Category: games

HoTT Army: Professor Hans’ Metal Minions

Here is my latest Hordes of the Things army: Professor Hans’ Metal Minions.  I just made that up.  I finished this army before Cold Wars, but didn’t get a chance to post about it yet.

Professor Hans’ Metal Minions
Professor Hans and his Avatar: Magician General.

Professor Hans was afflicted with Polio at a young age.  For years he studied Science, Technology, and the dark arts of Alchemy to try to find a solution to his frustrated confinement. After receiving a small mechanical assistant robot from his uncle, he began experimenting with building ever more complex mechanical bodies.

Eventually he invented a mind-machine interface that allowed him to give his creations the autonomy they deserved. This army is the result of years of experimentation with transplanting insect and animal brains into mechanical bodies.

His work must continue until he feels he can successfully transplant his own brain into a suitable host body.  In the mean time, his army gives him the tools he needs to find human subjects for further experimentation.

Professor Hans’ Brass Spiders: 4x Beast

This army is built primarily out of Mage Knight figures, but there are a few from other prepainted sets: Dungeons and Dragons and Dreamblade.  I repainted, touched up, and/or converted all of the figures in one way or another.

Professor Hans is a figure called “Gent” from the Dreamblade series of prepainted miniatures.  I repainted him with a brass colored integrated wheelchair.  In his hand he holds the Aetheric Impulse Controller for his Avatar, who can shoot its Aetheric Wave Gun at enemies that Hans has a particularly strong interest in.  Hans’ Avatar is a repainted Mage Knight figure.

Professor Hans’ Camel Backs: 2x Shooter

His brass spiders are early creations that use a spider’s brain to control their steam powered bodies.  They are Mage Knight figures that originally had riders.  I removed the riders, filled in the seats, added smoke stacks, and repainted them all.  These are Beast elements.

The Camel Backs are an early success with Hans’ use of the mammalian brain.  They carry steam boilers on their back and shoot cannons instead of spitting. These are Mage Knight figures repainted silver with brass highlights.  They are Shooter elements.

Professor Hans’ Turtle Men: 4x Blades

The Turtle Men use brass bodies controlled with the brain of a snapping turtle.  They are mixed Mage Knight figures, also repainted in a better brass color with matching color highlights.  They’re Blade elements.

Papa Bear is a giant steel mech controlled with the brain of a bear.  It’s a Dungeons and Dragons prepainted figure. Most of the paint is original, but I changed the highlights from copper colored to brass so they’d match the rest of the army.  This is a Behemoth element.

The Dragonfly combines Hans’ insect brain interface with a flying mech that uses his newer, smaller power sources.  It’s a flyer. This is also a Mage Knight figure that had a seat and a rider. I filled it in and repainted portions of the figure.

Now all I need is a stronghold!

Professor Hans’ Papa Bear: 1x Behemoth

 

Professor Hans’ Dragonfly: 1x Flyer

Cold Wars 2013

JM decided not to go to Cold Wars this year, but luckily Mike Kaizar did.  It’s always more fun to go to a convention with a friend, even when there are more friends waiting for you when you get there. He drove from Columbus to Pittsburgh, and we left late enough that we got to Lancaster at 8 or 9pm.

BBDBA Doubles

First thing on Friday Morning, as usual, was BBDBA Doubles. This was the first time Mike and I have partnered for BBDBA, and it went quite well overall.  I hope Mike keeps coming out to more conventions in the future; I’d happily partner with him again.

This was the first BBDBA event I’ve played in that had a historical theme: Medieval Europe. We took my recently finished Early Hungarian army. I filled out the third army by building a morph army out of my Germans, Early Russians, and other random figures. Many of the figures were identical except for the paint job, so they matched well.

I’ve wanted this army for a long time, and was very interested to try it in BBDBA.  For the Ax/Bw option, I would ordinarily have chosen all Auxilia.  However, since this was BBDBA with a Medieval Europe theme, I expected to see relatively little bad going (except when playing against The Davids), and a substantial number of bows in our enemies’ armies.  I decided to take 3x3Ax, 3x3Bw.  In retrospect, I’m not sure if that was the best choice or not.  3 bows wasn’t as many as bow-heavy armies had, so it may have been better to take all bows or all auxilia.

Early Hungarians vs. Two Davids playing Feudal English with Welsh ally.

In the first round, we faced Two Davids: David Kuijt and David Schlanger.  They were playing Feudal English with a Welsh ally. We ended up as the attackers, and as I expected, we saw a good amount of terrain.

In this game, our command structure used three combined arms commands, with elements shifted around to get good break points and PIP management.

  • High PIP, 13 el, BP 5: 2xKn(Gen), 2xCv, 5xLH, 3xSp, 1xPs.
  • Mid PIP, 13 el, BP 5: 2xKn(CinC), 1xCv, 3xLH, 3xSp, 3xAx, 1xPs.
  • Low PIP, 10 el, BP 4: 2xKn(Gen), 1xLH, 3xSp,  3xBw, 1xPs.

The Davids had one large English command and one tiny one: their C-in-C had 3xKn, 1xCv, and 4xHd, which they taped in place around their camp.  This meant that they could attack with their C-in-C command’s mounted, and they’d have to lose 3/4 of its elements in order to break.  It made it easy for them to combine two or 3 commands against one of ours, and its small size made it hard to reach and even harder to gang up on.

Our commands worked quite well, but unfortunately our attack didn’t succeed quickly enough to win. It ended up fairly close: we lost 25-75. It was a good matchup and a fun game; a great way to start the convention.

Early Hungarians vs. Comedy and Tragedy playing Low Countries.

In the second game, we faced Comedy and Tragedy: Spencer and Christina Ginder.  They were playing Low Countries: a pike army (with knights).  Their forces were less mobile than ours, so they had terrain on the board again.  That was satisfying, but also made me question whether this army composition for Hungarians actually wants very much terrain.

In deciding what command structure to use here, I considered how Spencer might use his pikes.  Many players combine their pikes into a single huge block, give it the low PIP die, and sit it on defense.  Some build a single large pike block but spread it across two commands so they can attack with it. Others maintain several separate combined arms commands.

