Checking In

So... an upcoming house move has momentarily curtailed my planned solitaire game quest for 2011. To be honest, I have kind of decided that playing board games solitaire is only slightly more entertaining than doing an income tax return, so perhaps for the best.

In the mean time, I've been wasting life's precious moments on the following:

• DoomRL: The latest version of the rogue-like incarnation of all things Doom. As previously reported, the turn-based nature of this game makes it feel quite similar to the FFG board game, i.e., rolicking good fun. Besides, ASCII splash damage from the BFG is fun to watch.

• Men of War: Take the hard core detail of Squad Leader and port it into a Russian-made RTS, crank up the mission difficulty to max, and you have Men of War. I love an RTS that demonstrates the difference between a 1941 Russian T-34/76 and a KV-1b. The scale is individual soldiers, guns, and vehicles. Give the demo and quick ride on Steam, and let me know if you ever want to try some co-op Comp Stomp.

• GMT's Fighting Formations: Since I've been snuggling the rulebook and playbook for this game in the spoon position each night for the past month, I thought it prudent to at least get it on the table and push the pieces around a bit. Yep, solitaire sucks, but, wow! What a finely crafted system. I can't wait to play a lot more.

• Shopping: Various fun things I've ordered: Ikusa, 1830, the new Twilight Imperium 3 expansion (of course!), Yggdrasil (love the theme), Arkham Horror Miskatonic (the system is starting to drive me insane though), Awful Green Things from Outer Space (pure nostaglia).

• Fighting Games: Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and the new Mortal Kombat. Good stuff! My reflexes are not what they used to be... and I never was any good to begin with. Let's play!

Alright... time to go pack some more boxes!

Incoming!

The year 2010 is now long gone. Long live 2011! It's now time to start focusing on a fresh crop of new games to fill our ever dwindling closet space. One of my little mental diversions is to continually polish my shopping cart at the on-line deep-discount retailer du jour (Coolstuffinc at the moment). I add games, think about them, remove them, add them back in, etc., and eventually gather enough momentum to pull the trigger.

Here is what is currently bouncing around the cart:

• Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game - Essentially the sequel to last year's Castle Ravenloft game. I'm a sucker for big plastic, Ameritrash, dungeon crawls, especially ones that don't take 8 hours and leave everyone at the table angry (I'm looking at you, Descent!).
• Thunderstone: Dragonspire - Because the thousand card sleeves this game has already consumed is not yet enough. I'm not yet convinced this is actually a good game system, and I dislike the setup and shuffling, but I find the actual gameplay exciting and rewarding.
• Cosmic Encounter: Cosmic Conflict - An expansion for the best game I never play. More aliens, including some that have decades of playtesting behind them is a good thing. Perhaps I'll show up one Monday with this in tow.

So... what is on your wish list?

Back from Oblivion

Hello, again, everyone! I hope the new year is bringing lots of gaming goodness your way. I have dropped off the face of the San Antonio board gaming scene quite completely these days, and the number of posts here is a reflection of that. Of course, the culprit is this.

Nonetheless, board gaming does continue here at the Fortress of Solitude. I am declaring this the year of the solitaire game. My plan is to invest time into one solitaire game per month for the rest of the year. Here is the current schedule:

February: Hornet Leader, Carrier Air Operations. The plan is to fill out a squadron using SABG Classic member names (since I don't know the current ones), and fly a full campaign. Who gets to fly the trench run and pop the proton torpedo down the exhaust port of the Iranian nuclear bomb factory? Stay tuned.

March: Where there is Discord. Definitely one of the more attractively produced games in my collection, this rather complex simulation of the Falklands War (from the British perspective) cries out for table time. To keep things tense, I'll assign the names of SABG Classic members as individual ship captains. Watch out for those Exocets!

April: Raid on St. Nazaire. Too long has this classic simulation of the British raid on the St. Nazaire U-Boat pens gone unappreciated. Again, to make things up close and personal, I'll assign individual SABG Classic member names to be the leaders of specific commando counters. With casualties projected to be over 50%, it might be time to consider upgrading your life insurance policy.

May: Labyrinth. I know this gem is seeing lots of SABG table time, but I'm postoning diving in until the solitaire game flowchart patch is published in the next C3i. Who knows... I may be kicking myself later for postponing playing this game (much like I did when it took me a year to get War of the Ring to the table. In any event, I have high hopes here.

