Category: games

DBA at Legions… on a Friday??

I met JM at Legions this Friday, to play some DBA, and discovered a latent desire to play DBA in several other Legions gamers as well. They should really get out on a First Monday of the Month, since the Stooge crowd has other plans on Friday nights.

I arrived shortly after 9pm and waited for JM to finish up his Flames of War game while I tried to wake up… I really could’ve used a nap. I brought 5 armies so there would be plenty of different opponents, and ended up playing 4 games total.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures while I was playing…  I’m writing down my thoughts primarily so I’ll remember them.

In the first game, JM played II/12: Alexandrian Macedonians with the 4Ax option, against my II/7: Later Achaemenid Persians. I took my now-standard mix of 3x4Sp, 1x3Ax and 1x2Ps.

At this point I hadn’t waken up yet, and I don’t remember much of the game. But I do remember it was fairly tight, and I remember the pivotal event: I had my mounted force on my right flank, and I was able to surround Alexander (3Kn) on the front, one flank, and rear, for a +2 (or +3?) to +3 quick kill. Of course, it ended up 1-6 against me: I lost an element and the rest of my mounted fled in all directions. Alexander easily picked off one last element for the win… pretty much a historical match up the whole way.

In retrospect, the one error I know I made but failed to correct was to deploy three woods instead of two woods and a steep hill, for arable terrain. Oops! It obviously didn’t help me much…

During the first game, John ran home to get his DBA army, which he had never played yet: III/64, Nikephorian Byzantine. This is a bit of an oddball with its large base elements: 1x6Kn, 3x8Bw. In the second game I played against John, once again with my Later Achaemenid Persians. I tend to use them when teaching the game since it’s a fairly straightforward force from a rules perspective (if not a tactical perspective).

John had read the rules but never played the game, but despite the Byzantine general’s inexperience, my Persians remembered their recent defeat by superior Yuan cavalry and were fearful. I deployed two woods and one steep hill at three points of a triangle, 6-7″ from the edges. John won the edge with the steep hill, which I had planned for, but that left me with the two woods on my flanks, and not quite enough room to deploy my full force as widely as I’d prefer.

I deployed my spear block between the woods with my General in reserve, my bad going troops on the right flank, and my cavalry on the left. My 2x3Cv snuck in next to the woods, and my 2x2LH were in column behind my line, faced left to sweep out around the flank.

John deployed his bow elements on the hill (as I hoped), his cavalry facing my left flank with a rear line in reserve, and his light horse on my right flank in position to threaten my camp. He had a lot more room to deploy than the space between the woods, so he was cramped when trying to move in on my left flank.

On my right, he threatened my camp with his light horse. In response, I directed my psiloi through the woods towards his light horse and also redeployed my two light horse elements to the opposite (right) flank behind my main line. The psiloi forced his horse to retreat, gaining advantage on that flank.

Meanwhile, in the center he walked down from the steep hill as I wheeled my spear to reduce the room for his cavalry even more. Eventually the light infantry on my right flank joined in the battle against his bows while my light horse prevented his light horse from threatening my camp. In the end I killed some of his bows, while he punched a hole in my spear line with his Knight, leaving him with 2 kills and me with 3. But my spear line was now vulnerable, so I needed to get one more kill…

I advanced out of the woods toward his remaining bows, and flanked his light horse with my two light horse. I killed his light horse with mine and ended the game, but the bow fight was fruitless.

But wait! I think my light horse were out of command range and I didn’t have enough PIPs to move them both… but I’m not sure. We decided it was a Pyhrric victory at best, since we couldn’t determine the initial element positions closely enough to be sure of the command radius, and we were both glad we learned from that game.

In the third game, JM played Warring States Chao Chinese (II/4c) against my Skythians (I/43a). While he went to the rest room, I swapped out the 24″ board for a 30″ board so I’d stand a chance. I ended up being the attacker (no surprise), and he deployed with two woods on one side and an empty board on the other.  I got my preferred board edge and he got no terrain on his side at all.  If I were him I’d probably have used more terrain to ensure the Skythians had to attack a defensible position.

He deployed with all his bow on my left flank near the board edge, with the line extending to his cavalry near the center of the board. Wow, 30″ boards look a lot bigger, there’s plenty of room to get around the sides.

In response, I deployed my light horse in two columns of four with my general between them, and my bad going troops on my right flank in case he swapped some bow over to that side. My plan was to outnumber his cavalry on the right flank, possibly using my bad going troops to screen his bow if he swapped it to that side (he didn’t), and to ignore his slow-walking foot on my left.

This worked as planned, with a little help from JM. In the first turn, he launched his LH far out into my field, isolated and alone, and I picked them off. I don’t think this was the best move for his LH, since it’s easy to kill elements when you outnumber and surround them.

