Pixar does it again.
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Been meaning to get to this for a while. But I’ve been waiting for my good copy of AP4 to come in (see below).
Origins, one of the bigger gaming conventions, happened a week ago, which means that there’s also been a few new products lately.
ADB managed to get out Captain’s Log #37 while finishing off Module X1R (additional X-ships, as well as rules for ‘partial refits’) as their “Origins product”. They reported that the dealer’s room was smaller, but that they had very good sales. Next up should be Module Y2, with more early years ships for the empires in Y1, and the early ISC.
Also, several people have noted that it felt like a thinner crowd this year, but the convention ran 5 days (up from 4) and Origins reports a total increase in attendees, so they seem to have been spread out more.
MMP has had two new products recently. Action Pack 4 for ASL came out about a month ago. I’ve received my pre-ordered copy, but it was damaged in shipping, and I’m still waiting for its replacement to arrive. (Which they offered to send as soon as they heard the word “damaged”, I would have been willing to submit photographs as proof.) I haven’t really looked over the damaged copy, but what I’ve seen looks good. I have looked over the latest re-work of walls and bocage, and think they’ve done a fine job of clearing up a couple things that weren’t defined and providing some great examples (one of which came from an article in ASL Journal 3). They’ve also just released Warriors of God a fairly simple game of the 100 Years War that has been getting some glowing reviews, as well as South Mountain, the latest entry in The Gamer’s line, and part of the Regimental Sub-Series (RSS). They have also posted another game to the preorder list: Storm Over Stalingrad. They mention that it is on schedule to be released at Heat of Battle 2 in August, and will be released no matter what, the pre-orders are for those who want it early and cheap. The title would seem to be a reference to the fact that it uses a similar system the popular AH game, Storm Over Arnhem.
GMT meanwhile is reporting about 30 copies left of Blackbeard, pretty fast sales for a game that only came out a couple months ago. I imagine it has a reprint in its future. The schedule of game releases pushes on, with The Napoleonic Wars (reprint/2nd ed.) having gone out, and they’re gearing up for Successors (another AH reprint/new edition); I should get my copy late this month.
EDIT: And now that I’ve posted this anyway, my replacement copy has shown up.
Been a busy weekend.
Saturday was the Midsummer Art Festival at the Triton Museum. We did our usual thing and got out the pavilion and panels and set up a nice display. Friday had been a really hot day, and we were worried about the Art Fest being pretty punishing, but the temperature stayed reasonable, and there were some pretty good stretches where clouds got in the way of the sun, which helped a lot. In fact, it even rained for about 30 seconds at one point.
Sadly, it was a smaller show than the usual one, only one day, and with a smaller crowd. Sadly, this means that we only sold one piece (the last limited print of World Domination), but it was a pleasant day, and we’re happy to help support the museum.
Yesterday was both my birthday and monthly wargaming. Sadly, the need to do it on Sunday gave us a hard 5 PM time limit, as some people have a long trip home from here. But we got far enough through the First Crusade game from last time to be able to call it at the end of the day.
The main experience for me during this half of the game was a series of bad chit pulls. I had a hard time getting any of the higher-numbered chits, which made it all too easy to ignore some of my leaders.
The first few turns went fairly well. By the time the summer of 1098 was over the North Syrians had been completely destroyed, with all their cities taken and their commanders taken with them, leaving them with three 1-1 leaders and no army. He started gifting himself cities from the South Syrians so that they could conduct the defense of a couple sites the S. Syrians wouldn’t get around to, and try to raise a new army.
Meanwhile, the thrust south was going too slowly. Raymond finished taking Hamah, and Bohemond got down to Homs and took it by assault. However, at that point the Fatamids realized that the Crusaders didn’t care who all these cities belonged to, and sent their army and navy up to garrison Acre. By that point, winter was coming on, and Raymond tryed staging himself down towards the coast south of Acre, but the weather was too bad, and he ended up stranded south of Tiberias.
Meanwhile, the situation up north was getting desperate. Kerbogha seems to be cursed. In actual history, he failed to meaningfully intervene in the Crusades, and in the game, despite a good campaign rating and a large army, he tends to do poorly. In this game he got beat up in most any battle he had, but he kept managing to make good most of his losses, so his army was staying in the 40 range, while the Germans were slowly dwindling. Added to this was some really poor German chit draws that saw them barely moving while the Mosul Turks started cutting off lines of communication to outside supplies and the fact that the bulk of Crusading forces were getting further away. My hope was to keep dancing around and trade cities back and forth with the Turks and hope to have the right ones left at the end of the game.
This worked well at first, but it probably took me too long to unify my armies so I had a better chance of keeping Kerbogha honest. And in the spring of 1099, disaster struck the German army.