Large blocks of pike are hard to break but easy to avoid, and they’re easier to use effectively.  Combined arms is more flexible, but more difficult to use and easier to break by killing things other than the pike.  We decided to build a very mobile force that would be able to quickly and easily outflank a large block of pike, if they brought one to the field.  Our main force would follow up to pin their line in place, preventing them from effectively turning to face our flank attack.  Our approximate command breakdown:

  • High PIP, 10 el, BP 4: 3xCv (Gen), 7xLH.
  • Medium PIP, 16 el, BP 6: 4xKn (CinC), 1xLH, 6xSp, 2xPs, 3xAx.
  • Low PIP, 10 el, BP 4: 3xSp (Gen), 3xBw, 1xPs, 2xKn, 1xLH.

It turned out the Ginders decided to use multiple combined arms commands, but we maintained our plan: a fast flank attack where we intended to win, and a slower frontal press where we hoped not to lose.  They deployed with a gap in their line for flexibility, but unfortunately couldn’t use their third command to both fill the gap and protect their flank effectively.  This stretched their command radius to its maximum.  Their combined arms commands had pike and knights interleaved, making it difficult to get optimal local matchups.

Our left flank attack arrived quickly, but took a long time to become effective.  We tied up a larger number of the enemy’s troops with my smaller mobile command, but unfortunately our high PIP die was committed to that use alone. In the mean time, we started winning more quickly elsewhere.  In the end, the battle didn’t go as we had planned, but we did win 92-8, so I have no complaints.

The lesson we learned here is that you really don’t need a very large flanking force to be effective, if you can truly get around the enemy’s flank; but you do need a lot of time if you’re using resilient weak forces (LH) versus a stronger enemy who can’t kill you (Pk).   The terrain made it difficult to support our flank attack effectively, since we didn’t have any bad going troops in the attacking command.

Early Hungarians vs. Doug Austin’s Condotta with Swiss ally.

The third game was the first time we rolled low enough to defend and place terrain.  Early Hungarians are Steppe, not arable, so we placed a bunch of small bits of rough and a few hills.

Our command split was the same as in the first game. We placed our Mid and Low PIP commands first, with a gap between them so we could wheel them both to the right or left depending on our needs.  Unfortunately, our terrain was offset to the left a bit farther than we’d prefer, leaving little space to deploy our third command on that side.  This made our third deployment possibly a bit too obvious.

Doug deployed to overlap our line on both ends, as expected; and we deployed our third command on our right flank, also as expected.  This left us with a lot of room to outflank him on our right, but he overlapped us on our left.

Doug quickly second-guessed his deployment, and decided he needed more troops on his left (our right) flank.  He started spending PIPs to redeploy knights from his right to his left behind his line, as he advanced slowly and we tried to press on as quickly as possible.

We had the early game advantage due to the PIPs he was spending on redeployment and having his troops out of command. I broke his command on our right flank, but unfortunately I was too aggressive with my CinC command, and ended up suffering losses where I should have just been holding the line and waiting for my right flank to keep winning.  We started losing elements on our left flank, and eventually lost enough elements in our CinC for it to break.  It was a good game, but we lost 16-84.

My first goal for BBDBA was to win a game, and I accomplished that with JM several conventions ago.  After that game, my second goal was to finish with at least 100 points.  We achieved that in this tournament, after a strong win and two losses that actually gave us points.  BBDBA Doubles is one of the highlights of every convention, now that I’m competent enough to feel like I have a chance of succeeding in most of the games.

Quad Themes

Friday night was Roland Fricke’s Quad Themes event.  There were 4 rounds, each played with a different army from a different historical theme.  At this point I was fairly fried, so I’ll just give a rundown of the results.
In round 1, I played Early Egyptians (I/2a) and beat Mark Pozniak’s Nubians, 6-5.  Next, I played Later Achaemenid Persians, and beat Dick Pagano’s Macedonian Successors 4-1. In the third round, Rich “Diceman” Baier’s Later Imperial Romans (East) beat my Ancient Brits 4-2.  I got to play Mike Kaizar in the last round, but it was a poor matchup for him: my knight-heavy Feudal Spanish faced his blade and raider Vikings. He won anyway, with a 1g-0 victory in one of the first rounds of combat.

Alexander the Great Theme

On Saturday morning, we were forced to get up way too early, for Mark Pozniak’s 8am event: an Alexander the Great theme.  I brought Later Achaemenid Persians, and lost all my games.  I didn’t write down my opponents’ armies, unfortunately.  Mike Guth beat me 2C-0.  Bill Fisher beat me 4-2.  Kristy Faux beat me 4-3.

Unification War: Rise of the Son of Heaven

On Saturday afternoon, I ran a Pyramid format event with a Warring States Chinese theme.  We used Limited Attrition rules as described on the Buttocks of Death Wiki.  

Warring States Pyramid, final round of 4-on-4.

We had two new, young DBA players: Otto, Dave Schlanger’s son, and his friend BJ.  They had a lot of fun, and I expect to see them playing DBA at more events in the future.

The Commanders in Chief in the final round were Otto leading his Chu empire against David Kuijt’s Qin empire.

These 4-on-4 games usually end up being more like several 1-on-1 games next to each other, rather than having as much interaction between commands as you have in BBDBA, but they are still quite fun; and that’s the real point in the end anyway.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the Pyramid format, and the limited attrition rules worked very well, as they did at last year’s Cold Wars.  I think I prefer running Pyramid events rather than Matched Pairs.  I like having fixed signups and a tighter historical theme, and it’s easier to handle the matchups when the pyramid is constructed before the event starts.

Two Davids Campaign: Recovering Byzantium

The real reason I had to paint Early Hungarians before this convention was the Two Davids campaign event: Recovering Byzantium.  The campaign was centered around Byzantine states in 1230AD, and Hungary was on the outskirts.
In the first round, John Manning attacked me with his Byzantine army, and I lost 3-4.  Not a great start, but that’s okay.  In the second round, Jack Sheriff’s Syrians attacked me and I beat them.  Next, I attacked Mark Burton and failed to capture a vassal.  
In the final round, I had a high number, and I was surprised to be allowed to attack someone again.  When my number came up there were 4 of us left. I attacked Dave Schlanger, and beat him; acquiring a vassal.
After the fourth round there was a bit of an incident… I won’t go over the details, but you’ll never fail to  remember it if you were there. It pretty much put an end to peoples’ enthusiasm for a fifth round.
I still enjoy the campaign events.  I think overall, I enjoy events with a very strict army list best, because they provide me with the most motivation to paint more interesting armies.

Hordes of the Things Open

Hordes of the Things: Fire vs. Ice played by BJ.
On Sunday morning, Mike met his parents for breakfast and I played Hordes of the Things.  I brought my Die in a Fire army.
For this event, my composition was: Mg (gen), Beh, Drg, 3xBd, 2xFly, 2xLrk.

