Wednesday, July 27, 2005
August is already shaping up to be a good month for gaming. Next Wednesday, Logan and I are going to be giving Pirates of the Spanish Main/Crimson Seas/Revolution (I think I should just standardize on Pirates of the Spanish Main for future reference) a try. I'm looking forward to this one, but the only way I can make up a national fleet (as opposed to going multi-nation) is by going with France. Maybe I should wave the white flag now? ... Just kidding. ;)
A bit later in August, I've got a couple of games scheduled with David B. We'll be giving Granada: The Fall of Moslem Spain a try one Thursday evening, and then he's going to teach me Ogre the next Thursday. Sweeeeeet. I'm also hoping to get a game (or two, or three) of Car Wars going during August, as well, but that might get pushed to the September timeframe.
A bit later in August, I've got a couple of games scheduled with David B. We'll be giving Granada: The Fall of Moslem Spain a try one Thursday evening, and then he's going to teach me Ogre the next Thursday. Sweeeeeet. I'm also hoping to get a game (or two, or three) of Car Wars going during August, as well, but that might get pushed to the September timeframe.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Much as my players won't want to hear this, I'm really, really, really, very much enjoying my break from running D&D. My stress level has gone down. :)
The Half-Blood Prince
My mother finished up reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince a few days ago, and I snagged her copy of the book on Sunday. Last night, I sat down and read the first two hundred pages. It's interesting that it's calling into question certain characters' loyalties, and the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher surprised me. I didn't see that one coming.
Still, both my mother and Sean told me they were disappointed with the book overall. They said it doesn't compare to some of the previous novels. My mother actually said it seemed like it was meant as a filler between Order of the Phoenix and the seventh book (meaning it served little purpose). We shall see.
Still, both my mother and Sean told me they were disappointed with the book overall. They said it doesn't compare to some of the previous novels. My mother actually said it seemed like it was meant as a filler between Order of the Phoenix and the seventh book (meaning it served little purpose). We shall see.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Gaming on the weekend
I've been slacking over the last week. I haven't posted here since last Monday. A quick summary of my weekend...
I played Russian Campaign, 4th Edition on Friday night at David M.'s in Pickering. Saturday was the Canucks Amuck meetup at Hart House, where I played Wings of War and Brawling Battleships. Then I stopped off to see The Law for about an hour on my way back home. Then some Settlers of Catan with Jacquie in the evening. We played a two-player variant I found online.
On Sunday, I hit Wyldstar with Logan. No new comics in over a month. What the hell is wrong with their distributor? I did pick up a couple of packs of Pirates of Revolution, though. Logan and I are probably going to give that game a try next week. In the evening, Jacquie, Loki and I went over to my parents' place for a barbecue and a game of Poker's Wild.
It was a gaming weekend. :)
I played Russian Campaign, 4th Edition on Friday night at David M.'s in Pickering. Saturday was the Canucks Amuck meetup at Hart House, where I played Wings of War and Brawling Battleships. Then I stopped off to see The Law for about an hour on my way back home. Then some Settlers of Catan with Jacquie in the evening. We played a two-player variant I found online.
On Sunday, I hit Wyldstar with Logan. No new comics in over a month. What the hell is wrong with their distributor? I did pick up a couple of packs of Pirates of Revolution, though. Logan and I are probably going to give that game a try next week. In the evening, Jacquie, Loki and I went over to my parents' place for a barbecue and a game of Poker's Wild.
It was a gaming weekend. :)
Monday, July 18, 2005
If only navy ships could really do this...
Friday, July 15, 2005
Battlegroup
It's not often I head into the north end of the city, but I braved the rush hour trip up the 404 last night to head into Thornhill and meet a few other war gamers from the T.A.B.S. group. David B. was hosting this time, as well as cooking us fellow gamers a great dinner. Mmm...
Sorry; I drifted there for a second.
