I generally stay away from sci-fi themed wargames. After all, a big part of the appeal of a wargame is seeing how a designer takes real world factors into account in their design, at least for me. Still, it's one of my favorite genres for film, television, and books, so I suppose I can be forgiven for buying Struggle For The Galactic Empire, even though it had no tie-in to any sci-fi franchise that I am interested in (and really, is that a good reason?) I suppose I was interested in it because it was a solitaire game, and I'm focusing on solitaire wargames this year, trying to play one per month.
Does it count if I only got through two turns?
Struggle (and what a good name that is for this game) posits sort of a reverse-Star Wars kind of situation - you are the Galactic Overlord and your job is to keep your empire together. Making you earn your paycheck are the forces of "Chaos" which really means anyone who is making you earn your paycheck. None of these forces are organized at any level other than the occasional "independent" empire that pops up. Otherwise, they're all on their own, and your job is to clean them up without letting the "Chaos Level" go to 11. Or, in this case, 100.
And there's a lot of Chaos out there. Usurpers, Aliens, Rebels, and those pesky Independent Empires popping up in several different permutations. Yet all of them look pretty much the same. In fact, their systems (really vast conglomerations of systems) all look just like your systems but with a different background. Same for the ships. And the Chaos markers that you pull from a cup to determine which chaos is coming at you at this particular moment look *exactly* like your forces.
Like most solitaire games, you have relatively few choices. In this game, it's about moving your forces, deciding what to attack, and deciding what to buy (or, if you are cash-strapped, what to keep). And, since the forces of Chaos are, of course, random, there's no telling where they'll appear next or in what form they'll be, so it's hard to plan long term other than to try to keep your military forces and morpogenetic (really, that's the word they use) forces straight. The only difference between the two is that the former kills units and the latter converts them.
Combat is particularly random. Since you're using a single d10 roll to determine outcomes based on combat differentials with some drms tossed in for flavor, it's a flat curve, which means that if you roll a lot of 0's you suck and if you roll a lot of 9's you win. Even if you have a big differential.
I could spend a lot more time going over this game, but really? It's not worth it. The designer spends considerable time in his design notes trying to make it sound like this game is different because the tech is based on nano and bio tech, and that the currency is bodies instead of bucks, but there's no differentiation when you get to the mechanics, even with the (correct) assumptions that these things would be more important on a galactic scale.
The randomization is tedious as well. You have to draw something like 24 (really) chaos chits in the first turn of the first scenario, then read up on how to place every single one of them. When you choose random sectors and there's no system there (really? in a space of thousands of systems, there's *nothing*?), sometimes you move up, sometimes you move down. You have to find the right rule in the right place in the rules every time. And Decision doesn't provide a Living Ruleset for reasons that I actually find to be pretty obvious - this game is terrible.
I got through two turns out of ten, with crappy rolls throughout for my forces and great rolls for the forces of Chaos. I felt like my friend Mike. I understand that most solitaire games rely heavily on randomness to create the illusion of excitement. I understand that you're trying to fix things that come up and see what happens. But there's nothing there to keep me.
There's no sense of story. There's no sense of theme. There's no sense of this being a giant Alien Robot (certainly not from the incredibly lame graphics on the Chaos counters), or the Mutant (really the Mule from the Foundation series), or really anything at all. Invaders from another galaxy? Look pretty much like everything else. Throw randomness for the sake of having something to do on top, and these games are worthy of being burned.
Two turns of hitting my head against the wall of this game was all I needed to convince me that this game was going to be *given* away. I wouldn't charge anyone for it. Perhaps someone less fussy, who likes sci-fi games and who hasn't played a lot of really good wargames might like it.
I'm counting this as my game for May just because I was so insulted by the design. I think the designer did it in high school and pulled it out because there was a hole in Decision's production queue. I really have no idea why else anyone would have considered this worth publishing.
So what did I do after putting this monstrosity back in the box (and taking back my counter tray and good baggies)? I pulled out another solitaire design by the same guy, Coral Sea Solitaire, published in World at War magazine, published by the same company, only to realize that the Dummy counters that are supposed to be used for the IJN units don't have ship silhouettes on the backs. Looking on the 'Geek, apparently they had a *lot* of counters that needed replacing, as well as forgetting to include three or four tables. Decision, to their credit, put out replacement counters and will send them to you, but it turns out that those markers have *different* ship symbols on the back than the ones you mix them with. Among other things. Not to mention several rules holes.
And that, my friends, is it for me for anything from Decision Games. And, for that matter, Joe Miranda, the designer. I was strongly considering resubbing for World At War, but no more. These games make Fields of Fire look like a textbook example of how to develop games. And I think you all know how well I think *that* went.
Utter crap. Avoid both at all costs.
Too bad. Decision looked like they had finally gotten their act together with the repub of RAF and D-Day at Omaha Beach (which *are* good solitaire games). Looks like that was more because of the designer of those games than anything else.
I only hope that I can save some other poor schmuck from spending a few hours of precious gaming time (not to mention more than a few bucks) only to find that the trees are calling and they want their paper pulp back.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The iPad As A Gaming Aid
After using the iPad for a week at WBC West as a gaming aid, I thought I'd relate my experiences with the device. Keep in mind that this is very new tech, less than two months old at the time of the gaming event, and it will almost certainly improve as it's been such a huge success.
