Musings, Ramblings, and Things Left Unsaid

SpielByWeb Update

2009-07-02T17:27:00.002-05:00

100%Blade! It's your turn!

I've spent the last two weeks in beautiful (?) Carlisle, PA, home to the US Army archives. I'm technically a semi-employee; I have a dress code, I come in at a certain time, leave at a certain time, and get a lunch break, the works. It's a three-week special internship, for which I am paid from a private grant. It's supposed to give me a running start to my dissertation, and it's certainly done that. For one thing, I realized that I'm really researching a navy story, not an army story...but there's still plenty here.

My favorite unit that comes up--often--in my study is the Mississippi Marine Brigade. This could easily be considered the worst unit in the Union army. They were stationed on a largish number of boats commanded by BGEN Alfred Ellet. The idea was that they would sail to a hotspot, put the boats close to shore, lower some gangways and send hordes of cavalry ashore to deal with the problem. In practice, the MMB were essentially vikings. The difference between "Rebel cavalry" and "probably innocent town" were a little fuzzy to the MMB. As was discipline. In one memorable incident, the marines (who should not be confused with the US Marine Corps of today) at a prearranged signal staged mutinies on board all the ships to ostensibly protest rations, but I can't help imagining that they just wanted to go pirate. In the end, nothing happened to them after order was restored. But they're an interesting approach to the problems of occupying a vast waterway.

So that's been my life. No gaming has been done, but I did get two games delivered here for...some...reason? Anyway, I now have the new Pegasus edition of Top Race, which completes the set for me. (I'm not going to try to get all the Top Race editions.) Probably my favorite racing game system; I'm eager to try this out. I also got a copy of Royal Palace, under the theory that I should own any game I can win. (If I stuck to this, and made it ONLY games I've won, I'd have a vastly smaller collection...)

What I do have here is my Combat Commander kit. Mr. Cranky has expressed a desire to try a wargame again, and this is the one that has been settled upon. It's one of my favorites, so why not? I'm putting together a scenario with relatively small numbers of units on a relatively terrain-free board, to minimize rule-age. I like that you can do this easily with CC; I know that it's part of a large series of games, but still. I love the rules, and I love the scenarios, but the simplicity of putting new, balanced scenarios together seals the game for me.

On the Road

2009-06-19T16:35:00.002-05:00

I'm about to head out for the Harrisburg, PA region--specifically, to work in the US Army's archives in Carlisle for three weeks. As is my wont, I also plan on squeezing in some gaming and game store visiting. One of the game stores, "That Game Place," has one of the most amazing logos I've ever seen: A wizard riding a tank firing a die. I mean, how do you top that? You might have a meeple riding the tank, sure, but a wizard's not bad. I would become a fan of any sport that had a team with that logo.

ALSO, AND UNRELATED: Anyone out there a Gathering fan? The band, I mean. I've been listening to their latest, The West Pole, which is the first (in many years) without their longtime frontwoman, Anneke van Giersbergen. Every review I've read tells me it's magical, but I'm not hearing it. I mean, it's not bad, and I don't want to compare it to the AvG period, but it's not grabbing me the way a really good, four-plus star album should. (And I really don't get the claims that the new singer, Silje Wergeland, will be able to handle songs like Rollercoaster and Shot to Pieces in live shows. Totally wrong voice for those songs, imho. And AvG would be wrong for the TWP songs. They're very different voices, and very different songs were written for them.) Just mildly venting...if there's some level of appreciation I'm missing, then do tell. I'm giving it two or three stars at the moment, aka "pretty good."

I have to get this off my chest

2009-06-17T10:29:00.002-05:00

Why does the packaging for Fruit by the Foot:

Emphasize "FOOT" over "Fruit"? I mean, presumably people are buying it for its fruitiness rather than its footiness. Foot, in general, is a poor thing to associate with food.

That is all...

I've lost my title-composing touch

2009-06-17T08:44:00.005-05:00

FIRST OFF: ~~Iain! Your turn in Amun-Re!~~ Taken care of. Many thanks!

SECOND OFF: I've been toying with the idea of buying Space Alert, the latest from Czech Games Edition. The reviews I've heard have been mixed; I'm mostly attracted by the fact that it's solo-able. The idea, if you're not familiar with it, is that the player[s] are cooperating to beat back waves of alien ships attacking their spacecraft. The attack lasts ten minutes, moderated by either a deck of cards or a track on a CD. I'd have bought it already if it had a slightly different theme: Taffy III at Leyte Gulf. (UPDATE: I'm wrong! What am I thinking of? There's some relevant clash between a destroyer and waves of Japanese planes.) I realize that significant chunks of the mechanics might have to change, but I still claim a historical theme might be interesting for the basic engine and idea. Of course, I like historical themes more than fantasy/SF ones (EXCEPTIONS: When they're faithful to books: Cthulhu, LotR, etc. I can't explain it.) I like Smallworld fine, but...Vinci has a map of Europe and classical-ish markers, so it wins for me.

I headed over to Jorge and Eva's place last night, after far too long of a layoff. We played a few games, but two stand out in my mind. The first is Royal Palace, which has interesting features you can read about in other places. What struck me about it is that, to my astonishment, I won. I thought I was doing OK, but not anywhere near Jorge, who I thought was at least ten points ahead of me at any given time. I ended up being wrong in my assessment by about twenty points. The funny thing is, everybody thought Jorge was safely winning, and thus helped me maximize my score. Oops! I think I would have been able to find a win on my own, although--once again--I didn't think I was looking for one.