This initial Light Horse battle reminded me a bit of my very limited understanding of the tactics used in Go. JM used a PIP to move into a disadvantageous combat, despite my warning against it: he had a plan. I told him it may be better to force me to use my PIPs instead. This is similar to how I understand Go should be played. Technically, the rules say that you use stones to surround your opponent and capture their stones, but in reality good players use only the stones required to demonstrate that it is inevitable that you will eventually surround your opponent, and no more. If they force the issue you prove it to them, but there’s no use in either side expending any resources on a foregone conclusion.

Similarly, in DBA if you know the outcome of a situation is inevitable, then force the other player to spend PIPs to resolve it. Since DBA has randomness (unlike Go), they might not have the PIPs required, and may not be able to complete the attack. It may not be the most important way for your enemy to spend PIPs, especially if you can use other troops to increase the threat somewhere else. At the very least, making the enemy spend 1 PIP instead of you incurs a 2 PIP advantage overall.

This realization begins to show me how to see DBA primarily as a PIP management game, rather than a combat result game. 

After his second LH was inevitably destroyed, I moved on to the rest of his flank and faced his 3xKn (gen), though I thought it was a non-general knight. Oops! He killed a light horse or two while I surrounded his flank, but I never doubted the outcome: my concentrated forces eventually took out his general and I won.

In the last game, I played II/4c Warring States Chinese (Chao) against JM with II/12 Alexandrian Macedonian. Apparently we met in India somewhere, judging by the palm trees we used for terrain.

I was defending and once again, laid out 3 large terrain pieces: two woods and one steep hill in a triangle, directly in the deployment zone. This time I got the steep hill on my right flank and a wood on my left, and JM got a central wood opposite me. It was a very tight deployment for me between the bad going, with barely enough room for my 4x4Sp. I deployed my spear line centrally with 2x4Cb in the woods to the left, 1x4Cb on the hill to the right, my chariots behind the main line, and my light horse on my far right flank to the right of the steep hill.

He deployed everything on my left flank, with his artillery and bad going troops centrally in the wood. He advanced, and I brought my LH around the flank to threaten his Artillery if he left the woods. On the left flank, he wheeled in to line up his pike block between the bad going, and send his light horse around my flank to my camp. I responded by sending my bow through the woods to ZoC his pike block’s flank, and by sending my reserve HCh to protect the camp.

He shot one of my LH with his artillery, while my spear block moved up to take on his bad going troops. On the left flank, my two bow units successfully delayed the advance of the Pike block to meet my spear’s advance.

I ended up killing his 2LH, a few pike with my bows, and enough elements in the center to seal a victory.

I think JM put up a good defense, especially with his use of the artillery, but he was really trying to shove too many units into too small a space on my left flank, without any bad going support on his flank.

Update:  Oops!  We made a mistake: artillery can’t enter bad going off-road.  That would have changed things significantly on that flank.  

During my last games with JM, John coached Mike through his first game of DBA with some help from JM and I. Mike borrowed my Persians to face John’s Nikephorian Byzantines again, but they didn’t fare as well this time: John deployed as the attacker to set up some very good matchups, and wore down Mike’s cavalry with his bows.  It was a fine demonstration of the game mechanics, and Mike is also interested in playing again.

I managed to get out of the store at around 1:30am after paying my “play at the local game store” tax.

Overall, we all seemed to enjoy these games and learn from them. Playing with relatively new players fooled me into thinking I knew what I was doing… sometimes. And I really do enjoy the 30″ board more than 24″. Maybe Friday can be 30″ DBA night and first Monday of the Month can be reserved for 24″ boards?

Thanks for the great games! I’m inspired to paint more armies now so we can have more unique opponents.

BBDBA at Legions, March 2010

Tonight at Legions DBA night, we played BBDBA.  It was my first time playing a “proper” BBDBA game by the Rules As Written.  I brought my Later Achaemenid Persians (II/7), and we decided by a roll of the dice that my Persians would face Jim’s Yuan Chinese (IV/48).  Another roll of the dice put Rich on Jim’s team, and Steve on mine.

I put some thought into this game before I got there, but not a lot.  I anticipated the possibility of facing Steve’s Hundred Years War English, which would present a vast array of new tactical problems: lots of artillery and bows.  It was different enough from anything I’ve faced so far that I felt I’d have no chance of winning (but many opportunities for learning from my mistakes).

That turned out not to matter, but the Yuan Chinese presented another challenge: even more cavalry than my Persians. My main pre-planning went into how to split my army into commands that had optimal break points and well-defined tactical purposes.  I settled on a 16 element high-pip command consisting of 8 cavalry (and light chariot), 6 light horse, and 2 psiloi; a 13 element low-pip command consisting of 9 spear, 3 psiloi for rear support, and the C-in-C (cavalry); and a 7 element mid-pip command with 3 Auxilia and 4 Psiloi in an active role.

