The Phantom. Menace?

A friend and I both have a TIE Phantom in our collections, but both of us have held back from playing it. I think that there has been some concern about flying against it, but also about flying with it. It's one of the ships that has had a lot of X-Wing gamers talking about it, some saying that it's over powerful while others say that it's nothing to worry about if you know how you fly against it. The conclusion seems to be that it changes the game, for better of for worse is a point of debate.

The "big deal" with the TIE Phantom is that it can cloak, and when it's cloaked it has the highest agility of any ship in the game. That is coupled with also having the highest attack score in the game, so it is hard to hit yet hits very hard. Throw into the mix that when it uncloaks it also takes, what amounts to, an additional move action on top of its normal move and you've got something interesting. With a high pilot skill it will also be taking that additional move after many other ships have taken theirs, so it should be able to put itself somewhere where it can shoot but not be shot at. However when its uncloaked it agility drops down to beneath that of a normal TIE fighter and it's not able to take a lot of damage.

So it throws a few different things into the bucket. And last night we played it for the first time...

The Imperial Squad

• A TIE Phantom that has the ability to move in curves when it decloaks and not just straight lines, so it can dance all over the table. It was also loaded up with extras that let it recloak immediately after it fired and a few other bonuses. It took up about 40% of the points for the squad.
• 5 basic TIE Fighters

The Rebel Squad We had discussed the game and I knew that a Phantom was going to be tried out, so I built something that had what I hoped would be an anti-Phantom capability while also being able to hold its on in "normal" games...

• Wedge. He has a very high pilot skill so should, in theory, be able to fire at a Phantom in between the brief time when it uncloaks in the movement phase and recloaks in its attack phase. He was also loaded up with an R2 unit that could cause stress, which denies actions, and an engine upgrade so he too could take an extra move after seeing where other ships were going to be.
• A Y-Wing with an Ion turrent, 360 degree fire, all the better for taking down Phantoms... Plus I love the Y-Wing anyway.
• An X-Wing
• A Z-95

In effect I was taking two ships that I thought could deal with a Phantom, the Y-Wing and Wedge.

The game
The TIE Fighters stuck together in a swarm of five. The Phantom initially started to come down one side of the board. But when I turned my fighters into the asteroids in the middle of the table the Imperial Player changed his mind. He pulled the Phantom back up and looped it behind his swarm and down the left side of the table. It was kept cloaked pretty much all the time as the player wasn't sure that he could get it into the right position and didn't want to risk it being in the wrong one.

So it actually didn't do very much for quite a while. In the mean time it was a 100pt rebel list against a 60pt Imperial swarm. The obvious happened, the swarm took a beating. It managed to take out the X-Wing and the Z-95, but they were the secondary elements of my squadron. Wedge and the Y-Wing were my real star players and made it through.

And then the Phantom makes its appearance when the swarm is down to two ships. And, again, it doesn't do very much. It does blow the Y-Wing away but Wedge is still intact, and he's awesome. The Phantom was kept in close and uncloaked, Wedge took it down leaving him against one damaged TIE Fighter.

Game over, the Rebels win.

The lessons
It's hard to draw any real final conclusions on the Phantom from just one game, but there are some things that could be taken away.

• The Phantom is far from unbeatable, in a straight up fight when de-cloaked its low agility and low(ish) hull and shields mean that it can die reasonably easily.
• Don't be distracted by a Phantom, you don't want to go chasing after it leaving its back up to tear you to pieces.
• The Phantom isn't that powerful.
• The Phantom, with the pilot who de-cloaks with curved not straight moves, is very hard to fly well. You have to be able to predict with reasonable precision where its targets are going to end up and where its moves will therefore end it. Those things are far from easy. Yes a fantastic player will, I think, be able to use a Phantom to utterly devastate your squadron. But, to be fair, they'll be at such a skill level that they could probably do it with nothing but Y-Wings.
• You have to risk your Phantom, yes it's a lot of your points but if your opponent isn't going to get distracted and chase after it then it needs to be in the fight backing up the swarm.
• I don't think you want to get into a "normal" dog fight with a Phantom like you would any other ship. For the points it costs it can't take the damage it will receive. Your paying points for this ship that can dart all over the able, so it should be darting all over the table. In the end game I was suggesting that the Imperial player should accept that his TIE was doomed, get the hell out of there and not fight again until he was Wedge blind sided.
• Wedge seems quite capable of dealing with a Phantom once he had those upgrades. With his engine he can take an extra move to get the Phantom in his firing arc and with his droid he can cause stress to the Phantom which will stop it cloaking after shooting, then everyone else can take a shot at the thing as well.
• The Y-Wing doesn't do an awful lot of damage. It's Ion turret might be 360 degrees but it will only do one damage. It's slow and hard to manoeuvre so it's hard to get shots off with its main guns that would do more damage.

Marvel Dice Masters - First Encounter

The other night I had the chance to play a couple of games of Marvel Dice Masters. It was described to me as Dominion with Dice, now I don't know Dominion but I have played a couple of games of Trains, and I can kind of see what my friend was getting at.

This post isn't really a review, I don't think that I got deep enough it to do that fairly, but more my initial thoughts on the game and how I saw it working, and they may not be entirely accurate...

The game is a dice building game, you start off with a pool of fairly limited dice and then you buy other dice to add to your pool. It seems to take several dice to buy another die, and the die you buy will typically be more powerful than than those that were used to buy it. The die that you have bought and the dice you used to buy it will all eventually end up in the pool you can draw from. Therefore as the game progress you ramp up in terms of the quantity and power of your dice pool.

In a bit more detail you actually have several pools of dice and the dice flow between them as you perform various actions. You have a bag full of dice to draw from, a pool of used dice (that will be used to refill the bag when it is empty), a pool of dice representing "knocked out" characters (a "prep area" is what the game calls it, so it might have uses other than I saw), a pool of dice representing characters you have fielded and a pool of dice that you have just rolled (the "reserve").

You start the game with a number of characters on your team (two in the case of our starting game) and each of those will have a number of dice that you can buy that represent them (I think that they come with two dice each). There are also some cards in the middle for generic upgrades that either player can buy.