I used the iPad in a couple of ways, at least I planned to. First was to use the device as a wargame ruleset aid, allowing me to have the most recent copy of rulesets, playbooks, and errata/FAQs. In this sense, with one notable exception of The Burning Blue (which looked like Latin for some reason in PDF, perhaps due to the font used in the original rulebook), it was a huge success, but only after I had created extensive bookmarks for each rulebook.
For this task, I used GoodReader for several reasons - it was easy to get the rulesets into the iPad without any other device (other than getting 'Net access through WiFi - my iPad doesn't do 3G). I could organize the rulesets in folders, make changes to the file names, and other basic management tasks. The program also had a "soft" rotation hold feature so that I could turn the iPad and not have the text do gymnastics, although I had to do this every time I turned it on. I could zoom either by tapping (which I turned off after the 50th time I did this inadvertently) or by the standard pinch/expand method that you use on the iPhone.
The text was very clear, search was pretty useful (it would move forward *or* backward with a touch), and once I had useful bookmarks in place it helped considerably, and I found myself finding rules much faster than if I was using hardcopy, especially on larger rulesets such as Battle for Normandy. Of course, I also had something like 40 bookmarks! Organizing the bookmarks was also possible, if a bit time consuming - you drag them into place, but the software only displays around 12 or so at a time so I had to stage them if Artillery was at the bottom of the list. On the other hand, inserting them required me to go to a page, decide what bookmarks I wanted, then type them in.
For wargame rules access, it was an unmitigated success with the caveat that some prep was required, which I find to be perfectly acceptable. I missed it dearly in the last game of the week I played, and I hope to figure out why those rules were easily printable on my home Mac but not viewable on the iPad. And yes, I did try zooming in with no luck.
If I could change one thing, it would be to allow me to go to the next page via either touching the sides of the existing page vs the top/bottom, which is the default. The Kindle reader I use touches the sides, as does the iBooks reader, and I constantly had to remember that with GoodReader it was the top/bottom instead. That should be something that the dev team can add easily, and I plan to pass it on to them.
The other thing I hoped to do was to blog as I played. This turned out not to work well at all. I tried using a piece of software called Mover Lite to transfer photos from the iPhone to the iPad, but it worked about 20% of the time, and the rest of the time it just disconnected the iPad from the WiFi system (despite me being about 15 feet from the router with no intervening media other than air). I resorted to emailing the photo, but then Blogger wouldn't allow me to type data in - the keyboard wouldn't come up, and I couldn't even select the text body field. I resorted to using the built-in Notepad feature rather than fuss with Pages, which required me to first select the text I wanted to include and copy it to the clipboard, then go to the Photo app, select the photos I wanted to include, send them to the Mail app, then paste in the text into the email body, then send it off to Blogger. This worked, but photos always appeared at the top of the entry and formatting was occasionally lost.
I abandoned that idea after my third game and chose to blog once I got home to a desktop system instead. To be honest, trying to keep track of every turn was a lot of work, and while I thought it was effective (especially with A Most Dangerous Time), it was more work than I was willing to do in a week already filled with a lot of brain activity.
For blogging, especially if you want to make use of photos, right now it's a fail. Fortunately, this is really the only situation that I see it as something I'd want to use the iPad for, mostly because it takes up so much less room on the game table than a laptop.
I ended up using the iPad in a way I had not actually expected to for gaming. Near the end of the week, Chuck, Matt, Eric, and Dave were playing Rise of Empires using a copy that was missing the board that holds all of the various tiles. In and of itself, that's not a big deal, except that the Trade option chart is on that board, and you need it to play the game. Someone had drawn a hasty scrawl on a piece of paper, but I had another idea. Grabbing the iPad from their room to the sarcastic cries of "The iPad will save us!", I went on the 'Geek and downloaded a photo of the board in question, zoomed in to the relevant section, and lo and behold they used it for the rest of the game. Only problem - the screen time out, which I could have turned off for them had they asked.
Here's a shot of what they used:
I used the iPad in a couple of ways, at least I planned to. First was to use the device as a wargame ruleset aid, allowing me to have the most recent copy of rulesets, playbooks, and errata/FAQs. In this sense, with one notable exception of The Burning Blue (which looked like Latin for some reason in PDF, perhaps due to the font used in the original rulebook), it was a huge success, but only after I had created extensive bookmarks for each rulebook.
For this task, I used GoodReader for several reasons - it was easy to get the rulesets into the iPad without any other device (other than getting 'Net access through WiFi - my iPad doesn't do 3G). I could organize the rulesets in folders, make changes to the file names, and other basic management tasks. The program also had a "soft" rotation hold feature so that I could turn the iPad and not have the text do gymnastics, although I had to do this every time I turned it on. I could zoom either by tapping (which I turned off after the 50th time I did this inadvertently) or by the standard pinch/expand method that you use on the iPhone.
The text was very clear, search was pretty useful (it would move forward *or* backward with a touch), and once I had useful bookmarks in place it helped considerably, and I found myself finding rules much faster than if I was using hardcopy, especially on larger rulesets such as Battle for Normandy. Of course, I also had something like 40 bookmarks! Organizing the bookmarks was also possible, if a bit time consuming - you drag them into place, but the software only displays around 12 or so at a time so I had to stage them if Artillery was at the bottom of the list. On the other hand, inserting them required me to go to a page, decide what bookmarks I wanted, then type them in.
For wargame rules access, it was an unmitigated success with the caveat that some prep was required, which I find to be perfectly acceptable. I missed it dearly in the last game of the week I played, and I hope to figure out why those rules were easily printable on my home Mac but not viewable on the iPad. And yes, I did try zooming in with no luck.