When it came to playing the game, 7 elements seemed small for a mid-pip command, and I was convinced it was better to put 2 psiloi back from the high pip command into the mid pip.  Jim broke his side’s command into a high pip command consisting primarily mounted but with a bit of bad going support; a low pip all-mounted command; and a mid pip foot command with a bit of mounted support.  The aggression roll made us the defender, and I placed terrain as seen in the accompanying pictures.  I left a wide open space for my spear wall, with enough bad going to anchor its flanks and room for the cavalry to play on the sides.

Next came deployment.  We deployed the spear wall in the obvious open space in the middle, and the bad going troops to the left, with our cavalry in reserve.  In retrospect, there was only one good place to put the cavalry, so we should’ve placed that first, instead. It’s also fastest, so if we had placed it incorrectly it’d be easier to move than the foot.  If we placed the bad going troops last, they could have reinforced either of the spear’s flanks as necessary.

The first picture shows the board after the first turn, which is very similar to our initial deployment (our side on the bottom).  At this point, I basically knew I was screwed and should just immediately give up.  My cavalry was far outnumbered on my right flank, both in number elements and in number of pips, since he had two commands playing against one of mine.  Another major concern was the fact that I attempted to anchor my spear’s right flank on the woods, but I didn’t provide any bad going troops to secure it.  The gap between my cavalry and spear was wide, and a huge problem, since it was big enough for the enemy foot to flank my spear, and my horse could do almost nothing to help.

I’d hope that a Real general in my position would mount an orderly retreat and return to fight another day. But historically, Darius III only ever routed in a very disorderly fashion after Alexander turned his flank, so we decided to let the Yuan play the part of Alex this time around.

From here on out, the battle went very predictably, but it was accelerated by Jim’s excellent die rolling skills.  He had multiple turns in a row where the low-pip command had 4 pips, and was consistently rolling 5’s and 6’s in combat as I rolled 1’s.  Blame it on the dice, I always say!  No, it’s better to learn from my mistakes, instead.  “Oh no, not another learning experience.”

The beginning of the end came on the right flank.  I advanced in an attempt to isolate individual cavalry elements before they left the steep hill and regrouped, and wheeled to the left to defensively increase my frontage against Jim’s line.  It didn’t work: he punched a hole in my light horse with his cavalry general, and was able to exploit it.

The big mistake I made here was deploying my light horse too far to the flank and leaving my stronger cavalry on the left where it did no good.  I also should’ve thrown my general into the fray, since he wasn’t the commander in chief.

In the mean time, Steve was doing better on the opposite flank.   His bad going troops and my spear in the middle outnumbered the enemy’s mid-pip command.  He had control of the flank to the extent that a coordinated attack between the spear and his auxilia could fold the flank easily.

But there were a few problems. One was bad die rolling on our part, of course.  Another was the fact that even if we did turn that flank, it didn’t contain Jim’s commander-in-chief, so it wouldn’t be enough to win the game.  But most importantly, time was running out.  My right flank mission should have been to delay the larger commands, but my impatience got me into trouble and didn’t give Steve the time required to win on his side.

The final image here shows the Middle of the End.  I do think bad die rolls had a disproportionate effect against us on our left flank; we were in a pretty good position overall.

On the right, we had no chance.  By retreating I was able to close the gaps in my line somewhat, but my line was stretched thin and Jim’s had plenty in reserve.  I eventually lost my 5th element there (it wasn’t love), and the command was demoralized.

We were still in the game, but not for long.  We had one turn for me to make an effort not to run away before the spear command was also demoralized and we lost.

I learned a lot, and had a good time despite losing.  In order to fix the game, I think I’d have to change almost everything I did: splitting the commands, deploying terrain, and deploying the army.

In retrospect, my initial split that included 2 psiloi with my cavalry might have helped a lot.  Those two psiloi would have done a good job in the bad going, delaying Jim’s auxilia and protecting my spear’s flank.

But if I had 2 Scythed Chariots instead of psiloi, those would also have helped in my cavalry command, by giving me a bit of punch and increasing the size of the command without a penalty for losing them.

I wonder if the other two commands would’ve worked better if I had given 3 spear and a psiloi to the bad going command.  Steve could’ve used the spear in the good going, and helped the situation overall by reducing pip demands on the central spear command.

That would leave an 11 element mid-pip command consisting of 3xAx, 3xSp, and 5xPs; a 9 element low-pip command consisting of 6xSp, 2xPs, and 1xCv (gen); and a 16 element high-pip command with 8xCv/LCh, 6xLH, and 2xSCh.

