Five years, man. Also, five weeks.

All right, this is really rough, but at least a record of what got played in Early Fall 2012. Maybe I'll fill in a bit later, or someone else will in the comments.

This week I selected Traders of Genoa for our game, since, as I repeatedly stated, "It's been FIVE YEARS!"

Well, it wasn't five. It was four, so mea culpa on that. Still, a long time to go between plays.

PREVIOUSLY : Last week was 2 rounds of Smash-Ups, one w/ 3 players + 1 w/ 4. Also, Bios Megafauna.and For Sale!

PREVIOUSLIER : Game of Thrones Storm of Swords, yo. My wife thinks Storm of Swords is the nerdliest boardgame title possible. Feel free to suggest nerdlier possible titles in the comments.

EVEN PREVIOUSLIER : Roma, followed by Lord$ of Vega$, and I think a 3 of Vikings

PREVIOUSLIEST UNDER CONSIDERATION IN THIS ENTRY : Battlestar Galactica!

More thinky bloodshed (A Game of Thrones : A Clash of Kings)

Although we were only three players, I wanted to try the A Game of Thrones expansion one more time (now that I've played it with four, I was less afraid of getting a bad impression if it didn't work out).

I was Stark (white), Shemp was Lannister (red) and Kozure was Barratheon (black). Greyjoy is mandated as the house to remove from the game, which appeared to make sense though I was afraid that without my natural enemy it would be too easy for me (in the four player game, Stark and Greyjoy start in the north).

In practice, it wasn't too bad. I did enjoy relative peace for much of the game as I grew my forces and slowly marched south. As it happened in our last game, the Lannisters shot out ahead in VPs early in the game. Unfortunately for Shemp, he watched the Lannisters get beaten down for it, just as in our last game. It was Kozure who was pulling out ahead. He took King's landing and was pushing back the Lannisters, winning Claim with his abundance of power tokens. The three houses converged at Harandhall and Riverrun. I took Riverrun first, satisfying my house tactics card Claim condition. Kozure took Harandhall. Shemp came from the south-west and put pressure on both of them. In order to steal the victory from Kozure, Shemp and I hatched a plan to surround Harandhall, so that I could support the Lannister's siege against the city. As it often happens, particularly between me and Shemp, the partnership did not go as planned. He had just taken Riverrun from me, so in an effort to give me the opportunity to take it back I took an unconventional route to surround Kozure... I crossed the river with a single unit and "supported" with Rob Stark's army rather than moving the army itself. It was good enough to defeat Kozure's army, and good enough to take back Riverrun, but it left me with a single army at the gates of Harrenhall (ironically, the idea to take back Riverrun that turn came frm Shemp, though it was certainly my plan to go back eventually). In the final turn, Kozure's Barratheon's had 7 claim, Shemp's Lannisters had 5 and I had 6. If things went according to plan, Shemp would steal a city and we would find ourselves in a three way tie. knowing I wasn't in a position to gain any claim this turn, and knowing I had to stare down a host of betrayed Lannisters at Riverrun, I had to be defensive on my last turn and set myself up to win on the tiebeaker. Unfortunately, in placing my action tokens I didn't think to put a support token on my army adjacent to Harandhall and s when Shemp did attack, I couldn't help in any way. He lost by one. I hadn't seen it coming, but Shemp had a second target in mind, as he swept east to King's landing and took the city. Barratheon managed to get it back, but for a second there it seemed like he might have managed to stop Kozure from winning.

In the end, my programming mistake was a huge one, because I would have won on the tiebreaker (most supply). Oh well. All hail king Barratheon! All hail the master of A Game of Thrones: A Storm of Swords, Kozure, as his win ratio remains 100% at this game.

Of LannisPort and King's Landing (A Game of Thrones: A Storm of Swords)

Back when we were often four players, I used to lament the fact that we couldn't play A Game of Thrones since it took five to play optimally. I recently decided to spring for a copy of the expansion called "A Storm of Swords" because it features a new board designed specifically for four players. Of course, that's when Luch moved out of town, and we dropped to just three players...

Well, this week Bharmer made his once a month appearance and so we were four. Kozure decided to pick this game, and there was joy in the land of Westeros.

If you know A Game of Thrones, this is mostly the same game on a different board, but there are important differences:

1) There are no boats or wilding attacks.
2) Leaders are added to the game, and new rules for taking hostages and hostage negotiations go with them.
3) Each player gets a "Tactics" deck, which gives an ability for each game turn.
4) Four "Ally" deck representing factions that can be, err, allied with.
5) A claim track allows players to gain VPs in other ways than conquering territory.

