Posts Tagged Onward Christian Soldiers

11 results.
Apr26

Revolting Edessa

by Rindis on April 26, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had Mark over today for more gaming (this is three weekends in a row with someone…). Today was his pick, and he had decided he was interested in seeing the Third Crusade scenario from Onward Christian Soldiers, which was more than fine by me, as I think it’s a good scenario.

It was a rough start, as it’s been a bit since either of us has played, and we also had to remember not to confuse the issue with Carthage which can be similar.

One critical bit that didn’t hit me (the Saracens) at first was that Saladin starts under the onus of a rule where he has to have half his available forces with him, which he doesn’t. I could either sit in front of Acre as the Crusaders besieged it, unable to do much, and try to get reinforcements there, or leave and seek out those same reinforcements.

(The first try before we realized just how unbalanced his command structure was, saw Saladin attack the Crusaders twice and drive them away with good die rolls.)

I went seeking reinforcements, and was approaching the 50% mark, when a revolt broke out in Edessa, requiring my immediate attention. (Really immediate—I pick up Saladin and 10 SPs and move him all the way across the map to Edessa.) This pretty well froze me in place for a turn as nothing was set up for this. And two turns later it happened again, when I’d only gotten half way back and was still gathering a new force together.

So, while Saladin was gone, Acre was still besieged. Richard took Cyprus and then landed at Tortosa and quickly took it as well. Acre fell about the fourth turn, after siege attrition had got the garrison where it could be assaulted more easily. (An interesting note, about this time we had a turn where there was only one successful continuation roll. Slowed everybody down.) After this, Crusader attention turned to Jaffa, where Saladin had been gathering his army together. Also around this time, Saldin’s trusted subordinate, Taki ed-Din Omar, was killed by Assassins (further paralyzing my command).

I was actually able to sally during the siege of Jaffa with a minor leader and narrowly win the battle, causing the siege to temporarily end. As winter got closer, I realized the army there was way too vulnerable, and I planned to carry the force out by sea to safety, until something better could be arranged. So, in my biggest mistake of the game, I neglected to have my fleet marker be my automatic first activation after winning the initiative!

Jaffa fell, and with it went about 1/3 of the Saracen forces (and another leader). I managed to take some revenge by driving the Crusader fleet out of Acre Sea Zone, and then Saladin arrived to ravage the countryside around Acre, and retake it at the end of the turn. The Crusader army reconvened at the gates of Jerusalem, where Philip I decided he’d had enough and went home.

During winter 1190, Jerusalem was taken (for the second time) by Crusaders from Europe. Duke Hugh of Burgundy immediately set out to re-establish contact with the coast, as Jaffa had come under siege by Saracens coming up from Egypt. Marching around several strongholds, he took the town of Haifa (exactly 10 attrition points away from Jerusalem). Meanwhile, Saladin fell ill in Acre, not allowing him to isolate the Crusaders in the interior.

So, it was another Crusader auto-victory, though this one was much earlier. At first, Mark was worried about how to deal with Saladin, and the large force he was gathering. The events conspired against me, and he took advantage of every one. I could have done better even so, my play just did not rise up to the challenge presented.

It may be a while before we get together again, Mark has a socially busy month coming up. When we do get together, it will be for some-scenario-or-other of Stonewall Jackson’s Last Battle.

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Dec01

Philip the Lionhearted

by Rindis on December 1, 2008 at 9:40 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

…And we ended up playing the Third Crusade scenario for Onward yesterday.

After playing the small 2nd Crusade scenario twice in a row, it was almost startling to see the system back in it’s full glory. It really pointed up just how limited of a scenario 2C is. As it turned out, we both wanted different sides, and I ended up with the Crusaders again. (My Dad wanted to be on the defensive, and I wanted Richard.)

At any rate, the scenario picks up in medias res, with Richard I just arriving off the coast of Cyprus, Philip II having just arrived near Acre while the combined armies of Guy and Leopold sit and besiege Acre with Saladin encamped nearby.