Anyway, Chris N., who I met a couple of weeks ago during the La Citta game, was there. Bill was the other player for the game we were playing, a card-based WW2 naval warfare game called Battlegroup from Lost Battalion Games. As we were playing our first round, another T.A.B.S. member dropped by. Pete didn't join in on the Battlegroup fun, but instead chatted with us as he cut out the counters for his newly-acquired Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #2. Now that the second ASLSK is out, I'd better start thinking about grabbing the first one. I think it's a three-part set, and I don't want to get left behind. ;)
To sum up, Battlegroup was fun, but I'm as dumb as a retarded monkey when it comes to naval warfare. I kept getting the order of actions mixed up. I also kept forgetting what a couple of the acronyms stood for. I guess I'm just not enough of a military geek or something. :-/
Sorry; I drifted there for a second.
Anyway, Chris N., who I met a couple of weeks ago during the La Citta game, was there. Bill was the other player for the game we were playing, a card-based WW2 naval warfare game called Battlegroup from Lost Battalion Games. As we were playing our first round, another T.A.B.S. member dropped by. Pete didn't join in on the Battlegroup fun, but instead chatted with us as he cut out the counters for his newly-acquired Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #2. Now that the second ASLSK is out, I'd better start thinking about grabbing the first one. I think it's a three-part set, and I don't want to get left behind. ;)
To sum up, Battlegroup was fun, but I'm as dumb as a retarded monkey when it comes to naval warfare. I kept getting the order of actions mixed up. I also kept forgetting what a couple of the acronyms stood for. I guess I'm just not enough of a military geek or something. :-/
Thursday, July 14, 2005
One-third of studies are bogus
You'd almost expect to see this on a site like The Onion, but when it's on CNN, it must be true ... right? ;)
Anyway, check out the study that says one-third of studies are bullshit. Just brilliant.
Anyway, check out the study that says one-third of studies are bullshit. Just brilliant.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Tournament Jousting
I spent some time last night fiddling with a little jousting simulation game that's older than I am. I picked up Tournament Jousting (made by Bearhug Games) off of eBay a few years ago. I think the game dates back to the early 1970s. ... Correction: BoardGameGeek.com lists it as being a 1979 release.
Anyway, it's a hex-and-counter style of game -- but without the hexes, seeing as it uses a more traditional grid model. Sean and I gave the game a try sometime after I bought it around 1998 or 1999, and then it just collected dust for a few years. So I pulled it out and spread it out on the kitchen table last night. I gave it a try pitting two groups of jousters against each other (typical lance versus lance style), and then went from there.
It's supposed to take about an hour to play, but I really don't see why it would take that long. Half an hour, perhaps. But maybe I just wasn't considering my options well enough, and maybe if I was actually playing against someone, they'd be considering their strategies a bit more. I'll have to coax someone into playing this with me.
Anyway, it's a hex-and-counter style of game -- but without the hexes, seeing as it uses a more traditional grid model. Sean and I gave the game a try sometime after I bought it around 1998 or 1999, and then it just collected dust for a few years. So I pulled it out and spread it out on the kitchen table last night. I gave it a try pitting two groups of jousters against each other (typical lance versus lance style), and then went from there.
It's supposed to take about an hour to play, but I really don't see why it would take that long. Half an hour, perhaps. But maybe I just wasn't considering my options well enough, and maybe if I was actually playing against someone, they'd be considering their strategies a bit more. I'll have to coax someone into playing this with me.
Monday, July 11, 2005
From the Stone Age to the Middle Ages in under six hours
Prior to heading over to The Law's place on Saturday to play the Civilization board game from Eagle Games, I briefly considered bringing a notepad, my tape recorder and/or my digital camera to preserve the game we were about to play. Realizing that taking notes or shooting pictures every few minutes would incredibly slow down what was likely to be a fairly slow game anyway, I decided I would just consider the good and bad points of the game as I went along and write a summary of them on my laptop sometime after the end of the game.
