Merric's Musings

Nov. 19th, 2009

Ooh - Minis! Thank you Paizo!

Woo - my very first metal BattleTech minis, which proved best value to get from the Paizo online store!

Ten BattleTech minis that I now have to assemble and paint. Wait... why did I buy these again?

Tonight, I also got to play the new version of Carcassonne - Wheel of Fortune - with Liam, Sarah and Daniel. Very nice variant. Oh, and a game of Hellenes with Liam. We got a lot of rules wrong, but we got through it; our next game will be a lot better.

I've had a good evening.

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Nov. 18th, 2009

Why did I get my new laptop?

I've now been in possession of my new laptop for a few months and, it seems, one of the primary reasons I bought it was to watch DVDs on it rather than on my television set. Hmm. It's not like I'm doing this in a different room than the TV - it's right there - but having a widescreen on the laptop does make some difference. I think it's also slightly better on how much power it uses.

The other main reason I got my laptop was apparently to finish writing the MechMaker program - a program that allows the user to create and print BattleMechs using the Introductory and Sword & Dragon rules. It's working quite nicely at present, although I haven't yet added the feature to split a couple of weapons between two crit locations. That hasn't really been necessary, though. I've made a slight change to the Total Warfare blank sheet I print it on: Quantity of weapons is no longer a heading. I found "2 Medium Lasers" was too easy to misread as just a single laser. An entry per line works fine and I've yet to have a Mech's armament that doesn't fit.

Tonight I'm going to Good Games Ballarat, as I've been doing every Thursday night whilst Randy is rehearsing, and I'll oversee the latest game in their BattleTech/Sword & Dragon campaign. Should be fun. Derek and Sara have gone and really upgraded their few remaining Mechs. The two Grasshoppers they are running have Endo Steel internal structure to save a few tons, which they've used to add a couple of prototype Double Heat Sinks and an extra Medium laser. Very, very scary mechs. They're up against 5 Light mechs tonight so it should be an easy win to the Sabres. It's just a case of how much damage the opposition will do.

I spent last Sunday afternoon getting a few of the kids (Jayden, Jackson and Liam) addicted to BattleTech. I hope that when I get in there this afternoon, one of them will have bought the last Introductory Box Set. I also hope that Catalyst will get the 25th anniversary set out sometime real soon - I need more minis!

Oh, I finally painted a couple of minis under Mick's direction on Sunday - a few of my BattleLore figures. Eventually, I'll work my way up to BattleTech, but I started on the little BattleLore (20mm) figures because they'll look good painted and I want a second set of BTech figures before I start painting them.

I've been playing BattleLore with Nash, who is rather impressed by the game. We're working our way through the Hundred Year War scenarios at present, and we had two fantastic games last Saturday. I won both by a single banner, but they could have gone either way.

New acquisitions include two new BattleTech books: Masters and Minions (which is a background supplement mainly for the RPG) and the 25th Anniversary Art & Fiction book, which is very nice indeed. On the wargaming side, I've got the GMT block game of Hellenes, which I really hope I'll get a game of soon, and MMP's PanzerBlitz. That last was due to OPSI#2 - it had an expansion for PB, so I had to get the basic game. I'm a sucker that way. (Especially as Randy isn't too fond of the original). It looks like lighthearted fun.

For the Eurogamers, I've picked up Endeavour, which Randy, Rich, Jesse, Josh and myself played on the weekend. This is a really, really good game. I was unsure when I first looked at the game, but it plays beautifully. There was a lot of strategy that we didn't quite understand when we started (our initial building draws were pretty poor), but the game really came together as we continued through the game. It looks to have a lot of replayability, and is brilliant with five players. The theme adds a nice little fillip to the play of the game. It has resonances with Age of Empires 3, but it's very much its own game.

Randy had picked up The BoardGameGeek Game, and that was a great amount of fun. It uses dice to provide positioning each turn, but there's actually not that much luck in the game. As it turned out, I won the BGG game and Randy won Endeavour.

I've got lots of pictures from Saturday's games, but I haven't gotten around to writing up the sessions yet. I hope to get to them soon.

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D&D - Bunches of updates

The Wizards of the Coast have made a lot of updates to the rulebooks this month. Don't know if any of them affect our games, but just so you know. :)

Nov. 10th, 2009

New bits and pieces

A nice surprise when I got home today - Operations Magazine Special Issue #2 arrived, carrying with it "Beyond the Beaches" - an ASL Starter Kit bonus pack with a new board and 3 scenarios. OMSI2 itself contained some new PanzerBlitz scenarios along with the IGS game "Bravery in the Sand' which has a very nice review on BGG. I need to play some of these games with Randy!

