Going Interplanetary in High Frontier!

ESA stake their claim on Mars.

We managed to play another game of High Frontier this past weekend. I was actually only aiming for a trial/tutorial game to showcase it, but in the end we played it the entire way through. I simply didn't want to end it until the game had started clicking for my new players, and this took quite a while...

Our second foray into the solar system was made with four players. Myself playing the People's Republic of China (PRC), Anders as ESA, Claes as the UN and Micke as NASA. It was a new game for Claes and Micke so after a 30 minute rules explanation we began.

Well... you know what the board looks like by now.

Just like last time the first hour of the game went slowly as we all tried to get the patents we wanted. I made a quick mission to asteroid Eureka for the glory points and a few turns later Anders set out for the moon. However he hadn't thought it through entirely so although he managed to land, claim it and take off again the crew found themselves without enough fuel to get back to Earth! Stranded in Lunar orbit the ESA command staff decided to turn the rocket into an outpost (basically leaving the crew and the rocket engine floating in space) while he worked on a new rocket that could be used for a rescue mission.

ESA's claim on the moon (left disc), the outpost in orbit (right disc) 

and the rescue rocket being assembled in low Earth orbit.)

Micke as NASA had put together a rocket complete with robonaut and refinery but had trouble with its high mass. The engine he was using had a fuel efficiency of two so he was worried that he wouldn't be able to get anywhere. This is an illusion that is easy to fall prey to when you start playing High Frontier. You calculate your available burns (in Micke's case five I think), then you look at the huge sprawling map of the solar system and you feel like there's no way you'll be able to go anywhere worthwhile! After talking him through it and showing him some available routes though, he realised that he could actually make his way to the Gefion family of asteroids, and Ceres in particular. Sure he'd be bingo fuel at that point, but that would hopefully not be an issue as he was going to build a factory there anyway which would let him refuel quickly. For some reason or other Micke still decided to play it safe (this is space travel after all!) and left his refinery in low earth orbit to be picked up later as he went prospecting with only his crew and robonauts.

The UN building their first ET factory on Hertha.

I had my second mission on the way as well. I had procured a raygun robonaut with an ISRU of 2 (lower is better) which opened up a whole slew of asteroids to me. So I aimed to do basically the same thing as last time and set my  goal at the Koronis family of asteroids. By this time Claes had finally got his mission off the ground and headed towards the Nysa asteroid family. He claimed Hertha and built a factory there but his UN crew weren't quite up to the task of prospecting Nysa itself even with the help of his new hi-tech refinery and a re-roll for using a buggy. The Chinese rocket had just reached the sweet spot in the Koronis family and proceeded to prospect five asteroids in one go! Unfortunately I didn't have much luck with the die and only managed to claim a single one. It allowed me to build a factory there and upgrade my robonauts to a respectable ISRU 0 raygun! I had the option of developing the monstruous Salt-Water Zubrin thruster instead, but I had an engine that could so the job decently so opted for the robonauts as they felt more important at this point in the game.

PRC (red) heading towards the Koronis family while NASA and ESA are back in LEO.

During all this time (10+ years in game time) Anders simply tried to scrape together enough money to boost the parts he needed for his rescue mission.

By the time NASA had returned to pick up his refinery and fly it back to Ceres I had just returned to LEO where I sold my new fancy hi-tech robonaut for a hefty sum (knowing I could always build more at my asteroid base) and started looking around for a second refinery so I could build that big nasty engine!! Micke got his factory at last, very happy that he could now finally use a much better thruster he noticed that he'd been looking at the wrong asteroid and had thought it was an S(tony) spectral type when in fact it was a C(arbonaceous). Quite a setback when much of his plans had been riding on the new tech.

ESA finally rescued their stranded crew thanks to their new solar sail and Anders started prepping for a new mission... sunwards. He'd been the first on the moon and now his next target was Venus! The solar sail is an interesting thruster as it doesn't use any fuel but it also has a very low thrust. However, the closer you get to the sun the more bonus thrust the sail gains so when nearing Venus and Mercury the ESA spacecraft was zipping along very quickly. There were a couple of sweaty minutes as Anders rolled for the aerobreaking (roll a 1 and your carefully assembled spacecraft becomes so much spacedust!), but he made it successfully and his crew became the first humans on Venus! They were later told that they were the first settlers as well, as their solar sail had been lost during the aerobreak and they had no thruster strong enough to get out of Venus' gravity well. Time for another rescue mission!

ESA, first mission to Venus!

He did make up for this by quickly launching a robotic mission to Mars as well and building a factory there. This was the sixth one with the seventh ending the game. Micke had built his first and Claes had started scouting for a good location for his third among the Jupiter trojans while trying to claim three M-class sites. I managed to plonk my second down before he managed though and the game ended.

The final score was 24 to me (PRC), 16 to Anders (ESA), 14 to Claes (UN) and 7 to Micke (NASA). It might seem like I was way ahead but just like last time that is mostly thanks to the glory points by getting the science and any site awards. Without those I would only have had 18 points - much closer!

Looking at the performance of my three friends I think they did well overall, even though it was a long, slow start. Claes was the slowest by far in the beginning, but at the end of the game he made a lot of smart choices and started to understand how an extra-terrestrial factory really opens up your exploration options! Micke took to the rules reasonably quickly, but had trouble grasping what his overall goal should be - get victory points, yes, but how to go about that. There are a lot of interlocking mechanics in High Frontier, and while the rules themselves actually aren't that complex the different interactions between patents, their hi-tech side and spectral type can be fairly dense. Seeing what needs to be done to achieve your industrial and point scoring goals can be a challenge at first. As far as I could tell Anders didn't have any trouble with the rules (although I think perhaps he thought he did), but he suffered from bad mission planning. Getting stuck in lunar orbit waiting for rescue for 10 years and then getting stuck on Venus wasn't part of the mission statement. If he'd planned ahead a little bit more carefully it would have been a much closer race I think.