We also ran out of money--which by happy accident is the top post on BGG for the game. I think I had the least money by the end, which I suppose could mean I used my money most efficiently? I guess?

The other game I thought I'd mention is my first play of Stone Age, which is currently ranked 31st on BGG, and has some extremely gaudy numbers and reviews and everything else. It is, of course, what I assonantly call a "place your dudes and get your cubes" game; BGG prefers "Worker Allocation," which is certainly shorter. I thought it was all right. GRANTED: I finished last. It's a good game, but it doesn't do enough things newer or better than my beloved Pillars of the Earth to really suck me in. Besides losing with a bullet, the game kind of dragged on; three-player would not seem to be its sweet spot, and I agreed with my hosts that four would be a better fit for the game. Definitely one to try again. UPDATE: It would appear, thanks to diligent questioning from Russ, that we were playing things wrong, which added a turn or three to the game. I'll certainly give it another try.

And finally: My "go book or chess book?" "contest" below was, indeed, from a go book: Kamakura from Slate and Shell. Vastly recommended! Nobody asks a 73 kyu player if it'll help their game, so I'll stick to the text part of the book. It's about, as those better versed in such things than I may already know, a ten-game match between two of the giants of mid-20th-century go: Kitani Minoru and Go Seigen. It took place in the Kamakura temple complex over a quite-long period. Much of the book deals with the events surrounding each game, from the physical surroundings to the verbal banter between the players (!). One learns a great deal about go culture ca. 1940. It is remarkable that in one of the biggest events in Japanese go during the period, players talked between moves, Kitani shaved his head in an effort to restore his balance--it's fun to imagine the Fischer-Spassky match going like this go match. Great reading--and, like many S&S efforts, the game diagrams have very few moves each, so it's very easy to follow. With any luck, diligent study should bring me up to about 69 kyu; whether it'll improve your game by four stones is another matter.

Fascinating Experiment

2009-06-12T16:13:00.003-05:00

Let's see. Anybody around? If so: I've set up an Amun-Re game on SpielByWeb called "Calling all cars," with the password isanybodythere. A five-player game, as the good Lord intended. (Or Dr. Knizia, anyway.) See you there!

Varia

2009-06-11T13:26:00.002-05:00

I keep forgetting I have this bully pulpit. So what have I been up to since April 25?

It was a long, long six weeks. I wrote two papers--and had to rewrite one of them. I also had to take my comprehensive exams. Each of these exams involved mastering a given reading list--of twenty to sixty books each, in my case--and then write out an answer in twenty-four hours on a particular subject that was given to me at 8 AM. Then, after four of these, I had to defend them in an oral examination.

But it's over--I passed them comfortably, and am now ABD! Life is easy; all I have to do is research and write a 350-page book. The research will be the most fun, of course; it'll likely be an immense road trip through the upper midwest and the south along the Mississippi. My topic: The military occupation and government of the areas along the banks of the Mississippi during the Civil War.

So don't write a book on that yourself, plz.

For the rest of the summer, I'm going to relax, and then do some work in the Army's archives, and then work on a lesson plan for my students: My first time as the "real" teacher. The subject is US History to 1877. Can't be too hard. Right?

...

What else have I got...

A little contest! Does the following come from a chess book, or a go book?

In the grounds of the great temple, tranquil in its antiquity, the clear voices of cicadas could be heard, whilst in the garden a black butterfly, big as a bat, danced soundlessly over the red amaryllis--the flower of September's autumnal equinox. The night before had seen a harvest moon. From the cloudless sky, a chill wind sucked down from the steep hillsides was enough to cause an involuntary tightening of the lapels.

If you get it right, you get ten points.

Le Havre is turning into a game that I respect highly, but have little intent to actually play--except maybe solo. I just don't comprehend it, and there's so much to comprehend that it seems like work. Do I really want to play it fifteen times, and then reflect on my inevitable defeats in order to become incrementally better the next time? Thinking...thinking...no. I'm too deep into the Cult of the New, for one thing. (My first human opponents, Mr. and Prof. Cranky, have played it umpteen times, and wiped the floor with me in our game. It was a harrowing experience.)

Not that my opinion can't change. I managed to eke out a victory in Age of Steam--one of my white whales--also chez Cranky. By my reckoning, that was my first not-last in my several playings. And now that I've learned that the 3rd Edition comes with a solitaire map, it becomes more attractive. (I'd sold off my AoS set a while back, when I decided I'd rather have $250 than the game.) And besides: I won! Woohoo! Nothing improves my opinion of a game quite like victory.

Yeah, I might pick it up this afternoon.

Game of Chicken

2009-04-25T16:03:00.002-05:00

(It's times like this I'm glad this blog isn't popular anymore.)

I have three shelves full of chess books, and a roughly equal number of go books. I consider myself a fan of both games, and routinely list go as one of my three "perfect 10" games. (The others being Combat Commander and Amun-Re. I go by categories.)

However, I virtually never play chess or go, even against the computer. I used to play go every week (or more) when I lived in Austin, but now...not so much. I love it, but I've lost the will to play it. Why?

I'm afraid of losing, basically; I don't want to look unintelligent. To paraphrase an old chestnut, I have chosen to keep my stones in their bowls and be thought a fool rather than play them and remove all doubt.

In some ways, this is partly because of the things that have led to me taking nine pills a day, racking up $1000 worth of mental health care a month (all paid by my insurance, thank heaven), and so on. It ties into why I have trouble writing; I might get caught out in an error; why risk it?