If I could change one thing, it would be to allow me to go to the next page via either touching the sides of the existing page vs the top/bottom, which is the default. The Kindle reader I use touches the sides, as does the iBooks reader, and I constantly had to remember that with GoodReader it was the top/bottom instead. That should be something that the dev team can add easily, and I plan to pass it on to them.
The other thing I hoped to do was to blog as I played. This turned out not to work well at all. I tried using a piece of software called Mover Lite to transfer photos from the iPhone to the iPad, but it worked about 20% of the time, and the rest of the time it just disconnected the iPad from the WiFi system (despite me being about 15 feet from the router with no intervening media other than air). I resorted to emailing the photo, but then Blogger wouldn't allow me to type data in - the keyboard wouldn't come up, and I couldn't even select the text body field. I resorted to using the built-in Notepad feature rather than fuss with Pages, which required me to first select the text I wanted to include and copy it to the clipboard, then go to the Photo app, select the photos I wanted to include, send them to the Mail app, then paste in the text into the email body, then send it off to Blogger. This worked, but photos always appeared at the top of the entry and formatting was occasionally lost.
I abandoned that idea after my third game and chose to blog once I got home to a desktop system instead. To be honest, trying to keep track of every turn was a lot of work, and while I thought it was effective (especially with A Most Dangerous Time), it was more work than I was willing to do in a week already filled with a lot of brain activity.
For blogging, especially if you want to make use of photos, right now it's a fail. Fortunately, this is really the only situation that I see it as something I'd want to use the iPad for, mostly because it takes up so much less room on the game table than a laptop.
I ended up using the iPad in a way I had not actually expected to for gaming. Near the end of the week, Chuck, Matt, Eric, and Dave were playing Rise of Empires using a copy that was missing the board that holds all of the various tiles. In and of itself, that's not a big deal, except that the Trade option chart is on that board, and you need it to play the game. Someone had drawn a hasty scrawl on a piece of paper, but I had another idea. Grabbing the iPad from their room to the sarcastic cries of "The iPad will save us!", I went on the 'Geek and downloaded a photo of the board in question, zoomed in to the relevant section, and lo and behold they used it for the rest of the game. Only problem - the screen time out, which I could have turned off for them had they asked.
Here's a shot of what they used:
Yes, I'm brilliant. And there was no further sarcasm.
They even used the markers on the iPad screen.
There were some other things that I thought the iPad could have done with some coding on my part that would have been nice as well:
- Pre-paragraph look up tasks (through the Encounter Matrix) for Tales of the Arabian Nights;
- Step Loss, Air Point, Combat Supply Point, and other record keeping in BfN;
- Luftwaffe Raid Planning in The Burning Blue;
I'm sure there were more possibilities, but that gives you an idea of what is possible.
I briefly considered playing Race for the Galaxy with the hands on your iPhone and the systems on a common iPad for all players to see, but the screen is simply too small to display that much information. It sure would make shuffling the deck easier, though...
I did not use programs such as Score or Diceinomicon that are intended for gaming as they weren't really needed so much. Dice towers and built in scoring systems worked just fine for the most part. We did use the Diceinomicon at our final dinner, however, to determine who got the excess cash after we've over paid the bill, although that was using the iPhone rather than the iPad.
I also used the iPad extensively for email, Web surfing, watching a couple of movies via Netflix or Stargate episodes I'd previously downloaded, and doing some puzzles via Puzzle Maniak.
I did have one negative experience outside of blogging - after watching one movie the first night, I found myself unable to get video and other bugginess, which required a soft reset. A hard reset was out of the question as the iPad was not synced to the iMac we have at the vacation house. Fortunately, it did what it was supposed to do, and I had no further wackiness. Perhaps the problem was using GoodReader as my video player, more as an experiment than anything else.
I am also increasingly enamored of the Apple branded sleeve/cover for the iPad. Mike continues to keep his "naked" and I'm far too nervous about scratching the screen of mine to do that. Given the problems of getting a protector onto the screen without bubbles or foreign material, the Apple case does what it needs to do, and I continue to marvel at how much it feels like I'm holding a book when I read in the dark. There's no question that the Kindle device, while not touch sensitive, is a superior reading experience - the e-ink is incredible, and the screen is nowhere near as reflective as on the iPad - but given the price points and the flexibility of the iPad, it wins hands down on versatility alone, at least for my purposes.
I give the iPad as a gaming aid (in the uses I made of it) a B+, and if you don't plan to blog with it, a solid A. I should also mention that I used a wireless Apple keyboard with it, and was impressed with how seamless an interaction that was once paired (which was a simple process as well). Hitting the space bar on the keyboard woke the iPad, just like on my desktop system! And having the complete character set available made entering text so much easier than using the onscreen keyboard. It works, but it takes about three times as long to type material in.
I may well decide to take on one of the above mentioned coding projects in the near future, as they all seem pretty easy (other than drawing on the Luftwaffe planning maps for TBB, which I may be able to do using drawing software that allows me to use a PDF or other graphic file as a background.
All in all, I'm very happy with the device so far, even if I do have to carry a cleaning cloth to wipe the screen a few times a day. The touch screen is completely worth it.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Where Now After WBC West 2010?
WBC West 2010 is history, and it's back to real life. So what's up on my schedule for the next couple of months in a gaming sense?