What they thought of the game when we were done was that it was fun and interesting once it "clicked" but that that click came fairly late in the game. There were many rounds spent on bidding for patents at the beginning. Probably about an hour of only that! I think it's a part of the game that will become much more exciting once we all become more comfortable with the game and understand the different patents, but at this juncture it just felt long winded and kind of dreary. I think next time we will try the quick-start rules where each player get one random patent from each category.

However, there has been one BIG thing we've played wrong in both these games. Namely that we've played rocket movement as an entire turn in itself! This is way off as you're actually able to do an operation and move your rocket each turn. This error alone probably doubled the length of the game! So things will move a bit quicker next time guys, I promise. :)

Micke and Claes both said that they'd like to try it again fairly soon, while the rules are still fresh in their minds. I think they both saw the potential in the game as first Claes started asteroid hopping and then Micke caught on as well. I'm not sure about Anders as he spent a lot of time this game simply trying to salvage half-failed missions. It might be the importance of planning ahead as he's often been a kind of lets-try-this-out-and-see-what-happens-kind of guy, an approach that rarely pays off in High Frontier. Still, in the end he didn't do badly as he came out second overall. Not to mention the bragging rights of being the first to the moon, Venus and Mars!

I had a blast once again, even though the first third of the game was slow. I'm happy I got a couple more friends to try the game and even happier that they enjoyed it in the end. Will definitely try to schedule another game soon. Next time I think I'm going to explore the use of solar sails properly. I feel there's a lot of untapped potential there! We should also bring out the expansion map at least, so Saturn and Jupiter are available as well.

Until next time fellow kosmonauts!

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Dust Warfare - First Impressions

Anders is in the process of converting his mechs, quite extensively. 

Hence the plasticard and weird I'm-taking-a-shit pose.

This post was actually going to be about the newly revealed company Planetary Resources and their plans to mine near Earth asteroids, but since I'm still reading up on that it'll be about... Dust Warfare!

Today I met up with Anders and we gave the game its first test run. Anders bought the book earlier this week and had read it while I had only leafed through it, trying to pick up the basics. The core rule mechanics (moving, attacking etc) are mostly the same as for Dust Tactics but the way the game plays has changed quite a bit. There's a new reaction system in place and suppression plays a vital part as well. In addition your commander(s) have become a lot more important as they can issue special orders that your opponent can't react to. Those are the three main new things, the rest are mainly tweaks here and there (like adding an armour save and vehicle crits).

My BBQ squad taking cover behind some AT-43 containers.

We played the first scenario of the book which is basically an escalating engagement lasting roughly 4-6 turns. You'll get more and more of your force on the board each turn with your mechs (not robots!) coming in last. Using the contents of the original Dust Tactics box + two command squads meant four infantry squads and two mechs each. The table we set up had a fair amount of terrain on it, probably a lot more than was needed. I think this comes from us having played a lot of Infinity the past year.

We rolled for initative and started to move our squads onto the board. For the first couple of turns nothing much happened as we moved cautiously forward, hugging cover and playing it safe (again, Infinity). It wasn't until turn three when the mechs entered that we actually saw some action. With almost everything in cover there weren't any casualties though. Hehe!

I think this table needs some hills...

The special orders available during the command phase seemed important to both of us when reading the rules, but as we played we couldn't quite figure out how to use them effectively. Basically they allow you to take either a move or an attack action but at the cost getting a reaction marker, meaning you get one less action during the unit phase. In that way it evens out, except the opponent can't react during the command phase. We really struggled with it though and many times simply skipped it, choosing to be able to use sustained fire later. However, this is not a fault of the game I think, but rather a fault of ours - we simply need to figure this out. It felt a bit strange, but in a good way; "this is strange, but it feels like it has tactical potential!" rather than "this feels strange, this rule sucks!!".

EDIT: There are other orders available as well. Like the regroup action which actually allows the unit to make a free bonus move and still having two actions later (and removing all reaction and suppression markers). There are also some other platoon specific orders; the one I had allowed me to call in off-board artillery while the Axis one allowed him to use "blitzkrieg" (although that seemed far inferior to a simple regroup).

Three of my squads and a mech finally managed to do some serious damage. 

The Axis reaction fire proved ineffective against the mech armour.

Having played lots of Infinity reactions wasn't a new concept to any of us. They're a bit more limited in Dust Warfare though as you can only react if you have a unit within 12" of the acting unit. This might seem like cripplingly short range (I'll never get to react!!) but bear in mind that a standard rifle has a range of 16", and a shotgun only 6"! You can react by either firing back (simultaneously) or moving 6". You can't react if you're suppressed and if you do you get a reaction marker, meaning you can't react again and you'll only get one action next time you activate that unit. Again I think because of how reactions work in Infinity we had a different mindset when we started playing and we didn't see many reactions during the game and the ones we did see were mostly of the move variety as you can often simply move back 6" out of range of your opponent and cancel his attack! Just like the command phase this felt interesting but that we needed more plays to grasp how to use it effectively.

One of the Axis squads with a reaction marker and two suppression markers. 

Meaning it can't act at all!

