24 days later...

Wow,

I suck as a game blogger...  Heck, I suck as a gamer lately.  Between work and the current vacation I haven't had much time for gaming.  I did get in on the last round of Songs of Blade and Heroes with the guys before I left for vacation, but will miss this weeks effort.  I went 0-2 for the last session making me 4-2...  It sucks loosing! :)

While on the road I did get a few games in.  Taught a couple Ticket to Ride and Pandemic.  They have played a lot of settlers, but hadn't tried these yet.  We got a few games of each after the 8 kids went down.  It was a hectic days.  Last Saturday was the Warrior Dash, the race that a group of us went to attend.  Here are some neat pics with a link to others...

The gang post run...

Should be back in September with more gaming action, at least I hope so...

jp
long lost gamer

Monday Night Gaming

Greetings,

Steve and Susan came over and we had burgers & asparagus for dinner.  The three of us went to the basement and played three games.

- Ticket to Ride – Susan hadn’t played in a year and she likes train games.  Her and I were pretty close, but she completed two extra tickets which got her the ‘most traveled’ and the extra routes.  Poor Steve misjudged his train lengths and ended up losing most of his tickets because he couldn’t connect the far distant ends.

- Dominion x2 – We next played two games of Dominion.  We hadn’t played in a few months, so we quickly reviewed and found that we had been making a mistake from the first time, namely not dumping the remainder of your hand after each turn.  That made a huge difference in circulating cards and getting more cards/gold to do stuff with.  The first game was pretty standard but had no ‘attack’ actions except the witch, but she really didn’t come out to play.  The main players were Festivals and Villages giving lots of multiple actions in the game.   I took a pretty aggressive approach to collecting Provinces and it paid off in the end.  The second game we ended up with all the ‘attack’ actions as well as the moat, which was pretty interesting.  Steve took a Thief route, Susan took a Spy route, while I cornered the Laboratory market.  The Spy/Lab combo worked well for Susan as she slowly cleaned out the Provinces and Duchy cards.   For me the highlight was having five of my six Laboratories in a single turn.  +2 cards, +1 action, followed with a woodcutter for +2 gold and an extra buy.  J

We wrapped up around 830, which was good timing and I got my food and gym stuff packed up before bed.

jp

Gaming?  Yes, gaming…

Weekend O' Gaming

Salutations,

I got quite a bit of gaming in over the weekend. I kicked it off with a game of Flames of War with Paul at the house. I was suppose to go to the slow grow league, but forgot to pack my toys! Paul was nice enough to come over that night so we could knock out the game.

The game was a great game of my Recon Italians versus Paul's Motorized Brits. It was a blood bath on both sides with me having a clear line to the objective, but loosing one stand too many and loosing enough platoons to force a test. Since Capitino had passed away, that wasn't happening. Paul got the win with a 4-3.

Saturday I had a game of Warmachine with Adam. I started my Khador stuff and used a Sorcha rush with four Shock Troopers, a Kovnik marshaling a Berserker, Mechanics Marshaling a Juggernaut, Widowmakers, & Grey Lords. Adam was running Magnus with a Mangler, a Mule, 2 Renegades, Herne & Jonne. I moved everyone up pretty aggressively, and on turn two I popped Icy Gaze to freeze all the 'Jacks, allowing me to run my heavy hitters in position. Won't be able to do this trick in MkII, but it worked for now. The Kov & Berserker took the Mule while the Shock Troopers worked on the Mangler. Neither finished the job, but they did some serious damage. The Widowmakers exchanged rounds with Herne & Jonne and came up on top. I used the Juggernaut and Grey Lords to tie up a Renegade and keep Magnus worried. Game ended with Sorcha doing a few solid hits with Ice Fang. It was a good game from my point. Adam and I discussed tactics, like hiding the lights behind the heavies so they could both fire. Also discussed swapping the Mule for a Nomad so he could bring the Pirate McNale into the fight.

Saturday afternoon I was at Rob and Steve's and we rolled up Savage World characters. It is interesting system and I hope to run a modern setting game in Las Vegas. The characters are all 'real world' entities. Rob and Steve opted to make a larger version of themselves at 'GAMA Trade Show' while Eric made an employee of the Excalibur in full medieval attire. Paul rounded up those present with a cowboy reenactor from one of the sideshows on the edge of town. We tried the combat system versus a pack of dogs and it wasn't pretty. That lead to some minor character mods to help things along. Hope to have a real go in a few weeks.