(Why yes I do have a paper due this week that I'd be better off writing rather than this, why do you ask?)

I suppose the real question is why this doesn't present a problem with other games. Part of it has to do with how chess and go are "touchstone of the intellect"-type games that have centuries of experience, literature, and thought invested in them. Millions have played, computers have been programmed to play them, hymns have been sung in their honor, there are professional players who play for millions. Amun-Re, on the other hand, has been around for six years, there are maybe 20,000 copies out there, and the great mass of humanity has never heard of it.

Also, it has to do with the playing culture. Most gaming "scenes" are not enormously competitive. (Exceptions, exceptions.) Mostly, though, games are social enough that the stigma attached to losing is not too great. On the other hand, I feel the cold stare of the millions of better go players than I am whenever I put a duck on the board. I've somehow spoiled the game.

Great chess players often speak about how winning just feels sort of like having driven home from the store without getting into an accident: Nothing special, but obviously better than the alternative. Losing, however, is vastly worse: Like an insult, or an injustice. For the insecure patzer, winning is like escaping, and losing is like having your worst fears about yourself confirmed.

(I'm not fishing for compliments here; just noting something odd about my game-playing preferences. I'll probably nuke this one in a few days.)

On the Bookshelf

2009-04-19T12:54:00.002-05:00

...or, at this moment, "on the windowsill." Anything flat is a shelf.

I have a new favorite series of books. Slate and Shell has come out with four books now in a "Master Play" line. Each of these slim volumes covers one (or, most recently two) famous go pro--Takemiya Masaki, Go Seigen, Lee Changho, Kato Masao and Seo Bong Soo. The commentaries are by Yuan Zhou, and the well-go-book-read will have guessed the format. Each pro is represented by just two games--gone through virtually move-by-move with comments.

The miraculous thing is that the annotations actually make sense to me. Partly this is because we take it a step at a time. In chess, there are several move-by-move books, but doing it like that makes it hard to see the overall trends. The usual thing is to take a chess game, let a bunch of moves rattle off, and then explain the last move...which is even less helpful. Nobody does it quite like Yuan Zhou, where (say) five moves are strung together and then we are shown how they work together.

I'm essentially never going to be a decent go player--which, for myself, I define as single-digit kyu. I hope, though, to learn to appreciate a good game when I play through it.

The New Toy

2009-04-08T19:43:00.002-05:00

So, a new game has reached my table: The Halls of Montezuma, the latest card-driven game from GMT. It's sort of a perfect storm for me; it's a great subject, in one of my favorite systems, from a favorite company. Sold!

(I actually gave up game-buying for Lent; lucky for me, I paid for it eons ago, so it counts.)

The game has one thing I don't like: The rulebook is problematic. It's like a mystery, where the secrets are not revealed until you get all the way through--at which point, if you've been keeping careful track, all becomes clear. All didn't become clear on a first pass; we're off for a second pass.

It does, however, provide something I like very much: Uncertainty.

First, the key mechanic to the game is manipulating Mexico's political will ("PW") to continue the fight. A great many things affect PW, like winning battles and whatnot. One of the ways is through the various PW cities. Most major cities have a PW marker showing what they're worth. The catch: At the start of the game, neither player knows what they are. Neither the US or Mexico really has a clue about what's going on in the hinterlands.

This also works with reinforcements. When you get reinforcements, you get A Leader and Some Troops. Who exactly that leader is, and what troops he is leading, is unknown to you. For the kind of warfare I study--and I imagine that of most wars--this is about right. You can scream bloody murder to GHQ about needing troops, but it's up to their infallible wisdom to choose which ones you get. (Or don't get.) This is far, far superior to the usual calendar of reinforcements--"Oh good, this turn I get Grant."

Finally, reinforcements. You can order forts and breastworks to be built, but how good they are is not up to you. However, you are allowed to know the final result, which is unknown to your opponent until he chooses to attack them. My question: Why should the builder know the defensive value? But 'tis a small point.

I have yet to see how it works in practice, but I'm intrigued thus far. Any game where I have eight randomizer cups working is a good one in my book.

The Lay of the Land

2009-03-28T12:12:00.003-05:00

This had been something of an exhausting week, so on the spur of the moment I cast around yesterday evening for some folks to play games with. I found precisely two--one of the results of doing things as snap decisions. Both were fellow Civil Warriors from the office, but I eschewed wargames for two more Euros to introduce them to.

I chose Ra and Taluva. We did Ra first. It's gratifying to see people get more comfortable with games, and thus with rules. The actual play of Ra is fairly straightforward, but there are a lot of things to keep track of, particularly with scoring. Talking everything out led to a lot of a-ha moments. The first epoch saw ridiculously few Ra tiles come out; there were several auctions called before we started seeing Ra tiles. As it happened, I had three suns left when the other two bowed out, so I got a pretty big haul. I ended up winning the game; the scores were something like 60-50-40.

On to Taluva. As always, choosing colors is fun. "Do you want to be the brown people, red people, yellow people, or white people?" None of us felt secure choosing the white pieces, so they were left in the bag. By the second turn pretty much everyone was comfortable with the rules.

This game was insanely close. I won, and Jonathan (to my left) would have won if I'd missed my chance. Looking at the game afterward, though, we discovered that Tim (to my right) missed a win on his turn...so yeah, it was close.

What came next cemented our status as dorks. We analyzed our created island for militarily important typology. The island was really two islands, connected at a pair of isthmuses (isthmi?). Clearly those two points were critical, as was the long saddleback ridge on the east island. The west island had one big mountain that dominated the whole works, with a sort of "lost valley" in the middle, a single hex surrounded by elevated terrain. We figured that the east island would likely have better soil.

