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.

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.

A bit of this and a bit of that

Technical problems stop the Panzers in their tracks

Just don't aim for
the window...

Badger came round last night for what was supposed to be another session of Fighting Formations and perhaps some Combat Commander. Unfortunately events were to intervene in the form of the shiny new desktop PC which I had taken delivery of just the previous day. I hadn't had time to set everything up that Thursday, so on the Friday I decided just to wait for Badger's arrival so that he could offer his assistance. It's not that I'm a complete tech-idiot or anything but there are always risks associated with transferring your old system to a new machine, so I felt it would be useful to have Badger on hand.

Just as well too it turned out.

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.

The long dark night of the dice rolls #1: a little light relief

I mentioned last Tuesday that I've played hundreds of games during the months of my depression, nearly 600 in fact. Still getting back into the swing of things here at RD/KA! as I am, I thought I'd run through some of the highlights of that epic series of games, and cast a quick eye over some other games which I've bought recently.

Ivanhoe, Ivanhoe and yet more bloody Ivanhoe!

The impressive statistic of nearly 600 games played since last September is put in its proper context by the fact that more than half of those were games of Ivanhoe. My neighbour Liam (last seen swigging wine at Sioux's gallery launch in May last year) came round on xmas eve keen to play a game to which he'd taken an instant liking way back in October 2009. We played a 24-game session. And so began a marathon run of 325 games, all but 9 of which were played in the 6 months up to May. That's averaging 14 games/week, in a couple of sessions each week. Whew!

Rain starts play

Get down, deeper and down!
Tuesday's visit to G3 was just the icing on the cake of what had been a bumper few days gaming for yours truly. Such a big night took priority over the weekend's gaming here at RD/KA!, which- thanks to my trip to Edinburgh and the recent good weather, saw our first Sunday session in a month. Donald, Gav and I made three on the day. First choice was down to Donald, which put him in the Overlord's Seat of Power for a long-awaited return to Descent, my favourite dungeonbash boardgame.

A dynamic duo?
With only 2 heroes a solid tank was a priority. Gav chose that role and quickly settled on Mordrog. I decided to run a rogue , choosing Kirga for his ability to keep the spawning monsters at bay. And so we had a pair of scurvy greenskin 'heroes' we hoped would be fit to tackle the best that the Overlord could throw at us.

UK Games Expo'10 #3. Games to the left of them, games to the right of them

A weekend of lovely stuff
With trade stands and demo tables spread through 6 halls in the Clarendon Suites there was plenty to keep me busy on Saturday before the Combat Commander tournament, and on Sunday. I had to exercise a measure of restraint at the trade stands this year because I was hauling my own luggage home by train, which gave me an added incentive to pass the time playing as many games as possible.

Cubicle 7
My first definite port of call on Saturday was the Cubicle 7 stand, located in the Gold Zone (where I'd later play my first game of Dominion). I was a man on a mission: I wanted a copy of the new superhero RPG Wild Talents, which I'd seen in the Expo programme because it'd been nominated for 'Best New RPG' in the Expo Awards. The stall was very busy so I only had time for a brief exchange of pleasantries with Angus Abramson before moving on.

"Alas, I am undone!"

Sieze the day?
I said last Thursday that I wanted to get Dominion to the table up here in Glasgow "at the earliest opportunity". That opportunity arose when Badger appeared for Friday night gaming. I'd been touting for a game of Conflict of Heroes- what with the upcoming demo tour, but the lure of Dominion proved too much to resist. A Euro-style cardgame that can keep this grognard's favourite treadhead's game off the table? Regular readers will realise that this must make Dominion something really special.

What went down
The rules of Dominion include a few recommended sets of Kingdom cards to give beginners balanced games which demonstrate different dynamics of play (you only use 10 of the 22 different kinds remember?) so- knowing what I was looking at and for this time, I was quickly able to get the game set up using the starter game cards (all shown in the illustrations left and below). Five minutes later we were playing. Five minutes after that Badger was playing his cards like he'd been playing Dominion for ages: grinning all over his face as he surveyed good hands; grimacing at his hands of shite.