Whenever a unit is hit it receives a suppression marker, regardless if the hit scored any damage or not. A suppressed unit gets one fewer actions (cumulative with reaction markers) and can't react to enemies. If the unit has more suppression markers than models it starts to retreat. Also a suppression raises the units cover value by one step (hit the dirt!). You remove one marker at the end of the turn and roll to remove more each time the unit activates. You can also remove all markers on one squad with a special order during the command phase. This was a lot more straight forward and easy to wrap your head around as suppressing units had a real in-game effect. Even though an attack didn't cause any actual casualties inflicting suppression effectively pins the unit down, allowing your other units to advance/attack unmolested. Simple but effective rules!

At one point my Pounder managed to inflict three points of damage to Anders' Ludwig 

and set it on fire(!), meaning it would die after its next activation. 

However, he had a nearby engineer who managed to fix it. Boo!

There are more additions like the vehicle critical hit system which I liked (I put a Ludwig on fire!), the additions of armour saves which I'm of two minds about but think might be necessary if you want somewhat longer games. The way army construction works where you have three thematically different platoon structures to work from is interesting and should give different platoons a distinct flavour. Looking forward to the Sino-Soviet book to see what kind of stuff they have available.

In our game we only got into serious scrapping in the fourth and fifth turn when my BBQ and Ranger squads backed up by the flamethrower mech closed in on Anders' laser grenadiers and regulars. There was a bit back and forth but during the fifth turn I caught both squads in the open and reduced them to a man each effectively winning me the game.

I think we both liked the rules but felt we hadn't used them to their full potential. We really advanced slowly, while we probably should have tried charging ahead. While cover is a distinct bonus the squads are fairly resiliant just using their armour as well, so running in the open might not be so bad. The short range nature of most weapons also mean that you need to close fast with the enemy. It's kind of nice change of pace I must say!

Towards the end of the game the Axis tried to get their Lothar in position to attack 

the Allied left flank, but it was too little too late.

Bottom line, I'm really impressed with what Andy Chambers have managed to do with Dust Warfare considering the rigid set of tools he had to work from inherited from Dust Tactics. Combat resolution is quick and painless while the actual gameplay holds quite a lot of tactical depth - a very nice combination! Overall this (150 points) game took about 90 minutes, with a fair bit of rules checking. I can easily see even larger games clocking in around the hour when we have the rules down pat.

Looking forward to exploring it more! The wait for the Russians has certainly become much more gruelling...

EDIT: Made a follow-up post to this article with some Additional Thoughts and a full on, comprehensive After Action Report of our lastest battle as well which might be of interest.

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Board Game Night!

Not exactly stellar photography, I know...

Yesterday we had another board game night and managed to work our way through three games; Ad Astra, The Name of the Rose and finally Space Alert. As I mentioned in my High Frontier session report we have been playing quite a lot of wargames this past month or months so I've been in the mood for something different. We hadn't played Ad Astra in quite a while even though we've always enjoyed it, so it was fun seeing it hit the table again. Anders also used his Hotz space mat to enhance the visuals. Nice touch!


Ad Astra

When I try to quickly explain Ad Astra to new players I usually say that it's kind of like Settlers of Catan in space but with less emphasis on luck.  I might be selling it short, but it does convey a lot about the nature of the game. Basically you all start in the Sol system with one planet type (resource) each and then you need to expand out into the galaxy where you can start colonising new planets, building factories, terraforming stations and new starships. To win you try to amass victory points by means of three different scoring cards that you need to consider carefully when to play.

In our game yesterday I started with a mineral planet and raced out to find my first energy planet (which you need to fuel your spaceships). The others dod the same but while they started building colonies, which will give more resources, I built a terraformer instead - giving me a VP lead by left me with less resources. I built another spaceship instead and jumped from system to system looking for food. Unfortunately I couldn't find any so my plan to build more terraforming stations didn't work out. The others had built up more balanced space empires, although food produce still proved to be a rarity in the galaxy. I was still ahead in points but the rest were quickly catching up. In the end I decided to play to my only strength: the mineral I had at the start of the game. Thanks to landing at two more mineral rich planets I could produce quite a lot of it and then discard it all for victory points. This put me in the lead at 55 points (the game ends at 50) but as I thought I'd won Anders revealed his alien artifact card: Omnibus Rebus Responsum. This particular artifact meant that if its owner ended at exactly 42 victory points at the end of the game s/he would be the winner, and Anders had just ended on... 42.

Good game which was fairly close between all players. I really felt like my lack of resources would come back and bite me in the ass but I managed to hold off until the end. Fun to see the Omnibus Rebus make an appearance as well. Hehe!


The Name of the Rose

The space mat theme didn't work as well this time around. Monks in space?

This is one of those games that I rarely suggest myself, probably because of the games dry-ish theme, but always have a blast when actually playing! As you might have guessed from the title the game is based on Umberto Eco's novel of the same name. In it you take the role of one of monks of a benedectine monastary and you have tro try and avoid suspicion as you do your daily choirs (or not do them as the case might be). At the beginning of the game you are each dealt a card that tells you which colour monk you are and you need to keep it secret from the other players. During play you want to keep your colour monk low on the suspicion track while you try to push the others up. Of course, you have to do this without raising suspicion as to your own identity. It's all very sneaky and reading the other players is a large part of the game.