We also concluded that Tim's Red Peoples had were a maritime people; with just a couple of exceptions they were all at Level One by the sea. Jonathan and I, on the other hand, had a more varied cultural topography.

What can I say? It's what we do. Tim told us about how when he and his fiancée go for walks, he periodically asks where she thinks the defensive lines should be from an attack out of [some trees/a road/a car dealership]. I've done something similar on my walks; if I walk from Road A uphill along Road B to my apartment, I often think about what an ordeal it would be to charge up to take the ridge my apartment is on; there are three military crests that can be stoutly defended, and it could take hours to get to the top. The other options, though, are up some sheer surfaces in the woods. It's quite a ridgeline. I figure this kind of planning will come in handy if some kind of "Red Dawn" situation breaks out in State College.

Morning!

2009-03-18T07:45:00.000-05:00

Yeah, that worked like a charm. This security guard got fired for sleeping on the job. Have to come up with some other trick...

Hold the Line

2009-03-18T03:14:00.002-05:00

I'm stuck on a sentence, so why not write a bit here...

I've been casting around for a game to have set up where I can pick up a turn here and there as events warrant. The most recent game I've cleared space for is Worthington's Hold the Line, a reimplementation of Clash for a Continent, which is one of my favorites.

I'm of two minds about the upgraded look. Between C4aC and HTL, Worthington has moved up a weight class in terms of graphical presentation. The counters are linen-finished, and the art on them is done by one of the "historical art print" artists, Gary Zaboly. I do like the new board and terrain hexes, even though I found the originals to be serviceable enough. The counters I'm more dubious about; I liked the old wood ones, and with them it was easier to put an infantry unit and a leader/artillery unit in the same hex. That said, from a purely graphic-art perspective they're quite nice.

I've set up the War of Independence scenario for Harlem Heights. I chose it because I didn't know too much about it, and it looked interesting on the board. Washington has cut off part of the English army--some of the best bits of it--and has to outflank it before the reinforcements arrive, which is soon.

When I get a chance to play it, I'll try to post some pictures. When that'll be...

This has been Working Well

2009-03-18T02:04:00.000-05:00

Only one nap! Check this space at 4 AM...

An Experiment

2009-03-17T20:24:00.003-05:00

My, it's been a little while.

If you look carefully, you might notice little shiny metal buttons set in the walls of, say, shopping malls, stadiums, or--where I first noticed them--large dormitories. They're for security guards, who have a special little...doohickey with them. When they reach one of the little buttons, they touch the doohickey to it, and that tells the central computer that the guard hit that checkpoint--i.e., that he was (probably) actually pacing the floor.

Tonight/this coming morning, this blog is going to serve a somewhat similar function for me. My writer's block and procrastination have been acting up something fierce, and that combined with the happy news that a conference paper that I thought was due next week is actually due last week...fun times. I need to write something on the order of ten pages, real soon now, and I can't trick myself into taking a "power nap" or anything of the sort.

I have to make one more trip for supplies, and then I'll post something every top-of-the-hour. It'll be game-related. The big supply I need I have plenty of: Coffee. My three ibriks, two moka pots, one steam espresso maker (but no drip coffee maker) will set me fine, with my two coffee grinders and God only knows how many different kinds of coffee. The real trick will be figuring out how to do this without sugar. Those who know me from back in the day might remember that Bit-o-Honey and orange juice is my brain food of choice.

I'm on a low-carb diet, though, so those two are out. I'm thinking gum; that's supposed to keep you thinking straight. Ish. We can hope. Anything to keep me rolling until about noon, at least...

(I'll brook no criticism of low-carb diets, at least as a lose-weight-fast technique (which was the doctor's orders; I was a special case). I've lost forty pounds since the second week of January.)

Manoeuvring

2009-03-11T08:56:00.002-05:00

I managed to contrive a way to play games two days in a row this week, which is something of a new experience. Even stranger, I played the same game each day.

Friday night, my friend Tim and I eschewed a departmental bowling night (Team building + Beer = Damn near Charles Bukowski) and met for some gaming and conversation. We were hoping for a third, but he failed to materialize. I pulled out a two-player I had tried to get onto the table for some time--GMT's Manouvre.

Many/most/all of you have likely heard of this game by now. It's played on a chessboard with terrain (towns, hills, forests, etc), and each player gets eight pieces representing one or another Napoleonic-era military unit. Each nation gets a different mix of units, and a different mix of cards with which one has those units attack, defend, bombard, get healed, go on forced marches, and on and on. There are also a few leaders in the deck, which give yet more combat bonuses and allow for coordinated attacks.

I took the Turks, Tim took the Prussians. The key to the game was a little clump of hills right in the middle of the board. I managed to plant my Janissaries (by far my best unit) up top, where they became almost unstoppable. Both Tim and I fought like demons, and I won a narrow attrition victory--piling a few cards up to make the attack almost unstoppable. We both agreed we liked the game very much, and would definitely try again.

On Saturday, I went over to Castle Cranky for a trio of games, another of which was Manoeuvre. I took the Austrians; Josh had the French. Each of the various nations has a particular "personality;" the French personality is "being awesome" and the Austrian personality is "being terrible." Still, Josh (weakened by, as he put it, bad card draws) failed to kill a single one of my troops, and I couldn't maintain any kind of bridgehead into his territory. (My Austrians also, naturally, failed to kill any of the French.) Josh won a controlling-the-field victory in style.

