Friday, September 02, 2005
On Wednesday night, I made yet another trek up to David's place in Thornhill. I swear the rest of the TABS members must be a little miffed at me, considering how much of David's gaming time I've been taking up recently. This will likely be the last time I game with David for a few weeks, though. I'll see him next week at CondoCon, but we don't have anything else booked for before or after that -- although he has mentioned that he'd like a Granada: The Fall of Moslem Spain rematch. Additionally, he'd like to get another learning session in of Star Fleet Battles, which is what he thought Justin and me on Wednesday night.
SFB was technically the first hex-and-counter game I was exposed to. Back in high school, I was friends with a guy named Chris Chesher (who I actually contacted via email several months ago when I found out he was part of the Toronto area Living Greyhawk crowd). Chesher was a strategy game player, particularly PC games Civilization, Esterian Conquest and VGA Planets. However, he also liked to play tabletop war games.
At that time, I was into Supremacy. A couple of my D&D players were also Supremacy fans. Both Tim and Steve enjoyed playing Supremacy with me, and we tried to get in a couple of games a year. Well, Chesher picked up a copy of SFB and then wanted us to give it a try. As I recall, he had played it before, and he was willing to teach us.
Unfortunately, Chesher wasn't a very good teacher (sorry to Chris, if he's reading). The learning session didn't go well, and after it was completed, those of us who were being taught had decided we really hated SFB. I even went so far as to make a vow to never play the game again.
So much for that vow. After hearing David and another guy in TABS talk about SFB and how much they loved the game, I slowly coaxed myself into volunteering to give it another whirl. I'm glad I did. David is an excellent teacher, and he introduced us to the game in a way that made sense. He ran Justin and I through a very simple Klingon versus Federation space battle, with each of us using a light cruiser from our respective races (I was the Feds, BTW).
It was a fun night, and I think the game actually captures the spirit of Star Trek combat. Justin blew my ship away, though. Still, even though I lost, it was still fun. ;)
EDIT: Dec. 3, 2007 -- I knew I'd posted something somewhere about playing SFB in high school, but I couldn't find it. Chris C. pointed out to me it was on my blog, and he also pointed out that I was full of shit when I wrote this. We never played SFB in high school -- and Chris has never played it. Sorry, Chris.
SFB was technically the first hex-and-counter game I was exposed to. Back in high school, I was friends with a guy named Chris Chesher (who I actually contacted via email several months ago when I found out he was part of the Toronto area Living Greyhawk crowd). Chesher was a strategy game player, particularly PC games Civilization, Esterian Conquest and VGA Planets. However, he also liked to play tabletop war games.
At that time, I was into Supremacy. A couple of my D&D players were also Supremacy fans. Both Tim and Steve enjoyed playing Supremacy with me, and we tried to get in a couple of games a year. Well, Chesher picked up a copy of SFB and then wanted us to give it a try. As I recall, he had played it before, and he was willing to teach us.
Unfortunately, Chesher wasn't a very good teacher (sorry to Chris, if he's reading). The learning session didn't go well, and after it was completed, those of us who were being taught had decided we really hated SFB. I even went so far as to make a vow to never play the game again.
So much for that vow. After hearing David and another guy in TABS talk about SFB and how much they loved the game, I slowly coaxed myself into volunteering to give it another whirl. I'm glad I did. David is an excellent teacher, and he introduced us to the game in a way that made sense. He ran Justin and I through a very simple Klingon versus Federation space battle, with each of us using a light cruiser from our respective races (I was the Feds, BTW).
It was a fun night, and I think the game actually captures the spirit of Star Trek combat. Justin blew my ship away, though. Still, even though I lost, it was still fun. ;)
EDIT: Dec. 3, 2007 -- I knew I'd posted something somewhere about playing SFB in high school, but I couldn't find it. Chris C. pointed out to me it was on my blog, and he also pointed out that I was full of shit when I wrote this. We never played SFB in high school -- and Chris has never played it. Sorry, Chris.
// posted by Chris @ 12:14 PM 
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