Each turn you draw four dice from your draw pool add any that were in the "knocked out" (prep) pool and roll them into your "reserve". The dice have lots of different symbols on them that do different things. The uses that I can recall are:

• If it represents a character then you can pay energy to bring them into play (move them into your "fielded" pool).
• Provide energy that you can spend to buy new dice or field a character. There are a number of different energy types and also wildcards. To buy a die you need to have at least one die that provides the energy type that they require and the numbers must add up to the number printed on the card/die.
• Provide an effect that boosts attacks.

Once you've used the dice that you have rolled you can then attack your opponent, you push forward some or all of the dice from your play area and your opponent can then react by assigning characters from their own play area to fight back. Your characters have damage and defence statistics and both attacker and defenders will attempt to damage each other. The outcomes seem to be:

• If an attacker takes more damage than their defence they are moved to the pool.
• If an attacker takes less damage than their defence they are moved back to the "play" area.
• If an attacker does not have a blocker than their damage is applied to the opponent, you have a certain number of "hit points" and loose the game when you take them all.

There are a few implications to this...

• Having a knocked out attacker or defender isn't necessarily a bad thing, they go into your "knocked out" pool and you'll add them to your roll in the next round. So you can roll a load of dice, which you can use to buy loads of things.
• You don't seem to ever actually loose a character, their die will be somewhere in your pool, your pool is only ever going to get bigger
• If a blocker is assigned to an attacker then none of the damage will get through to the opponent. So if you have one low level mook defending against a low level mook and the Incredible Hulk then you're better off blocking the Hulk. The Hulk would do far more damage to you than the mook will if he's not given a blocker.

The second game...

This photo shows my situation just before the game ended (the matt isn't included in the starter set, but it seems very helpful). What you can see:

• I chose Thor and Iron Man as my two characters for the game. They come with two dice, I've managed to buy one of each.
• I've managed to get a Thor and an Iron Man die into my field zone.
• I've rolled more than four dice, the previous turn I had some low level mooks that I used to block some attacks. They got knocked out to my "Prep Area" and I therefore rerolled them alongside the four I drew from my dice bag.

My next step is to attack, I attack with both Thor and Iron Man (this itself is free) the two characters from my "Field Zone". My opponent had just a Hulk to oppose them... But characters have special abilities, and Thor's is that characters of Hulk's type (bashing?) can't block his attacks. So my opponent couldn't block Thor's attack, and Thor's attack was big (characters can have levels, I'd rolled the highest level Thor and paid a lot to have him ready to use). Therefore all of Thor's attack was applied to my opponents hit points and he was knocked out of the game.

Conclusions...

• We played the games in about half an hour or so each, which included me learning it from scratch and some rules look ups. I think that "proper" games involve more characters and more hit points per side so might take longer
• It seemed pretty abstract at the time, but typing this up has helped me think about it and it does all make a kind of sense.
• Things escalate quite quickly, one you buy more dice you can then buy even more next time around.
• Timing your attacks is crucial. If my opponent had even one low level mook available then none of Thor's attack would have made it through to his hit points.

So, would I play it again? Yes I would. It does seem quite fiddly but once you've played through it and are able to just follow each step while also having a bit of knowledge about what you need to do for the future then it clicks together.

I'd really recommend the play mat though, not only does it look quite nice but it also really helps to understand how the game flows.

Space Hulk Game Report

A couple of weeks ago there were only two of us available for a Thursday night game, Karl and I. An evening of Space Hulk was offered...

I hope I'm not alone in admitting that I've been grumpy with Games Workshop for more than half of my life (please, come on, it's not just me, right?) ¹.  However they played a pretty big part in the start of my adventures into gaming.  I was at the Games Day where they launched WH40k back in 1987 (30 Space Marines for a tenner!  Go Beaky Marines!).  More pertinently I was at the 1989 Games Day where they launched Space Hulk,  a few demo games and I was hooked ²...

Over the next couple of years I played a lot of Space Hulk, it was enjoyable and tense.  I added the Death Watch and Genestealer sets to my collections and also the missions and extra bits from White Dwarf.

But then my grumpiness with Games Workshop increased and off I went to Uni, and that was the last of my encounters with Space Hulk.

Until last Thursday...

Game One

I took on the Genestealers and Karl had the Terminators.  It was a simple mission where he had to get through the Hulk and reach a target room with a Marine carrying a flamer.  It all came flooding back...  I tried to get at his Marines through the entry points near his start position but he had it too well guarded.  So I hung back near his target room and began to flood ("flood" might be an overstatement with only two reinforcement blips a turn) the area.  A Marine raced forward and blocked my access to two entry points, but he was breaking his Marines apart.  So I raced up the gap and just as he was about to reach his target a Genestealer leapt on the back of the flamer Marine and tore him apart.

Victory to the Genestealers, but it was close.

Game Two

A simpler proposition, Karl had to kill 30 Genestealers before I killed his entire squad.  I only had two reinforcement blips a turn but I had all the time in the world.

Karl broke his Marines into two main groups, one holding the left of the board and one the right.

I saw two options.

1) Attack the left and the right together, this would make Karl split his Command Points between a number of Marines.

2) The Marines on the left were in a good position, the Genestealers could only get at them via long corridors which provided plenty of opportunities for them to be mown down.  If I could crack the right hand side then the Marines remaining on the left hand side wouldn't be numerous enough to cover all the access routes, I could then get at them, and eat them, or something.

I went for option 2.

Things started well, a quick moving Genestealer managed to bag one Marine from the right hand side very early on, this was tremendously helpful.  I built up my forces and went for it...  Awesome rolling from the Space Marines cost me a lot of Genestealers but the right side collapsed...

On to the left...

More awesome rolling followed but, as hoped for, they couldn't cover all the access routes.  Queue more awesome rolling as the Marines retreated.

Then there was just one Marine and one Genestealer left, the alien (well Tyranid as I believe GW later retconned it) reached the Marine with two attacks left.  The Marine drew the fight!  One slow Space Marine vs. a sprinting intergalactic death octopus and the fleshy man thing drew!  Blimey!  I had one last attack before it would be the Marine's go, he would back away and blow the Genestealer into tiny chitinous pieces.  I rolled, I won!

Victory to the Genestealers!

Conclusions

Both games were very close, the last one incredibly so.  It always felt possible for either side to win even though, from my recollections, the Marine's had a generally harder time of it.  I'd be very happy to continue going through a few more missions of this.

