Got game!- Glorious carnage!

Commands and Colours
Badger was round on Sunday, so we got in another couple of games testing the expanded nationality rules for M44, plus a game of BL.

In M44 we decided we wanted to have another look at the British and German rules, plus try out one of the Scenarios from the Front- ie. a scenario designed by a fan using the online scenario editor DoW provides for purchasers of M44 (and BL too). So we chose #1525U. Operation Charnwood: Phase 1- Drive on Caen, designed by M44 veteran Brummbar.

Badger and I both agreed that the scenario was fairly balanced: challenging to both sides and fun to play. With hindsight, our two 5-3 victories for the British has left me with the feeling that the historical balance might be a bit off. I thought that all these operations around Caen were unsuccessful? Also, Badger and I both liked the idea of having AT guns differentiated from artillery. We played Brummbar's variant from the scenario first, then I looked up his more detailed variant rules he'd posted to a thread on the DoW M44 forums. We felt something wasn't right, and we tossed ideas back and forth for some time. In the end we decided that simplest was best: what's the difference between field artillery and AT artillery? The latter need LOS. So that was it: AT artillery are identical to regular artillery except that they need LOS to the target. We found that this worked just fine.

Then it was off to Uchronia. I had a scenario already in mind following a recent heated controversy over at the DoW BL forums. So we were playing Scenario #12A. Crossing the Rhone, where I was to take on the feared Archpriest, Sir Arnold of Cervolles (banners) with the mercenary army of Seguin of Badefol (pennants).

The battle was long and hard, with a lot of preparatory manoeuvring, but in the end the Archpriest won out 6-3. There is a lot I could say about this game. Enough for now that we both thoroughly enjoyed it, and that I would say the result doesn't show just how close-run the battle was; Badger might demur of course! Also of interest was the fact that the game revived my interest in straight BL, after my recent thoughts about the innate superiority of Epic BL. This was perhaps the most surprising result of the game for me.

Score
2-1 Badger :(

Meanwhile...
Following on from these titanic tussles, Andy beat me in a game of Fluxx on Monday; and I took a small measure of revenge against Ros last night, beating her 2-1 in our first Carcassone rematch.

Score
2-2
Ah well!

And, finally...
More important perhaps than all of that though was that I played my first game of Warhammer 40K in, oh, I don't know how long.

Andy's been patiently bugging me to play 40K patrol for ages now. Casting around for a game to play on his bank holiday Monday visit, he suggested a game. I agreed. I was going to play my very own Penumbra's Talons space marines, naturally enough, while Andy would have a choice from the rest of my collection. He chose Orks. We chose our armies, set out a tabletop, and set to.

Andy had some 50 assorted greenskins in the form of 2 mobs of Ork boyz and 1 mob of Gretchins with a slaver. Facing off against this horde I first toyed with the idea of using a lot of tac-marines and heavy bolters. Then I decided to make one of the heavy bolters mobile by mounting it on an attack bike, and I was off. I ended up going with:

• 5 scouts: heavy bolter, sniper rifle, bolters
• 3 marine bikers w/2 flamers and 1 attack bike
• attack bike
• 2 landspeeder Tornados, operating independently

Andy's Ork mobz were positioned behind some hills to my northwest, with his gretchin near the centre covering their flank. My bikes and attack bikes were deployed on my centre baseline, hidden from view by some ruins and a large alien bush. The 2 L/S were safely out of sight in the base I'd carefully prepared for them during terrain set-up. My scouts went on my left, positioned to make a quick dash for a forward defence bunker where I hoped they'd sell themselves dearly against the Ork boyz who'd be on top of them in no time at all.

My plan went like a dream: the scouts were wiped out, naturally enough, but they diverted 1 ork mob away from the centre of the action so that my bikes could get to work on the other greenskins. This they did, with the bikes and attack bikes dealing with the gretchin and holding off the advancing ork mob without too much difficulty. My Tornadoes were held in reserve, and in the event I only needed 1 of them to deliver the coup de grace to Andy's 3rd mob hurrying to the scene of the action after they'd dealt with my scouts.

What a great game! The Talons have never really looked so good in action before (as compared, that is, to in my imagination). The Patrol rules also shone: my force would've been illegal under regular army-building rules, so what this showed was how 40K Patrol is a great way to experiment with new formations. As a marine player, I was also pleased to note that the 40K4 tweak to attack bikes (W2/Sv3+ instead of W1/Sv2+) is both logical in itself, and at the same time makes sense in that it allows attack bikes to feature in the patrol game. On top of all that the game played very smoothly, reminding us that the Warhammer 3-dice engine is still a very good tabletop gaming system. I imagine Andy's already working on an Imperial Guard patrol to settle the score!

Score
3-2
Grins! ;)

Start the week @ RD/KA! : Got game!

A month in the games of
A quick check of my meticulously maintained BGG Games Played record tells me that I've played 29 boardgames across 7 gaming sessions since my last post... no, no, I'm not anal enough actually to present averages, but I'll bet some of you readers are finding that you could no more resist calculating them than could your humble scribe! There's been some roleplaying and another movie too, but more of that anon. Here then, for your delectation and delight is a round-up of a month's boardgaming.

A Tale of teasing taunts and tenacity
It all began when I was visiting Ros at the end of April. She suggested we have a game of something. I fobbed her off because I was feeling lazy. But she persisted, and soon we were playing backgammon. I, of course, could not resist telling her that she was on a hiding to nothing, seeing as how I'm a much better backgammon player than she is (a little friendly needle is always worth adding to a decent gaming table!)

I guess I'll have to develop some more of this line of needling with Ros, because the final result for 12 games was 8-4. This was a creditable showing, and far from the less-than-enjoyable (for Ros that is) utter crushing I over-confidently expected. That'll be another day.

Battlelore? Still epic
Soon thereafter, it was time for another of Badger's visits, and our continuing exploration of the wonders of DoW's Battlelore. Badger had a look through the Epic scenarios online, and settled on Epic BL 4- Moorish Giant. Here is the set-up.

Random selection of sides gave Badger the pennants (at the top of the map). Oh dear, I thought, he's got the giant. Y'see, the last time Badger and I had played with the giant, I pulled what I'd thought was a really smart move in the hope of killing it quickly. It'd only been when I saw the position after I'd made the move that I realised it was actually a bit dumb, with the potential to become an utter disaster. I got lucky that time, and managed to kill the giant before he'd been able to exploit the situation to turn it into an utter disaster. So the sight of that giant on Badger's side instead of mine made me nervous.

Working through the set-up, I gained some relief when I noted that the giant didn't get his rockpile in this game. Good, I thought- at least I won't have 3 dice ranged attacks heading my way!

Details of lore council compositions and so on escape me, but the game opened with the giant doing pretty much what I'd feared: he waded into the centre of my line and started rolling Lore on his battle dice to generate those pesky 2-hex push backs. Nothing else for it I decided: I sent my units forward hoping to kill it before it did too much damage. I reckon I threw about 2 dozen dice at the thing before it finally went down, and by the time that happened, most of my centre was on or just in front of my baseline. Meanwhile, pretty much Badger's entire army was massed in tidy formations across the middle of the battlefield. Facing this, I took a more than just a crumb of comfort from the fact that I was only down 3 banners to 2 after this titanic tussle.

My army split as it now was, and with Badger well positioned as described, I decided that I had to act fast or I was doomed. Which flank to attack was the question? At this point the cards and, ironically enough, the effects of the giant's havoc came to my aid: I could put together a decent attack on my right flank. Not only did I have the best of my dwarfs there, but I also had some units from the centre which were well positioned to assist thanks to the efforts of the giant!

I can't remember much of the details at this long remove. What I do remember is that is was nip and tuck all the way. My victory, when it came, more or less pipped Badger at the post.

Another feature of this game which I remember is that I suffered from little lore and not many powerful lore cards. Again, details escape me, but I was left with the feeling of operating on a shoestring in my lore play throughout the game. With hindsight I can tell you that that just makes my victory all the more satisfying!

