Lich King Engine

by on October 15, 2008 at 11:22 am
Posted In: MMO

(Cross-posted with WoW_Muradin because I’m too primitive to have an editor that’ll post this to both.)

Well, WoW went to v3.0 yesterday.

It’s different. I don’t remember the Burning Crusade engine being quite so big of a shock, character-wise.

Hunters have changed a lot. The fact that Scatter Shot is now a 10-point talent in Surivival makes sense (I always thought it was a little odd in Marksmanship, but it worked well with the ‘utility’ feel that BC Marksmanship had), but it caught me flatfooted. Since I’ve been needing that to survive a trap that breaks early, Dunain is currently invested in a little Survival rather than Beast Master, and won’t be trying Chimera Shot until 71.

Everything else is weird. The reactive abilities have had that stripped out. Mongoose Bite no longer requires a dodge before I use it and Kill Command no longer needs a crit. Instead they’re just on timers.

Aimed Shot has been massively depowered. In fact, it really doesn’t do much more than anything else, and less than Multishot does per shot. It’s pretty much Arcane Shot with a ‘no heal’ debuff now. The good news is it’s now an instant. However, it shares a cooldown with Multishot now. The only shot with a cast time I have now is Steady Shot. I should check if they fiddled with that.

Aspect of the Viper changed, but is still pretty sick. Before it increased mana regeneration, with the effect getting stronger the lower the hunter’s mana was. It meant that it was effectively impossible to run Dunain out of mana for more than a few seconds. Now, it halves damage done, but returns mana per shot (I approve of the idea of making it a real choice). I was getting back ~380 mana per shot, and interestingly, I got mana back on each hit with a Multishot. ~380×3 – ~340 for Multishot = ~700 mana profit. When out of mana, it will get a hunter going again even faster than before.

Lance is very different. I’m noticing the AI seems to have changed, and he *sometimes* charges a target as soon as I attack. (Or else I’m way too used to hitting control-1 now.) Don’t know why sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t. I’m going to have to study this and try to understand what the heck he thinks he’s doing.

The guild managed a quick run through Heroic Steam Vaults Slave Pens last night to see how things were working.

The only way I could tell that it was Heroic is that we got Badges of Justice off the bosses. I know that SV is a really weak Heroic, but… this was a pushover.

Part of it is definitely Blanc. They have really upped the DPS on Protection Warriors.

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My Successor Needs Success

by on October 12, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

A little while back, I got in the new edition of Successors. Generally, it’s a four-player game, and we currently have four in the regular group. But, Jason tends to get busy between teaching duties and working on his advanced degree, and so he hasn’t been available.

I have a friend, who is something of an old-time gamer, but he’s in school and is generally busy. After the latest reshuffle of dates, I mentioned it to him last Thursday and he said, “Sunday? I can do Sundays.” ^_^;

So, the four of us (me, Mark, Patch, and Zjonni) finally sat down to it today, a little over two weeks after our initially scheduled time. Despite the extra time to prepare, there was of course the requisite amount of head scratching and misplayed rules.

I got Antipater and Lysimachus as the two generals of my faction. This was a very nice consolidated location, with initial control of Macedonia and Thrace. While everyone else went out on grand adventures, my policy was to play a quiet conservative game and try to slowly grow my power base without attracting undue attention.

Patch had Perdiccas and Antigonus which gave him Phrygia and Babylon, as well as initial control over the body of Alexander the Great. The initial maneuvering of course involved lots of claims of control over the bulk of the Asian territories. Patch expanded into Lydia, Mesopotamia and Susiana. Zjonni drew Peithon and Craterus, giving him Media and Cilicia; he moved south into Syria and parts of Mesopotamia. The first coup of the game was early in turn 2, when he played Treachery to spirit Alexander’s funeral cart out of Babylon and gain control of it. He subsequently marched the cart into the near east, and it rested for a while in Damascus.