Historically, Richard took Cyprus (from the Byzantines), landed at Acre, took over the siege while ill, fought off a couple minor attacks, took the city, headed south, won a deservedly famous victory at Arsuf, but was unable to take Jerusalem when Philip and Leopold left him to return to Europe; nor was he able to secure a peace that could guarantee the long-term viability of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Not wanting to disturb a winning formula, the major event of the first turn was Richard taking Cyprus. However, instead of proceeding directly to Acre, Richard then landed in the Holy Land at friendly (but neutral) Tripoli.

Richard eventually decided that the siege of Acre was well in hand, and moved north up the coast, taking Jabala as he went before stopping to assault Lattakiea. Saladin moved north, worried at the possible loss of Antioch and Edessa. In two pitched battles Richard defeated Saladin, allowing him time to take the city, and Saladin retired to get more troops and perhaps face someone a little less energetic.

Saladin came south, gathering a mighty host from various garrisons and arriving reinforcements along the way, and hit the Frankish army lead by Philip at Acre, where the siege was slowly grinding away. Philip was forced to retreat with moderate losses, ending the threat to Acre.

Fate intervened at this point, with a revolt in Hamah, which forced Saladin back north in a hurry with a minimal force. Richard would have liked to test him again with nearly equal armies, but was held up at Antioch. Saladin was, however, able to fly back south and resume control of his army fairly quickly.

Faced with an army too big to safely fight, and with Richard far away and with too small a force to face Saladin, Philip gambled: He marched around Saladin and down to Jerusalem as the rainy season started, which was defended by a small force under Taki. Too small for Philip’s combined force, however. Philip established a siege.

Richard tried to race down the coast to help, or at least do something while Saladin was distracted, but was stymied by the rains and the need to support his armored knights (3 AK + 1 army size +2 weather—soon +3—really slowed him down, even with a ‘5’ campaign rating to continue with). Saladin staged out of Jericho and attacked the Crusader army.

Saladin, however, was not up to his usual mettle, and Philip’s army stood its ground. In a second battle, things went even worse, and Saladin was forced to retreat. He had, however, accomplished his primary goal: Philip’s army was now too small to besiege Jerusalem effectively. Philip grimly determined to continue to ravage the countryside and assault the walls, to force Saladin to continue bleeding his army against him, while the other scattered factions of the Crusaders collected themselves.

And then fate intervened again. Saladin launched a third attack against Philip and again failed to dislodge him from Jerusalem. However, Saladin himself took an arrow in the eye during the battle, and died shortly thereafter. With no effective Saracen leadership left nearby, Philip was able to carry the walls of Jerusalem during the winter of 1191. This ended the game, and no doubt left Philip as the primary figure of the history books.

It was a very good game, and exciting all the way through. I considered my move to Jerusalem to be very risky, but worthwhile if I could avoid any true military disasters, as Saladin’s larger army would bleed down faster than mine, and would allow time for Richard to collect a slightly more effective force as Saladin was pretty much forced to react to the game-ending threat. Continuing after the siege had failed was a gamble I was pretty sure would backfire, as if I took the city, Philip would either have to defend outside it anyway, or let Saladin assault when the walls were still only worth ‘1’, making it easy to loose the entire army. Saladin dieing was extremely unexpected, especially as both Saladin and Philip had rolled ’11’s for the leader loss check in the previous battle.

Anyway, the next game will probably be on Tuesday, and I’ve been pressuring my Dad to try out Pursuit of Glory—we’ll see though.

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Nov30

Forward to Glory! (But Not Victory)

by Rindis on November 30, 2008 at 10:25 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Well, the annual vacation with my parents has started out well. Weather on the way down alternated between sunny and warm, and overcast and threatening. But, no actual rain, and traffic was pretty good other than along I-210.

Took care of the main tech support duties yesterday morning, helping a neighbor with her machine, and getting the wireless network up and running again here. No big projects, thank goodness.

