In the eye of the storm: June gaming roundup

More games than you can shake a stick at

June saw a glut of games after the recent months’ paltry pickings I noted a few weeks ago- a total of 21 games played in 15 sessions. The Saturday crew turned up again for the first time in several months, and Przemek made a return appearance too. But it was 13 games of Combat Commander which turned regular hearty fare into a veritable whirlwind of boardgaming, thanks largely to the enthusiasm with which Gav and Liam took to the game after I’d managed to persuade them to give it a go: fully 10 of those games were games of CC against Gav and Liam.

Alien wars and other inhumanities
Eclipse: new gaming horizons in the penumbra

I picked up a copy of this hot new 4X multiplayer game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) early in 2012. It was an instant hit with my players and has seen play matched in recent years only by Battlestar Galactica and Cosmic Encounter,  a fact that is all the more noteworthy when you consider that Eclipse is a pretty intense game which can take as long as 4 hours or more when you’re not familiar with it. This familiarity has to be hard-won by repeated play and the Saturday crew have proved willing to play often enough to achieve that. So when we got together for our first Saturday games group in some 6 months, everyone was keen for another adventure in space, and I was primed to introduce the new material from the game’s first boxed expansion- Eclipse: Rise of the Ancients.

Infiltration: the game that almost got away

Feel the hype, sigh

Infiltration: are you
up for a caper?

The social media advertising for Infiltration passed before my eyes registered but ignored, a disinterest no doubt prompted by its being set in FFG’s Android universe: Android — “a board game of murder and conspiracy set in a dystopian future” about which the consensus is that its attempt to marry narrative to a competitive boardgame failed because of the clunky complexities of Kevin Wilson’s design methods (as seen in, eg. Arkham Horror or Descent, whose heavy status-tracking and bean-counting mechanics are exactly what would suck all the fun out of playing a co-op against a pseudo-narrative solitaire engine) — was one of a handful of later FFG releases enjoying certain novel features sparking an initial interest which quickly waned when I realised what I’d be buying. That is to say: a big box of toys and other shiny stuff thrown together into the interminable clunk of too, too many cards and counters presided over by a rulebook both poorly organised and frustratingly vague.

September games round-up: not writing, gaming!

Getting back on track

Write-ups of gaming sessions have been a staple here at RD/KA! since the earliest days (the first use of the ‘got game’ label dates to my 5th post back in August 2005, and the label itself is second only to ‘boardgames’ as the most used label). As well as being satisfying to write, these posts have also driven the development of my use of graphics on the blog, which in turn means that they have been the engine of my learning how to use the GIMP. These posts don’t come without their problems:

• They’ve taken ever longer to prepare the more graphic-intensive they’ve become.
• Writing them is very much ‘of the moment’; ie. they have to be written very soon after the gaming session, when my memory is fresh.
• Taking notes during a game- for the sake of adding detail to a session write-up, can be more than just distracting: it can also disrupt my enjoyment of a game and my attention to the flow of the game- at the expense of my decision-making.

Just when you thought it was safe to venture back onto the internet…

It lives!

Innovation in
mental health care?

Site-visitors who’ve tracked the ‘Recently played games’ widget over on the sidebar (or on my BGG profile page) during the months of this longest of bloglags will have been aware of continuing activity there throughout all that time. Regular readers will be quite unsurprised to hear that the recent reappearance of Up Front is particularly gratifying to yours truly. But it is the unexpected return of the Cylon menace which I must bring to your attention today.

Another random assembly of nuts, cranks and scrounged body-parts

A genuine masterwork?

I hosted a boardgaming stag-night for Badger last August. Seven of us played Cosmic Encounter and Dominion, both of which went down very well in a company of mixed gaming interests and enthusiasms; a success sufficient to generate demand for repeats, which themselves have happened often enough to establish a definite new games group. And so last Saturday 6 gamers assembled for a much-anticipated session of games and grub, with the prospect of playing Battlestar Galactica: the boardgame adding unknown and challenging expectations to the already familiar atmosphere of pleasant anticipation.

London days #3: We hit the gaming table, again

On Friday night then we turned to the "star attraction- specially requested by Mike" to which I'd referred last Thursday; that being Battlestar Galactica. I confess I was just a tad daunted at the prospect of this play of the game I like so much. It's one thing to teach a game like this to a bunch of confirmed gaming geeks including some experienced rules interpreters; it's quite another to teach it to people whose face-to-face gaming experience doesn't extend beyond card games and classic family boardgames.