The other times I've played The Name of the Rose I've done very well, ending lowest on the suspicion track and managing to figure out who everyone else was while not being figured out myself. This time however was a bit different. During the second turn I moved my own monk (black) to a position where he seemed less suspicious and Jimmy immediately blurted out "You're black!" which he then stuck to during the rest of the game. While accusations such as this is common in The Name of the Rose I think this put a seed in the minds of my fellow players and in the end it cost me. Also I don't think anyone of us focused as much on the game as we usually do which lead to a lot of guesswork towards the end. We simply hadn't paid attention to what the others were doing all that much so accusations were fairly mixed. In the end Anders managed to pull of a surprise win (surprising since he hasn't had much luck with the game in the past). As the orange monk he avoided suspicion and was able to get away with... whatever he was doing. It was fairly close though, with all of us being within nine points of each other.


Space Alert

The HMS Sitting Duck on her maiden (simulated) voyage!

I first played Vlaada Chvátil's Space Alert while living in Tokyo and actually played it rather intensively for a while. It was always a lot of fun with the players stressing out trying to take care of all the incoming threats, malfunctioning missile batteries and infiltrating saboteurs. In the game you play the crew of a new experimental spaceship and you need to survive for ten minutes while it comes under attack from exterior as well as interior threats. Oh, and don't forget to jiggle the mouse now and then so the screen saver doesn't crash the entire ship's electronic systems! Yeah. During play you use a CD that plays the current mission for 10 minutes and during this time you need to decide what everyone is doing by laying down order cards (go left, push button A, take the elevator etc.). These 10 minutes are very frantic as you're scrambling to make sure you have enough shields for defence, that you fire when you need to to kill the attacking space amoeba and that you have enough juice in the reactor to power everything up! When the 10 minutes are up the mission is over and you go through all the order cards one by one to see what actually happened. Hilarity often ensues when you realize the mistakes you've made and things rarely goes according to plan...

We played the first two tutorial missions which went well, since they're both extremely easy. Then we had our first proper (yet simulated) mission and things didn't go quite as well. Me and MartinH actually managed our half of the ship with surprising deftness, taking out three incoming threats with minimal damage, all the time not forgetting to jiggle the mouse! Jimmy and Anders on the other hand seemed to bump into each other more than a few times as they fought about pressing the same button, tried to fire weapons with no power or tried to charge an already overcharged reactor. In Jimmy's defence he did manage to send out a couple of missiles that helped destroy stuff, but that was more luck than skill. Anders on the other hand only managed to do one thing properly over the 12 turns! I guess the pressure got to him. Oh, and he did manage to look out the window once. In the end some unstable satellite (or something) destroyed the ship and we called it a night. We had a great time with Space Alert as well and vowed to play it again soon.



All in all a great night, although in hindsight I guess we should have switched The Name of the Rose with something more spacey to keep the theme going. Race for the Galaxy or (my game of choice) High Frontier would have been grand! Speaking of High Frontier both Martin H and Jimmy seemed intimidated by it and they thought it seemed very complex, something I've been worried about. However I'm confident that once they actually try it they'll realise that it's not as tricky as it looks and that there's a fun racing/resource game at its base.

In other news, we're playing Diaspora on Monday! You might remember the Kaulback cluster me and a few others created way back that didn't go anywhere. This time we have an all new crew and starting from scratch, so cluster creation it is. I dare say all of us are more motivated than last time so I'm really looking forward to this. Anders picked up Dust Warfare yesterday as well, so it'll be interesting to see what it's like. Finally I'm most likely getting a copy of Lords of Waterdeep next week. Sure it might just be a watered down combination of several "proper euros" but it does have a theme that appeals to me so I'll give it a try.

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Delta Vector the Game

I just wanted to promote a fellow blogger's spaceship wargame project; Delta Vector the game, from the blog... Delta Vector! EvilleMonkeigh (yes, that's his username) starts it off with an article about how other game systems have been modernised over the years, using Infinity and Tomorrow's War as example of modern wargames, and wonders why spaceship gaming is still stuck in the Full Thrust rut. Now, Full Thrust is a great game and there's nothing wrong with taking inspiration from it, but building a new game from scratch, trying to implement lessons learnt from modern skirmish games might give something.

In this first article the guidelines are laid out and I think they're spot on. I'd probably try to adhere to something similar if I ever sat down to make a spaceship game. Reasonably realistic vector movement, importance of maneuvering, reaction gameplay and as little record keeping as possible. Good stuff!

It was an interesting read and I looked forward to the next article in the series... the folllowing week or so. But no, within the next few days the skeleton of a game had taken shape on the blog and it looks fairly interesting. I like the easy to manage vector movement rules especially.

Here's a convenient link to all the articles so far:

1. Spaceship Game Design
2. Movement
3. Movement (Facing Changes)
4. Movement (Gravity and Planets)
5. Movement off Board
6. Initiative & Contested Rolls
7. Reactions
8. Design Crossroads
9. Fighter/Missile Movement
10. Direct Fire
11. Damage & Repairs
12. Relative Velocity
13. Weapons
14. Setting a few Parameters
15. Weaponry
16. Giving All Ships a Role

And there you have it, that's what EvilleMonkeigh has come up with so far. All in all I think it's looking really good. Some of it like Relative Velocity is stuff I would love to see in the game but wonder about how practical it is (how much more fiddly does the game become?). You can see parts of Infinity in the Contested Rolls and Reactions system which I think should work fine for a spaceship game as well. The weapons seem divere and with different roles without going overboard. And that the author is a fan of both EVE Online and DP9's Lightning Strike is just a bonus!

The articles are brief with a lot of pictures so quick to grasp. If you're a spaceship gamer have a look! There's a thread about the system over at TMP, which you can find here. Now, if I could only find some time to play around with these rules myself...

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Going for the asteroids in High Frontier!

The way I imagine my ET factory on Karin B.