So, yesterday afternoon, me and my Dad played the 2nd Crusade scenario from Onward, Christian Soldiers. It’s the smallest, shortest and simplest of the scenarios, and therefore a good introduction to the two-player play of the game. Since my one other play of the game was as the Saracens, and I consider the Crusaders to have the tougher lot in the scenario, I took the Crusaders this time.

I deliberately opened with the same move as my opponent’s last time had been: Move the combined armies of Jerusalem, France and Germany up from Acre to Tiberias. It’s possibly slightly cautious, but it helps keep the Saracen player worried about Damascus without possibly triggering a shattering confrontation right away, insuring that the initiative in the south stays with the Crusaders, and hopefully keeping the Mosul Turks from spending all their effort in the north.

From there, things ran quite differently. In the north, things looked pretty good for a little bit. But I was unable to roll well, generating a horrific number of ‘1’s for formation in the opening battles. Meanwhile, the Saracens rolled well; the classic tale of a western army falling for a feigned retreat and getting smashed in a counter attack played itself out all too often in this game. Still, I kept the armies largely intact into the second turn, slowing things down a bit.

Down south only saw limited maneuvering at first. But Unur of Damascus eventually headed north to help with the situation up there. As a couple more battle reduced the armies of Antioch and Edessa to a point where they weren’t much of a threat to anyone, he ended up heading south again. By this time, Baldwin and Philip VII had moved to the gates of Damascus and were besieging it, and Conrad was holding Tiberias, planning to move up to Tripoli and joining the small army there. However, he got off to a late start (last chit in the cup), and was defeated by Unur (still couldn’t roll a good formation, it was a fairly even battle otherwise).

The final turn and a half was mostly clean up for both sides. The Turks spent their time trying to claim the rest of the County of Edessa (and barely made it), Unur made a try at Jerusalem, but when he realized he had 4 chances in 36 (needed really good assault rolls), he headed to Damascus to get rid of the French army there. For once, the Crusaders stood firm, and Unur was unable to do anything. However, I had screwed things up, and the siege had ended the turn before due to the army strength going too low (largely due to desertions–the only event roll that did anything during the game). Meanwhile, Conrad and the other leaders had been busy with ravaging cities and taking Homs, Hammah and Shaizar.

So, at the end the score was 7 to 22. I had nearly gotten another 10 for Damascus, and Samosata had nearly held out (good assault roll at the end of the game), which would have given me another point, and lost the Saracens 3 for a possible 18 to 19…. I’m definitely convinced that the Crusaders have a much harder position in this one, not least because it’s much easier for the Mosul Turks to shift between the two different theaters than for the Crusaders. If I hadn’t so consistently lost battles that were winnable, it might have been very different, as Edessa and Antioch have just enough forces to be a problem for the Turks, with careful handling.

Anyway, I’m down here for a bit, and I think we’ll end up playing the Third Crusade scenario soon.

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Oct31

Combat in Onward, Christian Soldiers

by Rindis on October 31, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Posted In: Design and Effect

Crossposted from the Design and Effect blog on GameSquad.

I haven’t read nearly as much on medieval warfare as I might like, but what I do know is that for all the protestations of martial valor, and the romanticism of defeating your foe in combat, major battles were viewed as entirely too chancy things to trust the fate of your army and kingdom to.

With the considerable problems with communication, supply and training, this is an entirely understandable position. Instead, medieval warfare was largely a positional one, with control of key points being the objective.

With all this in mind, it makes sense that the combat system in Onward, Christian Soldiers is designed to be chaotic and unpredictable, with the idea of encouraging play that rewards sieges and other positional play. Even though it is acknowledged that players will remain more aggressive than their historical counterparts.

What gains my respect, is that even though they are chaotic, they are not random. Several factors go into the resolution. This means the system is a little cumbersome, but with practice it flows well, and it ensures the tension runs high whenever a battle is joined. Heck, the tension runs high whenever you think about a battle.