Thank goodness then for the excellent setup guide in the rules, which provides both a nice picture of the game's layout on the tabletop, and a step-by-step list of how to go about getting the game up and running. Of course that didn't stop me from screwing up on Friday night. Jo had chosen Gaius Baltar and Mike had chosen Sharon "Boomer" Valerii: both are characters who change the composition of the Loyalty deck used to determine who is Cylon, which was something I forgot. D'oh! Fortunately the most important mistake- Gaius Baltar's extra Loyalty card at the start of play, was spotted early enough to be quickly corrected; and the other- Boomer's extra one in the Sleeper Agent phase, was easy enough to correct before it mattered too much.

DiceCon East 2010 #2: Still going

Alan Poulter- webmaster of Web-Grognards, "the site for wargames on the web since 1995"; was one of the familiar faces who said hello, attracted by the sight of our Overlord game in play. We had our usual friendly chat, and Alan was angling for a chance to play a game of Battlestar Galactica, a copy of which Adam had happened to bring. Our course was set.

Getting frakked
It turned out that Alan was already into another game when we came to play BSG. Adam and Donald made us 3, and we had no trouble at all in rounding up some likely suspects to give us the full 6-player experience; more familiar faces: Barry, Bob and Mark. The younger old hands among you might remember Barry and Bob from DiceCon East 2007, where Barry had been the first to test my Lore skills in Battlelore.

An embarrassment of riches #1: Boxes of tricks

Home again...
...yesterday, from my New Year holiday: another Hogmany chez famille King in Prague; topped off with a long weekend in Cambridge visiting my old buddy Mark Dalgarno.

Time then to get 2010 off to a start here @RD/KA!. Are you sitting comfortably? :0)

Games glut guzzled!
With Badger- over xmas; Donald, Liam and 'Uncle' Martin- in the festive interregnum; and Radka, Bill and Daniel in Prague: a grand total of 54 games in 10 sessions over 14 days made my 2009-10 festive season the gamingest ever! The games I enjoyed are below:

• Combat Commander: Pacific x2.
• Ivanhoe x12.
• Fluxx x4.
• Settlers of Catan x6.
• Battlestar Galactica.
• Snow Tails x5.
• Settlers of Catan cardgame x2.
• Pandemic x3.
• Starship Catan x3.
• Backgammon x15.
• Chaos Marauders.

CC:P, Settlers cards, and Starship Catan gave me my own most satisfying victories of the festive megasession; but 2009-10's Festive Big-Win No-Prize goes to Daniel, for equalling Gav's record game-winning 5VP turn at Settlers of Catan.

My 2010 gaming wishlist #1: 2009 back at ya!

Something I prepared earlier...
Last December I wrote my 2009 gaming wishlist. Looking back at my 3 wishes I can say that 2 were granted:

• Playing Chad Jensen's second big GMT game, Combat Commander: Pacific.
• Getting my teeth into Battlestar Galactica, and all that entailed.

Unfulfilled was my hope of moving beyond tactical games into the realm of WW2 operations with Corps Command: Totensonntag.

Combat Commander: Pacific
Played a mere 7 times after the 2-year onslaught that was Combat Commander: Europe, CC:P is a game whose surface I've barely scratched. What I've seen so far was great:

• 5 games of Scenario A. Grassy Knoll, the highlight of which had to be the 4-game 'Rumble in the Jungle' with 'Uncle' Martin.
• 1 banzai at 'Gator Creek, Guadalcanal.
• 1 visit to the sweltering depths of the Burmese jungle.

Of the various rules changes major and minor, just 3 can be said to be revisions to the core system:

• Stacking and cover.
• Instant kill.
• Night rules.

I shall have my rewen-ge!

Recently preoccupied with a new member of his household- a kitten (cue pause for wave of 'Aaaaahs' from the audience- including yours truly I must confess: Andy and I visited Gav later to meet Kai the kitten and she is indeed the cutest little furball), Gav was missing from the table last Sunday. This was a bit of a shame because with Dave and Tony present we'd've made six for a Sunday session for the first time in many moons.