I first came across Sierra Madre Games' High Frontier back during the winter of 2010 and it immediately went on my must-buy list, but I only got it last week. Finally! It was created by Phil Eklund who's a bona fide rocket scientist and it's about the near future exploration of our solar system. Everything is based on real world physics and the first time you calculate your rocket's modified thrust is a feeling of both dread and awe! At its core High Frontier is a racing game: you want to get out there and prospect as soon as possible as well as grabbing the bonus "glory points" for being the first to succesfully return a crew from Mars etc.

At the start of the game you're all bidding for different rocket modules (thrusters, robonauts and refinieries) that you need to explore space. You need to decide if you want to travel light in an attempt to just gather some quick glory points, or if you want to bring a refinery to be able to actually build an extraterrestrial factory base which will allow you to advance your technology level. Then you need to start planning where to go and make sure you're rocket is not too heavy/slow and what to do when you get there.

The game map. Beautiful and terrifying at the same time! Actually this picture includes both the base game (right side) as well as the map from the expanded game (left side), adding Jupiter and Saturn (not to mention politics and space weather).

In our game I played NASA while Anders took control of the UN. We spent quite a few turns just constructing our rockets, almost going through the entire stack of availbale thrusters before we each settled on our respective designs. I think this was an artifact of our inexperience with the game and the fact that there were only two of us. With more players the race aspect would have been much more in focus and shorter flights would probably have been a more attractive goal. As it were we took our time to make rockets that could make it into the asteroid belt, each of us bringing robonauts and refineries.

NASA (white) on their way to Karin while the UN (purple) still linger in low Earth orbit.

I launched my mission one or two years (turns) before Anders and made it to the Karin family of asteroids. Since I had raygun-type robonaut I could prospect a lot of asteroids in one fell swoop, even though I needed to roll 1s and 2s to succeed. My prospecting succeeded on three of the planetoids and I used my refinery and robonauts to build a factory at Karin B. This allowed me to upgrade my raygun robonauts making it a lot more effective at prospecting. My next target was the nearby Vesta family.

In the meantime the UN had launched their expedition to the Gefion family of asteroids, which includes the dwarf planet Ceres. Anders had managed to get his hands on a fairly powerful engine and made it there quickly. He was unlucky and failed at prospecting Minerva, even though he had a re-roll when using his robonaut buggy. Ceres on the other hand is so large that you succeed automatically which was good news for Anders, however he discovered that if he wanted to build a factory there he wouldn't be able to take off as he would have to sacrifice the powerful thrusters of his robonauts. In the end he simply decided to decommision his entire rocked (basically colonising the worldlet) and then start over back in low Earth orbit. This is a perfectly valid strategy although he did miss out on gettin glory points for being the first to return a crew safely to the Earth and he would have to boost his rocket modules into orbit once again.

What it looked like after my initial asteroid prospecting spree! You can see my factory to the left (the cube) and Anders' to the right. The black discs are failed prospects.

While the UN was busy with Ceres I sent my now refinery-less rocket to prospect Vesta and the surrounding asteroids. With the upgraded robonaut and with no refinery my rocket was much lighter and could quickly zip around the belt! After prospecting three more locations (using up the last of my markers) I decided to return to Earth with my crew. This netted me some VPs and I got some more for being the first to prospect three or more S-class (stony) locations. Woo! Instead of boosting more modules for my rocket I simply refueled it and sent it on a quick science mission to Eureka, a Mars trojan asteroid which is easily reachable from Earth. This was simply to get more glory points of course. Next I went back to actually build a factory at Eichsfeldia, one of the asteroids in the Vesta family.

Anders had started construction on his second rocket stack during my asteroid shenanigans and he had his eye on the Nysa family of asteroids as well as the comet Encke. He succeeded in prospecting Polena and Hertha where he also built a factory. This being a two player game the fourth factory signaled the end and we started adding up victory points.

End game. As you can see we went exclusively for the asteroid belt which I think is a valid strategy as you're learning the game. Landing on planets require aero-breaking and crash hazards... scary stuff better reserved for next time. :)

I managed a fairly large victory with 30 points against Anders' 16. This might seem like a crushing defeat, but as far as exploration goes we were fairly even. I had a couple more sites prospected, but what really allowed me to pull ahead were the several firsts that I managed to claim. First to bring a crew back from a site, first to bring a crew back from a science site and the first to claim three S-class sites. Just these three things were worth 11 VPs together so it could easily have gone the other way if he wouldn't have been forced to decomission his rocket at Ceres.

My thoughts on the game: awesome! It might look kind of dry and math-y (and the rulebook reads like something Avalon Hill would've put out during the seventies), but there's a real sense of accomplishment and wonder as you finally launch your rocket towards its distant goal. Sure, I'm a great big space nerd, which helps, but you'd be remiss to discount this game as being only for people like me. There's a solid resource/race game with an economic engine trundling along under the hood. With more players (there's room for five) I can see it becoming both a lot more cut-throat as well as encouraging more trades and dealings between the factions. And I'm looking forward to trying the expanded game where space warfare is an option...

Anders liked it as well, although he felt frustrated that he couldn't practically land on any of the large planets. Or that is what we thought at first at least. After the game we discovered that you can in fact land on the Moon and Mars. You just have to have a very light rocket (a thruster with a crew pod on top) with lots of fuel. So... kind of like the Apollo missions. Then if you want to get serious about it and establish a base there you might need to research some better technology first.

After having had a period filled with lots of wargames (Runewars, Twilight Imperium, A Game of Thrones etc) it was nice playing something different. And High Frontier is certainly different from anything I've played before. To my mind a very cool game with a very cool theme. That it's scientifically correct is just a neat bonus! Don't let the playmat and board daunt you, it's not nearly as complicated as it looks.