There’s good mechanics dealing with getting to a battle too, but we’re concentrating on the breakdown of what happens once battle is joined:

Step 1: What are the Odds?
Naturally, a larger army holds a distinct advantage over a smaller force, but instead of a conventional CRT system (a subject I should go into in another post), where the relative strength alone is the prime determiner of the possible results, this just generates a modifier for the final result.

An important note for those used to CRT wargames is that the odds calculation is rounded off instead of down. So, while normally 14 to 5 would be 2:1, in this game it is 3:1. While this is more appropriate as you’re just trying to gauge that the army is ‘about’ three times as large, and it keeps an odd hole from showing up in the modifiers, it does slow the process down because any edge case isn’t easy to resolve mentally. Aid cards are provided with a table for all the likely force strengths.

The odds themselves translate directly into the modifier—so 3:1 is a +3 modifier, 2:1 against is a –2, and so on—except that 1:1 is +0 (naturally), and 1.5:1 is +1.

Step 2: Formations
This is the real meat of what makes the system different, and why going into a good-odds battle can still put your heart in your throat—and why it can be good to seek a battle as the weaker army.

Reflecting the clash of different styles of combat that marked the Crusades, and the fact that even the best leaders did things in battle, that to our eyes, make little sense, Onward uses the idea of each side adopting a ‘formation’ for the battle (which has been seen before), but takes control out of the player’s hands by turning it into a die roll. The results of this roll depend on the leader rating, and side (Crusader or Muslim).

Also, the passage of time, and the fact that the Muslims adjusted to Crusader tactics is accounted for, as the Muslims get a different table in each Crusade, with better results each time.

The possible Crusader formations are Impetuous Charge, the vainglorious attack, possibly in the face of all military common sense, that was seen all too often from commanders just arrived in the Middle East; Defend in place (obvious), Flank attack (also obvious); and Frontal Charge, which is the well-timed charge most classically seen from Richard at Arsuf. A 1-rating leader has a 5/6 chance of IC (a ‘6’ being D), with the odds of an IC going down with each rating, and the normal competent 4-rating with one chance in 6 of IC, 2/6 of D, 1/6 of F and 2/6 FC. Richard the Lionheart (the only 5-rating leader in the game) replaces the chance of an IC with FC.

The Muslim formations are Defensive, Cautious (line up for battle and and look for an opportunity), Flank attack, and feign retreat and Encicle. In the First Crusade, a 1-rating leader has a 5/6 chance to go D and 1/6 C; by the Third Crusade it is even odds of either. A 4-rating leader has equal chances of C, F, and E in the First Crusade, and this only shifts slightly to a 1/6 of C, 2/6 of F, and 3/6 of E.

So… what does all this mean? What do the formations do against each other? As you might guess, FC and E are the formations that the Crusaders and Muslims respectively want to see come up. The Crusaders have a definite military edge in the fact that the Frontal Charge trumps everything else, and will always generate a positive modifier for the Crusaders, a mere +2 against E, and a +8 against a Muslim who is being Defensive. The Impetuous Charge is iffy, it can generate a positive modifier against D, but is a -5 against F and -8 against E (which sounds exactly like several of the worse defeats we read about in the Crusades).

Note that the worst Crusader formation (IC) does well against the worst Muslim formation (D), meaning that in the First Crusade a 1-rating Crusader leader can ride roughshod over 1-rating Muslim leader, as there are only three chances in 36 of not seeing IC vs D.

Step 3: Other Modifiers
There are a few minor modifiers that can show up, like defending in a town, some random cards that can be played, etc.

And then there’s armored knights. Due to the nature of the difficulties in employing knights in battle in the Crusades, and the devastating effect they could have when they did get to hit the enemy, knights are a separate factor of the army while everything else is just generic strength points. There’s a lot of restrictions on them: only certain formation results get to use them, they can’t be used in/against a town… etc. However, when the Crusader does get to use them, they generate a +1 shift per point. (This would generate a +8 in the First Crusade if the leaders of all four Crusader factions happened to be fighting together at this point—more likely it’ll generate a +2 or so.)