We started the setup of the game about 1:00, just a few minutes after Rob arrived. We chose our pieces (Law was purple, Rob was red and I was green), and then I started explaining the basics of the game. Once we distributed the facedown markers for each territory, we chose our territories, with Law choosing first and me choosing last (and then it went back counter-clockwise for the second territory). The Law popped his first village into the heart of Africa. Rob chose to put his village in about the centre of North America. I put my first village in the far northeast corner of Asia. I put my second village only a couple of territories away from my first -- just a bit to the south. Rob put his second territory in Central America/Mexico. The Law made an odd decision and put his last settlement in one of the northern territories of South America, putting him and Rob at odds pretty much right away.
Then play began, with The Law going first. Now, the way going first works is kind of cool. For each turn (not phase of a turn), the first player changes. So Law went first in the first turn, then Rob and then me, and then it went back to Law and around again. I do wish I had kept a tally of how many turns we actually played. I'm thinking we played somewhere in the neighbourhood of nine turns. I'm pretty sure I started three times, anyway.
From the get-go, The Law started worrying more about his South American colonies than his African ones. Rob, with North and Central Americas making up his home, worried about expanding. It was clear he had intended to move south into South America pretty quickly, but when The Law placed his second village in that area, it kind of screwed up his plans. So with the knowledge that he would quickly run out of space in North America, he started to build up his war machine.
I figured I wouldn't stand much of a chance if I decided to go toe-to-toe with The Law in battle, so I focused on building up my technologies and cities. In the end, this proved to be the best strategy, seeing as how I was earning gold coins like crazy by the end of the game while the other two were going broke just keeping their armies going. Throughout the game, The Law and I respected each other's space, and I only once crossed over into Africa with a settler -- just to see what was in a specific territory (although I did get lucky early on and take possession of a minor civilization that The Law found on the north-west tip of Africa). Then I had that settler hotfoot it out of there and return to Asia and Europe to consider settling new cities.
The first turn went painfully slow. It took us at least an hour, if not an hour-and-a-half to complete that first turn. Of course, we were all still learning the rules. We made a few mistakes, most of which I think I'm to blame for -- but nothing was really messed up by misinterpretations of the rules. After the first turn, the subsequent turns went much quicker, and by the time we were in our third or fourth turn, the order of the phases was becoming second nature to us.
While I don't remember all of the details of what went on in the game, I remember that I spread out through Asia and then Europe, settling around a dozen cities. I never engaged in combat once, and instead, I focused on building out my empire and purchasing city upgrades and technologies. Rob and The Law went the other way. They built up their militaries and then started going to war over The Law's northernmost cities. By the end of the game, Rob had managed to take two of The Law's cities, but the all-too-random battle mechanics ended up -- I think -- frustrating Rob more than anything. The Law didn't mind the battle mechanics, he later told me.
From an outsider's perspective on combat, I would say the combat engine is far too simple. It's too random, and (like Risk) the person with the most powerful army stands a good chance of getting wiped out because of it. Of course, taking into account that the mechanics for war are meant to simulate what happens in the Civilization PC game, I'm not sure this is all that far off. I still seem to remember a bit more of a pattern in predicting battles in Civilization, though. I could be wrong, though, as war was never my forte in the PC game.
While the two of them threw money at the war machine, I concentrated on building my cities and building technologies (and thus gaining wonders of the world). Essentially, what I did was focus on preparing for the end game, in which victory points are calculated. Settlements, wonders of the world and certain technologies all give you victory points, and I purchased all of those in spades.
The game finally ended around 6:30-ish. We decided when we started to play the short game, which takes you from the beginning of the Ancient Era to the Medieval Era. By the time we were nearing the point of the Medieval Era, it was getting late and I think we were all a little tired from the number of hours we had been playing. We agreed that after the first Medieval technology was purchased, we would end the game. According to the rules, you roll a d6 every time somebody buys a Medieval technology, and you end the game if the die roll result is equal to or lower than the total number of Medieval technologies already purchased. We didn't really want to go through several more turns, though, so we ended as soon as I purchased the technology for the trebuchet. As an aside, the only Ancient Era technology that didn't get purchased was currency. Heheh.