Footnote

The next day I had an email from Games Workshop saying that Space Hulk was being re-released.  I looked online and it was available, I dithered about (£75 is a lot for game and, as said above, I'm grumpy with Games Workshop) but after a bit of wifey persuation I decided to go for it.  On Saturday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the games release, I went online but it had sold out.

*** Shakes first at Games Workshop ***

But, on the positive side, I now had another reason to be grump with them :)

---

[1] The grumpiness began almost immediately after my introduction to Games Workshop.  Back in the day White Dwarf covered games from other companies, they would review them and publish material for them.  That declined and then stopped from about issue 90 or so, they turned into an in house magazine that only dealt with Games Workshop products.  I also seem to remember Games Workshop stores selling products from other companies, I'm sure that my copy of Twilight 2000 came from the Beckenham store the day that it opened (my copy of Blood Bowl certainly did).

[2] I remember clutching the box on the coach back to London and feeling very excited about it, my friend was telling me how similar to the movie Aliens that it looked, but being a good boy who had a VCR under strict parental control I hadn't experienced the joys of that film.  My friend got a free set of some Games Workshop card game for some reason, but I had Space Hulk, I was winning!

X-Wing Match Report

Rebel Mini Swarm vs. two big Imperial Ships

I've become quite keen on Fantasy Flight Games' X-Wing Game . A friend and I are gradually expanding the ships that we've tried out and this was the first to feature the TIE Defender. The Defender is the peak of Imperial Design philosophy, which appears to be "let's take the TIE Fighter and stick a few more wings on it". So was it any good? Well in a way we did find out, in a way we didn't...

The Rebel Forces
I've got a theory that the Rebels should work with each other, so I went for a Y-Wing that can pass on Target Locks ("Dutch" Vander) and an X-Wing that could pass on Focus tokens (Garven Dreis). I then bulked those ships out with an extra Rookie X-Wing and two vanilla Z-95s.

The Imperials
Just two ships, a Firespray and a Defender. But both were tricked out with a lot of expansions and with good, but expensive, pilots.

The Game
The forces lined up for their initial "joust", I had the Rebels while my friend had the Imperials. Both of his ships were piloted by better pilots than mine (and flown by a better player than me) so I had to place first. I placed my ships in the middle, he split his apart. I've fought the Firespray before and knew that it was a tough nut to crack. So I decided to focus on the Defender, I thought it was the slightly weaker link, all of my ships then went straight for it.

The result? One dead Defender... It did get to shoot first and did a lot of damage to Garven, my best X-Wing pilot, but it was hammered by the attacks from five ships who benefitted from the target lock passing. They should have benefited from the focus passing too, but I blew that part. It was enough, the Defender went down. This left the Firespray zooming in on my side with my ships facing the opposite direction, and my ships aren't very good at turning, so I lumber around.

The Firespray is packing a heavy laser cannon, it does a lot of damage and I loose Garven but I'm turning around... I chase the Firespray up the table...

Then I remember that the thing has a rear firing arc and one of my Z-95s gets a pummelling at point blank range from the thing. But the Firespray is running out of room... The Y-Wing has already landed one ion token on it, one more and it's ionised and might fly off the table...

I manage to ionise the ship once more but it doesn't quite fly off the table, it recovers in time to take a hard turn. The ionisation and the hard turn he has to do keeps him slow. This means that I can pick my range and stay out of that rear arc, I pour on the damage and it goes down.

A Rebel victory!

Conclusions

• A Rebel mini-swarm can hit quite hard, you're rolling a lot of dice in your attacks.
• The Defender is great at turning around, it can do a 180 without taking any stress, which had it survived the first pass would have been a great ability.
• The Defender is still relatively fragile (well compared to the Firespray), and up against 5 rebel ships it will have a tough time. It's questionable whether loading it up with so many points worth of upgrades was a good decision. A few more cheaper Defenders might have been a better bet.
• The Defender was unlucky to take so much damage in that first joust, it rolled appallingly on its evades. I still think that the Rebels would have taken it out not much after the point when it died. But this does highlight that when you have a smaller number of ships the extremes of bad luck will hurt you more than when you've got a greater number of ships to help spread it out between.

We're not dead... ok, ok I died but it was just a game!

Ok, it has been a while… but the Finely Diced Gamers are still here and attempting to get a few additional blogs written. As primarily a games group, it’s been pretty great to see a few new faces join our gaming evenings, perhaps we’ll see a few new writers and articles presented for reading on here too.

As well as being pretty open to new gamers, we’re also pretty open to all types of board games, war games, digital games and even the occasional miniatures game. I’ll be honest I’ve had a huge push to miniature game again and I’m using the momentum to paint some of my old 40K miniatures. The reason for this re-interest in modelling is because, well I recently turned 40 and as a present from my fabulous wife (Becca), I’ve been provided with a permanent space where I can model, paint and even play (solitaire) games if I so choose…

Now, primarily the miniatures that I’ve collected have been Games Workshop (a long time ago), and as such are pretty much all Out of Production (OOP) now. In fact, further back on the blog you can find an after action report (AAR) from when a few of us played Necromunda – my Van Saars are still unpainted but the plan is to get them ready for action and possibly get a rematch against Matt’s house Cawdor and Rebecca’s house Goliath gang.

However, I no longer feel obliged to purchase and collect GW, perhaps it’s the prices or perhaps I just want to try something else. Regardless, I now have two modelling projects that I’ve undertaken and neither of them are GW, but they look super cool and I’ve actually started painting some of them. Allow me to explain.

So… literally just arrived, opened but yet to be readied for use is Super Dungeon Explore (SDE).

SDE is a dungeon crawler inspired by old Japanese console RPGs. The 52 included miniatures are done in a cute / chibi / super-deformed style, which means the head is roughly the same size as the rest of the body. I’ve had my eye on these miniatures (and specifically this game) for a while – they just look super detailed and the game being a dungeon crawl sounds pretty good too. I shall not go into too much detail since my plan is to update with a blog following my attempts to get this game modelled, painted and brought out to the table – watch this space.

Now the other project is a fairly new war game called Dropzone Commander.

