Oooo, deep title Douglas!
Tuesday showed what can happen when you have a lot of discretionary time on your hands - six hours of WoW online. Everything seemed to go pretty smoothly, with me getting up to 11th level and completing quite a few quests. I also moved on to the Loch Mordan region and took my first flight path to Ironhold.
Still, six hours. I did stop for lunch and a shower, fortunately. I would have played even longer but the servers were down for maintenance until 11am PST, although that didn't stop me from trying to log on every ten minutes until I got lucky at 9:30. It did not help that Mel was working that day, so no one to tell me I was playing too much. Which I was. Today I'll be forced by events to avoid playing more than a couple of hours at most, and in fact my intention is not to play at all. Hello PS2 and Guitar Hero!
Hmm, that's a lot like trading in cocaine for morphine. Which is really a pretty good idea, believe it or not - one of the founders of Johns Hopkins saved his life and career through exactly that strategy.
But enough about my supposed drug use. On to boardgaming with actual people! A Tuesday night Rip City Gamers session! At Matt's! Playing WoW the Boardgame!
;-)
Matt and Laurent had expressed an interest in playing the board version, and so I brought my copy thinking there would be four of us (including Chuck. Silly me, I forgot about the unholy trinity of Alex, Liz, and Dana. However, they all were interested in giving the game a try, so we set up for six players with me "game mastering" and teaching the rules as we went.
Six players takes a long time to play this game, and in fact we were about two thirds of the way into the game when suddenly it was after 10pm and we needed to pack it up. I was glad we'd tried out the six-player competitive version as it really showed some interesting characteristics that I've typically missed in my usual solitaire or two-player games. In the latter, the game is pretty much about the race (against your opponent or the clock) and developing your characters. In the six-player game, while there was a lot of focus on those elements, it seemed to me that the social factor was very strong, with both sides spending quite a bit of time planning out their moves to their best advantage. I saw this to some extent in the game I played with Dave and Chuck at WBC West last year, although I was the guy who was healing up much of the time while they were running around in tandem killing everything in sight.
Unfortunately, WoW is an experiential game rather than a true competitive game, and there was little interaction between the two groups other than a little quest poaching thanks to a Subterfuge card. Dana ran smack into the same problem I alluded to in the last paragraph, where if you blow a couple of battles you can find yourself in a world that can and will kick your ass at the slightest provocation. There are a few things in the expansion that help here (giving at least the opportunity of XP for independent critters) but as in many development games a bad turn at the wrong time can kill you. Worse, it puts you in a position where you have little control over your fate - if you have no money to upgrade your powers, for example, you can end up in a cycle where you attack a too-strong quest monster over and over, spending four or five cycles for every iteration.
On the plus side, this didn't happen to anyone else. In fact, Chuck (who was also on the Alliance side) was screaming ahead, hitting level 4 before we'd finished turn 12, which is perhaps the most impressive XP collecting I've seen - that's only 12 actions on his part, including training, movement, etc. He got the benefit of a war fought by Liz and Dana that benefitted everyone, but still quite a feat.
Playing with two experienced WoW online players, Matt and Laurent (who apparently will show up if I offer to bring this game), it was nice to hear that it did indeed invoke the spirit of the online game quite well. Jesse had commented on this too, but since that was a two-player game I was interested to see if it worked with more.
Playing time was a bit of an issue, but to be honest I think we could have finished had I been able to set the game up ahead of time and had everyone been familiar with the rules. There is a lot of planning that can go on during the other faction's turn, and I did encourage this. However, I had to teach the game as we went, so the first few combats went quite slowly, but by the third or fourth on each side everyone had a very strong grasp on how combat worked. Considering the complexity of the system, I think it is quite impressive in how intuitive it is. There were a few questions coming up over the course of the game, but in general I was able to answer almost everything without checking the rules, and when I did I actually found the index to be useful! Amazing.
