Wargaming Part I: Amarillo Design Bureau (ADB)

by on June 6, 2007 at 9:34 am
Posted In: Boardgaming, News

Apologies in advance to all those following this journal who have no interest in wargaming. I’m planning on helping a few people who are get up to speed on what’s going on (industry in general, and my own purchases/interests). To start off with, I’m going with a company that has accounted for a fair amount of the available time/dollar budget.

When Task Force Games went under, ADB (owned by Steve Cole, the original designer of some of TFG’s better early games) got the full rights to Star Fleet Battles and the other games in the same universe. Currently there’s three board games, a card game, and a line of RPG setting books (using other companies’ licensed rules).

I have a… large collection of SFB materials (not quite everything I want, but more than I will probably ever need). And my little group has been playing on a “historical progression” idea to try and show how the ships change over time. We started in Y135, and are now in Y152. I’d like to get back to it, but right now other games are taking up the FtF attention (which certainly isn’t bad either).

Currently, the next products out the door for SFB are going to be R11, G3 and Omega 5. ‘Omega‘ is an alternate setting/locale for SFB that is slowly being fleshed out in a series of modules. The ‘G’ series are all updates of each other, and are just the ‘annexes’ (various informational charts) of SFB all collected together. R11 is (yet another – being the 11th after all) collection of new ships. It’s subtitled “Support Ships” and should be out for Origins (the counters for this and a bunch of other stuff goes to press… today, I believe). I’m not sure if there’s any more specific focus (there’s usually a couple of ‘new classes’ to tie things together) beyond frigate-sized transports for everyone.

Products that seem likely to get published within the next, oh, say, two years are Y2 (early years), X1R (additional X-ships), and Star Fleet Assault (actually a new game on ground combat in the Star Fleet Universe). The last has been sitting around for a while, and SVC didn’t think it’d sell, but a recent poll of customers and retailers changed his mind.

Also, they recently ran out of counter sheets for C1, and are printing up new ones in a new prettier style. I plan on getting the new sheet the next time I order from them.

Federation & Empire is the strategic game with the same basic setting. There’s currently five fairly substantial expansions to what starts as a pretty large game. I actually have all five, making it their only game that I’m truly ‘caught up’ on. I’ve done a Vassal module for it, and am hoping to get a couple people playing it with me this year. ^_^

There’s no new products immediately coming out, which is just as well, I’m still trying to (mentally) catch up on it all. The ‘next big thing’ should be ISC War, which instead of adding new complications to the General War of the main set, is going to be about the conflict that happened immediately afterward.

And that brings us to their new game, Federation Commander. It’s much the same as SFB, but designed to be as light and fast-playing as possible while keeping the ‘core’ concepts. They spent the effort to make the presentation as sharp as possible (no black and white forms in a day of easy color printing), and it has been selling very well for them. I haven’t gotten it yet, but that’s lack of funds and time, not interest, for it looks and sounds very well done. There’s an avalanche of different products out for it, from the main sets, to large packs of extra ships and counters and mapboards, to small packs of extra ships (SSDs). They present a ‘group’ of related races in stand-alone box sets, and the third one Distant Kingdoms (featuring the Hydrans and Lyrans) is underway for… Origins? Not sure. The Klingons and Romulans were naturally the focus of the first two box sets.

In addition to everything else, they recently released Federation Commander: Academy which is a cut-down version of the Klingon set for less than half the price. Graduation then provides everything in Klingon Border that isn’t in Academy so that you don’t end up repurchasing everything.

Captain’s Log #35 just came out about a week ago, and they’re now offering a couple new options. You can order it (direct from them only) in a ‘large type’ format (10 point instead of 9…); it’s not formated for it, so articles run over into extra pages which are otherwise blank. Also, you can now spend a little extra and get an extra copy of the SSDs not bound into the issue, so they can be organized and copied easier. I’m currently about four issues behind on the Log, and plan to stick with the normal version for now.

Oh, and while I’m here, happy(?) D-Day everyone!

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 

Level 70 ding!

by on May 28, 2007 at 10:34 am
Posted In: MMO

Last Wednesday, Dunain re-entered the magical land that has no experience bar. He hit level 70 during a Shattered Halls run.

As you might guess from that screenshot, I was also doing the new Children’s Week quests at the time. The new content for that with Burning Crusade is much like the original set of quests, and grand simple fun.

A few days ago, with help of a loan from a very eager Blanc, he got his gryphon. Once again, that’s been an interesting experience. Being able to fly wherever you’re going is very nice, especially with how vertical certain parts of the world are.

Runs are continuing to happen. We’ve now had two runs where we’ve gotten all the way through Shadow Labyrinth. And on this last run we got the record for number of wipes down to a low of two. Both were on Vorpil, it’s going to be a while before we can do him easily.

I went on my first Steamvaults run Saturday night (the guild had gone a couple times without me). Went pretty well. Farmishi is finally set up to do an Auchenai run and start trying to get the next piece of her Dungeon 1 look-alike set.