Also arriving was a game I ordered about a year ago: Dungeoneer, Tomb of the Lich Lord, a dungeoneering card game by Atlas Games. I don't really know that much about it: 2-4 players, plays in about an hour. Has anyone out there played it? I ordered it when I was looking for new dungeonquest-style games. Just perusing the rules and cards, it looks playable (and more interesting than Munchkin). It's been out of print for quite a while, and I'd almost forgotten I'd ordered it, but MilSims got in the recent reprint and sent it to me.

I guess my next package in transit will be from Paizo, with a few BattleTech minis in it...

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Nov. 8th, 2009

Weekend session reports

D&D on Sunday - Demon Queen's Enclave session 2

D&D on Friday - Greyhawk, the Adventurer's Board

Descent on Friday - Paul's First Quest

Descent on Saturday - Narthak Finally Falls

BattleLore on Saturday - The First Battle of Crecy

BattleLore on Saturday - The Second Battle of Crecy

Formula Motor Racing on Saturday - Three Races

Not reported on yet, but they still happened...

BattleTech on Thursday - Two Missions

Magic on Saturday - My First Standard Constructed Tournament

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Castle, Castle and Firsts

Another enjoyable weekend that was really somewhat overbusy - like most of my other weekends recently. I wasn't able to do anything with the "Weekend in the Realms" D&D event. I managed to completely forget it was on, and I was busy with my other gaming anyway. I think Mick may have run a session this afternoon, but perhaps not.

Thursday night was BattleTech night, and it saw us having two concurrent games of BattleTech going at once. It's something that made Popey and Nash very happy; me too.

Friday afternoon after work, I managed to get a game of Descent in with Paul (his first game) along with a couple of games of Magic. My new sets of Descent dice have arrived, so, as I wrote before, I'm trying to get in quite a few games of Descent this month. I got in two games this weekend, the second on Saturday afternoon when that group actually managed to get through the first dungeon. :)

BattleLore, Formula Motor Racing and Magic made up Saturday's gaming, and there was D&D on Friday night and Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps more interestingly, the new book by Richard Castle arrived on Friday: Heat Wave. It's not that long (about 200 pages), but was suitably entertaining.

Also arrived, book 4 of the Sharing Knife by Lois McMaster Bujold, which I read with great pleasure. It's certainly a lighter series than her other books, but it does touch on deeper themes without actually solving them. It's rather nice to see this approach - most fantasies I read tend to the epic.

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Nov. 4th, 2009

Seeking Master Denia

For those who are interested, my moderately inaccurate session report of our last Star Wars session is now up on RPG Geek. We're on to the penultimate adventure of the Dawn of Defiance! :)

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Getting in the mood for some Coffin Games

Fantasy Flight games call their big game boxes "Coffins", and I've accumulated a few of them over the past few years: World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Twilight Imperium and Descent.

I'm not playing enough of them.

My new Descent dice (four new sets) arrived today, which should speed up our play of Descent greatly, and that's a game I will be able to find players for at Good Games without problem. What about those other games, though?

Yes, I really need to go on a splash of playing those games more.

I think if I play Descent every Saturday this month it'll be a start. It'll allow the other players to get more familiar with it. The next month we can move to something like Twilight Imperium...

Sounds like a plan. :) Now, just to find the other players!

(As for # of players - Descent I'll play with 2-5, Starcraft with 3-5, Twilight Imperium with 4, and World of Warcraft with 2, 4 or 6, though it's probably best with 6. Just long!)

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Oct. 31st, 2009

A few session reports

I've spent the morning writing a few session reports covering the past couple of days of boardgaming. It's been a fun weekend. For once, I'm not out on a Sunday, so I'm enjoying the relaxation.

Yesterday, Randy, Josh, Rich and I gathered at Randy's place for a few boardgames. The major new game we played was Last Train to Wensleydale, a game about shipping cheese by Martin Wallace. It's a very entertaining game which is fairly short but intense. It took us two hours to play, but I'm sure we could do it in the range of 60-90 minutes now we know what we're doing.

We also played Ticket to Ride 1910 with five players, Mel joining in. This was an extremely tight and enjoyable experience. Although I was introduced to TTR through the Europe game, I'm becoming a lot fonder of the original version and its expansion, although I think both Randy and Josh would have appreciated stations in the game. I managed to win both train games we played!