Step 4: Results
So, there’s all these numbers that add and subtract from the final result, inducing a fair amount of chaos into the system as it is hard to determine the end result without actually starting the combat. Now what?

The last bit is to roll 2d6, add the final modifier and consult a CRT table. As ever, dice don’t reduce the tension level. Combat results range from -10 to +24, with the results being #/# where the two numbers represent what the attacker and defender respectively take in casualties as a percentage of their army strength. The two extreme “blow out” results are 70/0 and 0/70, the two middle results (+7 and +8) are 15/15 and 20/20, and most of the time you can assume casualties will be between 5 and 25 percent of the army.

A nice brake on the system to keep a large army from taking excessive casualties against a small force is that if the odds are 3:1 or greater (or 1:2 or less), then the larger army figures its casualties as a percentage of the size of the smaller army.

And then there’s one last source of chaos. There are four results that say “X (#)”. These are Unpredictable Results, and you roll again (1d6 this time) add the modifier in the parentheses (from -2 to +2), and look for the entry marked with that number in its own column. As the six # entries are equivalent to -3, 0, +6, +9, +14 and +20, it can really shift where the results land. While the modifiers tend to constrain the results to what would be expected, so far in practice it has turned certain victories into costly ones and close battles into costly defeats.

Aftermath:
After all that, if one side took twice as many casualties as the other, it must retreat. Otherwise, either (or both) sides may choose to retreat, or both may stay of the field, and probably will go at it again soon (possibly after reinforcements arrive).

Summary:
I’ve found Onward, Christian Soldiers to have one of the best battle resolution systems I’ve seen. It is a little clunkier and unwieldy than I would strictly like to see, but I think it is well worth the time put into it. The results seem to mesh well with what I know of combat in the Crusades, and the formations give you a feel for the flow of the battle, creating more of a narrative, or feeling of ‘being there’. And finally, it achieves the design goal of being a horribly unpredictable thing, despite being influenced by several factors that the players do have complete control over. Battles will always be more common with wargamers than with leaders who had their own lives and fortunes at stake, but you understand why they were to be avoided.

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Aug03

One Holy City, Slightly Used….

by Rindis 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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Jun23

Happy Birthday to Me….

by Rindis on June 23, 2008 at 8:52 am
Posted In: Boardgaming, Life

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).

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Jun02

The Third First Crusade

by Rindis on June 2, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming, Life

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.

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Jul22

Onward to… space?!

by Rindis on July 22, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Posted In: SFB

Well, finally got Patch and Mark over and we finished off our game of Onward Christian Soldiers today.

It… did not go so well for me. My position at the end of the previous session (too long ago), was not bad, but the Crusaders, seeing the end of the game looming (we only had three turns left to go) assaulted a few cities and took them.

I figured out a little while later that I’d been misunderstanding the assault rules all this time. (Gets a little complicated….) And at least some of them should have held out, but it was way to late to fix it by the time I figured it out.

In the mean time, I was trying much the same thing in the north, to retake a few early cities while the Crusaders congregated around Jerusalem. But my rolls were pitifully poor, and I couldn’t make any headway. Out of three cities I attempted to (re)take, I only got close on one, and even there my army was melting away alarmingly fast. Seems to be Kerbogha’s lot in life….

I also attempted to cause some sort of loss to the Crusading forces with the garrison in Jerusalem before the city fell and automatically eliminated them. That was a disaster. I lost the entire army in the fight, and didn’t even hurt the Crusaders.

In the end, my VP (an average of all the factions you controlled) was 2. Mark got 12.5 and Patch won at 14.5. Not the results we expected a couple months ago.

That went fast enough for a late lunch, and another game. We did a small SFB squadron battle, basically a step up from the FF battle we did a while back.

Y152

Mark Patch Rindis
Federation Klingon Gorn
CL 98 F5C 89 CL 92
FF 71 F5 71 DD 68
FF 71 F5 71 DD 68
Total: 240 231 228

The force totals were actually designed around the Klingon squadron, as that’s a very typical deployment for them, and I wanted Patch to have a chance to see what the basic tactical unit of the Klingons really is.