I need to play it a few more times, but then I'll put together a proper review.

The UN rocket awaiting refuel in low Earth orbit.

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Quick and Dirty Infinity Tournament AAR

Nomads versus JSA.

I thought I'd put together a quick after action report of last weekend's Infinity tournament I participated in. It was very small with only five contestants and it was a first for all of us but it went rather smoothly in the end and was a lot of fun! Unfortunately it took a bit longer than expected so I had to skip my final game.

The armies were set to 200 points and after some deliberating I decided to go all out fast attack with Kuang Shi, an Aragoto and a Sù-Jián backed up by a Gŭiláng, an engineer, a Celestial Guard and my Shangji lieutenant. My force looked like this:


 GROUP 1 (Regs: 9/Irrs: 0):

  SHÀNG JÍ Lieutenant Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Pistol, Shock CCW (42)
  ARAGOTO Spitfire / Pistol, Knife (29 | 1.5)
  SÙ-JIÀN Spitfire, Light Flamethrower, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CCW (56 | 2)
  CELESTIAL GUARD  Combi Rifle + Light Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife (13 | 0.5)
  3x KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, Knife (5)
  GŬILÁNG Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife (25)
  MECA-Engineer Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife (15)
  YÁOZĂO Electric Pulse (3)

 198 Points | SWC: 4


Originally I thought about including a Husong total reaction remote to have some defensive firepower against AD troops and the like, but in the end I decided to go totally on the offensive! So how did the StateEmpire's finest fair? Let's find out shall we...

Match 1 versus Japanese Sectorial Army

Shangji and Sù-Jián advancing on the Domaru.

I started out playing against a sectorial army which made me a bit worried since I had never played against (or with) link teams, and he had a nice big one made up of Keisotsus. A common view in the Infinity community is that the first time you encounter some new kind of enemy troop you're going to loose against it, be it camouflage, AD troops, TAGs or link teams, and while there are certainly exceptions it's something I agree with to a large extent. You simply don't know how to handle them effectively. So I prepared for the worst...

The table we played (you can see it at the top of the page) on was very atmospheric with a stream crossing the center, some woodland areas towards the edges and a few houses around the central area. It looked nice but I thought it was way too open for an Infinity table, especially with four inch tall houses in or very near the deployment zone. It felt like the first one to get on top of those houses would totally dominate the match (more on that in match 3).

Anyway, the JSA got the first turn and the Keisotsu team quickly made it to a nearby house and scaled its walls making it up to the roof. They then put down a suppresive fire corridor just in fron of my Sù-Jián and a nearby Kuang Shi. A couple of Domaru brought up the rear and a Tokusetsu doctor stayed behind in the woods.

During my turn I advanced with my chain rifle toting Kuang Shi toward the link team who decided not to forego their suppresion fire to get an ARO against him. This was a mistake from my opponent's side as I could then simply hose the entire team with the chain rifle! It took a couple of salvoes and I think my Sù-Jián added some shots from his Spitfire as well, but in the end the entire team went down. One Kuang Shi advanced behind some houses to try and outflank the Tokusetsu and/or Domaru while the Sù-Jián took the fight to the two Domaru head on.

EDIT: I completely forgot! While this was going on my opponent's Oniwaban suddenly appeared near my Sù-Jián and tried to get into close combat with it. Unfortunately the transforming machine comes with a flamethrower as standard equipment and the poor master ninja only made it a few steps before turning nice and crispy...

In the next JSA turn the Domaru attacked the Sù-Jián with E/M grenades but didn't do any damage. I followed this up by pressing on with the Sù-Jiàn backed up by the Shangji and in the end they managed to take out both of the samurai warriors. One of them was the JSA lieutenant but sine their was a Kempeitai in the army as well there was no loss of command. My opponent was in retreat though and after taking some potshots at the lone Kuang Shi the game ended.

Not choosing to break the suppression fire to shoot the Kuang Shi was the key moment in this game, and had he done that I think it would have gone a different way entirely. When I started my first turn the entire link team was on top of a building in the middle of the table with fairly open terrain around them. Charging them with my Kuang Shi, hoping that their Dogged would allow them to get close enough was about the only thing I could think of against that. Well, in the end I did manage to win the game so I guess I did something right.

Match 2 versus Force de RR Merovingienne

Gŭiláng lurking in the ruins...

Another sectorial! No link teams this time though. I don't remember exactly what my opponent brought to the field as I'm not well versed on the French. But there was a sniper(?), a Zouave with a HMG, two Moblots, two Chasseurs, a doctor and a medic and some light infantry. This time we were on the second table which was made up of Mordheim buildings and some low walls. I think the terrain worked better here although there were still some real corridors of death as well as tall buildings in the deployment zone (his sniper was on the second floor from the start).

I got the first turn this time around and had a great success with one of my Kuang Shi! He started by running towards the Zouave who was in a foxhole in the second floor of a central building. He got his face full of white-hot scrap metal and went down! Happy with this the Kuang Shi skipped past the building the sapper had been in and spotted two Moblots that he continued to gun down. One of them returned fire and wounded my poor little techni-zombie but thanks to dogged he kept going. A Chasseur with a flamethrower lay nearby and fired in ARO but the Kuang Shi survived and responded with yet more Chain Rifle Fire! Finally he tried getting closer to the two downed moblots to finish them off, but this time he was put down for good by the sniper. But still, that's more than 100 points taken out by a single 5 point trooper! I guess I should promote him or something...