All in all, I'm more impressed with this game the more I play it. I think that the expansion is a must buy, as it does give you something to do with the Blue monsters and gives every character a broad range of choices for development. It's almost like running two concurrent role-playing games on a common board, with a strong race element (we used Nefarian, who demands the players move as quickly as possible as he may end the game sooner than the full 30 turns). While I think you need the right people, temperment, and fairly large table (Matt's extended dining room table was not large enough, to be honest), it worked well and I think everyone enjoyed the game with the possible exception of Dana who (rightly) felt that he was put into a difficult situation by the game itself. My opinion is that this is a risk in an experiential game, and while it doesn't thrill me I can live with it, and in fact have been in that very situation myself. At that point, you have to start scaling down your expectations of your contribution, and help out with planning for the rest of your faction. In a two-player game... well, that's why we have concessions.
Thanks to everyone who was willing and eager to play this monster. I suspect that this game will start to see more playings in our group in the future, even if they are two-player sessions (which Laurent has expressed a strong interest in).
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Die, Walmart, Die
Did I really think that Walmart would ship their Wii bundle for $100?
Try $215. For seven games and a video game console that weighs about 10 pounds. For the *cheapest* shipping option.
Ouchie.
Walmart, always looking out for the little guy. I guess Sam Walton is a midget.
Try $215. For seven games and a video game console that weighs about 10 pounds. For the *cheapest* shipping option.
Ouchie.
Walmart, always looking out for the little guy. I guess Sam Walton is a midget.
Hitting My Head Against The Wii Wall
I have now completed four solid weeks of Wii hunting, primarily by going to Fred Meyer's on the days they receive shipments. Eight trips, no success. This is particularly distressing because I know that both Best Buy and Circuit City (at the least, probably more) have put Wii's on sale very recently. The guy at Fred's even said he's stopped looking for anything from Nintendo as all they've gotten in were three Wiimotes in that time. I'm beginning to suspect that this particular Fred's is selling the Wii's out of the back of the truck, and that perhaps I need to be throwing some bribes someone's way. Almost.
The other avenue I've been pursuing is an online ad from Walmart. They offer a Wii, an "accessory" (extended warranty, worth less than the price of the paper it's written on), and *seven* games for $630. At $50 a game, plus $250 for the base Wii set, that's $600, so you're paying $30 (plus shipping, which I'm assuming will top $100 for reasons soon to be revealed) extra for the set.
There are so many reasons I haven't gone ahead and done this, despite my wife's nagging that I should just shut up and buy the damned thing. First, I have a real problem with Walmart's employment practices - for a particularly eye-opening account of how they run their stores, check out Barbara Ehrenriech's "Nickled and Dimed" book - and I have only purchased a handful of poster frames for wargames from them (they seem to be the only decent source in my area).
Second, while there are arguably seven decent (note that I don't use the word "good") games for the Wii out there, they aren't all in the list of games you can get. The Rayman Rabbit Rampage game is missing, as is the obvious WiiPlay choice (which, while having somewhat lame games, does get you a Wiimote), and certainly not the new Sonic game. As such, you are left with three or four good games and three not so good ones.
Finally, there is this little disclaimer that states that items will be shipped as they arrive. This means that they will send you the games, and maybe the Wii in a couple of months. My guess is that they'll also trickle the games out one or two at a time, tacking on $8 for shipping each time, with another $40 for the Wii itself. That's an extra $100 if they choose to be completely nasty about it. Make no mistake, companies often make a significant profit from "handling" charges that are hidden from the customer until the actual purchase point when said customer is already emotionally commited to buying.
Still, it's more tempting than I may be willing to admit to myself. We'll see how I'm feeling in another week.
The other avenue I've been pursuing is an online ad from Walmart. They offer a Wii, an "accessory" (extended warranty, worth less than the price of the paper it's written on), and *seven* games for $630. At $50 a game, plus $250 for the base Wii set, that's $600, so you're paying $30 (plus shipping, which I'm assuming will top $100 for reasons soon to be revealed) extra for the set.