Impressions of the game seemed to be good. We all enjoyed ourselves, and everyone indicated that they would like to play again. Even Rob's better half, who showed up within seconds of us calculating victory points, said she might be interested in trying the game the next time we play.
The weakest part of the game seemed to be the combat engine. When asked about it, The Law didn't seem to have any problems with the combat mechanism, but I know The Law enjoys Risk. I, on the other hand, don't enjoy Risk, and I like the combat mechanics to be a little more reliable. If one person outnumbers the other three to one, there should be almost no way for the outnumbered person to win. Civilization allows such bizarre results to happen, though -- and on a regular basis, it seemed. I got the sense that Rob was somewhat disappointed in the combat mechanics, and when I talked to him about it, he did tell me that he didn't care much for them.. All of his plans were laid to waste simply because of some bad die rolls, after all.
Personally, I think the combat engine should be stripped out and a better combat engine should be inserted. That said, though, it does show that avoiding military initiatives is probably the best way to go about winning the game. At the end of the game, I had twenty-four victory points, Rob had sixteen victory points and The Law had a whopping nine victory points (if he hadn't lost those two villages, he would have had two more points and Rob would've been down two). Avoiding war seems to be the way to go.
With the knowledge I now have of the game, I'm looking forward to trying it out again. It's probably best to wait until September before trying to organize another game of Civilization, though. At that time, I'd like to get a slightly bigger group to play, as I think the game might change a bit with more players.
We started the setup of the game about 1:00, just a few minutes after Rob arrived. We chose our pieces (Law was purple, Rob was red and I was green), and then I started explaining the basics of the game. Once we distributed the facedown markers for each territory, we chose our territories, with Law choosing first and me choosing last (and then it went back counter-clockwise for the second territory). The Law popped his first village into the heart of Africa. Rob chose to put his village in about the centre of North America. I put my first village in the far northeast corner of Asia. I put my second village only a couple of territories away from my first -- just a bit to the south. Rob put his second territory in Central America/Mexico. The Law made an odd decision and put his last settlement in one of the northern territories of South America, putting him and Rob at odds pretty much right away.
Then play began, with The Law going first. Now, the way going first works is kind of cool. For each turn (not phase of a turn), the first player changes. So Law went first in the first turn, then Rob and then me, and then it went back to Law and around again. I do wish I had kept a tally of how many turns we actually played. I'm thinking we played somewhere in the neighbourhood of nine turns. I'm pretty sure I started three times, anyway.
From the get-go, The Law started worrying more about his South American colonies than his African ones. Rob, with North and Central Americas making up his home, worried about expanding. It was clear he had intended to move south into South America pretty quickly, but when The Law placed his second village in that area, it kind of screwed up his plans. So with the knowledge that he would quickly run out of space in North America, he started to build up his war machine.
I figured I wouldn't stand much of a chance if I decided to go toe-to-toe with The Law in battle, so I focused on building up my technologies and cities. In the end, this proved to be the best strategy, seeing as how I was earning gold coins like crazy by the end of the game while the other two were going broke just keeping their armies going. Throughout the game, The Law and I respected each other's space, and I only once crossed over into Africa with a settler -- just to see what was in a specific territory (although I did get lucky early on and take possession of a minor civilization that The Law found on the north-west tip of Africa). Then I had that settler hotfoot it out of there and return to Asia and Europe to consider settling new cities.
The first turn went painfully slow. It took us at least an hour, if not an hour-and-a-half to complete that first turn. Of course, we were all still learning the rules. We made a few mistakes, most of which I think I'm to blame for -- but nothing was really messed up by misinterpretations of the rules. After the first turn, the subsequent turns went much quicker, and by the time we were in our third or fourth turn, the order of the phases was becoming second nature to us.