With half his force gone I was hoping to only have some mopping up left to do, but there was still that well positioned sniper making it hard for me. My Aragoto raced forward and took out the other Chasseur after a brief exchange of fire but was then taken out in turn by the sniper. I advanced with my Gŭiláng scout and Sù-Jián who managed to take out the sniper. In my following reactive turn they also nailed the doctor trying to rescusitate him. He was in retreat at this point as there were only two troops left standing which netted me a fairly solid victory with my only losses being the Aragoto and my three Kuang Shi.

Match 3 against Pan Oceania

A Kuang Shi and his... handler.

No more sectorials but plain old PanO! This time we were back on the other table only this time I started on the opposite side from last time. As I mentioned the table was rather open and it really looked like a potential killing ground in the middle. He fielded Jeanne d'Arc 2.0, an ORC trooper, a Croc Man and a bunch of Fusiliers. He took the first turn and put a HMG wielding Fusilier in a dominant position on the second floor of a bulding. The Croc man sniper had positioned himself in the tallest building in the middle of the board close to where my own Gŭiláng was lurking in a building opposite. The ORC trooper made his way onto the second floor of another building further back but then proceeded to go prone to avoid being shot.

In my turn the Kuang Shi ran forward heedless of danger and actually made it to some low walls. The Aragoto was fortunately not in any danger since the ORC was prone and could race forward on the road. My  Sù-Jián climbed a small building and proceed to gun down Jeanne d'Arc with its Spitfire! It then tried to take out the Fusilier with the HMG but failed which it paid for in my reactive turn as it was simply shot to pieces together with the two Kuang Shi. Apart from that not much else happened though as the Crocman also went prone and the ORC stayed down.

Seeing his opportunity the Aragoto biker raced along the road and as he skidded around a corner he opened up at the surprised HMG Fusilier who went down in a hail of bullets. The Aragoto revved his engine again and swerved around another building in the PanO deployment zone where most of the rearguard Fusiliers were in plain view. He proceeded to gun down three more Fusiliers (one of which was the lieutenant) and wounding the ORC trooper before perishing. This left only two enemy troops but since the Croc man and ORC were together more than 80 points the PanO weren't in retreat quite yet. They were in loss of lieutenant though and didn't really do anything during my reactive turn.

This allowed my Shangji to methodically climb up onto the building nearby the Croc man and simply burn him to death with his flamethrower (first time I've used it actually. Woo!). At this point I made a mistake. I had won the game and if I'd been smart I should have simply waited for it to end. But that wounded ORC trooper who had been hiding behind a wall the entire game just proved too enticing! So I ramboed across the field with my Shangji and even though I spent two full orders pumping bullets into the prone ORC he simply wouldn't die! With my final order he used the flamethrower which did take the ORC out of action, but he returned fire and did the same to my Shangji. This meant that together with the Sù-Jián and Aragoto I was in retreat as well and PanO won on points, even though I had wiped out his entire force. Aargh! Well, that will teach me to curb my enthusiasm!

Wrap Up

In my fourth game I would have met the Nomad force who ended up winning the tournament and I think it could have been an interesting match. But there will be more opportunities I'm sure. The end result was:

1st: Nomads

2nd: JSA

3rd: Frenchies

4th: Yu Jing

5th: PanO

So, what I took away from this tournament was that the fast, aggressive play style that I've been using against Anders' Nomads works well against other players as well. I'm glad since it's a play style I enjoy and where I can use cool models like the Aragoto and Sù-Jián. I'm very happy with how they performed even though the Sù-Jián bought it in the last game. My Kuang Shi also performed spectacularly! They almost never dissapoint and I find it hard making a list without them. I'm also happy that I (kind of) won three out of three games! Yes, I lost the last one on points but I still see it as a win from a tactics perspective. 

Looking at the army in retrospect I would get rid of the engineer. She was meant for the Sù-Jián but by the time it actually got wounded it was so far ahead that it would have taken several orders for the little Yáozăo to get to it. I could have squeezed in a Zhanshi paramedic and another Kuang Shi instead. The rest of the army performed well with the fast attack doing their thing while the Gŭiláng acted as backup and the Shangji anchored the deployment zone.

Thanks to the guys who pulled it all together, and apologies in advance for all the stuff I remembered wrong or distorted in my report. I do think the overall flow of the games are correct though. I'm looking forward to the next event where I'll make sure I have time to spare so I don't have to leave early! 

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March Wrap Up

Sù-Jián on the prowl...

It's the end of the month so let's see what kind of stuff I've been up to then...


Mini and Board Games

• We had a board game night over at Anders' place where we started off with a four player game of Runewars which was a lot of fun! I really do like that game a lot and I've finally got around to ordering the expansion which I'm eagerly looking forward to. Anyway, I played as the humans this time around and managed a win during the fifth year I think. I wasn't too far ahead of the others at this point, but it was a fairly solid victory nonetheless.

• After Runewars we debated wether to continue or go home and sleep. Of course, sleep lost out to Anders' latest aqcuirement: Rex: Final Days of an Empire. As you probably know it's a new release from FFG which is a retheme of the old Avalon Hill Dune board game. They couldn't get the rights to the Dune IP though so instead transplanted it into their own Twilight Imperium universe, something I have absolutely no problems with (although I found it hard not to think of factions and game mechanics using the Dune names. Will try to rectify this). Since we were only four players we didn't get the full experience and missed out on some of how the factions interact (like playing Chaos in the Old World with less than four players) but we had a great time even so. I played the evil Letnev who have access to lots of traitors and lots of sneaky weapons, but I was out of luck as I didn't get to use a single traitor and I got all the right cards too late. In the end we had to call it a turn early with no clear winner, although it looked like Sol had the strongest position. Really looking forward to playing again with the full six players! Although I think our group needs to learn to be more flexible and not so vindictive when it comes to alliances etc. The same goes for when we're playing A Game of Thrones. haha!

