Game news VI: Successors

by on September 11, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming, News

It’s heeere….

My copy of Successors just showed up today from GMT. I thought the game looked really interesting when Avalon Hill first published it over a decade ago, and now I actually have a copy.

Physically, it looks very good. The usual solid bookcase box, counters, a couple of nice looking dice, and a really, really nicely mounted board (nice surface texture to it too). And in about two weeks, I should get a chance to see how it plays.

Also, MMP is apparently just about to put the next Action Pack (#5) up on preorder. The usual deal, a dozen scenarios, three new boards; this time all set on the Eastern Front. Board 56 will have a somewhat spread out village with a mix of wooden and stone buildings and a number of groves/orchards. Board 57 is a second ‘transition’ board with buildings mostly along one side of the board, allowing a city to taper out more naturally. Board 58 is a three level hill with a number of orchards, and a bit of a pocket valley along one side of the center.

They’re really starting to come out with those faster than I can keep up….

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Two Failures for the Price of One!

by on August 29, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Posted In: Life

So, many moons ago, my CD-ROM drive (yes, really) started having problems. Not recognizing disks correctly, thinking that the drive had been removed from the system (like a flash drive) in the middle of an operation.

Finally, a couple months back, it just stopped recognizing disks altogether. Thankfully, I haven’t been using it for much. The main games I play are WoW and VASL, and neither of those need a disk in the drive. But, it’s a heck of a thing to be without.

So, today, I finally went out to get a replacement. After hemming and hawing for a while, I finally went for the most expensive option short of a Blu-Ray drive–$45. Only it turned out to be on sale for $35. ^_^

And a good thing too, because Smudge has been having some minor trouble with her DVD burner for a bit now. And while some of it was different, some of it also sounded like the same symptoms I’d had. When we got back, she started to print out a file. Font missing–sigh, dig out Corel for the font.

And the drive wouldn’t recognize the disk at all. Her’s had decided to go kaput at a most annoying time.

So, now both Micca and Haruhi have brand new Asus DRW-2014L1T drives. They can burn +/- R and RW, +/- R dual layer, DVD-RAM, and can use LightScribe, which allows the drive to burn a label onto the disk (assuming the disk can do that).

Farewell, Pioneer 12X, you’ve been a very good drive, being my first computer equipment purchase, lasting 12 years and six systems: Nausicaä, Little Washu, Washu, Isamene, Utena, and Haruhi.

As for Smudge’s TDK drive, it lasted three years and came with system-corrupting Roxio software. I’m not buying their products anymore.

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Triumph of the 4-3s

by on August 17, 2008 at 10:32 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had Patch, Mark, and Jason over for wargaming again yesterday. I was a little surprised when Soldier Kings came up as an idea last time. We’re a bit uncertain on the balance, as it seems too easy for Britain to win the 4-player game.

But, that is what we decided on, and today I was Britain, Mark was France, Patch was Prussia, and Jason had Austria (again). Considering that everyone knew that Britain was the favorite, I wanted to play a bit cautiously; I’ve had trouble with over-extending myself in this game before.

I got lucky on initial draws, I started with two 4-3 navies and a 4-3 army. We’ve found that the 4-3s (the best units in the game) are impressively hard to hurt. If you can get them into an area where there isn’t a lot going on, they’re practically unstoppable as it is very hard to get the three hits needed to damage them on (say) 3-4 dice.

Oh, one thing can stop them: running out of resources to fund attacks, and keep sieges from taking forever. All of us had problems keeping our units properly maintained in the later stages of the game.

The first year of the war was pretty calm, I was more concerned with trying to bait the French fleet into a naval battle and see if I could bottle him up in France than starting overseas adventures. France sailed out, I intercepted, we had one round of combat, he went home. Even better, the French admiral died during that one round of combat, making things much easier for me.

