Wargaming Part III: GMT Games

by on January 18, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming, News

And now for my long-delayed post on what is possibly the biggest current player in board wargames. GMT has been around since the late ’80s and has a very healthy publishing schedule. Historically, I haven’t paid as much attention to them… and have felt guilty about the lack. So, there’s probably big backlog of games that I should discover from them, as well as a lot of tempting items on preorder.

Among other things, they are a leading proponent of the card-driven game, first introduced in the mid-90s. GMT has recently done several games with similar systems that have gotten a lot of positive comment: Wilderness War on the French and Indian War; For the People on the Civil War, and Paths of Glory on WWI. Currently on preorder is Pursuit of Glory, based on Paths and focused on WWI in the mid-east.

Recently, they’ve gotten into block games, most notably Commands & Colors: Ancients (now with three expansions, it’s been a big hit), the fourth appearance (first by GMT) of a fairly simple battle system. Mark has picked it up, and I’d like to try out his copy at some point.

Their biggest series is the Great Battles of History. Since I tend to prefer operational and above for my game scale, I haven’t paid much attention to it. But it is worth noting that the next one up on preorder is Chandragupta, which is to feature several battles from early Indian history—I don’t know of any other wargames covering this.

Also, they currently have reprints of two Avalon Hill games on preorder, Blackbeard and Successors. The former is (of course) a game of piracy in the Caribbean that I know I played and enjoyed, but don’t really remember. Successors is one of the original card-driven games, about the breakup of Alexander the Great’s empire. I always thought the subject was appealing, and regretted not having any money when it first came out, so I preordered it when it first came up at GMT.

The one GMT Game I do have is Onward Christian Soldiers. Watchers of this blog should be familiar with it, as I’ve reported a couple playings of it. It just recently went out of stock, so it’s probably still available in stores… for a little bit.

1914: Twilight in the East just recently went off of preorder. I couldn’t afford it on preorder, so I’m not going to afford it now, and I’d never find the time or place to play it anyway. But… it looks to be attempting a detailed look at supply and control and how ‘fresh’ troops are after marching around a while, at the level of detail where I’ve always wondered “just how does that work, anyway.” So, I keep staring at it.

Other titles that have caught my eye (ow!) are Unhappy King Charles and Conquest of Paradise.

They currently show 25 games that have gotten the minimum 500 orders that guarantee that they’ll finish development, and publish it… someday. Their average rate seems to be about two games a month, so that’s quite a backlog. They prioritize by what gets the most preorders, so some things that just barely make the 500 mark can sit for quite a while. And there’s another 27 titles that have not hit the 500 mark on the P500 list yet (including a reprint of Wilderness War).

In other wargaming news, ADB has just published Captain’s Log #36, putting me 3 behind again. They’re also getting ready to publish their next set of counters for future products, and it looks like both X1R (more X-ships) and Y2 (more Early Years) are going forward. MMP has announced that everything for Valor of the Guards is either printing or in final proofs, so that is finally going to come out.

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The Battle of Vandaha

by on January 14, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Posted In: SFB

When the plot resulted in a coup (which failed), the Hidden Dagger County declared war on the DDSC and attacked. Larkahn’s son Larzhak, now Duke, supported the attack, as did the White Stripe County. They were unable to use their full combat power, however, due to the ongoing Fourth Lyran-Kzinti War and a “convenient” demonstration of power by the Hydrans.

The Battle of Vandaha was virtually a reprise of the Battle of Long Claws, but the DDSC (soon to become the LDR) forces were proportionately much larger.

Me, Mark, Patch, and Paul got together on Saturday to play this scenario from S2. Like the earlier Battle of the Long Claws, it has three sides (with two teamed up). However, our roles were shuffled: I was the DDSC, Mark had the Emperor’s forces, and Patch had Duke Larzhan, with Paul assisting him.

I hadn’t looked things over in detail, and was surprised to see that the battle was bigger than the previous one. It did not help that every single ship in my fleet was different (CA, CL, DD, FF, Pol, Pol-S, FAL, FAS).

The opening setup was like last time, and Patch’s plan was like mine: turn, and go after the DDSC first. My initial plan put the freighters up front, with everything else running faster. They were expendable, and durable, and the FAL, with two overloaded disruptors, had a fair punch.

EW was interesting, as we generally just allow scouts to play with it, and there were three different platforms available. Patch put up +1 ECM each on his four lead ships, while Mark put +3 on one of mine, +3 offensive ECM on Patch’s leading CA, and I put +6 on my CA. Considering that that adds up to a +3 die-roll shift if his CA fired on mine, I think it did affect where Patch went in somewhat.

Speaking of which, that did not go as I thought. I had vague notions of a point blank skirmish and put up reinforcement on nearly everything. But I figured it’d be dead ahead, and the two fleets ended up going by each other’s left, so everything hit the #6 shield.

The initial parts went very well. Both sides started getting ships taken out of the battle, but I gave better than I got at first. Mark showed up in time to really help out, but towards the end of the turn, Patch/Paul had more unengaged ships than we did, and at the beginning of turn two, that started to tell.