I hadn’t properly read the Crusader victory conditions when we had to choose cities after the fall of Antioch, and only remembered that picking Jerusalem was important, but forgot why. So, each of us ended up with one faction that picked Jerusalem and one that didn’t, and those two that didn’t lost 20% of their force to the two that did. This transferred forces from the Germans and North Franks to the South Franks and Sicilian Normans (who really needed it, the Norman army was down to about 5 ASP). However, the shrinking of the recently unified German army made it much harder to contemplate standing up to Kerbogha. A misstep by me allowed him to trap the Germans in Samosata. I got him with a surprise attack out of the gate when arrived, and did some damage, but then I went back into the city. The resulting siege and assaults on a SDR 2 city wiped out the German army, and reduced their possessions to Tarsus, back in Anatolia.
Meanwhile, the South Franks and the Sicilian Normans had reached Palestine, but had no real options. The important cities were too well defended to assault, and the armies were too small to besiege them. The continual recruitment of the South Syrians had finally been paying off this session, and a well timed desertion card had drained the life back out of Raymond’s army after receiving the troops flocking to the armies that were after the holy city of Jerusalem.
We ended up calling the game at the end of June to Mid-July 1099. Things weren’t going to get any better. I was in the cellar with an average score of -3 (-1 for the South Franks who had Hamah and -5 for the Germans who no longer had anything), Jason had an average of 5 (11 for the North Franks who had Antioch, -1 for the Sicilian Normans who had Homs), Mark tied first with an average of 10 (0 for the North Syrians, 20 for the South Syrians who still held Damascus and Jerusalem), and 10 for Patch (who had Aleppo and Edessa). We figured Patch as the winner, as the Mosul Turks were sure to take more of their victory cities in the next few turns.
Beyond that, my birthday was quiet. Baron fixed a good dinner, and later brought back a very nice three-layer cake with a raspberry topping from a fancy desert shop. My parents got me a copy of The Magnificent Century, book two of a history of the Plantagenets that I’ve been wanting to get all of (I already have book one).
Ah SamBakZa…. If you haven’t seen these Korean music videos before, check them out, they’re quite fun.
If you have… part 3 is out.
Had the gang over for wargaming on Saturday (Mark, Patch and Jason). We decided to go for a four-player game of Onward Christian Soldiers (1st Crusade), the three of us having enjoyed our previous experience, and wanted to try it with an extra player.
Jason, as the new person to the game, got the Northern Franks and the Sicilian Normans. I got the Southern Franks and Germans. Patch took the Mosul Turks and Mark had the Syrians.
It’s been very interesting. Jason got out of Anatolia as fast as he could, and headed for the area near Antioch. Some issues with what it takes to unite two armies under one command kept him from being able to start a siege. However, he proved adept at the assault rolls, and managed to take Antioch late in our session (about the 5th turn) for fairly minimal losses without ever starting a siege. He’s also established a few bases along the coast.
I hung around and took Lampron and Tarsus to base out of (Tarsus surrendered in return for me letting the troops go). Some poor activation chit draws really slowed me down. The Germans have since turned east with the idea of starting a County of Edessa. However, Kerbogha showed up at the earliest possible time, and that has kept the Germans busy. Baldwin just took Aleppo, so there is now a Christian base in the area. Kerbogha immediately marched north to engage Godfrey. A tense battle ended up with an unpredictable result that lost Kerboha a fifth of his army. He maneuvered around Godfrey, picked up reinforcements, and a second battle saw both sides get good formations again, and another Christian win (though a narrower one). At the prospect of a third battle, my nerve finally broke, and Godfrey retreated and hasn’t managed to move since.
The South Franks got a slow start, but have worked their way down to Syria, while Mark has managed to get a good number of troops in the area to block the Crusaders with. Mark has also been recruiting like mad in Damascus, but has largely gotten ‘1’s so far, leaving him far short of the manpower he’d like to have. Also, he’s lost two of the North Syrian leaders to successful assaults on the cities they were holed up in. Either someone is going to start moving south towards Jerusalem soon, or there’s likely to be a number of sieges where the Crusaders try to eliminate entire armies by holing them up in cities and assaulting them. Adhemar has already tried moving south, but ran into serious trouble and is now down to about 5 ASPs, after several battles.
Next time, we will (hopefully) finish off the game. It’s a messy situation, and a couple bad defeats could swing things.
During the game Jareth called with a problem: He’d just gotten a Blu-ray player and needed people to help test that it was working properly. ^_^ So, me, Smudge and Baron headed over that evening. Baron fixed a spaghetti dinner for everyone, and we watched a collection of Pixar shorts (Blu-ray) and introduced Jeremy to Giant Robo (DVD). And just talked a bunch.
A fun, fun day.