Meanwhile, both Austria and Prussia had been talking of seizing territories from France instead of pursuing a destructive war with each other. This made France unhappy, and I certainly wasn’t going to interfere. However, that didn’t last long, and as Prussia and Austria started fighting each other, and during the first winter turn, I and France started supporting each one respectively. Prussia lost Frederik and Schwerin in quick order, putting him at a decided disadvantage (a pair of good leaders and higher quality armies are the equalizer against Austria’s greater manpower and resources). I could supply him with extra money, but I was short of men myself.

During the second year, my adventures in the New World began in earnest, as I used the power of a 4-3 army and 4-3 navy to sweep up French possessions in the Caribbean. France managed to take Hannover (the only British continental possession) in return, but I then blockaded the French fleet (which I’d been unable to intercept) in the port.

By this time everyone else (and especially France) was spending themselves into ruin, while I was merely a little short on manpower to pay my maintenance. Initial attempts to get Spain (on the French side) and Turkey (on the Prussian side) into the war drained money in bribes from everyone and ultimately got knocked out with “Royal Heir Dies” cards.

By the end of the third year of the war, I was just short of an automatic victory (18 VPs out of 20). The Caribbean was in my hands, the French attempt on Virgina had stalled, and I had just taken Louisiana. I had a growing presence in India to try and take care of the problems there, but it was getting under control.

Then the deck was reshuffled. Five ‘Minor Country Alliance’ cards came up. Thankfully, four of them went to me and Prussia. When it was all over, Russia was in the war with Prussia, I had convinced Turkey to help out, and Portugal was allied to me.

The problem was, Spain was now allied to France. Spain’s forces aren’t all that good, but there’s a lot them, and they quickly pointed up my most severe problem: infantry. Spain was busily taking over everything they could reach, and I couldn’t respond because I only had two armies in the New World with which to bring a land battle and besiege a place. I would have happily redeployed armies to the New World… but I didn’t have any to spare.

We had to call the game at the end of the fourth year, due to time constraints. However, this means we made better time than before, so the game is getting quicker for us. It was agreed that I would have won eventually anyway, but I did manage to have a healthy lead in the end standings anyway: England 10, Prussia 0, Austria -1, France -30.

The hope is that by the next meeting we’ll be playing Successors. If that doesn’t make it in in time, we’ll be playing Conquest of Paradise again.

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One Holy City, Slightly Used….

by on August 3, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Went up to a wargame club in Oakland today. Found out about it through BGG, and gave it a try. Not hard to get to, and in a very nice game store (they have a second floor for all the club activities that could probably hold some gaming con open gaming rooms I’ve seen). Attendance was lower than what I understand the normal is (about a half-dozen guys plus me, and it sounds like a dozen is more normal. With the drive, I won’t be going too often, but I’ll certainly be back at some point.

At the moment, it looks like the current big item is Combat Commander. I’ll probably give it a try at some point, but I have to say that ASL is really more than enough squad-level combat for me. Right now they have a kind of meta-campaign of it going, which also explains the popularity.

I nearly got talked into a game of it, but talked my opponent (whose name I’m already blanking on) into a 2nd Crusade game of Onward, Christian Soldiers instead. This was a little more involved on my end than it might seem, as I’ve only played the 1st Crusade scenario (which is much longer), and the rules are somewhat different between the two.

He opted to take the Crusaders, and in hindsight, I’m not sure if that’s the best idea, they have a very challenging situation in front of them. For this scenario, there’s almost two separate theaters, the north and the south. In the south, the Crusaders have the Kingdom of Jerusalem (with their best leader–Baldwin II) and the French and German contingents against just the city of Damascus (which is a tough nut to crack). In the north, the Mosul Turks have a large army with a good leader (Nur ed-Din) against the fairly small forces of Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli. An interesting bit is that victory is VP-based after four turns(!), and you generally only get VPs for areas you don’t control at the beginning.

The first thing that happened was the Crusaders started staging their army towards Damascus. Unur (Emir of Damascus), decided to try and distract them by taking Tiberias (2VP) and threatening Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Turks moved out, and started attacking the various parts of the County of Edessa.

