Dustballs and Mutants

I'm must actually really like Auto Assault. I'm certainly semi-obsessed with the theme. Mutants, cyborgs, cars with missile launchers.

I can't remember how playable Carwars was, but I'm very tempted to seek out a copy of it and inflict it on my regular P&P victims. I wonder if there's a GURPS post-apocalypta?

I listened to Steve Jackson's "State of the Company" podcast recently. The good news is that SJ Games is rolling on. Munchkin has put them way over, and they are in serious jeopardy of making money. Assuming they can keep enough copies of Munchkin printed. The down side of this is that keeping Munchkin in print requires that all new development be effectively shoved to the side. That doesn't make me feel good about gaming as a whole.

He also mentioned that Eagle Games, who produced the board game adaptation of Sid Meier's Civilization, closed their doors. This is bad for me, because it means my supply of super fancy cheap figs just dried up. I guess that could be why they closed the doors.

Car flying.
Bullets screaming.
Cybers dying.

SITS - out of the box

The Saganami Island Tactical Simulator. Even the name is a mouthful. And now I've had a good look at it. I picked it up for David for his birthday. I will say this, the box passes the critical weight vs. cost test. It's a big, heavy box. The box is a bit low on bits. Real bits that is. Most of the bits are laminated card and uninteresting plastic. Models are a separate purchase.

SITS is now, in my mind, the reigning champion of the "Most Complicated Game Ever". It make Star Fleet Battles seem like primary school maths in comparison. Newtonian physics has that effect on paper games.

The game looks cool, I think. I suspect it rewards the correct aspects of play, but so far all we were able to do was work through the tutorials about movement and aiming. That took about six hours. We still don't get some of the details about missile defense. 3d movement though. Pretty cool.

Inside the box is a mixed review. Some of it is pretty high end. The really nice laminated play cards, though on the small side, are very nicely made. The cardboard used for counters is at the other end of the scale. It's too thin to be useful. I think you would be better making some square dowel pieces and pasting the ship images on. Or scanning and printing on sticker sheet. The hex maps are big, but on regular paper stock. That means it doesn't lay flat out of the box, which is annoying but not a show stopper. If you are going to play lots, investing in a roll mat might not be a bad move. Check out this one at Paizo. Actually, a roll mat is probably a great investment no matter what, but then I might get an Oyster (beige I would have said) coloured one, which you could write on (water soluble pens only!). Good for all kinds of fig based games.

We plan on trying a second session where we may actually shoot things at each other. David thinks we may be best to play in the horizontal plane exclusively first. I think that makes a fair amount of sense. Hopefully this time I won't be looking for the Marine recruiter afterwords. I figure people who want to be on star ships, but can't handle astrogation, join the Royal Marines. They just want you to carry a gun. No thinking required.

A Grand Army

And what I meant was Staff Sergeant. I think, in the real military (any real military, probably) if you make a rank label mistake like that you get beat up. Fortunately, I'm not in the military.

I have assembled a collection of both Republic and Separatist figs for Star Wars: Starship Battles. I'm not sure how balanced my respective sets are, and I haven't actually seen the rules yet. I still think WotC are jerks for making the ARC-170 the rare fighter. I understand the marketing "need" to do it this way, but it doesn't make sense. The Jedi fighters should be rarer and have better stats. And it appears neither side has assault ships (no gunships for either side). They have shuttles for the imperial era.

Star Wars Risk (v1.1)

I had a very cool game night tonight. Zachary and I had a go at my version of Clone Wars Risk. Now, I know some of the uber geeken are shaking their heads about the Clone Wars, but you need to keep in mind two things:

1. My kids love the new Star Wars. Maybe more than I loved the old Star Wars.
2. I like the Clones and the Droids. (Yes, I hate the gungans. Sheesh. You're incorrigible.)

So I simplified it and changed it. I haven't liked old risk in a bit. Now Star Wars (Clone Wars ed.) Risk adds some new stuff, most of which would be way over a five year old's head. So junk all the cards and things. I cut it down to the four factions available (red and yellow clones, blue and grey droids). I made two distinctions between pieces. Guys (Phase 3 clones or Super Battle droids, regardless of color) are worth 1 point. Each faction starts with 20 of those. Guys roll 1 six sided die for combat. Tanks (Turbo Tanks for clones, AATs for droids) are worth 3 points, but get to roll an eight sided die. You didn't get any tanks at the start (but I think next time I'll give 3).

Each Faction gets 4 starting locations. Red goes on Coruscant, Duro, Biss and Alderan. Yellow starts on Ilum, Malastare, Toydaria and Bogden. Blue starts on Mustafar, Utapau, Geonosis and Polis Massa. Grey starts on Kashyyyk, Felucia, Mygeeto and Saleucami. You can distribute your starting guys how you see fit, but for this game I went 5 on each for all factions. Zachary was in a Republican mood, so he decided to play the clone factions, and I played the Separatists. Ignore everything else in the box for now. He's not really old enough for this, why bog him down with more choices.

The turn order goes red, blue, yellow, grey. The first thing you do is count the number of systems you control. You get this many points to buy new units this round. Guys are1, tanks are 3. Tanks roll a bigger die. Once you pick your new guys you place them. If you don't spend all your points you don't get to keep them, so you may as well. You place new guys on the systems you already control.

Now you move. All guys and tanks get one movement. They may move to any adjacent system or across a hyperspace line, but not both. If you want to get a point for a system, you need to leave a guy or tank in it. You don't get points for systems you don't have guys in. But you don't "have" to leave a guy behind.

After you moved all the pieces for you current faction (your only faction if you're not playing two) you fight any battles you created. A battle happens anytime your troops enter a system where there are troops from the other team (there are two factions for each team). This is like risk but not, move all your pieces you want to move, then fight the battles.

The attacker (it's your turn) uses the black die. He gets a maximum of 3 die. He chooses three of the units in the attack to fight this round. If he chooses a guy he rolls a d6, if he chooses a tank he rolls a d8. Any combination is valid to a maximum of three die. If you have 3 tanks and three guys, then you can have any combo of 3d6, 2d6 and 1d8, 1d6 and 2d8, or 3d8. If you have less than 3 pieces, you use less than 3 dice as appropriate.

The defender uses the same system, but only selects two pieces to defend from the units in the system under attack. She rolls the white die (d6 for guys, d8 for tanks).

Each player rolls their selected die and compares the results. Each player presents their highest number first. Of these two die, the higher result wins, and that person must remove one piece (their choice) from the battle location and place it back in the box. In the result of a tie, the defender (rolling the white die, whose turn it is not) wins and the attacker must choose a piece to remove.

Battle continues until one side or the other is eliminated or the attacker retreats. The attacker may retreat only if he came from an adjacent system (rather than using a hyper space jump). He must retreat units back to the system from which they came.

Repeat until one team or the other is eliminated.

We had a blast. And I seriously thought he was going to hand me my hat for the first hour. It was a combination of die rolling (good on him, bad on me) and a seemingly uncanny grasp of the concept of focused attack. I won in the end because I have a better grasp of supply and eventually seriously out numbered him.

But it was close for a while.

Wincon '06

The largest Wincon in years. Of course it's been sleeping for years as well, but I have to say I'm actually looking forward to taking a short break from PC gaming for a Saturday. I found (and said recently) that there is a human dynamic missing from online gaming. This will probably change a bit in the next couple of years as voice over IP becomes more feasible.

Some Zombies!!!, a bit of Bosworth, and I think I'll bring my stack of SimCity Cards. I need to spend an hour working on my tourney rules.

I miss RPG night...