A few other new items have been added which have a lesser impact on the game, such as a weather track that makes some passages inaccessible during stormy weather, and garrisons which are units that can only defend.

In my opinions, each of the additions are excellent. The loss of boats is unfortunate, but is more than compensated by the other additions.

The leaders, major characters from the books, are interesting because they have two "states". The first is their basic state, and boils down to an addition to the combat value for the group. The second is triggered when the player controlling it plays a certain kind of order (usually raid or consolidate power)... in this case the player can choose to ignore the chosen event and instead execute a march order and benefit from a slightly altered, more powerful leader. As an example, Jamie Lannister goes from a 1 strength unit to a 2 strength unit with a bonus sword icon when activated. The subtle impact here is that the triggering order might cause combat out of sequence... A raid marker that triggers a march allows combat earlier than normal and can therefore allow a player that would otherwise be later in the combat turn to make an attack before his opponent can act. If a combat involving a leader produces losses, the winning player can choose to claim a leader as a prisoner instead. Later on, power tokens can be squeezed out of the owners of your prisoners. Further, hostage negotiations can take place which adds a welcome layer of politics to a game that is meant to be political in the first place.

The tactics cards add a level of uncertainty to each game turn because depending on the choice, a player might have a bonus on siege or on defense, a player might make an alliance from the "Ally" deck, a player might squeeze power tokens from the former owners of prisoners in his holding cell, etc.

The Ally cards are interesting because they add reinforcements and other abilities to the players, and offer another path to follow to cement a lead or stage a comeback.

The Claim track adds another way to gain VPs. Certain tactics cards and westeros cards give the possibility to a player to gain a point on the Claim track, which gives players an alternative to pure military victory.

Overall, the game feels at once significantly different and much the same. The foundation of the game is unchanged, but a layer of chrome has been added which changes the flavour. The tactics card and the Allies shake up the chess-like simplicity of the basic game. Some players may strongly hate or prefer this introduction of randomness, but I like both for different reasons. Due to game length issues, I would probably pick A Game of Thrones: A Storm of Swords for four players and Mare Nostrum for five, but I'd happily play either.

In our game, I was the Lannisters, Shemp was the Barratheons, Kozure was the Greyjoys and Bharmer was the Starks. In the starting setup, the Lannisters start spread out and with Eddard Stark as a prisoner. The prisoner puts me immediately at odds with the Starks, and geographic adjacency + a Barratheon tactics card ensures that there will be conflict with them as well. Still, early in the game the Lannisters managed to conquer two neutral cities and satisfy their tactics card VP condition... I was within a single point of winning the game!

Then came turn 6.

In turn 6 I miss-programmed one of my armies, putting it in a situation where it became decimated. I lost King's Landing to the Barratheons, lost a 7 point army due to rout, etc, etc. I played very badly, making stupid call after stupid call, dropping back to 4-5 points in the process.

Greyjoy and the Starks were similarly exchanging blows in the north for much of the game. Jamie Lannister was planning a raid into the Greyjoy camp as The Starks came down from the north and started putting pressure in the center of the board.

Unfortunately, it was getting late and we were forced to end the game prematurely. It ended up being a three-way tie for most VPs, so we had to go to three levels of tie breaker to find the Greyjoys victorious (most supply was the determining tie-breaker).

A Game of Thrones is quite a long game to play, and requires a certain amount of effort to play properly. That's fine. I enjoy it quite a bit when it does get on the table.

Every plane is a little different. One's just right for you! (A Game of Thrones, Wings of War)

Shemp was an indecisive dictator this week, so we brought a number of games to choose from ("we'll bring the games we damn well please", I believe, was the wording). He picked Kozure's A Game of Thrones, a game I've been trying unsuccessfully to get to the table for months... so no complaints here. We were one player short of the ideal 5, but we aren't good enough at the game to tell the difference yet.

A Game of Thrones

In order to avoid getting the same starting setup as last game, we chose the factions randomly instead of getting our traditional colours. I ended up with white (House Stark), Shemp was red (House Lannister), Kozure was yellow (House Baratheon) and Luch was green (House Tyrell).

House Stark is this game's version of Russia. Huge northern territory, mostly empty. It looks like a good starting position, because there is lots of land to expand to unchallenged. The downside, however, is that it's very hard to defend.