While I did what I could (in between trying not to forget rules completely) to help him though it, there were the usual first=game fumblings with keeping the armies under control and moving. By the end of the second turn, the Turks had most of Edessa, while the forces of Tripoli and Antioch tried to take Aleppo. In the south I was dithering about as the Crusaders drew closer to Damascus.

The third turn saw the siege of Aleppo broken as Nur ed-Din started pushing them across the map, and Unur ravaged the countryside around Jerusalem to reduce the garrison, and the Crusaders invested Damascus. Or tried to. There was a good number of missed continuation rolls on both sides that prevented much from happening.

The fourth turn was quiet in the north as the Frankish troops retreated into Antioch, and I didn’t have much interest in trying to take it with a good garrison there. In the south, the Crusaders sent Louis VII to try and eject Unur from Jerusalem before it could be starved into submission. In the only battle where the armored knights played a part the Crusaders were unsuccessful and had to withdraw (got a ‘4’ on 2d6 with a net +0 modifier). However, the massive army at Damascus got a good roll and managed to take the city by assault, eliminating the garrison there (I had left about a 1/3 of the army there to make sure it wouldn’t be easy).

That ended things with a 20-10 VP Moslem victory. I had taken all of the former County of Edessa (slightly better than historically) for 15, and Jerusalem for 5, while Damascus was worth 10 all by itself (historically, neither of those fell), and the Crusaders had retaken Tiberias on the way to relieve Jerusalem.

I’m glad to report that the Crusader player enjoyed himself, and I have to say I’d like to try this from the Crusader’s viewpoint, I need to figure out just what their options are. The biggest mistake looks to have been not putting more of the Kingdom’s garrison troops in Jerusalem itself to make it harder to starve out, and that wasn’t obvious to me before hand.

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The Conquest of Raiatea

by on July 20, 2008 at 9:05 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had Mark, Patch, and Jason over again for gaming yesterday. This time it was Conquest of Paradise, a kind of simple civ-game set in Polynesia.

While we’d read the rules ahead of time, that was about it for preparation. So, none of us really knew what to expect and there was a certain amount of fumbling around. The four-player game has the two two-player positions next to each other and the third and fourth in slightly isolated positions but with weaker islands.

Mark had Hiva, the island furthest out, and also had the bad luck to draw a lot of open ocean while exploring, so he had a hard time getting anywhere in the rest of the game. I had Raiatea (the third player position), and did decently well. As we entered the mid-game, my victory points (which had been lagging because of the weaker home island) suddenly leapt from right above Mark, to just behind Jason and Patch.

Jason, with Tonga, was definitely the major threat most of the game. He got better tile draws than Patch (Samoa), and so tended to have an edge on victory points. Then, when most of the map was explored and the fighting started, he managed to take Patch’s home island early on, and kept it for the rest of the game.

I ended up fighting a three-front war, and slowly loosing territory. The nature of combat is very random, and I just couldn’t make some attacks work that looked pretty easy. On the other hand, I did have one where almost every roll was a ‘6’ which wiped out the opposing forces (as opposed to merely letting them retreat and come back later).

We took a lot longer than the box time would indicate; some of that was just figuring out what was going on, and I think some of it was that the “known world” west of Samoa and Tonga wasn’t exploited at all until very late in the game, lowering the pool of available victory points so that 22 took a bit of effort. Also, we figure we left buying the culture cards until later than we should have.

At any rate, Patch nearly pulled together a win with 21 points one turn. This meant that he got pounded the next turn, and Jason was a threat to win instead. Sadly, I couldn’t really afford to do much, since I was feeling weak and didn’t want to leave myself undefended either. Mark couldn’t reach him, and Patch’s attack failed, so Jason won with 26 points, Mark had 20 1/2, I had 20, and Patch had… 12 (part of his territory was detached from the main area and didn’t count for points).

A fun time for everyone, and a game we’ll be getting back to soon. The plan for next time is to give Soldier Kings another go.

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