Meanwhile, Mark got Leonnatus and Ptolemy, and therefore had Helespontine and Egypt. This also made him the Usurper. His initial expansion north into Judea and Syria ran into Zjonni moving south, and at the end of turn 1, we had the first battle of the game. Craterus lost the battle (barely), but Ptolemy lost his life, which left Mark in a much weakened position as he had to rely entirely on Minor Generals in that area for the rest of the game. Also, three Unrest Spreads cards turned up in the first two turns of the game, and the first two hit Egypt.

This caused the Usurper to become Patch on the second turn, who retained that status for the rest of the game. Mark ended up retaking Egypt and leaving it well garrisoned before moving out again. In the meantime, he spent his efforts around Helespontine working his way around Thrace, breaking my control of it, and working on controlling the entire Hellespont (worth 2 victory points). I had to start generating garrisons so that if he wanted to get into Macedonia (my worry) he would have to forgo his Champion status. As well, I moved into Bithnia to take control of it, and left a garrison behind in Nicaea, which frustrated Mark’s ambitions.

Most of the game for me was losing lots of troops in sieges, and beating those armies that did come my way (mostly the independent Illyrians). I did, after some struggle, take Athens, but I kept having to fight off other problems, rather than actually nailing down control of Greece. Admittedly, the plan was to put it off a bit, rather than draw the attention that the six victory points would generate.

Meanwhile, Patch drew Seleucus on turn 2, giving him a third general, and automatically got Demetrius on turn 3. He was in the lead, he had four major generals… and we had a hard time disengaging from each other to attack his position. Zjonni had a great plan to work over Patch’s back areas with the Indian Elephant Corps, but Seleucus arrived in Babylon with Anti-Elephant Devices and defeated that army handily. The fighting in the near east continued with Alexander being buried in Tyre, and then Mark managed to take it from Zjonni in a close-run battle.

I had ended up with Treachery in my hand myself and was wondering if there was any way to get an army out to the near east, spirit the body out into my army and then get it back for Pellas for a proper burial (10 legitimacy points, which would put me close to a victory on that basis–and it’s rare enough that just being able to say I did it would have been nice). But Alexander got buried before I could come up with anything, and that was the end of that plan.

Losing Tyre also wrecked Zjonni’s plan to win a surprise Legitimacy victory (which wouldn’t have worked because he hadn’t properly realized that Cleopatra needed a card to activate, not just a capture). In fact, none of the marriage cards, nor Plans of Their Own ever showed up in our game. One of the surprises in our playing was to realize that each turn only uses up a little over half the deck. I had expected that we would burn through most of it, after Surprises were burned.

I might have been able to disrupt Patch’s control of Phrygia, but I was still burning movement points like mad on seiges, and Mark gave up his Champion status to become a Successor, and started making threatening moves towards Macedonia again. This meant he no longer had anything to loose by attacking me, and I was free to attack him. Polypercheron (Antipater having died and been replaced by him) came up and drove Leonnatus into the sea at Chersonessus. Free, for the first time in the game, of enemy armies on my doorstep, I was getting to be in a good position.

However, at that point Patch managed to take control of a couple more provinces, and got the points he needed for an automatic victory.

We’re looking at the next meet being in a month. At the moment we’re looking at Conquest of Paradise, but we might end up with five people, at which point we’re thinking more towards Soldier Kings or Civilization.

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Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

by on October 3, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Posted In: SFB

In Y155, an Orion “Horde” attacked and destroyed Federation outpost K4. This was a prelude to a massive smuggling operation in which weapons and contraband purchased from the Klingons were smuggled into Federation space.

The three usual suspects (me, Patch, Mark) just finished playing this scenario from S1 online, with Mark taking the Federation and Patch and I splitting the Orions. It’s an interesting scenario, as it’s written to complicate a fairly straightforward situation. Also because of it’s nature, it caused us to pay a lot more attention to a few parts of the rules than normal.

