WBC West 2008 - Wrap Up

WBC-W '08 is in the history books. It was a week of heroic wins, doomed losses, and games that elated some and frustrated others. I like to feel I learn something every year in terms of what we can improve, and this year was no different. Here's my take on the event:

Most Anticipated Game - OCS Tunisia. I went in to this game knowing it would take a while to start internalizing, and sure enough it did, about five hours. By that time, however, I knew this was a game that I would enjoy while constantly feeling frustrated that I couldn't do anything I wanted with any units on the board, unlike the vast majority of wargames. I will be playing the Kasserine scenario solitaire in the near future to reinforce the ruleset. 

Best Play Experience - As much as I liked Tunisia, it was a learning game and one that I didn't start to enjoy until later on. The most intense play experience, though was A Victory Lost, one that was in doubt right up to the last turn. Honorable mention goes to Manifest Destiny, when I played about as good a game as I could, holding off Chuck at the very end to take the win despite the entire field nipping at my heels. 

Worst Play Experience - Thunder's Edge. This game taught me the most important lesson of the week - I don't like multiplayer strategy games in the stripe of Axis and Allies. At all. Throw in components that have a strong DTP feel, the potential for winning the game more or less after setup, and a subsystem that could have been left out of the game entirely to it's improvement, and the end result is a pile of MPS games that I own today but probably won't in about the time it takes for me to convince Mike to put them up on eBay. Attack!, Dust, probably a few more. I will hang onto Starcraft for now, mostly because of the interesting z-axis element and the action stacks, but it won't have much time to impress me. 

Rookie of the Year - Ken wins this one, hands down. Bribing us with really good hooch didn't hurt. He was pleasant and a gentleman throughout, even that first night when I was having my Thunder's Edge meltdown. Ken, you are welcome back anytime, although I suspect you now understand just why schedule is so important.

Biggest Surprise - My endurance. I've struggled to keep mental and physical concentration over the course of the week in years past, in some cases hitting the wall only two or three days in. This time, possibly because of my regular Wii Fit exercise program (proving any exercise is better than none), while I had occasional lapses, I definitely felt alert and involved more or less continually despite four or five hours of sleep the first couple of nights. Honorable mention goes to our three-player game of The Napoleonic Wars, which I played to check out the new edition rules. This is a very good three player wargame, and probably a great two-player game. Ken felt like he was getting beat up as Austria/Russia, but to hold of a stronger French army for nearly three turns - that was pretty impressive. Austria got removed from contention on that third turn (I had incredibly great card draws), and that may have hurt him in terms of his chances of winning the last couple of turns, but to be honest the game should have ended on the third turn with the Peace roll. 

Game I Most Want To Play Again Soon - Here I Stand, if only because I have yet to finish a full game. I will only play this three-player in the future, I can't imagine the downtime problems with six. Also the most likely to be played over a long period of time online (between Chuck, Eric, and myself). Honorable Mention to Nappy Wars 2-player.

Most Needed Player Aid - AVL needs a chart of ZOC and major river effects. I don't know how many times we had to look up various rules because of the delta - can't move from ZOC to ZOC across any major river space, but you *can* advance across a bridge with a mech and keep moving. Ack. The *only* knock on an otherwise classic game.

Biggest Disappointment - Actually, the game I most wished I'd played but didn't. This is a tie going to Pursuit of Glory (unpublished, so eminently unplayable) and The Burning Blue. Just not enough time to learn the latter, as I detail more below.

Things I'd Do Differently - The evening gaming was a bit of a mixed bag this year, and finding out that Mike liked almost none of them was frustrating, especially after we'd nixed Arkham Horror when he said he wasn't interested in playing that. As Mike is as certain to be there next year as anyone, I'm not sure what to do other than just look for games that will work well for the number we have minus two and have him play shorter and lighter two-player games. If it sounds like I'm picking on Mike, I'm really not. It's just that I'm trying to provide as comprehensive and fun an experience for everyone, and while I know I'm not going to hit the ball every time I go to bat, at the same time I'd prefer that everyone was playing games they liked. I'm fairly certain that Mike's experience this year was not what he'd hoped, partly because of the evening fare but also because of the Distortion Field wrecking multiple longer day games. 

