If you threw Kemet (w/expansion), Cyclades (w/expansion), and Blood Rage into an arena, who would come out victorious?
Rising Sun.
-Tom
Blood Rage.
Fixed
That’s an odd “fixed” gag. You prefer Twilight Imperium to Rising Sun, huh? I wouldn’t even put them in the same category.
On an unrelated note, I got to play Among the Stars, Carson City, and Sol: Last Days of a Star last night. All excellent!
-Tom
I don’t know…I’m very tired.
I got Charterstone, Photosynthesis, and Dice Forge for my birthday. Pretty impressed with my wife’s google-fu skills!
I got 7th Continent, Churchill, and History Maker Golf on my wife’s birthday…Score!
Do I want to bother with the $5 digital version of Brass? I’ve heard some mentions that it’s a “classic” that seems extremely dry and outdated today. I’m fine if I get a week or two of enjoyment out of it before going back to Through the Ages.
Speaking of which, anyone interested in 4 player TtA online games?
Chaos in the Old World
I really find this appealing. Great job capturing the style of the books of my childhood.
Filthy casual
clutches dogeared copy of Lone Wolf books
Oh I had those too!
Didn’t they recently-ish release a “New Adventures of Lone Wolf” series that takes place after the Curse of Naar book? You play a brand new Kai monk (it was getting pretty ridiculous how Lone Wolf kept finding even super duperer new Kai powers) escorting the Moon Stone back to the Shianti on the Isle of Lorne (how do I still remember those names?).
Cosplay Ogre would have been the best costume at PAX east.
I don’t know. My gamestore has a listing for Lone Wolf: Terror of the Darklords, but I don’t know anything more than that. It doesn’t appear on BGG, I guess it isn’t a board game because this is the product I can see from google searching
http://cubicle7.co.uk/lone-wolf-adventure-game-terror-of-the-darklords-pre-order-and-pdf-out-now/
I saw it, and was curious because I liked the books when I was younger, and a lot of respect to Joe Dever for making them available online these days.
Joe Dever has died, so I’m not sure how interested in any new Lone Wolf stuff I’d be without him at the helm.
I suggest you show him what dice luck can truly do to a game: I just played a game of Mark Herman’s Pacific War (Victory Games: 1985) this weekend in which the following events happened:
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On the Japanese turn in which I was in my best position to retake Guadalcanal and engage the American carriers at even strength, my opponent rolled Ambush CV for the month’s intel condition which allowed him to move DOUBLE my move in the Reaction Player Contact Phase (essentially getting to see what I did, and then becoming the Operation Player himself!) and being able to DOUBLE ALL HITS against my carriers that month, almost ensuring I would lose any air strike exchange. Chance of this happening on that month? 1%. (He had to roll a 9 (only) on 1d10 for his Strat Intel Condition and then roll a 0 (only) on a 1d10 on his subsequent Op Intel Condition roll. In that order.)
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On the first turn of the rematch game, my US Marines rolled a 7:0 result on their landing on Guadalcanal (a 4/10 chance on 1d10) but then took double losses when they failed to pass their Troop Quality check (they were Quality 8 so could only fail on a 9 on 1d10 (so 10% chance). They had 14 steps. Seven step losses doubled is 14, landing fails, US loses an entire Marine division, Japanese can now reinforce Guadalcanal with their own infantry division and make an amphibious landing even more difficult. Game over. Chance of that happening? 4%.
This is a game that we arranged to play and set aside 2.5 full days of play to finish. Oh, and that was only possible because I had flown cross-country on business so I could stay with my friend who was my game opponent. That arguably turned on two sets of incredibly unlikely die rolls.
And you know what? I’m very satisfied with it.
I thought somebody was going to reply to you before I did (randomness is so underrated these days), but anyways.
I just happened to read Sabin’s musings on the subject of chance in Simulating War. That’s a pretty cool book and there are many great insights there (btw, he sees fog of war/hidden info as a type of chance), but it got me thinking about how in wargames nobody would accept a no-chance game while in “euroish” games its shunned upon. I attended a conference last year where a designer was talking on the subject on how boardgame design informs computer game design, and on the subject of chance he basically stated that any random roll after a player decision was a wrong design and that randomness needs always to happen before player input (for example, draw three cards and choose one before acting rather than draw one after acting). This made me question what kind of board games he was playing :).
My current thinking is that games with chance model a more complex decision loop (having to account for the possibility of bad rolls in your strategy) and that a lot of players prefer simple, more puzzly, heuristics.
That said, a 14:0 loss on a 4% chance seems really high. What was the Japanese strength on the island?