At long last, I managed to play another game of Battletech on the weekend. It was Josh's and Rich's first game, but they learnt the rules pretty quickly and, I think, had a great time blowing up my mechs.

Two of my mechs suffered Ammo explosions, which was bad. Very bad. Goodbye pilots!

Meanwhile, Josh and Rich, playing mechs of Sorenson's Sabres, completed their mission. They only lost one mech during the battle - a Panther that was unfortunate enough to suffer three engine hits! They also had a Trebuchet with one engine hit, which wasn't that fun to pilot, though, in the end, it was very important for them completing the mission successfully.

The game took about 4 hours to go through; not too bad given new players and the opposition they were facing. With any luck, we'll get another game on this coming Saturday.

Our last session of the Friday Greyhawk campaign was not one of my better efforts. It didn't help that I had a couple of players missing (pulling out at the last moment), nor that I was dreadfully tired. It was also a transition session, where we changed between one style of campaign plot to another. Urgh. We had four short (and quite boring) combats, plus a little roleplaying. It did, however, serve its purpose and, with any luck, things will be looking up now.

There were a couple of good things to come out of the sesion, thankfully.

The first was due to Rich. I'd concocted the story of this band of university students finding an ogre's cave, getting beat up, and returning with the news of its location to the university. From then on, it became a popular dare to visit the cave and see the ogre. This group of adventurers (with prodding from a new NPC) decided to go and slay the ogre and take its treasure. Upon arriving, Rich's paladin entered first, with the rogue and ranger sneaking in behind.

Rich saw this menacing ogre growling at him, club upraised, and completely flubbed his Perception check. For the next few minutes, he tried to talk to an unresponsive ogre. Finally, his patience exhausted, he charged it... only to drop into the 20' deep pit before the stuffed ogre skin. Then the bugbears charged the others in the party!

That was a fun moment. Eventually, Rich climbed out and the combat turned in their favour.

The other important thing that occured was the introduction of Teresa Corthan, daughter of my original AD&D magic-user, Meliander. Nathaniel had expressed a wish for more elements of his homeland of Ulek to be used in the campaign. So, enter Teresa as an NPC - a 16 year-old girl, who'd been sent to Greyhawk to attend the same college as Nate's character.

Teresa will be a lot of fun; she's a NPC that I'll enjoy roleplaying, and she also provides a lot of interesting plothooks. She also firmly fixes the campaign in the timeline. If she's 16, then it must be 598 CY. I might add a couple of years to her age (and the timeline) once I've placed everything properly in the timeline... but I know she was born in 582 CY, so that's a firm dating point for everything else.

Now to see if I can design a better adventure for our next session!

MerricB

I've almost played 100 games of Dominion on BSW. Hooray!

The game is remaining entertaining, although there are times when interaction ceases and super-combo decks become standard. Just like Magic. Yeah, there are things I don't miss about Magic.

The Chapel (trash up to 4 cards in hand) has proven to be incredibly powerful - especially when taken early game. Getting rid of all the low value cards in hand makes your deck so much more efficient.

Talking of weird combos, I now have the new FFG version of Cosmic Encounter. Bitswise, it's great. 50 races, and nice plastic spaceships that are so, so much more usable than the recent Avalon Hill version. (They are little flying saucers that stack). They've also got plans for an expansion. Let's see how that goes.

I also have the upgrade pack for Talisman 4e. Now to get the Reaper expansion...

I also buckled and picked up the Road to Legend expansion for Descent. (Scott - did you ever finish that campaign you were running?) Don't know how often we'll get to play it; the drawback of our group owning somewhere upwards of 150 boardgames. Or 200. We need to find out.

I was happily reading the 4e Draconomicon and Manual of the Planes on the weekend. I've got a sneaking suspicion that they might be the best versions of those books yet. Yeah, I enjoyed them. 4e does some incredible things to the D&D cosmology - it keeps the best of the old, and puts in a lot of things that really resonate with me. Shadowfell and Feywild, I'm looking at you! (Oh, and the Elemental Chaos. Love that concept).