In the first round, I faced BJ’s Ice elemental army.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to use the pretty elemental terrain board.  I lost 8-12g.

Next I faced Otto’s Slaad demon army: basically giant lizard demons. I beat him 6g-2.

Hordes of the Things: Fire vs. Rick Wynn’s Wild Hunt of Faerie.

In the final round, my fire elementals faced Rick Wynn’s Wild Hunt of Faerie (Oberon, Titania Elves) army. Rick’s army was beautiful, built mostly out of Games Workshop plastics.  He did a wonderful job of building an exactly 24 point army with a very specific theme.

After a bit of posturing, our magicians made it into range of each other.  I decided to try to ensorcel his general with mine on the first turn I had a chance, because he had two magicians and could get a better shot against me if I waited.  This turned out to be a tied roll, the only result that didn’t end up with one of us losing instantly.

In the next round Oberon returned the favor, with Titania’s help, instead of ensorcelling with Titania and having Oberon help.  Despite his better combat factors, I rolled high enough to beat him and pull the instant win: 4g-0.

This was the first time I had used a Dragon in HOTT.  I have mixed opinions about it at this point; it’s powerful and looks cool, but it’s also easy to lose and you don’t get any overlap support from friendly elements.  I think the key might be to use it with fliers who can provide flank and rear support more easily.

It turns out that after my two wins and favorable loss, I ended up tied for first place with BJ.  Since he beat me, he won the event overall.  Congratulations, and I hope to see you back for more games!

It was another great convention, and I’m glad I went. I won’t be making it to Historicon, but I look forward to more great conventions in the future.

Battle at the Crossroads 2013

Apparently I’m about a month behind on posting event reports.

This year’s Battle at the Crossroads was on February 22nd. There were only 6 players for DBA, so instead of running a pyramid event, we ran a normal 3-round tournament, and ended with a 3-on-3 game “for fun” with the top two players as C-in-C of each side.  The games were played with DBA using the 2.2+ extensions, and I had a new set of MU sticks made for the occasion.

3-on-3 Battle at the Crossroads; John Loy and Larry Chaban.

I won my first two games, against Daryl and then John Loy.  In the last round of standard play, Larry finally broke his 2-year losing streak against me, and beat me.  I’m officially no longer his nemesis.  Sooner or later he’s going to have to find JM and beat him, since apparently Larry has never beaten him…

For the final 3-on-3 game, Larry and I were commanders-in-chief. My allies were the two players Larry beat: Mike Kaizar and Bob.  Larry commanded John Loy and Daryl.

Everything was going well overall, but then Mike’s command broke on our right flank.  Soon after that, Daryl’s command broke opposite Mike.  Unfortunately, Bob broke before we could break the enemy, and it was all downhill from there.

The army selection was fun this year, with a biblical theme.  The games were over quickly due to the low combat factors, which allowed us to fit in 3 single games and the triple game, and still get home at a reasonable hour.

This was a good event, but we need more players!  What happened to the days of bringing 4 or more players from Pittsburgh?

Malifaux: Terrain

We finally made time to play another game of Malifaux.  Frank, Andy, JM, and I played two games side-by-side on a 4×6′ board set up with terrain set up for two adjacent 3×3′ boards.  This was a good showcase for my Malifaux terrain, so I took some pictures.

A Ronin attacked by mechanical spiders in the woods

Frank played his Viktoria crew against my arachnid-heavy Ramos crew.  Andy’s Colette box set tried to fend off JM’s Freikorps.  Frank crushed me utterly in 4 turns, while JM destroyed Andy’s dancers in 6 turns.

After trying and failing to enjoy the Terraclips terrain, we’ve fallen back to using area terrain pieces on a Terrainguy map.

The terrain here is an amalgam of pieces from a variety of sources that I’ve collected over the last decade or so.

Malifaux terrain: city and outskirts

Some of the buildings are Mordheim terrain from the box set. Others are completely scratch built and hand painted by Frank.  Some are made from inkjet printed walls glued to foam core. The hobo village around the swamp is plastic O scale railroad terrain.

The grave stones and piles of skulls are from Michael’s craft store during Halloween season.  The graveyard was scratch built by Frank.  There are railroad trees, cast resin stumps, and strips of cloth for roads.  The barrels were store bought pre-painted terrain.

Colette versus the Freikorps in the streets of Malifaux

I scratch built the swamps and rough ground area for dual use with DBA and Malifaux.  They’re made of thin plastic with rocky sand glued on, followed by paint and flock.  The water areas are done with glossy varnish slopped on over the paint.

Frank scratch built the board fences for Warhammer Fantasy, and I built the stone walls using Hirst Arts plaster molds.

Overall, I like the way this terrain looks, works, and stores better than Terraclips.  I could see adding a few standalone Terraclip buildings to this kind of game board, but I don’t think I’ll be trying to lay out an entire board of Terraclips terrain again any time soon.

Playing Malifaux reminded us all how much we enjoy the game, and we plan to play again soon.  Unfortunately the game seems to be changing faster than we can keep up with, since we don’t play regularly.  Luckily it’s still enjoyable with older models.

Games with Ezra, Part 1

Ezra, about to start a game of Hordes of the Things.

My son Ezra is now 5 years old, and he has enjoyed playing games of all sorts for as long as he’s been able to play.  Here are some of the games we have enjoyed playing together so far.

He has a great capacity for learning game mechanics, and a long enough attention span to finish a game that he’s truly interested in.  Most of the time he’s able to handle loss well enough to want to play again. The biggest challenge I’ve had in finding good games to play has been that he’s only just starting to learn to read.

For now I’m limiting this list to games that adults can play with kids, and those that are surprisingly appropriate for children (or at least for Ezra) instead of the ones everyone knows work well with kids.  This isn’t a game review, and I won’t be teaching how to play the games; but I will mention any changes we made to make the games more playable.

Cartagena

One of the first “real” games we played together was Cartagena.  When we first started playing, I removed the “move backwards to draw cards” mechanic and turned it into a “play one, draw one” game.  This helped him learn the mechanics and the strategy of skipping over full spots to move forward more quickly.  In the last year or so, we’ve started playing with the full rules instead, but we don’t play as often as we did.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is fairly commonly known to be good with kids, except for the farmer scoring mechanic.  The Hunters and Gatherers version can work a bit better, because scoring hunters is a bit easier, but I find it to be a bit more bland, and young kids still have a hard time thinking ahead far enough to know whether to place a hunter or not.