Very early in the game, Kozure gave me an ultimatum to exit the eastern sea. Outnumbered, I headed north. Once north, I realized there was no where left to go. Later on, when Kozure came followed me, I had nowhere left to go and was eliminated from the sea. My eastern border was wide open for attack, and there wasn't much I could do about it.

Problem was, to the south Shemp was also creeping towards me. We struck a deal to divide the regions a particular way, and then out of the blue Luch comes and takes one of mine by sea. Luckily, Shemp sank his ships which allowed my attacks on his units to eliminate rather than allow retreat. There was substantial border tension between myself and Shemp after that, as it was clear we were lining up to attack. I made what I thought was a shrewd move: Shemp had a considerable force (3 knights) in a region I wanted. He prepared for my attack, but instead I defeated the region to the south, cutting off any possibility of retreat when I would eventually turn my attention to the knights. It didn't work, though, because I passed up an opportunity to attack at bad odds and wound up having to defend at impossible ones instead. It was a stupid move on my part. Oh well.

The real problem, however, was that all this distracted us all from the real threat: Kozure was expanding unchecked. Before we knew it, he won. Did I mention that he waltzed in and took my starting province from under my nose? I knew that undefended border would come back to haunt me...

A Game of Thrones is a very good game. Even though there are large swings of luck due to the events that come up, they affect all players equally. In fact, it's biggest impact seems to be to make each session different (last game was characterized by a total lack of supply, whereas this one had one muster all game... keeping unit count low.) Another odd thing: The barbarians attack 2-3 times at 0 strength!

It had been nearly two years since we last played. I think we'll be playing again next week. Looking forward to it.

Wings of War

We had about 20 minutes left, and Shemp indulged me by picking Wings of War. I recently acquired a number of the miniatures and the Burning Drachens set.

As far as finding a wargame which is easy, attractive and fun enough to play with non-wargamers, this one hits it out of the park. When I first brought it home, I played a game with my 5 year old son. We had a great time, and I bought a few more miniatures a few days later.

Gameplay couldn't be simpler. Each plane has a deck of cards representing areal maneuvers (hard turn right, straight, swoop to the left, etc). Each deck is different and approximates the flying characteristics of the the real plane.

- Choose three maneuvers and places them face down on the table.
- Simultaneously reveal them one at a time.
- For each card, line up the "start point" identified on the card with your miniature, then pick it up and set it down at the end of the flight path symbol.
- If a plane is within shooting range of another plane, the targeted player draws a card from a damage deck and keeps the result secret.
- Once the total adds up to the damage capacity of the plane, it's shot down.

That's it. It all comes down to a 20-30 minute session of maneuvering around the table, trying to line up shots and avoid getting hit in return. It's fast and fun, and looks really nice. The game ships with a large number of optional rules for special damage, altitude, zeppelins, tailing, etc. Of these, we only played with a few of the special damage types (fire, gun jams and damaged rudders). It took about 1.5 minutes to explain the rules and we were dogfighting.

I played the red baron in his signature red Fokker DR.I. Shemp joined me as the german Albatros D.Va. Luch and Kozure teamed up with the SPAD XIII and the Sopwith Camel, respectively.

Well, the Fokker lived up it's reputation as a fragile but agile plane... but the Red Baron did not live up to his reputation as a pilot capable of flying it. I was shot down by the Kozure's Sopwith rather quickly (I drew a 5, a 4, a 3 and a 1). Shemp managed to last a while longer, but ultimately succumbed to a concerted attack by the good guys (he drew a ton of zeros and ones and therefore managed to survive several hails of bullets).

I think it went over quite well. I'm not typically into miniatures because they often end up being clunky and complicated. I'm happy to say that Wings of War is an exception, and I like it very much. I'd like to try a balloon busting scenario next time, maybe with more/ newer planes.

Now, I just have to figure out how to store these things...

WarO / FightO (A Game of Thrones)

Kozure will soon become a dad again. Anyday now soon. So we gave him a chance to pick a little in advance of his normal week. His choice? A Game of Thrones (a recent, ludicrously inexpensive aquisition).

A Game of Thrones is a Waro (wargame/ euro hybrid) based on a series of books I know nothing about. It feels like a cross between Shogun and Antike to me, though most people tend to decribe it as a shorter Diplomacy.