Another family gathering
Badger's visit chez moi was soon followed by another visit on my part to my friend Bill and his family. Bill decided that it was time to break open his own copy of Battlelore to introduce his son Daniel to the game. Off to Agincourt it was then.

Bill and I conferred briefly: the French, with their opportunities to launch devestating cavalry charges, are the force most suited to a beginner we felt. And Bill decided that young Daniel was quite capable of being dropped into the full rules, instead of following the programmed learning DoW have cleverly provided in the BL scenario book.

The game was a great success. Daniel grasped the rules quickly and moved into action confidently with some coaching. Naturally enough I drew my own killer card for the scenario- Darken the Skies. You can be sure that, even against young Daniel in his first game, I savoured the opportunity to unleash my 20 dice! A bit of careful positioning later I did, generating a disappointingly puny 2 kills (although as Bill and I noted, that's actually only about 1 point under the average). And of course, Daniel was eventually able to unleash his cavalry and enjoy the satisfaction of sweeping me from the field.

As I said: a young gamer's ideal introduction to an exciting new game playing against a worthy opponent (even though I say so myself).

Our curry supper out of the way, a game of Settlers was next. Unless memory fails me, here are the key features. First off: in her initial setup Radka was left with a choice of a poor resource base, or a trading strategy based on the fortunate conjuction of some good resources and their port. She wisely chose the latter.

In the early game her key resource generator for this strategy was the target of the robber, and I could see that Radka was beginning to doubt the wisdom of her strategy. Naturally enough, this early setback made others the robber's target, Radka was able to develop her position, and finally pulled off a good win. I can't remember for sure (and Bill could perhaps correct me if I'm wrong), but I think I was a fairly close second.

So far then, Radka is becoming something of our Queen of Catan. Certainly she has become the player to beat.

My home is my castle (or not, as the case may be)
A recent visit to a local boardgame store (y'know, the classic kind, selling chess, backgammon, parlour and puzzle games, with a smattering of Euro and adventure games thrown in for good measure). I was looking for something in the Euro style, something Ros would enjoy, or which would go down well chez Bill. I found it in part the first of Rio Grande Games' popular Carcassone (BGG page).

Carcassone is a game I'd seen many times in my FLGS. I knew it was a popular Eurogame. I'd even looked through the box one night while visiting Gav (a name already known to regular readers, eg. from this this epic series of C&C:A and M44 games last year). So, without being able exactly to say why, I was sure that Ros would take to this game like a duck to water. And she did.

Carcassone is a simple to learn- rules on 2 sides of A4; quick to teach- 5 to 10 minutes tops; and easy to get to grips with- the various elements of the game become clear after a few plays. At the same time, the learning curve appears intriguing. There are certain obvious tactics which appear less obvious after a few games, eg. trying for huge cities. And then there are sublties about the way the game binds together the classic structure of opening, mid, and end-game, all of which appear to come down to the farmers. All of these are the hallmarks of a great game, and suggestive of clever designers who have learned good lessons from the classics.

These ruminations aside, the game was a roaring success. Ros and I both had great fun in a session which demonstrated Carcassone's addictive qualities: the final score was 5-4 to Ros. You can be sure that Ros has been waiting for me to announce to the world her triumph in our first ever session of a brand new game. Ah well, it's a fair cop guv, but society's to blame!

A mixed bag
They say brevity is the soul of wit, but in this instance it serves only to help me to get this post to bed. Although the WFRP campaign was put on hold, some of us are still getting together for regular boardgame sessions (as witness, eg. previous posts about Doom: The Boardgame- here and here, both of which were Sunday sessions turned boardgaming). Our last such session featured myself, Andy and Tony.

We had a go at Mayfair Games' Settlers of the Stone Age, which Andy had borrowed on my behalf. I enjoyed this variation on the Settlers system. It is a good game, worth having on your shelf to bring out now and again, although I have to say that it is a poor cousin to classic Settlers because it just cannot enjoy the same replay value. Our game also featured little of the trading which is the core of what makes Settlers the modern classic that it is, and I was left wondering if this was something intrinsic to the design- ie. more than just an accidental feature of our particular playing. This too would limit the replay appeal of the game. In any event, Andy won a handsome victory thanks to intelligent play based on a better understanding of the victory conditions than either Tony or myself.

We then turned to Rio Grande Games Mississippi Queen. Erm, what can I about this? I had a really good night once in a boozy 5-player session. I still find its design and execution elegant and charming. But I was glad when our 3-player game that Sunday was over, and felt a little embarrassed that I'd brought it out.

After this Tony sat back to let Andy and I have a go at Crimson Skies, published by the now defunct F.A.S.A. This is a game I played a few times on its initial release, enjoying it hugely, and which I have often looked at wistfully on the shelf wondering when I'd get another chance to play. It is a crunchy grognard's type of game with some lovely mechanics evoking a real feel for its subject- dogfighting with 1930's pulp super-planes. The crunchy rules are worth the effort because they generate entertaining results.

Andy and I had a lot of laughs with our game, and Tony liked the look of it too. I suspect we'll have this one out on the table again before too long. I just hope I can do better than cutting and running to save my precious planes from destruction the next time. Like, eg. getting a decent hit or two would be nice.

Who is the law?
Bill's Wednesday roleplaying session has also recently devolved into boardgaming. It began with a game of GW's 1980's classic Judge Dredd.

This is a game which wowed us all when it first came out. It had lovely components chock full of imagery from the strip of 2000AD fame. In every way the game really made us feel that we in the Megacity 1 we had come to know and love over the years.

At the same time I think I can say that it has exercised a power over our gaming imaginations unmatched even by such tactical masterpieces as our beloved (and much, much more played) Up Front. I think I can safely say that no position in our gaming history was ever more hotly contested than that of Chief Judge of Megacity 1, to the extent that even now, more than 20 years later, the news that one or other of us has managed recently to gain the position; well, let me just say that no one takes that news lightly. So, when Bill suggested we play our first game in 20 years, you can imagine what was at stake; all the more so for me since I have won and retained the position in Bill's absence in the intervening years.

Tony went into an early lead. I managed to pull off some good arrests, including picking up a major crime with Judge Dredd's help while I held the Edwin Parsey card. Bill was lagging woefully behind all this time, and he knew it. As we entered the end game I could see the prize of prizes in my grasp: a 3-time winner, including a 20-year rematch. I could retire on this for life and let the others squabble over the scraps for the duration if I pulled this one off.

Bill of course was beginning to gain on us but, perhaps influenced by his early whinges, I made the mistake of focussing my finks all too much on Tony. The decisive moment was when Tony hit Bill and I with Block War just as I was sitting in the Grand Hall of Justice ready to tool-up for my last patrol. Desperate not to be hospitalised, I played to grab a combat card from Bill's hand. He had none, nor did Tony. So I was forced to tackle Judge Rex on even terms.

The result of this was that Bill went into the endgame with a full hand of cards to mine and Tony's couple. I made a play for a crime where I'd've had to roll a 5 or 6 against the perp's 1 or 2 to make the arrest and win the greatest prize in my career as a Judge. I failed. Bill, of course, deployed every resource at his disposal to make his winning arrest without even having to roll the dice.

Oh, and it wouldn't even've mattered if I'd made that arrest: Bill had the Edwin Parsey card up his sleeve. So the only crumb of comfort I could take from not making my arrest was not having to suffer the crushing gloating of Chief Judge Rex as he wiped the grin off my face with a card play that you can be sure he'd've timed to deadly perfection. At least we had a good belly laugh about that one afterwards.

We revisit more classics
Bill fancied some Up Front on his most recent visit. Tony was happy to sit and watch, and I willingly obliged. We started off with Bill's Japanese against my Marines in Surprise Attack. Lovely, I thought- my least favourite squad in the game, asleep at their posts against an onrushing Japanese horde. You've just got to treat them right, said Bill. So I did. I survived the initial Japanese hail of fire (premature IMO), rallied, and won a crushing victory; which consisted of beating the Japanese at their own game- ie. close combat, and gunning down the remains of the Japanese squad as they closed-in to attempt what their betters had so conspicuously failed to achieve.