In between the train games was The Name of the Rose, a boardgame by Stefan Feld, a designer whose work I quite admire. Rose isn't his best game, but it includes a fair deal of bluffing and trying to conceal your identity from other players. This was a close game, with Randy taking it by a solitary point from me and Josh. Rich did not have a good game.

We also played Descent: Journeys in the Dark. It's a fun game, even if the balance is wonky (especially when the heroes get the better treasures). I had only small successes as the Overlord as the three heroes crushed my dungeon. I've got the Quest Compendium, but I haven't actually run all the quests from the original box, so this was one of them.

On Friday, I introduced Nash to BattleLore and we played two scenarios: Agincourt and Burgos, Castille. Both were really close games, but the pictures of the battles really say to me that I need to paint the minis, as I do with my BattleTech and Descent ones!

Whilst I was playing other games this week, Nash, Popey, Derek and Sarah were playing through a couple more missions in the BattleTech campaign I'm running for them (Sword and Dragon starterbook with some houserules). Nash and Popey are really getting into the game, which is excellent. We need to play some more games in our own campaign!

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Oct. 29th, 2009

Space Hulk, Advanced Squad Leader

I wasn't able to play BattleLore last night, but I did manage to play both Space Hulk and Advanced Squad Leader.

Space Hulk was a lot of fun. Randy and I were playing the second mission in the set, which requires the Space Marines to hold down two access points that the Genestealers are getting into the area. I sent three marines in one direction and the other two towards the other point.

Unforunately, I managed to completely forget how ineffective the chainsaw is in combat (it kills doors fine, but isn't any better in melee than a regular powerfist), so the two marines I sent to one entrance were overwhelmed and killed quickly. My other marines successfully captured the other entry-point, though.

From here, my sergeant and my assault-rifle marine went back to kill the rest of the genestealers. Lots and lots of genestealers. Eventually, Randy actually had every genestealer he could use on the map - I wasn't able to lock down the other entrypoint, and instead needed to just kill them all. The assault-rifle ran out of ammo and that marine bought it. Then too, so did the sergeant. It was all down to a normal Marine with a Bolter and Power Fist.

I set him on overwatch, and Randy started running his mass of Genestealers towards me. Attack after attack after attack, and I just was able to shoot them all. Randy sent some around a side passage, but most didn't make it that far. I had magic dice, and enough command points that I could unjam my bolter when necessary.

Finally, he was down to 2 Genestealers, only one of which could get to me this turn. It came at me from the sidepassage... and my gun jammed and it was in melee. This one I lost, and Randy won the scenario. But that lone marine had killed about 20 Genestealers. Wow!

ASL - or rather, Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #2 - was also fun. I had a bunch of Commonwealth troops and their anti-aircraft guns, trapped and surrounded by Germans. The game ran in waves, with the initial push by Randy's men killing one of my weapon crews before I forced his squads to retreat (cutting many of them down to half squads in the process).

Unfortunately, there was a lone squad to the south of me and many to the north of me, and my guns just couldn't break them! First one, then a second of my three Guns malfunctioned, and with the rest of my support troops broken, Randy was finally able to push back and run over my positions - in the last turn he had to do so. That was an excellent game - took us about 2 hours.

I'll post pictorial session reports of both up on www.boardgamegeek.com sometime in the near future.

Oct. 26th, 2009

Car Wars Compendium - PDF

This one's for Martin and Bradford:

Yes, the Car Wars Compendium is finally available again, as a us$15 PDF from Steve Jackson Games. It actually came out a fortnight ago, but I don't normally pay that much attention to SJG as most of their games I don't play. (I made an exception for Revolution!, a recent boardgame, but that's because it arrived in Good Games Ballarat and had good buzz on BGG).

Car Wars is another of those big games that I knew about as a teenager, but didn't get to play much. In actual fact, I played a lot more of Car Wars than I did of BattleTech, but still - not that much. A pdf release of Car Wars is actually pretty useful for me: most of the rules you don't really need a printed copy for; just print out a few reference sheets and design a few cars and you're good. I can probably get some good grid paper somewhere...

So, Martin - do you have a copy yet?

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The Gathering Storm - The Wheel of Time

Well, I now have it: The Gathering Storm, book 12 of the Wheel of Time, and the third-last volume in the tale. The book was partly written by Robert Jordan, and completed by Brandon Sanderson. Over (hopefully) the next two years, the remainder of the tale will be released and we will finally have the Wheel of Time in its entirety. It's been a long journey. I began reading the series in 1994; the first volume was released in 1990!