Castle Panic

And our third entry in “Games that start with CA” is by far Ezra’s favorite and most played game.  At its height we were playing for hours on end, and I’d get sick of it before he did, but at this point he rarely maintains interest long enough to finish a session anymore.
Castle Panic is especially good with young kids, because it is a cooperative game.  You play with open hands, make plans together, and accomplish goals with each others’ help. We both prefer playing this one with the Wizard’s Tower expansion.  Although there are cards with words, they all have unique pictures, and when we were playing this game regularly, Ezra could recognize and summarize every card in the base set even though he wasn’t really reading any of them.  The most challenging aspect of this game, for grown-ups and kids alike, is to make plans for your whole turn before you start trading in your cards.

HeroQuest

Marla found a copy of HeroQuest at a yard sale for around $3, and it was a great investment.  I’ve finished more dungeons with Ezra than I have with adults. We played this one semi-cooperatively: I played the dungeon master and controlled the two spellcasting characters under Ezra’s guidance as the party leader.  He controlled the barbarian and dwarf: Kick in the door, and kill whatever’s on the other side of it!  When there were decisions to be made involving traps and searching, I had Ezra make the decisions since he wasn’t looking at the map.

Heroica

I’m not sure what it is about Heroica that encourages just about everyone who plays it to make up new rules and change the ones that are already there.  This is an incredibly simple dungeon crawl with no reading required, and it also has Lego, so how could any kid refuse? It’s theoretically competitive, but realistically players are usually leap-frogging each other through the dungeon.

Lionheart

I found Lionheart at a yard sale before I had any kids, and for years I attempted to trade it away.  I’m glad I didn’t, because it has been a lot of fun with Ezra.  This is a board-based miniature wargame for 2 players.  The mechanics are easy to pick up, and the combat doesn’t even require math skills.  I expect it’d be hard to find these days, but it’s a lot more worth playing than I expected it would be.

Dune Express

This is a fun little print-and-play area control game.  It has no language components used during gameplay, and there isn’t much for players to remember.  We play the basic rules, but haven’t had to make any changes to play well together.

Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice is a quick “push your luck” game with simple rules.  Ezra’s good at managing his risk in this game, and he’s just as likely to win as any adult.

Zombies!!!

For Zombies, we skip the event cards, and there are no other language dependent components used during play.  This makes the game a bit less fun and flavorful, and it can take longer without the help of additional weapons, so I also reduce the number of board sections we need to get through before reaching the helicopter.

Dungeon!

I’m only listing Dungeon here because it was a major disappointment, and did not meet our expectations.  It’s too simplistic for Ezra, he gets bored too quickly. There aren’t enough decisions to make, and there is very little character development.  For a simple, fast dungeon crawl, we prefer Heroica.

En Garde

This one is listed for ages 14+, but that’s ridiculous.  The truth is, almost every game with plastic or metal parts produced today must list an age of 13+ or 14+ because they cannot afford to have their pieces tested for toxicity.  We play the simple or slightly advanced versions of the rules, with no other changes.

Uno

I don’t love Uno, but there were some times when Ezra couldn’t get enough of it; and he consistently beat both his parents and his sister.  He also likes Harry Potter Uno, or Crazy Eights if there aren’t any Uno cards around.

Loot

I’ve played this with both kids a few times, but it isn’t that good with only 2 players.

The Sorceror’s Cave

This is one of the first dungeon crawl games I played with Ezra.  It’s extremely dependent on good luck to succeed, which totally drove away Martine.  Ezra fared better and enjoyed playing it, but we quickly moved on to other games with a similar theme.

Wings of War

Ezra loves starting games of Wings of War, but rarely finishes them.  He likes playing with the plane miniatures, and isn’t very good at flying predictably. But early on, he shot me down the first time our planes were within shooting range, so maybe that’s why he keeps coming back…

Hordes of the Things

I’ve started introducing Ezra to a few different miniature games, but at this point I have to wait until he asks to play so I don’t drive him away with my enthusiasm.  He has finished several games of Hordes of the Things, using all of the rules (all of the rules that happen to come up) but with a limited set of elements. The easy way I’ve found to introduce young kids to the game is to limit element selection to only about 3-4 types of elements, either all foot or all mounted.  Kids can remember 3-4 different combat factors, but it requires a chart if you need to remember different factors vs. foot and vs. mounted.  We played HOTT using Mechwarrior prepainted figures, limiting element selection to Behemoth, Knight, Rider, and Hero.
I’ll write more as we discover more games worth playing, but I expect we will soon start opening many more boxes once Ezra starts reading.

Fall-In 2012

Last weekend was Fall In! in Lancaster, PA.  I drove out with Rich and Larry as usual, but unfortunately JM couldn’t attend this time.

Fall In 2012: Maureen Reddington-Wilde
playing Gauls in the Warbandia event.

This was an unusual convention for me.  For the entire weekend, I didn’t use any army that fought after 50AD, but my chosen army dates were even earlier: no later than about 250BC.

Thursday

Thursday night, Larry ran Warbandia. Eligible armies need at least 6 warbands, and I didn’t have many choices.  I brought my Celtiberians, since I painted them fairly recently. In the first game, I beat Maureen Reddington-Wilde and her Gauls 4-0.  The second game against Mike Guth’s Visigoths was worthy of an epic poem, but unfortunately I’m no poet, so all it gets is a compound sentence.  In one turn both of our generals were killed, tying the game at 3g-3g; but unfortunately it was Mike’s turn next,  and he was able to kill one of my elements without me killing any of his, so he won 4g-3g.  In the final round, I lost to Paul Georgian and his gauls, 0-4g.

Friday

The Stooges telling us we did it wrong.

Friday was BBDBA doubles.  Since JM wasn’t around, I found an alternate partner: Chris Brantley.  We played triple Hittites, the later list with heavy chariots instead of all light chariots.

Our first matchup was against the Stooges and their Patrician Romans (East). We were doing okay for a while, but then we started rolling combat dice. Chris’s command lost 3 chariots in one bound, punching a big hole in the center of our line.  We were able to regain some ground, but not enough; we lost 6-94 after our C-in-C command broke.  We made a few mistakes in the center, such as missing an opportunity to close the door on the enemy’s general.

Bill Brown and Will Michael run forward with their pikes.