Undaunted, Bill took us back to the jungle, where I ended up taking in the Japanese against the British in Jungle Assault. I was happy to play this one- a 17-man Japanese squad with 2 LMG and 2 mortars has that effect on you. I couldn't be complacent though: British rifleman backed up by a Vickers MMG are rightly feared.

I quickly ran my mortars forward to get them in range, and began raining down fire on the British MMG. These kept the British usefully pinned so that my 2 LMG groups weren't suffering too much fire. Unfortunately they weren't going anywhere much. When I finally got Sgt. Okimoto's group moving, they found the inevitable marsh. The upshot of that was that I ended up having to charge the lone Sgt. Okimoto forward in the faint (but very real) hope that he could win the game single-handed with some serious bayonetting. In the end though, time constraints forced him to banzai, which proved instantly fatal.

During the post-mortem we agreed that I had played a poor game. Sure, my mortars had kept Bill's MMG group pinned, which minimised my casualties for a long while. But I'd been unable to exploit the opportunity because my other groups weren't sufficiently advanced- a poorly coordinated mad rush in other words. This was compounded by the fact that my hails of mortar fire ate up a significant portion of the deck. Contrariwise, Bill pointed out that he'd had a strange game: pinned for so long and unable to do much, he'd essentially won almost through inaction. But those are the vagaries of Up Front.

A game of Nuclear War rounded the evening off. Thanks to his missing his first turn, Bill was knocked out even before he had a chance to play. I mourned the fact that it'd been Tony's propaganda which'd delivered the coup de grace because I'd decided to spread the hurt after hitting Bill for 25 million the previous turn. Then Bill had to sit and watch Tony and I slowly pound away at each other until I finally won. Nuclear War is a great beer and pretzel game whose merits lie in player interaction and the way it generates a domino effect. We all agreed that the game that night had demonstrated none of those features, and it'd even've been better if we just called it off. But Bill also agreed that this was Nuclear War, so there could be no question of that.

Start the week @ RD/KA! : Brilliant Sunshine?

I have a sort of love-hate relationship with the cinema: I really like the sense of occasion of going out to see a movie, and I just love the big-screen experience when a film-maker really knows what they are doing- sometimes there's just no substitute for the power of being there (cue old fart's nostalgia about that first 'Star Destroyer moment'). On the other hand, much of what passes through our local multiplexes is too uninspiring to encourage me to venture out very often; and the proportion of formulaic shlock I end up sitting through when I do make the trip only confirms this prejudice.

So I must confess to being both surprised and pleased at dragging myself out last Thursday too see the big budget SF movie Sunshine. Two films in as many weeks? A real turn up for the books!

The spur for this moviegoing extravaganza was the name of Danny Boyle as the director- the same man responsible for Trainspotting and 28 Days Later.... The latter I really liked; the former was simply brilliant- the opening of Trainspotting is simply one of the most exhilerating 20 minutes of cinema I have ever watched. This full-throttle romp captured me in exactly the same way as did the similarly relentless opening to Alfred Bester's classic novel The Stars My Destination.

Intrigued then, but with expectations set to middling, I set out with Andy to give Sunshine a go.

The plot of Sunshine is uncomplicated: it is the middle of the 21st century and the sun is dying. So a spaceship is sent out with a gigantic nuclear bomb to restart the star's nuclear core. It goes missing, naturally enough, so a second ship is sent out in a last effort to save humanity. Hmm: a mission to save mankind setting out after the failure of a previous similar mission? Who'd've guessed that the unexpected discovery of the first ship would lead to a change of the mission parameters of the second, with equally unexpected consequences?

So far so familiar. And an awful lot of what we see as this unfolds is as familiar as the plot. Cultural cross-references have a way of passing me by (which can often make even the most cliched plot deliver a surprise or two- so that might be a good thing!), but even I was able to notice nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dark Star, Alien, and Event Horizon. Still, these are all very good films to 'take inspiration' from, and I guess it is arguable that Boyle might've been seeking to use that very familiarity to shortcut the exposition needed to get his setting and premise across so that he could concentrate on his characters and his story.

And, to be fair, Sunshine is more than just another SFX-driven Potemkin village of a blockbuster. Sure, as an SFX movie it was actually really quite good. The CGI spaceship looked very nice, and there were some other very nice FX sequences. More importantly perhaps, the sun was handled aptly. The film succeeded in taking the familiar distant orb and turning it into a majestic and malevolent presence. So while not necessarily an SFX blockbuster, Sunshine certainly delivered some impressive imagery.

Better still- the imagery didn't serve as a substitute for a story. There are characters driving the narrative as well as macguffins. Heck, there's even a dramatic theme underlying the story, a theme hinted at if not given away outright by the name of our heroes' ship: the Icarus II. This theme develops along 2 main lines in the film: the classic hubris of flying too close to the sun; and the more Nietzschean jeopardy of staring too deep into the sun so that it warps your soul. In fact, it might not even be too fanciful to suggest that Sunshine takes the Conradian inspiration of the classic Alien and turns it inside out, from 'the heart of darkness' to... well I think you should get my drift.

There are several elements of the movie which support this interpretation of the moviemakers' lofty thematic ambitions.

First off is the strong presence of eyes, both literal and metaphorical. Check out the intro clip on the movie's website to see just one example: the Icarus II looks very like an eye, with iris, cornea, retina and optic nerve (seriously- just take a look!). Second, the notion of the sun's light getting inside the characters' heads is made pretty explicit. And then there are those hardened EVA suits. These looked strangely piglike to my mind, often giving the impression that their wearers were snuffling in the ground, so as to contrast with the whole idea of man looking up at the sun. All a bit fanciful? Perhaps, but there was definitely something of this ilk going on in Sunshine in my opinion.

The main problem with all this was that it was presented in a film which was ultimately a bit confusing, and which relied, in the end, on a plot twist which was an absurdity too far. Added to this there was the inherent implausibility of the ship's crew as agents of their mission. I mean to say: the Icarus II was a ship which was carrying all that remained of Earth's fissile materials on one last mission to save the planet. Looking at the crew assigned to this mission, you just had to ask yourself: where the heck were the military? The rag-tag civilian crews in Alien and Event Horizon made sense in those movies (not to mention the fact that the crew in Event Horizon were simply the most competent I've ever seen crew a movie spaceship); their counterpart in Sunshine just seemed a bit out of place.

In a strange way then, you could say that Sunshine is a film which was hoist on its own petard; in trying to reach beyond staple blockbuster fare, it ended up reaching beyond its own resources. It was interesting despite its flaws, and is certainly worth the effort for the big screen experience if you like this kind of film. Not bad at all really.

Start the week @ RD/KA! : Got game!

Gosh, but it's been a bit quiet on the boardgaming front these recent weeks! All I'd managed since my last bountiful weekend has been a single game of my current hot favourite- Combat Commander: Europe. I finally managed to take the Germans in against Tony's Russian partisans, winning a close-fought victory in a game which displayed all of the strengths of this fine design.

However Donald was at a loose end yesterday, so he joined Tony and I in a mighty afternoon's boardgaming.

Settlers of Catan
"What are we going to play then?" Confronted with this question, it was the easiest thing in the world to turn to this old friend. We managed to get 2 games in. Each was notable in its own way.

The first game was played on a board which seemed absolutely covered in red numbers- this'll not take long we told ourselves. We were right. With so many rich regions it wasn't difficult for each of us to find good locations for our initial settlements. Donald had a position which showed a lot of potential, with 2 6-point ores near an ore port, among other goodies.

Start the week @ RD/KA! : Down to The Wire

A televisual feast to celebrate this week after last Monday's moan about the tedium that was the much-hyped 300. And no, I'm not talking about the new Doctor Who series, which continues to send me to a delightfully warm and fuzzy place with each new episode. In fact, I'm not talking about anything new as such at all. What I'm talking about is HBO's magnificent cop show The Wire.

I can remember seeing trailers for this show on the FX cable channel maybe a couple of years ago. For some reason the series passed right by this fan of crime fiction- maybe I was burned out from watching too many episodes of the Law and Order and CSI franchises. Whatever the reason, I assumed that The Wire would be just another formulaic US cop show, and ignored it.