We had a lot of confusion going into the week about when people would show up, and even one last second dropout (I got the mail the day I left), although that wasn't nearly as critical as the player would have only been there for the last couple of days when the schedule gets a lot looser. Next year I will post specific entry points. People are welcome to show up between entry points, but if they do there is an excellent chance they won't have an opponent unless they get lucky and someone else shows as well (or we have an odd number). As always, only day games are applicable. The entry points will be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If you came on Monday evening, for example, you wouldn't be guaranteed a game or opponent on Tuesday, but you would on Wednesday. 

This was a stickier problem this year than previously, so I'm just thinking out loud of how to solve the problem. If you have ideas, please contribute them. 

For those who wonder why we put such an emphasis on schedule, it's very simple. These are complex, involved games that run for (at a minimum) three hours or so, all the way up to 12 or more. Preparation, both in knowing the ruleset and the operational situation, is critical to the enjoyment of everyone at the table. Had I not been boned up on OCS, my game with Mike wouldn't have finished. And just forget trying to *teach* a game that you don't know really well. I know that Dave enjoyed his game of Wilderness War much more than if he hadn't spent time getting familiar with the rules and situation ahead of time. 

And our heads can only hold so many rulesets before they explode. I was considering bringing The Burning Blue, but decided against it at the last minute because I admitted to myself that I didn't have the necessary prep time in the game to allow it to be successful. That was another important lesson I learned this year, although fortunately before we got to the nanocon. 

Of course, even with all of these great games, it would all be for naught if the people I played with were all jerks (and I freely admit that I did my best impersonation of one during Thunder's Edge). Fortunately, they are all smart, funny, pleasant, patient people who are there as much for the company as for the gaming. Dave asked me as we were packing up if I'd felt like I was hosting this year, and I was surprised (pleasantly) to say that I hadn't. We are getting to a point where the event runs itself once things start, and it didn't matter what game we were playing or who I was playing with, every game with one exception was great fun. I really liked going to the concert on Saturday as well, and I *really* like not having to drive - four hours behind the wheel tends to take it out of me. 

I was also very happy to extend the week to a full seven days. We'll do this in the future, although if possible I might try to book the week from Saturday to Saturday to allow people a day to recover when they get home. I know I'm exhausted today, both physically and mentally, and if I had to work I think I'd fall asleep at my desk. The workmen with the compressor that started up at 8:30am didn't help, of course, but otherwise I probably would have slept in to noon. 

Dave asked us for our final video blog question about what we'd tell people to do if they were putting on a similar event. After four years, I'd say the following: it's about the people, the environment, and the games, in that order. Like the people you play with, understand the limits of the space you are in (as well as your own) and plan accordingly, and pick games you like to play, although if the first are taken care of the remainder is a relatively minor point. You will best know what your group enjoys - maybe side bets make things more interesting, or tournaments (not something so important for us), or keep a running total of who wins what (also not so important for us). By far the most important thing is that at the end of the week, everyone is ready to go home but at the same time thinking about Next Year.

Next Year, there will be t-shirts.

WBC West Report Part #7 - Final Day

When we last left our intrepid gamers, Doug and Chris were heading out to the Wilco concert (woo hoo!), Ken had finished his gaming for the weekend, and Dave, Mike, and Chuck were staying home to play India Rails. Apparently that didn't go so well for Mike, who I don't think has played a lot of these games. It's important to be careful to generate enough cash with your initial runs and not overbuild, and while I wasn't in the game I get the sense from his blog that he got caught short. You can always wipe your cards by losing a turn, which may or may not hurt you, but like I say, I wasn't there so I don't really know what happened. I do know that Chuck got the delivery cards in the right order and at the right times, which can be a problem with the game. Me, I prefer to play crayon rail games solitaire, as the downtime can be excruciating if you're just making a long run and other people are constantly making deliveries and drawing new load cards. 