One more tweak and it looks even better: give one more Psiloi to the low-pip command to link with the cavalry, and I’d have a 10/10/16 split, which is ideal for break points.   Then, the main problem would be deploying two of those commands without either giving away too much information, or compromising one of the low pip command’s flanks.

I think in order to have any chance of sucess with BBDBA I’ll need a lot more practice with single-army games.  But I enjoy the game even if I fail at it, which is always a good sign.

Thanks for another good night of gaming at Legions, everyone!

The Battle of Five Armies: The Dogs

I’ve started painting figures from GW’s Battle of the Five Armies boxed game. I started with the Wolves and Goblin Warg Riders because I like dogs, and find them easy to paint.  The four units of Wolves and four units of Goblin Warg Rider cavalry represent just under 1/3 of the figures in the Battle of Five Armies box.

These are 10mm miniatures, quite a bit smaller than my 15mm DBA armies.  This is the scale where sane people stop shading anything and resort to block colors with black lining between them.  The results are quite reasonable at normal playing distance (arm’s length), but as seen in the pictures here, they’re not meant for closeups.

These are plastic figures, and the shape of the wolves is exactly the same as the 28mm Warhammer wolves.  All of the plastics are modelled at 4x scale or larger, and then they somehow shrink them down when making the molds.  The figures lose some detail on the top and bottom, since there can’t be any undercuts in the mold, but leaving black primer there hides the defect well enough.

The main complaint I have about the figures themselves is the fact that the poses are all identical.  They’re packed tightly onto the bases and you can’t get much variation in their position.  As far as accuracy goes: the wolves and wargs are the same models, unfortunately.

I’ve heard a theory that Tolkien’s Wargs are actually Andrewsarchus Mongoliensis.  This makes sense from a morphological perspective, and I enjoy the idea and its possible implications. Although it’s hard to interpret the intent of the author when it comes to fictional works, I think that once a book is written, the interpretation of the reader is far more important than the intent of the author.  Stories that stand the test of time will inevitably suffer no end of interpretations inconsistent with the author’s designs, but they will survive them all.

However, I’ve also decided that I don’t really enjoy painting these 10mm guys.  It’s not hard, despite how small they seem, and it’s impressive how little paint it takes to make a figure look painted if you’re leaving black lines between the block colors.  But it’s a very tedious, repetitive process.  Watching (listening to?) the olympics helped a lot, but that’s over now.

I’ve finished painting the goblin infantry as well, but they aren’t all based yet, because I ran out of metal 40mm x 20mm bases until I got more tonight at Legions. That leaves “the good guys” and leaders.  I’ve started the elves, but haven’t gotten very far on them yet.

Blackbeard Update

Here are some second impressions after playing Blackbeard again last Friday, this time with 4 players.

I still think the game feels quite random, but once you get used to the rules it’s a bit easier to gain a bit of control over that randomness.

The KC rules both helped and hurt.  They did provide a greater chance of failure for the pirates, but they also provided an opportunity for greater wealth if they were killed.  Almost half of Frank’s VP came from killing one KC: 11 combat x 2 notoriety, and he retired to turn that into x2 VP for 44 VP total.  That seems excessive to me.  On the other hand, I think we played even fewer Warships this game, since they’re so weak. 

There was a lot more port attacking going on. No one grabbed anyone else’s booty.  There was very little motivation to go take the Buried Treasure instead of just attacking another port.  The game still felt too short in turns, even though it was about the same length in time as our 3 player game.

Overall, I’d still play it again, to see whether I’d want to play it again or not.

Battle at the Crossroads: 2010

Today, I went to Cambridge OH to play in a pyramid format DBA tournament at Battle at the Crossroads.  It was a great day, and I did at least as well as I anticipated.

Battle at the Crossroads is a small annual miniature gaming convention.  There were about 5-6 scheduled games in addition to the DBA tournament, as well as a flea market.  I’m glad I really enjoyed playing DBA, because the rest of the games weren’t very interesting to me.  I managed to escape the flea market without taking anything home either.

I really enjoyed the Pyramid Format. We had 12 players, so in the first round we played 6 1-on-1 games.  For the second round, the winner and loser of each game join their remaining forces, with the winner playing commander-in-chief to the army as a whole; we had 3 2-on-2 games.  For the third game, they split one player off of each group of four to form a fourth group of three, and we played 2 3-on-3 games.  Placement was measured by your win-loss record, with your individual elements killed and losses counted to break ties.

The tournament’s theme was “A Day Under Scythian Skies,” and the eligible armies were Skythians (I/43ab) and all of her historical enemies.  Special rules for the tournament allowed Skythian players to start with an additional element, and to reduce their aggression from 4 to 0 or 1, which allows them a better chance to choose the game’s terrain.  I chose Skythians, since this would be my best chance to field this army competitively. My army was: 3Cv (gen), 8x2LH, 2x3Ax, 2x2Ps.