While I don't remember all of the details of what went on in the game, I remember that I spread out through Asia and then Europe, settling around a dozen cities. I never engaged in combat once, and instead, I focused on building out my empire and purchasing city upgrades and technologies. Rob and The Law went the other way. They built up their militaries and then started going to war over The Law's northernmost cities. By the end of the game, Rob had managed to take two of The Law's cities, but the all-too-random battle mechanics ended up -- I think -- frustrating Rob more than anything. The Law didn't mind the battle mechanics, he later told me.
From an outsider's perspective on combat, I would say the combat engine is far too simple. It's too random, and (like Risk) the person with the most powerful army stands a good chance of getting wiped out because of it. Of course, taking into account that the mechanics for war are meant to simulate what happens in the Civilization PC game, I'm not sure this is all that far off. I still seem to remember a bit more of a pattern in predicting battles in Civilization, though. I could be wrong, though, as war was never my forte in the PC game.
While the two of them threw money at the war machine, I concentrated on building my cities and building technologies (and thus gaining wonders of the world). Essentially, what I did was focus on preparing for the end game, in which victory points are calculated. Settlements, wonders of the world and certain technologies all give you victory points, and I purchased all of those in spades.
The game finally ended around 6:30-ish. We decided when we started to play the short game, which takes you from the beginning of the Ancient Era to the Medieval Era. By the time we were nearing the point of the Medieval Era, it was getting late and I think we were all a little tired from the number of hours we had been playing. We agreed that after the first Medieval technology was purchased, we would end the game. According to the rules, you roll a d6 every time somebody buys a Medieval technology, and you end the game if the die roll result is equal to or lower than the total number of Medieval technologies already purchased. We didn't really want to go through several more turns, though, so we ended as soon as I purchased the technology for the trebuchet. As an aside, the only Ancient Era technology that didn't get purchased was currency. Heheh.
Impressions of the game seemed to be good. We all enjoyed ourselves, and everyone indicated that they would like to play again. Even Rob's better half, who showed up within seconds of us calculating victory points, said she might be interested in trying the game the next time we play.
The weakest part of the game seemed to be the combat engine. When asked about it, The Law didn't seem to have any problems with the combat mechanism, but I know The Law enjoys Risk. I, on the other hand, don't enjoy Risk, and I like the combat mechanics to be a little more reliable. If one person outnumbers the other three to one, there should be almost no way for the outnumbered person to win. Civilization allows such bizarre results to happen, though -- and on a regular basis, it seemed. I got the sense that Rob was somewhat disappointed in the combat mechanics, and when I talked to him about it, he did tell me that he didn't care much for them.. All of his plans were laid to waste simply because of some bad die rolls, after all.
Personally, I think the combat engine should be stripped out and a better combat engine should be inserted. That said, though, it does show that avoiding military initiatives is probably the best way to go about winning the game. At the end of the game, I had twenty-four victory points, Rob had sixteen victory points and The Law had a whopping nine victory points (if he hadn't lost those two villages, he would have had two more points and Rob would've been down two). Avoiding war seems to be the way to go.
With the knowledge I now have of the game, I'm looking forward to trying it out again. It's probably best to wait until September before trying to organize another game of Civilization, though. At that time, I'd like to get a slightly bigger group to play, as I think the game might change a bit with more players.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
The annual D&D summer hiatus
Since the summer is getting busy, I've suggested to my gaming group that we put the D&D campaign on hiatus until after Labour Day. This has generally been an annual occurrence, although I seem to recall that we didn't actually have a hiatus last year. I think we played right through the summer -- but just on a lighter schedule.
Oh well. A couple of months off will let me recharge the GMing batteries, prepare a little bit better for the rest of the Temple of All-Consumption and maybe even run a one-shot or two just for fun. After all, I really did want to run some one-shots this year ... and I haven't run a single one up to this point -- and the damn year is half over!
