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.

Song of Blades and Heroes

I've seen Song of Blades and Heroes (SBH), from Ganesha Games, on the street for a while, usually associated at a post on Tabletop Gaming News.  I've always  kind of discounted it due to the really cheap looking cover.  Heck it looks as bad as some of those original D&D cover art.  Compare for yourself.   So it was with some trepidation that I plucked down an entire $8 on a PDF version of the rules while being board out of my skull one evening on my last work trip.

What I found was a really clean, simple to execute rules set for a generic fantasy gaming.   In a nut shell, each figure on the board has two stats; Quality and Combat.  The Quality goes from 2+ to 6+.  It is the number you need to roll on a D6 to activate the model this turn.  Combat is your martial skill and is a single roll up of your offensive/defensive/armor/weapon/skill/etc.  It ranges from 1-5.  One of the unique items I like on SBH is the activation system.  When you choose to activate a model, you roll between 1-3 D6.  Your choice.  For every die that comes up on or above your Quality level, you get an action.  If you get two or more failures in a single roll, then your turn is over.  This forces the player to decide how risk averse the are...  Roll a single die for everyone and you will get to activate everyone, but be very limited to only a single action.  These actions walk, jog, run, attack, powerful attack, shoot, etc...  each take 1-3 actions.  If your only rolling that single die, then you can walk up to your opponent, but you won't be able to attack him.

On Saturday night late, after I had the green light, Eric came over and we tired a quick game.  He had a small undead hoard with a Wraith, zombies, skeleton warriors and a few archers.  I had an orc list with a warlord, 4 warriors and 4 goblin archers.  What really struck each of us during the game was the importance of the leader's ability to make your Quality better while in the Long range.  Eric's zombies had a real problem being Quality 6+ after his leader left them behind.

They have a quick and dirty mini campaign that can be completed in a night once you get the rules down as an average game is suppose to be about 45 mins long.  Ours was a bit over an hour, but we did keep looking up stuff to make sure we got it ok.

Another great feature is that you can build your army as you like since they have an online warband builder that allows you to create a custom warband.  So break out those Warmachine or Warhammer figs and get to building boys!

Finally, the seemed to have expanded past Fantasy.  They have both a modern gun centric game using the same core rule set as well as a Napoleonic skirmish game which might be interesting.

jp
Another one?

Slackerville...

So I only posted four times this month.  That is bad.  I wish I could say I haven't reported more gaming stuff, but I really can't, it has been pretty quite.

Still on the road for travel, but did have today off (vice Saturday that I put in a 10 hour day in) so I went to the theater and saw "The Wolfman".

I guess I would give it 2 out 6 silver bullets.  It was visually well done, except the close up of the wolfman looked a bit comical.  It looked like they were trying to pay homage to the old B&W version, but it didn't really get pulled off well.  That combined with some rather lack luster acting it just didn't sell well.  Which is sad, because the Wolfman has always been my favorite of the classic monster movies.

I did purchase a PDF version of "Song of Blades and Heroes" for $8.  It has some real simple game mechanics that looks like it would fit well in a skirmish game.  It claims to be playable in under 45 mins once you are comfortable with the rules.  I hope to pressure strong arm talk into the gang into trying out.  Cost would be zero as we all have a ton of fantasy figs and I've bought the rules already.  It looks perfect to run a mordhiem type campaign with a significant reduction in book keeping.

Any Hoo...  Have a good one and I'll catch you next month with more game stuff...  I hope!

jp
Post?  What Post?

Saturday Gaming

So I've been real slow in getting game stuff on the blog.  Been a tough month for gaming.

On Saturday I went to the Shoppe after my work out and played three games of Warmacine.  First game was a bonus game against Mike C.  I played Butcher, Devastator, Full Man O War unit and a Manhunter.  He played a bunch of pointy eared elves...  I can't tell them apart... He misjudged some distances with his caster (Eagle dude)  and failed a charge on the Butcher, allowing him to return the favor.

Second game was against Paul A. as a league game.  He had Ashlynn list with Precursor Knights, Nomad, & Rupert.  Not a bad list, but not a lot of 'fodder' for getting in the way or big hitters to take out MoW/Jacks.  I ended up trampling the Devastator to Ashlynn and getting her with the buzz saw.

Third game was another bonus game with Eric F.  He was playing Reznik, which is always tricky given Engine of Destruction.  I can't remember all the details of Eric's list, but it was a good game.

Afterwards Eric, Adam, Mike and I played two games of Formula D.  We tried the street racing rules on the first game.  Made for interesting play with the Nitro rules.  Eric took first, I snuck in on second due to Mike's spin out.  Second game was traditional on the Sebring track.  I won, with Eric in second and Adam coming in third, while Mike crashed.

Good games all around.  Thanks guys!

jp
Play!

Afterwards

Runewars Unboxing...

The much sought after, slow to produce Runewars Unboxing Video... :)



jp

Runewars... To Arms, To Arms

I broke down and purchased Runewars a few weeks ago when I had bonus points to spend at The Game Shoppe.  Saturday gaming has been hit and miss with events and schedule, but I was able to get Rob, Steve, and  Team Chaos (Eric & Mark) to play last week.  The box says it takes 3 hours to play, I assume that means when you have experienced players.  It took us about an hour to set up the board and read the rules to get us all on the same sheet, then playing took us about four hours.  Now, those turns did pick up steam the further we went along and we all started to understand the finer points of the game.

The turn order the first round also includes race selection.  Rob took the Elves, I took Humans allowing Team Chaos to have the Demons and Steve the Undead.  Wouldn't have been natural if they hadn't. :)  The random board construction was an interesting add, allowing each game to be a bit different as home realms and map tiles used alters for each game, let alone how they are placed together.  Rob's Elves got 'stuck' way out on a lonely limb and Steve's undead were on the low side of the other side behind some defendable mountains.  Eric's forces and my Humans were squared across from each other pretty tightly.

One of the nice features to this Fantasy Flight Game is that they built in an end-state vice 'total dominance'.  You have to collect Dragon Runes and have control of six of them or six 'years' in game time pass with the winner being the player with the most Runes.   In the end, Eric and I were racing to get the Rune's in place, but Eric and Team Chaos was able to get their hero into town first.  The turn went five full years plus a spring and summer.

Everyone seemed to like the game, I would like to see a 6 player expansion with Dwarves and Orcs as the new races so more folks can play.

I need to record the audio for the unboxing, so I'll post that up as soon as I can get to it.

jp
Defend the Realm!

Steelhead Riflemen... A sign of things to come?

I must admit, despite playing Khador for the slow grow league, I am still very much a big fan of the merc stuff.  Privateer has come out with a preview of a unit that I didn't even know was on the horizon, the Steelhead Riflemen unit...

Flavor text reads:

A doctrine of combined arms lies at the heart of the Steelhead Company’s training manual and their riflemen are one of the most important elements of these combined forces. Working in concert with other Steelheads, or the regular forces of a client army, the riflemen are skilled shooters capable of decimating enemy lines or providing covering fire to ensure that their allies reach the enemy in one piece. Every rifleman is a solid marksman, but when ordered to concentrate their fire at a single target they become truly deadly.

This sounds like they will synergy with the other Steelhead units in the game. Adam should be happy to expand his force in a very shooty direction as well...

What I wonder, like many others, is a Steelhead Warcaster that far away? If Merc's go the way of other factions, will we see 12 casters? That would mean four empty slots, three if you take Gorten Epic (which would rock, but that is a different story/wish list/wild speculation)... Only time will tell, or a preview, what ever comes first. :)

jp

Fire for effect!