Jul 072017
 

After a marathon game of Eldritch Horror the night before, Thursday got off to a slow start. In order to ease into the day we dropped by the Cool Stuff Inc ding and dent sale to scout out some deals. 

Spying a reduced price on Shadows of Brimstone, I decided it was time to get in! I’m looking forward to build those miniatures and get the first play down. 

From a gaming perspective we were able to get in a game of Tin Goose, an excellent game bringing the flavor of the early development of airlines to the table. The mechanics of crash risk, oil costs and labor strikes were an elegant touch. 

Later in the evening we opened up our copy of SPI’s John Carter Warlord of Mars, still in shrink after 38 years. You can find that video in the twitter feed. 

The evening was wrapped up with a late game of Galactic Emperor. 

Tomorrow we may get Star Trek Ascendancy or BattleLore to the table. Looking forward to more fun!

Jul 062017
 

The rush hour din was still ringing when we began caravaning north from South Florida towards Orlando. Destination: the manor gaming convention in the state, Dice Tower Con. 

With a brief stop over in Boynton Beach to pick up another member of the contingent we made our way north through intervening traffic and under threat of an upcoming “lane blockage” which our trusty google maps indicated ahead. 

Arrival was uneventful but the first day parking was tight. We found a spot and begun the unloading process. The cargo contained:

  • Time of Crisis (GMT games). I had playtested this title a bit and looking forward to a play brought with my official copy. 
  • Eldritch Horror (Fantasy Flight Games). My daughters favorite and a title that is a must play on those rates occasions we get the gang all-together. 
  • ASL Starter Kit 1 & 3 (MMP). One of my fellow grognards in the clan and I have a hard time getting in sessions of this two player tactical wargame. This is the place for it!
  • Mega BattleLore (Fantasy Flight Games). The 1st edition on steroids. House rules and over 300 figures. This is a Saturday play for six. 
  • Star Trek Ascendency (Gale Force Nine) while we had hoped to see the expansions before DYC, it’s still a favorite for us. One of the best Trek 4X games ever. 
  • John Carter Warlord of Mars (SPI). An old favorite from our youth. We always like to do one “nostalgia” game. 

After some dinner at the nearby Olive Garden we hit the game hall for some five player Eldritch Horror. A serious tangle with Ithaqua commenced lasting five and a half hours. Typically these games end in a loss, but even after losing three investigators the team pulled it out with the indefatigable Lilly Chen putting the final Eldritch token on the third mystery. Satisfying. 

Now on to day two…

Dec 282014
 

Siege warfare. When you speak those words a myriad of images comes to mind: walls, towers, tunnels, projectiles, and waves of men; climbing, fighting, dying. Those are our first impressions and popular movies support those images.

But Siege warfare is complex and varied well beyond the basic elements we commonly think of. Many commanders and armies of the past would do their utmost to avoid it due to the inherent complexities in successfully executing a siege, particularly when it involved advanced and established defenses, difficult terrain, or poor supply. A broken siege often meant disaster for the besieger potentially costing them not just the city but reversing all of the gains of the campaign.

The subject of siege warfare has fascinated me personally for many years both as a student of history and a wargamer. My first real exposure to siege games was the classic SPI title The Art of Siege, which I have borrowed for this posts title. It is imminently appropriate to describe how an army commander would approach a siege. As an art.

In electrical engineering, there is an old adage that digital design rests on a solid foundation of principals and procedures, while analog design is an art form. The roots of this tongue-in-cheek maxim is the level of uncertainty dealing and accounting for all of the unexpected elements in the analog world: a Radio Frequency wave reflecting in an atmosphere is messy, an electron on a conductor, much less so.

And that is what the term, art, really represents when applied to siege warfare: It’s messy, the unexpected can and will happen, the unaccounted for events that will plague you as a military commander will be more frequent than in an open field battle. There is more time for the engagement and therefore more opportunity for those unknowns to arise. By comparison, a battle on an open and flat plain is simpler, men will only be able to fight for so long in an open pitched battle, but behind those walls it could be weeks, or even months, before the capitulation.

It may be high time to readdress siege warfare in terms of a wargame format. The genre has never spawned the volume of works like Napoleonics or World War 2 strategy, and I think following this reasoning, the opportunities to explore the possibilities have been limited. Not by lack of talent of the designers, but more a rarity of opportunity to evolve.

Siege warfare will be the genre I will be focusing on in 2015. As I mentioned in my last post I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in this area and I think it’s time I take it a step further. Let’s see what comes of it.