Summer: Ambush. Hopefully by this Summer, Hornsfan will finally decide to donate his collection of Ambush expansions to yours truly. We'll see... In any event, I hope to lead a rag tag band of SABG brothers through the base game campaign. We'll see who survives to have their memoir converted into an HBO miniseries.

Later in the year.... Okay... I'll need to take a look at the collection to see what else I have to choose from. I know my mint copy of Task Force Games' Intruder (a.k.a., Alien: the Board Game) will be one of them.


What else to catch up on.... Oh, yes.... Yomi. Wow! If you like 2-play duel-style card games and are at all a fan of old school 2-D fighting games (e.g., Street Fighter), then you need to check this out. The designer of the game is the man behind some of the actual design and balancing of recent Street Fighter video games, so he knows the subject matter well. The good news is you can play the card game for free here. I picked up the full set of 10 decks with play mats, and am itching to get some play time in. In the mean time, if you'd like to arrange some on-line play at roughly 15 minutes per game, just shoot me a note or leave a comment here.

Okay... that's long enough for one post. See ya!

Wargaming with Moral Queasiness

Greetings. I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season and keeping warm with good games by a roaring fire... or at least a roaring LCD screen.

One game I've been snuggling up to is GMT's new Labyrinth. This game is essentially an unofficial sequel to GMT's previous Twilight Struggle game. The new game borrows many of the same key mechanics but with a healthy layer or two of extra chrome. For instance, there are now actual military units moving around on the board. Each country not only has a modifiable influence value but now also stability can be changed (aka regime change). Each side has different choices / mechanics with on which to burn operations points. So... a bit more complexity, but in my opinion, good, thematic complexity.

One issue that is tough to wrestle with is the uneasiness one experiences when playing the Jihadist side. For instance, the autovictory condition for this side is to successfully set off a WMD on US soil. Hooray. This is certainly a thought provoking game, but I can't remember ever having played one so directly dealing with the ugliness of attacking civilians.


Perhaps thankfully the game comes with a fully developed solitaire version where you're playing the USA vs. an evil AI Jihadist opponenet. I haven't fully digested how the AI system works, but I'll report back soon.




What else is new?

Lot's of WoW getting played. Thanks to Michael and Chris for the continual gifts of gold pieces and tough to find crafting components keeping me zipping along towards the Level 80 end game. I actually started having WoW dreams last night, so I'm officially taking a break for a day or two. Bad sign.

I figured out that Cool Stuff Inc. will ship card sleeves in bulk to you via USPS first class mail, making their already cheap prices even cheaper. No tax; 35% off retail; and $0.99 shipping makes the transaction quite a deal, especially given that the latest Thunderstone expansion consumed around 350 sleeves.

Netflix is awesome. Unfortunately I now seem to be compelled to put a Netflix-enabled device on every TV. Netflix is now officially a part of the Axis of Evil. Okay... sorry.... Channeling Labyrinth again there for a moment.


Bye for now. Off to find some egg nog!

Essen 2010 Post Mortem

So... I'm back. What can be said that hasn't been said by others already? Probably not much. Here are some random observations:

• At least for me, one full day at Essen is more than enough. Towards mid-afternoon I had the distinct feeling my brain was melting down, and I was causing a permanent lifespan reduction.

• Essen has the best Con food ever. The Germans know how to do junk food. Nothing like a fully loaded (sauerkraut, etc.) 12-inch bratwurst to get your HP back where they need to be. Of course the 3 Euro cokes kind of sucked... but, you have to expect to get screwed when you're trapped in a massive convention center.

• The high end luxury hotel adjacent to the convention center entrance has the swankiest, cleanest, most full featured restrooms I've encountered outside of the United States (including Tokyo). After a seven hour train ride to get to Essen, this was much appreciated.

• By planning out my booth targets in advance I was able to get everything I wanted to buy or pick up in less than one hour, which loaded full a backpack plus another large carrying bag. Overall the Con seemed to have a much smaller crowd this year than when I was last there. I'm sure having a mental map from my previous visit helped a lot as well.

• Next time I go, I'm going to somehow get a press pass and get in on Wednesday. Waiting in line is for suckers.
  