In fact, both the first two volumes were released in 1990. That was the last time that happened - since then, the gaps between the volumes have been growing larger. Disaster struck in 2005, when Robert Jordan succumbed to illness (heart disease), but his wife and publisher made the inspired choice of choosing Brandon Sanderson to finish the tale, based on Robert Jordan's extensive notes.

I bought Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy and stand-alone tale Elantris earlier in the year, and think they're extremely good fantasy fiction. I'm going to be fascinated by how he's handled the Wheel of Time books.

That's the UK/Australian cover above; unfortunately the new books have moved away from the Darrell K. Sweet illustrations on the earlier set, so my collection doesn't have a matching set. (But I've also got half of them in mass-market paperback size and the rest as trade paperbacks, so they don't match anyway).

Of course, now I have to read the 750-odd pages of the tale. That's going to be an enjoyable task. By tomorrow, I dare say I will have finished and can give you my opinion of the actual book, rather than just what I feel at the moment: intense joy that it's finally out and that I own a copy!

Posted at 11:15 pm | Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

Plastic premium BattleTech figures

Ooh...

http://battletech.catalystgamelabs.com/2009/10/23/catalyst-game-labs-offers-premium-quality-plastic-miniatures/

http://www.camospecs.com/Article.asp?FictionID=27

"Catalyst is pleased to release the first two premium-quality plastic miniatures for sale through www.battlecorps.com/catalog: the Thor and Loki Clan OmniMechs from Technical Readout: 3050 Upgrade.

"These extremely high-quality miniatures are the result of a match-up between Catalyst Game Labs’ insatiable desire to continue the explosive re-birth of BattleTech popularity with Ghost Studios, a manufacturer at the cutting edge of technology utilizing a seamless all-digital process from conception to final miniature production."

The price is US$17.95 for one of the packs, which contains one assembled and one unassembled mech. (So two copies of the Loki, or two copies of the Thor).

The metal minis go for US$12.50 each (for the Loki) or US$11.50 (for the Thor); so this is cheaper.

Trying to order them online (through www.battlecorps.com), added US$10.50 to the postage for one, US$14 for two packs, bringing the total to US$50 or AUS$56 given current exchange rates - thats aus$14 per mini. Is it worth it? I'm not sure; certainly not at present where I'm not using OmniMechs!

Comparatively, the ten metal Mechs I recently ordered from Paizo (still waiting for them to source the Mechs) came to about aus$110, (including $20 shipping), but they were comparatively cheaper in metals anyway. - so aus$11 each.

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Oct. 21st, 2009

Elegance and the Development of Game Systems

There's a game in the Alea Big Box range called Chinatown. It's recently been reprinted by Z-Man games, and that's the version I've played. The game is a fairly simple one: you trade with the other players to get sets of buildings which you then construct on the map. The more sets of buildings on the map you have, the more income you make.

I've only managed to play the game once, but what struck me about the game was how the rules got out of the way of the chief point of the game: trading. Basically, you can make any trade you want. Want to trade for buildings already on the table? You can. Want to do a three-way trade? You can.

The game rules provide a framework that don't interfere with the play of the game. They show you how you make money and get the buildings in the first place, as well as give a victory condition, but interfere very little in the fun part of the game.

On the other side of the equation, you have games like Advanced Squad Leader, where the system tends to be somewhat intrusive. What it has is a lot of chrome: your squad can produce a hero or leader who steps to the fore when most needed. Booby traps can get you as you cross the field, and enemy snipers are drawn to increased activity.

However, I've spent some hundreds of dollars on ASL, and it's one of my top-rated games! Yes, it's fun, despite occasionally spending quite a bit of time looking up rules.

It's interesting to consider ASL and D&D together, because ASL has had a policy of not abandoning rules. Once a rule is included in the book, it is very, very unlikely to be jettisoned. A few rules have changed over the years, but normally, not much. (Rules are on loose-leaf binder pages so they can be exchanged with errata pages). The only big change was in the move from Squad Leader (which had acquired a bunch of contradictory rules in its three expansions) to ASL - which cleaned up a bunch of stuff and basically made a "new game" in much the same way as the transition from oD&D to AD&D.

Meanwhile D&D, which is likely a much-more played system, has had now four major "system resets": each of the editions of "AD&D", and one branch line (BECM D&D) that has only seen minor revision.