There are so many reasons I haven't gone ahead and done this, despite my wife's nagging that I should just shut up and buy the damned thing. First, I have a real problem with Walmart's employment practices - for a particularly eye-opening account of how they run their stores, check out Barbara Ehrenriech's "Nickled and Dimed" book - and I have only purchased a handful of poster frames for wargames from them (they seem to be the only decent source in my area).
Second, while there are arguably seven decent (note that I don't use the word "good") games for the Wii out there, they aren't all in the list of games you can get. The Rayman Rabbit Rampage game is missing, as is the obvious WiiPlay choice (which, while having somewhat lame games, does get you a Wiimote), and certainly not the new Sonic game. As such, you are left with three or four good games and three not so good ones.
Finally, there is this little disclaimer that states that items will be shipped as they arrive. This means that they will send you the games, and maybe the Wii in a couple of months. My guess is that they'll also trickle the games out one or two at a time, tacking on $8 for shipping each time, with another $40 for the Wii itself. That's an extra $100 if they choose to be completely nasty about it. Make no mistake, companies often make a significant profit from "handling" charges that are hidden from the customer until the actual purchase point when said customer is already emotionally commited to buying.
Still, it's more tempting than I may be willing to admit to myself. We'll see how I'm feeling in another week.
Monday, February 26, 2007
This Is Why I Don't Gamble
Thursday - Buy World of Warcraft (basic game, no expansion). Spend two full hours getting it installed/updated. Five minutes into the game I no longer care. Play for about an hour, figure out the basics of the interface. I'm a gnome rogue, btw. Apparently not a great choice if you want to join a lot of groups (and I'm a bit surprised that I've been invited to so many), but I'm more interested in getting to know the game on my own.
Friday - Play for about 90 minutes. Pretty much exhaust all of the quests in Coldridge Valley, I think I'm around 4th level by this time, which seems to have gone pretty quickly. Ran into my first "challenging" quest in killing trolls in the cave.
Saturday - Play for about two hours. Move into Dun Morgain (or whatever it's called). Get used to the area in that time, do a few quests, hit level 6 after killing a lot of critters.
Sunday - Play for about 2.5 hours. Trolls in this area are a lot tougher to kill. I figure out that I can get Shimmerweek up on Shimmer Ridge by camping, going into stealth mode, then poaching from the troll baskets while the other players in the area fight the trolls. i decide some time later that maybe this was on the rude side, but hey, I'm a rogue. I also spend a *lot* of time dying in the troll cave in the area, at one point I have to wait about 15 minutes for some more players to come into the cave and kill some of the 12 (really) trolls that are roaming unmolested around my corpse. Make a really dumb decision to exit the game in the cave when I realize I have to go to a choir concert in 40 minutes and I haven't showered yet.
Sunday evening - read parts of the manual, so some online reading while Mel watches Grey's Anatomy. Fall asleep thinking of how to kill that last troll headhunter to complete my quest and avoid dying for the 90th time in that dumbass cave. BTW, I'm really bad at sneaking up on monsters, they always turn around when I get just a smidge too close.
Monday - Play for about 2 hours, maybe a bit less. Finish the headhunter quest, learn to cook, spend a little time looking for copper to mine but just end up getting killed by animals who wander by and I have to spend a very long time remembering how to get to using a dagger instead of my pickaxe. Take a cask of ale up to Loc Morgan, take a keg to delive into the area, but decide to head for Ironforge to deliver a map of the troll cave. Wow, Ironforge is cool. Wow, this game is taking over my life. My wife asks me how I'm doing on limiting my playing time, I mumble something about that I'm doing quite well but privately have to think for a minute as to when I actually started. Amazingly, I *do* stop when I tell myself I will, but mostly because it's dinner time. Finish at 8th level, starting to work on my various skills (especially mining and cooking, engineering just seems to happen for some reason). Oh, and I start learning first aid.