Now this is a joint project between Jay and myself. Both of us wanted to get into a miniatures war game system but wanted to actively avoid GW – a few systems looked interesting but this was ultimately the game that we both wanted to play. Part of the appeal is that the game comes as a starter set, which means that there’s enough in the box to get an idea of the game and then allow you to make a decision whether to indulge and buy more… sorry, increase the size of your chosen army, or not.

Jay has taken the part of the alien scourge (skimmers), whereas I have got the fabulous UCM (lots of tanks). Now this is also a work in progress since Jay has still to complete painting his arm. At the last look I’ve got about 50% of my starter army ready (all my tanks and APC’s are painted awaiting fine details) although my ground soldiers and drop-ships still need further prep work. I’ve not painted anything in a very long time but what I’ve done so far I’ve enjoyed – it’s certainly a challenge painting models that are at a 10mm scale. Once we get this to the table there will most certainly be another AAR.

Talking of getting Games to the Table, we have still been having the occasional game too. The most recent game played has been Tales of the Arabian Nights.

This game was played at our last evening of gaming, there were five of us playing. Simply put, each person decides what their own win condition is, which is done by choosing a score that can be split between story and destiny points – adding up to a total of 20. You then have to take your character around the map completing quests, scoring (story & destiny) points and ultimately experiencing a story as you would an old Steve Jackson “choose your own adventure” book. For those not old enough to remember, these books all started in a similar way, but as you read you would be asked to make decisions… decide to try and kill the monster, goto p75, slip past the monster, goto p99. 

This took the entirety of the evening with some very peculiar story’s being told, some of us got married, some were being pursued by ner’do wells and I died… no-one told me that death was even a possibility (fortunately my brother? Was able to take up my quest), unfortunately I didn’t win. A good game and it made for a very enjoyable evening… but you do need to play with individuals who don‘t mind making a fool of themselves or reading a lot (there’s a lot of reading).

Finally, The Resistance – I got given this for my birthday and managed to play this with 7 people soon after.

 
Everyone seemed to have a good time, although we all got called a spy at one point or another. Essentially this is a game spread over 5 missions, with a team selected from everyone playing by a team leader (which is continuously moving from one person to the next) being tasked to complete at least three of five missions successfully… but you don’t know who are the spies or if they have been selected for the mission –and it only takes one spy for a mission to fail.

As each mission completes, successfully or not, you start to deduce who the spies may be and those loyal to the Resistance (the spies know the other spies). To add further pressure – everybody gets to vote on who goes on each mission – it is possible to fail a mission if you’re not satisfied with the team leader or their team choice – just decide quickly whose going – five no votes and it becomes an automatic fail and the spies win the game.

Note to self – it’s not a good thing when everyone agrees with a team being sent on a mission, it typically means there is a spy on the mission.

Right, I’m off to take photos of the unboxing of Super Dungeon Explore for the next piece which will hopefully be up shortly.

Video Games Player... Geek, Boardgamer... Geeky, Wargamer...

So... Apparently I've entered a niche that even the broad spectrum of general boardgamers don't approach for fear of being labelled "too geeky"! In this niche we don't use card decks, we don't use meeple, we certainly don't use miniatures, although there is an awful lot of cardboard, sorry... counters, a whole load of counters - don't forget the hexagonal map grids either!

It all started at the last UK Games Expo in 2013 when I was invited to try a game on the Saturday night.  I'd had a couple of beers - a couple of whisky shots too, so when my good friend Jay told me that we were playing a "wargame" - Conflict of Heroes - well I was more than happy to try.  I'll be honest, I was a little taken aback by the jigsaw puzzle size box - where were the miniatures, the scenery, the hundreds of dice?

Jay got things going with the starting scenario and then we just kept going - from explaining the coding of the counters, attack values, defense values, facing, cover, hard cover.  We just kept going through scenarios, adding more complexity but with each level of complexity a greater respect for what the game provided... immersion! I've played it since and again, thoroughly enjoyed it, although we still haven't got to the tanks... yet!

Now Jay was happy that he had someone who was willing to play one of his beloved wargames, but he went on - iterating that there are so many different wargames out there, perhaps I'd consider trying another of the titles in his collection, something perhaps a little closer to my heart, something a little more futuristic.  I think, he says, I've got a game that would be perfect for you - I think you need to try Space Empires 4x!

So... I've played Space Empires three times now, the most recent was last weekend (yeah I realise this isn't date specific).  Now I like 4x games, I own Eclipse which is one of my most favorite games in my collection,  it's a very good 4x game but so is Space Empires (I can't deny I've hunted and found a copy on the dreaded eBay).  They're both very different beasts though, different enough that I'm happy to have both in my collection and I would be torn now in having to choose between them!

So back to the games we've played... Game One involved a small two player map with not much space between us - the intention being that it was a learning game and hopefully not too long - we didn't finish the game but that was a timing issue!

The second game was the same small map and same basic rules but we picked up the rules and the admin pretty quick again once we got going - this game had an end and a winner but we didn't play until the other was totally annihilated, just until the homeworld was taken.  Now normally, certainly with other boardgames, once you've got an opposing player on the rails you go in for the kill.  Apparently with a wargame if you've got your adversary against the wall it's actually acceptable to call the game, especially if it means you get a second game in the evening. We didn't get a second game but we knew the next game would allow us to use the full complement of rules.

The third game used a larger map, meaning more exploration and all the rules were available - this meant we had access not only to all ship types and technology but also warp gates and alien races - however the game has been designed so the additional rules are in fact modular so you can pick and choose to make the game more complicated, or less so...

As the game started Jay had access to a lot of minerals whereas I had explored and found a lot of my starting worlds, what this meant was that Jay was initially wealthy although I had more opportunity to make wealth in the long game.  What I chose to do however was to use merchant ships to link all my newly colonised worlds together which provided two benefits 1) for every connected world I got an additional CP & 2) as my merchant ship network expanded it meant any ship travelling along it got an additional move (very useful as I later found out).

For the first handful of turns both us simply explored and made plans, it later transpired that Jay's plan was to learn terraforming so that he could colonise barren worlds, it was a sound plan (and an expensive one) unfortunately after finding one barren world he lost pretty much the entirety of his scout fleet and then was unable to locate any more barren worlds; a slight hiccup.