We didn’t get far into turn 2, and there was definitely some major carnage to come as the two untouched elements were just getting to grips with each other. But it was decided not to continue it later – so: marginal victory for Duke Larzhan. At least I can say I did better as the DDSC than Mark did previously.

The current plan is to do a battle to show off a couple of the early Dreadnoughts currently in use next time, and see if we can get a good group together for Soldier Kings the time after.

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Another year already?

by on January 2, 2008 at 11:32 am
Posted In: Life

It’s been a fairly odd last month for me. I could not convince myself that it was Christmastime at all. To just about everyone: sorry for a lack of presents. I could have afforded something, but just couldn’t make myself believe that Christmas was anywhere in the next six months.

However, Christmas happened on schedule anyway. For Christmas itself we actually hosted dinner for several of our friends. Overall, we had eight people in the house at once, which I think is a record for us, and it was great to actually host something beyond wargaming.

The actual gift-giving celebration waited for the next weekend, when Baron had more time off, and we visited Smudge’s parents. This had been a holiday tradition for us, but we’d stopped because of Smudge’s allergies. So it was great to get to go again, and Smudge only had very minor problems, a great improvement!

However, Comcast seems to have managed to really screwed up cable service while upgrading Sunnyvale (or really, their contractor did it for them). It hiccuped for a few days, then started on a cycle of being decent during the day and failing at about 6-7 PM and being down until 9 AM. At the end, it just failed completely. And all during this, the TV reception was screwed up (the good channels had moderate static) as well. This started a bit before Christmas, and finally resolved last Sunday. Maybe. Last night it was evident that there’s still trouble as WoW was having painful lag-spikes (two of us, on different servers, at the same time – it really looks like the line).

This was right during the bulk of my time off between Christmas and New Year’s, so no real work got done on BackBreaker’s site/database. >.<

To pass the evenings, I ended up watching about half of Nana with Smudge (which has been hard to find time for, as me and Drew were the only ones who expressed any interest when Smudge first introduced it).

And Smudge finally got around to finishing off Final Fantasy XII. Good ending. Generally, all the elements of XII are very good. Great characters, good plot—and for once, no one wants to destroy the world. However, as a whole it’s one of the weaker ones, namely because while all the side quests make sense, and make sense for the main character, they are completely disconnected from the main plot. You feel like you have to deliberately break the flow of the plot to go do any of them. This weakens the flow of the game immensely. Overall, I’d say it’s the third weakest main-series FF I’ve played/watched played (above VIII and V), and the fourth weakest in the full franchise (above X-2).

All of that has got me in the mood of console RPGs again, so I started a game of FF III on Smudge’s DS, after finally figuring out how to do regular saves on it. We’ll see if I get far. I’m also contemplating trying to get all the way through V on the PS2 (instead of Connectix’s emulator, which had some trouble with it), but I can’t see where I’d steal the time from.

Anyway, Live Journal year in review: I count 42 entries, nineteen tagged ‘gaming’, eleven ‘wow’, nine ‘sfb’, five ‘life’, four ‘onward christian soldiers’, two ‘comics’, two ‘humor’, one ‘a victory lost’, one ‘library’, one ‘internet’, one ‘pixar’, one ‘reading’, one ‘micca’, one ‘astronomy’, one ‘art’, and one untagged.

Pretty much as I expected. Number of posts is down from 2006, but most of that is a lower count of WoW-posts. On the other hand, I wasn’t expecting the large number of one- and two-off tags. My subject matter has spread out a bit. I’ve always figured this would turn into something of a gaming blog, and the tags show that, though I really need to try and get back on the wargaming news stuff.

I made one prediction in last year’s post: that my gaming budget would go down. I was right, and right that I wouldn’t be getting much outside the major life-stealing systems I’m already involved with. But, I attempted to spend as much as 2006. I have some fairly large outstanding pre-orders with MMP that I expected out by now that I’m keeping money in reserve for. That and I was right about Burning Crusade keeping me in WoW.

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An Uphill Battle

by on December 25, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Posted In: SFB

Well, internet here has been really flaky since about last Thursday. Apparently a contractor for Comcast has not been cleaning up after himself, and leaving much of Sunnyvale in poor shape. I imagine they’re getting coal in their stocking.

Last Saturday was the last wargaming meet of the year. The four of us did the two-team SFB fight that had been scheduled for last time. Me and Patch are the stronger players, and were on one team, while Mark and Paul were on the other with a sharp BPV advantage.

Y153:

Klingons + Lyrans Hydrans + Federation
D7C 131 LC 174
D7 121 RN 165
CA 131 CA 125
CA 131 CA 125
Total: 514 589

The actual BPV difference can be attributed to all the Hydran fighters. It was kind of nice to just pick ships by classes and not worry about what the Hydrans do to the BPV calculations. The idea was for each side to have four cruisers with one on each side being a command cruiser.

Mark and Paul played a good, solid, conservative game all the way through. Patch and I tried being a bit fancy and could not quite get it to work. We actually split our forces early, in the face of united opposition. The general hope was for one of us to get a good opportunity while they tried to deal with the other one. If I had been playing up to par, it might have even worked, but I out-thought myself on several occasions during the fight.