In no edition has D&D really been as elegant as Chinatown. The original D&D comes closest, but both it and AD&D are hampered greatly by the lack of a good editor and developer. From the first supplement, Greyhawk, D&D has acquired complexity. AD&D was, like ASL, recasting the complexity garnered through the initial supplements into a more robust system, but, unlike ASL, it didn't have a good editor, giving us such oddities as the initiative system and the monk's surprise chance. (Surprise in AD&D is rolled on d6s, with the number showing on the d6 indicating how long surprise lasts for. The monk uses d% to find out if he's surprised. How do they intersect? No idea - there are different approaches).

AD&D 2nd edition did have a good editor and development team working on it; the base system actually is pretty clean. Unfortunately, the system lacked oversight and, especially with its supplements, had great problems in maintaining an overall tone. (Indeed, the Complete Priest's Handbook recommends throwing out the standard cleric to allow its system - at a different power level - to work!)

Looking back on these systems, you can see the dual desires for completeness (which ASL aspires to) and elegance (which Chinatown displays). Elegance might not be the best word, but for my purposes it will do.

Can you have an elegant, complete system? To a certain extent, you can - depending on the subject matter. There is a certain elegance in 3E design, for instance, even as it attempted to be the most complete system of D&D (a title that, I believe, it still holds). To a large extent, it is the form of elegance displayed by Mark Rosewater in his controversial column on Magic design, "Elegance".

The trouble with trying to design a system that will handle anything is that, along the way, you have to make adjustments to cover things that you didn't think of originally. One of my favourite examples of this is in the introduction of monster intelligence scores to BECM D&D. You see, there's one spell that pays attention to how intelligent the creature is. (Maze, I think). Unfortunately, monsters in BECM didn't have those scores, so one of the BECM rulebooks (Companion? Master?) has a list of intelligence scores of every previously printed monster just to make one spell now function. Yes, the system is now more complete, but at a great loss of elegance.

I personally feel that 4E has sacrificed a certain amount of completeness to become a more elegant game. However, it's not like Chinatown: the rules and abilities are very present in your mind. (Compare to OD&D combat where, for the most part, it's just roll d20, compare to table, and do 1d6 damage). Where it differs from ASL and 3E is that you're unlikely to be looking up rules references all the time - well, assuming you have the condition chart handy.

Completeness or flexibility? That's another question. 4e may be (or become) as complete as 3e, but is it as flexible? Hmm. Or is it more flexible, in the hands of a group that knows it well? Perhaps in certain areas.

A recent World War 2 squad level game, cousin to ASL, is Combat Commander: Europe. This game has a certain correspondence to 4E, in fact: the game is card-driven, which somewhat restricts the play of the game (the main correspondence is to 4e combat, although the DM is free to go beyond the rules in 4e) , but because the special events have moved into the card text - unlike being die-trigger driven like in ASL - the requirement to remember all the special conditions is much, much less.

The point of all of this is not to say that one approach is better than another - certainly that is reliant on personal taste rather than god-given rules of game design - but rather to muse on some aspects of design and some correspondences I've noted between D&D and the board game world.

There are other musings I might make upon how retroclones may become even more elegant than initial oD&D, but I've mused long enough today.

Oct. 20th, 2009

Fringe, season 1

I spent a fair bit of the weekend watching season 1 of Fringe, which I recently acquired on DVD.

Fringe is a series that didn't get much of a chance on Channel 9 in Australia before it wandered on to parts unknown. This isn't entirely surprising, because the first few episodes of Fringe aren't really very good. They feel slow, which is a cardinal sin of ad-interrupted programming. (When you notice it when watching without ads, it is worse!)

It takes until episode 7 ("In which we meet Mr Jones") for the series to really get underway, and then we get the usual run of arc and non-arc episodes, with more arc episodes later on. The well-cast Jared Harris as "Mr Jones" really nails the primary antagonist of the first series.

The strength - and weakness - of the show comes from its overarching mythology and plot, though. It's a great premise that slowly gets unfolded in the second half of the season. Thanks to our favourite mad scientist's fractured memory, some of the revelations are truly surprising, although flagged earlier on. The final episode of season 1 has got some truly remarkable revelations.

Unfortunately, all of this makes it very much not a show for the casual viewer, and probably much, much less a show for the non sci-fi fan. It'd make a great RPG; and a great series of novels. It makes a great TV show, but I'm dreadfully afraid that we won't see its conclusion, as the second series has been hit in the ratings. It's currently attracting about 6 million viewers in the US compared to 9-10 million last season. Of course, a lot of that has to do with Fox deciding to move it to Thursday night where there is a lot of competition.