In the second round, we faced Will Michael and Bill Brown with their Scots Common army.  This was the most interesting Pike army I’ve ever faced, mainly because they decided to split their pike into each command and use it on the attack rather than holding it back and using it as a huge static defense.  They deployed away from their camp, which pulled us into their trap.  We deployed heavily in front of their camp, to encourage them to deploy their third command there to defend it.  Unfortunately, our C-in-C wasn’t on that side of the board, so they smartly decided to give up their camp, and concentrate all their forces on our C-in-C.  We won their camp, but we weren’t fast enough to kill 4 more elements in their C-in-C command before they broke ours and won the game.  It ended 14-86 in their favor.

Unfortunately, for the Nth time in a row there were 9 teams for BBDBA, which is just the completely wrong number to have.  In the third round we got a bye, which just sucks.  I’m there to play, not to win a free 80 points without playing a game.  I had a good time playing in the other two games, and I’m not sorry we lost.

In the evening, Chris Brantley ran Ars Militaria: a Book II event using double blind deployment.  This ended up being very interesting, but it’s not how I’d prefer to play DBA every time.

David Kuijt built stands to hold curtain-like screens across the center of the board.  After placing terrain and choosing our board edges, the curtain was put into place and we each deployed our armies based on knowing only the terrain and not the enemy’s deployment.

I brought Later Achaemenid Persians.  In the first round I lost to Dave Schlanger and his Early Gordyenes.  In the second round I beat Alex Bostwick’s Seleucids despite his attempt to force-push the terrain when I wasn’t looking.  In the last round, David Kuijt beat me with Greco-Bactrians.

The blind deployment worked fairly well without any cheesy moves taking place.  Nobody had time to find any obvious ways to break things, and the armies were matched well enough that there weren’t any problems.

However, I do think the screens affected the metagame and deployment choices somewhat.  Maneuver is more important if you aren’t sure where your enemy is going to be, which affects both army selection and deployment.

Saturday

On Saturday morning, I ran DBA Matched Pairs.  As at Historicon, we only had 15mm armies show up, which was a good thing, because the 25mm boards weren’t available yet this time either.  We had some inexperienced players joining in, so we took our time to teach them well and only got 3 rounds in before time ran out.

In the afternoon, I played in the Two Davids sci-fi event, 61 Cygni: Blood, Dirt, Plasma-bolts.  This event use a ruleset inspired by HOTT, written by David Kuijt with the goal of implementing Mechwarrior/Battletech themed battles a bit better than HOTT manages.  There were 8 players on a huge board, the map of Rio de Janeiro that they used for Monsterpocalypse HOTT at Historicon.

The main problem with using HOTT for large scale sci-fi battles is that the guns are huge, but the HOTT shooting ranges are tiny to nonexistent.  David’s rules implement direct and indirect ranged fire at much more plausible ranges, while maintaining most of the feel and rules of HOTT under the surface.  Overall, the rules worked fairly well; but I think they need a bit more polish to really handle the feel of Mech battles effectively.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of this visually impressive event.

David Mitchell’s Skythians kicked butt.

On Saturday night was the Two Davids campaign event: Death To Assyrian Oppression!  This event pitted a half dozen Neo-Assyrian Later Sargonid armies against a gamut of historical enemies.  I played Skythians.

My 5 rounds:

  • Dave Schlanger attacked, I lost and lost my general.
  • Rich Gause attacked, and I lost
  • Jack Sheriff attacked, and I lost; but I killed his general.
  • I attacked David Mitchell and his Skythians, and lost again.
  • Maureen Reddington-Wilde attacked with her Skythians, and I beat her.

I ended up with only 2 points, but at least it wasn’t negative!  In other news, Alex Bostwick was taken over 6 times in 5 rounds (with one suck-up tile) and came in last place with -1.

Thanks to everyone for another great convention!  I hope to see you at Cold Wars 2013.

Tournament Report: Stoogecon 2012

Stoogecon was last month, but I haven’t found time to post a report until now.  I didn’t bring my camera this year, so I only have results and no pictures.

The first event was a DBA 2.2 Open tournament, with 8 players.  I brought my Italian Condotta, IV/61.  I plan to use it at the NICT at Historicon, but I had never used it in straight 2.2, so I thought I’d give it a try.  Overall, I really enjoy playing this army a lot more than I think I ought to.

In the first round, I faced Mike Naughton, who fielded the only other Medieval knight army in the tournament: Teutonic Orders (IV/30).  I beat him 2G-1.

The second game was a tight contest against Jim Naughton’s Middle Imperial Romans (East).  I ended up losing 3-4 after we each had several opportunities to break the 3-3 stalemate with a good combat roll.  This was the first loss for my previously undefeated Condotta.

In the last round, I faced Rob Torres and his Later Pre-Islamic Arabs.  I beat him 4-2.

Jim Naughton won the tournament with no losses.

The second event was Matched Pairs, using the February 14th DBA 2.2+ Beta rules.  We hoped to play 4 rounds, but unfortunately some players dropped out to play DBM, so we only ended up with 6 players and 3 rounds.

Just like last year, I brought Later Achaemenid Persians with the Auxilia and Psiloi options, and Early Bedouin.  After last year’s experience with these armies, I decided the pair wasn’t actually very well matched.  However, I think DBA 2.2+ has improved the matchup in several ways.

In 2.2, the Bedouin camels suffered against the Persian foot, but was a bit better against its cavalry.  Their ability to play in the dunes was minimized by their high aggression, and not very useful because of the camel’s deficit against enemy foot.

In 2.2+, Camels are now 3/2 and don’t recoil against Cavalry (but quick-flee them).  This gives them at least even odds against Persian Auxilia, and works fairly well against enemy Cavalry.  Also, the Bedouin’s greater number of Psiloi benefit from 2.2+’s Psiloi group move through bad going.

Overall, I expected the matchup to be much closer than it was in 2.2.  In practice, I only really played one game with this army, and it didn’t provide any corroborating evidence.

In the first round, I faced Mike Naughton again, using a Matched Pair I’ve seen him play before: Scots Irish versus Picts.  I chose the Picts with their new Light Spears, and lost 3-4.  Mike went on to win the tournament.

Next, Frank Popecki chose to use my Persians against my Bedouins.  He beat me 1G-0 in the first few turns of combat, so we decided to play it out for fun.  In the rest of the play through, he beat me 4-1.  So, score one more for Persians against my Bedouins.  I won’t believe the Persians are truly better in this matchup for several more games.  With this many low-factor troops, a few winning combats early on can cascade into a quick win.

