Game Date: Friday, 30 March 2007

Location: Llarry Amrose and Steph Rowe’s residence

My opponent: Llarry Amrose

Like most other gaming geeks, I like to get in multiple playings of various games during a given session, but sometimes, one game is enough. And on this Friday night, the other Rio Salado Gamers were dividing into groups, leaving Llarry and myself to find something to keep us occupied. And the choice was easy: Combat Commander Europe. Now, I will admit that part of the reason that I find this game so intriguing is that I’m still learning the rules, but the game is very good (especially to an old grognard like myself). Llarry chose scenario 9, entitled “Rush to Contact”; I chose the Americans and discovered that I would be the attacker. I knew that this would be a challenge given Llarry’s greater familiarity with the rules as well as his greater playing experience in this game, but I just remembered the comics that I read when I was a child. In the words of Sergeant Rock, “Nothin’s ever easy for Easy Company”. And those words were prophetic, as nothing came easy for me this night. It started when we drew our hidden objectives, and mine was that the one objective that was on Llarry’s side of the board just one hex from the edge was worth five victory points (I believe that this was the maximum number of victory points that one chit can give an objective). I chose to approach the center of the board cautiously while sending a couple of squads to secure that valuable objective. I was somewhat slowed as I couldn’t find any “move” cards for several turns, but Llarry was doing a lot of discarding as well so I don’t think either of us had much in the way of usable cards at the start. As the scenario progressed, I noticed a disturbing trend. Our luck was about the same, fluctuating between the good and the bad. But the one exception was that Llarry was getting the better of me in the area of random events. Over the course of the game, Llarry received extra reinforcements three times, got to look at my hand and discard a card three times, and had three of his troops become combat-hardened. In addition, I got to draw two more secret objectives and they both increased the value of the objective that was on Llarry’s side of the board. Okay, I did get my Hero into play so it wasn’t totally one-sided, but the overall accumulation made it very difficult for me to have much of a chance. As the time finally ran out, I was well behind on victory points. My only chance at victory would have been to force Llarry’s forces to break, and I would have to have played much more aggressively to do that. Still, I learned how the artillery rules worked as well as how to use some of the game mechanics better for the next time I play this.

Game Date: Wednesday, 28 March 2007

Location: The Game Depot

My opponents: Chris Dorsey, Doug Hastings, and Shon Morfeld

The Hero Clix tournament was a power game this week. For 800 points and unrestricted, this was a scenario for the powerful characters to trot out, and they certainly did just that. My team was Ganthet, Korvac, Power Princess, and The Demon. I admit that I didn’t have much synergy going on; these were just characters that I felt like playing even though I knew that my team had several glaring weaknesses. But that didn’t matter much as I saw the team that Shon put together: KC Flash, KC Green Lantern, KC Hawkman, KC Superman. For those of you who aren’t familiar with comics, KC stands for Kingdom Come, a storyline set at a time when these heroes (along with others) are in their elder years, but being superheroes, they don’t suffer the ravages of age. Instead, they have all those years of experience to set them at the ultimate level of their abilities. Therefore, these characters are extremely powerful individually. I had no chance against them, and Shon took my team apart with surgical precision. And no, I’m not exaggerating the power of Shon’s team as Shon went on to win the tournament.

I faced Chris next. He had a straightforward team of Batman, Hulk, and Superman. I knew that my team would have difficulty with hypersonic characters, but I was able to fight against Chris’ team on a fairly even level. He defeated The Demon while I defeated Batman, and after the timer sounded, we counted up points. Chris ended up with the win by just 7 points.

My last match was against Doug. His team consisted of Hawkman, Miracle Man, Pulsar, Shazam, and Valor. This gave him three characters that each had hypersonic speed. The outcome of this match was unsurprising and probably inevitable as Doug took out my team in fairly short order.

Peace, out.