• And finally, yesterday I played in a small (though ITS registred) Infinity tournament. It was a lot of fun and I did fairly well. I managed fairly large victories in my first two games and then lost my third on points due to some bad desicions by me when I had already routed my opponent. Then I had to bow out of my last game as things had taken longer than expected. My final position was four out of five but I'm looking forward to next time where I'm sure to alot a few hours more for the event. More on this tournament in a separate post.

Painting and Modelling

This month has been fairly quite on the hobby front I'm afraid.

• I finished my two Guiláng and has started prepping the next batch to be painted. There are some specialists (doctors and engineers), heavy infantry like the Hsien, a remote and Father Sforza lined up. Oh, and another Tiger Soldier. However, just as I finished basing and priming them I finally got my MAS bases so now I'm thinking I should rebase them first.

• The French have been released for Dystopian Wars have been released and I'm sorely tempted, but I'll try to hold off a bit longer.

Video Games

There was a fair amount of videogaming this month (which might explain my lack of painting. Hehe!).

• Me and my friend Anders have been talking about getting Borderlands for ages but we haven't got around to it until now. What finally got us going was that Micke got an Xbox and was eager to join and another Martin (who've had an Xbox for a long time) was eager to get back into the multiplayer part of gaming. So off we went and bought us each a copy of Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition. So far we're only about level 10-11 but we're having lots of fun even though there's been quite a few deaths. Hehe! Fun game with a nice mix of FPS action and MMO-esque looting and levelling.

• I also played through L.A. Noire in its entirety. I actually got it during some special offer at play.com several months ago but hadn't played it until now. For those of you who don't know the game it's James Ellroy mixed with Grand Theft Auto, and although it has its share of flaws I had a great time with it! The facial mo-cap (or whatever they call it) is outstanding although it does bring to light the contrast between the living faces and the stiff doll-like bodies. The clue finding bit gets a bit long in the tooth after a while, but I always enjoyed interrogations. And the environments (and cars!) are simply beautiful. It can get a bit samey and it would have been nice with some more player driven choices, but overall I think L.A. Noire was a great experience. Especially since it's so unique! Both the time period and even more so the actual gameplay concept. I don't think there has been a game about police procedural like this before. Give it a go!

• And finally... there is of course Mass Effect 3. For some reason I didn't anticipate ME3 as much as I did ME2. Sure I was going to play it, but I didn't pre-order or anything. I'm not quite sure why but suspect it had something to do with most trailers and previews concentrating on the action part. Sure, that is fun but I mainly play it for the story. Anyway, I got it and after a couple of hours in I came to the moon of Palavan where I really got hooked again. First off the action gameplay has again been tweaked and is now on par with tripple A action titles like Gears of War. I found myself loving the multiplayer as well where I tried some different classes and races but what really made me go "Wow!" was the human Vanguard. You use your biotic charge to slam into your enemies like a freight train and then when the survivors try to get on their feet you release the energy of your shield in a nova, hitting like a tonne of bricks! So yeah... a freght train delivering a tonne of bricks. That's ouch for ya! There's been lots of talk about the ending and some fans are really angry about it. I view it a bit differently I think, but want to avoid spoilers so won't go into it here. My advice is to look closer at the ending and what is happening, and not take everything at face value. Also, Minority Report.

Other Geekstuff

Let's see...

• I still haven't finished The Naked God. There's still about 1/5 left and things are starting to approach critical mass! I'm undecided on what to read next though. L.A. Noire got me into the mood of re-reading the L.A. Quartet but I would also like to get back to reading Alastair Reynonlds. Hmm...

• I watched a few movies; Insidious which I thought was great during the first half (reminded me of The Others) and then it just took an entirely unexpected left turn and headed straight into the woods! Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting ride and I appreciate what James Wan was trying to do, although it just didn't quite work in the end. I recommend it though, there's a lot of good stuff in it too! In the mood for some more horror I came across the remake of John Carpenter's The Fog which I thought might be interesting... but no. Just no. I watched the original as a kid and I love it but this whole thing was just a big mess from beginning to end and even Selma Blair and Maggie Grace in panties doesn't help. Finally me and Micke went to the cinema and watched John Carter (of Mars), in 3D as regular old 2D wasn't available. I was sad to read that it "flopped" in the US as had a great time! This is classic sci-fi where it's borderline fantasy and I just liked the whole feel of the movie. Like Conan mixed with Dune or something!

• I'm sure most of you have seen the trailer for Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome by now and I understand why the fanbase is excited. It does look rather spiffy! While I wasn't one of the people who wrote angry letters to SyFy-channel demaning more space battles in the original (reboot) series I certainly won't pass it up. Hehe! Was surprised that they'd copied/ripped off/homaged Fincher's Dragon Tattoo trailer this soon though, complete with Trent Reznor's cover of Immigrant Song. It's a great trailer with its own voice (which is rare these days) so I can understand why they did it, but still. Then again it's supposed to be "leaked" and NBCUniversal has asked for it to be removed, so maybe for internal use only.

And that's about it! I should get some more painting done next month and I'm looking forward to trying more Rex and Runewars with the expansion. Me and Jimmy have been talking roleplaying again so there's that as well...

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