In the final round, I fought Rob Torres again.  I chose his Palmyrians, with lots of Cataphracts, against his Later Pre-Islamic Arabs.  I beat him 4-0.  I remember really liking the look of the Palmyrians and enjoying playing with Cataphracts.  Since I don’t have a Cataphract army yet, I may have to look into picking up the figures for these guys.

Over the course of the day I won as many games as I lost, which is pretty good for me across multiple events.  More importantly, I enjoyed playing DBA.  I still prefer 2.2+ over 2.2, which is good since it’s the future. 

Review: A Game of Thrones: The Card Game

In anticipation of four players for game night tonight, I set up Civilization ahead of time… guaranteeing that only three players would show up (thanks, Murphy).

Instead of Civ, which we prefer with four players, the three of us played A Game of Thrones: The Card Game for the first time.  Here’s a short review of how I liked the game, without getting too far into how to play it.

A Game of Thrones is a “Living Card Game” that was once a collectible card game.  That basically means that it’s still best to buy a lot of cards and build custom decks, but the additional cards are available in fixed packs instead of a random selection.

Also fairly obvious: it’s themed after George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, though it was created long before the television show and uses original art instead of screen shots.

We played with three out of the four starter decks from the core set, without any modifications.  Two of us have extensive experience with CCGs prior to playing, and the third has moderate experience.  Because none of us had seen any of the cards before, it took us over 3 hours to figure out the rules and play a 3-player game, which is a lot longer than the recommended time frame.  We acknowledge that we’re typically a slow group compared to published time limits.  I’m confident that subsequent plays would be much faster, probably within the 1-2 hour time frame they suggest.

My one line summary is: I really like this game!  I’m really afraid of buying more cards.

The cards and rules do a great job of implementing the feel of the politics of Westeros.  House Lannister has and uses money, House Stark has a bunch of kids with dire wolves, and House Targaryen has dragons and not much else to speak of.  There seemed to be a few bugs with individual characters: Eddard Stark’s ability clearly should not be to constantly avoid death. And maybe I haven’t read enough of the books yet, but some of these houses didn’t come into direct conflict as much as they did in the game.  But the overall feel of the complicated political interactions between the noble houses of Westeros is implemented very well by these rules.

The multiplayer conflicts and variable player order combine to require very difficult decisions between spending resources to initiate challenges versus saving them to defend yourself; and between choosing titles first versus having the last opportunity to attack.  The game definitely encourages success through good strategy, and I never felt randomness played an overwhelming role in the outcomes.

My biggest concern with the rules is analysis paralysis.  It’s easy to overthink things (“So clearly, I cannot choose the wine in front of you”).  There is also a lot of direct conflict that is veiled in a theme of indirect conflict, so it’s important to put on your “thematic game” and “wargame” hats before starting.

I’m a long time fan of the Middle Earth: The Wizards CCG.  It has a long play time with a lot of high quality thematic content, and it comes directly from the books instead of relying on cinematic interpretations.  My overall feeling of A Game Of Thrones: The Card Game is very similar.  It doesn’t follow the plot of the books exactly; but it does retain the setting and characters in a lot of detail, and it encourages exploration of the world and themes created by the original literary source.

If I compare this experience to the general case of “CCG with vanilla starter decks,” only Middle Earth: The Wizards comes close to providing a comparably high quality experience.  If I compare it to other CCGs that handle more than 2 players gracefully… the only other game that comes to mind is Shadowrun, and even if you could find an opponent, where would you get the cards?

To be fair, we have no experience with the additional cards available for the game, or with deck building, so this review is necessarily limited. There will certainly not be any problem with a lack of depth in the card selection, but it’s not clear whether the huge number of cards that have been released so far are well balanced or not.  It’s hard to find time to build decks anymore with 2 kids around, but I’m sure we’ll get sufficient value from the core set’s $40 price tag.

If I had to come up with a complaint about this game, it would be the packaging.  The core set has the worst box insert I’ve ever seen.  The only way to justify the huge square box at all is to suggest that you can store all of the expansions in it along with the core game, but it begs to be stored as you’d store any CCG: in long card boxes.  Unfortunately, in their attempt to make this into a board game instead of a CCG, Fantasy Flight added pawns and a board that don’t store well along with cards.  The Title Reference Cards are more than adequate to convey all necessary information; I’m sure the board and pawns are only there to make board game players more comfortable.

I would definitely recommend this game for anyone looking for a CCG (or LCG) with a lot of player interaction that supports more than 2 players.  If you also know and love the works of G.R.R. Martin, you can’t go wrong here.

Cold Wars 2012: Saturday

Matched pairs, 15mm games

JM and I volunteered to run a DBA Matched Pairs event on Saturday morning.  Neither of us got a lot of sleep the night before, so when I woke up I just let JM sleep in and started the event without him.

I posted details on Fanaticus, but here’s a summary of the results.   We had 16 players in two brackets.  4 players used “hybrid” basing, which uses 15mm figures with the 25mm base sizes for more visual appeal.  One player had 6mm figures on 15mm bases, and the rest brought straight 15mm figures.

Since each player provides two armies that will play against each other, any scale can be used as long as they’re compatible.

Jason Bostwick won group A with 71 points (3 wins, 1 loss), and Ted Furey went undefeated in group B with 89 points.

May the Beer be With You: Rick Wynn, HOTT matched pairs.

Next was Hordes of the Things matched pairs.  I brought my Battle of Endor “matched” pair built from Star Wars collectible miniatures.  This was not an even match, but it produced historical results.  I need to work on the army composition before bringing it out again.

In the first round, I faced Alex Bostwick using my army.  He chose the Rebels and Ewoks, and I played the Imperial side.  He crushed me quickly, I believe it was 6g-0.  Shooter generals are feeble, but it was too late to change my mind.

Next I played against Jeff Franz using his Perseus vs. Medusa Greek armies in 15mm scale.  I  had Perseus fly behind his line with a harpy to strike his harpy in the rear and kill it.  Unfortunately, in response Medusa turned around and shot Perseus down, recoiling him into his own harpy and killing him. I lost 6g-2 after 2 rounds of combat.

In the third round, Rick Wynn also chose to play the role of the Ewoks.  This game lasted a bit longer, but ended the same way: my shooter general was crushed and the Empire fell.  It was approximately 8g-0 at the end.  Hmm, I have a problem losing generals, apparently.

Finally, I faced Greek Alex who was borrowing a pair of “Arabian Nights” armies from Rick.  They were identical: a Magician general, flyer, dragon, behemoth, and warbands.  These are PIP intense forces, but it evens out when they face each other.  Alex whittled me away, got his dragon on the board, and finally ended up winning 14-0.