Later Mic showed up and we played a bit of Rob's Forgotten Realms D&D game. I rolled up a new character, a 5th level Tempest Fighter that had lots of attacks, but low damage. One encounter was good, but I was dead tired and headed home about 11pm.

On Sunday, The Eldest and her Roommate came over for dinner. I roasted a chicken with potatoes, carrots, & green beans. It was pretty yummy if I say so myself. We played a three handed Ticket to Ride with The Eldest winning with a whopping 8 routes complete. We then introduced her Roommate to Pandemic. We lost to virus outbreak in the first game, but one the second.

Lots of games... :)

Finally, I worked on the WARMACHINE MkII Slow Grow League Rules. You can find them on The Game Shoppe Forum for review and comment. It should be fun.

jp
Play!

An update, my kingdom for an update

Greetings fellow gamers,

As I said before, I've got a ton of updating to do.

First off on Warmachine. Since the last post I have had two games versus Phillip down at the Shoppe on Tuesday. Turn out is pretty light, which is a sad reflection on my Pressganger skills, but I hope that it will pick up the closer we get to MkII release.

The first game was my Gorten force against Phillip's Severius. At 500 points it was a solid game with Phillip taking a Crusader, Devout, and Blessing of Vengeance, a Choir and a full unit of Temple Flame Gaurd w/ attachment. (I'm sure I'm missing something else... Come on, its been a week!) With my Gorten, I had Meg + mule, Min unit of Steelheads, a full unit of Precursors w/ attachment, Lady A & Holt, Bokur, and Rupert (I think). The game was well played with me picking at the edges of Phillip's force, eventually taking out his 'Jacks, except for the Blessing which in the end took out Gorten. The highlight was the two shield wall units poking each other with sticks and not getting much movement.

The second game this Tuesday was 750 points. Again I played Gorten (Alexia, Steelheads, Meg w/ Mule, Thor Stienhammer w/ Driller, Capt Sam & DD w/ Nomad, Rupert, Lady A & H, Eyriss). Phillip played Epic Krueger (WoldWyrd, WoldWarden, Gnarlhorn Satyr, Blackclad, Sentry Stones, Shifting Stones, Tharn Ravager Whitemane, War Wolf, Ravagers w/ Shaman, Wolves of Orboros w/ attachment). We didn't get a chance to finish this game as we were both taking a bit too long on the turns. Phillip tried to overload around a terrain feature, I shifted my forces back to the middle. Hero's from my side were Lady A & Mr. H. along with Eyriss took the Wolves to task as Phillip had spread them along the whole board. The Tharn Ravegers got tangled up with Steelheads and a Nomad that contained them long enough for the two casters to throw everything they could at each other. It was a great game, only wish we could have finished.

On Saturday's D&D, you might have seen the comments. We came within the razor's edge of a TPK. The dice swung around at the end, keeping the party alive, but it wasn't pretty. We had the only Defender (Kaz, the Dragonborn Paladin) and one of the Strikers (Eldacar, the Halfling Rouge) floating face down in the water as the party struggled to maintain their own against the Harpy and her accomplices. We did get four solid encounters, from the a big solo (440 hp worth) to the frozen room looking for treasure to a pair of water rooms that provided difficulty for the short ones in the party. Good times. Not sure when I'll be able to go again. Maybe on the 15th. Time will tell.

On Wednesday The Other Half and I had The Eldest, The Roommate, and the Eldest's boyfriend (hence forth known as The Boyfriend) over for dinner. The Eldest, The Roommate and I played two games of Ticket to Ride after dinner. It was nice to play a fun game and teach someone the cool new games around. The Roommate actually caught on real quick and won both games, plus she is the first person I ever see get a 'Longest Train' with every single train. Pretty impressive for a beginner!

Finally for tonight, Bloodbowl on the CPU. I've racked up a ton of Prestige points and should hit the actual Bloodbowl this season when it opens up. I am 33 wins and 2 ties so far. The AI, especially on the easy setting, is not that bright. I hope it gets a bit tougher on Medium when I finish up this campaign.

I'll update on the Race for the Galaxy expansion as I want to give it it's own space with pics. Short version is that is has some great cards added to the mix! :)

jp

Ah, a nail!