Gaming Highlights - January 2014

I’m not sure where January went, I’m pretty sure I was present for most of it but I’m not sure how it disappeared so quickly. Anyway, I did mean to post again, so I thought a quick wrap-up of my gaming highlights for January were in a good idea.

So in no particular order my favourite bits of gaming were….

Risk Legacy - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/105134/risk-legacy

This one continues to just be a huge amount of fun for the five of us who invested in the game. We’ve managed to avoid any spoilers, and have slowly opened the various packs as required, and the whole thing has been huge buckets of dicey, warmongering silliness. I’m still uncertain as to how much replayability there will be now we’ve pretty much unlocked all the secrets, but even if we only play the fifteen games on the board I would be more than happy with what it has cost us.

Can’t say too much more about it without spoiling it, it’s Risk, it definitely rewards aggressive play, the dice hate me, grrrr bears.

Spyrium - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/137269/spyrium

Have been wanting to try this one for ages, and thanks to our friendly local game pimp we had the chance to try this one out recently.

 It has a lot of the things I like in games…worker placement, trying to read other players, being able to mess with other players plans, ways to build little scoring engines. The theme is a bit pointless, though I do like the art and the shiny gems. The placing workers between cards is genius, leading to a lot of thought over where to place and what possible options are available if you don’t get the card you want. There are a lot of tactical placement options if you keep an eye on what the other players are trying to achieve, which works pretty well with our group’s often aggressive yet friendly style of playing.

Overall, loved this one, just a huge amount of game in a small, cheap box.

Space Empires 4X - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/84419/space-empires-4x

Had the opportunity for a two player game when a gaming night fell apart so Karl and I got this one onto the table for a second time after our first learning game. I think Karl has pretty much come around to the idea of pushing small counters around so we’ll definitely be getting some more wargames on the table, but at the moment this one strikes a good balance of complex gameplay without too much rules overhead. The rules came back to us surprisingly quickly and at its heart it really is quite a simple system, with the only real fiddly part being the paperwork required to track income and technology.

It plays very much like your traditional 4X game, you spend the first few turns exploring and building your economy, a few more building bigger ships and things and then it’s all out war whilst trying to do all the other things at the same time. It’s yet another game that really rewards aggressive play and says so much in the rules…though I’m sensing a theme here with my friends. The paperwork really isn't too bad, but it does slow things down a little and that combined with the hidden units makes for quite a long playing time as it’s easy to lose track of exactly what ships you have where. The combat is simple and effective, with a variety of options to use technology and terrain to your advantage, you can sway the battles but there is room for crazy die rolls to make heroes of tiny little ships.

We've still only scratched the surface of this one, still haven’t moved beyond the basic rules, but it’s clear that it’s a game that requires a long session to make it work so it probably won’t hit the table all that often. Still I’d like to get some of the other rules in place, and possibly get a third or forth player involved for a really huge game.

There were a few more but I’ll stick with those three as highlights for me…now on to February and some more gaming, and hopefully some more posting.

Kickstarter - Ares Magazine

Got to give a very quick pimp for the new Ares Magazine Kickstarter. There's nothing much like this being published any more, outside of the historical wargaming magazines which come with a game like Strategy & Tactics. If they can make it work in that niche market, I think there may be a way to make it work for science fiction, though I imagine it'll be the game that sells the magazine rather than the short fiction.

I'm still a huge fan of short fiction magazines, buy some of the few that are still published and I collect some of the old ones when I find them. I know I'm in the minority though, so many of the short fiction magazines have gone out of business and the remaining ones don't have enormous subscription numbers from what I have read.

I  hope it succeeds because I'd like to see lots of issues.

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone has had a fun and game filled 2013, I've played a load of interesting stuff and I'm looking forward to lots more gaming in the year to come.

Sadly the blog didn't quite recover from it's quiet period earlier in the year, but it's a New Year and I have some new enthusiasm so I'm going to try and make an effort to start updating the poor thing again. I've no idea what yet, probably some more solo gaming stuff, hopefully some more gaming from the group, might have to open it out into some more computer/video gaming as that has been eating into my time again.

Whatever it is, it'll be something. :)

On the Table - Viceroys

We've a little desk area upstairs that was ostensibly built to allow my wife to work from home, which just happens to be a nice size to set up the odd wargame and leave it out for a few days. I didn't plan it...honest. Anyway, the aforementioned wife is away on a business trip which affords me a little time and space to set something up, and that something happens to be Viceroys from Task Force Games.

