High praise for Warriors of God

Warriors of God covers the 100 years war between France and England at a strategic level (see map at left). This period is the same one covered by BattleLore, though BL is a tactical, battle level game. Many people think this conflict defines medieval warfare. This game has been getting a good bit of buzz, and now there's a rave review.

link

As another contender in the light wargame category, this game has my attention. The wargamers who grew up in the 70s and 80s now have jobs and kids, both of which eat away at free time (I resemble that remark...), so I expect this game niche to continue to see new entries.

There's probably a cool way to incorporate BattleLore as a battle system for this game. Would be a cool thing to do during a con over a weekend.

When is the first SABG con again?

My Thoughts on Conquest of the Empire

I know that I am somewhat late and I don’t want any wise cracks, but I just now got around to getting Conquest of the Empire. I have yet to play, but would like to.

I played CoE back in the 80s while in college. I was too poor to have my own set, but I managed to get in several games with friends. I was all too happy to see Eagle Games put out the new version and overall, I am quite pleased with it. But there is something that bothers me and it was on my mind all day at work. When I got home I searched around on the net to see if anyone else had mentioned it, but I could not find any such evidence. How about my local gaming compadres?

This is what concerns me: As far as I can tell, there is no reason that I would want to buy cavalry or catapults over infantry. They cost more and are less effective. Maybe if they had some kind of special use, but if they do I cannot seem to find it. Did I miss something here? This REALLY bugged me today. I was so happy with the new changes in CoE2. The senate thing was cool. I like the alliance thing and the influence markers are great. So what happened with the battles? Could I have had too much Peach Fresca when I was reading the rules? Could I have accidentally been sent the unfinished proto-type rules in some kind of a quality control error?

Please tell me your thought on this. There MUST be a reason to spend the Roman Citizens hard earned taxes on cavalry and catapults. If my worst suspicions turn out to be true, then I hope you will allow me to share with you some proposed house rules that may remedy the situation. I would like to know your feedback.

Atomic Comics and Gaming

Yesterday evening I stopped by the closest FLGS to my house, Atomic Comics and Gaming, on Broadway, roughly across the street from HEB Central Market. The store is relatively new, having opened within the past year and has a great location right in the heart of a busy retail district. I was initially hopeful, as from the street I spotted a rack of board games on the wall. Unfortunately, once I inside I found what looked to me like a store on the ropes.

First the positives:

• Gaming Space: The store has dedicated 2-3 gaming tables at the back which are for free, open gaming. Though the lighting in the store seemed just a tad dim and the space a bit cramped for the number of tables, this looked area looked like it would work for a small group.


• Location: For me the location, about 3 miles from my house, is ideal. Plus, being across the street from Central Market and a few other good eating places would make any mid-game-day reprovisioning quite convenient. Parking around the corner on a side street seemed adequate.


• Video Games: One thing I think every FLGS should have is a few arcade games. Its always fun between game sessions to blow off some steam with a good fighting game and even have a quick king of the hill type tournament against your gaming group. Atomic Comics has a 2-3 arcade games in the store set up for just this sort of fun.


• FFG presence: The store did have Marvel Heroes and World of Warcraft on the shelf, priced at full retail.

Now the negatives:

• Lighting: The entire store could use a healthy increase in footcandles. My overall impression was that the store had a dark and dreary atmosphere inside. Last night actually had clear skies, so I don't think this can be blamed on cloudy winter weather. In particular if we were to ever use the gaming space, lighting might become an issue.


• Atmosphere: Thinking back, I'm not sure whether the actual temperature in the store was cold or whether this impression was merely psychological. The floor of the store is not carpeted and the ratio of merchandise to floorspace is pretty low, giving the impression that the store seems somewhat barren. The walls of store were painted with a dark color, with lots of comic posters all over the place. My overall impression of the store's "theme" was was that it seemed like a converted basement bedroom of a comic-geek teenager. The girl behind the counter had bouncey Tejano music playing through the store audio system, which at least to me, didn't seem to go too well with the pseudo-gothic theme of the store.


• Merchandise: The board game content was approximately 5-10 games, all priced at full retail. I don't remember exactly what all of them were, but other than the FFG stuff I don't remember being impressed by the selection. A few Steve Jackson titles, I believe... On the store's website they adverstise as being a certified hub for all things Wizkids. I figured I'd at least be able to get an occasional in-the-neighborhood fix of a Mechwarrior CMG booster or two from the store. Unfortunately, they didn't have a single booster pack from the game in stock. I did see a few Heroclix items on sale, plus a fair amount of Magic and a few other CCGs. Overall, the store seemed about 80% comics.


• Activity Level: I visited the store at approximately 7 PM on a Thursday night. I was the only customer in the store. No gaming activity of any kind was underway. One of the fun things about going to an FLGS is seeing what other geeks are playing. Perhaps this isn't entirely a fair criticism of the store itself, but the activity level in the store was zero.

Conclusions:

• The store is hurting. Maybe I came on a bad night, but the store was dead. I was looking forward to throwing them a bone or two, but I honestly couldn't find anything I was remotely interested in buying.


• We are very lucky to have a store like Dragon's Lair in our town. I need to shop there just a bit more to show my support.

BattleLore Report

Al and I met at 7 at DL to play BattleLore. I set up while Al skimmed the rules. I covered a few more items, and we started. We played a scenario w/ full lore rules, but a fixed council to keep it a little simpler. I had lots of cards, but Al had more total lore masters.

Things ebbed and flowed across the battlefield. As always I never had quite enough control over my troops. The variety of troops was nice. Different kinds of foot and cavalry, a few archers.

The lore helps to smooth out the luck, IMO. Rather than a straight-up miss, you pick up a lore token, which softens the sting. Then your lore cards help you mitigate poor command cards to some degree. Plus the lore council is fairly cool. It's only "cool" rather than "super-cool" because there's a lot of overlap among the different cards reducing the differences among the people.

The downside of all this cool stuff? The game takes longer. Al and I were tied 4-4 @ 9 when we had to leave. The lore deck has to be set-up, and then it requires shuffling on top of deploying the units. The extra stuff in the lore cards, especially healing, stretches out the game. For example I had a healing mist that let me reinforce several weak units, otherwise Al would have won before we had to leave.

I don't have any real complaints, but if I were going to make one up it would be duration to complexity ratio. The game length might be pushing it a little bit for this game. If I'm going to invest that much time in a single game, I'd like to have a lot of control, but the system is set-up to deny you a lot of control.

I like the game and the C&C system. Unit variety, terrain, chaos, magic. At an abstract level it actually models warfare pretty well. Fast and simple for a wargame.

Anyone looking to play?

In Further Praise of Valley Games

I just received my upgraded, wooden dice for Command and Colors: Ancients yesterday from Valley Games. I cannot overstate how much of an upgrade these finely crafted dice actually are. The picture above, borrowed from the Valley Games website, just doesn't do the dice justice. The paint used has a metallic finish to it, giving the swords and helmets just the right amount of gleam. The dice are a bit smaller than the horrid, plastic garbage dice provided by GMT, making them much more dice tower friendly. In addition, the feel of wooden dice in your hand seems much more appropriate to the theme of the game than the cold, slick, black plastic dice that come with the game. Perhaps as you play you can picture some ancient Greek craftsman carving these little cubes as the hoplites marched out the gates of the city-state...