I'm very glad that my favourite show, Doctor Who, sits with the BBC and is greatly loved in England. At least that show should survive for the foreseeable future.

(Just for Nathaniel: visit this site for the cast list of A Game of Thrones with photos.)

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Oct. 13th, 2009

Playing Space Hulk 3e

Tonight, I got to play Space Hulk for the first time in several years. Well, in over a decade. I never actually played the game much - one or two games at most - but I broke down and bought the recent Games Workshop rerelease of the game.

Randy played the Genestealers (appropriately, his username on BGG is genesteeler), and I played the marines. How did it go for the marines? Not so well.

Space Hulk is about the marines fighting against incredible odds. Yes, they certainly were incredibly this game, and I lost handily. I hope I do better next time!

(For the full pictorial session report, I've uploaded it to Boardgamegeek here).

Randy commented after the game that the game was like Doom: the Boardgame (heh, as we both know, it's the other way around) but with all the bloat taken out. The game plays fast. It feels fast. There's a timer on the Marines! Once we get to the bigger scenarios, the game will become even more fun. Oh, and we'll need to play it on a bigger table!

Mechanics getting in the way of what the game actually does is a problem with many, many games. BattleTech, D&D, ASL - I'm sure you can think of more. One of the great things about the advent of the Eurogame was that it stripped away a lot of the needless complexity of boardgames and left the core experience - which was a superior one.

This isn't to say that getting rid of all mechanics is always the best course. I enjoy ASL, and a lot of that enjoyment comes from knowing that it can handle unusual situations. The chrome of games is important too - but not to every game.

D&D 4E is in a funny place right now. A lot of the chrome of 3e which, frankly, was making the game extremely hard to DM at high levels and a lot harder to balance has been stripped away - but new chrome has been added. The basics of D&D involve rolling a d20 to hit, an AC, and rolling odd polyhedrals to reduce hit points. It's what you layer on top of that which determines edition and feel. OD&D didn't have much more than the basics; 4e has considerably more than that.

My personal feeling is that 5e, when it comes out, will revert to more like a 1e approach to characters, but keep a 4e sensibility to balance and DM duties. Thus, the strict power set-up will disappear and a more free way of showing PC capabilities.

For now, though, I'm going to enjoy Space Hulk, BattleTech, D&D 4E, and my other wonderful games!

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Oct. 11th, 2009

A Nice Weekend - Magic, Martian Rails, D&D and Space Hulk

I probably should have spent this weekend at the Magic: the Gathering Grand Prix in Melbourne. Instead, I spent it playing games up in Ballarat. I had a fantastic weekend - two D&D sessions, and a lot of boardgames, but, on the other hand, I didn't get to see Daniel place 52nd in the Grand Prix (and win $200). That's 52nd out of slightly over 400 players - a fantastic job. My Sunday D&Ders were keeping track of his progress through the standing updates on the Magic site. Daniel went 7-1 (that's 7 wins and 1 loss) on the first day, and then 2-4 on the final day to end with an 9-5 ratio.

While he was doing this, I was drawing with crayons on a map of Mars.

So, well done, Daniel! I hope you had a good time (and Sarah was properly appreciative of your efforts!)

I managed to play a couple of new games this weekend. Probably more significant was Martian Rails, one of the Mayfair Games' "Empire Builder" series of crayon rail games. The play of the game is pretty simple: you get three cards which each have three delivery options on them (deliver Red Martians to Barsoom and get $40 million). You then build rail - drawing on the map in crayon to indicate what you've built - and move your train along the track, picking up goods at various places and them taking them to their destinations. Unlike the Age of Steam games, there are lots of different goods and places to deliver them. Rayguns? They're only found at one place at the bottom of the map. Red Martians? Only two places have them!

A lot of the game is spent moving your (slow) train over the track to the places you need to go. I've now played it twice with Pat, and it's surprisingly addictive. I wouldn't want to play it with more than three players (and, Randy, Pat wants to play this game with both of us), but in its old clunky mechanics there's a surprisingly fun game. What really makes the game is all the references to SF set on Mars - there's the Pyramid Mars (Total Recall), Helium, Barsoom and trains called the John Carter and Dejah Thoris (Martian series by Edgar Rice Burroughs) and there's a special delivery to Sam Parkhill's store (Martian Chronicles; Ray Bradbury). There are a lots of references that I don't get, but there are enough to make a SF-fan like me very happy.