My plan was to build some big ships so whilst I was colonising worlds and increasing the size of my MS pipeline, I was also researching the necessary technology to build my big, big ships. I had also researched a technology that would allow me to explore a little easier - it essentially meant i could look at what a system contained without revealing it and then move to a different hex and explore again; quite useful! Especially since I was able to locate a number of black holes and some equally dangerous hexes.

As the turns progressed the inevitable happened and we both met in mortal combat, admittedly I was the aggressor but on this occasion I wasn't the victor - my attacking fleet was all but destroyed.  This wasn't the first fleet I lost either, the second fleet I sent on the attack although liberating a barren world was then lost to mines - they didn't even get a shot off - this was both a costly affair and also such a waste.

To counter this new threat of mines my scientists developed mine sweeping technology, my third fleet  was supported with my newly designed minesweepers - this fleets's mission to finally take Jay's homeworld.  Here was the problem for Jay, because of my MS pipeline I was able to get all newly created fleets onto Jay's doorstep by the end of my movement phase - meaning that he was having to go on the defensive as opposed to taking the fight to me. It was a close fight but the minesweepers did their job, unfortunately one mine survived destroying my designed & created flagship Dreadnought - one of the largest ships that could be created in my shipyard.  Fortunately, the Battleships that survived the dreadnought's destruction rained down righteous fire on Jay's remaining ships and homeworld - nothing survived!

Jay's economy was understandably rocked but he was not down for the count,  Jay did however concede a victory to me (we were after midnight on the clock) since his homeworld was lost and it was unlikely to end well for him.  Jay wasn't defenseless though and he had in fact sent a fleet towards my MS pipeline.  His fleet may not have got too far since I had another fleet of Battleships lurking  two hexes away but he certainly could have slowed me down.

Our third game finished we both looked at the board and just talked about how things went - we both agreed, mines are nasty - they don't take hulls off, no they just take whole ships. A mine, if the other doesn't have minesweepers, takes out a ship that is in the hex with it - the mine owner gets to choose the target and it can take out a dreadnought just as easily as a scout.  With no shots fired and my first dreadnought removed from the board, it's very annoying, however I also had mines researched and built so they were fair kills - it could have so easily gone the other way.

The other thing we both agreed upon, we definitely want another game of Space Empires 4x soon, but our next game will now probably include additional rules from Close Encounters, the first expansion. SE4x:CE brings a lot of new rules in the form of ships even bigger than dreadnoughts, nebula mining and ground combat on colonised worlds to name but a few.  Space Empires is a fabulous game, allowing you to build an entire civilisation and then send it to war - it is most definitely a 4x game - explore, expand, exploit and exterminate - definitely exterminate ;-)

What can I say other than I believe I'm a wargamer convert... I quite like chits / counters!

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.

Necromunda - down and dirty gang warfare in the 41st Millenium

A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away?), before having children, before my wife and a long, long time before I became a Finely DiCED Gamer I used to like playing Warhammer 40K... Ok who am I trying to kid, I collected Warhammer 40K (and played sporadically) – Spacemarines, Imperial Guard & Squats – I'll admit it I wanted to be the first to host the best all-in-one army fielded by a Rogue Trader. I know the chances that Gene-seeded Space Marines would tolerate standing shoulder to shoulder with the ab-human Squats would be slim but this was going to be MY perfect army.

Time goes by and my vast collection (my wife's words) of Out Of Production (OOP) metal & plastic miniatures have been sold to allow me to buy PC's, a XBOX 360, and my latest passion - board games. However, before I sold everything I once cherished off, I made a decision as to where I would draw the line.  I decided to hold onto my 1st Ed. Copy of Space Hulk (inc. all expansions), Bloodbowl (3rd Ed.), my war-gangs for Mordheim and finally my hardback copy rule book for Necromunda – essentially my GW skirmish systems – systems where you don't need tonnes of figures to have a game (or a table the size of my current living room).

I eventually became a member of the Finely DiCED Gamers - from our inaugural meeting (and all those since) we have discussed the games that we all want to play. Some games are suggested for when we have a our full contingent of five, some get brought out because they're shiny and new and others because they're just damn fine games.  Well, last Sunday I got to play a damn fine game of Necromunda, the tabletop miniatures battle system which has elements of a role playing game.  You create your gang - it gains experience and hopefully becomes UBER.

But before uber you have to get in a fight and to get in a fight you need a gang - so to begin with we had to sit down with the miniatures we owned and create our new gangs on paper. When I say we - let me introduce Matt & Rebecca – you haven't met Matt or Rebecca yet but hopefully you'll read something from them shortly. Moving on - Matt, Rebecca and myself created our gangs – all three of us create gangs that include a gang leader (there can be only one), gangers (the back bone of any gang) and juves (cannon fodder) – we all had gangs containing roughly 10 miniatures with pretty much the same stats – just access to slightly different weapon sets.

Rebecca went with a house Goliath gang "The Takkers" with the highest gang rating of 1158, big brutish fellows who you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night - certainly not in the underhive.  Matt went with his house Cawdor "Kommissars" - having a gang rating of 927 (the lowest of the three of us), these guys had a distinct uniform look and paintjob - the look said "we mean business". I brought a Van Saar gang to the party - "Serene's Soldiers" with a middling gang rating of 1013, I had no heavy weapons in my crew but I did have access to some more specialised weaponry for both gangers and juves.

Gangs created, we decided that we would like to have all three of us play against each other, to that end we chose a mission where we had to collect an item for the guilders - get said item and get it off the board (the guilders giving the returnee 50 creds).  Getting the said item would mean all three gangs squaring off - looked like an easy opportunity for Serene's Soldiers - leave the others to duke it out.  The board was custom made by Matt & Rebecca as were all the scenics - even without being fully finished it just oozed coolness - have a look.

Board Ready, Gangs Ready, so who goes first?

Player setup was worked out using highest to lowest gang rating - order of play seemed to be Matt first, then Rebecca and finally me - we each had to choose a table edge and then place our gang members within 8 inch of said table edge - the unused table edge would become the exit route - where the guilders "item" would be carried from the board.