Battlestar Galactica
Anyhoo, it was my turn to choose our first game. After all that I've recently written on the subject, it was a cinch that I was going to choose Battlestar Galactica. There was more to this decision than the obvious desire to play the game over which I'd expended so much digital ink to expunge my doubts about its lasting merits. No, I had a whole other agenda, a 'political' agenda if you will. Y'see all that analysis had also convinced me that BSG gameplay could be improved if you brought ulterior motives and other sources of paranoia to the table.

Again, the toasters' offensive

No, not some Philip K. Dick story; nor even another glorious Cylon victory for yours truly; but a return to the topic of my last post, in which I'd wanted to tease out the implications of the issues that've come up across the table during our games of Battlestar Galactica. Arriving later that same Sunday Donald convinced me that I'd been too allusive altogether, because he'd come away with the impression that I don't like the game. I couldn't let this misconception lie.

All carping aside Battlestar Galactica is my #1 multiplayer pick of 2008. It's a long time since a multiplayer game has hit so many high notes in so few plays (7, to be precise). Regular readers should remember that those 'procedural limitation' caveats I've maintained these past 9 months stemmed in the first instance from my experience of Arkham Horror, FFG's shiny new edition of the cult Call of Cthulhu boardgame. This had palled very quickly for me when, during a break from my Ashes of Middenheim campaign, and after a couple of plays whose inevitable clunks and fumbles almost span out of control under the weight of 6 players, Gav and I cakewalked a 2-player teamup against Cthulhu.

What price survival?

Throwdown round up
I've been under the cosh of the annual D.I. (Depressive Incommunicado) in recent weeks, hence the bloglag. There's been a healthy diet of gaming all the same, as site-visiting readers attentitive to my 'Recently played games' sidebar gadget already know. I won't be revisiting all those games but, for the record (naturally enough):

• Badger and I played 3 games of Memoir'44:

1. Sainte-Mère-Église x2.
2. Utah Beach.

• Andy, Donald, Gav and I played 6 games:

1. Chaos in the Old World (unfinished).
2. Carcassonne x3.
3. Battlestar Galactica.
4. Settlers.

Score
Andy Erm, no.
Badger Nope.
Donald Nada.
Gav 3 (2x Carcassonne and 1 Settlers).
Me 5 (BSG, Carcassonne and 3x M44).
:0)

The end is nigh?

Battlestar Galactica
Dave added himself to the recently familiar turnout, making us 5 for Sunday's games. Donald had first choice and he plumped for Battlestar Galactica. I was pleased with this choice despite the anti-climax of our last play. The imminent expansion I wrote about back in June was part of the reason for this: I want to have played the basic set often enough to have gone well beyond first impressions when I get a taste of how the expansion changes the game.

Preliminary testing
Sitting down Monday morning to get to work on the write-up, I decided on pictures of the key cards which'd been part of the Cylons' final onslaught. I set to work with the scanner. The first scan- fullsize at left, was terrible: the pictures were too small and the resolution was terrible. I briefly considered just using them but, remembering recent testing of the ideal setting for scanning miniatures, I decided instead to run a quick settings test. (No prizes to the readers who notice the smidgin of irony here, but cheerful greetings for sure to those who might wish to register their groans at my lame attempt at humour!)

Games a gogo!

The vicissitudes of everyday life have taken their toll on my blogging- key amongst which has been my labours to get my painting table up and running again after my long layoff; and a future onslaught is already on the horizon. Meanwhile, here is a quick roundup of last weekend's gaming.

Combat Commander

Badger was due round for another dose of Combat Commander last Friday. He was expecting us to continue our Stalingrad campaign. What he didn't know was that Mark and Robert were due to visit again. Hoping therefore that he might get chance to taste revenge after the pastings he'd suffered at Mark's hands last mayday, I suggested to Badger that we play an official scenario, something we could set up and play more quickly than the campaign with its decision tree and record keeping.

A moment to marvel at...

As regular readers might already've guessed, and as my facebook friends will already know, the old mood swing kicked in recently, slowing down to a near trickle the flood of articles which already promise to make 2009 RD/KA!'s best year since 2005. I first noticed this a couple of weeks ago in the form of a change in my sleep cycle which signalled my mood swinging below the median.

The inevitable next phase began just this week, with decreased energy levels, poor motivation and attendant psychological disturbances. The upshot of all this is that the various activities I've been enjoying for the past few months start to become painful to contemplate, let alone engage in.