There was a pretty epic Zopp game between Dave and Chuck later in the evening (I went to bed around 10:30pm), and I'm not quite sure who won, but the level of play was apparently a whole lot higher than when Mike and I were involved. ;-)

Sunday morning saw Chuck and I finishing up our AVL game. I had studied the board a little in case I went first to speed play up (right) and saw pretty early that were I to draw the STAVKA chit first that I would be in serious trouble. Sure enough, the first two chits allowed Chuck's Soviets to more or less wipe out my units near Stalino, and it was only the timely intervention (with no response from the Soviets) of most of my panzer units that pushed them back and more or less destroyed the Soviet army in that part of the board. However, I wasn't able to get the three infantry units out of Rostov intact, as that army didn't activate until too late to do any good, and I could have used them. However, the game was definitely in the balance.

Then I screwed up. I moved a panzer unit south to the Black Sea to prevent Chuck from using the road net to make a run for the Dnepr, but put it one space out of command from the best HQ in the area. To make matters worse, STAVKA came out first again on the 8th turn, and soon that unit was surrounded and I had to dilute my panzers to try to break out the southmost unit and also to head north to work on saving Kharkov. The breakout failed, and at that point I knew that I would be five points down at the end after losing points for OOS units, so I conceded the match at the start of the 9th turn. An epic game, with incredible luck on both sides. 

Perhaps the thing I like most about AVL is the narrative element. It really feels like units are fighting for their very survival, and I had not one but two chances to perform the famous "back-handed blow" first at Rostov, then at Stalino. It was a very tight game, but as happens in very tight games that activate via chits, how those chits come out at the end will have a huge effect on who wins. It is a testament to this game that I would have had a very real chance on the last turn had I not made that one stupid choice (among several stupid choices on my part). Of course, Chuck will say that I left him an opening to go retrieve 1st Panzer in Rostov, so there you go. A great game, one that I'll bring out repeatedly, and one that I'm already considering solitairing again in the coming weeks.

While we finished our game, Dave and Mike played for the Manouevre title, with Mike getting creamed fairly quickly. Something about dice and cards. The Deansian Statistical Distortion Field was in full swing over the course of the week, and Mike and I spoke a little about how shorter games might result in a more satisfying experience for him as he really likes close games that come down to the wire, and he'd have more chance of getting that experience with more games rather than fewer long ones. Of course, there's always chess. ;-) 

Our final game, played in between making beds and doing laundry, was Perikles, a fairly recent Wallace title published by Fantasy Flight. Personally, I think this is one of Wallace's best, although there is a fairly big luck element in the game during combat. And this time, I was the victim on the last turn. We were running 40-40-39-39 going into the final round, and I had no cities to guard, so I went after two of Sparta's cities. I had a chance to win the first one, but blew the following roll that would have won it. There's an example of where the dice, which are rolled perhaps fifteen or so times in a game by a given player, can really cause havoc. I failed pretty much all of my attack rolls in that turn, all six or so of them, and so handed Dave something like 12 points that put him in first place. 

That's not to say I don't like the game, far from it. I was in a position where I really needed some military victories because of how ownership of the cities and cube count played out, and I chose to go for two battles and failed both. One battle would not have gotten me the win, but it would have knocked Dave down far enough that Chuck would have taken it, so I went for both and reaped the whirlwind as a result. This game doesn't come out nearly often enough. 

And with that, WBC West was all over but the inevitable smack talk on the ride home. Dave asked us a few more wrap up questions for his video blog (an experiment that was successful from my perspective by virtue of it's relative unintrusiveness, although I have not seen the video yet). 

I will evaluate the week in a later entry.