It was late last year when I discovered just how wrong I'd been. Bill brought the Season 1 DVD set around one evening when we were supposed to be playing games, and suggested we watch a few episodes. We did. Bill went home, and I sat up all night and well into the next day until I'd watched all 13 episodes. Then last week he brought round the Season 2 DVD's. This time I had to get some sleep after episode 8, but again everything else stopped until I'd watched the whole series.

So, what's so good about The Wire? Absolutely everything, is the simple but not very informative answer. Watch this video:



and go off and read these reviews- the Guardian and the Telegraph- while I think of something more thoughtful to say (oh, and rest assured that none of the praise heaped on the show is at all exaggerated)...

Season 1 of The Wire has a commonplace enough story: a team of misfits who've pulled a shit detail surprise themselves and their superiors as they rise above themselves and actually start to do a good job. This unfolds in luxurious detail because the series doesn't follow the familiar formula of self-contained episodes in which each week's case has to be resolved in the space of 50 minutes of TV. Although unoriginal to the point of cliche, this familar human story works particularly well because it serves to open up the political dimensions of policing, while simultaneously providing a counterpoint to the unflinchingly bleak portrayal of urban decay, crime, and police cynicism.

All very well, but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, because even though The Wire has a narrative pace unique in the history of TV cop shows, it is by no means a 'slow burn' series. No, it grabs you from the get go, and keeps you gripped right to the end. From minute one The Wire is marked out by its magnificent scripts, with dialogue which reveals character, drives plot, creates the texture of the setting, and entertains and amuses in a seamless web in which not a word is wasted. The politicking of senior officers is particularly well-handled, in scenes giving a real sense of men measuring each word they speak because they know that everything they say can and will be used against them by ruthlessly self-interested careerists just like themselves.

If the scripts of The Wire mark it out as superior fare almost as soon as the first character speaks, it is the series' treatment of the first season's theme- the war on drugs- which transports the viewer to somewhere completely new. The drug culture on the streets of Baltimore is depicted in grim detail, to be sure, but that's not what marks The Wire out from other shows. More important is the depiction of the drug dealers themselves. Gone are the one-dimensional stereotypes familiar from shows like NYPD Blue or Homicide: Life on the Street, the sneering sociopaths whose hatefulness invites us to sympathise with the interrogation-room brutality of the cops. What The Wire gives us instead are real people, criminals who are charming, who grapple with their own moral issues, and who- above all- are often astonishingly competent in their criminal endeavours.

The Wire's depiction of the good, the bad and the ugly on both sides of the law explodes the black-and-white morality which underpins most cop shows. The result is a portrayal of the business of crime and the politics of law-enforcement as a peculiar tragic duet, both exploiting an endemic urban blight for their own interests even as each has nothing more useful to offer as solutions than their own kinds of sticking plaster for gaping wounds.

These themes are expanded in the 2nd season, which moves from the housing projects to the waterfront in a story which begins with another staple of the genre- a nameless corpse. To the desperation of the black underclass which fuels the drugs trade is added the stevedores' struggle to survive in a declining industry. Naturally enough, this leads to union corruption, which comes under investigation because of the pettiest of personal vendettas, with the result that the old team is reassembled. Meanwhile the consequences of the 1st season's investigation into the drugs trade are being played out.

If the 1st season of The Wire was magnificent, the 2nd perhaps shows the true scope of the ambitious vision of the series. Carrying forward the old story with the new adds an epic sweep to the continuity of the familiar characters in The Wire's novelistic narrative. Beyond that, the series' themes are deepened in a profound way. In the simplest terms, the story of union corruption extends the series' horizons to municipal government and international crime. More than that: interweaving the drugs and union corruption stories renders the plight of the black underclass and of union labour as 2 sides of the same coin.

What more can I say about The Wire then? Not a lot really. This series really does live up to all the hype. Seasons 1 and 2 already qualify it as the sort of masterpiece long remembered as "they don't make TV like that anymore", after the fashion of, say, The World at War. If you're not already a fan, then look out for it, and watch it!

Interesting trivia point
Clarke Peters, who plays Detective Lester Freamon, appeared in a 1983 episode of the legendary TV series The Professionals.

Start the week @ RD/KA! : On the calendar

DiceCon
The Scottish Boardgames Association have confirmed the date of DiceConWest 2007- Sunday 17th June. As ever this year's event will feature the Official Scottish Settlers of Catan Championships and a Kniziathon.

What with the big turnout of C&C players at DiceConWest 2006, I'm thinking that it'd be nice to organise another C&C tournament. The main question would be: which of the 3 C&C systems to use? The availability of sets is a significant factor naturally enough.

Whatever, perhaps I'd better get my finger out and contact Ellis then, eh?

UK Games EXPO
I first found out about this event last year @ DoW. I very much like the idea of an all-in games con, and it would be nice to see a decent one established here in Britain. The UK Games EXPO site has grown a lot in the months since I last looked at it, and there is a lot there to interest gamers (including a DoW-sponsored M44 tournament for yours truly!). I quite fancy attending this, although I would need to organise proper accomodation for a long weekend in Birmingham. These logistics aside, this is a tempting event. ;)

Start the week @ RD/KA! : Marks out of 300?

So I finally went to see this latest Hollywood cause celebre last Thursday. It had been a near thing, getting my bum on the seat in front of the big screen for this one. The advertising campaign having left me cold, 300 eventually came to my notice nearly 4 weeks ago, during a regular trawl of the left-wing web for my mandatory alternative take on world events. Reading 'Gorgeous slaughter' I was first surprised to discover that both a Frank Miller graphic novel and its movie adaption had passed me by so completely- I'm a bit of a Frank Miller fan after all.

Reading the post comments my surprise soon turned into ire. Delivering a thematic critique of the movie's ideological subtext was one thing, but prejudicial plain dumb ignorance was another. One remark in particular left me seething:

This sort of Der Stürmer crap has always been an element in Frank Miller's work, though, if not the major element - look at the number of gay villains in "The Dark Knight Returns", f'rexample. He's basically the house pornographer of the American far right; his approach is to manipulate the reader with steamhammer subtlety into cheering for the guy dangling the 'baddie' over the edge of a building...

The Dark Knight Returns, a fascist parable? Has this guy actually read the damn comic, I was asking? I mean to say: this is the comic in which the Batman (the justice-obsessed loner who refused to knuckle under when the US government decided to clamp down on superheroes) taught an important lesson in the meaning of humanity to the 'demigod' Superman (the all-too-willing servant of that same US government); and then went underground to start a movement dedicated to... to, well what, exactly? Blind subservience to higher powers, p'raps?

But I digress. The ironical upshot of my own irate response to this outburst of left-liberal ire was that I decided to make an effort to see a movie which otherwise might've completely passed me by.

Those 2 lost hours in the cinema under my belt, I can now sum up my opinion quite succintly: YAWN.

I'll set the ideological issues aside immediately.

Yes, this film is indeed laced with a subtext all too easily co-opted in favour of Anglo-American warmongering in the Middle East. And sometimes this is right in-your-face in a way that I found quite repulsive. It matters not a whit whether this was intended, or merely a by-product of the film-makers' native outlooks: the real world provides the context in which this film will be viewed, and so people will interpret this film with that real context- and their own biases- in mind.

And no, I don't think that this film is some kind of crypto-fascistic parable. The charge that art might celebrate fascistic impulses is both very serious, and beyond the scope of this article. So all I can do here is repeat my conviction that this film did not do that.

If the artless historical revisionism and oh-so-timely reactionary themes of 300 were staple Hollywood fare, the cinematic experience was similarly uninspiring. What you see in 300 has all been done before, and often better.

Well OK, except for one sequence- right at the start of the battle- when the shield walls clash for the first time. This really gave a taste of what the poor bastards on both sides might actually have endured in that primitive clash of arms. That moment of genuine tension was unfortunately not repeated, as the rest of the action scenes were witless gorefests whose essential stupidity is neatly skewered here.