Once all three of us had placed our gangs a few loose ends were tied up - which obstacles could be jumped over and which would provide movement penalties.  If gang members entered a building it would take one turn (one complete movement allowance - MA) to exit onto the roof to snipe.  Finally, the guilders "item" would require a skill test to pick-up - on a roll of 5 or 6 it would be picked up otherwise another gang member would have to try (or wait til next turn) - equally if the gang member carrying the "item" were hit / knocked down then they would drop the "item".

Turn One :

First Matt rushed three of his gangers and the leader straight into the open heading towards the centre of the map where the guilder item was located - unfortunately he hadn't paid attention to the fact that Rebecca's heavy stubber (in a legitimate setup position) then had direct line of sight to at least one of these gang members.  Matt also had three gang members run around the board edge towards my position whilst at least two gang members entered a building to assume a sniping position.

Rebecca moved up as many of her gang as she could, some running (preventing shooting) whilst others simply took a basic MA so that they would be able to fire at the Kommissars making a direct line to the guilder "item".  After Movement Rebecca chose to shoot her heavy stubber which had the option of sustained fire - with some good rolls she managed to get 4 shots off - one missed, three hit - two gangers and the leader went down.  One ganger was killed, another was critically injured and could only crawl, the team leader realised he only had a flesh wound & got up.  Rebecca's remaining gang member's shooting didn't really do much!

I simply moved my gang towards the centre of the map - making use of as much cover as I could.  Realising that Matt had three gangers heading towards my position I managed to get at least two of my guys into a good firing position.  When it came to shooting I manged to knock down and injure a juve - another of Matt's gang that was crawling.

Turn Two :

Matt essentially had his leader and ganger holding ground in the open - the third crawling back to his starting position, his two gang members who had entered the building took up firing solutions on the roof, finally of the three coming towards my position one simply crawled out of the way to allow the two behind to attempt rushing my position.  Matt's shooting phase was quite constructive, injuring the Goliath with the heavy stubber - giving him some breathing space.

Rebecca continued to move her gang members towards the guilder item - both Matt and myself were a little concerned at this point since Rebecca was the closest to the goal (and closest to the exit zone). Rebecca's shooting didn't cause any real problems for Matt (or me) this turn, possibly getting the sniping duet to duck and cover?

I was still sending my leader and juves towards the centre of the map (whilst attempting to hide them behind cover) to snatch the "item".  Trying to plan ahead I also sent a ganger with a bolt gun towards the exit area to try and get a modicum of control (shoot anyone leaving kind of control). Seeing as everyone else was trying their luck with sniping. I decided to move one of my lasgun gangers into a building. Since I still had two of Matt's Kommissars coming at me I also bolstered my two man position with a lasgun carrying ganger.
When I came to shooting it was that Lasgun wielding ganger who hit, knocked down and critically injured one of Matt's two - which unfortunately led to the 2nd (still standing) ganger (with a rather big flamer gun) failing a leadership test and running away from combat for 2D6 inches - oh dear *snigger*.

The Kommissar Flamer ganger, top right - he's fleeing!

Turn Three:

Matt had one dead, three gangers crawling around and another running for cover (the Cawdor flamer guy did not stop running), however on the bottle test he passed and continued with his... plan?

Not a lot  of movement  but Matt decided to take a shot at Rebecca's leader - he shot, he scored and the Goliath Leader went out of the game.

Rebecca continued closing on the central point - she was moving in force and she wants those guilder credits.  Troops that were present were essentially juves and gangers (around four in number) in or around the barricades surrounding the central point from her starting edge.  The ganger with the heavy stubber managed to get up and enter a building, whether to get out of harm's way or to snipe is not clear but it would give her a distinct advantage with it's 20" short range / 40" long range ability.
When the shooting from Rebecca started - Matt's Leader fell to the pavement only this time he was not taking a flesh wound, this time he was down for the count - payback perhaps for the loss of Rebecca's leadership?

The first charge of the game is a little underwhelming since one of my gangers runs past the barricade to close assault the closest downed kawdor ganger - dice aren't even rolled - it's automatic.  Since my edge is clear of Cawdor I now start moving those remaining gangers to the centre - Matt's facing another bottle test and Rebecca has taken a couple of hits - a few more and she'll be bottling it - I still haven't lost a man.
When I start firing my leader uses a full charge on a plasma pistol - this should incinerate whoever it hits - amazingly it hits but does no damage? Unfortunately by rolling a six means that although I hit I have to take an ammo roll, which I lose (no more plasma pistol).  What's more frustrating is that this happens again and again for me.  I lose a bolt gun and a lasgun to ammo rolls - the good news being that another of Rebecca's juve's is flat out behind a barricade.


Turn four:

Matt rolls for his remaining crawling gangers - they're not getting up! He then decides to not even bother rolling to see if he succeeds his bottle test - he leaves the battlefield... quickly!

Rebecca moves in to pickup the guilder "item" (we really should have asked what it was), the first juve fumbles (not rolling a 5 or 6), fortunately a ganger behind the juve tried again and picked it up - is it all over?
Rebecca starts firing with her stubber from its superior firing position which gives Serene's Soldiers it's first dire casualty.  Another Juve goes down but is not out for the count (phew).

We've got the guilder "item", what do we do with it again?

 Knowing that Rebecca has the guilder item and that I could potentially force her into a bottle test - I'm trying to get every gun into a firing solution.  The idea of moving towards a house Goliath ganger does not appeal or make sense but this is something that has to be done.
My first kill this turn is from a shot gun using a scatter shot shell - I'm fairly sure there is nothing left of the goliath - the amusing thing is that its the ganger (holding the "item") that dies and not the juve who was actually fired at - go figure (the "item" is now back on the floor), unfortunately nothing else hits (dammit).

Turn Five:

At this point it's 9pm and we've been playing since 3pm (creating gangs, setting up the board, setting up the gangs and ultimately learning the rules as we go).  Rebecca is essentially going to be taking a bottle test because she has lost 25% of her gang (much like Matt). We decide to stop there - however Serene's Soldiers claim a moral victory (and the 50 cred victory) since he would love to continue shooting until Rebecca's gang takes further losses resulting in a failed bottle test.