I took the Gorns to be different and because the Hydrans don’t have a good way to put a force in this BPV range, and the only way I could get a Kzinti force to work was with two CLs, which I wasn’t keen on. I contemplated a Lyran force, but wasn’t set up for it.

We put a black hole in the center, like in the FF battle, and as they tend to do, it dominated the thinking.

I initially swung around wide, looking for a good opportunity. With three turn arming weapons, and two other sides, I wanted to be cautious. Mark and Patch tangled first, and Mark managed to just knock down a shield on an F5, but got no internals, in return for much the same.

As he swung closer to the black hole, he ended up in front of me as I went screaming by it myself. I fired a couple Gs at him to convince him to turn off, but no such luck and we did a range 0(!) pass. He had empty tubes, I wanted to hold the rest of my torpedoes for the Klingons. However, one torp hit a FF for 15, phasers really hurt it, and I got through the shields and armor of the CL for a little damage.

After that, the Patch did a nice sharp turn at speed 12 (that should have warned me) and got an overloaded disruptor volley into my rear shields at good disruptor range. Didn’t do too much, but it still hurt.

We had to call it about there for time, and since it was just to have fun with, we won’t be continuing, which is a pity, because it was going to be real interesting to see if I could turn around enough to put the main guns to bear on the Klingons. I’d already put one of the CL’s torps into arc, but I needed a turn and a bit more arc for the DDs plasmas to be able to tell again. Against Klingons, that’s a tough order, and I’m happy I got the left arc on him.

Going purely off of internals done, the game goes to me, but the next turn would have been really tricky. How to sacrifice a shield or two and sucker Patch in for a real Gorn overrun (no holding back on that one…).

Anyway, next month we’re planning on playing Selected Attack from C1. I get to play the Hydrans taking on a Klingon base station!

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May26

Onward to Jerusalem!

by Rindis 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.

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Apr08

Onward to May!

by Rindis on April 8, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had Patch and Mark over yesterday for another round of Onward Christian Soldiers. We definitely have a much better handle on the rules now. Got about as far through this time as last, but yesterday was a short day, since Mark had another engagement that called him away, we were really going much faster. Things are definitely looking interesting enough that we’ve written down where we are and will be continuing the same game next time.

For this game, I took the Muslims, while Patch and Mark split the Crusader factions. Their general plan was to march south with the North and South Franks, while the Germans and Normans stay behind to clean up the North. I’ve been benefiting from having a better understanding of how troop assignment works to gather my armies into forces that stand some sort of chance against a crusader army. Sadly, even my best leaders just aren’t very good, and most of them don’t have a chance against the better Crusader leaders.

An interesting dynamic of the First Crusade game, is that the Muslim leaders are generally cheap to activate, which means they get lots of activations in a compared to the Crusaders. On the other hand, they generally can’t do as much during an activation, and there’s only three leaders who can even possibly get a good formation in battle, which is about as bad against the incompetent Crusader leaders as against the good ones.

I have been abusing some good die rolls, and gotten myself into trouble. The North Franks sent Robert of Normandy down the coast past Tripoli, presumably to seize a base to take Jerusalem from (which is the only thing in the south that’s truly defended). I managed to surround him with a couple armies and cause some losses. Then, Adhemar (of the South Franks) trapped Duqaq (my better leader, who had moved against Robert from the north) between him and Robert. It’s going to be… interesting to see if I can get myself out of that. But while the size of my army is dwindling, I haven’t suffered any outright defeats(!), which is keeping me from having too big a disaster (yet).

Meanwhile, Both Antioch and Aleppo are under siege. Aleppo is a bit more worrisome, as one of my better leaders is trapped in there. Kerbogha, my best leader is set to arrive this turn with a large army. There’s a lot I’d like him to do…. Namely rescue Ridwan in Aleppo, break the siege of Antioch, and rescue Duqaq from the armies surrounding him, but he’ll probably only have a shot at one of them.

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