Game Date: Monday, 26 March 2007

Location: The Game Depot

My opponent: Matt Esbrook

The scenario for Horror Clix this week called for 300 point teams, and the only special rules were that monsters could only slay victims if they moved three squares or less (creaky floorboards). I decided to try out a team where every member had the slash attack (that is, the ability to replace their damage dealt with the roll of one die), so I chose Archaelogist (who starts with dynamite but draws her machete later), Evil Leprechaun, Jester, Matron Mother (the only member of my team without a slash attack, but she’s always useful), Runaway, and The Mad Monk. Matt had a good team (Avatar of Cthulhu, Colonel America, Jekyll and Hyde, and Velociraptor), but he wasn’t prepared for my slashing madness. I got in close and went to town with my dynamite, shillelagh, machete, knife, and sacrificial knife. I had some good rolls, and I had some bad rolls, but I had enough rolls to balance out the luck. The damage I dealt out was enough to take out Matt’s team before he got a chance to get going. I don’t mean to make it sound like a rout, because the early battle was quite close as we moved into position and lost our point men. But once the battle really got underway, I slowly turned the tide in my favor and carried it through to victory.

Peace, out.

Game Date: Saturday, 24 March 2007

Location: The Game Depot

My opponents: Mike Gingold, Christa Haley, Greg Paul, Jayson Phillips, Mark Soto, and Bobby Warren

To start the afternoon, Bobby decided to buy a game for us to play. And going along with his monthly theme of Rome/Italy, he purchased Alhambra: The Dice Game. Okay, so maybe this game has nothing to do with Rome/Italy, but Bobby was planning to buy it anyway. Mike, Christa, Jayson, and I pulled up chairs at the table to help him break in his new game. Mike observed that this game is ruled by the dice, and he did have a point. After all, the words “Dice Game” are part of the title. I believe that there is a bit of free choice, but if you can’t get decent dice rolls, you aren’t going to do well (kinda like most dice games). But at least this version of Alhambra plays quite nicely with five players. As for this playing, Bobby ran away with the game.

Next, Mike, Bobby, and I pulled out Shear Panic. We agreed to play that the white spot on the panic die was choice of color for a lamb slam instead of an ewe turn. This was to avoid a ewe turn on a panic die roll in which the active player was forced to make a ewe turn that did not benefit him at all but which determined who would win. This isn’t as far-fetched as it seems as my last to playings of this game were determined by just such a result. Since that sort of forced king-making is very enjoyable, we tried out the optional color lamb slam to see if that would save this game. And wouldn’t you know it, we didn’t get a white result on the panic die in the Shear Panic field so the issue never came up. Mike wound up winning by doing the best at hiding at the back of the flock.

We let Bobby scratch his Rome/Italy itch by playing Attila next. Greg and Mark joined us to fill out the game. As I have commented in the past, this is a game that I enjoy playing even though I always finished in last place. I broke that string of ineptitude with my last playing just a week ago with a second place finish, so I hoped that I had finally put that behind me. I started out well, jumping into the lead after the first century, but then I usually manage to do that in this game. However, I managed to avoid my usual plunge to the bottom; the only thing that I did differently than in the past was to hold onto cards that I could use in a conflict, even if it meant sacrificing some tribesmen of the tribe where I had the greatest influence. That allowed me to make the quick jump necessary to hold onto the greatest influence and also add more tribesmen (thus increasing my score). We didn’t get any of the peace tiles for the last century onto the board as Greg ran his influence marker to the top of one of the tracks to end the game. And somehow, I wound up in the lead to take the win.

After that, Greg, Bobby, and I pulled out Taluva. I had a clever plan to build up a settlement so that I could build a temple, and then place a tile to split that settlement allowing me to place a second temple (and hopefully a tower after that). However, Greg blocked that by placing a tile that forced me to place my tower earlier than planned and in such a way that prevented me from splitting my settlement like a pregnant amoeba. The game settled into the usual race to get your stuff built. As we neared the end, I could see that Bobby had set up his position so that he could get his third temple and all of his huts built and there was nothing that I could do to block him. So I quickly built my second tower and pushed to get all my huts on the board. But I was about two turns behind Bobby as he placed his last huts on the board to take the premature victory (don’t look at me, that’s what the rules call it).