I didn’t get a picture of my first game.  In this match, I faced Jim K and his Later Achaemenid Persians (II/7: LCh(gen), 2x3Cv, 2x2LH, 1xSCh, 3x4Sp, 1x3Ax, 2x2Ps).  I rolled low for terrain and set up a hill and two small areas of rough.  I set up first with my infantry split onto both flanks, with the intention of swapping two infantry to the other side in reaction to his deployment.  My biggest mistake was failing to do this, but instead swapping my Cv general out from in front of his SCh.  As a result, my infantry reduced the maneuverability of my light horse, and basically pinned them in place.  My other big mistake was rolling lousy for pips every turn… but what can you do?

In the end I killed one of his elements, and he killed 2 of my light horse as well as my general.  This 4 element overall loss ended up being a good outcome as we entered round 2: some groups lost as many as 9 elements in the first round.

In round 2, Jim K and I (on the left, in the first image) played against Rich Baier with Warring States Chinese (II/4e: HCh(gen), HCh, 3Cv, 3Bd, 4x4Sp, 3x3Cb, 2Ps before first round losses) and Ted Hall’s Skythians (I/43a: 3Cv (gen), 9x2LH, 3Ax, 2x2Ps before first round losses).  Ted and I were relative beginners, so we faced off on my right flank while Jim and Rich fought over the other flank.

I deployed well, with some advice from Jim.  I placed 2x2LH far off to the right of the woods, my light infantry in column facing the woods, and the rest of my light horse and cavalry closer to the center.

My primary goal was to take the bad going with my infantry and threaten Ted’s opposing light horse. Rolling 6 pips on my first turn allowed me to achieve it quickly.

Ted responded by sending 2 light horse around my flank, and our groups of light horse faced off.  The bottom of this picture shows the result of this initial combat on my right flank, which pretty much decided the game: my light horse killed his, and then I turned his flank.  Although my initial rolls were lucky, I had my psiloi in reserve to help if I didn’t hurt him in the initial rush.

I ended up killing 5 of Ted’s light horse, breaking his command, and ending the game (since he was commander in chief).  He killed one of my light horse, which seemed lieke a good trade to me!  Jim and Rich may have traded an element each, but there were no decisive reuslts on our left flank.

I was split from that group to join Kevin Serafini (Kushan, II/46b) and John Loy (I/43a: commander in chief) in the third round.  Since John also played Skythians, we split our armies into separate mounted (John’s) and infantry (mine) commands. By now I’ve started to lose everyone’s names and army selections, but I know we were facing Larry Chaban (I/43a), Nick (II/24: 1x3Kn, 11x3Cv), and Tim (I/43a).

We got the terrain roll and set up first.  John placed all the bad going (rough) at one end of the board, and deployed the two mounted commands first with the plan of deploying my infantry after the enemy deployment, to take the bad going. As seen in the picture at the right, they deployed all their forces at the opposite end of the board, and I deployed my infantry in a reserve position behind Kevin’s forces to compensate for this flaw in our plan.

This deployment was almost immediately revealed to be a big mistake, as the enemy’s plan became clear.  Since they had fewer elements than we did, they didn’t want to fight on a wide front on this 72″ board, and risk being outflanked.  Instead, they denied our right flank and turned the table on us: they wheeled their entire line 90 degrees, and forced us to play across the narrow width of the table instead.

Luckily John and Kevin were able to get their faster mounted troops into a better position quickly, but I was left with few pips to move out from behind Kevin and protect our left flank from the impending charge of the light horse.

We did a fairly good job of salvaging the poor deployment, and in the end it came down to a close decision between which of our c-in-c commands would demoralize first.  We lost, but it was a very fun and tight game.  It made me consider the value of playing larger DBA games on a deeper board as well as a wider one.

I managed to do an adequate job of protecting the flank with a loss of 2 out of 7 elements, but I don’t think I took any kills in return.  If I had deployed facing my flank to start with, I think the biggest effect would’ve been to allow the other commands to take higher pip dice for maneuvering without endangering their flank.

After this game, we hung out for an hour or so for Rich’s game to finish, and awards were handed out.  Because he lost in the first round, Larry’s 2-year winning streak was broken, and Rich ended up in last place with no wins.  There were enough token prizes to go around: I got a nice little tower shaped “barker marker” (40mm square measuring piece).