In sum?-: 300 is a film too derivative to be interesting, and too obvious to be offensive. Wait for the TV release?- well, a bit late now given the film's box-office performance; but it is only really worth the effort if you particuarly like Hollywood blockbusters' take on the triumph of style over substance. ;)

PS. I have to note that, politically tendentious inanities notwithstanding, there are many very informative comments appended to the 'Gorgeous slaughter' post noted above.

Start the week @ RD/KA! : Got game!

So it's been another bumper long weekend of games for yours truly.

Memoir'44
The fun began on Thursday with a visit from Badger.

We ended up playing 5 games of M44 to test the expanded nationality rules. We played #2: Sainte Mère-Eglise and #3: Sword Beach twice each, and #5: Omaha Beach once. The results (recorded here, here, and here) left me 4-1 up on the night.

More important even than that taste of victory were the playtest results: the new rules are standing up fairly well, and tweaks have been introduced where necessary. (More details can be found on my DoW:M44 thread on this subject.) More important perhaps even than that is the fact that trying out these new rules has revived mine and Badger's interest in playing this game which originally cemented us as gaming buddies.

Score
4-1

Settlers of Catan
My dear friend Ros and I paid a visit to my old pal Bill and his family on Saturday night. Episode 2 of the new series of Doctor Who and a curry supper out of the way, we got down to a game of this modern classic.

As ever with games of Settlers amongst players who've previously encountered each other across the isle of Catan, there were scores to settle and reputations to be made, maintained, or enhanced. For my part I had (again!) to deal with Bill's launching of a personal vendatta- in which he did anything and everything he could to confound my plans. All this fiendishness notwithstanding, I still almost won through, being pipped at the post by Bill's wife, Radka, when she beat me 10-9. Much good fun was had by all, as ever with this game.

Score
4-2

Doom: the Boardgame
Andy and Tony came round yesterday and we had another go at this new favourite. Tony and I played the marines against Andy's Invaders. We decided that it was time to start a campaign game- in which the marines count kills for experience points, but it didn't really matter in the end: the marines lose the campaign (and all accumulated experience benefits) as soon as they loose a single mission; and yes- Tony and I extended the marines' perfect losing record by yet another mission.

Still- as we discussed later- this is not a game where you lose and think, "Rubbish game." Rather, just like a video game, it's a game in which defeat as the marine player only encourages you to have another go. As I noted many moons ago, this 'arcade game effect' is something that we first noticed (even more moons ago) when playing Up Front. I find it delightful therefore to find this same effect generated by a game which puts a computer-game into a boardgame; especially one whose basic mechanics recreate so excellently the PoV of the 1st-person shooter, as I have noted elsewhere.

We'll be back!

Score
4-3

Attack Sub
Tony left after the game of Doom (imagine: choosing to go to a party instead of staying to play boardgames...!). I worked through the 2-player options of my games collection. Andy decided that he liked the sound of Attack Sub.

I confess that I was a little leery of his choice: I haven't played Attack Sub in years, and was concerned at how easy this game would be to pick up for quick play. I needn't have worried: it turned out that this card-driven game of submarine warfare (designed by Courtney Allen, the designer of the epochal Up Front) was even easier than I remembered.

In the event Andy's only real mistake in our game was his choice of the Soviets (a choice driven, perhaps, by his hope of enjoying the 'Sean Connery effect'?), whose subs were markedly inferior to my US boats, despite my crews' best efforts to screw up their sensors through repeated malfunctions. Other than that, Andy suffered from some serious bad luck as his subs proved unable both to detect- and then to hit- my own; while my own boats' fish were better served by the whims of fortune on the day.

For my part I was pleased to be reminded of how accessible is this fine game of the cat-and-mouse of submarine warfare. And I'd like to think that Andy enjoyed it enough to give it another go.

(Note to self: give new players the US subs in scenario #1.)

Final score
5-3

Grins!

Meanwhile...

Been busy lately down at the Geek

I've been a regular visitor to the BoardGameGeek for the sake of the C&C:A and CC:E forums for some time. Recently though I decided to fill out my BGG profiles. So I listed my collection, and have been keeping a full list of my games played.

Andy's reaction to this news was to proclaim the excess of my geek, but I was unabashed at this pot-blacking. I'm easily exactly geekish enough to get satisfaction from playing with an online database like this. I just wish I'd started sooner so that all the boardgames I played last year weren't missing from my records.

I've also put up my first Geeklist. Taking a tip from another list I read recently, I kept this one simple: it's just a list of the games we played over the weekend. Read it now while it's active!

Also, if you're interested in CC:E after yesterday's preview, you could do worse than pop along to the BGG: CC:E forum and ask around to find out more. ;)

Start the week @ RD/KA!

Battlelore blues?

I went down last December celebrating a fine session of the spectacular new Battlelore. And I'd celebrated BL again over more games with Badger on our Xmas-day games bash (the ideal way to geek out the horror!).

I mean, I was really liking the way the changes in the medieval command deck, and in the battle rules- no leaders or evading, limited battle back and so on- were working to change the relative strengths of the different unit types. The slower, more attritional pace of the battle contrasts neatly with the shock of impact and clearing of-the-dust of C&C:A. Tactically the rules favour the wedge at the expense of the line, and make cavalry the supreme shock troops. All the little rules add up nicely (even if at the expense of a rash of impromptu FAQ's). And the Lore game offers exactly what it says on the tin: mighty magics and heroic powers galore. All that and monsters too! I should've been in pig-heaven.

So I was a bit shocked to feel my heart sink at Uncle Martin's choice of BL to get our session off to a start, during his recent visit. At least it wasn't Roborally I figured: I couldn't stomach the prospect of another mammoth tussle like the last time. I had an assured ace up my sleeve though.

These Battlelore blues were short-lived enough in the end: I downloaded the free preview Epic BL rules on sight, and Badger and I had a go with the set he'd blagged for his birthday. What a stuffing I took. But what fun it was!

Badger and I soon agreed that Epic is the way to play Battlelore: the much larger armies- about as many units as in a large Ancients battle, but on a board twice the size; the vaster piles of lore- you use 2 sets of lore counters, so that you can accumulate twice as much for truly monsterous lore spending combos; and the Epic rack- a chance to play 2 Section cards in a single turn, so that you can really move some of those vast forces!

Naturally enough DoW have me hooked on the BL package for the forseeable future!

Start the week @ RD/KA!

Expanded nationality rules for Memoir'44
This is something which I've been thinking about for some time. I think the command and fire-and-movement mechanics of M44 are exactly as good as the similar rules in C&C:A or BL- very good indeed in other words. And the multiplicity of terrain types is part of what makes M44 the game it is. But the richer diversity of unit interactions in Ancients left me thinking that core M44- with its essentially identical Americans, British and Germans, was feeling a bit flat. So I decided to expand the nationality rules to make each army have its unique flavour.

Before the rules, thanks are called for to neil1967 and Randwulf at DoW: M44. The British 'big push' rule was Neil's idea first, and Randwulf helped fix the Kampfgruppe rule.

Germans
'Saddle Orders'
Instead of playing a command card and ordering units, a German player may choose to discard 1 command card and order no units. The player may then draw 2 cards, choose 1 to keep, and discard the other.

'Kampgruppe'
A German player may form a Kampgruppe- ie. combine 2 depleted units into 1 unit. The 2 depleted units must be of the same type: infantry, armour, or artillery. If a unit with a special ability combines with a unit without that special ability, that special ability is not retained by the Kampgruppe; ie. units must each have the same special ability for that ability to be retained by the Kampfgruppe.

Order both units. Move either or both units so that they are in the same hex as each other. Remove any models in excess of the unit's full strength. The opposing player does not gain a victory medal for the removal of the depleted German unit. Neither of the 2 depleted units forming the new Kampfgruppe, nor the newly formed Kampgruppe, may move any further or battle at all in the turn in which the Kampgruppe is formed.

The German player's hand capacity is reduced by 1 card for the rest of the game each and every time a Kampgruppe is formed; NB. the German player's hand capacity may not be reduced below 3 cards through the formation of Kampgruppe.