I didn’t want to say too much before the game started, but I did warn everyone before the game started to look over the victory conditions very carefully. The victory conditions work off the normal Modified Victory Conditions, and relative victory points gained thereby, but the points are redefined from the standard BPV. All the Feds have is a Battle Station, and with the number of ships against it, it will be destroyed. Worse, the Orions get to send in a large Q-ship first, and the base isn’t allowed to do anything until it can get its first shot off. However, destroying the BATS is 5 points. Destroying the Q-ship is 10. So, if the BATS destroys the the Q-ship, the Orions lose—unless they can capture the BATS, which is worth 20 points.

Patch had the initial Q-ship, and the two LRs in the force that shows up after it fires. I had the CR and CA that show up with the LRs. The Q-ship came up and fired point blank towards the end of turn 2, downing shield #2 and doing a good number of internals. An impulse later, the suicide shuttle hit. The base is allowed to start with weapons active, and took a fair chunk out of the Q-ship, and slapped on a tractor beam. After the end of turn 2, there was a tractor auction where the BATS maintained the tractor for 13 points of power, which at least drained some of the BATS’ reserves.

Naturally, the BATS carved up of the Q-ship’s hide at the top of Turn 3, while the Orion force moved in at moderate speed. To my surprise, instead of preparing to finish it off, he beamed a couple of boarding parties over, and followed this with more on Turn 4. Luckily, a couple of the transporters had been knocked out in the initial volleys, and he was unable to get an advantage over the Q-ship’s crew, which in fact beamed a couple back on board the BATS. I slowed to speed 8 and got to range 12 from the base at the end of the turn. Patch went faster in the LRs, but swung wide towards the north of the map above the station.

Boarding party combat reduced Patch’s BPs to one on board the Q-ship, and both on board the BATS died. However, they did take one with them.

Mark’s attempt to take over the Q-ship mystifies me. I suppose, if he’d gotten control, he could have tried to limp it off the map, and pretty much guaranteed victory by getting double points for it, but it was pretty much a drifting hulk by this point, and we probably could have grabbed it and towed it somewhere convenient for recapture on its way out. 20 points would certainly have guaranteed a draw at minimum though. If he could cripple a ship or two, it might even be a victory. But, I was quite happy to see him frittering away his BPs on the effort, as it had become obvious that we were going to need to capture the station to get any sort of victory at all.

Obviously, the points are set up so that the Orions must preserve the Q-ship if they don’t want to face a boarding action (and with 25 BPs starting on the BATS, it’s not a fun prospect). To do that, I would think either the Q-ship needs to be able to keep from being tractored as the BATS pounds it to pieces. I’m not sure if it’s possible to keep it from getting crippled (which would still be 2.5 points—half of what the Orions get for destroying the base—a tight budget), but sticking to range 2 or three when firing should make the power exchange uneven enough that the BATS probably can’t afford a determined auction from the Q-ship.

As it was, it was time for my attack run. The CR doubled both engines, bricked #2 and went speed 16. The CA doubled one engine, went 15, put a good brick on #2 and a few points on #1 just in case. By my calculations, the downed #2 on the BATS would come back around about when I got there. Thankfully, Mark did not change the rotation speed and mess that up. The plan was to show him #2 until he fired, then turn the #1 to him, centerline him at point blank, and then show him #6 at the end of the turn. The big worry was that he’d wait until after I had to turn to make the run work and gut me at point blank with an unreinforced shield.

The skirmishing continued at the Q-ship as it emptied it’s last phaser capacitor into the weak #2 (bounced off of reinforcement), and the base transported more BPs on board. Also, Mark fired early and did a mere 20 points to the CA (18 of which bounced off the brick) with 3 ph-4s.

Towards the end of the turn, I hit range 1 with the CA on the weak #2, range 2 with the CR and Patch’s LRs. Even with the EW advantage of the BATS, we did something akin to 98 internals, and thoroughly wrecked things. This was a a means to an end, as the real point was killing more boarding parties on the base (1 per 10 internals taken) right before transporting ours aboard, followed up by three shuttle-loads of further BPs (one loaded at the non-combat rate).