And then essentially declared he never wanted to play again. I think, among other things, this points up a major difference between a Eurogame mentality and a Wargame mentality. (Not that one cannot have both; I like to think I do.) The luck of the draw can be maddening to Eurogamers, who demand relatively little luck compared to wargamers, who are obliged to accept that life is not always fair in these games. Managing this gap is one of the key problems for Euro/Wargame crossovers. (The other, of course, being the appropriate level of detail.)

Luckily for Josh, there are other games to play as well. We actually began the day with Gulf, Mobile & Ohio, one of Winsome's Essen 2008 offerings. It involves railroads, and auctions where the money you spend goes towards capitalizing said railroads. It reminded me a great deal of Age of Scheme, but with a few twists. I did like the ending mechanism: There are six colors of cubes, one with about ten cubes, on up to thirty cubes. When a railroad starts, it takes the color of whatever has the most cubes left. Once each color has been used once, the game ends. It's an ending mechanism that really affects how the game plays out. It's good, but I have a lot of good games. I'll try it again, and see what I think.

Finally came Vikings. I bumbled through the game, not entirely certain what was going on, or what all the rules were. I bought stuff that it seemed like I could use, never having much money laying around, and generally wandered around, trying to figure out which of Josh and Jean--both experienced veterans of the game--would win. They had so many vikings! And were creating oodles of gold, lots of nobles for VPs...it was impressive to watch.

Needless to say I won, and by a decent margin. Is this really a game where you can win by making obvious moves? More likely, I think, is that Josh and Jean were too engrossed with their own battle to pay much attention to me. This has worked to my advantage before. My first gmae of Stephenson's Rocket pitted me against two wily veterans, and I clearly looked harmless the whole game. By the end of it, I had more money (VPs) than the bank had left, and more than the other two put together.

Of the three games, I thing I like Manoeuvre the best for the time being; Vikings has some interesting mechanics; I'd like to try again. GM&O didn't grab me, but I'm willing to try again. What's best, though, is that I've managed to play three games from my unplayed list. As a devotee of the Cult of the New, that's a real accomplishment!

Ancients: Remix

2009-03-01T13:49:00.003-06:00

By mid-May, I have to have written a conference paper, two journal-article-length papers, and have read (or have "read") some 250 books...so what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than playing a wargame?

I felt inspired to try another Victory Point Games title, so I brought out Ancient Battles Deluxe. It's a redesign of one of my favorite games, Ancients. Ancients was an attempt to make a fairly believable but very simple tactical game. It featured generic counters, generic maps, and a bajillion scenarios.

This one keeps the same look. The counters are Red Army vs Blue, the maps are just 18 x 12 hexes. The rules, however, are a notch or two up in complexity. That does not mean they are complex; it just takes a few goings-through before you internalize them, particularly the melee rules. There's a lot of adding, multiplying, and dividing going on here. However, by halfway through the battle, I was up and running nicely.

I chose Magnesia, mostly because it had elephants on both sides. The winner is the one with the most VPs. You get a VP for making the other army panic (losing a certain number of strength points), capturing the opposing camp, and one for having the most troops on the field at sunset. The Romans, in this scenario, have superior leadership (the Scipios) but fewer troops. They are given a 1 VP handicap.

I had Antiochus simply charge the Romans with his greater volume of soldiers, in the hopes of tying down the Romans and hopefully turning a flank or two. The Romans refused both flanks in time, but fought from a cramped position the whole game. The Seleucids took horrific casualties, but hoped to hang on until their phalanx caught up (it was left far behind in the initial charge)--and hoped to last just one turn longer than the Romans.

And, lo, they did. I eventually called it for the Seleucids; the Romans were on the verge of losing the last casualties before panic and rout set in--and weren't going to inflict it on the Seleucids simultaneously. The Romans missed a lot of die-roll breaks in the second half of the game, but their limited mobility told the tale.

I like the command and control system here. It's about as good as one can be that doesn't get completely bogged down. You have n leaders, and you allocate them to units each turn. They represent concerted efforts as much as anything. They can command multiple troops if they're part of a formation...and these formations tend to break apart as the battle progresses. Then, it becomes a matter of aiding local battles.

A worthy update and successor to the original model (which is still available here, for free). The homepage lists a third expansion coming out, covering (mostly) the first years of gunpowder in the west--which, naturally, I'm eagerly awaiting.

And now: Back to the reading.

Could be Simplified

2009-02-25T13:36:00.002-06:00

I like Mahjongg a great deal, to the point where I have not only a "standard" Chinese set, but also Mhing...and a very snazzy Riichi (or "Reach") set.

I haven't gotten a chance to play Riichi yet--gosh darn there are a lot of ways to score points--but I have read the rules, and I thought I'd share one of the "setup" rules--setting the winds. The following is taken from the wonderful The Great Mahjong Book: History, Lore, and Play by Jelte Rep.

The allocation of seats around the table happens quickly [emphasis ed.]. The four Wind tiles, an odd tile, and an even one are mixed and placed in a row. The oldest player (or the host) throws two dice. The six tiles are turned faceup and the odd and the even tiles are moved to the closest side.
If the oldest player throws an odd number, then he gets the wind that is on the odd side temporarily . . . The other players are allocated the other temporary Winds: the player who sits to the right of the oldest (counterclockwise) gets the second Wind (East); the player who sits right of him gets the third Wind (South); and the fourth player gets the remaining wind (north).
If the oldest player throws an even number, then he becomes North and the other players respectively become South, East, and West.
Now temporary East decides who will become [real] East by throwing the dice. If he throws six, for instance, then he counts counterclockwise, starting with himself, and temporary South becomes East.