WBC West Report #6 - Friday Evening thru Saturday

Friday night was Chuck's night to teach and moderate Republic of Rome, the 20 year old AH multiplayer diplomacy game where everyone can lose but only one person can win. The game has a rather checkered career, having had the initial problem of some of the densest rules ever written for what is a pretty simple game at it's core. Page after page of exceptions and special cases make reading the rules (in 1990's-era Don Greenwoodese) an exercise in tedium. My electromagnetic fields class textbook was an easier read. Making things worse, AH itself tended to give official errata that contradicted itself on occasion. There is a living rules edition on the net that's been stable for a couple of years, and I recommend it as the authoritative rules in the absence of input from the publisher. 

Fortunately, Chuck knows the game well, and so the five of us listened to him explain the rules (too much - this game *must* be taught on the fly, as goes for so many AH multiplayer games of the era), then dove into the labyrinthine morass that was Roman politics. After a couple of turns, we pretty much felt we knew what we were doing, but given that no one really wanted to be sneaky we mostly just dropped intrigue cards on people who looked like they were ahead and gave consuls to people who had recently lost senators. 

In an interesting bookend, we had an epidemic early in the game, and one more on the very last Forum Phase roll. In the first case, Dave and Chris lost senators, and in the last I lost my really good senator to end up close to last before I could transfer my faction leader marker to him. In the end, it was really more about having a lot of fun with people around a table than playing the game per se. This sort of game screams "fiddly!" to me in so many ways, and the weak 90's era AH graphics and chits don't help. Put all of the markers and other minutiae into an iPhone app, and this might be worth playing, but for now I'm unlikely to pull it out. I own a pristine copy that I may end up putting up on eBay before the Valley Games reprint comes out (assuming it ever does - that's a company with a poor track record of success in publishing).

Saturday was our last full day, which is always a bit sad for me. My brains are *just* starting to run out of my ears, which indicates to me that the week went about as long as it was supposed to. Today, Chuck and Mike played the Cedar Creek scenario in Glory III, with Mike's die-rolling and the Deansian Statistical Distortion Field putting the big hurt on his side. Dave did some biking and other non-gaming activities, while Chris, Ken, and myself played three turns of Napoleonic Wars. Combining this with Welly and Here I Stand in one week shows that I can at least tolerate playing this system, and I enjoyed all three games (despite the delta between the three nearly popping my head). 

I took France, while Chris was the wily English and Ken the Austrians and Russians. Napoleon took his first impulse to make a run at Austria, but suffered horrendous attrition (thankfully halved) of half his force in the first forced march space. Ken brought up the Russians quickly, and Chris sank the combined Spanish/French fleet at Trafalgar with no problem. The French ships never left port again, not even to commerce raid. That gave Chris the chance to move his units around the board at will, but it didn't help much. A build up in Naples was met with a French force that zipped down from Milan to first take Naples (fortuitous, as Joseph was crowned on turn 3 by a proxy neutral card play). A build up in Portugal resulted in the British kicked out of Portugal and nearly losing Gibraltar (but the Spanish were unable to finish on the second round after getting two sixes in the first). Finally, he invaded mainland France not once but three times to little avail other than soaking up French CPs, which admittedly is the whole point.

Meanwhile, Napoleon simply couldn't get it done in Austria. Five attacks in the first turn all failed to dislodge Kutuzov's large mixed army, and despite Spain having a Capitulation card in the second turn, France wasn't able to get into Vienna before it was played. Prussia's fortunes went back and forth and back and forth, and very nearly fell into the French camp when England failed to return them to Unaligned status, which would allow the French to preempt on the next impulse and play a 6 action card with a 6 Reserve card (the old plus cards in the first edition), but Austria had a card that preempted France's preemption, and thus Prussia remained neutral into the third turn. I'll note that the French had four six cards, a five, and a four, plus their reserves which were 6 and 5 respectively. Hard to get more CPs than that in a turn. Things were better at the end of turn 2, plus Europe was exhausted, but a six was needed to create peace and the game continued into turn 3.

