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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"Good, our first catch of the day."

So we had our first impromptu game night of 2011 yesterday! The group consisted of me, Anders, Claes and Mats (who lives very close by. Convenient!) and on the menu we had Runewars, Alien Frontiers and Space Hulk: Death Angel. In the end we went with Runewars since I have been waiting to get an opportunity to play it again. I was thinking that we might have time for at least a game of Alien Frontiers afterwards but that hope was quickly dashed when we decided to try out the Epic variant for the first time.

Normally in Runewars you play through a set number of years (six) with each year split into four seasons, corresponding to player turns. The goal of the game is to acquire six Dragon Runes and you can do this in a variety of ways; conquest, politics, questing and so on. The runes are actual physical tokens on the board and there can never be two rune tokens on the same space so as you acquire more you need to spread out to be able to control them all. There's a slight twist in that every time you receive a rune you get two tokens, one with a picture of a rune on the back side and one that is blank. You place both of these in territories you control, leaving opponents uncertain of your runes' actual locations.

Setup: complete. I'm the Uthuk Y'llan (red) closest to the camera.

Now, in the Epic variant you play until someone get seven (not six) Dragon Runes or until the end of the eighth year. Also the runes are always placed face up which lets everyone know where all runes are located at all times. These changes might seem small but they make for a much (much!) longer game.

Last night we started around eight o'clock and we had to call it quits around 1:30 in the morning after having played five years (a little over half the game). At this time Mats had five runes, Anders four and Claes and myself three. So it's definetly a much more drawn-out experience than the standard game and it leads to more actual fighting between players. However I don't think there are actually more battles per turn, it's simply that you play longer which leads to more opportunities to attack your opponents.

Anyway, over att BGG and other places you'll hear a lot of people saying that the Epic variant is the definitive way to play Runewars and that the standard game is over "as soon as it starts getting interesting". I'm inclined to disagree. To me one of the key aspects of Runewars is how it manages to take Twilight Imperium (one of my absolute favourite board games of all time) and distill it down to something you can play in a reasonable amount of time. Sure it doesn't have the intricate complexity of Twilight Imperium but the overall feel comes reasonably close.

Somewhere around year four I think. It's looking pretty good for the daemonic hordes of the Uthuk at this point, but those infernal elves managed to squash my stronghold and drive me back!

So when you take this game and draw it out to five, six seven hours I can't help thinking "why not simply play Twilight Imperium??". To me the standard game of Runewars has a great commitment vs fulfillment ratio. You commit two-three hours and the sense of fulfillment and payoff is great. I think Twilight Imperium has it as well, even though you probably have to commit six or seven hours to it*. However, when you put Runewars in that same time slot it can't really measure up to the original so to speak.

In the future I think we'll stick to playing Runewars using the standard rules (maybe with some tweaks like requiring seven runes but still keeping the hidden mechanic and six year time limit) for when we crave epic conquest/questing/politicing but have a limited time budget and Twilight Imperium for when time is not a factor. Recently we've been doing a lot of shorter sessions during evenings. I really like this as you can get together on the fly and just play something for a few hourse, however, this rarely leaves enough time for full day games like Twilight Imperium. Since we've started scheduling two full game days a month from January onwards I think TI will hit the table more often though. I can already hear the Emirates of Hacan trying to lure me with promises of great riches!

Twilight Imperium, how do I love thee, let me count the ways!

Yepp! Hope you enjoyed my long winded, board game-centric post. Well, you have another WFRP3 session report to look forward to sometime this weekend. Hehe!

*Examples of a games with poor commitment vs fulfillment ratio Talisman, Risk, Zombies!!! and, unfortunately, Android (which breaks my heart, because I really want to love it!).

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Board Game Extravaganza!

Gaming wise it's been a busy couple of weeks since I got back to Sweden. I've been meeting with my old buddies playing everything from Puerto Rico to Runewars! Let's see if I can recall what we've gone through...

We started out with an evening of Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy and Age of Conan. It was actually the first time I had played Puerto Rico and it was a lot of fun! I managed to come in first by building up a coffee empire that made me a lot of money which I used to construct buildings which in turn netted me quite a bit of points! It was also interesting seeing the parallels with Race for the Galaxy. Two great games with similar themes and mechanics, but still different enough to scratch two different itches.

In Age of Conan I took control of the Aquilonians while Anders was Turan and Micke the sly Stygians. It started out well for both Aquilonia and Turan while Stygia had a hard time with the wild savages of the Black Kingdoms. By the Second Age I had amassed quite an Empire in central Hyboria and I felt it was fairly secure, my armies outnumbering both Turan's and Stygia's. I was planning for a couple of pre-empive strikes into Turan during the Third Age, but before I had a chance the sneaky Stygians managed to crown Conan as king and Micke actually won the game! He ended up with one point ahead of me while Turan was one point behind! Overall a fun game that really showed that Conan can have a great impact if used correctly.