This sort of thing is precisely why we just drew the winds out of a bag back when I played regularly.

The Sheep and the Goats

2009-02-25T12:09:00.002-06:00

I decided, for reasons of space and finances, to cull the collection a bit. I eventually marked 140 (including expansions) for sale, and sent the list off to a used game dealer. I know I'd get more if I sold them individually, but my time is not entirely valueless.

Some bad games are in the seven piles in my apartment, as are some very good ones. Aaaand then there are the mediocre ones. I used a few criteria to judge whether a game stayed or went away.

If I really liked the game, it obviously stayed. Also obvious: Selling off the games I hate. There weren't many of the latter. The real challenges were the ones I'd never played, or played a few times and thought "eh."

If I thought I'd never play it, and had it basically as an objet d'art, it went. See: This Hallowed Ground, the extremely huge and fairly complex game on a battle (Chickamauga) that doesn't excite me. But it's really huge! I can say to my buddies "Behold my huge game! This gives me many advantages in male dominance rituals!" It's gone.

A lot of games that other people like, but I think are...good, but a bit much, are on the pile. Most notably, Race for the Galaxy. I like it OK, but it doesn't do much for me. Why I bought the expansion, then, I'm not sure. They're both on the pile.

(I guess with Race, it pushes all the buttons that San Juan does, but with added bells and whistles that distract me, and reduce the number of players I can play it with. I can teach anyone San Juan, but Race comes with fairly intense charts and whatnot. No thanks. Go and Chess are my limit for reading strategy guides.)

Games that I think are good...but I have a lot of good games. When the heck was I going to play Antiquity? Nobody's ever asked, and I've never suggested it. Why would I, when I have a great many great games that I'd rather play/explain to people. Masons is...fine, I suppose. But why not a quick game of Thurn und Taxis?

Games I own for "academic purposes." At one point I decided that it was important that I own every single darned game on the Civil War. So I could write an article, I guess? My dirty little ACW secret is that I find vast stretches of the military side of the war totally uninteresting; WWI, WWII, and Ancients are my military history bag. (Bags?) This knocked out a number of games, most notably War Between the States. It's huge, I disagree fundamentally with its assumptions, and there are no fewer than seven ACW grand strategy games I'd rather play, because I actually like them. Plus it might get me some $. Easy call.

A less easy call: PitchCar. It's a good game. I like dexterity games, and racing games. There were two things working against it. First, it's not my favorite dex game--or my favorite racing game! (It is, however, my favorite combination of the two...) Second, and more important: I suck at it. If it's a game I congenitally suck at, it's gone.

Duplicates, and near-duplicates. I'm not sure why I have two copies of Lancashire Railways; soon enough I'll have one. Then there are the two games I call "Meet the New Boss; Worse than the Old Boss:" Domaine and Entdecker: New Horizons. Well, "worse" may be a stretch, but I can't see much improvement and Löwenherz and Entdecker 1.0 were formative gaming experiences...so I'll keep those versions.

A few things saved games that might otherwise go.

Small games tended to survive. First, they might not get noticed. I have basically no idea what's in my three shelves of "small games." Also, and this is really its own category...

Worthless games live in a sort of liminal state. Anybody up for some mediocre S&Ts from the early nineties without magazines? Anybody? They're worth about $3 on the open market, which means I might get $1 if I'm lucky. I could probably get $1 of value out of it. That said: I still put Tripoley on the pile, so I was willing to stretch this rule. I didn't think I'd get $1 out of it, I didn't want to donate it, and it pains me to throw games away...

I can't wait to see the eyes of the UPS Store people when I drive up with these. They know me as the "game guy," but nothing's prepared them for this.

Game Night

2009-02-22T09:27:00.002-06:00

I managed to piece a game night together involving five of my fellow history grad students plus (coming in late) Josh, AKA Mr. Cranky. We played in an empty classroom, my apartment being, um, otherwise occupied by extreme messiness. It actually worked out well; it may become our gaming venue of choice. Centrally-located (I'm on the edge of town), spacious...the only downside is that I have to take the games along, which requires some advance planning. But no matter.

The night began with dinner. I think we may have walked into an episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares; it's always a good sign when the waiter says that, quote, "Everything is going wrong tonight." And it seemed to have been. The tea machine was busted (bad news for a Chinese restaurant), service was spotty, some of the food was a little dodgy, but we seem to have emerged essentially unscathed.

Upon our return, waiting for Josh, we busted out Transamerica. This was unquestionably the hit of the evening, and perhaps the most intense and passionate game of Transamerica ever played. They quickly intuited the first rule of Transamerica: Your cards are awful, and you need to express it boldly."

"This one isn't a real city!"
"I don't think this is in the United States.
"It is mathematically impossible to connect these cities."

Some of the other rules were less easily intuited. Being a group of relatively novice gamers, some were faster learners than others--it took fifteen minutes to explain the rules of TA, but we did get going eventually.

And good Lord almighty did we get going. The game clearly hit some sort of pleasure center in the brain, as what resulted was over an hour of shouting, gesticulating, trash-talking (!), crying aloud, swearing--all at high-volume. We played about four rounds, six-player, all told (in, again, an hour or so), and never actually finished a game.

Josh arrived in the midst of this ("I shudder to think of how you guys would react to Transeuropa"), and when we finished that round we broke into two groups. Josh introduced three folks to the world of competitive zoo operation (Zooloretto, of course) while I guided two gamers through Metropolys.

