Ten Years Ago - March 2016

Over the years our club has been involved in playtesting rules, mostly by Sam Mustafa. It's an interesting process and often good fun.

Playtesting is often secret at first, and this post from ten years ago was our first go with a new set of WW2 rules. They eventually became Rommel, but were very different in their original form.

More Secrets

Triumph!

Geoff has recently got hold of a copy of Triumph! and suggested we give it a try last night. 

For those that don't know, Triumph! grew out of one of those interminable schisms that happen every timeWRG update a rules set. One of the DBA updates upset a group of people enough that they wrote their own DBA update, filed off the serial numbers and published it as Triumph! So, as you can guess, Triumph! is basically DBA. Part of the fun of the rules is looking at how familiar BDA/DBM terms have been clumbsily renamed to avoid the set looking the same.

To be fair it's a nicely laid out set of rules, with proper paragraphs, sections and diagrams. I don't know how tight the language is in terms of covering situations, so can't comment on whether any ambiguity has crept in whilst trying to make them readable. We let Geoff run the game. 

We played Early Imperial Romans against Selucids. Armies are built using a simple points system - elements are 2, 3 or 4 points and you build an army with 48 points. Naturally we found ourselves juggling the army structure a little when we found ourselves one point over or under. 

I did like the card-based terrain deployment system. It's a neat idea, albeit one that requires a deck of special cards or several pages of lookups in the back of the rules. You choose your terrain, then number each piece. Then you randomly determine a layout that shows where on the table each  number must go. There are 36 layouts (I think).

Anyway, here are the armies all set up. Geoff played the Romans whilst I had teh Seleucids. Dave watched and offered advice. 

My phalanx. Geoff has them based deep for ADLG, so they looked impressive and overly deep.

I started off well by losing my general. This has no battle-loss effect like in HOTT, and teh general doesn't even count as more points like in DBA. Yu jusy have command difficulties for the rest of the battle.

My cavalry-based right flank got disrupted pretty quickly.

What saved me was my phalanx getting lucky and killing the Roman general, which left both armies starved of movement. 

We fought on and both reached the point where  decent kill would see us win. I had a go at some Roman auxilia on my left. Failed to kill them. 

Geoff had now flanked my phalanx, but they steadfastly refused to die. 

A useful run of PIPs - sorry, 'Command Points' - saw my cavalry get into action and kill some of Geoff's 

On the same turn some of my phalanx dies. We were now both over our breakpoints ...

... so it went down to who had gone over the least. That was me, by one point. So the Romans lost and I won a Pyrrhic victory.

What did we think? The three of us basically felt like we'd played a game of DBA with too much extra fiddle to make it fun. To be fair the other two play ADLG a lot, and I think that's just DBA that's been overcomplicated. But I think our view was that we weren't unhappy with the latest release of DBA when we wanted a small quick game, so Triumph! offered nothing new.

We did like that there was a troop type called 'Bad Cavalry'. Dave saw in as Bad in the Michael Jackson sense. I saw it as cavalry that needed to be punished. And did just that to it. 

If you don't like DBA but want to play DBA then Triumph! might be the rules for you. 

HOTT In Brisbane

It was, indeed, hot in Brisbane. 

So last week we travelled up north, crossed the border into the 1950s and went to visit my son and his family. He requested that I bring some HOTT armies as he hadn't played in a while and really fancied a game. We managed one game.

For those that remember my son from the UK HOTT compettion circuit many years ago, here he is now. 

He used the Dukedom of Ceidonia (which is strictly his army, but he left all his HOTT armies behind when he moved out and they're MINE now) - Blade general, blade, two knights, a hero, a behemoth and four spears. I used the Spawn of Tiamat - Magician general, hero, four hordes, three knights, a beast and a behemoth. The Ceidonoans defended. 

The centre saw the heroes of both sides facing off, as well as the foot.

My left flank saw our knights and behemoths get straight into a fight. I felt confident here, being one knight up. The downside for both of us was thata wood seperated this flank from the both armies' generals, making command a little harder. Still, with everything impetuous, combats would be maintained with little effort; the flank would fight itself. 

The centre wasn't looking so good for me, with hordes facing spears. Tiamat used magic to try and eliminate the enemy hero but he resisted her. 

Things quickly fell apart. 

The Ceidonians were doing OK on the flank as well; they had eliminated one of Tiamat's knights, evening up the fight. You can see Tiamat's beasts assisting on the flank.

Qingu the hero was flanked and eliminated, leaving Tiamat pretty much on her own. 

Some blades drew the beasts away from the Ceidonian tank. However they were quickly eliminated by Tiamat's creatures. 

More fighting on teh flank saw more of Tiamat's army eliminated. 

Tiamat finally ensorcelled the opposing hero. Surprisongly this brought the casualties to near parity; we were both at a stage where a couple of good combats would see us win. 

This was helped by Tiamat being able to bring back all of the dead hordes. 