And I've just got to love any book that gives space to the Fomorians.

MerricB

A lot of games have suddenly come into stock, so I've been getting regular parcels from MilSims of late. The highlights:

Rails of Europe - the expansion to Railroad Tycoon, which is now out of print, and the license to the RRT name has gone. So, Glenn Drover is using the same system to produce a Rails of the World game, but before that comes out, Rails of Europe allows you to use your RRT pieces in a new setting. Confused? Cool! However, this is a really great game. I played a 3-player game with Randy and Rich on the weekend which Randy won, although I showed you could make a fairly high score without upgrading your engines.

Yesterday I had a 4-player game with my students. I won it by a solitary point - Sam would have won if he'd had completed his Baron card. Incredibly close, and very fun. I had the Venice-St Petersburg Baron card, but due to Steve's links, I couldn't go direct. It was more like Venice - Paris - Berlin - Moscow - St Peterburg! I owned the centre of the game, but Sam did really well down south.

Brass - I've played this once with Mark Brown and Randy, and absolutely loved it. My own copy came in yesterday. Lots of components, and a great Industrial Revolution game. Martin Wallace strikes again! 3-4 players, 2-3 hours. I'm looking forward to playing it again, especially as we'll get all the rules right this time. Not sure when we'll get a game, but we'll see.

Through the Ages - from the designer of Galaxy Trucker, comes this little game that brings the Civilization computer game experience to a card/board game. Well, sort of. This is another incredibly fun game, which I'm really happy to have. 2-4 players, plays best with 3, and takes about an hour per player for the full game. Our game on the weekend (Randy, Rich, me) saw me crush the other two by being (a) the technocrat with a lot of technologies and culture, and (b) be very lucky by drawing military defense cards to hold off Randy's barbarians as they attempted to crush my buildings. Highly recommended.

On the D&D side of things, both Martial Power and Dracomonicon: Chromatic Dragons arrived yesterday. I'm conflicted about D&D at present - it really doesn't help that lots of sessions have been cancelled or have been interrupted in one form or another recently. I hope Sunday's session goes well, because I need a good D&D experience before the year ends.

I've also been playing a lot of Stone Age online recently. I've begun to win games, although I've also lost a couple of games by 2-3 points (which is frustrating, especially in 3-4 player games). Stone Age is just lots and lots of fun.

MerricB

Urgh. I really, really hate being ill. Ever since the surgery on my vocal cords back a couple of years ago, any new infection goes right to them and does horrible things to my ability to speak. I am really, really, really grateful that Peggy's birthday is this Friday and I don't have to run a session of D&D. The next session should be really fun (as it'll deal with the consequences of Adam's betrayal), and having it run by a DM who can't speak would likely cause it to be not as cool as otherwise.

Instead, I'm off to the Magic prerelease on Saturday. I'm hoping my voice will have improved somewhat, but nonetheless it'll be my first Magic in a year (since the prerelease this time last year). I can also buy Peggy's birthday present whilst I'm down there, so win-win for me. Shards of Alara looks like a fun set - you've got to say that about any multicolour set, especially one as wacky as this one.

I'll play in one flight and then wander back to the city for a little shopping and a trip back home. I'll see if Mind Games has any nice 3rd party D&D supplements I want to pick up - possibly not, given the horrible state of the GSL, but you never know.

I've survived a week without my father! Hooray! I'd be enjoying it more without this cold, though. Yesterday, when I was supposed to be getting some kindling in, I watched it rain instead. Why is it that when I'm home and I have a cold, it gets really nasty outside?

So, I watched a bunch of JAG yesterday, as well as rewatching The Stolen Earth, the penultimate episode of Season 4 Doctor Who. Boy, I love that episode, and I can't wait until Sunday when the final episode shows, all 65 minutes of it.

My digital camera still hasn't arrived. Hasn't been sent, actually, so at least I haven't paid for anything yet. That's annoying me. I want to write a couple of ASL session reports, but they need a camera to really make sense.

