Saturday, March 13, 2010

Saturday Gaming, Friday Edition

I took some comp time on Friday given all the travel I had been doing.  If nothing else I earned a butt load of credit and travel comp time to use the past three weeks.

Steve was between mid shifts so I invited him over for some gaming after he had his sleep.  He showed at 2 and we had a chance to play a few games.  We started with Song of Blade and Heroes.  It was the first time for Steve to play and only my second.  He had some painted Gladiator figures from a game that Suzanne got him at GenCon, so I created a gladiator list for him that was pretty nifty.   I broke out my GW Dwarves and created one for me.


It was a good solid intro to the game.  I had a few extra numbers on Steve, but he had the quality troops.  Despite my slow speed, I was able to get up on the hill to move closer to Steve's force, but it was Gladiator Boris' Berserk combined with Reckless that issued first contact.  Unfortunately, since he always had to advance, he couldn't get an attack off, allowing the Slayer to hit and take him out early.  Additionally the Iron Guard were able to gang up on LeRoy to take him out on turn five or so with a "Gruesome Kill", causing his band to fall back.  That is when the tide turned and the remaining gladiators said, "Hey, it is only Dwarves!  Come on!"

I moved my Commander too close and he was netted and killed pretty easily.  That caused my forces to fall back twice, once from the dead leader and once for being under 50% strength.  The band dispersed to the wind and they never recovered.  Steve was able to pick off the rest of the band solo fashion, while the gunners tried vainly to pick off approaching forces.

In the end Steve won taking out all the Dwarves.  We chatted about the game and both liked the system and may try to set up a campaign with the gang as it seems to play quick and simple.

We then set up a game of Agricola then ran down to Hectors for dinner real quick.  Good Mexican food and pretty solid pricing.  If I could drink I would have had the Dos Equis Amber, from what I remember of my beer drinking it is yummy.  As it was I had two tacos and was pretty full.  Steve, The Other Half, and I had a pleasant conversation while waiting and eating.

When we got back to the house we started up Agricola had a few rounds and Paul showed to deliver me a printed copy of the Song of Blades and Heroes series as he has access to some great printers at work that can handle the job effectively.  We chatted for 1/2 hour or so then Paul headed down to the Shoppe while Steve and I finished up the game.  Steve went with a Occupation and Improvement strategy, trying to leverage all the freebies to get extra resources.  I focused on a little of everything, but tried to get the extra actions (babies) as early as I could.  With the expansion rules, the new fuel requirements kept playing havok on my wood collection, slowing down my fence building.  Steve ran into trouble at the end between feeding his large family or building a stone home.  He ended up feeding the family as it looked to be more points then those lost on the home.  Final score was 28 to 37 in my favor, with my concentration on card point improvements making the difference.

Good solid afternoon/evening of gaming.  Thanks for coming over Steve and hope you made it through the Mid-shift OK!

jp
Off to Lincoln for WM Tournament.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I will drink an extra beer or five today to make up for your inability to drink.

Unknown said...

I do miss the occasional beer with dinner. I may try some wine, but the carbonation is suppose to be tough on the pouch.

jp

Daimyo said...

Nothing like an old fashioned dwarven warband beatdown to get the night off to a good start! ;) Seriously though, I thought your dwarves were going to mince my gladiators what with me losing two right out the gate. But just goes to show the beauty of the system where my remaining gladiators were able to rally and through catching your leader, able to turn the tide.

But as bad as I whooped you in the battlefield, you returned the favor in spades on the farm. I think my biggest mistake was not getting a means to turn animals into food causing problems in the late game. Thought you have to admit I setup a sweet combo there at the end - almost. :(