I am continuing my attempt to play one solitaire wargame per month, which doesn't give me a lot of time in May. However, my first priority is to try to get in a game of Struggle For The Galactic Empire. It's fairly rules light and while it may bleed over into June I hope to get it at least learned and started in earnest this week. I am also continuing with my participation in Steve Dixon's B-29 online campaign, which has been surprisingly satisfying.
Of the games we played at WBC West, I'm particularly interested in getting A Most Dangerous Time, Stalin's War, and Battle for Normandy back on the table. The latter is really the only one I can solitaire effectively, and I plan to do the Gold-Juno-Sword scenario (even with the invasions) just to see if I can get a sense of the problems Mike had with the game's mandatory assault requirements and see if I can make more efficient use of engineers for blowing bridges. Not to mention nailing the rules down in my head. As for AMDT and SW, I figure opportunities will come up somewhere along the line. I also intend to try The Burning Blue via VASSAL, although I think my game generated enough interest that I'll be able to find an opponent for face-to-face play.
I need to make a decision about whether I'm going to get the various "dust" games I've already mentioned on the table this year. After a closer look, I'm learning exactly *why* these games have never gotten set up and played - the maps are problematic. Of them, only June 6 and The Legend Begins will fit on my side table, while Victory In The West and Ukraine '43 will require my main table for however long I play them. I'm not sure I can make that kind of table commitment. Even now, I have a record player and a stereo amp sitting on top of TLB maps which are taped down to my side table, and I'll need to run through those rules yet again before playing. That said, I'm even more excited about trying out June 6 after playing BfN, and if anything ends up being played, that will be it.
I'll continue to attend our regular Tuesday euro/strategy gaming sessions (one tonight, amazingly).
I am continuing my attempt to play one solitaire wargame per month, which doesn't give me a lot of time in May. However, my first priority is to try to get in a game of Struggle For The Galactic Empire. It's fairly rules light and while it may bleed over into June I hope to get it at least learned and started in earnest this week. I am also continuing with my participation in Steve Dixon's B-29 online campaign, which has been surprisingly satisfying.
Of the games we played at WBC West, I'm particularly interested in getting A Most Dangerous Time, Stalin's War, and Battle for Normandy back on the table. The latter is really the only one I can solitaire effectively, and I plan to do the Gold-Juno-Sword scenario (even with the invasions) just to see if I can get a sense of the problems Mike had with the game's mandatory assault requirements and see if I can make more efficient use of engineers for blowing bridges. Not to mention nailing the rules down in my head. As for AMDT and SW, I figure opportunities will come up somewhere along the line. I also intend to try The Burning Blue via VASSAL, although I think my game generated enough interest that I'll be able to find an opponent for face-to-face play.
I need to make a decision about whether I'm going to get the various "dust" games I've already mentioned on the table this year. After a closer look, I'm learning exactly *why* these games have never gotten set up and played - the maps are problematic. Of them, only June 6 and The Legend Begins will fit on my side table, while Victory In The West and Ukraine '43 will require my main table for however long I play them. I'm not sure I can make that kind of table commitment. Even now, I have a record player and a stereo amp sitting on top of TLB maps which are taped down to my side table, and I'll need to run through those rules yet again before playing. That said, I'm even more excited about trying out June 6 after playing BfN, and if anything ends up being played, that will be it.
I'll continue to attend our regular Tuesday euro/strategy gaming sessions (one tonight, amazingly).
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
WBC West 2010 - Wrapup
Another year, another WBC West. For me, this was not only the best one yet, but also the smoothest running yet. I'm pretty sure that those two things go hand in hand. It was also the best attended, with nine wargamers plus Mimi for the occasional evening game.
Here are some thoughts on the entire process more or less in chronological order:
Driving Attendance: We started discussing WBC in mid-January, believe it or not. The idea is to nail down the date, reserve the house (it's a family vacation home that we don't rent out, but it gets a lot of use), and start getting commitments for attendance. I'm delighted that there's enough interest that there's a four month lead time to start getting excited about the event.
Who's Playing What With Who?: After the initial discussions and establishing who will be there, we start discussing games and pairings starting in early March. There's some risk that we'll have drop outs, but a month of prep time is usually enough to nail these things down. In my case, every game I intended to play was established by this time with one exception: Stalin's War, and that was Dave's choice to switch over from Ukraine '43. Especially risky as the game was due to be published in "late April" which means early May at best, and late August with a high degree of probability. Amazingly, SW was indeed at my door by May 8th, and I had already spent time learning the game from the pre-pub rules. Knowing when people planned to arrive was also important during this step, obviously.
Game Prep and Final Prep: Pairings and games are established (mostly) by the beginning of April, giving us about six months to get everything learned to a point where we can more or less jump into the game. While I felt I was doing a bit of last minute cramming to fit everything in that last week (especially with running two separate "learn the game" sessions with players for BfN, Sword of Rome, and A Victory Lost), at the same time, I did no prep work other than packing on the Saturday before we left, and that only took about an hour for games, clothes, and everything. I would have spent more time on BfN in hindsight, but otherwise I felt this part went very well for me.
We also had the usual material sent out to establish who was cooking which night, information for new attendees, etc.
Thanks to Dave for codifying this process and driving it. The pre-event planning is almost as much fun as the event itself, and it's kind of become the major gaming event of the year for me, even above GameStorm and the Euro retreats in the fall and winter, and EGG in Eugene in early February. Part of that is the sheer amount of prep time that's involved to play between three and eight wargames that a large portion of the population would struggle mightily with, but there's no question that we all get more than a little excited about both the event and the lead-up.