Sadly my wife being away also seems to coincide with our youngest daughter deciding that sleep is an optional hinderance, and this leaves me with the slightly annoying problem of having the time and space to play something complicated whilst having the mental capacity of a cabbage. Still, I keep trying and occasionally it works out, sadly it's a little slow going this time round but I've been enjoying trying to figure the thing out.

Viceroys is a game of exploration and colonization, set in the age of exploration. It's pretty much 15th century 4X, you explore, make discoveries, colonize, produce wealth from those colonies, buy new units, fight natives, other players and pirates. It's all played out on an old school map, complete with the inaccuracies of the time which adds to the theme, though it is a little confusing to play on.

Luckily it comes with rules for non player characters so it's playable solitaire, as I'm not entirely sure it'll make it to the table with the group. It's old for one thing, 1986 though it feels like an old game, the pieces are old school cardboard counters with bad/non existent art, the cards are the old style thin stuff that came in sheets, it's got a ton of die roll modifiers to keep track of, it's looooonnng or at least I can see it taking a long time. The whole thing feels a little clunky in the way some of these old designs do.

There is a lot to like though, there's a lot of scope for interesting play, the diplomacy idea in particular sounds like it could be fun with people being able to make verbal or signed written treaties. Verbal treaties are just that and can be broken easily, but if you sign a written treaty then you lose victory points if you decide to break it. Each player takes on various "offices" to help run the actual game, and these offices bestow small benefits like extra income. There's land and naval combat, plus a system for war in Europe. There are lots of additional rules and intricacies, which make the whole thing seem more like a moddable system, though this is partly it's problem, especially with the particularly meandering rulebook which splits the rules up for no apparent reason into completely different sections.

Well, I've not got far. I may leave it set up a little longer.

You have to love a game which has the line "For the purposes of the game, the world is round" as one of the rules though. :)

Yo Ho Ho.....

Just had to write a quick post to point people towards the latest release from Two Hour Wargames. They produce some really interesting rules for tabletop wargames which have a lot of flavour, with great roleplaying and campaign elements. I've a few of their books as PDFs and have messed around little but it's their latest I am most interested in.

"And a Bottle of Rum" is their new product focussing on pirates, and our group really does enjoy a little over the top pirate gaming. I grabbed a copy as they had a sale over the weekend, and I might try it out if I can get over the current bout of sleep deprivation. One of the great things about their rules is that they can be played competitively, cooperatively or even solo, which makes getting them on the table and testing them out a little easier. The campaign and character creation usually has a lot of tables to roll on, and there are reaction tables for almost everything which determines how non player characters react to your actions.

Just need some miniatures...though I might just makes some card ones for now.

Anyway, some info from their website:

“FIFTEEN MEN ON THE DEAD MAN’S CHEST - -“
Everyone likes Pirates…okay, maybe not everyone but, if you’re reading this, I bet you do! So how do you like your Pirates? What? Let me explain.

YOUR PIRATES, YOUR WAY!
Some like their Pirates from history, you know, Blackbeard, the Spanish Main and such. But some like their Pirates a little more open-ended. More “what if” history, where the game is grounded in the period, but the player is open to do what he wants. Write your own story, if you will.
In “And a Bottle of Rum” we do both. We start you off learning the mechanics of the game. Build your crew, get your first ship, etc. We give you all the game mechanics you’ll need for you table top adventures. Not strictly a miniatures game but not a traditional Role-Playing Game either. We like to call it an Immersion Game where you take the role of a Pirate Captain and fight and flee as needed to gain Fame and Fortune.
Inside you'll find...
Rules for small land Encounters from Carousing to Smuggling.
Rules for Big Land Battles for sacking cities.
Rules for ship to ship combat with boarding actions.
Rules for Big Sea Battles with multiple ships per player.
To cap it off, in “And a Bottle of Rum.” We give you two Campaign areas. The first is the Spanish Main, the New World around 1660; the Golden Age of Piracy, if you will. That’s the historical part with the places and people of the time period.
The second is the “what if” historical version. Instead of the Spanish Main you’re plying your trade off the coast of Lemuria, seeking the charms and treasures of Mermaids then carousing in the Trade Ports of … but I digress.
What we’re saying is you can Pirates your way. Torn from the pages of history or from your imagination, it’s up to you! So grab a beverage of choice and prepare for nights of high adventure as you write your story. Listen! Hear the song? Sing along matey, you know the words.