Once again, I felt a need to learn how to play HOTT effectively.  The troop interactions are fun, but also new and different, and not what I’m used to.  I ended up picking up prepainted Mechwarrior figures for another HOTT matched pair of armies, so I’ll have more armies to choose from if I ever find the time to play.

Finally, the event we’ve all been waiting for: Condotta Chaos!  As usual, the Two Davids campaign event was the highlight of the convention.

Jeff Franz, looking down.

By the time this event started, I had been running on too little sleep for a long time.  I was basically on autopilot by now.  Luckily the event was run using the DBA 2.2+ rules, which I seem to be more familiar with these days.

I originally intended to take Pike and Artillery as my army options, but then I learned none of the Condotta armies were allowed to take pike.  Since I needed to take spears, I took psiloi to provide support for them. My other options were an additional Light Horse, and of course the pavisiers.

In this event, all knights were allowed to dismount as blades at deployment.  I painted blades for this, so I hoped to get a chance to use them.

In the first round, I drew a high numbered chit, and defended against Jeff Franz’s Condotta.  I placed terrain, and used a road curved around a hill and a wood.  I deployed with two Knights dismounted as Blades near the bad going to act as bad going troops.  He very helpfully placed his Artillery on the same flank, and I sensed an opportunity.

This was the only game when I took advantage of a 2.2+ rule that I remembered but the enemy forgot.  He kinked his line, so I contacted his ungrouped Artillery and caused it to conform to my column of blades so I could fight it without an overlap.  It wasn’t without risk: I had to survive one round of combat against a knight before I could get back into bad going.  With the threat from his artillery neutralized, our lines clashed and I eventually crushed him and killed his general: 4g-2.

In this campaign, losing a general meant rolling on a table to see whether the general escaped (no effect), was captured (the only way for a winning defender to gain a vassal), or killed (causing the army to lose their vassals).  Jeff’s general escaped alive but embarrassed.  Fooey, I could use a good vassal!

Jan Spoor, looking down.

In the next round, I got to choose between two high numbered tiles and so I was attacked again.  This time I faced Jan Spoor and his… wait for it…  Condotta!  He used the same composition that I had.

I rolled as the defender and placed similar terrain: minimal bad going with enough room between them to play, and a bent road.  I deployed all my knights mounted, and left two elements of bait to the left of the woods.  He deployed three elements on that flank and took the bait!  Oh wait, he also brought his General with him so he wouldn’t be out of command.  That wasn’t part of my plan…

In the end, it was a very close, hard fought battle.  He had superiority on the left flank, but I managed to kill enough in the center that I pulled off a 4-3 victory before I died.  Once again, since I was defending, I didn’t gain any vassals.

Rick Wynn, looking down.

In round 3, I drew two tiles again since I won, and once again my numbers were too high to attack with.  Rick Wynn attacked me with his Medieval Germans.

I defended, placed very similar terrain again, and once again placed two elements of bait on the left flank. This time they were on a road, making them look extra fancy in their steel stirrups and poofy sleeves.  I deployed one knight dismounted, since Rick had more heavy foot than I did.  He also took the bait, but he took an entire spear quad to counter it.  This was great news.  As long as I could threaten them enough not to move back to the center, I was confident I’d never need to face them.

It was either this game or the previous one when I finally figured out how to wheel my army into advantageous matchups effectively. In this game it really clicked and worked well.  I swapped my elements into place so that it was in Rick’s benefit to walk forward, and in my interest to wheel into a better position, and it just worked really well.

But Rick is a good player, and he did a very good job of protecting his flank with the woods on his side.  I managed to hit his line hard enough to do some damage, but after my initial combat advantage I started taking casualties.  Pretty soon I was only one element from dying, but I managed to kill his general and win 4g-3.  In the end, two of my elements and one of his had done a 180 in the middle of the board, it was a real mess.

This game demonstrated the difference it makes when you don’t lose rear support when a front rank dies in 2.2+.  My psiloi support survived at least 2 rounds of combat against his knight, but eventually lost a 2-2 mutual quick kill roll. A Knight killing spears and following up into a Psiloi with double overlaps is not necessarily a good deal for the Knight… it’s certainly dangerous, possibly too dangerous.

Since Rick lost his General, he had to roll on the CMAT table as well, and I captured him.  A vassal at last!

Mark Pozniak, looking down.

In the final round, I drew the 1 and 2 tiles.  Finally I got to attack, and so did Rick.  I had a tiny vassal tree compared to other players, but they did look like juicy targets.  I hadn’t played against Poz yet, and he had a big vassal tree that I could reach easily, so I attacked him.

Mark had Condotta, and I think he took Artillery.  He defended and placed terrain.  It looked similar to mine, but with the bad going farther apart and larger.  He also placed two elements of light horse on a flank, and I mirrored his deployment there.

Again this game, I was able to wheel into good matchups with the main line.  I struck his light horse with mine at just about the time our lines met, but it was a minor mistake: I should’ve waited for him to come to me so he’d be out of command radius.

I killed one of his light horse immediately, and this time I didn’t lose my early combat advantage. I won combats all down the line and fairly quickly killed him 4-0.  It was a much faster game, but much less tense than the previous ones.

This win netted me a large vassal tree, and Rick added to it with his attack as well.  In the end, first place was a three way tie between me, Mark, and Rich Baier.  We had a roll-off to break the tie before Dave Schlanger had a chance to tell us who was actually eligible, but everyone else had so many plaques they just let me take it anyway.

So finally, I started winning!  I guess it was better that it was all in one event; now I’m qualified for the NICT and have a measurable reason to try to get to Historicon in July.  We’ll see if my schedule allows it.

Saturday night, we stayed up until 4:30am after the Daylight Savings clock change, playing Red Dragon Inn.  This was quite a fun little Take That! game, with a good theme.  But as with most of these games, it is nothing without its theme and the right players to make the most of it.  It’s not a good choice for our gaming group in Pittsburgh, but it was a lot of fun to play with the rowdier convention crowd.

Those games produced my favorite quote of the convention, courtesy of Alex Bostwick: “Hey guys! Alan is secretly 40!”  Well, just because you don’t tell anyone something, that doesn’t necessarily make it a secret, but I’m old enough to appreciate it when someone thinks I’m in my 20’s.

Thanks to everyone for running these excellent events!  I had fun, as always, and look forward to seeing everyone again.