British
'Marksmanship'
A British infantry unit may always fire at an opposing infantry unit with a minimum of 1 battle dice after battle dice reductions are applied for the defending infantry unit's terrain. Battle dice reductions due to the attacking unit's terrain may reduce this as normal; eg. British infantry in wire firing at an infantry unit in woods at 3-hex range would have 1-1=0 battle dice and would therefore be unable to fire. Bonus battle dice gained via Tactics cards are always applied on top of this; eg. the aforementioned unit would fire with 1-1+1=1 battle dice if using the 'Their Finest Hour' card.

'The 'big' push'
Instead of playing a command card and ordering units as normal, a British player may choose to play a command card as a plan. The command card is played face-down in front of the British player. The British player does not draw a new card when he plays a card as a plan. In subsequent turns, the British player may either play command cards from his hand as normal; or he may develop his plan, by playing another card face down in front of himself as above.

When the British player starts a turn with 2 planning command cards face down in front of him, he must go ahead with the plan. Both command cards are revealed, and are executed in the same turn. The British player replenishes his hand to its full value after playing his planning cards.

US Army
'Logistical superiority'

• The printed 'Medics and Mechanics' card orders 2 units instead of 1
• 'Recon 1' to be used as a 'Medics and Mechanics' card.

'Go, go, go!'
At the start of the game, and immediately after (ie. before the card's orders are issued) the play of the 'Their Finest Hour' card, the US Army may 'mulligan'

• the US Army player may discard as many cards as he chooses
• the US Army player then draws 1 card fewer than the number of cards he chose to discard
• the US Army player then draws 1 extra card on the conclusion of his next turn, to refill his hand to its normal size.

Russians
'Russian command rule'
In late-war scenarios, in which the Russian command rule is taken as not applying:

• the rule still applies
• but the command cards which the Russian player may play from their hand now include all Tactics cards as well as those already specified.

I've started threads on this subject on the DoW and BGG M44 forums. The DoW thread is full of ideas all ready. And there're brief comments on Badger's and my first playtest. More soon I hope. ;)

Start the week @ RD/KA!

Last Words... the Current Big Thing
Grognard reflexes honed over years of Squad Leader, Up Front and HERO rules-tinkering caused my bout of the Battlelore blues: I was pining for some more classically-detailed tacsims of the hex-and-counter school; challenges which M44 just can't deliver. M44 already looking a bit patchy, core BL beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic, and my just not getting enough games of C&C:A- I needed a new gaming fix.

I found exactly what I was looking for in GMT's Combat Commander: Europe. The title caught my eye while I was browsing through GMT's Project 500 lists last year: sample counters, map sections, and fate cards. Skimming the playtest rules (here are the current rules, and the FAQ, all laid on for your perusal) my immediate reaction was no more original than most- looks like a cross between Squad Leader and Up Front I thought. This prospect excited me, and I bought the game from the FLGS around new year.

Badger and I played a couple of games, and I liked it as least as much as I hoped I would. Then Martin had a go on his recent visit. His first impressions were mixed- not bad, but a bit meh. A few games later he was singing CC:E's praises as the best game I've shown him in years. Tony is similarly enthusiastic, and we've been playing several games a week lately. Badger and Donald are keen on it too.

Designer Chad Jensen has a definite hit on his hands. My most played game of 2007 so far. ;)

Upon a distant shore...

It's been a long time since I posted here on RD/KA!. So long, in fact, that, as has happened before, the mere fact of the lengthy silence has become a topic in its own right. But this time the issue is more than just the vagaries of my mental health, as explained in previous posts (eg. here, here, and here); more than that, there has been a serious reorientation in my gaming priorities, as well as some reconsideration of the very purpose of this blog.

In the weeks' silence since last December it isn't too fanciful at all to say that the sight of the same ever-appearing RD/KA! front page was a veritable incubus (meaning #2, naturally enough!) for your would-be scrivener. A perpetual goad, this ever-unchanging web-presence would probably've amounted to little more than another landmark of unfinished business had it not been for, among other things, this most recent comment posted by some anonymous well-wisher only last week.

There has been a bare handful of comments posted to old posts in the weeks since that last celebration of Battlelore. But none of them gratified and encouraged me as much as that last one. Thank you, whoever you were. Your encouraging words, appended to that post of all posts, turn out to have amounted to the bottle's message which made the unexpected journey there and back again.

And as for the question asked by my anonymous benefactor? "[Am I] OK? Did the latest treatment help?" The answer I can give, with satisfaction but without much celebration is an emphatic, "Yes!".

The past months have dragged me as low as I have been since the days of the dancing scalpels. I have endured much pain when I thought I'd be enjoying better fortunes. I have tried a risky experiment in living without medication, which has proved to me that I really can't get by without some kind of mind-altering chemicals for the sake of mood stabilisation. I have only recently recovered to the degree that I begin to remember that just living is a boon in its own right, all circumstance notwithstanding.

The roleplaying has been a casualty of this unfortunately, with the Sunday WFRP group and Bill's Wednesday D&D campaign both having been dissolved. But boardgames have come to the rescue, as my recently updated BGG games played profile can testify.

Game on! ;)

Got game!

Battlelore bonanza! #2: DHL delivers days later

Still flushed from the excitement of DiceCon the day before, I checked my inbox last Monday to find an email from DoW informing me that my preordered copy of Battlelore- complete with my 2 free promotional miniatures- had been shipped 2 days previously. Making haste to the tracking site via the enclosed link I found that the package was sitting in a depot somewhere in Germany. You can be sure that I checked that URL several times daily thereafter, labouring perhaps under the obscure superstition that I might thereby somehow speed the precious cargo on its way!

The game finally arrived on Friday morning; very timely because Bill was due to visit on Saturday. A serious gloat later I set to work. Taking a hint from Tom Vasel in his review over at the The Dice Tower I bagged-up the miniatures: they are presented in lidded plastic storage trays which are at least as fiddly as they are nifty. And I followed the advice posted by DoW on how to fix the miniatures bent by the sheer weight of the contents stuffed into the box (a good reason for dispensing with the trays in favour of alternative storage). This very necessary task (some of my heavy cavalry miniatures were so bent as to be lying flat) proved even easier than the DoW webpage makes it appear.

Bill and I got 4 games in on Saturday. Our games at DiceCon having convinced us that it is the Lore scenarios that make the game, we decided to find out how the goblins and the dwarves played. So we began with scenario 6: A Complex Web.

To save me repetitive reminders you can find an explanation of the various symbols on the DoW site: the Battlelore Primer- handy downloadable introdction, and the Battlelore Chronicles- the dedicated blog which has tantalised so many of us in recent weeks. Beyond that I just need to add that the round badges denote the dwarfs (white saltire on blue background) and the goblins (the yellow thingummy on a dark red background), and that the singular green banner surrounded by the dwarves denotes the giant spider. Dwarves and a giant spider on the same side? Well that's mercenaries for you I guess.

Two easy victories for Owain the Red Hand later we'd concluded that the key to this scenario was saving the goblin wing of Edward of Woodstock's army from a fearful rout. Rising to the challenge, I resorted to driving Woodstock's human troops towards the right of the Red Hand's line.

I took a leaf out of Bill's book by using Greater Portal to bring one of Bill's heavy cavalry units right in among my goblins so that my hobgoblin lizard riders could surround it and ride it down, while my other cavalry got stuck in on my left. A brutal exchange of cavalry charges ensued with the result that I had cleared the Red Hand's right flank. The giant spider scuttled out to try to retrieve the situation for Bill, to no avail. My troops, battered after their hard-won local victory, withdrew so that Bill couldn't easily just send out a unit in a sneak attack hoping for an easy victory banner or two.

I wasn't having everything my own way though, and we were pretty much neck and neck as we entered the end game, which was fought around the centre/left of the map as Bill's dwarves marched forwards in search of victory. Luck was with me in the end and Woodstock's army proved triumphant, although it was a very close run thing.

For our final game we wanted to see what happened with a fuller range of Lore cards available, which took us to scenario 7: Crisis in Avignon.

Playing the English I began by positioning my archers to fire at Sire Arnoul d'Audrehem's medium infantry by the river bend. I was hoping for a quick kill to weaken d'Audrehem's left wing so opening up the possibilty of seizing the bridge which offered me a victory banner.