The main new feature of the battle was the use of several transporter bombs. Both Patch and I took full load outs (which probably violated the 10% rule) of TBs. I tried using them for the ‘instant minefield’ effect, but wasn’t remembering all the rules (should have set most of them for just anti-fighter work) and gave myself quite a headache just maneuvering around my own stupidity.

In fact, the long-term implications of the entire deal was a wrecked Lyran cruiser. Until this point, it was looking like we might see some saber-dancing for a while, but this forced me in closer. In the aftermath Patch got the Hydran Ranger, but most of the opposing heavy weapons hadn’t fired, and they did a number on the D7C.

This gave us the reloading turn we needed to try and do something in return, but it wasn’t to be. I had forced myself too far away, and even going faster than everyone else, I was still two hexes away from the Feds at the end of the turn (who were also still in the same hex, which would have made one ship’s ESGs not nearly as much of a killer weapon). The Feds HETed and wrecked my remaining cruiser. One Fed CA was crippled in return, but that was not nearly enough. The day ended with our remaining forces scattering to attempt to disengage.

Oh, and Patch had to fire a single drone on the way out at the D7C to destroy it. For the first time ever that I’ve seen, both security stations were destroyed, and the crew successfully mutinied.

The final percentages gave Mark and Paul a Marginal Victory. The fight through the points generated by the BPV differential kept it from being much higher.

The next meet is going to be the “Battle of Vandaha” from S2. We might manage to sneak it in mid-January before Further Confusion, but it will probably be early February.

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And a Fine Time Was Had by All

by on December 10, 2007 at 9:24 am
Posted In: Life

Got back from my annual vacation with my parents yesterday.

The trip down went well, main problem was getting started a bit late. The chaos of the potential schedule changing on a day-by-day basis meant that I never really worked out just what I wanted to bring with me, so I was thinking of little things I ‘forgot’ all the way down. Oh, and I got lost a block from my parents. Well, not lost, I knew where I was, I knew they were close, it was just that when struggling to read the directions in the dark I missed a step.

The new place is very, very nice. It’s much larger, brand new, and they got to choose a bunch of options in the floorplan, so it’s personalized to them. One problem: the guest bedroom (which is normally an office-ish space for my Mom) is on the opposite side of the house from the guest bathroom (which is next to my Dad’s den/gaming room, which would ordinarily be a pair of bedrooms, so it actually does make sense).

A neighbor took photos of the entire process of taking the old mobile home out and putting in the new ‘manufactured home‘ (which seems to boil down to ‘post-1975 mobile home’), including a few taken from his roof, looking down at the process. Great reference, and it might be nice to get a copy of the CD he did.

Technical duties were limited this year. Figured out the TV/VCR/DVD setup, which involved examining the back of the TV and swearing at the manual, which was done entirely as guide to the remote; never once diagramming what connections the TV itself had and only in passing mentioning that the extra inputs are treated as extra channels on the last page. Set the router up physically in hopes that everything will do its job right when the DSL is finally activated. Oh, and I helped with a neighbor’s (same one as above) software difficulties. Thankfully, he had most of it figured out, I generally just had to describe what a Video CD was (he had a CD-burner but not a DVD-burner), and finding something that could play one to test (only my Dad’s computer—with Vista—completely got it).

The game room is still being set up. I helped my Dad put together a bunch of the short cheap prefab bookcases. These will be the base of the table. Since that comes a bit later, we were left to networked computer games for gaming this year. We ended up going through a couple of Age of Wonders 2 scenarios, and had great fun beating up on the computer together.

We took a small trip up to an area just north of Cherry Valley, that has lots of apple groves. We missed the end of apple season, so most of the town was closed up (very seasonal). We ate at the restaurant that was open, and had very good apple cider and pie (the main course wasn’t bad either).

On Saturday, we visited my Aunt Ruth in Fallbrook. And took a look around my old home town. It’s in much better shape than I expected. It seems that the fires were very fast ones that just burned out the underbrush and only singed the trees. There’s burned off hillsides, and trees where all the leaves are brown and dead, and untouched areas in between.

My old place wasn’t near the fires, but Smudge’s was inside the fire area. It’s perfectly fine, with a grove that didn’t exist ten years ago in the front yard. Not far away, on the south side of Mission, the entire hill is black and charred, but the little Valentine/Capra area is fine.

In between those two trips, I visited Elaina, Mike and Rowan for about a day and a half. They’re doing well. (Or at least, as well as can be.) Rowan (now 3) still remembers me from last year (mostly for puzzles and seeing Christmas lights in downtown Riverside with everyone), and is still cutely demanding in that way that only small children can manage. Still extremely bright and much taken with “Uncle James”, which does make visiting with Elaina and Mike themselves a bit harder.

The drive home went well. Got started on time, got home early. Had a lot of unpacking to do (ended up with a lot more books than I started with). It rained a lot Saturday, but was clear, if a bit damp the next day. Lots of picturesque snow-covered mountains to see. In fact, the snow line got down to about 3700 feet in the Grapevine, giving me a much closer look at snow than I’m used to. And I could see exactly where the lee-side of all the slope were.

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