The turn ended with a 5:1 situation on the Q-ship. Mark only generated one casualty, and Patch gave up control of the ship, and preserved his BP with the understanding that there’d likely be help arriving the next turn. Between casualties and transfers to the Q-ship, the BATS was down to 6 BPs, and we had 15, +4 that couldn’t participate until the following turn. We did 6 casualties, effectively silencing the opposition.

Then things got confusing. Mark was thinking of self-destruction, but thought that he couldn’t do it with more than a minimal crew on board; he missed the provisions for if there’s more enemy than friendly BPs on board. If I’d been thinking about it, I would have have burned four of the casualties inflicted in taking over the two-box bridge (the only control spaces left).

As it was, the last two ph-4s spoke one last time, hitting the rear of the CR, and destroying the Q-ship, which exploded on the shield of the CR that just went down. Thankfully, it’s big enough that it could take it without crippling.

The final tally was 20 to 11.5, which worked out to a Tactical Victory for us.

The next SFB game is scheduled to be “The Federation Exchange”, which will probably be played between Mark and Patch.

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Denying Victory

by on September 22, 2008 at 10:00 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had Mark over yesterday for some gaming. First, he showed me game I hadn’t heard of, Cowboys, and we did a really fast two gunmen shootout (maybe 45 minutes including absorbing the really short rulebook?). Anyway, it seems to have a lot of potential as a really light game, and Mark may bring it over for one of the ‘bigger’ meetings at some point. (Ur, yes, I did win, with the side that was distinctly easier to play.)

After that, we setup and started a game of A Victory Lost, which I’ve been meaning to introduce him to for ages. As the Soviets are a little more obvious as to how to play, he took them, giving me my third game as the Germans (I’ve got to get in a game as the Soviets…). We got through the end of turn four, and will be finishing it off on Vassal.

Overall, I’d say I’m in a pretty good position. Mark’s been a little conservative movement-wise, and maybe a little too willing to make 1:2 attacks. My main problem is that he’s starting to move into a gap in my line near Voroshilovgrad, and I’m not sure what to do to plug it. Otherwise, I’ve got the usual raft of problems at this stage.

The opening demolished the Italian 8th Army as usual, and later attrition has meant that the Julia division are now the only survivors. I actually managed to get the 3rd Romanian Army early this time (usually I don’t get to try to save the units in that area until after STAVKA has already been drawn. So, I had some luck with the initial withdrawl, and the fighting around Millerovo has been pretty intense for the entire game. My usual luck at this stage intervened and a couple of attacks on exposed Soviet units failed, and he managed to rescue two tank Corps that should have at least been reduced.

I started pulling the Hungarian 3rd Army back last turn. Thankfully the Soviets got stalled for a couple turns with 2:1s that reduced his units on the flank of my line. It seems like I’ll get most of the units out, but there’s no real natural line available until I get back to the river near Valuyki, and it could get bad pretty fast.

Hollidt also started pulling back to the Donets River last turn. I think I left it longer than I should have, and things haven’t gone too well, and I lost the 7th Luftwaffe Division. Further south, things are potentially worse, as I’ve lost most of the Romanian units down there, one of the Panzer divisions took a step loss early (as was then reassigned to Hollidt). So the remaining two are slowly backing down the length of the Don River, and there’s not really anything I could call a ‘line’ down there. There is a mass of Russians though.

The good news is that he’s just getting units across the Maynch River at all, and he’s still trying to dislodge an infantry division that’s holding Proletarskaia. This is by far the best shape I’ve been in down there at the end of Turn 4, and with a little luck the 1st Panzer Army will save the day nicely.

It’s still tough, I feel like I’ve lost more units than normal, and certainly my line is a lot more tenuous than I’d like. We’ll see if I can hold it together. Mark is definitely enjoying the game, which is great.

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