Boardgamingwise, we had a great boardgameday on Saturday (my last day of almost full health). I got to play Brass, and that was really, really, really good. It's England during the Industrial Revolution, and you're building industries, canals and railroads. What makes it very interesting indeed is that the resources you need are often built by other players, so by taking them, you actually help them. It's a lovely design.

I've been looking at For the People, a American Civil War game at home on my own, although I expect I'll give Randy a game sometime in the near future. Deluxe SPQR is sitting on my table just at the moment - I'll have a solo game of that tonight. And, to celebrate the release of the Living Rules for Blackbeard, I had a couple of solo games of that yesterday. KCs are now terribly, terribly tough to defeat - and if you fail the roll, your pirate dies! No damage, just dies. It's actually always been that way, but I think we thought they worked the same way as Warships. We'll have to give it a game soon at a BGD.

Thursday night, assuming I feel up to it, I'll be at Randy's playing Combat Commander: Europe and Twilight Struggle, both great, great games we haven't played much recently.

MerricB

My new digital camera will be shipped to me sometime next week. I'm not quite sure when - the memory card isn't in stock, although they have given me a date for when it comes in - but with any luck I'll soon be the owner of my very own digital camera. It'll be cheap, probably quite effective, and will greatly relieve all of the fans of my session reports who think they're nowhere near as effective without pictures.

Of course, this relies on them delivering it to a school during the holidays... I wonder if that'll give them problems? It has for some major deliveries here in the past.

I'm probably going to be broke if every item I've currently got on preorder or backorder suddenly shipped. (A bunch of them did last week). Running down the list...

• Burma, an OCS wargame
• Doomed Battalions, an ASL core module
• ASL Journal #2 reprint
• Kingdom of Heaven, a card-driven wargame
• P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, a D&D 4e adventure
• Stone Age, a Eurogame I've had on preorder for a long time
• Rails of Europe, an expansion to RRT that I may never get
• Memoir '44 Terrain Pack
• Memoir '44 Pacific Theatre

Incredibly, that seems to be it at the moment. The latest set of D&D 4e books are on their way to me, and I probably will get them this evening (Forgotten Realms Player's Guide, Treasure Trove and the FR adventure).

MerricB

This has been a good week.

I was named Geek of the Week on boardgamegeek, and a bunch of parcels arrived as well.

Just in the last few days, I've become the proud owner of:

• D&D 4e DM's Screen
• D&D Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 4e
• D&D H3: Pyramid of Shadows (the third in the "H" series of adventures)
• Pathfinder #13
• Pathfinder Companion
• ASL: Pegasus Bridge campaign
• Operations Magazine Special Edition #1, which contains...
• ... Iwo Jima, Rage against the Marine, a small wargame
• ... Singling HASL, a small ASL campaign
• Combat Commander: Mediterranean
• SPQR
• Memoir '44: Eastern Front pack
• Race for the Galaxy

Oh, and in K-Mart I found a boxed set of every Ian Fleming James Bond novel... for $70. Price on the back, 90 pounds, or about $200. Very, very happy.

And there's still D&D to come on the weekend!

MerricB

I'm currently still in an "expanding" phase as regards to my collection. There are too many interesting games I don't have, and that I haven't played yet. The games I play tend to cover a range of types and themes, but one thing I'm always on the lookout for are more games I can play solo.

Wargames have recently become more interesting to me, and so I'm investigating a few of those whilst I wait for my copy of Agricola to be shipped to me. Or printed in the first place. You know you it goes. GMT Games have recently reprinted SPQR, one of the "Great Battles in History" series of wargames. Randy has Alexander, the first of that series, so I thought I might pick up SPQR and see what I made of it. It arrived in the post yesterday evening, and soon it was out of the wrapper and on my gaming table.