I also got to play Scrappers, which Mick had bought. This is a light little game that reminds me somewhat of RoboRally, although faster and possibly more fun. You're playing a bunch of goblins on a factory floor, who are darting around a conveyor belt, grabbing components off the belt and trying to build a contraption. Suffers a bit from Analysis Paralysis for new players, but there's a good game in there.

On Sunday, we finished King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, so next session we'll be moving onto Demon Queen's Enclave. Josh wasn't able to make it, so the remaining three players (and our NPC, Splug) managed to play through six combats in about 3-4 hours. Yeah, we're getting quicker. I really enjoyed Trollhaunt, and I hope my players did too. The next adventure should have a bunch of roleplaying in it, I hope!

And, yes. I broke down and ordered a copy of Space Hulk from GW, which arrived on the weekend (along with Napoleon's Triumph, Revenge of the Giants and BattleTech Technical Readout 3075). I've been assembling the minis between writing paragraphs of this. Now, I just need to find someone to play it with...

Posted at 06:21 pm | Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

Sep. 30th, 2009

New BattleTech stuff

Well, my acquisition of BattleTech stuff continues apace. Arriving today...

Notice anything about it?

You probably don't. It's subtle. Here's the previous one in the series:

Do you see it now? Yes, it's no longer "Classic" BattleTech; it's just BattleTech again.

BattleTech Strategic Operations offers the following options to BattleTech games:

A new abstract air-to-air combat system (and air-to-ground), which means a much easier integration of AeroTech units in the regular BattleTech game.
Rules on linked scenarios
Advanced Aerospace Movement & Combat
Maintenance, Salvage, Repair and Customisation
Battleforce - Standard and Advanced Rules (that's representing lances of Mechs with single figures).
Oh, and more miniature rules and record sheets.

Missing from the picture is the Interstellar Operations book, which will have all the force generation and resolution rules, but that should be out next year, I'd guess.

Also getting closer is A Time of War, the BattleTech RPG (4th ed), which has recently been released as a beta PDF for US$10. What's really nice about this pdf is that you'll get it upgraded for free to the full pdf version when that's released. It's pretty complete as is, and it's just been released cheaply early so the BattleTech community can look at it early and find errors. If you don't want to spend the money on the print version (and that's likely to be about aus$80 when it comes out) and you're interested in playing in the game I eventually get running of it, now is your chance to get it cheaply.

The other two BattleTech books that arrived today were Interstellar Players, which details a lot of shadowy forces in the BattleTech universe (including the Bounty Hunter!), which is mostly interesting from the RPG/storytelling sense of things, and Jihad Hot Spots 3076, the latest in the Jihad storyline plotbooks. Apart from covering 4 years of the war, it also has a BattleTech campaign included in it (about 10 scenarios or so) which one of these days I'll run - of course, we have to get through the Sword and Dragon campaign first!

Non-BattleTech acquisitions: three more old D&D modules: B4, the Lost City, L2 The Assassin's Knot and X5 Temple of Death. My collection of old stuff is looking pretty good by now.

Posted at 04:42 am | Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

Sep. 27th, 2009

The Light of Burning Shadows - a review

I finally managed to get around to reading The Light of Burning Shadows by Chris Evans on the trip to Melbourne on Thursday. Yes, a book I ordered especially in from Amazon/America because I wasn't sure if I could get it yet in Ballarat, which had been sitting on my bedside table for a couple of weeks as I kept finding myself otherwise occupied. Go figure.

Anyway, I've read the book and it successfully continues the tale started in A Darkness Forged in Fire - a military tale set in a fantasy world. It's got all the hallmarks of epic fantasy, just with a military force providing the setting for the main characters. Lots of interesting things going on, but, frustratingly, it's a book 2 of a fantasy series (possibly a trilogy, though I haven't double-checked), and it has the basic problem that middle books of trilogies have, especially when the entire trilogy isn't out yet: it doesn't actually end the tale.

The Light of Burning Shadows does feel part of a bigger tale, but it's not really standalone. The first book felt a lot more complete in itself. Of course, Light does end on a cliffhanger, which doesn't really help it feel complete - but the tale it tells doesn't quite feel to have the significance needed to be complete unto itself. (Read one of Steven Erikson's Malazan books. Yes, they're a lot weightier, but although they're all part of a series, each builds to a massive climax that makes each book significant). There's a climax here, but it doesn't feel quite as important.