But the battle was decided on the flank; Tiamat's giant worm was finally defeated by the Ceidonian tank and that was enough to break the forces of Chaos. 

Cei and I haven't played against each other in a while so it was nice to have a game, even if I did lose. In a few years I'll be able to lose to his son ...

Magical Athlete

My latest boardgame obsession is Magical Athlete. Each player has a team of four racers. Each racer takes part in one of four races, with increasing rewards for victory as you progress through them. Two of the tracks are mild, so are just straight races. Two are wild, and are littered with bonus and penalty spaces. To race you line the competitors up and players take turns rolling the dice and moving their pieces that many spaces. It's a simple family race game with no skill and no fun.

Well ... no. You see each racer has a rules-altering special power. One can choose to move exactly five spaces instead of rolling. One can drag another racer to their space from anywhere on the board. One gets to advance a space every time another racer uses their ability. True, some of the abilities just happen, but others offer choices. Choosing which race to commit a particular racer to is also a decision. Some work better on the mild races, whilst others give you an edge on the wild board. But you know what racers are in the other teams and you also have to outguess your opponent - will they commit a racer that makes your power less useful?

And the fun? With multiple powers in play for each race the results can be chaotic and unpredictable. You'll enter some races at a disadvantage and still enjoy the process. 

And how does he game look? Amazing. The artwork is wonderfully quirky and childish, really giving it a lot of personality. These are the playing pieces for the 36 racers on offer. A game will use between 16-24 of them. 

The cards are equally nice. And you can see some of the powers there as well.

Racers on the start space of a wild race. From left to right they are: Lackey (gets to move if an opponent rolls a 6), Third Wheel (gets to advance to any space where they can make a threesome), Genius (gets an extra turn if they predict their die roll), Heckler (gets to move if an opponent moves badly), Gunk (slows everyone else down) and Rocket Scientist (can double their move but crashes afterwards)

The end of a set of races. Twin (copies a previously used power) has just won, whilst Dicemonger (can sell rerolls) has come in second. 

This is not a heavy game. But it's clever, looks fantastic, is good for all ages and (most importantly) a tremendous amount of fun. 

York Factory Again

It's been a hot humid weeken, so to cool down on Sunday afternoon I got out my Galleys & Galleons scenario for the action at York Factory in 1697, which is set in a frozen and fog-bound Hudson's Bay.

You can read about the first time I played it HERE.

I played it as written but with randomly scattered ice-floes ships could collide with and with the Charismatic trait on Owner's Love instead of Fireship. 

It's a fun scenario because, aside from the dangerous ice-floes and limited shooting ranges (because of the fog) both sides get a random set-up and random entry of reinforcements. The French started with two ships in play (Le Palmier and L'Equimaux), whilst the English only had the Dering. Two opposing ships actually started next to each other. 

Whilst L'Esquimaux quickly sailed to safety, Dering and Le Palmier exchanged fire. 

Le Palmier was damaged. 

Although they started with the advantage of numbers the English soon got the upper-hand as more of their ships arrived. The first was the mighty Hampshire. 

Soon they had all four ships in play, and a shift of wind gave them the weather-gauge as well. 

As teh English organised themselves the French finally got reinforcements in the form of their largest ship Le Pelican. Le Palmier moved up in support. 

L'Esquimaux engaged Royal Hudson's Bay, inflicting some damage. 

However the small French vessel received a shattering rake from Owner's Love.

Royal Hudson's Bay finished the job. Holed below the water-line and with it's tiller gone, L'Esquimaux struck. 

Royal Hudson's Bay then moved to engage the newlt-arrived Le Profond. 

Meanwhile Hampshire was working it way around the ice in pursuit of Le Pelican and Le Palmier. Le Wasp arrived in the vicinity as well. 

Royal Hudson's Bay and Le Profond exchanged fire, and to the surprise of the French the English ship struck. 

Le Wesp took one broadside from Hampshire and also struck. 

Hampshire took a risky course through some ice to head off the French ships, whilst Owner's Love came up aiming to engage Le Palmier. 

Owner's Love took fire from Le Pelican and Le Palmier and was soon on fire. She took no further part in the action, and eventually burned to the waterline. 

Hampshire moved up. 

Hampshire and Le Pelican engaged. Dering came up in support of the Hampshire, but Le Pelican fought both sides and Dering caught fire. They soon extinguished it, but the delay took them out of the fight. 

The two large vessels blazed away at each other. Both ships took damage and Le Pelican lost some rigging. 

Hampshire ran aboard Le Pelican and grappled. 

The crew of Le Pelican resisted bravely for a while, and it looked like there might be an upset for the English. But the Hampshire's crew persisted and the French ship struck. 

At that point I called the game finished, with the English gaining a marginal victory. They still had Hampshire and Dering, whilst the French has Le Palmier and Le Profond. All ships were damaged but the odds probably favoured the English. However it would take several turns before the two sides could properly engage, and I was running out of time to play. So I assumed that in the fog they'd break off and see to repairs.