One of the delights of having ASL as almost my first wargame is that almost every other set of rules seems simple in comparison. SPQR has a 32 page rulebook, and then a scenario book, and, because I bought the Deluxe version, another scenario book. The rules have a lot of things I find unfamiliar in them, not least because I'm very unfamiliar with this era of warfare. However, there are many historical notes from the designers that I'm delighting in, as they give context to many of the rules.

For instance, the reason that the maps are so bare of terrain (which is such a difference with ASL) is because the early phalanxes and other units had great trouble staying in formation in more difficult ground, so the battles would take place in areas where both sides could manuever. Looking at these historical notes makes me want to get Alexander as well, just to see how warfare was back then in an even "simpler" time.

There are five scenarios in the original SPQR, and also a suggested "learning" scenario, which uses only a few forces. That's the one I chose. Unfortunately, it doesn't give any details on how the forces should be deployed. "In the middle of the map, with at least 5 hexes between them" is basically what it says. So, Hannibal and his elephants, some cavalry and infantry all ended up in a long line facing Flavenius and his infantry and cavalry. The elephants were in the middle of the line, the cavalry (of both sides) was on the end.

Glancing at the other scenarios, that seemed not quite how to do it, but it'd do for this introduction to the game.

Learning the game rules by playing, even after an initial readthrough, was an exercise in page-flipping. This is pretty standard for all wargames though, so I wasn't daunted. In fact, even though playing through a single turn of the game took about 2-3 hours, it wasn't really that difficult to pick up on how the game worked.

Basically, you activate each leader in turn, from lowest initiative to highest (changing sides as required). Each leader can activate either a "line" or two of similar troops, or 3-7 individual units. For various reasons, I was using the unit activation more than the line activation, not least because I didn't really have that many units and I was beginning with a cavalry charge.

Leaders are also able to activate several times in a row (momentum) or seize the initiative from the opponent (trumping), and I'd investigate that more as the turn went on. As it happened, Hannibal was the superior leader and was able to nominate one of his subordinates to activate first, even though normally the Romans would have had the first activations. So, it was a cavalry charge with two Light Cavalry units towards the left flank of the Roman army.

Actually discovering how you declared melee combat took more time than most other tasks in the game. There's basically two methods: first, if you move into base contact with a counter, you place a "Shock - Must Check TQ" marker on it, which indicates that combat must occur. Then, after you finished all the activations of that leader, any of your units in his command radius can also be involved in Shock combat.

Charging means you get an extra roll to see if the involved units lose Cohesion. Once a unit takes "Cohesion Hits" equal or greater to its Troop Quality (TQ), then it routs.

The actual business of Shock Combat requires the checking of three tables, all of which took me little time once I started to get the hang of it. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if I memorised a few of the more common results... However, for some reason that eludes me, the three tables were printed on opposite sides of a sheet of tables... I would have thought that if they'd all been on the same side (as there indeed was room for) it would have made more sense? No matter.

Wham! The cavalry hit the opposing Roman cavalry and a legion, and both sides took a lot of Cohesion Hits. The legion decided to call it a day, and I discovered that there was this lovely rule that cavalry occasionally must pursue routing units... even off the far side of the map at times (and can only be recovered by the overall leader sacrificing his entire turn). It didn't happen in this instance, with Hannibal's cavalry breaking off and staying in a position that was just a little vulnerable...

As I continued to work through the first turn, I discovered how ineffective slingers were, and likewise for javelins, although the latter did have some small effect. The Roman cavalry charged the Carthaginian flank, and caused them to rout as well. This time, the cavalry unit continued to pursue, reaching the routed Carthaginian cavalry and then utterly destroying it.

Once the two-hex phalanxes of Hannibal's reached the fray, I began to see their power, unwieldy though it was. They hit the edge of the Roman line of units and began to systematically destroy and rout them. Especially with Hannibal fighting with the phalanx... the +3 to the combat roll was quite devastating when added to the 3:1 numerical superiority of the phalanx over the lone legion.