• Germany in October is COLD. I have new sympathy for the participants in the Battle of the Bulge.

• At least a quarter of the floor space at Essen is devoted to children's games, which is a huge area. There was also a big inflatable bouncy castle zone, making this a potential family destination... assuming your spouse will hold down the fort while you go do the other 75% of the Con.

• The night before the Con I had dinner with three native Germans I work with, all architects and engineers. They asked me what I was going to do the next day. I thought to myself, "Hey, I'm in Germany where everyone is a hardcore board gamer. Its the national pastime, right? Surely they'll all be pumped about Essen as well!" I told them, "I'm going to the go to Essen to the Spiel board game convention! Isn't that awesome!" ...Crickets... crickets... "Ugh... you're going to do what? Where? Ummm... why? Have you ever been to Essen? Its probably one of the least interesting cities in Germany. Why not go someplace nice or fun like Heidelberg? Board gaming?" So... pretty much the same reaction you'd get from a random group of Americans. Myth dispelled.
  

• Sean: I have your Power Grid promo cards.

Anyway... now to play some of these new games!

Back to Essen

Well... it now appears about 95% likely I'll be there again this year, though unlike the photo above the Essen I remember was dark gray and full of rain. I managed to hornswoggle a business trip to Europe during exactly the right time to enable me a day at the Con. Still, getting there will involve 3.5 hours each way on a train and a very long day.

Worth it? We'll see. Last time I finessed my way into the Con during dealer-only set up day (Wednesday) and snarfed up all the good stuff before it was tainted by the masses. This year I'll be there on Friday, which I remember as being akin to Mortal Kombat (with wall-to-wall German chain smokers in your face)!

If I see any good free stuff I can get extra copies of, I'll definitely do so.

In other related news, Master Persuader Michael seems to have sucked me back into something I swore I had forever forsaken: WoW.

Enough Quiet, let's say "I wanna" like 8 year olds

I keep telling my kids that it's impolite to just shout out things you want for your Birthday, Christmas, or a random Thursday. But since everything has been so quiet around here, I'll kick things off:

Right now I want to:

1. Get Dominion Prosperity
2. Try Dominant Species
3. Get 7 Wonders (probably)
4. Get in some emergency gaming, since I'm going to miss Monday night.
   

Blood Bowl on Steam

Although apparently a sequel is approaching soon, the current incarnation of Blood Bowl PC (including the expansion and strategy guide) is only $10 on Steam this weekend. If you pick it up and want to play, just post a comment here.

Oh... and I just burned a B&N gift card to pre-order Civ V. In the mean time, I'm back to playing (badly) Fall from Heaven 2.

De-shrinking Castle Ravenloft this evening for solo play. Anyone else have an opinion on this one yet? Descent light?

Persistence Against Consistency

Another two weeks of daily Angband; an other level 30 Dwarf Fighter slain by a basilisk. This game will at some point cause my brain to explode. Anyhow, back to Level 1.

In more happy news, I did just order a pile of games:

Thunderstone plus expansion: Yes, I'm late to the game, but I was finally persuaded by marketing.

Axis and Allies: Europe 1940: Because I've gotta catch 'em all.

Bang: Wild West Show: Because I needed more reason to de-shrink Bang: The Bullet.

Arkham: Lurker on the Threshold. Because the game is not yet large and complicated enough.

Perry Rhodan: The Cosmic League: Because I don't yet have the stones to unshrink my mint copy of Merchant of Venus.

Carson City: In celebration of finally completing Red Dead Redemption

Heroscape D2: Again, gotta catch 'em all.

Talisman: Highland: I like my expansion boards to be symmetrical, so I have at least two more to go after this.

PC Gaming: I picked up Mount and Blade: Warband off this weekend's Steam sale.

Adios for now!

Grognardian Goodness

Happiness is coming home to a big, chunky box from GMT Games sitting on your doorstep. Today I arrived to find GMT's Pensacola 1781 and Wilderness War (reprint) patiently waiting for me. For some reason I seem to be going through a musket phase...