As is typical for this sort of game, every player starts by picking a faction (which, in turn, determines a variety of starting conditions). The goal of the game is to grow the faction's territory by conquering regions until 7 cities/ strongholds are controlled by a player (who immediately wins the game). Along the way, military units will be produced on land and sea, battles will be fought and backs will be both scratched and stabbed.

There are a number of mechanics working in parallel as the game progresses:
- 3 decks randomly reveal a card at the start of each turn. Those decks determine what events take place that "period". There are several types of cards, but the three most important are:
- Supply. Player must cross-reference the number of regions with barrel symbols exist in their territory with a chart which will tell them how large of an army they can maintain (and in what configurations).
- Army Production. All cities and strongholds produce new soldiers, subject to the limits imposed by supply.
- Political Upheaval. This forces players to make a secret bid to detrmine the ranking in three categories: Political Power, Military Might and Intelligence. Each of these is very powerful in it's own right and being first place conveys additional bonuses to that player. For example, the order of the Political Power track determines turn order and the first place player determines the result of all tie breakers.
- The cards may force the advancement of "the barbarians track"... representing an everpresent threat of barbarian attack to the north. If/When they attack, all players have an opportunity to work together to fight them off.
- Following that, players must assign actions to all units simultaneously and secretly. They are then all revealed and executed in turn order (I found this, in particular, similar to Shogun).
- Advance the turn marker and start over.

Combat is quite simple. Compare the value of units in combat, add the value of any units which have chosen to participate and then play a card with a combat value to determine the final total. The loser generally must retreat all units to an adjacent friendly region. In other words, actually losing units is supposed to be fairly rare.

The intention, I think, was to create a game of conquest which had many opportunities for diplomacy, but which lasted only 3-4 hours. Although I enjoyed the game, ours did not feature much diplomacy at all.

I don't recall names, but my faction started on the east island. Kozure was in the barren north all by himself, Luch was on the west coast and Bharmer was in the south. Not knowing what to do, and being relatively close to two regions which were defended by neutral forces but gave a number of good resources if conquered, I decided to go for them. This put me into Bharmer's territory, leaving Luch and Kozure to bump heads to the north. Lucky for me, bharmer was rather peaceful and didn't attack me until I started attacking him! My expansion strategy seemed like it was working... I had 5 cities/ strongholds about 5 turns into the game (which seemed good at the time).

Two things were affecting my game pretty dramatically: 1) I started the game resource poor, so my military formations were limited to singles + 1 pair + 1 triple. That situation didn't change until the turn the game ended, so it posed a very real limiation on my game. 2) The positions of power came of for auction fairly frequently. I spent a LOT of money to keep the throne, and on occasion held the military might one as well. It seemed like turn order mattered a lot, and determining tie-breakers was also very usefull. This also meant that Bharmer was perpetually last in many of these tracks because he was my main opposition.

Anyway, luck was with me this game. I didn't lose a single conflict, I managed to hold on to the throne the entire time I needed it, no-one attacked me when I couldn't defend myself and ... most importantly... I spied an opportunity to grab the last two cities I needed totally by accident (in other words, I put everything in place to do it the prior turn, but was working towards something else at the time). In a nutshell, I was able to hop onto a boat I had just placed with two soldiers I had just moved to get into two of Kozure's undefended territories. Game over.

This is a game that will get better when people understand what things are worth. I feel I won this game because I took a lucky chance on the throne of power being important, because Bharmer and Luch weren't attacking me and because we didn't have enough experience with boats to really see and understand all the implications of sea travel. Now that all these things are well known, the next game will have a totally different dynamic.

Another side effect of our inexperience was that very little diplomacy was concducted/ needed. It was Easy vs. Bharmer South and Kozure vs. Luch north. With the larger picture in view, I'd bet that negotiations will be far more interesting next time.

Anyway, A Game of Thrones is a game that I enjoyed but which I think will be substantially better next time (I had a splitting headache for much of the evening, so that may have coloured my view somewhat). The simultaneous action assignment and the various interlocking mechanisms driving what looks like a war game reminded me strongly of Shogun and the simplicity of combat and economy of units/ action types reminded me of Antike. Compared to Shogun, I'd say that the system FEELS somewhat more natural and better tied to the theme (Shogun is very euro-like in it's disconnect between theme and mechanics), but I can't yet say whether that leads to a better game or not. Compared to Antike, I'd say that if you were to add a few layers of WARO chrome to Antike but kept things generally restrained you'd get something like AgoT.