have two decent freestanding ones, and with both of them working together the temperature stayed quite reasonable.

Zjonni has just finished moving, and came down ill during that, and is still recovering from both. So we only had five of the group over today, which was a second playing of Russian Civil War, which we were happy with the last time we played it, so Dave, Patch and I went for it again with Mark and Jason joining in this time.

This time the White Russian forces were pretty evenly split amongst the five of us (as were the Politburo markers). Given that there’d be little chance of multiple people trying for a White win, it looked like the Red Party was the way to go. The problem with that was, that I’d gotten an even split of White and Red leaders, and the only leader I had worth more than a ‘1’ was one of the White leaders (a ‘3’). No one was really wanting to do a pre-game trade, but I eventually talked Dave into giving up the other White ‘3’ for a Politburo marker. Since everyone had 2 or 3, and this just swapped which of the two of us only had two markers, I felt I wasn’t giving up much while gaining something that I might be able to affect the game with.

At first, the game seemed to be going in what should be the typical direction, with power bases consolidating, and many of the peripheral units getting eliminated. This is a process that decidedly favors the Reds. However, the random events were mostly coming up as plagues that did a good job decimating everyone. Jason got control of the Finns early, who promptly came down into Petrograd to limit the Mark’s powerbase… incidentally killing Lenin and preventing Red reinforcements for the turn in the process.

This changed the complexion of the game considerably. I had managed to bag several minor Red leaders in my turn, but it was mostly to try and level the playing field as I didn’t have much to play with on that side of the divide. The second turn was mostly more of the same, with more nasty plagues and the Finnish army continuing to hold Petrograd, and no one willing to try and tackle the juggernaut. I was a little surprised that Jason decided to keep the units there as I didn’t properly realize the score in White VPs he was accumulating by picking off Red leaders with the Finns.

With no Red replacements for two turns, the playing field was becoming much more level, though the attrition of White leaders started insuring that active White forces were shrinking as all the available units could not be controlled. Petrograd finished the third turn with Finnish and Red units present, so they finally got replacements. This, I thought, might doom my chances at engineering a White victory, as my remaining Red units had already been knocked out, without me ever getting VPs out of them. Jason was getting the ‘green meanie’ award, since he’d gotten control of the Finns, Baltic states, and Belorussians.

And I came up with a minor tactical innovation: I moved a White army to a Red stack and attempted an assassination. If it failed, I could sit and allow him to chance the low-odds attack (or just leave…), if it worked I could uncontroll the Red ‘6’ combat unit and attack a much weaker player stack. Thankfully, I rolled high. Assassins had been largely sitting idle, but they became much more popular after that.

Eventually, the game boiled down to just a few leader stacks available, and my remaining White ‘3’ leader gave me a fairly dominant position, even with the high-value Red units that were back in service. Trotsky died during turn four, so the Reds were again without replacements. Both Patch and Jason had pretty much lost they’re Red units, forcing them to try for White VPs and a White win if they wished to continue to influence events. At the very end of turn 5, the last Red leader was eliminated, ending the game with a White Victory immediately thereafter.

Player White Red
Rindis 51 11
Jason 40 21
Dave 33 51
Patch 29 10
Mark 1 10

I hadn’t expected this result, and as can be seen, Mark got stomped on pretty hard early, and I never got anywhere with my Red forces. Jason had actually gotten more Red kills than I had, my lead was from having more White units available, and from getting control of the gold at the end of the game (it changed hands twice on the last turn).

Everyone had a good time, and I can say it looks like the game holds up well to repeated playings. Also, the extra chaos of 5 instead of 4 players was a big help to the game.

Next time, we’re looking at doing a playtest of Metropolis, a game of the rise of the Greek city-states 8th-5th centuries BC.

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Revolting Edessa

by on April 26, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had Mark over today for more gaming (this is three weekends in a row with someone…). Today was his pick, and he had decided he was interested in seeing the Third Crusade scenario from Onward Christian Soldiers, which was more than fine by me, as I think it’s a good scenario.

It was a rough start, as it’s been a bit since either of us has played, and we also had to remember not to confuse the issue with Carthage which can be similar.

One critical bit that didn’t hit me (the Saracens) at first was that Saladin starts under the onus of a rule where he has to have half his available forces with him, which he doesn’t. I could either sit in front of Acre as the Crusaders besieged it, unable to do much, and try to get reinforcements there, or leave and seek out those same reinforcements.

(The first try before we realized just how unbalanced his command structure was, saw Saladin attack the Crusaders twice and drive them away with good die rolls.)

I went seeking reinforcements, and was approaching the 50% mark, when a revolt broke out in Edessa, requiring my immediate attention. (Really immediate—I pick up Saladin and 10 SPs and move him all the way across the map to Edessa.) This pretty well froze me in place for a turn as nothing was set up for this. And two turns later it happened again, when I’d only gotten half way back and was still gathering a new force together.

So, while Saladin was gone, Acre was still besieged. Richard took Cyprus and then landed at Tortosa and quickly took it as well. Acre fell about the fourth turn, after siege attrition had got the garrison where it could be assaulted more easily. (An interesting note, about this time we had a turn where there was only one successful continuation roll. Slowed everybody down.) After this, Crusader attention turned to Jaffa, where Saladin had been gathering his army together. Also around this time, Saldin’s trusted subordinate, Taki ed-Din Omar, was killed by Assassins (further paralyzing my command).