UK Games Expo'10 #1. Friends old and new

Rattle and hum: the convention circuit with added cyberware
As many of my readers will know, one of the special charms of any convention is meeting new people with an ease all too uncommon in everyday life. The simple foreknowledge of passions shared with those you encounter, coupled perhaps with something of a 'hothouse' environment as people try to squeeze as much as possible out of the convention experience, creates a drive to turn chance encounters into memorable moments. This pleasure grows when continued convention-going turns these passing moments into casual acquaintances and more enduring friendships.

This already familiar experience has changed in recent years thanks to the intervention of the internet, and of social networking in particular. People you know online become candidates for organised rendezvous at the earliest opportunity; those you meet at conventions are added to your online network so that it's easier to meet up in the future. And so the hobby community is enriched as a whole- by the growing networks of its members; and for each of those members- by their increasing ability to participate in and contribute to the life of the community of their shared interests. (Image via Online Teaching Resources.)

Mad March roundup #1. Chivalry and... sorcery?!

Wednesday night woes: but for whom?
Badger was on holiday from work a week past Wednesday, so a day's gaming was called for. There was talk of playing Conflict of Heroes because of my imminent demo session at next weekend's Conpulsion 2010 but that'd've felt too much like homework for me, so we decided to play Combat Commander: Pacific instead. The CoH homework will be done solitaire next week I guess.

Combat Commander doesn't hit the table as often as it used to these days, so I was pleased to get in another game. Full CC battle reports here @RD/KA! have become less common even than that, the most recent being May last year. So I'll forbear from comment about our game until another day.

Stemming the varlet tide
Liam came round for dinner later, which curtailed our CC session after that one game. Dinner done, we turned to that old favourite- a new favourite of Liam's to boot: Ivanhoe. We managed 5 games.

Score
Badger 1 (15 tokens).
Liam 1 (17 tokens).
Me 3 (21 tokens).

I also owned the pwnage, with a game in which Badger and Liam's combined total was 3 tokens. Bragging rights to brave Sir John! :0)

Just passing through...

I'm working on a big post which I hope to get up tomorrow. Meanwhile, I paid a visit to Glasgow's 2 FLGS today, in respect of a new project the exciting details of which I hope to reveal very soon.

Pleasure not entirely deferred
The latest eagerly awaited- and slightly delayed, expansion to Chad Jensen's Combat Commander: Europe series- Battle Pack 3: Normandy, hadn't made its way yet through the transatlantic distribution channels to land at the Dragon and George by the time of my visit yesterday. Just as well really, because it meant that the fact that I couldn't afford it anyway didn't leave me to sit drooling at home in hapless anticipation until I had lucre sufficiently filthy to lash out on this must-have product. Soon though, we go!

London days #1: I hit the big city

Ain't life a bitch?
I flew down to London on Tuesday for a short holiday, visiting with my cousin Jo and her boyfriend Mike. Mike's a gamer, so that 3 choice games from my collection are in my luggage. Of course there is more to life than gaming, eg. food; so Tuesday night began with a visit to Strada, where I finally found the perfect pizza I've sought unsuccessfully these last few fmonths in Glasgow. And it is too good to be true because sure enough- there's no Strada in Glasgow: the search continues. :-(

Card-sharps or just sharp at cards?
Pleasantly satiated on pizza and chocolate pudding and ensconced chez Jo and Mike, we start as we mean to go on: getting down to some gaming. The hour is late and my hosts have early starts because they have jobs to go to, so the star attraction- specially requested by Mike, has to wait for a more appropriate occasion. I decide therefore that the elegant simplicity of Fluxx is called for.

You get what you play for

Plus ça change?
Saturday night party animal Gav being the last of yesterday's five to arrive, I foolishly left Andy, Dave, Donald to decide what the filler would be while we waited. I say "foolishly" because I'd finagled Andy's agreement to a game of Ivanhoe before Donald's appearance; and I just knew that given the choice, Andy and Donald would gravitate to a different game. And so it proved, as we sat down to Fluxx.

It's not that I don't like Fluxx; far from it: Fluxx remains for me an exemplar of conceptual ingenuity and clarity of rules exposition in games design, and a lot of fun to boot. I just rather prefer the cut and thrust of Ivanhoe to the chaotic antics of Looney Labs' best seller.

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 #2: Hidden depths unplumbed?