Dunain’s current pet projects are to make himself the Nether Chain Shirt, and get Consortium rep for a new ammo pouch.

The former means farming air elementals. Lots of them. Argh.

└ Tags: ,
 Comment 

Onward to Jerusalem!

by on May 26, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Me, Patch and Mark got together for monthly wargaming today. We continued our earlier game of Onward Christian Soldiers. We’re near the end now, and when we continue, we’re going to need a second game to play afterwards.

When last we left our heroes, the Crusaders were besieging Aleppo and Antioch, and Kerbogha was was set to come on board and start causing trouble.

I figured (rightly) the situation with Duqaq was more immediate, so Kerbogha set out to rescue him from the armies that had surrounded him, and leave Aleppo to it’s own devices for a bit.

In the actual First Crusade, Kerbogha arrived at the seige of Antioch just after the Cruaders took it, failed in an attack on the Crusaders in the city, had his alliance break up, and retired from the war without really doing anything else. His poor luck seems to be following him in the game.

He’s a good leader, and he’s got a gigantic army by the standards of the game. He has suffered from poor attrition rolls, and has been very timid in battle against these barbaric invaders. In about four straight battles he rolled “cautious” for his tactics (which is good for most First Crusade Muslim leaders, but is his poorest choice, and should only happen 1/3 of the time). He failed to break through to Duqaq, who got his army cut to ribbons by the continual harrying of the Crusader armies around him, and got captured, putting one of my best leaders out of action.

Kerbogha pulled out and headed to Aleppo to break the siege there. Meanwhile, Antioch fell to the Crusader forces there, freeing up one of the more powerful armies.

Aleppo turned into a disaster. I had a good leader and army trapped there, and the Crusader assaults on the walls were getting closer to succeeding. By the time it was done, I had wrecked a couple of armies trying to break the siege (and got another one trapped and lost Balduk, a not-quite incompetent leader), and Kerbogha’s army was dangerously depleted. Aleppo fell, and Ridwan was captured, taking out another of my good leaders. Winter brought an end to the campaigning as the Crusaders started to head south again. Soqman, another of my second-string leaders managed to ambush and halt the march south.

In any battle you roll two dice for every leader involved. On a 2 or 12 they are eliminated or captured. Mark and Patch had been playing with fate, rolling lots of 3s and 11s all day. Finally, it happened and I captured his leader. And then I rolled a 12 and Soqman was captured in turn.

In all, I’ve had five leaders captured. There’s automatic replacements for all but one of them, but they aren’t very good. Meanwhile the Crusaders are getting dangerously depleted, with some factions with a bare handful of men left. But my poor leaders have trouble fighting anyone, no matter what the odds. The game doesn’t have far to go (about four turns), and if Kerbogha can keep from getting himself killed, we figure I’ll win. But we’re uncertain on how the victory points will pan out, so we’re going to have to finish it off to really know.

└ Tags: ,
 Comment 

Database Musings…

by on May 24, 2007 at 10:40 am
Posted In: Life

A while back, a friend of mine had the idea to put all his DVDs into a database so he could keep track of them, let his friends know what he had to borrow, and keep track of who had borrowed what. A noble idea, the project eventually collapsed under its own weight.

In the meantime, it had sparked an idea of my own that was a bit more grandiose, and therefore collapsed under its own weight even faster. In my case, it was also the realization of some problems that I’ve never been able to reconcile.

My project was a database of magazine articles. Between the three of us here (at that point), we have a fairly good library of reference materials. And it’d be nice to spread the wealth around. Locating a particular book is not too hard. But, I also have magazines with articles on various interesting subjects. How (even for my own purposes) do I find what I want in those?

As a good example, I have a good number of National Geographics. When Smudge or Baron want reference to, say, cheetahs, it’s nearly impossible to find the right one, even when we know we all read an issue featuring them relatively recently.

So, the original idea was to record each article, with the magazine and issue number, and for sorting purposes, a general category (history, astronomy, nature…) and a short specific description of the subject matter, equivalent to what you see on the spine of a Nat Geo.

Not a bad idea, as far as it went, but too limited to be a great search tool. Part of the idea was to make it easy to fill in the data and thereby make it possible that the project could be competed. But some articles defied an easy description, and some things that a person might want to find, may not just live in obvious subjects. If National Geographic does an article on the African savanna, and there’s there’s some really good photos of elephants in it, when Baron wants photo reference, he won’t see the article it if he looks for elephants in the database.

I suppose a list of keywords might be better. In a way, what I want to do is create a card catalog for magazine articles.

Actually, what I really want is a magical way for someone to find information on a subject if the household’s combined library has anything on it (yes, that includes the books). @_@ There’s a lot of stuff in there, and I’d like it to be more visible.

So, I’m pondering the subject again, and wondering if anyone has any bright ideas.

└ Tags: 
 Comment