I was actually able to sally during the siege of Jaffa with a minor leader and narrowly win the battle, causing the siege to temporarily end. As winter got closer, I realized the army there was way too vulnerable, and I planned to carry the force out by sea to safety, until something better could be arranged. So, in my biggest mistake of the game, I neglected to have my fleet marker be my automatic first activation after winning the initiative!

Jaffa fell, and with it went about 1/3 of the Saracen forces (and another leader). I managed to take some revenge by driving the Crusader fleet out of Acre Sea Zone, and then Saladin arrived to ravage the countryside around Acre, and retake it at the end of the turn. The Crusader army reconvened at the gates of Jerusalem, where Philip I decided he’d had enough and went home.

During winter 1190, Jerusalem was taken (for the second time) by Crusaders from Europe. Duke Hugh of Burgundy immediately set out to re-establish contact with the coast, as Jaffa had come under siege by Saracens coming up from Egypt. Marching around several strongholds, he took the town of Haifa (exactly 10 attrition points away from Jerusalem). Meanwhile, Saladin fell ill in Acre, not allowing him to isolate the Crusaders in the interior.

So, it was another Crusader auto-victory, though this one was much earlier. At first, Mark was worried about how to deal with Saladin, and the large force he was gathering. The events conspired against me, and he took advantage of every one. I could have done better even so, my play just did not rise up to the challenge presented.

It may be a while before we get together again, Mark has a socially busy month coming up. When we do get together, it will be for some-scenario-or-other of Stonewall Jackson’s Last Battle.

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The Far-flung Babylonian Empire

by on April 19, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had six people over for a game of Advanced Civilization today. New record for attendance (and pushing the limits of what can be hosted)! The setup was interesting as we used my Civilization set for the board and counters, and Jason’s for the cards and AST (which are the parts that get replaced in AdCiv…). Anyway, Patch and Zjonni had never played before, while the rest of us hadn’t played in years… decades even.

No one had any particular preference for a particular power, so we gave Babylon to Patch and Egypt to Zjonni, as they tend to be very forgiving powers, and then we ended up with Jason taking Africa, Dave Assyria, Mark Italy, and I took Thrace.

That last worked out very well for me, as Thrace has a forgiving AST sequence, and there was no Illyria or Crete to butt heads with. I wish the first part was intentional, I honestly hadn’t looked. The placement, of course, was very intentional.

One of the things that makes Civilization such a great game to pick up and play is the fact that despite a fair number of different things going on, the game starts very simply, and you work up to the rest of the rulebook. So you get a chance to get used to different parts of the rules at a time. Everyone had a blast, and is more than up for doing it again, soon.

For most of the game, Asia was fairly quiet with Assyria, Babylon and Egypt coming to good agreements on borders and keeping to them. Since Assyria had something of a slow start, having to muck around with figuring out what to do for city sites, this overall worked out well for Babylon, which eventually even colonized Crete (!).

Africa kept busy poking at both its borders, generally nothing decisive with Egypt, but plenty of fighting over Sicily and south Italy with the Italians, which I was happy to see. A bad combination of disasters caused trouble for the entire area, and Egypt and Africa had a hard time recovering. Italy had never managed to get very far at all.

All of this, and the generous AST gave me a good start. I rapidly moved west and then south, generating a buffer area and then colonizing Greece. The buffer held in the north-west corner for a good half the game, when I had purposely delayed some city building to maximize population. As I got to the point where I was building and supporting a good number of cities, the buffer zone collapsed and Mark was slowly forcing me back along the Danube into my primary coastal areas.

I got to 8 cities at one point (and only Babylon had beaten me to that), but then calamities kept knocking them down faster than I can rebuild them. Patch is very good at trading, and did not take too many calamities (hey, I tried!).

Since we knew we had a time-limit coming up, the last turn got strange. Egypt managed to invade Crete, knock out both Babylonian cities there, and build new Egyptian ones there (aided by the fact that Patch only had two markers in his Stock, and therefore couldn’t fight much once the cities were broken). Egypt shot up to nine cities from about five in one turn. I didn’t think enough about the fact of the last turn, or else I could have built one more city than I did.

Long-term, Babylon was in the best shape, as he had just gotten the nine cards to get into the early Iron Age and was moving forward on the AST again. I needed another turn or two to get there. Egypt had been stuck in the early Bronze Age until the last turn….

Final Scores:

Side Player AST Cities Civ Cards Cards Treasury Total Place
Africa Jason 800 250 175 4 6 1235 5
Italy Mark 700 100 105 18 3 926 6
Thrace Rindis 1000 200 510 0 0 1710 2
Assyria Dave 900 250 220 21 16 1407 4
Babylon Patch 1000 250 700 0 0 1950 1
Egypt Zjonni 600 450 560 0 0 1610 3

We still need to work out the details, but we’re planning on the next session being in a month, and will likely be another go-round with Russian Civil War, this time with six players.

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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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