You can also find some more information at their blog, with some examples of play.

They clearly haven't tried learning Magic Realm...

Solo Gaming Review - Aether Captains (Print & Play)

Bit quiet round these parts isn't it? Thought I'd liven things up with a quick look at a solitaire game I've just tried out. This one brings another aspect of the hobby into focus though, and that is print & play games. Oddly it was a print & play game that kind of led me back to boardgames by pointing me in the direction of Boardgamegeek, that game was Zombie in my Pocket, and for a free game it certainly has cost me a lot of money.

Anyway, print & play games are, if you are unable to make the logical leap, games you can print out and play. They are quite often free, though some are available to buy, and there are also many, many solo games, in part because of the solo print and play design contest that runs on boardgamegeek. Some of them are as simple as a single sheet of paper, others require days of spray glueing  and cutting out strangely shaped pieces of card. I'm not sure why it appeals to me, part of it is the craft which I find relaxing, part of it is the 'free' games, and the instant availability...though they are generally neither free or instant due to the time and components.

I could waffle on all day, but I should really get to the game in question. This one if Aether Captains, the first in a series of games designed by the prolific Todd Sanders on Boardgamegeek. Todd seems to create, or redesign a new game every few weeks, or at least it seems like that, and he has a really nice touch when it comes to artwork. Seriously check his stuff out, the Barbarian Prince redesign is outstanding, I have a mostly finished copy to try soon.

So the description reads:

"As commander of the the HMS Dauntless, you have been tasked by the Emperor to find and destroy merciless air pirates threatening the skies of the world. With your staunch crew of steam welders, engineers you fly with honor into battle"
Aether Captains is a solo, steampunk themed, dice game. You take on the role of a commander of a worthy, air-going, zeppelin, battling a wave of attacking air pirates.

Mmmmmm steampunky..... It really was the theme that got me, plus the components are cool.

The game uses 1" wooden cubes for the pieces, depicting the various craft and the damage inflicted on them, some also being rolled as dice though a D12 is required for most even resolution.

Above is the initial setup, with my airship vertical down the middle, plus the various attackers laying in to different sections. The enemy cubes are rolled to determine some random enemy craft, which are then placed randomly using the D12, so you should get a nice range of starting points.

After this the game follows a simple set of five phases which are repeated until either all the enemies are destroyed, or four of your airship sections are showing maximum damage. The damage to your ship sections is shown by rotating the cubes, which affects the target values you need to roll for attack and defense, and can also reduce the range of guns if they are available on that section.

All resolution using the D12 is simply rolling over a target value, so rolling greater than the red value on one of your airship sections is a successful attack, and rolling greater than one of the blue values is a successful defense. The same goes for the enemy attack rolls, plus some other rolls for moving the airship, or repairing sections that are damaged.

The phases are:

1. Air Pirate attack and your defense - each enemy gets a chance to attack the section it is adjacent to, and you get to defend, any damage is recorded by rotating the cubes.
2. Air Pirate movement - the D12 is used to randomly move the enemies, they will either move one space clockwise or anticlockwise, or remain where they are.
3. Your movement or attack - this is where you can fight back, some of the cubes have gun emplacements, with a range displayed in black squares. Each gun can fire once at an enemy that is in range, on the same side of the airship as the gun. If you choose not to attack, you can shift the airship one space backwards or forwards, as long as you don't leave an enemy behind in doing so, this helps bring guns into range and move damaged sections away from attack.
4. Your repairs - you can attempt to repair a section by rolling greater than the current repair number.
5. Crew re-roll - the next picture shows the game further along, and includes the crew die which is rolled at the end of each round of phases. Depending on the crew result, you gain various bonuses or dice modifiers which can be used in the next round. 

Rinse and repeat, and you are done. It plays pretty quickly, and there aren't a huge number of decisions to be made, and Todd has stated that it's one of the first real designs he uploaded, and he considers it a bit rough around the edges. It's a pleasant enough distraction though, and I like it enough to try out some of the expansions which have been created by both the designer, and fans of the game. 

Don't bother if you want a game of deep strategy, but if the theme appeals, and you just want to chuck some dice around for ten minutes it's not a bad option. I did have the wooden cubes handy though, so it wasn't much effort on my part to build.