I am very happy with my experiences at my first DBA tournament, and I’d definitely do it again.  I enjoyed playing Skythians, and I was happily not faced with any fiddly rules issues or armies I was unexperienced playing against.  It’s beginning to seem that I understand the rules of this game, but there are very few tactical problems I know the answer to yet.  I probably won’t take Skythians to an open tourney any time soon, but I’d consider them for a book I or themed event (especially since they’re currently my only book I army).

Regarding the special tournament rules for Skythians: I read some concern about the additional element in the army and the reduced aggression, from mailing list posts before the tournament.  However, I heard no complaints about it at the tournament itself, and I don’t think it was as overpowering as some worried it might be.

I figured there was nothing I could do with 9 light horse that I couldn’t do just as well with 8, so I chose an additional 3Ax instead.  I held that element until the last game, and it helped me retain bad going.  I’m glad I had it, but I consider it a slight change in army composition more than an additional element: I never had more than 10 elements after the first game anyway.  Since all the first round players were matched skythian vs. enemy, any relative diference in element count was balanced by the second round (though truthfully I don’t think there was much of a difference anyway).

My lower aggression allowed me to win the terrain roll the first game, but that didn’t help me win the game.  After that, since I wasn’t c-in-c, my aggression didn’t matter anymore anyway. 

Unfortunately I don’t expect to make it to Cold Wars, but I do hope to be at Stooge Con and Historicon for more DBA tournaments.

Thanks to all my allies and opponents for the wonderful games; to Kevin for a ride to and from the venue; and especially to the organizers of this fine event!  It was a wonderful day of gaming.

Blackbeard: Read the Rules

Well, we should’ve read the rules more completely.  Hopefully my re-read will help our next game.

  • We totally missed the KC rules and pirate-controlled KC’s coming into play other than by event cards.  Oops!  No wonder ther was no challenge for the pirates.
  • We missed the fact that cunning can be used for rerolls.

We’re likely to give the game another try, we’ll see how that turs out.

Game review: Blackbeard

Daniel nearly missed a fatal encounter with Blackbeard… or maybe he just knew when to run. Actually, the game wasn’t that bad, but I definitely have mixed feelings about it. I’d like to play it
again, to see whether I think it’s actually worth playing or not.

At its core, this is a straightforward “pick up and deliver” game with a pirate theme, and a “take that” element to provide challenges for the pirates to face. However, as it was produced by a wargame company (GMT), I think it has ended up twice as complicated as it needs to be to provide the same basic gameplay, and feels far more random than it should be.

The game took 3 hours to complete, not including setup time, for 3 players who hadn’t played before (though I read half the rules before we started). That’s within the 2-3 hour timeframe for the game, which is unusual for us, even with games we know.

The basic gameplay is what I expected from a “historical” pirate themed game. You sail your pirate ship(s) around the map to find merchant ships and take their stuff, while fending off attacks by warships. Then, sell the stuff in ports to get money, or attack ports to steal their stuff too.

Each player controls one or more pirates, and the pirates gain “net worth” and “notoriety” through their exploits. Pirates who retire convert their net worth and notoriety into victory points, while pirates
who die or fail to retire before game end only provide VP for their notoriety. When a pirate retires, you can get a new one and continue playing, or just use one of your other pirates already in play.

Some of the seeming complexity of the game comes from the way the rules are written. They’re verbose, repetitive, and hard to read without falling asleep. The play aid is 4 sheet sides, and doesn’t include basic things like the player turn order.

The other things that make the game feel too complex are rules that have little effect on gameplay. Maybe we just didn’t use enough of the “take that” cards (see below for more on that), but we found the effectiveness of warships, storms, and scurvy to be minimal. Playing a warship on another pirate typically felt like giving them free notoriety for killing it, and not like it was a serious obstacle.
Even the worst storm anyone faced didn’t send them back to port for repairs. No one was ever anywhere near running out of crew loyalty, speed, or combat.

And then there was the randomness. Merchant ships are chosen randomly and placed upside down in random locations. You then have a random chance of whether you find a ship or not, with the maximum chance of success at 50% most of the time. When you do find the ship and decide it’s worth looting, it contains a random amount of booty, and a random hostage.  This resulted in a huge disparity in the number of merchant ships looted by various players, and the total amount of loot this resulted in.

The main tactical decision with merchant ships is: Go to India where the loot chart is the fattest. Of course, that depends on the roll of the dice providing India with merchants…

The scarce resource in the game is your total number of actions over the course of the game. Actions come from cards in your turn, and you typically get 1-3 actions per turn based on the card you choose to use for actions. In so many words: when the card deck is almost finished, the game ends.

This mechanic has several effects. First of all, it’s very beneficial to play 3 action cards instead of 1 action cards if possible; but that’s usually not possible unless you have the right pirate. Also, it means that a 4 or 5 player game probably takes just as long as a 3 or 2 player game, because the total number of turns/actions is going to be about the same.