On the third turn, France had managed to grab a few keys (Naples, Salzburg, Venice) and had an extra card. Good events bumped the cards for them and the Spanish up, and they ended up being the last two powers with cards. This time, when France played the card that lets them replace all of the cards in their hand, they drew the capitulation card, so I knew it was time for Napoleon to bring it to Vienna. Kutuzov intercepted, and the final battle dice totals were 29 to 25 with the edge going to the Austrians and Russians. I rolled like a demon, though (finally, after losing so many battles where I had an edge), routing the two forces, although the Russians had a card that negated the rout, and then preempted after the British impulse (this time unopposed) to force the Capitulation and knock the Austrians out of the war. Only one ceded territory, though, but I still had enough to put France up above any other power. Britain never had enough gas to get the Prussians in, and Europe was once again Exhausted. 

At this point, France was the only player to donate a card to stop the peace roll, meaning they'd win on a 2 or higher on a d6. 

So I rolled a one. 

At this point, we were all exhausted ourselves after several days of gaming, and we all agreed that we'd let the game die on it's own. France was in a good board position, although with a little cleanup to do. Prussia, on the verge of going to the coalition camp soon, and Turkey going to the Austrians (like I cared), were both about as full of units as possible. Berlin had more than 20 units and four leaders. That next turn would have been about the French and British pushing that rope back and forth, while the Russians (who saw something like 15 units and leaders go to the regroup box after the Austrian capitulation) and Austrians would have been playing catch up. The French wouldn't have been able to bring in the Prussians, but the Austrians would have gotten the Turks, although aside from threatening Italy I'm not really sure how much help they'd have been. 

Nappy Wars is a real hoot, and definitely best with 2, maybe three. I suspect that this will see some more table time for Chris and myself, as it hits his sweet spot for complexity. 

Tonight we are off to see Wilco, Ken has bowed out as his family came out to Sunriver, and I suspect that Mike has about had it with dice for the week as well. Tomorrow, Chuck and I hope to finish our epic AVL game, and I will do a recap post on Monday of the entire week as well as how that final set of games turned out.

WBC West Report #5 - Friday Day

I'm taking the opportunity between games to fit in what has, so far, been the highlight of the week for me - my A Victory Lost game with Chuck. We've gotten through six of nine turns, with the outcome very much up in the air. In other action, Chris and Mike are finishing up their FAB: The Bulge game (which is going the distance), while Dave and Ken had an epic game of Hannibal that ended with Dave losing Hannibal at the 2/3's mark and Ken taking advantage to control enough areas that Dave felt the game was over.

I've played a couple of games of AVL, but it always seemed that things went pretty well for the Germans early and they didn't really have to sweat too much. In our game, however, I decided to run early to avoid multiple Soviet chit pulls that would wipe out my front line units. Chuck focused on 1st Guard, 2nd Guard, 5th Shock, 3rd Tank (which comes in early), and 28th Army, which comes in from the SE part of the map in an attempt to sneak into Rostov early. 

Chuck got to the Don and Donets rivers by the end of turn 2, but had to spend a little time regrouping and cleaning up Axis minor units in his backfield before continuing his advance. Of particular importance were the Hungarians up in the NW part of the map, who were holding onto the only real Soviet rail line into the rest of the map. It was critical that they hold through turn 4, and they somehow managed to do so, if only a single critical space. That crimped Popov's army as well as 3rd Tank, which are currently driving on Kharkov against pretty thin forces. 

The reason those forces are thin is that my German panzers (far too many of which were lost because I didn't pay careful enough attention to Chuck infiltrating past them so that they had to take losses instead of retreating) concentrated in the south to try to relieve the 1st Panzer Army, which *almost* made it to Rostov in time (I did actually get into Rostov, but was out of supply at the end of turn 5). That's one of the risks of the "run away" strategy - how do you keep the Soviets from advancing on both sides of the Don before the 1st Panzer gets on the map? Fortunately, by the sixth turn, I had two "activate anyone" chits in the cup, but things got very exciting when I drew two chits that allowed Chuck to attack my somewhat exposed units and reduce them. Things looked grim.