What makes Light good, though, is the world it's set in, more of which is revealed in this book. There's a lovely moment when a character who thought he was one of the villains realises that he actually isn't. That's not quite an accurate description of what happens, but the theme is something that's turned up a couple of times in this series. I'm still not convinced the Shadow Monarch is actually evil. Honestly, I could do with some more time spent with the characters; the character of the Prince, in particular, holds a lot of potential that you don't really get to see because most of the viewpoint characters don't like him.

The book would probably benefit from a summary of who the characters are at its start or end, mainly due to the fact that they get referred to by first or last name (and sometimes rank), which proved confusing from time to time. OTOH, there aren't really that many characters, so maybe I just need a better memory (and more sleep before reading it!)

I enjoyed reading the book, and I'm hoping it won't be that long before the next one appears!

Posted at 10:36 pm | Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

A big weekend

Eep. I've just had one of those action-packed weekends that really had just a bit too much action.

Thursday, I went down to Melbourne to see my brother and his new house. He's bought a small house in Hawthorn, where he is living with his wife and their two dogs. The weather was mostly fine - one pretty bad rain shower as I was leaving Mind Games, but it was fine in the afternoon when I reached him, and then we spent an hour or so walking the dogs through the rather pretty streets and parks around his place.

I bought two new games in Melbourne: A Touch of Evil and Rum & Pirates, each of which I've now played twice: once each with Jeremy, and then a further game each in Ballarat. The links above are of the session reports I've written for them on BGG.

Friday was mad: Get into Ballarat and go to Good Games. Play boardgames and Magic. Go to Martin's, run our Greyhawk campaign. Then go back to Good Games for the Zendikar midnight prerelease... in which Sarah opened a revised Tundra. Those "priceless treasures of Zendikar"? They're real - randomly inserted really old and valuable cards. Pretty rare though, the Tundra was the only one we saw.

D&D was good, although a relatively short session. With Adam's new character (a bard, Maximilian) joining us, I wanted to introduce a few new NPCs so that the group - and Adam - have people to relate to. So, the group got invited to a noblewoman's party, where they met Adam's PC's brother, the daughter of the noblewoman, and a couple of other NPCs. These will - with any luck - give a lot of roleplaying opportunities in the future and also point the way to the PCs becoming more important in the scheme of things as they reach the Paragon Tier. Then bandits attacked the party, stole some jewelry, and the party entered the sewers in search of them.

I managed to leave out a lot of detail that I'd intended to use in that session. Thursday had ended late (the train was delayed on the way back) and so I was tireder than I wanted to be. Still, good things happened.

I only stayed for one round of the prerelease, opting to go home and get some sleep. The next day, I went back to Good Games Ballarat for the actual daytime prerelease. As normal, this was Grand Final day, and I was not surprised to find that only 10 people turned up for the day prerelease as opposed to 20 for the midnight one. (It surprised a few other people). I was surprised to find Sarah and Daniel there, but I was very glad to see them. This prerelease, I lost the first round and ended up coming 2nd or so. My deck was nowhere near as good as the one I played the previous evening, but neither were tourney-winning quality.

Then we had a Zendikar booster draft, in which Daniel drafted a killer white/blue deck that won the game. My deck wasn't bad, but it couldn't deal with his 2-cost 2/3 fliers. No-one could. I had a couple of really good games against Sarah, who, by now, was making a lot of stupid mistakes due to being really, really tired. I ended up equal second in that tournament.

After that, a wiser fellow would have gone home, but I'd bought Chicago Express on Friday night (didn't have any change, needed something extra to get to the minimum EFTPOS transaction to buy a Coke and a chocolate bar, and exceeded it by a lot), and Laurie, upon learning this, wanted a game. So, Laurie, Torin and I had a game of Chicago Express, followed by one of Talisman. Both were a lot of fun, and I finally made my way home and fed the cat.

Sunday dawned, and still with not quite enough sleep, I made my way in to Nathaniel's place where our D&D group finally slew Skalmad in P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens. We only played two encounters - at that point, it was a natural point to break and, as we were missing Adam, it was worth ending there. So, Josh, Nate and I played A Touch of Evil and I finally went home to bed - after watching a few episodes of House. I slept for about nine hours before getting up the next day.

Back to work this week. Tuesday night will be wargaming at Randy's: I think we'll play the next ASL SK#2 scenario, and some other short wargame.

Posted at 09:55 pm | Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

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