I really do think Age of Conan is an underrated game. It might not be as fast and flashy as, say, Runewars, but the kind of slow more "realistic" feel to it definitely fits the original Howard stories. It made me want to finish my AoC painting project...

Then we had two games of Middle-Earth Quest. First I took the role of Sauron against Anders who controlled two heroes. Although Sauron dominated most of Middle-Earth the free peoples still managed to win in the end, which seemed kind of weird to me. I did however discover that there was a number of things I played wrong and most of them were to my disadvantage. I'll get you next time you stinky heroes!

Except, the next time I was one of the heroes, Beravor to be exact. Micke also took the role of Argalad against Anders as Sauron. This game was a little bit up and down and although Beravor grew quite strong at the start of the game I accumulated a bunch of corruption cards which really slowed me down towards the end. It looked like a clear win for Sauron, but thanks to some sneaky play from me and Micke and a fair bit of luck we actually managed to win in the end! Weee!

And then... Runewars. I was browsing through my FLGS considering if I maaaybe should get some smallish game like Endevour or Mystery Express when I suddenly was possessed by the horrible daemon Geimkollectour who made me buy Runewars instead! Granted it's a game I've been eyeing for a while now but I thought I'd hold off a bit longer.

It's a far cry from the amount of plastic you get in Twilight Imperium or Descent but what you get is really of the hightest quality! Beautiful minis and a beautiful board! I had only glanced at the rules before but after reading them through once I was quite impressed. I think FFG has really started tightening up their games as of late. Chaos in the Old World is probably the best example of this, but Runewars and Middle-Earth Quest are not far behind. It makes me really excited to try Horus Heresy!

Anyway, I played a game against Anders who (naturally) chose the undead legions of Vaiqar the Undying while I controlled the daemonic Uthuk Y'llal (you can see the board after the first turn above). Basically I had the upper hand when it came to military strength while Anders managed to get the full amount of heroes and then kill all mine! I think he could actually have pulled off a win thanks to that since questing with your heroes is the main way of getting more Dragon Runes. In the end however my daemonic horde proved too large and too fast as I managed to conquer the last couple of areas with Dragon Runes in them that I needed in order to win. Vaiqar had some trouble getting a balance of resources, having mostly Food (great for skeletons, eh?!) but lacking Wood and Ore which hampered his military campaign. Below is the penultimate turn of the game. The giant was great! Although I actually had a mission to kill 'em all...

I think Runewars was a blast and I can't wait to play it again with three or four players! The mechanics are very slick and most of them feel very natural and logical. I love how all the rules come together in an elegant way to really make an attractive whole. It's hard to choose a favourite part, but if I had to pick one it'd have to be the battle system. You don't just line up your troops and roll a fistfull of dice but instead line them up at their respective initiative and then fight rank by rank. Since all troops have different special abilites this makes for a very engaging battle where it's important to plan ahead. I also really like how battles are not about killing every single enemy unit but rather that routing units play a big role. Hmm... I could go on about stuff I like about Runewars, but it's getting late so I won't. Suffice to say I think it will hit the table in our group a lot from now on.

I also played a quick game of Firestorm: Armada. Neither me nor Anders had our models ready so we used the cutout fleets provided by Spartan Games. Not having models really makes the game... unfulfilling, but since this was mostly about getting to know the rules we persevered. We had one cruiser and three frigates each, me playing Dindrenzi and Anders Terrans. I lost my cruiser early but Dinzdrenzi ships are tough and after mowing down the opposing frigate squadron frigates outmaneuvered and ganged up on the lone Terran cruiser, blowing it out of space, netting me the victory. This was just a small taste of the full game though and I'm looking forward to playing it "for real". Oh, and speaking of which, my magnets just arrived which means I can start basing my ships. Which will lead to painting! Yay!

We've also played Race for the Galaxy quite a few times and then we began... Descent: Road to Legend! I've been wanting to try Descent for a loooong time and now I've finally done it! It was fun but extremely slow going. After our first session we realised how much we'd played wrong so we decided to start over from scratch, and so far the Overlord is only slightly ahead in points. I won't go into it much more since I'm planning to make a separate post about it later. Below was the first dungeon we entered in the now aborted campaign. A named master giant with 28 wounds and 7 armour took a long time and quite a few deaths to kill. Urgh...

That's all I think. I might have missed something. We were about to try 1960: The Making of a President, but never got around to it. Oh, and Micke made his character for WFRP; a Grey Wizard!

Well... that's all!

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