To wrap up my afternoon, I joined Christa and Jayson to try out Cabale. This was an abstract strategy game for up to four players. Though I’ve often seen this game on clearance tables, I had never played it before. Now that I’ve tried it, I’ll definitely grab one up the next time I see one marked for clearance. It was fun, moving my runner around on the board and leaving droppings here and there (that’s not what the game called them, but that’s the way I thought of them). And then there was the Checkers aspect where my droppings could jump your droppings and capture them. The game goes on until someone’s runner no longer has a legal move left, at which time we total up the victory points. You gain victory points for the spaces that your droppings are on as well as for your opponents’ droppings that you managed to capture, and you lose victory points for any of your droppings that you didn’t get to place on the board. Interesting and fun. For the record, Jayson won (but then as the only player who had played before, he should have).

Peace, out.

Game Date: Friday, 23 March 2007

Location: Gamers Inn

My opponents: Miles Antwiler, Noah Antwiler, Steve Bauer, Matt Cullinan, Eddie Hinan, Jason Maxwell, Rob Smolka, and Bobby Warren

We started this session of the Arizona Boardgamers with a journey back to ancient Rome with a game of Ave Caesar (the original edition for you sticklers out there). The Ben Hur wannabes were Matt (who dropped out after the second race), Eddie, Jason, Rob, Bobby, and myself. I won’t even mention what we would have looked like had we been decked out in togas, but I assure you that we would not have looked as good as the Spartans in 300. We are gamers, after all. And speaking of that, back to the game that was in progress. I took second place in the first race and won the second race to take a decent lead in points. If I could get any points at all in the third race, I stood a good chance of winning. Of course, you have to finish to have a chance at any points, and I got forced into a long stretch on the outside curve on the first lap. That guaranteed that I wouldn’t finish at all, and sure enough my chariot wound up just one space short of the finish line. Jason and Bobby wound up tied for the most points, so they got to share the win.

Our venue shifted to renaissance Italy next as Princes of Florence hit the table. I began with my usual strategy of using the first three turns to set up my works, but by turn three I realized that it wasn’t going to work. I decided to switch strategies and went for a building strategy (a strategy best employed from the very start). I quickly got my second and third builders, and that let me put up the buildings that I needed. I also came up with two prestige cards that would help me as I filled in my courtyard as quickly as I could. I wound up with 56 points, a decent score and enough to gain the victory on most days, but not on this day. Rob had the hot hand and finished with 67 points to take the win.

Next on our agenda was a trip to China as we pulled out Tichu for a six-player game. We have had a debate lately as to whether the six-player version is supposed to use a double deck or not; the decision of those participating was that a six-player version with only a single deck wouldn’t be as interesting. So on one side (metaphorically speaking) of the table were Miles, Eddie (who was replaced by Noah about halfway through), and Steve facing off against Matt, Jason, and myself. The luck was definitely with our opponents as our two tichu bids of the night both went down because our opponents had more (and also higher) bombs; it’s depressing when your bomb of Kings goes down to a straight flush. They also completed a tichu bid of their own and pretty much controlled the game all the way through, although the score looked like it was a close game.

Our final stop for the evening was ancient Egypt. The game was Amun-Re, and the brave sojourners were Miles, Steve, Jason, and myself. Now, I’ll admit that I’ve played this game a number of times, but in my defense most of those playings were with five players. The few times that I had played with three or four, we had used all the provinces again for the New Kingdom. I did not know that the provinces that were unused in the Old Kingdom went out of the game, so I had always set my strategy (including building pyramids in the Old Kingdom) based on the idea that some of those provinces may well not be in the New Kingdom. Steve, who explained the rules, forgot to mention that point in his rules explanation so I was caught very much off-guard when this was revealed on the next to last round. And while I could hide behind that as my excuse for doing so poorly in this playing, that was only partially the reason. The other reason is that I couldn’t get any bonus cards in the Old Kingdom, and when I got five of them early in the New Kingdom, I could only score one of them by the end of the game (that province thing). So I wound up in last place. However, I consider it an act of karmic justice that Steve was punished for not mentioning that rule (we did have new players who needed a full rules explanation) as Jason beat him out by one point.

Peace, out.