Finally, it means that using cards for their events instead of actions reduces the length of the game, by increasing the rate the deck is consumed. So although on the surface, it seems that by playing more
“take that” cards, you might be able to whittle down other pirates via attrition. In reality, this would only shorten the game so much that the extra damage wouldn’t matter.

I think the combat and storms could matter more in a longer game. But since your holds fill up after looting 2-3 ships anyway, requiring you to go back to port, you end up getting refits regularly anyway. I can see why the instructions include an optional rule to add +2 to all warship combat results.

We haven’t fully explored some aspects of the game yet. For example, I think it may be more worth attacking ports than looting ships. It’s a better use of actions, since it only takes one action to attack and loot a port, but at least 2 (and maybe more) to take a merchant ship. You might not succeed looting a port, but the chances are often greater than the chance of even finding a merchant ship.

Overall, I’m interested in playing again, to see if I’m missing anything, and to see if my greater familiarity with the rules makes it more fun. But my overall impression after one play is that it’s a
huge luck fest, that requires much more effort than I prefer for the amount of fun it gives in return.

Game report: Uncharted Seas, 2…

…In which our heroes remember the importance of reading the rules ahead of time.

Frank and I played Uncharted Seas again on Saturday. We didn’t get to the “setting up and remembering how to play” stage until 10pm or so, and then we had to find the rules for all the new models we’re using.

We were playing almost 1000 points per side. My Dragon Lord fleet consisted of 2 battleships, a squadron of 3 cruisers, a squadron of 3 heavy cruisers, a dragon carrier, and 2 squadrons of 3 frigates each. Frank’s Dwarves had a battleship, a flagship, two squadrons of 3 carriers, a squadron of 2 heavy carriers, and two squadrons of 3 frigates.

The scenario was a simple “line them up and knock them down” setup since we’re still figuring out how to play well. The game ended up lasting about 3 or 4 turns, which is to say, until we stopped at 2am.

When we called time, I had basically lost: I lost all of my cruisers, all but one frigate, and one wing of 3 dragons from the carrier. My carrier was damaged, but my other models weren’t. Frank had damage on many of his models, making them less useful, but only lost a few carriers and a few frigates.

I learned several things not to do, but I’m not sure what I should do instead!

Dragon Lords are fast and have good long range firing, but don’t have good armor or short range guns. Dwarves have heavier armor and much better short range guns. They’re also better at firing forward instead of broadsides.

This presented several difficulties. First of all, my fast frigates were really easy to get too far ahead, where they were stuck out by themselves and got into trouble. Once they were there, they got in the way and acted as a screen, preventing my cruisers from firing through them… until they were crushed. The frigates can only shoot at short range, but once they get that close they’re hosed by the Dwarves.

The other problem Dragon Lords have is difficulty bringing all its guns to bear. To stay at long range, you need to sail around the edges of the table and shoot towards the middle. But if you do that, you’ll only ever get one broadside and possibly minimal front arc shooting. But if you close to get both broadsides into combat, the Dwarves crush you in close shooting.

So maybe I need to use the Frigates as a screen in a more conscious way, or possibly as bait to send the enemy where I’d prefer them to be.

A few problems with the rules are showing their head as well. Maybe it’s just a lack of tactical skill, but I’ve seen this in many miniatures games. When there are both weak and powerful units on the board, the weak ones all tend to get killed off quickly, leaving a duel between a few large units. With large ships being harder to hit by small ones, but killing the small ones much more easily, an equal number of points of small and large ships aren’t really balanced because the small ones can hardly touch the large ones.

The other problem I have with the rules is the specific implementation and maintenance they’re doing with the actual rule book. Spartan Games sells their rule book, but they release rules for new models online instead of selling them. They also make rules corrections and additions available online for free. This is good!

The problem is, these rules additions are spread aross many files and it’s a big pain in the butt to actually use them, especially in combination with the rulebook, which is not available online. The best case scenario would be One Big File of “everything else” you need except the rulebook.

The reality is much worse. To figure out how to handle the Dragon Carrier, I needed to consult 4 different files: the stat card, front; stat card, back; Nogdra Dragon rules; and Flying rules.

Using these separate files makes it easier for Spartan to release a single update, but it makes the rules nearly unusable because you’re not sure which files you need until a question comes up.

I also don’t like the revision control they have on thier rules. They call the files things like “Flying rules- final.” Well, what happens when you change the final rules? Nothing is ever final, but they don’t have any room for new version numbers.

Overall I’m happy and I’d still play the game again, but maybe not 1000 point battles until we’re more familiar with the rules.

Make Your Own Game: The Game Crafter

I recently discovered a really excellent web site: The Game Crafter.