Metropolys was a big hit as well. It was good to see them appreciate a somewhat brainier game, and they got their heads around the weird auction system quickly. One guy didn't grasp part of the final scoring...but it wouldn't have mattered in the end. I won by seven points, 40-33-18.

Zooloretto was a quieter experience than TA, which seemed to make it go down a little less well, but I can't really speak to that.

I have to admit that I was a little taken aback by just how intense Transamerica was. Part of me always hopes that the meatier fare will do better than the appetizers and desserts, but then again it's my job--as the gaming host--to ensure that my guests have fun, rather than that they become educated in the ways of Higher Gaming. Enthusiasm seemed to run high for another game night--and they liked the looks of Union Pacific...p'raps they're climbing the ladder after all.

Civilians in the Path of Wargames

2009-02-21T16:02:00.002-06:00

...or, if you will, "Playing the 'Rape of Belgium' Card."

About forty years ago, virtually all books on military history were set on the battlefield, which was neatly scrubbed and prepped before battle. Soldiers were important primarily as carriers of equipment, whose status could be determined neatly by "morale clocks" above each regiment. (He says, exaggerating for effect.) Since John Keegan's Face of Battle, change has come--and, indeed, has accelerated. War is now seen as a very large societal event, with much of the focus now on the individual soldier's experience, and how war affected civilians--those on the home front, and those in the path of war.

Wargames are still generally focused on the theater of battle (or war...), but in the last fifteen years or so, there has been a change similar in kind--if not in degree--as that which has taken place in military history scholarship. I'd like to spend a few blog posts--probably interspersed with other kinds of post--discussing how civilians have appeared in wargames. Sometimes they're represented in cardboard counters just like everyone else; sometimes they're more abstract.

This little project began as a seminar paper I wrote last semester; turning it into something larger (and scholarly) is on indefinite hold, so why not put it here? With any luck at all, it'll provoke at least one thought somewhere. And for an academic, that's a runaway success.

Impossible, but Necessary

2009-02-17T17:53:00.003-06:00

So, I've begun toying with the idea of turning the Soviet Dawn/Israeli Independence system into an American Civil War game. Instead of one point of convergence, though, I'm thinking three: One for Virginia, one for the West, one for the Trans-Mississippi. Once the CSA loses Virginia and one of the others, it's out of the game. There'd also be a track for the political viability of the CSA, which would represent a combination of internal dissent and foreign recognition.

I ran that by one of the folks in the office, who objected--as there was essentially no way that England or France would ever recognize the Confederacy, because [of numerous reasons extraneous to this post]. I agreed that there was no way it could happen in real life--but it had to be in the game, as it is in most Civil War games.

See, both the USA and CSA thought it was a serious possibility, one which they spent considerable energy either discouraging or encouraging. If a game designer is to create the illusion of history, he or she must find some way for the players to fritter away energy and resources on sidling up to European heads of government. The result: Making it possible for the CSA to get material help from Europe.

There's another possibility, of course: Simply not having European recognition enter the game at all--or making it so much sound and fury, signifying nothing. Battle Cry of Freedom (the "forgotten" Civil War game) has the various events all happen--Mason and Slidell, the Trent Affair, the works--and they affect the sides in military terms (which seems kind of odd to me).

I prefer my option, obviously. It has kindred rules in other games. Ted Raicer wanted players of Paths of Glory to be historically paranoid about supply issues, so he made the rules draconian: Any out-of-supply unit is immediately destroyed. He granted (as I recall) that this wasn't what would have automatically happened in 14-18, but he wanted the players to be supremely supply-conscious.

It's not really something we can do in history books, at least the nonfiction variety. Tension is harder to create, but of course not impossible. The secret, like a good mystery novel, is to keep the reader from mentally skipping to the end of the book. When I read William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, for example, I would occasionally find myself in real anticipation to find out what would come next--although I naturally already knew. Sadly, few academics write nearly as well as Shirer. (Hell, few nonacademics write nearly as well as Shirer.)

In my neck of the woods, the best I've found has been William Shea and Earl Hess's Pea Ridge, which receives my very warmest recommendation. Watch the chaos of the Pea Ridge campaign as it unfolds! I described it once as the blind leading the blind, fighting the blind. And it was one of the major battles of the war...

Get that Garbage Out of Here

2009-02-15T20:19:00.002-06:00

Got back from Virginia today. On the way back, I stopped at Monocacy National Battlefield. It's relatively new--it opened in 1991. It's quite nice; excellent exhibits, and restored to near-1864 condition, including working cornfields.

They're most notable, however, for their trash cans: They have none. I wanted to dispose of some water bottles, and searched in vain. I took them with me into the visitor's center.

"Can I throw these away somewhere?"
"We ask that you not."
"What?"
"We're a 'Trash Free Zone.' If you create trash, you have to take it with you out of the park."
(pause)
"Do you seriously expect that to work?"

They did, apparently. She did relent, and offered to take the bottles off my hands privately.

I will say that I didn't see mountains of garbage laying around, but (a) the policy was quite new, and (b) it was still the off-season. We'll see how this goes in July.

A Night on the Town

2009-02-13T08:51:00.001-06:00

So, I wandered over to the game store—the great Game Parlor of Woodbridge VA—and waited for the gamers who were scheduled to arrive at 6:30. I had with me my brand-new copy of Metropolys, which I had bought at GP the day before. When the gamers came, it was clear that they were going to play Axis and Allies—the new, gargantuan edition—instead of my kind of game, so I left them to it. Ah well.