Since the game ended we all sat down to work out experience and credits earned by each gangs participating juves, gangers and leader.  We also worked out if anyone was maimed, didn't make it or if there were any grudges etc.  One interesting point - Matt's leader made it (more or less), Rebecca's leader unfortunately was found and kept close to death as a hostage by Matt's Kommissars.  Rebecca got her leader back after paying a considerable amount of credits - the good thing is that Matt and Rebecca got their leadership back ;-)

For a Sunday afternoon game, I can't think of a better game to play - brought back a load of old memories and when we get to play again will undoubtedly create some new ones.  My plan is to get my gang painted so that it actually looks the part - that will be done in time.  Until then Necromunda will allow us to go into mortal combat in the far flung future - a galaxy far, far away - not so much - just where we get time and opportunity to setup the boards again!

Infidel! - My Somewhat Rambling Fascination with Historical Wargames (Part 1)

So we find ourselves looking over the crusader camp at the Battle of Dorylaeum, with the massive Seljuk Turk army just visible in the distance. At least this is a quick photo I snapped of the Dorylaeum scenario from GMT's Infidel boardgame. It's the second in their Men of Iron series, this one focusing clearly on the huge cavalry battles of the early Crusades. Whilst I have the pikemen on display here, they tend to be a little..squishy in battle, this is really all about the mounted units and their movement.

It's currently set up on the desk in our bedroom much to my wife's dismay, but I'm taking my time playing it solitaire and trying to absorb the rules, and it really does work for me as something to dip into now and again when I have the time. It's also quite brilliant, and as a good example of why I enjoy historical wargames I thought it would serve as a nice little introductory post about my fascination with this area of gaming.

So why do I play these games? It's certainly not for the shiny components, the one above is a pretty good example of the genre but even this one consists mostly of small cardboard counters and a paper map. You can't really see it in the picture, but the perspex from a poster frame is covering the map, just to make it playable. Things are definitely improving all the time, but for gamers into massive heavy boxes full of intricate plastic miniatures, then these board wargames really don't compare.

It isn't for the cost either. It's not like they are hugely less expensive for not having those mountains of plastic or wood. Actually thinking about it, almost all of my most expensive games are wargames. I think that's largely down to it being a niche within a niche, small print runs, and the added cost of all the shipping given there aren't many companies producing them in the UK.

So why then? Well it all started, for me at least, with...

Solitaire play - When I first got back into boardgames this was almost a necessity, I hadn't yet found a local group, and I lived a fair way from any of the people I had gamed with before. More than that though I enjoy it, always have done, sometimes I read a book, sometimes watch a film or some TV, sometimes it's a game on the  PC or console, but if I'm in the mood I really enjoy sitting down with a board or card game. So in my hunt for good solo boardgames, a lot of the recommendations were for wargames. Whilst there are many great "designed for solitaire" wargames, I also discovered that many wargamers will solo games not designed for one player, playing each side to the best of their ability just to enjoy the process and see how it all played out. I'd found my people. :)

One of the big draws for me when playing solitaire, is the ability to take time, and really study the...

Complexity - Now this doesn't necessarily mean the rules have to be complex, though that is something I enjoy, and it is something you would need to get used to if you were to explore the world of historical boardgames. Sure, many of the rulesets are more complex than your average boardgame, they are after all modelling complex situations, and even when abstracted there can still be a lot going on. It's also the emergent complexity I'm interested in though, the idea of a relatively small set of rules producing a complex simulation. This ties back to some of the academic work that interested me most, and I find the whole "cardboard machine" idea fascinating to peer at. Then there is the simple satisfaction of learning a new set of rules, I enjoy the process which seems bizarre given how much I avoided it during my academic years.

Another side of the learning that goes hand in hand with these games is the...

History - I've always been fairly science focussed when it came to education, hence my fascination with the mechanics and modelling aspects, but my interest in these games has opened up an interest in the history that they portray. I've read so many more books, and articles on history since getting into wargames than I ever have before. There is something very satisfying for me about playing a game, and also reading around that subject, though that tends to lead me off in different directions reading more history. The end result however is that I know far more about the world, and some of the conflicts that have shaped it than I ever did, and that's all from playing some games.

It's partly the rich history that creates a great....

Narrative - I do like a good story, and I particularly enjoy a solitaire game if it creates an interesting story. Wargames are very good for this, there is so much going on you can't help but get caught up in the story. This ties in with the above part about history, where you read about these great battles, and then watch them played out before you with the ability to try different approaches. Infidel is a great example with this constantly moving battlefield with charges and counter charges and reaction fire turning these beautiful lines and formations into chaos before they regroup for the next clash. Some of my favourite though are the squad based tactical games, which often play out like scenes from a great war movie.

...and at that point I think I'm going to break. Lets call this part one, as I'm in danger of rambling for far too long and I still have more ideas milling around. I'll pick up where I left off in part two.

KEMET - A fantastic game of beating up your friends, and riding around on mythical beasts. Can you think of a better way to spend your time?

I was first introduced to this game by a Tom Vassel video review on DiceTower.com and knew immediately that I wanted it. The ancient Egypt theme, the light war game mechanics and the gorgeous mythical creature miniatures…its love. 

Unfortunately it has taken nearly 3 months for this game to arrive in the UK; during which time I more than once considered getting it delivered from Europe or America. I held off and finally the game arrived last Friday morning, just in time for our next game night. Was the game worth the wait? and the £45 price tag?

I’ll say this now to save time, if you do not like combative and aggressive games, you probably won’t like this. This game not only encourages attacking, it’s necessary and key to the game. You will take on the roll of Egyptian gods battling each other for supremacy of the ancient land of Kemet (name for Egypt at the time, kinda). Your goal will be to gain 8 Victory Points, and keep them until the end of a game round. I say ‘keep’, as some of these Victory Points will only be temporary, which can, and probably will, be stolen by another player.

Throughout the game you will be able to gain permanent Victory Points, mainly through combat, and temporary Victory Point, mainly from controlling one of the multiple temples around the board. If another player seizes control of these temples from you, you have to hand over that Victory Point.

Each game round will start with the night phase (which is in effect an upkeep stage) in which you will gain 2 prayer points, the sole resource of the game. Players will take it in turns to perform an action (such as move a troop, buy an upgrade, or recruit new units) until everyone has taken 5. Unlike many similar games, such as Game of Thrones, everyone starts the game on an equal footing, with the same amount of resources and units. The board is designed in such a way that everyone is the same amount of spaces from each other, and you can teleport from you cities to important locations around the map for a minimal cost. All this comes together to make a very balanced and strategic game.