Here, you can do on-demand publishing of board games, while maintaining ownership of your creation. They have a selection of standard parts you can choose from, such as pawns, meeples, tokens, glass gems, and colored cubes. They also print and cut decks of cards, mounted game boards of certain sizes, and instruction books. Finally, they let you sell your game from their store, similar to the way a site like Cafe Press works.

I haven’t used the service or bought any games from them yet, so I can’t comment on the quality of the components they provide. However, as far as the price is concerned, this seems like an excellent way to get reasonably high quality cards printed, such that they are all an identical size (so you can shuffle them) and without running out of printer ink. The base prices seem like a manageable cost to build your own game and purchase a copy, but it seems like the margins would be really slim if you wanted to sell copies at a reasonable price.

I also discovered a similar site for books and authors: lulu.com. I’m no writer, so that one’s not as interesting to me.

Game report: Skirmish at Jumonville Glen

Family Game Night at Martine’s school was postponed due to weather, so we didn’t play the Jumonville game until last night. It went as well as I expected: successful, but very hectic with a group of 1st-4th graders.

The format of game night was basically a free-for-all: anyone could bring games and play with opponents they found, or borrow games from the school. My game was an oddball. I set it up and waited for people to walk up and decide to play. Lots of kids and a few parents and teachers were interested in the game before it started, and a handful of kids stayed to play.

When I started handing out figures and explaining the rules, there were 6 kids from 1st through 4th grades, Daniel, and me. I decided on 8 players worth of soldiers with the idea that Daniel and I could step out if anyone else wanted to join in.

People came and left a lot between the instructions and the first few turns. We ended up with 4 kids and three adults who pretty much stayed for the whole game, and a few kids who came and left.

The game itself went relatively well. It took maybe an hour and fifteen minutes including instructions. The French started at the base of the cliff, and the Virginians and Indians were at least a foot away. Early on, the battle was relatively even. Then the French got a long run of turns in a row, and did some real damage. We played until the bitter end: the last Indian soldier, dubbed “sniper,” took out 2-3 French before finally being shot for his last hit point

I learned a lot about running games for kids. First of all, most kids of this age don’t want to listen to instructions at all. I’m not sure whether it was a good idea to remove Blood and Swash’s “roll for your soldier’s ability scores” process or not. On one hand, it was some setup time that was avoided. On the other hand, it would’ve gotten the kids to do something while learning about their soldiers’ abilities, instead of just listening to me talk.

I think it might work best to set things up ahead of time, and introduce the rules by playing the first turn. Describing the rules to players who are just going to leave is a waste, and you’ll have to re-explain for people who walk up anyway.

I got a hint of another problem when playtesting with Martine, but it was more obvious with a group of kids. Kids have short arms, and they’re short. It’s not easy for them to reach figures in the middle of the table, especially without dragging their arms over all the terrain. The Blood and Swash games they play with kids at conventions did a great job solving this problem I didn’t know I’d have: the games are in a very small (1-2′ square) model bar room, with outside walls. The outer walls require kids to lift their arms high enough not to hit any of the contents of the game board. A ship’s deck model with railings on the sides might also work well for this.

The useful attention span of these kids was also only about an hour. Things can’t go on longer than that without losing steam.

As for the rules themselves: we ended up making some mistakes, though the players were mostly insulated from this. In an earlier playtest, I could never remember to tell players to activate 2 soldiers on face cards, so I didn’t even try to implement this rule last night.

The other big rules mistake I made was allowing charging into close combat without any bravery tests. I forgot this the first time someone charged, and so I skipped it completely from then on. It didn’t really make the game worse, but it was simpler and different: we had a lot more close combat than in playtesting. One tactic the “free charge” ended up allowing was leaving close combat to charge a different soldier in order to get the charge bonus for fighting. I didn’t have a rule that said you can’t leave combat, because most of the time it would not be beneficial to do that anyway… as long as you have to make a bravery test to charge again.

I had enough d20’s for all the players to use, and I said players could keep them if they stayed for the whole game. Obviously for most of the players who left in the middle, this wasn’t enough motivation. But I think there was one player who was staying on in the end only to get the free stuff. It’s probably worth doing this again, but I won’t have any expectation that it’s going to keep everyone playing forever.

I didn’t have any figure casualties, not even a bent musket. 3 of my trees broke off, but I mostly expected that; I’m surprised they didn’t break off earlier when adults were playing.

Overall I’m quite happy with how it went, and I’m really glad Daniel was there to help me herd the cats. Thanks! In the end, it was probably just an excuse to paint figures and terrain that seemed interesting, but we had at least 2-3 games worth of “playtesting” as well as one “real” game so that’s worth it. I’m not likely to try anything with more complicated rules at an open game night, at least until some of the players really show they’re interested in learning more.