This meant one thing: Gaming in my motel room. Quieter, anyway. I chose Soviet Dawn for the evening's entertainment.

It's a solo game, where you're the Bolsheviks seeking to establish the new Soviet state. You do this by protecting Moscow against six approaching armies, and by improving your geopolitical image until the world has to accept your legitimacy. If you can hold off the hordes until the end of the game, that's a military victory. If you win international legitimacy, that's a political victory.

Cards drive gameplay. Each card has several parts. It says which of the threatening armies advance, what special events come into play, and how many things you can do on your turn. There are three kinds of action. You can launch an offensive against one of the opposing armies—a mere roll-to-hit. You can roll to improve your international prestige—another die roll; this gets harder as you advance up the track. Finally, you can call Trotsky in and attempt a reorganization of the Red Army, which will provide one or another advantage—temporary or permanent.

Lots of the flavor of the war makes it into the game. You have to eliminate the Tsar before the Eastern armies reach Yekaterinburg. You can fortify Petrograd; you can get armored trains, you can choose whether to accept the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk or keep on fighting...and on and on. There's a lot of flavor bolted onto a simple framework. (The cards also have copious flavor text, which I always appreciate.)

There are as many turns (potentially) as there are cards in the game. Both of my games last night ended early.

The first one, I signed Brest-Litovsk the first card, which shut down the Baltic front for the time being, but activated the Allies, who proceeded to march down from Murmansk. I tried to beat them back, but every card moved them forward and my die rolls were hopeless, and they reached the last square before Moscow. Meanwhile, I attempted to get myself moving up the political track, but with a signal lack of success. I was eventually forced by a card to roll for Political Dissent. This is an interesting feature, whereby you can either lose a space, go nowhere, or turn the dissent around and actually move up the track. I rolled to move down, which in my case meant that my regime had lost all legitimacy inside and outside Russia, and I was put down in a bloody counterrevolution, which was aided by the Allied forces. I lasted six cards, or somewhat less than five minutes.

Let's try that again, shall we?

The next one, I decided, on a whim, to have Trotsky work his magic reorganizing the army. You need a six to do this, and lo! a six was rolled. Appropriately, I got the armored train, which aids in offensives. I would repeat this trick about six more times during the game (sometimes with positive modifiers), and I scored on no fewer than four rolls. It was magical. In an attempt to help balance the scale from the last game, I also got some big winners on the Political track. I kept all the advancing armies at arm's length for most of the game—thank you, Trotsky—and in the end I got a bounce from a Dissent roll and won widespread international recognition. A glorious victory, at the highest level of achievement!

And y'know, that seems about right to me. Why should we assume that the historical outline was the most likely? A few lucky breaks in 19170-1918, and the Bolsheviks go down in history as some overgrown Decembrists. And if Trotsky and other experts had been in charge of the army from Day One...the whole thing might have been wrapped up like a bow in three years or so, like my second game. An effective military could have given the state some vital diplomatic breathing room.

In other words, it all seemed like a logical narrative. And it was a narrative. I prize good storytelling in all wargames, especially solitaire ones, and this delivers in spades. I was cheering on my forces, grieving their defeats, and I have every intention to pull this game out many, many more times. I also look forward to trying their Israeli War of Independence game, even if (or perhaps because) it has less chrome. This is a magnificent solitaire game. It doesn't look like a “real” wargame, with just a few counters, a map that is essentially six marker tracks, and cards with more flavor text than in-game information. And maybe it's not a real wargame, but it is an extremely good Something.

Packin' Up

2009-02-10T00:00:00.002-06:00

I head out the door tomorrow (today?) for Quantico, VA, headquarters of the US Marine Corps and home to their archives, where I hope/plan to do research for the next few days. (I'm researching a paper on aspects of the occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934.) The most important question for any trip, if you're me, is "What games do I bring?"

I've given the matter no little thought; far more thought than I've given to what clothes I'm going to wear. I've settled on two, both solitaire wargames.

The first is Dan Verssen's "Field Commander: Rommel," which covers three of his campaigns (France 1940, Africa 1942, France 1944). The major problem: You're Rommel. It smacks of "clean Wehrmactitude," but most Rommelabilia does that for me. That said: The word on the street is exceedingly positive, and I have yet to play a Verssen solo game I dislike (I have the next game in the series, on Alexander the Great, on the way).

The next is Victory Point's "Soviet Dawn." It's actually not quite Soviet Dawn, actually; It's Soviet Da[shah-ee]. Yes, it's our old friend from many games set in Russia: Faux Cyrillic. It annoys me so, and it's all over the place in Soviet Dawn. The map is rife with it. But again: Lots of love for this game, and it's on a topic I like a great deal.

I'll be sure to post updates. And possibly with pictures! I'm also getting in some "real" gaming, as I've found a game night nearby.

Oo! And also a chess set. I've entered on one of my biennial Chess Frenzies, which typically results in the loss of very many dollars and the gain of very few ELO points. I've at least had the sense this time to get all my books from the library. Will this be the year Alfred plays a clocked game against a face-to-face opponent?

...

No, probably not. Although the local-to-Quantico game store does have a chess night.

I Hope you Like these Comments

2009-02-08T08:46:00.002-06:00

I gave it my level best to change my comments from Haloscan back to Blogger, but with a signal lack of success. Halsoscan wasn't very helpful (shocking!), Blogger said even less (actually shocking!), and the ideas in the forums didn't work. End result: We get these comments until a Plan C emerges.