Dying the Sky with Blood, and Pounding the Earth (Crimson Skies, Jungle Speed) 8454

Short post:

We played Crimson Skies, a "Clix" game featuring a boardless movement system (similar to Wreckage). In it, concept planes face off in arial combat. I beleive it's a two player game, but it worked fine with 4. Not much to say, except that I thought it was quite a bit better than HeroClix (and wreckage, for that matter) due to a more reasonable learning curve. This would be due to the fact that planes tend to start off with powers which they can only lose as they get hit... HeroClix characters aften gain abilities as they weaken. Also, those powers are relatively easy to absorb since the colour chart matches up reasonably well. The most interesting part (also the one I had the most problems with) was the movement mechanic. After initiative is determined, you play a "Maneuvre" card (my term, not theirs) to describe how your plane will fly. The card shows a flight path and you essentially place cardboard hex pieces end to end and match the flight path until your flight reaches it's speed rating in spaces. In theory, it's a nice way to encapsulate many of the possible movements that a plane could do without adding much complexity. In practice, I sometimes wished I could deviate slightly from the flight paths available since it seemed arbitrarily limiting at times. Also, while the cardboard spacers eliminate the need for a board, precision is lost and alignments can get out of wack if people aren't careful.

Ultimately, though, it's not a game for rules lawyers. It's a fun game if you accept the inherent "sloppyness" of a board-free environment and some of the game's limitations (and let's be honest... planes go fast. I might be kidding myself that such modifications in flight would be easy).

Team Easy-Bharmer took the skies in a tight formation and barreled towards Luch, leaving Kozure to fight a single one of Bharmer's planes. Much questionable maneuvring occured, mostly on my part, and planes threatened to crash on multiple occasions (that was mostly Luch, Kozure, Bharmer. Mostly.) I took down one of Luch's planes and Kozure got enough solid hits on Bharmer that he decided it was wise to escape rather than crash and burn. Team Easy-Bharmer ultimately shot our way to victory, despite much flying ineptitude all around. Well, everyone but Kozure (and that was expected).

We finished off with Jungle Speed.