The long dark night of the dice rolls #2: light at the end of the tunnel

Give me hexes, counters
& CRTs, goddammit!

I wrote last time about some of the highlights in recent multiplayer gaming. Today, I'm going to look back at some of the 2-player fun I've been having. When the Sunday sessions dried up I came to realise that the last couple of months of Sunday gaming had been slightly frustrating: we'd been playing too many light Euros. It's not that I don't like these games- I do; it's just that I wanted some meatier fare, with the lighter games filling their proper role, namely filler. I'm pleased to say that I've managed in the past couple of months to satisfy this desire to a significant extent.

Combat Commander

Regular readers won't be surprised that Badger and I have been keeping up our regular Combat Commander games. We've mostly being playing our way through the Combat Commander Battle Pack #3: Normandy. The scenarios start at the beginning, with Operation Deadstick- the Ox and Bucks' coup de main at the Bénouville (later Pegasus) Bridge in the early minutes of June 6th 1944; and finish at the end, with the 1st Polish Armoured Division's stand on Hill 262 ('The mace') during the battle of the Falaise pocket in late August. In between there are beaches to fight your way off of, beachhead fortifications to overcome, lots of bocage to fight your way through, villages to capture, and a couple of scenarios featuring French Resistance forces to boot.

Getting down to business?

I'm still working on my setup for that game of TS@VASSAL. This isn't because the rules are particularly difficult- they're not, as is evidenced by the mere 8 pages of actual rules in the 28-page rulebook, a whole page of which furthermore is devoted to components and setup; no, what's holding me up is the complexity of the gameplay resulting from the essentially simple elements. In other words, there is a lot to think about! For the benefit of readers, let me explain how the game works.

The world of Twilight Struggle
The world that was the superpowers' playground during the Cold War is depicted in Twilight Struggle on a map which divides the globe into 6 regions, each showing the most important countries in that region. The mapboard also features various information panels and record tracks as you can see.

Getting cyber on yer ass!

CC@VASSAL?-: not yet
Site-visiting readers alert to the sidebar content might already be asking themselves what and why questions about the new links recently added under the cybergaming heading:

• ACTS.
• VASSAL.

Cybergaming? Not computer gaming as such, cybergaming uses ICT to faciliate playing boardgames via the web, using apps typically requiring ownership of the boxed game. Regular readers might remember VASSAL, where an fB friend and fellow BGGer and I last January played what was my first turn of transatlantic Combat Commander.

Meanwhile...

I'm hard at work still on last Sunday's session report, which I hope to publish by Saturday. Here're a couple of quick stories in the meantime.

It's official!
Since its 2007 launch, UK Games Expo has established itself as the biggest modern adventure gaming convention in Britain. This year's UK Expo'09 takes place at The Clarendon Suites June 5th, 6th and 7th.

I can now confirm that I will be GM'ing a Combat Commander tournament at UK Expo on the Friday night and the Saturday. All other details are to be confirmed, but you can expect to hear more, here at RD/KA!, and on UK Expo@facebook, and CC@CSW plus CC@BGG, as you'd expect. ;)

It's a first!

Recent facebooking prompted by the wish for a network to support my 2009 tournament intentions led, last Tuesday, to a long-awaited premiere: my first ever game of Combat Commander using the VASSAL engine. I played a game or two of M44@VASSAL a couple of years ago. All I've done with CC@VASSAL is take the pictures I use for my CC maps here at RD/KA! Anything more than that, anything which involved using VASSAL actually to play CC, I just couldn't figure out a damn thing about it! And I was being slack about asking someone to teach me.