I actually have a better plan than ever to deal with this: exercise. I'm going to have to start to make good on last year's idea of regular gym attendance and swimming. I'll keep you informed.

Meanwhile: onwards, to bigger and better treasure!

Toasters, toasters, everywhere!

Battlestar Galactica

An unexpected visit from Gav (last seen at G3's 10th anniversary bash) plus Dave's presence ensured our first long-awaited 5-player game of Battlestar Galactica: the Board Game last Sunday.

The initial dice-off gave us the following cast of characters upon whom would depend the fate of humanity:

• Gav: Starbuck.
• Dave: Saul Tigh.
• Me: Laura Roslin (I'd enjoyed the Presidency before!).
• Andy: William Adama (he wanted those nukes obviously!).
• Donald: "Chief" Galen Tyrol (Donald reluctantly succumbed to our collective insistence that we couldn't do without a 'Support' character).

The 1st thing we noticed was that there is no Cylon Sympathiser in the 5-player game, so that we knew precisely the threat we would face, if not exactly when it would appear.

Andy? Nah, he's as human as you or m... URK!

Crimson Skies

We had our regular complement of 4 yesterday after last week's 2-player session. Andy brought his Crimson Skies models so we started our little campaign as we'd been planning. As is the fate of character sheets everywhere, some had gone mysteriously missing, so we had to waste time getting our pilots ready again. Soon enough though our heroes and their wingmen took to the skies.

We were using a mixture of metal and plastic miniatures from Andy's collection. I still don't have any decent portrait shots of Andy's own models, so in the meantime here are some images of the cardboard pieces, for purposes of identifying the factions' colours:

• Red Skull Legion (Andy).
• Confederate Air Corps (Me).
• Broadway Bombers (Donald).
• Redmond's Gang (Tony).

Our seating arrangment set Tony and I facing each other across a short map edge. I promptly offered him a truce, in the face of which he tried to hedge his bets. This was a foolish move, because I immediately directed both my planes to attack his piratical lowlives.

The fickle finger of fate

Battlestar Galactica

All present and correct come lunchtime, Andy, Donald, Tony and myself set straight to the game of Battlestar Galactica to which I, for one, had been looking forward all week. There was quite a lot to play for this week. Would the humans win out over the Cylon menace? Would BSG prove to be more than just a flash in the pan?

Tony got 1st player, and took the opportunity to cast himself as our resident hotdog pilot and glamourpuss, so that this week's lineup was:

• Andy: Giaus Baltar.
• Donald: Saul Tigh.
• Tony: Starbuck.
• Me: Tom Zarek.

Andy had the last pick after I'd chosen Zarek, which put him in the position of being able to choose whether to be President or Admiral himself (he wanted a change from playing a Support character after last week), so choosing whether I'd be President or Donald would be Admiral. In the end I was cut out of the privileges of office, which I didn't mind too much.

Done down by dastardly Donald's devious duplicity!

Battlestar Galatica

Back in December 'My 2009 gaming wishlist #2' outlined my hopes for FFG's new Battlestar Galactica: the Board Game. Andy, Donald and Tony were round on Sunday for 2009's inaugural Sunday session, and none took any persuasion to start with the Cylon menace (or should that've been start as the Cylon menace?).




Will it? Won't it?
Cross-media adaptions of geekery's icons are always troublesome, inevitably alienating some horrified fans as each must. With zero investment in the TV series, my question was whether the semi-cooperative procedural play would be at all interesting. In other words, would the BSG game be less the letdown that is FFG's Arkham Horror, and more the intense test of wit and will that is their Descent?

My 2009 gaming wishlist #2

Like I said, there's a Sunday session on today, so I'm going to post about the multiplayer games I'd like to see get a few plays in 2009. I'll start with new stuff I guess.

Battlestar Galactica
I rarely watched the original Battlestar Galactica TV show, and I watched the new one not at all. The new show's reputation did reach me though, partly through internet buzz, but mostly through Andy's enthusiasm. The new series' reimagining of the original material - with its equal-opportunities casting and darker tones - appealed to Andy where it appalled some geeks online. I have to admit it was precisely this contrast between the new and the old shows that made the new Battlestar Galactica in the slightest bit interesting to me, and then not interesting enough to get my bum in the seat in front of the TV (which says more about my TV habits than it does the show, naturally enough).