Everything In It's Right Place: All that prep would be for naught if the event itself fell apart. This year, it seemed like everything went like it was supposed to, with everyone playing exactly the games they thought they'd be playing during the day with one exception (Dave had left the 1805 map in a poster frame at home, sadly). No one got called away to court duty or dropped at the last minute, and while I still consider that a corner case and that things will go wrong in that regard in the future, it was really nice to have it all come together like it was supposed to.
The other nice thing is that we have enough people who have been out to the house that it feels more like the group's house than like my family's house. Unless you think of the group as an extension of family, which I tend to do. And, of course, with my nephew Alex there, it *is* family. Everyone knows that drinks go down in the garage fridge. Everyone knows how to close up. Everyone knows where almost everything is in the kitchen, where the extra TP is, what booze in the cupboard is my sisters that they shouldn't drink. It makes for a much more relaxing experience for me and for everyone else. While I love being the Den Mother, at the same time it's exhausting when combined with the high-level gaming we do, and anything that spreads that load around without having a negative effect on the other participants is awesome.
The Nits: Just a few, and they're mostly things that affect me specifically. As I mentioned before, I'm not going to explain any more day games like I did Sword of Rome (which I ended up doing twice to the detriment of the game). I guess I also had to explain Successors, but everyone had played that game before and had some experience with other CDGs. Sword took a lot of time and had it been earlier in the week it would have been more of a problem. Dave commented earlier that he didn't want a rule that affected everyone at the event, and that's not what I'm looking for. I'm simply saying that *I* am not going to explain rules, nor ask to have them explained to me *at the event*. This year proved that I can play largely new games and enjoy myself.
The only other real issue this year was space. At the peak, we had nine gamers playing up to four games at a time, taking up to four games worth of table space (although we only ever had three games going at once, though one was BfN). More than that is really that with ten people in a house of that size you tend to be constantly going around a corner and running into people. For three days, it's doable. If we had that many for the entire week, we're gonna need another house. That means we either rely on people who have houses out there we can borrow, or we need to rent a nearby place at a cost of about $20/night for everyone who attends (to spread out the costs). That turns a week that costs about $50 per person when you take food, beverages, and cleaning into account into a $200 per person event. I'm not sure that's going to fly quite as well, and it makes drop outs even more of a problem - we'd need to have people guarantee that they'd still pitch in their money even if they had to drop at the last moment.
For now, we seem to be doing pretty well in terms of numbers and when they show up, but we are on the edge of what we can accommodate at this price point. Asking people to give up a week of vacation and two 3.5 hour drives (out and back) seems like a small price to the guy who retired before he was 40, but for everyone else we need to be careful in how we progress.
Despite those small nits, there is no question that we have managed, somehow, to create a week-long wargaming vacation that not only runs smoothly and is a huge amount of fun, but that people start getting excited about three or four months ahead of time. The time of year is still a bit problematic (this year we actually had two Sundays between Mother's and Memorial Day, which won't happen again for six years), but there's no question that we don't have a heat problem like we did in late August.
And, of course, so much of what makes this a great experience is the people. While what you play is important, it's nothing compared to who you play with. We had an awesome time this year, and a big part of that is because of who was there. A huge Thank You to everyone who attended and made 2010 the Best WBC West Evah!
I will discuss the iPad and it's effectiveness as a gaming aid in a separate blog, probably closer to the weekend.
Here are some thoughts on the entire process more or less in chronological order:
Driving Attendance: We started discussing WBC in mid-January, believe it or not. The idea is to nail down the date, reserve the house (it's a family vacation home that we don't rent out, but it gets a lot of use), and start getting commitments for attendance. I'm delighted that there's enough interest that there's a four month lead time to start getting excited about the event.
Who's Playing What With Who?: After the initial discussions and establishing who will be there, we start discussing games and pairings starting in early March. There's some risk that we'll have drop outs, but a month of prep time is usually enough to nail these things down. In my case, every game I intended to play was established by this time with one exception: Stalin's War, and that was Dave's choice to switch over from Ukraine '43. Especially risky as the game was due to be published in "late April" which means early May at best, and late August with a high degree of probability. Amazingly, SW was indeed at my door by May 8th, and I had already spent time learning the game from the pre-pub rules. Knowing when people planned to arrive was also important during this step, obviously.
Game Prep and Final Prep: Pairings and games are established (mostly) by the beginning of April, giving us about six months to get everything learned to a point where we can more or less jump into the game. While I felt I was doing a bit of last minute cramming to fit everything in that last week (especially with running two separate "learn the game" sessions with players for BfN, Sword of Rome, and A Victory Lost), at the same time, I did no prep work other than packing on the Saturday before we left, and that only took about an hour for games, clothes, and everything. I would have spent more time on BfN in hindsight, but otherwise I felt this part went very well for me.
We also had the usual material sent out to establish who was cooking which night, information for new attendees, etc.
Thanks to Dave for codifying this process and driving it. The pre-event planning is almost as much fun as the event itself, and it's kind of become the major gaming event of the year for me, even above GameStorm and the Euro retreats in the fall and winter, and EGG in Eugene in early February. Part of that is the sheer amount of prep time that's involved to play between three and eight wargames that a large portion of the population would struggle mightily with, but there's no question that we all get more than a little excited about both the event and the lead-up.