On turn 6, after Chuck had gotten his shots in, I finally got my Manstein, 1st Panzer, and 4th Panzer activations, enough to destroy three Soviet tank units, reduce a couple of Sov infantry beyond repair, and supply the 1st Panzer army units going into turn 7. They all have an excellent chance of pulling back across the river in time to stay fairly safe, and Chuck lost enough mech units so that I suspect I will be able to hold (or at least counterattack) against any further advances. On the down side, the areas around Stalino and Kharkov are also weak, and it will be interesting to see if I can hold (or retake) either or both. Stalino wouldn't be too hard, but I can't really lose either - I'm right on the hairy edge of points, so anything I lose I'll have to make up somewhere. Perhaps I won't pull back quite so much as I think I will, and I do have two of Chuck's remaining mech units pinned against the Black Sea. I will need those panzers, though, to save Stalino, and the 3rd Tank army is so strong that if it can hook up with 1st Guard, he'll get three activations a turn and they will be hard to stuff back in the bottle. Should be an exciting end to what has been an extremely exciting game.

Tonight, we play Republic of Rome (moderated by Chuck, a game I'm really looking forward to), then tomorrow Chris and I are going to try out the new edition of Nappy Wars. Chuck and I hope to finish our game on Sunday morning while we clean up - it's an excellent choice as those STAVKA draws take about 20 minutes to do, so while he moves the entire army I can get the house closed up. Saturday night I'm not sure what's going on, as Chris and I are going to take in the Wilco concert. And I didn't bring any long pants or a hat. Sigh.

WBC West Report #4 - Wednesday Evening through Thursday

A little more report than usual tonight. 

Wednesday evening saw us playing one of my favorite multi-player strategy games, Manifest Destiny. This game is an evolution of Age of Renaissance, in itself a rather radical development of Civilization. Where AoR took Civ to a whole new level of not only complexity but also math (the third epoch requires adding and subtracting up to six or seven two and three digit numbers together to determine the cost of a single advance), MD was intended from the start to streamline the design, and to my mind it is very successful in that effort. The production values are bizarre at best (use of clip art for graphics, line art for the map, and scanned photos and paintings for the cards), but I'd rather have a good game that looks bad rather than a bad game that looks good. 

I consider myself to be a decent to good MD player (and in fact was once told by a championship AoR player that I was good at that game as well, although I don't think he had enough of a view of my play to know). I demonstrated this pretty well in our game, managing to pull off not one but two go-last-take-commodity-areas-go-first-collect-big-money plays, one near the end of the game with a $120 payout in oil, resulting in three 3VP advances in one turn. However, Chuck gave me a huge run for my money, coming within one Breakthrough roll (which required one of three numbers on a d6) of beating me. Still, I got the cards when I needed them, and played the way you are supposed to when life hands you lemons. I even started in Pennsylvania, considered one of the tougher starting points in the game. 

Thursday was Here I Stand day, while Mike took the morning off until Ken arrived and they played Napoleon's Triumph. I really like HiS - it's like nothing else out there in terms of it's asymmetrical powers, religious/political competition axes, and multiple fronts that you need to keep an eye on regularly, not just when things heat up. Henry VIII's search for a male heir alone makes this unlike anything else out there, not to mention the subject matter of the Reformation. 

Chuck took the Protestants/English, I was the Papacy/Hapsburgs, and we gave Dave the Ottomans/French so that he wouldn't have to worry about the religious battle. Chuck did a great job of explaining the rules, but we played very slowly. We also missed a rather critical rule that you couldn't reform/counter-reform the same space more than once in an impulse if you missed the first time. Chuck got off to a good start with the 95 Theses, but after that he was doing multiple rolls on a single space until well into turn 3 or 4. As such, he owned Germany, at least religiously, by the end of turn 2. We gave up after turn 4, nearly six or seven hours after we started. Most games I've played of HiS that start in the first turn go like this, mostly because you can't learn what you're supposed to do by watching other players. Everyone has very different goals and ways to score victory points, so you have to figure it out and ask questions when it's your turn.