The battle soon turned into a mass of small clumps of battling troops: the cohesiveness of the initial lines had been lost entirely. Hannibal's elephants did some damage to the Romans, but then were routed. But wait! Elephants don't rout... they rampage! The first elephant unit gored the unit next to it (causing it to rampage) and then both units ran around the map for a while, causing damage to the units nearby, until finally they both fell over, dead. Hannibal breathed a sigh of relief... there had been a chance that the elephants would have attacked his unit and killed him!

The turn ended with two units eliminated on each side (not counting the elephants) and with many more units both running away. I moved them towards the edges of the map, and prepared for the second turn.

Hannibal chose to begin the turn himself and rallied a bunch of his troops and then continued the Phalanxes Of Doom on their path through the now hurt Roman forces. The Romans activated their leader on their right flank and continued a cavalry attack on the Carthaginian skirmishers on that side, who demonstrated their ability to withdraw from battle. More and more rules were coming into play, but the whole was making some sort of sense, however poor my tactics were.

Then the cavalry leader tried for Momentum and achieved it... he was able to activate again and chase those skirmishers further. However, Hannibal "Trumped" him and took his second and third activation (Momentum for the third). More doom and gloom for the Romans, but they'd get a lot of activations after Hannibal finally finished his turn, and they still had a lot of activations left.

Unfortunately, at that point I dropped a book on the table, dislodging way too many of the counters for an easy reset. Hannibal and Flavenius both fled the earthquaking battlefield. This wasn't actually as bad as it sounded: I was out of time and had to leave for work (having started the game last night and begun again the next morning). I'd achieved my first goal: I now had a much better handle on the rules than when I began.

I expect that tonight I'll have another go at the learning game, and see if I can play it faster with fewer errors. After that, it'll be on to The Battle of the Bagradas Plains, which is suggested as a good scenario for those players not entirely familiar with the system.

It's looking like I might rather enjoy this game, which is always a bonus.

MerricB

Friday night's Star Wars was cancelled on account of a party almost everyone (but me and the GM) were at, so instead I spent the night at home. Randy came to visit, and we played a few boardgames. Life is hard.

We started with Battlelore, using the Scottish Wars expansion, and the Stirling Bridge scenario. That was fun - imagine if William Wallace was a dwarf, and you get the idea of how the game played. I played the dwarves and Randy played the English. All of this was using Medieval Lore rules, which keep some of the Lore cards but reduce their effectiveness. The new units (Mounted Knights and Clan Chiefs in particular) were really scary. Randy charged me early on with his knights and inflicted quite a bit of damage, but the Chiefs fought back and eventually Wallace was triumphant, 5 banners to 3.

Randy introduced me to Dungeon Twister. Oh, this is a mind-bender. I'm not quite sure about the game - you each control a group of adventurers trying to get treasure in a dungeon and get out the other side before your opponents do. It's really like Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation on acid. I lost this one comprehensively to Randy.

After that, there was a game of World at War: Eisenbach Gap, a fairly simple wargame that simulates what would have happened if World War 3 started in 1985. Randy played the Soviets who were invading Germany, only to meet some American forces. Randy managed to destroy one infantry platoon and its APCs, but his tanks were slaughtered by mine. I've played a bit of this solo, and it was Randy's first game.

Finally we played another game of Twilight Struggle. This was an incredible game - I was the USSR and Randy the USA. I got the early lead (as the Soviets normally do), but after that the score hovered around the same point for most of the game (about 10 in my favour). Whenever we played a scoring card, it'd only be a couple of points either way! Asia scoring - 1 point to Randy. Middle East Scoring - 1 point to me! The Americas did eventually fall to Randy, but I was able to negate the scoring there with another scoring card. The game ended when I played War Games - gifting Randy 6 points, but ending the game with the USSR on 3 points. It had been a very close game, and it's good to finally win another TS game!

Saturday was our regular Board Game Day with Rich, Josh and Randy. We had this one at Rich's, which precluded any of the really big games that need lots of table space.

So, we played...

Chrononauts, which saw Josh win the game, although he didn't realise it at the time.