Everything In It's Right Place: All that prep would be for naught if the event itself fell apart. This year, it seemed like everything went like it was supposed to, with everyone playing exactly the games they thought they'd be playing during the day with one exception (Dave had left the 1805 map in a poster frame at home, sadly). No one got called away to court duty or dropped at the last minute, and while I still consider that a corner case and that things will go wrong in that regard in the future, it was really nice to have it all come together like it was supposed to.
The other nice thing is that we have enough people who have been out to the house that it feels more like the group's house than like my family's house. Unless you think of the group as an extension of family, which I tend to do. And, of course, with my nephew Alex there, it *is* family. Everyone knows that drinks go down in the garage fridge. Everyone knows how to close up. Everyone knows where almost everything is in the kitchen, where the extra TP is, what booze in the cupboard is my sisters that they shouldn't drink. It makes for a much more relaxing experience for me and for everyone else. While I love being the Den Mother, at the same time it's exhausting when combined with the high-level gaming we do, and anything that spreads that load around without having a negative effect on the other participants is awesome.
The Nits: Just a few, and they're mostly things that affect me specifically. As I mentioned before, I'm not going to explain any more day games like I did Sword of Rome (which I ended up doing twice to the detriment of the game). I guess I also had to explain Successors, but everyone had played that game before and had some experience with other CDGs. Sword took a lot of time and had it been earlier in the week it would have been more of a problem. Dave commented earlier that he didn't want a rule that affected everyone at the event, and that's not what I'm looking for. I'm simply saying that *I* am not going to explain rules, nor ask to have them explained to me *at the event*. This year proved that I can play largely new games and enjoy myself.
The only other real issue this year was space. At the peak, we had nine gamers playing up to four games at a time, taking up to four games worth of table space (although we only ever had three games going at once, though one was BfN). More than that is really that with ten people in a house of that size you tend to be constantly going around a corner and running into people. For three days, it's doable. If we had that many for the entire week, we're gonna need another house. That means we either rely on people who have houses out there we can borrow, or we need to rent a nearby place at a cost of about $20/night for everyone who attends (to spread out the costs). That turns a week that costs about $50 per person when you take food, beverages, and cleaning into account into a $200 per person event. I'm not sure that's going to fly quite as well, and it makes drop outs even more of a problem - we'd need to have people guarantee that they'd still pitch in their money even if they had to drop at the last moment.
For now, we seem to be doing pretty well in terms of numbers and when they show up, but we are on the edge of what we can accommodate at this price point. Asking people to give up a week of vacation and two 3.5 hour drives (out and back) seems like a small price to the guy who retired before he was 40, but for everyone else we need to be careful in how we progress.
Despite those small nits, there is no question that we have managed, somehow, to create a week-long wargaming vacation that not only runs smoothly and is a huge amount of fun, but that people start getting excited about three or four months ahead of time. The time of year is still a bit problematic (this year we actually had two Sundays between Mother's and Memorial Day, which won't happen again for six years), but there's no question that we don't have a heat problem like we did in late August.
And, of course, so much of what makes this a great experience is the people. While what you play is important, it's nothing compared to who you play with. We had an awesome time this year, and a big part of that is because of who was there. A huge Thank You to everyone who attended and made 2010 the Best WBC West Evah!
I will discuss the iPad and it's effectiveness as a gaming aid in a separate blog, probably closer to the weekend.
WBC West - The Evening Games
I've covered the first two evening games (Successors and A Brief History of the World), so I'll just continue on from there.
2010 was a bit different because we didn't really plan any specific evening games, just brought a ton of stuff figuring we'd find things to play. I think that worked to a point, and that point may be good enough as I like having some more flexibility in the schedule given that so much is scripted.
Here's the list of what got played each night by me. I'm not completely sure of what others played, so I'll let those who blog those events cover them.
Sunday: Successors
Monday: A Brief History
Tuesday: Leaping Lemmings
I may be the only person in the group who enjoyed this game. We played six-player with Mike, Eric, Mimi, Chuck (who had to take a business call for most of the game, we moved him by committee and he won!), myself, and Tex. There is very little chance for strategy or (on occasion) even much in the way of tactics. That said I found it to be an utter hoot, even with six (as you move every player turn and there's little downtime). You may not do *much*, but you do *something! Would it be better with wooden cubes instead of cardboard punch-outs for the lemmings and eagles? Maybe. I just know that there's a pretty fun and wacky screw the other player game here that still requires a little bit of thought. Recommended with the strong caveat that you should almost certainly try to get a play in before making a purchase, as so many people in our group "tolerated" it at best.
Wednesday: Battle For Normandy Set-Up
Spent this evening getting BfN set up for the next couple of days, and got through the para drops and the first two of three invasion phases for June 6 AM. As I've said in the BfN specific post, I could just as easily spent this time setting up for the scenario that starts on June 6 PM and played a different game.
Thursday: Race for the Galaxy, Big Deck
A quick before-bed game after playing Battle for Normandy until around 10:30pm, against Matt and Alex, who had arrived that day. Both were very punchy and that made for a particularly entertaining game. I went with whatever original world it is that gets Brown worlds cheap. I was able nab most of the bonus points, with close to half my points coming from them. I was never able to find a good 6 point development, though, and Alex squeaked by me for the win. I've been playing the solitaire AI version recently and really like it, although I almost never win. I'm definitely getting to know the deck, though! My first time with the RvI expansion, I've only used Gathering Storm before and then only a couple of times.