After Tuesday's whistle-stop tour of my festive fun, it's time to go into a bit more detail about some of highlights. First off, the boardgaming.

Pandemic: just another buggy solitaire?
Regular readers should remember how the BSG boardgame wavered in my affections last year because I feared its initial appeal was going to be gainsaid by another solitaire engine at the heart of the gameplay. During Martin's xmas visit 3 plays of Z-Man Games' 2008 cooperative boardgame Pandemic (which I first saw just after its release, being played at DiceConWest 2008) complete with the On the Brink expansion served to remind me that the secret of BSG's success is as much down to the card-driven system as it is to the Cylon-human antagonism I enjoyed so much.

Excellence exemplified
Before I comment further on why I suspect the card-driven solitaire engine might be Pandemic's saving grace to this gamer, I have to say a word or two about its graphic design and production. In a word, these are brilliant; so much so in fact that mere words can't do them justice.

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.

'Twas the game session before xmas

None shall pass!
The choice falling to Gav should he choose to appear on Sunday; and with that existing uncertainty- a Saturday night's partying, doubled by overnight snow; Andy, Donald, Tony and myself played some filler while we waited to see if our main game of the day'd be Risk (Revised) or Roborally. We began with Ivanhoe, a game which doesn't see the table as often as it used to because it turned out that it wasn't as universally loved and admired around the table as'd been hitherto believed by yours truly.

Sunday's game- just Andy, Tony and me IIRC, was an example of the tight cardplay which I love so much in Ivanhoe. Tony took a quick early lead on 3 before Andy and I started swapping wins amid the inevitable 'leads to par' of Ivanhoe defensive play. That opening round or two included- IIRC, my loss of a token because I had to withdraw with the Maiden in play.

Underground, overground!

Bones to crunch underfoot, again!
Hotly anticipated by Tony, Donald's choice of Descent for yesterday's Sunday session was sure to be popular. When Liam joined us I knew it was going to prove interesting too: both the dungeon-bashing theme and the detailed systems put Descent outside the realm of the sort of family games that are the staple fare of the casual gamer, so that this would be the most obviously geeky of the games Liam had played chez yours truly.

I became immediately aware of this 'clash of cultures' as setup proceeded. I mean to say, Liam's a fan of that classic family strategy game Risk, so he's had a taste of boardgames which take a wee while to setup. With Risk though, the setup is a part of the game, in which the players determine their strategies. In Descent on the other hand, a similarly lengthy setup is a simple consequence of the sheer wealth of parts.

Curiouser and curiouser

Flashbacks from a cartoon robot TV
Last weekend's Sunday session – Andy, Donald and Gav making us four – opened with Andy's due choice (my preferred of his last call from 2 IIRC)- Roborally. Preferred it might've been, but the prospect of playing this early Richard Garfield design filled me with a perplexing mixture of anticipation and reluctance. I'm pretty sure that latter sentiment was mostly down to all the lengthy games I've lost against 'Uncle' Martin. What was perplexing was the strength of that sentiment, even if it was only momentary. Let me explain.

My Roborally@BGG stats notwithstanding, I've played this game an awful lot; so much so that my set is pretty worn, the program cards especially- as was noted on Sunday. So I like it a lot. More than that: in a very real sense my fondness for Roborally surpasses my grognard's passion for the WW2 tactical boardgames I love so much to play. The comedy of errors that is Roborally gameplay plays a big role in this, naturally enough; but the game haunts this gaming geek's imagination for one reason above all: Twonky.

All new! All singing! All dancing!

Shiny! Shiny!
We were 4 for games on Sunday, pleasing Gav because we came in under the 5-player limit which is one of the new features of the Risk (Revised Edition) he'd been inspired to buy after my comments about our recent big game of the current edition of classic Risk. A combination of Gav's bubbling enthusiasm for his new toy coupled with natural curiosity in the face of a radical redesign of this popular and well-known game meant that Tony- whose pick it was, was happy to elect to try the new game.

What went down
We played the 4-player starter game: a fixed setup for quickstart, and no rewards for objectives. This proved to be a great way to get rolling. The inevitable clunks and fumbles aside, the logical and coherent revised rules proved easy to pick up and we soon found ourselves playing a game that felt a bit like classic Risk with added blitzkrieg- a lot of fun, let me tell you!