Monday evening - Think about how Mel will be at work much of the next day and how I can get in a good four hours of play and go looking for mechanical parts amongst the leper gnomes. Consider joining a 12-step program but decide it would cut into my playing time. Wonder how long before Mel insists on a one-hour-per-day limit (my entry in the betting pool is this time next week). Think about what I'll do tomorrow in the game.
I am in serious trouble.
Friday - Play for about 90 minutes. Pretty much exhaust all of the quests in Coldridge Valley, I think I'm around 4th level by this time, which seems to have gone pretty quickly. Ran into my first "challenging" quest in killing trolls in the cave.
Saturday - Play for about two hours. Move into Dun Morgain (or whatever it's called). Get used to the area in that time, do a few quests, hit level 6 after killing a lot of critters.
Sunday - Play for about 2.5 hours. Trolls in this area are a lot tougher to kill. I figure out that I can get Shimmerweek up on Shimmer Ridge by camping, going into stealth mode, then poaching from the troll baskets while the other players in the area fight the trolls. i decide some time later that maybe this was on the rude side, but hey, I'm a rogue. I also spend a *lot* of time dying in the troll cave in the area, at one point I have to wait about 15 minutes for some more players to come into the cave and kill some of the 12 (really) trolls that are roaming unmolested around my corpse. Make a really dumb decision to exit the game in the cave when I realize I have to go to a choir concert in 40 minutes and I haven't showered yet.
Sunday evening - read parts of the manual, so some online reading while Mel watches Grey's Anatomy. Fall asleep thinking of how to kill that last troll headhunter to complete my quest and avoid dying for the 90th time in that dumbass cave. BTW, I'm really bad at sneaking up on monsters, they always turn around when I get just a smidge too close.
Monday - Play for about 2 hours, maybe a bit less. Finish the headhunter quest, learn to cook, spend a little time looking for copper to mine but just end up getting killed by animals who wander by and I have to spend a very long time remembering how to get to using a dagger instead of my pickaxe. Take a cask of ale up to Loc Morgan, take a keg to delive into the area, but decide to head for Ironforge to deliver a map of the troll cave. Wow, Ironforge is cool. Wow, this game is taking over my life. My wife asks me how I'm doing on limiting my playing time, I mumble something about that I'm doing quite well but privately have to think for a minute as to when I actually started. Amazingly, I *do* stop when I tell myself I will, but mostly because it's dinner time. Finish at 8th level, starting to work on my various skills (especially mining and cooking, engineering just seems to happen for some reason). Oh, and I start learning first aid.
Monday evening - Think about how Mel will be at work much of the next day and how I can get in a good four hours of play and go looking for mechanical parts amongst the leper gnomes. Consider joining a 12-step program but decide it would cut into my playing time. Wonder how long before Mel insists on a one-hour-per-day limit (my entry in the betting pool is this time next week). Think about what I'll do tomorrow in the game.
I am in serious trouble.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Simple GBoH Face-to-Face
At last! I play an actual Great Battles of History game with someone else!
I discussed my efforts to learn/solo this game a few weeks ago, when I played the Bagradas Plains scenario from SPQR twice. In the meantime, I have also tried to play the two scenarios in the Phalanx module for Great Battles of Alexander, although the first was thwarted by an incredibly poorly colored map where it was very difficult to distinguish between the lower level hexes (although there were nine different elevations levels, so maybe they were running out of shades of greenish-gray), the second cut short by time limitations.
For our regular game session, I brought my copy of Alex plus expansions to Jesse's on Thursday, and he was willing to give this game a shot, mostly to compare it to C&C:Ancients. I personally don't think there is any comparison - the games both cover specific battles in the Ancient world, but the underlying mechanisms are very different. We played one of the scenarios from the Tyrant module, which is well-thought of and covers the battles between Syracuse (on the SE tip of Sicily) and the early expansion of the Carthaginians c. 450 BC, so it predates even Alexander the Great and thus uses Hoplites rather than Phalanxes.