The Wilderness War box in particular had a new, satisfying heft to it over the previous edition, with a nicely mounted board packed inside, worthy of the hoary ghosts of Avalon Hill. I'm a huge fan of the French-Indian War theme since way back in my days as a elementary school kid in Pennsylvania learning about Iroquois raids on the hapless colonists who lived in the area and reading lots of Fenimore Cooper. I find this particular card-driven wargame to be one of my favorites and particularly well suited to PBEM play due to the relatively low unit density.

Pensacola 1781 (still in shrink at the moment) seems to be a Battles of the American Revolution game on steroids, with the full campaign game predicted to last 8-10 hours. This is quite a feat, as the game system itself is quite simple and fast, so I'm curious to see the scale of the fight. The game includes French, Spanish, British, American, and even Native American forces who fought in the battle, so there is bound to be lots of chrome here.


In other news.....

• Come join your fellow SABG pals on League of Legends. Post your handle in the comments, and I'll "friend" you there. Its good, free fun.

• Another random recommendation: Puzzle Quest 2 (platform your choice, most likely) is dangerously addictive fun. Now if I could just catch up to Hornsfan on the leaderboard....

• This looks like good gaming food.

It appears, sadly, that 1 vs. 100 is toast.


Okay, enough rambling. I have some shrink wrap to pop.

Washington: American Martyr

So... after suffering two terrible defeats at the hands of the Master Deceiver (making my lifetime record for the game 0-3), I managed to salvage a very ugly victory today in GMT's Washington's War.

American superhero George Washington (under my command) led a bold early war assault against Cornwallis in Delaware, triumphantly watching the tattered British army retreat Dunkirk style out to sea. Then... General Washington turned around. At his back was Clinton (I think... or perhaps it was Howe) marching down the one-way street onto the Delaware peninsula. Unfortunately, the American Navy apparently hadn't yet been invented, and the French were still frolicking in Paris with Benjamin Franklin. So... no American Dunkirk. Washington rolled the dice, lost, and was summarily executed with the rest of his surviving troops. The horror!

This was all on turn 2 of 12, so we decided to play on. Jon was one pesky American army overrun away from auto-victory, so I thought we'd be having an early lunch. Pretty much the entire British Army, almost completely intact, roamed and pillaged the countryside. Congress was disbanded and dispersed nearly every turn. Somehow, though I managed to get enough military and political control on the board to stay alive.

Time marched on and the people continued to turn to the light side of the Force. Jon had stormtroopers in every colony, but he couldn't quite snuff me out. In the end, I think the final tally was three British "colonies" (counting Canada) to my 8 or 9 (we may have had a neutral or two). USA! USA!

Wow, what a tough and closely fought game. Washington's War is a deep and fascinating game, with mechanics elegantly depicting the asymmetry of military power vs. guerrilla agility and grassroots support. This one is a keeper.


So... next on the agenda (besides anything else that I'm able to squeeze in) is to finally get Paths of Glory to the table! The Master of Deception and I are committed to making this happen.

Other news:

-- 100 Rogues on the I-whatever is tons of fun. A great brain diversion during long meetings where you're able to sit at the back of the room.

-- Speaking of Rogue-likes, I just downloaded the latest builds of Stone Soup, Angband, AliensRL (i.e., set in the Aliens movie universe); and DoomRL (yep, set in the Doom universe). I have a few trips coming up, so this should keep me busy on the work laptop.

-- Probably late to the game, but I just read Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Good, old-fashioned military Sci-Fi.

-- Next up in my board game shopping cart: Rommel in the Desert (finally), Talisman: Highland expansion; Memoir '44 Breakthrough expansion; and something else that I haven't yet decided upon that will get me $100+ in the cart. Recommendations?

-- I'm still alive in the Great Battles of the American Revolution World Board Gaming Championship PBEM tourney. I'm slightly up on my opponent, but one bad roll could send me to the locker room.

Alright.... fading back into the woodwork....

Around the Town

Some items, in no particular order:

• I have a new pile of Bridge Books (Thanks, Fred, for the heads up). This includes ~30 beginner's books. Some are standard "Bridge in a few hours" types. Many of them are British or Old (which teach slightly different/archaic bidding systems, but are otherwise fine). These are free to a good home. Some of them are actually good (deep) beginner's books that cover one aspect in detail (Bidding, Declarer Play or Defensive Play). I'd be happy to float these around for extended loans.
  