Oh well. A couple of months off will let me recharge the GMing batteries, prepare a little bit better for the rest of the Temple of All-Consumption and maybe even run a one-shot or two just for fun. After all, I really did want to run some one-shots this year ... and I haven't run a single one up to this point -- and the damn year is half over!
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Civilization
I've had the Civilization board game from Eagle Games since shortly after it was released, but I have never, ever played it. Jacquie and I spent an entire evening after I got the game punching out and separating all the minis, but it seemed that it was just a wasted evening ... until now, that is. I'm finally going to be giving the game a try on Saturday. It's going to be a small group for this first time, and I think we're going to play the short game, but I'm really looking forward to finally breaking this sucker out and playing it.
Monday, July 04, 2005
I started reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night. I'm not too far into it, but I'll probably whip right through the book and have it finished in the next week or so.
ALF: Season Two
It's a quiet day here. That's normal for a Canadian business day that falls on the same day as a U.S. statutory holiday. Not that I'm complaining, of course. ;)
My Canada Day weekend was pretty good. I got to just hang out and do nothing for a good portion of the weekend, but I also did a fair bit of running around, too.
The weekend really kicked off on Thursday night when I joined a Star Wars d20 session with a group I didn't know beforehand. The host, Xavier (who I met Wednesday night), invited me, and I guess the GM was cool with a new player. I had a lot of fun. However, it was really odd playing with a thirteen-year-old. I don't think I've gamed with a kid since I was a kid. I was probably fifteen the last time I gamed with a thirteen-year-old. Very bizarre. He just wanted to do crazy bravado shit and get into fights. It really reminded me of some of my old games when I was a teen.
On Friday, I had forgotten to get beer and make sure the barbecue propane tank was full. So I was beer-less, and the tank ran out a few minutes after I started the barbecue. So much for proper Canada Day celebrations. Still, we had Logan over, and it was a good night.
On Saturday, Jacquie and I did a lot of running around, and then we met up with Logan and headed out to Oshawa. Wyldstar still hadn't solved its distributor problems, so I once again wasn't able to get Conan #17. I got some propane and some beer, and the three of us were able to have a proper Canada Day barbecue that night.
Jacquie and I took a trip to the zoo on Sunday. I shot a few pictures with my digital camera, but the batteries died before we got to the last couple of animals we wanted to see. It was really too bad, as the polar bears were being fed. It would've been nice to have got a few shots of them eating. C'est la vie and all that, but I think I'll bring my 35mm camera next time instead of my digital. At least I don't have to worry about batteries, then.
My Canada Day weekend was pretty good. I got to just hang out and do nothing for a good portion of the weekend, but I also did a fair bit of running around, too.
The weekend really kicked off on Thursday night when I joined a Star Wars d20 session with a group I didn't know beforehand. The host, Xavier (who I met Wednesday night), invited me, and I guess the GM was cool with a new player. I had a lot of fun. However, it was really odd playing with a thirteen-year-old. I don't think I've gamed with a kid since I was a kid. I was probably fifteen the last time I gamed with a thirteen-year-old. Very bizarre. He just wanted to do crazy bravado shit and get into fights. It really reminded me of some of my old games when I was a teen.
On Friday, I had forgotten to get beer and make sure the barbecue propane tank was full. So I was beer-less, and the tank ran out a few minutes after I started the barbecue. So much for proper Canada Day celebrations. Still, we had Logan over, and it was a good night.
On Saturday, Jacquie and I did a lot of running around, and then we met up with Logan and headed out to Oshawa. Wyldstar still hadn't solved its distributor problems, so I once again wasn't able to get Conan #17. I got some propane and some beer, and the three of us were able to have a proper Canada Day barbecue that night.
Jacquie and I took a trip to the zoo on Sunday. I shot a few pictures with my digital camera, but the batteries died before we got to the last couple of animals we wanted to see. It was really too bad, as the polar bears were being fed. It would've been nice to have got a few shots of them eating. C'est la vie and all that, but I think I'll bring my 35mm camera next time instead of my digital. At least I don't have to worry about batteries, then.
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