I took the Syracusans, while Jesse's units (mostly Libyan MI and Celtic HI, with a few double-sized HI/HO units in the center) were backed up to a forested rise that played no part in our game. We missed the special rule that minimized the effect of the Libyan MI javelins (my units effectively got a +2 modifier when he tried to hit them, which would have helped a bit). However, this was a good scenario to try out the rules and learn the problems inherent in fighting with large and inflexible formations, which I had in droves compared to his mostly single-unit HI/MI units.
We started the game with our skirmishers trading fire, and Jesse clearly got the good end of this deal as he had about twice the skirmishers that I did. The trick to use with these units is to run forward, fire, then slowly drop back as your opponent moves forward. At some point they will die, but at 2VP apiece this isn't really a big issue - I had a whopping 8 points of skirmishers total. Archers are significantly better than slingers, but you'd expect that.
After Jesse's archers had messed up the Greek Allied contingent of HI/HO units on my right flank with a few hits here and there (and some significant damage to a Peltast unit guarding my far right flank), I started bringing both that formation and my center formation forward. His Libyans rushed forward and actually did quite a bit of damage with their javelins, which might not have been the case had we been using the correct rule (the idea is that irregular infantry formations in this period were less effective with the pointy sticks against Hoplite formations). What really hurt me, though, was when he managed to kill that formation's leader with his javelins, which only happens on one in a hundred rolls, a very unlikely outcome. With no leader (and me losing 25 Rout Points as a result), and about half of my army unable to engage or disengage with the enemy, it was just a matter of time before Jesse would roll up my flank like a cheap sleeping bag.
At this point it was time for my cavalry to advance on my left flank. Despite some shortcomings unit size, my units were of higher troop quality and heavier cavalry in general. After two turns of shock combat, he was down to one of the five units he had started with in that formation, but my leader had pursued his cavalry off-board and I was unable to get them back in time to attack his line from the rear. I will admit that my turn seizure attempts had been very successful over the course of the game, while all of Jesse's had failed, but with five HI/HO units unable to do anything but take hits on my right it really didn't matter much.
I did make a last attempt to close with his army's center, although I rolled quite poorly and had to devote the right flank of this formation to guard duty as the Greeks weren't helping any. My rolls chose that moment to fail me utterly, and while I never lost any of these units I was unable to do enough damage to his units to catch up in points.
The worst part, however, was when he managed to get his final two Rout Points by killing a lone skirmisher left behind out of position and routing him outright. That was 85 points and the end of the game.
This scenario was supposed to take about an hour, but for us it took more like three. Part of the problem was an unfamiliarity with the game (I'm still looking up rules), but also the fact that setting one of these things up takes quite a while what with finding the right units in the original game vs the module. Once I figured out that Jesse had the *blue* units, things went a bit quicker. Sigh.
Jesse enjoyed the game quite a bit, and he's planning to pick up the Alex/Tyrant combo soon. He also has the Caesar: Civil Wars game, although I understand that these games tend to be a bit one-sided, although not so much as Caesar in Gaul. We may try a Cataract scenario next time, or maybe another Tyrant game. I think it's worthwhile to get used to playing with a particular type of army rather than jump between the various legion variations, and with all of the C3i scenarios it shouldn't be hard to get at least six or seven good balanced games in just with the Hoplite/Phalanx era.
I discussed my efforts to learn/solo this game a few weeks ago, when I played the Bagradas Plains scenario from SPQR twice. In the meantime, I have also tried to play the two scenarios in the Phalanx module for Great Battles of Alexander, although the first was thwarted by an incredibly poorly colored map where it was very difficult to distinguish between the lower level hexes (although there were nine different elevations levels, so maybe they were running out of shades of greenish-gray), the second cut short by time limitations.