• Do you have any summer gaming resolutions? I do. I've actually been getting more and more of my collection played (and rotating through the not-recently played games at a reasonable clip).
  
• Thanks to Rob for Hosting, and also for confirming something I learned in Graduate School (Doctors performing math is a terrifying sight).
• Thanks to Anne for buying Greed (so I don't have to).

More X-Box Fun

Sorry for my continued habit of making non-board gaming-related posts, but I'm assuming gaming in general is at least tangentially of interest to most here. Plus, posting random thoughts on this blog is a healthy catharsis of the brain cells after a night of overstimulation, so I beg your indulgence.

Anyhow... I spent last night trapsing about the dusty environs of Rock Star's Red Dead Redemption. Over the course of a few hours I had a wide variety of adventures, including a duel, slaughtering various outlaw gangs, and a failed attempt to rescue an innocent man being hung. I had to shoot the rope he was dangling from while fighting off the evil lynch mob. Unfortunately my accuracy was a tad sub par, and the poor guy is now with the angels. In addition, my cowboy is now officially a one man wildlife killing machine, slaughtering all manner of critters that crawl, fly, run, or otherwise slink about the Wild West, skinning and selling the by-products of each.

So... my overall assessment is that this game is GTAIV with horses and cacti, much better graphics, and packaged in a no less interesting sand box. The game is still intensely gritty, with racism, murder, rape, prostitutes, and all the other stuff Rock Star is known for. Multi-player is way different, feeling almost like a full-blown PvP MMO, with up to I think 18-players in an instanced world, free to team up or take each other on, and lots of mini-adventures to take on. The game tracks XP in multi-player and seems to dole out nice toys at regular intervals. Right now my guy rides a very uncooperative mule and only has a terribly inaccurate, short range pistol, so I'm assuming I'm still Level 1.

Anyone else have this game? If you see me there, please go form a posse!

Oh... here is a stretch, but the game has a fairly involved poker mini-game built in as well.

Nocturnal Wargaming

Now that I'm with child, my "Me Time" largely occurs after 2000 hours. Thus, my board gaming lately consists of using rulebooks as bedtime reading, sleeving cards, arranging counter trays, and wondering which games I'll auction off next.

Thankfully, some motivated individuals associated with the Board Game Players Association (the same folks who run the annual World Board Gaming Championship) have organized two play-by-e-mail tournments I'm now engaged in. Although the competition in these tournaments appears to be quite fierce, so far its also been quite friendly and seems to be a great way to learn the systems as I go.

The first tournment, now officially kicked off, is for GMT's Great Battles of the American Revolution Series. The first game in the tournment is the Battle of Eutaw Springs (pictured above), a nasty, bloody little scrap that took place late in the war in South Carolina, featuring the Swamp Fox of Disney TV fame (starring Leslie Nielsen). The tournment will proceed through all the games in the series, which up until now have sat unpunched, decorating my bookshelves. Wish me luck!

The other tournment is for GMT's Washington's War. I like to think of this game as Hannibal with a three-cornered hat. This tournment is still forming up, but I suspect due to the newness and popularity of the release it will be a big one.

So... what else is going on? Lots of X-Box 360. I'm on the downward slope of Mass Effect 2, and Red Dead Redemption appears tomorrow. ME2 is incredible. I'm still not a huge fan of the Mass Effect combat system, but the writing, location design, and sound are amazing. I did have to bump up the difficulty to Veteran just to make things a tad more challenging, which isn't saying much, as my poor shooter skills are somewhat legendary within SABG.

I also tried the Halo: Reach beta.... More of the same, IMHO. Star Craft 2? I just like driving the Schwarzenegger-sounding unit around the battlefield.

Oh... and the "new" Good Old Games incarnation of MOO2 is getting a lot of play these days as well.

Okay... that's enough for now.

On to Mass Effect 2....

Yep. After two years, I'm done. I have to say, just like the time it took me two years to play my first game of War of the Ring, I feel pretty silly. What a great game! ME1 was way, way better than Dragon Age, in my opinion. In a fit of geekiness I even picked up the ME1 soundtrack.

Anyhow.... I have ME2 loaded in the tray and ready to launch tonight. I expect it to be rudely interrupted by Red Dead Redemption next week, but I'm looking forward to continuing the ME story.

What is everyone else playing these days?

Hello Again!