Willow, the Board Game, a surprisingly good movie tie-in game, which Randy and I won handily. Well, I saw we, but it was me, pegasus-mounted, bow-wielding Sorsha, who beat up Mad Martigan, stole Elora Danan, and took her home so my mother could sacrifice her and keep us in power forever! I rock!

Notre Dame, the current Eurogame I'm in love with. The players are placing influence in the sectors of the city, and trying to gain as much prestige as possible. Randy attempted to ignore the plague... he didn't do as badly as I might have expected, but he still came last. I got a lot of gold early, then transferred my influence into the park which meant all my later prestige gains were at +2 or even +3. (When a standard gain is in the realm of 1-3, you can see why that's significant). I ended up winning the game handily.

Ninja Burger, a Steve Jackson Game where you're ninjas delivering hamburgers. Theme says it all, really. Very typical SJG, which wasn't helped by me getting one of the rules dreadfully wrong (you're meant to draw a card at the beginning of every turn, not just one for going to the meeting). As a result the game was overlong. I forget who won it, so I'd appreciate a reminder before I write it up for BGG.

After dinner, we had a 3-hour game of World of Warcraft: the Adventure Game. This one is pretty good - it basically takes the Talisman game, takes out the endgame, throws in a bunch of quests instead, makes sure there's character interaction, and plays pretty quickly. I'm sure that we can get this game down to 2 hours or less once we're familiar with it. I managed to be the first to complete quests to get 8 VPs, although everyone had a lot of fun. (I guess it isn't that similar to Talisman, but one thing it shares is a very short player turn).

So, that was my weekend. Oh, except for the couple of games of ASL I played solo on Sunday, and the reading I did - mainly of Castle Zagyg material.

MerricB

I've been busy buying new games - both RPG and board - in the last few weeks.

My latest boardgame is World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game. I've just had a brief (incomplete) game of it with my students. There's a lot to recommend it. 2-4 players, takes about 90-120 minutes, and plays a lot like a more complex version of Talisman. Downtime is pretty light and what I really enjoy is how someone else rolls for the monster. Not that there's any decision to be made, but it feels like you're doing something.

I'll write more about it when I get to play it in full. (For my Ballarat friends, I'm busy all of Friday and on Sunday afternoon, but I'm otherwise free and I'd be happy to stay in later one evening to play this...)

I also picked up Chrononauts, which is one of my favourite high-luck games, simply because the theme is so good. You're a time-traveller from an alternative future, who needs to change history to get back home. Of course, with everyone from different alternatives, things get chaotic. You can also win by gathering artifacts, or just by patching up time and stopping paradoxes.

I'm in the middle of a Castles & Crusades kick as well. I've ordered the main rulebooks from MilSims, but I've also picked up a cheap PDF ($10) of the Player's Handbook. Oh, and a bunch of C&C modules in PDF. As I think I've mentioned, I don't think I'll ever actually play C&C, but I've a lot of time for adventures written in an "old school" manner.

Speaking of "Old School", that explains why I've just bought 13 "Dungeoncrawl Classics" from Goodman Games, mostly ones recommended by this thread on EN World. Half-price PDF sale at RPGnow? Cool. I might be blowing my gaming budget a bit, but it's fun.

A 14th DCC (in print) arrived in the mail for me yesterday, but it's a DCC conversion to C&C - GG1: The Mysterious Tower. I like this one enough that it'll become part of my "Greater Castle Greyhawk" and available for the PCs to adventure therein if they feel like it. Castle Greyhawk has, historically, had a bunch of demiplanes associated with it, so I might just slot in my favourite adventures there for my players to experience.

The last PDF I bought today was the official D&D 4e Monster Manual pdf. It's strange; the Aussie dollar is almost 1:1 with the US dollar at present. So the price was pretty good, even at the "horrible rip-off price" that a bunch of EN Worlders are accusing it of having. I bought this one for the statblocks - cut & paste will be very useful for homebrews. At some point I might get around to getting the rest of the books in PDF, but not just yet. I need a laptop first!

MerricB