For our regular game session, I brought my copy of Alex plus expansions to Jesse's on Thursday, and he was willing to give this game a shot, mostly to compare it to C&C:Ancients. I personally don't think there is any comparison - the games both cover specific battles in the Ancient world, but the underlying mechanisms are very different. We played one of the scenarios from the Tyrant module, which is well-thought of and covers the battles between Syracuse (on the SE tip of Sicily) and the early expansion of the Carthaginians c. 450 BC, so it predates even Alexander the Great and thus uses Hoplites rather than Phalanxes.
I took the Syracusans, while Jesse's units (mostly Libyan MI and Celtic HI, with a few double-sized HI/HO units in the center) were backed up to a forested rise that played no part in our game. We missed the special rule that minimized the effect of the Libyan MI javelins (my units effectively got a +2 modifier when he tried to hit them, which would have helped a bit). However, this was a good scenario to try out the rules and learn the problems inherent in fighting with large and inflexible formations, which I had in droves compared to his mostly single-unit HI/MI units.
We started the game with our skirmishers trading fire, and Jesse clearly got the good end of this deal as he had about twice the skirmishers that I did. The trick to use with these units is to run forward, fire, then slowly drop back as your opponent moves forward. At some point they will die, but at 2VP apiece this isn't really a big issue - I had a whopping 8 points of skirmishers total. Archers are significantly better than slingers, but you'd expect that.
After Jesse's archers had messed up the Greek Allied contingent of HI/HO units on my right flank with a few hits here and there (and some significant damage to a Peltast unit guarding my far right flank), I started bringing both that formation and my center formation forward. His Libyans rushed forward and actually did quite a bit of damage with their javelins, which might not have been the case had we been using the correct rule (the idea is that irregular infantry formations in this period were less effective with the pointy sticks against Hoplite formations). What really hurt me, though, was when he managed to kill that formation's leader with his javelins, which only happens on one in a hundred rolls, a very unlikely outcome. With no leader (and me losing 25 Rout Points as a result), and about half of my army unable to engage or disengage with the enemy, it was just a matter of time before Jesse would roll up my flank like a cheap sleeping bag.
At this point it was time for my cavalry to advance on my left flank. Despite some shortcomings unit size, my units were of higher troop quality and heavier cavalry in general. After two turns of shock combat, he was down to one of the five units he had started with in that formation, but my leader had pursued his cavalry off-board and I was unable to get them back in time to attack his line from the rear. I will admit that my turn seizure attempts had been very successful over the course of the game, while all of Jesse's had failed, but with five HI/HO units unable to do anything but take hits on my right it really didn't matter much.
I did make a last attempt to close with his army's center, although I rolled quite poorly and had to devote the right flank of this formation to guard duty as the Greeks weren't helping any. My rolls chose that moment to fail me utterly, and while I never lost any of these units I was unable to do enough damage to his units to catch up in points.
The worst part, however, was when he managed to get his final two Rout Points by killing a lone skirmisher left behind out of position and routing him outright. That was 85 points and the end of the game.
This scenario was supposed to take about an hour, but for us it took more like three. Part of the problem was an unfamiliarity with the game (I'm still looking up rules), but also the fact that setting one of these things up takes quite a while what with finding the right units in the original game vs the module. Once I figured out that Jesse had the *blue* units, things went a bit quicker. Sigh.
Jesse enjoyed the game quite a bit, and he's planning to pick up the Alex/Tyrant combo soon. He also has the Caesar: Civil Wars game, although I understand that these games tend to be a bit one-sided, although not so much as Caesar in Gaul. We may try a Cataract scenario next time, or maybe another Tyrant game. I think it's worthwhile to get used to playing with a particular type of army rather than jump between the various legion variations, and with all of the C3i scenarios it shouldn't be hard to get at least six or seven good balanced games in just with the Hoplite/Phalanx era.
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