The game has so many little subsystems (Ottoman Piracy, debates, reformation attempts, the Six Wives, exploration of the New World, it just goes on and on), that it's nearly impossible to keep all of the rules in hand unless you play regularly. Eric, Chuck, and myself played the tournament scenario a few years ago three player, and it went along pretty briskly, but we'd played recently. I played last January, and I swear it was like I hadn't played in three years. 

The other huge issue, at least unless you're playing with three, is downtime. As France or England, who don't have a lot going on on the board, you can wait 15 minutes between turns if things are moving along briskly. It's much better with three, although France/Ottoman still has to wait for quite a while if the Protestant or Papacy decide to do reformation, and forget it if the Protestants have a card that lets them make five or six attempts. 

The thing is, I really like the game. I think that Chuck and I may try the religious 2-player variant published in C3i that puts the political/military elements of the game into a card deck that simulates the other events going on around converting the faithful (or keeping them unconverted). I'd love to see how the game progresses for the English once Mary I enters the game and makes their lives hell on earth. I'd like to see more of the Popes show up (we had three Popes in four turns!) Perhaps Eric will be willing to play one turn a week for a few weeks with Chuck and I to get a full game in at some point, now that we have the rules in our heads. 

After a very nice dinner at Ken's place (just a couple of miles away), we started out the Manoeuvre tournament. I started out playing Dave, only to find myself with not nearly enough units on his side of the board and him smack dab in the middle of mine. I had an excellent shot at killing his fifth unit on what I knew would be the last turn, and I had not one, not two, but three unit cards, a Committed Attack card, and a leader. The odds of me killing him were excellent, right up to the point where he doubled his defense factor to 10 with a leader of his own, and then used a Guerilla card to remove one d10 from my roll. I could have killed him, but I needed a huge roll and didn't get it. BTW, I was Russia to Dave's Spanish.

My second game was against Mike, using Chris' copy of the game, with me playing the Austrians and Mike taking the Prussians. Unfortunately, Chris hadn't gone through and shuffled his decks well ahead of time, and the tiny decks don't shuffle well or easily. Mike discovered this about three minutes in after drawing cards for the same regiments in a row three different times. Having all of those cards show up in a row was pretty handy for wiping out two of my units, and at that point he said that he thought his deck needed more shuffling, which he did. He wiped out a third unit, and I was pretty sure I was going to lose quickly, but then he stopped drawing useful cards. I managed to first catch up in unit kills, then managed the fifth one about 30 minutes into the game for the win.

The crazy thing is, I considered asking if Mike wanted to start over after he realized what a mess his deck was, but as I was down two armies I figured it would look like I was just whining and hoping to reset the game. Had Mike asked to restart, I would have happily done it just because we hadn't started on an even setting. Now I wish I'd done it, even though we figured that reshuffling his deck would "fix" things, even though it would give me a huge disadvantage because I'd gotten the short end of the stick, basically spotting him two units. I figured that it wasn't a big deal, though, and soldiered through to a win when he kept drawing cards for units that had been destroyed already and I got cards that worked well together. 

After the game, I went through and thoroughly shuffled all of the decks in Chris' game so that wouldn't happen again. When I buy a new game, I always shuffle the cards repeatedly and even deal them out repeatedly just to make sure they're nice and randomized for this very reason.

Too bad, because my game with Dave was really fun (except when I'd do something and he'd be surprised that you could do that, to which I started asking Chuck what sort of teaching job he'd done with Dave to have so many rules misunderstandings!) It all worked out, because Dave beat Chuck in his second game, and since he'd already beaten me *and* Chuck, Mike was the last person Dave hadn't beaten. They may or may not play the final at some later date. 

Tomorrow, we start with a delicious breakfast out at Sintra, a great restaurant in Sunriver, then Chuck and I play A Victory Lost, Chris and Mike play FAB: Bulge, and Dave and Ken will play a game to be determined. Tomorrow night is Chuck showing us Republic of Rome, an old AH chestnut I've wanted to play for years but was daunted by the overly dense ruleset.