Friday: Tales of the Arabian Nights, Aliens
Let's be clear - Tales is not the kind of game that can really even be considered a game other than at the end someone wins, which is really more about putting an end condition on what is more of an experience than a game. That said, we had a ball. I seem to be a magnet for every crazy condition or status you can get - in this one, I was Insane, Wounded (briefly), Grief-Stricken, and Incontinent. Or something. Matt cruised to the win in our five player game, which featured Tex, Mimi, Alex, and myself as well. Protip - be sure to print out the "early" tables in the front that you use before going to the Matrix, then let one player look that up, another player look up the matrix, and another player read the paragraph.
Huge advantage to this game - you can teach it on the fly, which makes for not only a better experience for the group, but also for the teacher.
Roger had brought a copy of Aliens, which I owned once but was so turned off by the perforated sheet cards and low production values that I never played it after one quick play through. Like Tales, this is much more of an experience game than anything else, if more coop, and really requires several players in the right mood to work well. Two glasses of wine and four beers is, apparently, the right amount of alcohol to put it over the top. I'm pretty sure we didn't win, but I'm also pretty sure we didn't completely lose. BTW, for those who are familiar with the game, we played the reactor room scenario. I almost wish I hadn't sold my copy now...
Saturday: Battlestar Galactica!
The big question: would Mike be a Cylon again? Because he's been a Cylon in almost every game I've played against him. He complained about that and then picked Baltar, because he gets and extra card and apparently Mike really likes being a toaster. Frak.
This was the first game for Roger and Dave, not sure about Matt. I did the usual "this is your Loyalty card, don't spend a lot of time looking closely at it," then covered the skill check mechanism. We had a pretty busy first half, capped by a massive Cylon assault that took out about half of our civvie ships, leaving us in a precarious position wrt population. However, we got out in more or less one piece with the sense that no one had drawn a cylon Loyalty card yet, although I was very suspicious of Dave.
The second half saw a relatively quiet period, although as Admiral I used Saul's power to take the Presidency from Matt as I knew *I* wasn't a Cylon. Matt eventually managed to get it back, but by that point I was pretty sure he was a Cylon. Meanwhile, Mike was pretty sure Roger was a Cylon, and sure enough he revealed shortly thereafter, claiming that he was a terrible bluffer. Somewhat hilariously, he was able to look at one of Matt's cards, and pronounced him not a Cylon, so when he revealed it was pretty clear that it was Matt. I took the Presidency back again via the Quorum card that lets you take that office away, and then Matt revealed.
At that point, Roger threw a huge Cylon assault at us. We'd been missing jump cards for a bit since the turn around point, and it had taken a while for us to get to the first jump, which only gave us one distance (both cards sucked). We had nearly every raider on the board, and then even more showed up. With most of our vipers in the damaged box and all but two civvie ships on board, we went down in flames with the Population marker dropping immediately.
It turned out that no one *had* been a Cylon the first half of the game. I think that's one of the things I love about the game - it starts out as more or less a coop, then at the turn it becomes a massive paranoia game, which eventually turns into a survival/destruction game. Dave did not like the downtime or the samey-samey nature of the various skill checks, but I think that while there is a certain amount of downtime in terms of getting to take a turn, there is no downtime in kibitzing and protestations of loyalty. That's the heart of the game, "Fun With Paranoia," and while Dave felt the game was too close to Shadows Over Camelot, I feel that it's much more of a natural evolution that improved that system by leaps and bounds, the skill check mechanism is brilliant in allowing players to avoid showing who is disloyal (unlike SoC), and the Gut Check in midgame brings it on home. I still prefer the basic set over Pegasus, but there's really no reason to include it if you don't want to. The game is still huge fun - the fact that it was pretty much the only group game Mike played (aside from Successors, which he did *not* like) and enjoyed speaks volumes to me.
I enjoyed all of my evening activities, with the possible exception of the invasion turns of BfN, which was fine. We did what we needed to do and I still got in a fun game that evening. I was mildly disappointed not to get in Arkham Horror (although that's a hard sell for most of this group, mostly just Dave, Chuck, me, and possibly Alex and Matt), and very disappointed not to get in Manifest Destiny, which has been an evening staple for a while at both WBC West and our Euro retreats in the fall. Still, I have no real room for complaints - the company was excellent, the games were fun, and I got repeated chances to rest my brain after spending the days playing games for essentially the first time. The idea of the lighter evening fare was a brilliant idea, whoever had it, and it's made the week better because of it.
2010 was a bit different because we didn't really plan any specific evening games, just brought a ton of stuff figuring we'd find things to play. I think that worked to a point, and that point may be good enough as I like having some more flexibility in the schedule given that so much is scripted.
Here's the list of what got played each night by me. I'm not completely sure of what others played, so I'll let those who blog those events cover them.
Sunday: Successors
Monday: A Brief History
Tuesday: Leaping Lemmings
I may be the only person in the group who enjoyed this game. We played six-player with Mike, Eric, Mimi, Chuck (who had to take a business call for most of the game, we moved him by committee and he won!), myself, and Tex. There is very little chance for strategy or (on occasion) even much in the way of tactics. That said I found it to be an utter hoot, even with six (as you move every player turn and there's little downtime). You may not do *much*, but you do *something! Would it be better with wooden cubes instead of cardboard punch-outs for the lemmings and eagles? Maybe. I just know that there's a pretty fun and wacky screw the other player game here that still requires a little bit of thought. Recommended with the strong caveat that you should almost certainly try to get a play in before making a purchase, as so many people in our group "tolerated" it at best.