The best-laid plans doing what they always do, the battle soon took a different course, devolving into a bitter nip-and-tuck melee in the area bounded by the 3 hills straddling the section divider away from the river. The raging battle again saw careful manoeuvring as Bill and I sought to maintain our own formations while looking for weaknesses to exploit in the opposing lines. A heroic stand by one of Bill's medium infantry units reduced to a single model almost saved the day for d'Audrehem, but I won in the end in yet another near thing.

And that was it. Eight games played, and I'm feeling that I've got to grips with how the new elements in Battlelore affect the gameplay. As with the move from M44 to C&C:A the changes are subtle but decisive, giving Battlelore its own dynamic and set of challenges. I'll give a rundown of those changes and how they work just as soon as I can. ;)

DiceConEast 2006

Battlelore bonanza! #1: DiceCon dishes it up first
As I noted last week, I was expecting a bumper day of games at DiceCon over in Edinburgh, and boy, did I get what I was asking for! Registering upon arrival I couldn't help but ask Ellis Simpson- con co-organiser- if he'd managed yet to get hold of a copy of Battlelore, Days of Wonder's hotly anticipated new iteration of Richard Borg's acclaimed Commands and Colours system.

I'd asked more in hope than in expectation, hoping that Ellis might've been on some inside track to pick up a prerelease copy and, well, because (as regular readers will need no reminding) I have a reputation to maintain as an enthusiast for the most exciting boardgaming system I've seen in years. Imagine my surprise then when Ellis replied that Gordon Lamont- the 'co' in co-organiser and one half of the dynamic duo which is Fragor Games- had actually managed to bring a copy back from Essen. Imagine too the idiot grin plastered across my face as I scurried (yes, scurried!) to lay claim to this unforeseen box of wonders before it could escape my clutches. And cast your mind back, dear reader, to a moment of this ilk of your own to taste the delight that was mine to savour as I passed the day at DiceConEast 2006 immersed in this great game.

Here's a slightly blurry phone-camera picture of yours truly enjoying setting the game up (thanks Bill).

Fragor Games, the SBGA and DiceCon are clearly keeping Gordon a busy man: he'd only had time to open the box for a look inside, leaving the contents still sealed in their cellophane. Pausing only to double-check it was OK to crack everything open (a bit of a no-brainer to be sure, but I'm one of those gamers who's a bit weird about cracking his own games open first...), Bill and I set to the first scenario with a will.

Having given France back to the French at Agincourt, I then faced off against Barry- one of several gamers attracted to the spectacle of Borg's latest in action- in scenario 5: Wizards and Lore, which introduces the Lore (ie. magic) rules.

I lost this game thanks to a premature attack up the centre which was easily repulsed, and to Barry's rock solid play- especially his excellent use of his Lore; both of which left me flailing in a game of catch-up through most of the game. This was made all the harder by Barry's strategy of standing-off and raining magical death down on my units from afar, which made it impossible for me to close for melee without running the very real risk of simply being crushed by Barry's counter-attack. I was finished off thanks to a stroke of bad luck when I rashly left a single model open to death-by-plinking from Barry's archers the very turn before I was ready to unleash my own potentially game-saving Lore attack. Talk about a learning curve!

These 2 defeats under my belt I managed to squeak a win against Bob in the same scenario. Undaunted by this turn in my fortunes I went down to ignominious defeat against Bill in a 3rd play of the same scenario, thanks to a sound plan well executed on Bill's part, and to some frankly appalling Lore management on my own. A veritable hail of death from his archers (green pennants with bows on the left and right sections at the top of the map) aside, Bill's game was noteworthy for his very clever use of a Lore card- Greater Portal. This enables you swap the position of 2 units anywhere on the board. Bill used this to swap one of his medium cavalry units (blue standard with horseman) with one of my units. Arriving behind my lines, Bill's cavalry unit ran riot at great cost to my forces. I was impressed, and mortified.

I swear that I didn't hog the game all day on purpose: I did offer to let others play, honest! Maybe I looked like a good mark or something. Whatever. You can be sure though that I had a great time discovering that Battlelore easily lives up to the hype, delivering a whole new game that is neither just M44 with the serial numbers filed off, nor merely C&C:A with bells and whistles. Bill, Barry and Bob were very impressed too.

It was also great meeting Barry and Bob. It turns out that they're just 2 of a group of gaming buddies who play Commands and Colours regularly. As fun as it was to chew the fat with other afficionadoes, I was also encouraged by the prospect of C&C events at future DiceCons. Not content with this, it turned out that Bob and I had actually gamed together before, some 20-odd years ago. He used to work in the old Games Gallery in Edinburgh- my first FLGS- and we'd got together to play John Hill's classic WW2 tactical boardgame Squad Leader. Neat, eh?

On top of all this fun, I also managed to maintain my tradition of not winning a thing in the regular DiceCon entry-ticket raffle. This was all the more spectacular this time because everyone else with whom I was there- Bill, Antony and Donald- walked away with a prize. Antony in particular lucked-in, going home with a copy of Avalon Hill's Axis & Allies: D-Day. With prizes numerous, and as grand as this maybe I should be saying that 'my day will come', but who's to argue with tradition?

The pleasures of the day were rounded off by the presence of a French market just round the corner from Overseas House. I couldn't resist the lure of the fromagier, where I picked up a wedge of a perfectly ripe Brie at a very reasonable price. Eaten on oatcakes and washed down with a cheap red plonk, this later proved to be a delicious end to a fine day out.

So thanks to the lads for getting me up, out and off to Edinburgh, and to Ellis and Gordon for all their hard work in running DiceCon. And of course, a special thanks to Gordon for bringing Battlelore because he knew that there'd be someone there to appreciate it. See you all again next year I trust. ;)

Meanwhile...

A healthy diet of roleplaying
My little Old World
Restarted last month, the WFRP saw my PC's accept the challenge to venture further down the Paths of the Damned, driven if nothing else by Berthold's unexplained insistences on tracking down the mysterious Dagger of Yul K'Chaum, which apparently contains yet another daemon of the sort that perished in the cleansing fires of the Sacred Flame of Ulric. Hopes of advancing her wizard's apprenticeship frustrated by the Middenheim Guild of Wizards and Alchemists, Alane too was keen to visit Altdorf to meet her mentor Van Nilstrom. Grundi, Seigfried and Mordrin had nothing better to do, and wintering in wartorn Middenheim was not the most appealing prospect in any event. So off they all went.

Without pre-empting a possible write-up, sufficeth to say that the journey has been very eventful so far, with beastmen attacks, some unexpected company, and an object lesson in how the stuff of Chaos impregnates the very warp and weft of the fabric of reality.

Eberron
Bill, who ran the Midnight session last June (written up here, and here) has managed to fulfil his promise to start his own regular midweek game. He chose to run WotC's Eberron- which he's run before- to make life simple for himself.

The game began as a True20 adaption with just myself and Tony (a.k.a. Alane elsewhere). So we had 2 PC's each to begin with. I went with a rogue- who was my first choice for the archetype I wanted to play; and a warforged fighter- who was to be my backup 'schmuck'. With Brian and Andy (Seigfreid and Berthold to regular readers) soon joining in, I had to choose which of my 2 PC's to keep playing. Confounding my initial expectations, I had no difficulty whatsoever in deciding to run with my warforged fighter. Why? Easy: I couldn't resist the sheer vicarious thrill of being near invulnerable in combat (having an Adamantine Body does that for you) while dishing out the smites great cleaving with my mighty warhammer. Thus began the saga of K'Dun the Hammer.

The game itself soon changed too, as Bill decided to run it as a True20 D&D hack instead of the original True20 adaption. This is working very well. Meanwhile I'm having fun nurturing my inner munchkin as I contemplate the new feats I'll be buying with my new levels even as I wade into combat full of the joys of the various buffs the party spellcasters use to make my smites ever smitier. Heh.

Meanwhile, Brian has started his own blog: Dangerous Brian: A Wargaming Blog; check out his first Eberron post for a quick introduction to the PC's.