....Oh... Hello! Does anyone still come here? Its been a long while since I've had any meaningful contribution here (perhaps forever), but I thought at least out of nostalgia I'd post something. I was supposed to fly to Germany tomorrow, but a crazy volcano seems to have messed that up. So... I have some extra spare time to kill. Here is a smattering of what I've been up to:

-- StarCraft 2 Beta: Thanks for the code, FFG! Overall it feels like SC1 with a pretty skin, including the clunky old interface, need to memorize high speed hot-key macros, and nearly identical units. I'm quite surprised, though I suppose if it ain't broke...

-- Battlefield Bad Company 2: Quite possibly my favorite multiplayer FPS of all time. Somehow I seem to regularly score as best player in the X-Box Live matches I'm playing in, which means I'm likely being automatched with unskilled 10-year olds. In any event, its quite a hoot.

-- Mass Effect 1: I never finished this back in the day, so I restarted. My original character looked far too much like Steve, so fear of seeing him in a love scene was also a strong motivator for a reboot.

-- Heroscape: I'm finally getting around to sorting and organizing the hundreds of Heroscape minis I've collected. Good fun.

So.... not a lot of board gaming unfortunately. I did complete a massive sell-off, so my board game closet is in a never-before-seen state of organization and readiness.

Stuff I'm most looking forward to:

-- Red Dead Redemption.... Perhaps the next GTAIV-quality game? I pre-ordered from Amazon on Hornsfan's recommendation and paid the extra $6 for release date shipping in a fit of silliness.

-- Washington's War: I have it... I've studied it... Now I just need to play it.

-- Great Battles of the Revolutionary War: Same theme.... I'm in the WBC PBEM tournament for this game series, kicking off any day now. I've never played, but the games are colorful, simple, and very digestible. I can't wait to see if they're as fun as they look.


Anyhow.... I hope everyone is well and has a fantastic Fiesta season. If anyone wants to hook up for some on-line gaming of any of the above (or anything else really), just shoot me an e-mail.

March Madness

Well, its already March! Speaking of March, there should be a pile of games marching onto my doorstep this month, including the new Combat Commander Battlepack #3 and Washington's War, further evidence that all games worth reprinting eventually will be. The Washington's War Playbook, now on-line at GMT's website, provides an interesting commentary by the designer on the changes he made from the original We the People game.

I'm hoping for good things from these, as my recent acquisitions Republic of Rome and Axis and Allies: Pacific 1940 have been errata-fests of the worst kind. Luckily, thanks to a motivated community, both have now been living ruled back into shape.

On the computer gaming front, I just picked up Dawn of Discovery: Gold on Hornsfan's recommendation. Come join us in multi-player! Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy may be the best RTS I've ever played. I've been playing enough now that I can match wits successfully (barely) against Hard-level AI, and I'm still loving it. Meanwhile, I'm still crunching through Dragon Age and have no idea how far along I am. I played about 4 hours/day for a week, then got a bit burned out and took a week off. I'm back in now, and its finally starting to get nicely difficult and scary.

This next month I'm looking to pick up the Dawn of War II expansion. I'm a sucker for Chaos Space Marines. Also, hopefully I'll be ready for the Dragon Age expansion when it comes out.

This is a good time to be a gamer! What is everyone else looking forward to this month?

Now I just need to find some tarot-sized sleeves....

Commands and Colors: Napoleonics

I know a few of us are considering this next version of Richard Borg's gaming system of a thousand colors, C&C: Napoleonics. I've never had a huge interest in the subject matter, but reading some of the development discussions intrigues me enough to keep this on my radar. Some of the key differences over previous versions:

-- Units will lose effectiveness as they lose blocks. This will add a minor bit of complexity to the game, but I think also a much needed increase in realism. It always seemed ridiculous to me that the final few legionnaires left standing in a decimated (term actually used in proper context here) cohort could cause as much damage as a fresh, undamaged, fully manned counterpart.

-- This ruleset was the original C&C system and has been on the shelf since 1995 when no one was interested in publishing it. Apparently its been tinkered and toyed with since then and is just waiting on art.

-- The initial set will apparently only include partial orders of battle (OOBs) from a few countries. Future expansions are likely to be country specific, plus the inevitable Epic expansion.