While you may all start the game on an equal footing, you won’t stay that way for long. The element that will make your forces play different from everyone else’s, and what will make the game different every time you play, is the 48 upgrade tiles. When you buy one of these tiles you will get a permanent ability/upgrade/mythical creature that once bought, is yours for the rest of the game. Other than a few low level tiles, once you have a tile no one else will be able to acquire it. In this way you will be able to tailor your army and play style, making your forces completely different to other players.

Seeing as it’s a key part of the game, I really should take about the battle system. I won’t go into too much detail, it’s a simple system, the main thing to know is that it’s not luck based. For each battle you select two of your 6 battle cards (1 to use, 1 to discard), adding the combat value of the card to the number of your units in the battle, plus any modifiers on your upgrade tiles. The winner stays where they are, the loser retreats and a victory point is awarded if the attack won. As well as a combat value, these cards might also kill enemy units, or protect your unit’s form being killed. Once all 6 cards are in your discard pile, you pick them all back up again; meaning that you have to plan for what battle card you’ll need in a future round.

Everyone has the same cards as you, so you can go into a battle fairly confident of a result, and can plan accordingly. Know your going to loose? play a battle card that will kill off lots of their units after the battle. Have an easy win? play a card that will protect your units from being killed. Or like me, have a tile that gives you resources for killing units, so always go in trying to do the most carnage.

There are a number of other elements to the game that I’ve not covered in this review, such as:

·        The lovely marble effect 4 sided dice, used to show what level your pyramids are at, and in conjunction, what level of upgrade tiles you can buy.

·        The number of other less common ways to gain Victory Points, such as upgrade tiles, and upgrading your pyramid to the highest level.

·        The “Divine Intervention” cards which can be used as extra help in battle, or in a number of other ways.

·        You can only have 5 units together in 1 space, as a Troop. There are only 12 units available to each player, so you can build up massive forces.

The heart of this game is a light war game, layered on top of that is a clever action selection mechanic, and a deep upgrade system. It shouldn’t take long to teach to new players, and after your first play you should be merrily slaughtering each other without having to consult the rules at all.

Opinion:

As you will have already noticed, I am very enamoured with this game. I do tend to get very enthusiastic about a game, and can overlook any issues it has. So before I get onto more praise, these are only three negatives I can think of:

·        You do need a group where people don’t mind aggressive games, and won’t take it to heart as you stop on them mercilessly.

·        All players need to play well, it’s not something to play if you want to relax and not think too hard. If a player makes a few bad moves, it could lead to another player scoring 2 or 3 easy points and winning the game. This shouldn’t be an issue after the first few plays, as you’ll soon get to understand how to avoid giving players easy points.

·        The rules, while not terrible, aren’t prefect. I would recommend watching a video (either a review or walkthrough) to get everything straight in your head and consult the BGG forums if you need any further clarification.

I would recommend watching the Dice Tower review for a bit more info, and have a look at some more pictures of the game being played. My words alone don’t do this game justice, its as much fun as any game I’ve played in the last few years and combines very balanced and strategic gameplay with a great theme and gorgeous presentation. The first play went over very well with my game group; though our group does tend to like the more aggressive and competitive games (read: games where you can screw each other over), so it was always going to be a hit. This is a game I can see being in my collection for a long time to come and a staple of our game group.

**** One small note, when you buy this (and yes I did mean to write ‘when’), print off some reference sheets from BoardGameGeek for the upgrade tiles, it will save a lot of time if everyone has a copy to browse through. Like having your own little Argos catalogue of death and destruction.****

Below is a brief summary of our first game:

David (me): I was dogged by pre-emptive buying by Jay throughout this game, every time I planned to get an upgrade, Jay got their first. My first move was to send a troop to secure the Sanctuary of All Gods (where you can sacrifice 2 units at the end of a round for a VP). I only managed to hold this for 1 round, before attacks by both Matt and Jay forced me out. I spent the next few rounds upgrading (the best of these was an upgrade that game me lots of Prayer Points every time I killed another unit) and rebuilding my forces before going on an all out offensive against Karl & Rebecca, grabbing multiple temples, and upgrading my pyramids to reach 10 VP. No one was going to be able to steal enough temporary VP to deny me the win, so the game was called at that point.

Karl: Took an early VP lead, grabbing the two central temples, and started gaining a lot of prayer points every round. He accelerated ahead of everyone else, buying lots of upgrades (giant scorpion anyone?) and consolidating his position in the temples. Unfortunately for Karl, this did make him a target for the rest of the game, and due to a lot of attacks on his forces, he stalled at around the 5 or 6 VP mark.

Matt: Had an aggressive start, initiating the first attack of the game, against myself. Making a move on the Sanctuary of All Gods, but soon left the fighting there to myself and Jay, and moved into the Delta temple (where you can sacrifice 1 unit at the end of a round for 5 prayer points). He controlled this point for the rest of the game. After a few rounds of upgrading and beard scratching, Matt launched his main force (led by a giant scarab beetle) at Karl and then Jay. While he had some success against Karl, by this time Jay had become quite strong, and was able to swat away Matts attack with a Mummy Priest backhand to the face. Matt ended the game on 4 VP (I think).

Rebecca: Flew under the radar for a while, grabbed one temple and spent the first few rounds building up. Then with a twinkle in her eye, spend the rest of the game continuingly attacking Karl and myself. I think, even more so than me and Karl, Rebecca was the most aggressive player. She grabbed one of the central temples from Karl, and despite multiple unsuccessful attacks, she kept rebuilding and attacking some more. However, as quite a few of these attacks ended in defeat, she didn’t build up enough VP to win. She ended on 6 VP.

Jay: Took a slow approach, building up a strong resource generating base, and upgrading his armies. Other than a few small attacks, Jay wasn’t very aggressive until the last few rounds where his forces stormed out of his city, attacking Karl & Matt. However strong Jay was at this point, he has left his move too late, and ended on 5 VP. If we had played a longer game (10 or 12 VP) I think Jay probably would have won.

Game Time: about 100 minutes, including setup and rules explanation.

Judging from the threats and calculating looks I suspect that I’ll be a target next game. Bring it on! my giant snake army will take you all…..whimper….