Finally for now... DiceConEast 2006
The Scottish Boardgames Association's biannual boardgames event DiceCon takes place in Edinburgh today. A bunch of us are going through for the day. I'm taking a big bag of games. You can be sure that M44 and C&C:A is among them. There'll be a few old favourites in there too no doubt. I'm looking forward to some good gaming. More anon I trust. ;)

Got game!

Heavy Metal Mania!

So Badger dropped in last night for another session of the wonderful Commands and Colours system. Neither in the mood nor enjoying the time for a lengthy session over the cooker, I laid on one of my favourite quick lash-up meals: pasta carbonara. This time I tried adding a finely chopped fresh chilli (red, to contrast nicely with the green chopped parsley) to the cream sauce at the last moment. Although perhaps a whole chilli was a wee bit too much, it gave the dish an aromatic flavour of mellow fire without any burning aftertaste. Result!

Grub done we turned to the games. Badger wanted to begin with M44 after our recent games of C&C:A, and announced his desire to play the Americans. Having recently posted my thoughts about the Armour Assault tactics card on a thread over at the DoW M44 forums I had only one answer to this: the Germans, and tanks! Thus...

25s Ardennes - Bastogne Corridor, West - Dec 30th, 1944
Full details can be found here.

I was delighted with Badger's choice of scenario: 6 special forces infantry units; 6 tank units- 4 special forces; and 1 artillery unit against 8 infantry, 7 tanks, and 2 artillery. With terrain open enough for massed armour exploitation, and with artillery ranging-in on units as soon as they crossed their start-line, I could see that this was going to give me exactly the game I was looking for. It did, and how!

We played 3 times in all.

In the first game I was dealt the Dig In card, which determined my opening moves: I spent a couple of turns advancing infantry to forward fire positions so that I could dig them in and get some use out of that pesky card when I ditched it from my hand. I then plumped for a drive up my left flank and moved my centre armour into position. This done I quickly found myself with a reasonable hand for my planned attack while not having any worthwhile options for shuffling around elsewhere. So I faced a choice: I could waste time which Badger might enjoy using to keep me under artillery fire while preparing his own attack; or I could advance. I chose the latter.

The risky part of this plan was that I would be engaging the Americans without immediately being able to exploit my position with my main attack (yep, I was holding an Armour Assault up my sleeve!). I was going to have to pause to develop the attack before I pushed it home. I did have good cards to respond to any counter-attack by Badger, but I'd have to survive first. Survive I did, and my armour did their job. There was certainly some action elsewhere in this game, but the battle was largely decided by my attacks around Moircy and Remagne.

Badger naturally just had to try again. This game was notable for 2 things: it was a much, much more closely fought battle than the first; and more Armour Assaults than you could shake a stick at! Badger did a better job of dictating the flow of play this time, and the battle resolved itself into a mighty armoured clash around the centre with us both level-pegging on victory medals as we approached the endgame.

I played an Armour Assault which generated the full 32 dice of attacks (the most dice you're likely to generate in a single turn in M44: do the arithmetic to see how many units would otherwise be needed to generate 30+ dice in a one turn; then ask yourself how likely you are to be able to order all the required units with a single card). Victory was in sight! Badger Counter-Attacked. The game was balanced on a knife-edge! I Counter-Attacked in my turn, giving me the game. Three Armour Assaults in a row: the cauldron of battle and no mistake!

I took the Americans in our 3rd and final play of this scenario. The lesson I took from the previous games was that the Americans would do better to draw the Germans in then riposte than to initiate the battle themselves. To this end I began with some familiar tentative manoeuvring: throwing forward some infantry as pickets, then concentrating my centre/right armour to threaten the Remagne/Lavaselle areas. As this developed, I fixed on the plan of leaving my right flank temptingly open, inviting Badger to throw his left flank forward towards Sibret. Badger duly complied and his left was crushed by my carefully prepared counter-attack.

I had been hoping to exploit this local victory to make a run for Chenogne and a victory medal that might force Badger to split his forces, but was pre-empted in this when Badger launched his main assault through the centre. With little in hand to respond directly, I was forced to launch my long husbanded Assault up my left, unfortunately with little in hand to ensure any momentum. The battle swung backwards and forwards in a bloody fashion as armour raced here and there in search of that decisive attack. When the dust settled, I had won, but again only just.

3-0
Grins. :)

Baecula - 208BC
Three games of M44 down, it was a cinch that Badger and I were going to head back to ancient times to this battle in which the young Publius Cornelius Scipio had proved that the Roman legions could adapt their tactics to defeat the Carthaginians. We'd played it before see, getting in 3 games during our last session, back in October. These had all gone in favour of the Romans, with Badger coming out 2-1 up, leaving me to take consolation from having put up a better show with the Carthaginians than had Badger.

Full details can be found here.

Random selection left me playing the Carthaginians first, which was just what I wanted: I was keen to put the lessons of our previous games into practice. These lessons were:

• the Carthaginians shouldn't try and hold the hills- Badger had done this in our 1st play last October, and had been utterly stuffed as a result
• the Carthaginians should however make the Romans pay for gaining the hills- I had withdrawn from the hills in good order thanks to evasion, only to realise that I needed at least 1 or 2 victory banners from that phase of the battle
• the Carthaginians need to get their heavy infantry into action as quickly as possible- I had held them back defending the forts until the endgame because I'd wanted to wait to see which on flank the Roman mediums were most committed
• the Carthaginians shouldn't waste their light cavalry.

Having pondered these lessons I quickly ended up with plan of standing to fight on the hills with the light infantry on my left, while evading elsewhere. The stand on the hills was intended to buy time for my heavy infantry to mass on my right to get stuck in to the advancing cohorts of Roman legionaries. I was nervous about this plan because it involved a lot of preparatory movement- including redeploying Hasdrubal himself, and I'd seen before just how startlingly quickly the Roman medium infantry could advance; because it offered the Romans a fair stab at overrunning the camps on my left- those 'free' victory banners might prove decisive; and because I was nervous about the stand on the hills. But I had no choice but to try, since simply to repeat the tactics of my previous games would prove futile I was sure.

Pulling off a plan like this one with a mere single leader and a puny 4-card hand proved every bit as difficult as I'd imagined. The 4-card hand coupled with Badger's capacity relentlessly to drive the Romans forward meant that my manoeuvres were typically hasty and/or shallow: long sequences of good cards were hard to build, let alone hold on to. The result was a lot of reactive cardplay in which I was forced to make my key moves as soon as I could without waiting for a good sequence. On top of this the nature of the terrain and my position near my own board edge combined with my sole leader to make coherent battlelines a luxury I could rarely afford to consider.

These difficulties notwithstanding, I did manage to move into and hold together the formation my plan required. Battle raged on around the hills for what seemed like an age as the Roman legionary cohorts ground forward and closed-in on my increasingly cramped lines. Even so the situation looked very hairy indeed as we approached the end-game: I had taken a heavy toll on the Romans, but had only actually managed to kill a single unit. So I wasn't feeling very sanguine about my chances as my heavies and Badger's mediums finally got wired into each other on my left. In fact at one moment I almost despaired of victory.

In the end though luck was with me: I was able to pick off several of the Roman units I had previously whittled down, and my heavies' 5 dice did the business in close combat- I won 6-5. Whew!

As tradition demands, we swapped sides for our final game of the evening. What can I say about the crushing victory that ensued? Erm, it was in the cards. Opening with a Move, Fire, Move, I was able to bring the Carthaginian holding force under fire then engage it in a single turn. Some quick redeployment of Auxilia later and a Line Advance took my entire left and centre cohorts forward in one go. Two turns later, a 2nd Line Advance took my entire army forward in one go. There was very little that Badger could do after this. I won 6-1.

4-1
Grins :)

A satisfying margin, with the added delight of opening and closing the session with crushing victories by the heavy metal masters of their respective periods. But before I get too smug, I really do have to point out that the final outcome does flatter me a bit: 3 of those games were so closely fought that the whims of chance need only have been tweaked slightly in Badger's favour for the result to have been very different. Still... Heh! ;)