Anyway.... I'm not ready to push the button yet, but I figure perhaps I'll just play Chris' copy to see if its any good. :-)

Recent Gaming

So.... Happy New Year, everyone. Any good gaming resolutions out there? Mine is to play lots more games.

Unfortunately I haven't really been doing much board gaming lately, unless you consider selling, trading, sleeving, organizing, and rulebook reading gaming. Theoretically Republic of Rome and Heroscape: D&D should be showing up this month, as will Where There is Discord via trade from Belgium. I have such a huge backlog of unplayed games now... ugh!

In the mean time I've been obsessing over two non-board games, both of which I initially didn't really like that much. This actually isn't an uncommon pattern for me. Some of my favorite movies, books, music, and, yes, games were ones that took a bit of time to grow on me. Perhaps their originality was somehow a shock to my system... Anyway, here they are:

First, Sword of the Stars (with all three expansions shuffled in, of course) is a game I acquired recently via the insanely low holiday prices at Steam. The game is another in the popular line of 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) space opera games. If you can get past graphics 3-5 years old and some fairly spartan interface features, this game is as close to Twilight Imperium 3 as I've encountered in PC gaming. In other words, its awesome!

I would still have say Sword of the Stars is still slightly less good than Master of Orion 2, just because I prefer turn-based combat over real-time, but other than that, the game totally rocks. I had to play a couple hours before I could start to look past the initial ugliness and see the depth and richness underneath. The game has six races, each with different tech trees and game mechanics; loads of hidden ancient enemies on the map (ala' MOO2, but think multiple evil ancient ones out there actively hunting you and your fellow fledgling races); and tons of features pulled from sci-fi movies, novels, and etc. For instance, one of the evil ones developing (and trying to kill you) on the map is an ancient probe replicating itself via the resources of whoever it encounters (think Star Trek 1, the movie). Another feature is that if you push your research on computers too quickly, your AI will rebel, form SkyNet, enslave a chunk of your empire, and go after you.... hard. Okay... there's more, but that's enough blathering. If you get the game, get on Steam and join me in a co-op game!

The other game I'm enjoying right now is.... Modern Warfare 2. Okay, yes, me and 7 million other people apparently. Still though, at first I was pretty underwhelmed, thinking this wasn't much more than a shallow rehash of MW1. Then I kept playing, exploring Special Ops mode and multi-player in addition to the campaign. Wow.... the little details are pretty incredible. For example, you actually hear the sound of tires popping and hissing then see a slight lurch downward as bullets hit the car you're hiding behind. This game is very good. If you see me on XBL, Notre Dame 89, feel free to invite me to a co-op game.

Okay, back to Sword of the Stars...

Back to the Pacific

Hornsfan and I knocked out a scenario from the new Memoir '44 Sword of Stalingrad battle pack and, as you may surmise from the video, one from Combat Commander: Pacific.

The Stalingrad scenario we picked featured me as the evil Germans, unfortunately without our Zombie auxiliary troops this time, on the attack against a dug-in Soviet horde in a suitably gritty urban environment. I had half the German Army at my back, with support from air strikes and lots of artillery, but I might as well have been beating my head against the wall. Victory went to the good(?) guys, 9-5.

The CC:P game reversed our roles, with Chris' evil Japanese assaulting my dug-in Marines on a hilltop. Despite Chris' well orchestrated advance, laying smoke and spraying my boys with heavy MG fire, I was able to fortuitously draw hidden mines, hidden wire, hidden pillbox.... etc. By the time he had crested the hill, my reinforcements were pouring out the jungle and his troops were breaking. This time the fickle fate deck favored the USMC.

Other tangential news:

• Sold another Axis and Allies: Anniversary Edition copy. This time for $321. I love E-Bay and rich Europeans.

• I have one more WotR Gollum promotional figure (thank you, Spielbox!). Anyone interested, just make me an offer that will save me the trouble of E-Baying it.

• Power Grid Factory Manager, Roma II, and Twilight Struggle Deluxe appeared last night.

• Finally replaced my computer with a Falcon Northwest rig. Okay, Blizzard, you can release Diablo III and Starcraft II now...
  

• Republic of Rome from Valley Games is theoretically showing up later this week.

See you at the table sometime soon, or... perhaps at least across the virtual table via Vassal.