Cold Wars 2012: Thursday, Friday

Another Cold Wars has come and gone.  It was a lot of fun, as usual, and it has renewed my enthusiasm for going to conventions.  My friendships with friends I rarely see grow stronger, and I look forward to seeing everyone in person again soon.

I did a lot of losing this past weekend, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time dwelling on it.  There are other newer, more interesting things to talk about instead.

Thursday

JM and I rode out with Larry and Rich and set up camp in a second room the hotel accidentally reserved in Larry’s name.  Thanks for the mistake, no other rooms were available!

On Thursday night was Larry’s element-based theme game: Horde Wars.  Armies were required to contain at least one horde, so I took Post-Mongol Samurai with four hordes.  As usual, despite being a “Horde Wars” event, the metagame turned it into “Horde Killers Wars.”  I usually take advantage of the opportunity to try to learn how to use the themed element type, instead of trying to learn how to kill it.  This time, I’m not sure it worked, because I don’t think Hordes are as useful in large numbers as in smaller numbers.

My losses were against Ron Giampapa’s Feudal English, 2-4; Mark Bumala’s medieval army (I forget which one, but it had more Knights), 6-0; and Jason Bostwick’s Sarmations, maybe 4g-0.  Basically I was crushed, and the only elements I killed in the event were Ron’s psiloi rush.

Friday

I actually got sleep Thursday night.. no wait… no, I didn’t.  I had Thai iced tea and a Kahlua drink and couldn’t get to sleep at all, but JM confirmed I was snoring so I must’ve slept a little bit.

Friday morning was the first Big Event: BBDBA Doubles.  JM and I took Hittite Empire (I/24a) with a Mitanni ally (I/19).  This is hopefully the last time this army will be a straight spear line.  Starting with Historicon, we’ll be using the DBA 2.2+ rules for BBDBA, which will convert all the Hittite 3Sp into Light Spears.  This will make them weaker, but more maneuverable.  I’m not sure if I’d be as willing to take Hittites to BBDBA, but I’d be more willing to play a Hittite/Mitanni matched pair.

vs. Two Davids: New Kingdom Egyptians

In the first round, we faced Two Davids with their New Kingdom Egyptians. They placed a mandatory waterway on one edge, and marshes mucking up the deployment zone on the other edge. After protracted discussion, we chose the board edge behind the marshes, and they deployed half their army.  They reserved not only their last command, but a landing party from their CinC command, giving them maximum flexibility in deploying their final forces.  This won’t be legal in 2.2+.

We deployed defensively behind the marshes, with our mounted almost entirely on the right flank.  This gave us a good size bad going force to fight in the marsh while our spears sat behind to prevent breakthroughs.  JM refused their slowed left flank while we attacked aggressively on the right.

We won the bad going, and eventually broke one of their commands, but it wasn’t their CinC.  Unfortunately, it went more slowly than we preferred, and Dave Schlanger was strictly enforcing 2.5 hour rounds this time. We couldn’t seal the deal in time, so we ended up with an unfinished game, 29-10 in our favor.  This is as well as we’ve done against the Davids in person, which is good, but it is no fun to leave a game unfinished.

vs. Greek’s Greeks: Syracusan with Carthaginian ally

In fact, we disliked it so much that we decided to do it again in the next round.  We faced “Greek” Alex and Mark Pozniak playing Syracusans with a Carthaginian ally.  They defended again, but placed their mandatory waterway on the flank instead.  Heavy bad going bogged up the other flank, so we were destined to stick to the coast on our right flank again.

This game went very similarly to the first one, at the start.  We deployed on the right flank with the intent to attack heavily with chariots and support in adjacent bad going, while refusing the left.  The two games were similar enough that they get mixed up in my head.  In this game, we both broke one of the enemy’s commands before time was called, and the game ended 25-22 in their favor.

vs. Hans and Franz: Alex and the Classics

These two unfinished games pretty much spoiled the bracket and meant that someone could advance to the finals with only two wins.  That turned out to be Hans and Franz, who we faced in our final round: Rich Gause and Jeff Franz playing Alexandrian Imperial with Classical Indian ally.

Oh boy, did we end up sucking this game. But at least we finished it.  We placed terrain and deployed centrally and symmetrically.  I deployed Mitanni on the right flank.

I really don’t like blaming the dice, and it felt like we made a lot of mistakes this game; but in some cases we really didn’t have the PIPs required to do what we knew we should have done.  The first turn started with a PIP roll of 1, 1, 1, which just wasn’t enough; and it didn’t get better until it was too late.  Rich was able to push his attack down the road on our left flank unopposed, and I wasn’t able to mount any coordinated attack on the right.

Jeff and Rich both played very well and definitely deserved their 100-0 victory.  But that doesn’t mean I have to like it!  They went on to the finals and won their final game, taking victory in BBDBA doubles.  Congratulations!

In the end, we failed our goal of getting at least 100 points.  Next time we’ll have to take a faster army… hopefully one that we can win with.

After BBDBA Doubles was the Pyramid Pyramid.  This was a Two Davids pyramid format event using biblical era armies and the DBA 2.2+ modifications.

Dave Schlanger ran the pyramid format a bit differently than it’s done out in Ohio.  Instead of carrying our losses each round, the losing players all lose 2 elements and the winners lose nothing.  This provides some strategic attrition to reduce the size of the armies in play, while maintaining the same size army on both sides and rewarding winning instead of playing conservatively.  It worked very well, I’d like to see this form of attrition used more widely.

I had Early Libyans, which looked quite fun in this era: Warband, Bow, Psiloi.  I lost my first game to Jan Spoor’s Sea Peoples, 5-2.  Playing together in the second round, Jan and I crushed Jeff Franz’s Hebrews and Larry Chaban’s New Kingdom Egyptians.  In the third round, the four of us lost to Alex Bostwick, Mark Pozniak, Rich Gause, and JM Seman.  The highlight of that game was my demoralized bow shooting Alex’s general (the CinC) and recoiling it to its death… but we only demoralized one of their commands before they crushed us under their unrelenting boot of progress.

Instead of playing the Midnight Madness event, which would have provided some chance of going to bed at a reasonable hour, 7 of us stayed up until 2:30am playing Arkham Horror.  We had more devoured investigators than I’ve ever seen before, let alone all in the same game.  In Soviet Russia, you don’t finish the game, the game finishes you.  We quit while we were ahead and got some sleep… not enough, just “some.”

Stay tuned for Saturday…