Wednesday: Battle For Normandy Set-Up
Spent this evening getting BfN set up for the next couple of days, and got through the para drops and the first two of three invasion phases for June 6 AM. As I've said in the BfN specific post, I could just as easily spent this time setting up for the scenario that starts on June 6 PM and played a different game.
Thursday: Race for the Galaxy, Big Deck
A quick before-bed game after playing Battle for Normandy until around 10:30pm, against Matt and Alex, who had arrived that day. Both were very punchy and that made for a particularly entertaining game. I went with whatever original world it is that gets Brown worlds cheap. I was able nab most of the bonus points, with close to half my points coming from them. I was never able to find a good 6 point development, though, and Alex squeaked by me for the win. I've been playing the solitaire AI version recently and really like it, although I almost never win. I'm definitely getting to know the deck, though! My first time with the RvI expansion, I've only used Gathering Storm before and then only a couple of times.
Friday: Tales of the Arabian Nights, Aliens
Let's be clear - Tales is not the kind of game that can really even be considered a game other than at the end someone wins, which is really more about putting an end condition on what is more of an experience than a game. That said, we had a ball. I seem to be a magnet for every crazy condition or status you can get - in this one, I was Insane, Wounded (briefly), Grief-Stricken, and Incontinent. Or something. Matt cruised to the win in our five player game, which featured Tex, Mimi, Alex, and myself as well. Protip - be sure to print out the "early" tables in the front that you use before going to the Matrix, then let one player look that up, another player look up the matrix, and another player read the paragraph.
Huge advantage to this game - you can teach it on the fly, which makes for not only a better experience for the group, but also for the teacher.
Roger had brought a copy of Aliens, which I owned once but was so turned off by the perforated sheet cards and low production values that I never played it after one quick play through. Like Tales, this is much more of an experience game than anything else, if more coop, and really requires several players in the right mood to work well. Two glasses of wine and four beers is, apparently, the right amount of alcohol to put it over the top. I'm pretty sure we didn't win, but I'm also pretty sure we didn't completely lose. BTW, for those who are familiar with the game, we played the reactor room scenario. I almost wish I hadn't sold my copy now...
Saturday: Battlestar Galactica!
The big question: would Mike be a Cylon again? Because he's been a Cylon in almost every game I've played against him. He complained about that and then picked Baltar, because he gets and extra card and apparently Mike really likes being a toaster. Frak.
This was the first game for Roger and Dave, not sure about Matt. I did the usual "this is your Loyalty card, don't spend a lot of time looking closely at it," then covered the skill check mechanism. We had a pretty busy first half, capped by a massive Cylon assault that took out about half of our civvie ships, leaving us in a precarious position wrt population. However, we got out in more or less one piece with the sense that no one had drawn a cylon Loyalty card yet, although I was very suspicious of Dave.
The second half saw a relatively quiet period, although as Admiral I used Saul's power to take the Presidency from Matt as I knew *I* wasn't a Cylon. Matt eventually managed to get it back, but by that point I was pretty sure he was a Cylon. Meanwhile, Mike was pretty sure Roger was a Cylon, and sure enough he revealed shortly thereafter, claiming that he was a terrible bluffer. Somewhat hilariously, he was able to look at one of Matt's cards, and pronounced him not a Cylon, so when he revealed it was pretty clear that it was Matt. I took the Presidency back again via the Quorum card that lets you take that office away, and then Matt revealed.
At that point, Roger threw a huge Cylon assault at us. We'd been missing jump cards for a bit since the turn around point, and it had taken a while for us to get to the first jump, which only gave us one distance (both cards sucked). We had nearly every raider on the board, and then even more showed up. With most of our vipers in the damaged box and all but two civvie ships on board, we went down in flames with the Population marker dropping immediately.
It turned out that no one *had* been a Cylon the first half of the game. I think that's one of the things I love about the game - it starts out as more or less a coop, then at the turn it becomes a massive paranoia game, which eventually turns into a survival/destruction game. Dave did not like the downtime or the samey-samey nature of the various skill checks, but I think that while there is a certain amount of downtime in terms of getting to take a turn, there is no downtime in kibitzing and protestations of loyalty. That's the heart of the game, "Fun With Paranoia," and while Dave felt the game was too close to Shadows Over Camelot, I feel that it's much more of a natural evolution that improved that system by leaps and bounds, the skill check mechanism is brilliant in allowing players to avoid showing who is disloyal (unlike SoC), and the Gut Check in midgame brings it on home. I still prefer the basic set over Pegasus, but there's really no reason to include it if you don't want to. The game is still huge fun - the fact that it was pretty much the only group game Mike played (aside from Successors, which he did *not* like) and enjoyed speaks volumes to me.
I enjoyed all of my evening activities, with the possible exception of the invasion turns of BfN, which was fine. We did what we needed to do and I still got in a fun game that evening. I was mildly disappointed not to get in Arkham Horror (although that's a hard sell for most of this group, mostly just Dave, Chuck, me, and possibly Alex and Matt), and very disappointed not to get in Manifest Destiny, which has been an evening staple for a while at both WBC West and our Euro retreats in the fall. Still, I have no real room for complaints - the company was excellent, the games were fun, and I got repeated chances to rest my brain after spending the days playing games for essentially the first time. The idea of the lighter evening fare was a brilliant idea, whoever had it, and it's made the week better because of it.
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