FFG Posts from 4/21/12

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3220

Stuff about the Joust Metagame for A Game of Thrones.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3225

A preview of the new Asylum Pack for Call of Cthulhu. 

Unfortunately, as of yet, I don't play either of these games, but one day these will be exciting to me :)

FFG Posts from 4/18/12

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3215

Some information and spoilers about a new Battle Pack (Rising Dawn).  The cards mentioned all seem pretty awesome.  New Legend for High Elves (Eltharion), a new Neutral Order unit to make quests really efficient, and a Neutral Destruction unit to hinder your opponents' quests.  Really really sweet stuff.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3218

A bunch of information about using Bilbo Baggins from the upcoming Over Hill and Under Hill Saga Expansion.

Attempts at solitaire Lord of the Rings, 4/17/12

Well, I tried to play 'Passage Through Mirkwood' solitaire this evening, just to see how it would go.  I figure that with its difficulty rating of '1', it would be a good warmup for trying some of the more challenging scenarios.

Absolutely not.

First, I tried two games using just the Tactics cards.  Gimli, Legolas, and Thalin, with the Tactics cards from the core set plus the first couple of Adventure Packs.  Couldn't even get out of the first quest area.  Starting with 3 threat means that you'll almost never get any progress right away, given the starting location and Forest Spider, and if you run into even a small rut of locations, you're done for (the monsters you can fairly easily kill, thankfully).

I figured, hey, let's try something else.  Let's go with the Leadership cards!  Aragorn, Theodred, and Gloin took a crack at this quest, and despite handling themselves better, they didn't make it any farther. 

Next time I give it a shot, I'll probably at the very least take an actual constructed deck, with cards from two supporting types.  My mono-color decks certainly don't fly solitaire, haha.

FFG Posts from 4/16/2012

Sneaking Past The Watcher in the Water, Part Three

Gives an example deck list for utilizing the new Secrecy mechanic.  What is possibly the most interesting to me is both that new Aragorn hero card (reset your threat!?), and the Sword that Was Broken Attachment.  Very cool looking stuff.

New Empire Army book?

Huh, I haven't been paying nearly as much attention as I should have been.  The Empire are (or have been) just re-released for Fantasy!  Given that my Dark Elves seem to feel a little out of touch with the current game, it's exciting to think that the Empire may get some new toys to throw down with. 

I'll have to swing by, pick it up, and give it a shot.  Hear that Frans?  I'll be up for another Fantasy game before ya know it!

Also:  Halflings in the Empire army!!  About time they've made a return.

Cryx Kraken revealed

Yeah, yeah, I'm probably the last person to have seen this (thanks Minute!):

http://privateerpress.com/community/privateer-insider/insider-4-9-2012

That thing looks really really sweet.  Well done PP! 

(Also, take notes, GW- that's what a video should include- some information, and some people to give the company a more 'human' touch!)

Various gaming 4/7/2012

Well, I'm not posting a lot, but since I played a few wargames recently, I wanted to at least put SOME post up :).

I spent this past Saturday over at Rob's place, playing a few boardgames, and although I didn't take any detailed reports (or many pictures), here's a few details of what I did.

To start off, we played Close Action, by Clash of Arms games.  Since Rob had never played before, we chose to play one of the more basic scenarios- 'Dont Give Up the Ship: Chesapeake vs. Shannon'.  This is a fairly well known engagement from the War of 1812 that historically resulted in the USS Chesapeake being captured by the British.  I was playing the Chesapeake in this battle, but to keep things even for us, we played with the optional rule giving the US ships a Crew Quality of A3 (vs B4), making it a little more effective, and turning this into a fairly even matchup.

As mentioned, I didn't take copious notes of the battle, but I managed to hit Rob's ship hard on turns 7-10 (raking him from the front on 10), nearly knocking out 2 whole hull sections, and taking significant rigging losses in return.  On turn 14, I managed to rake him from the front again, bringing him close to striking, and we called it. 
 

I imagine this will be a far more interesting picture when we actually play a game with more ships, haha.

Really, I don't think I tremendously outplayed Rob, although I did outguess him once or twice (and got outguessed once).  Rob had to tack on Turn 7 to keep me somewhat engaged, and I think that probably hurt him a bit more than it felt like at the time (keep in mind the damage I did on the subsequent turns, which was relatively light in return). 

We followed this up by playing Warriors of God, from MMP.  We chose the scenario 'Lion in Winter', covering the period from 1135-1258 AD.  I played as the English.  The end result of this game was that I basically had two very successful turns, ending with Rob moving in a large army to clear out the English from Normandy, thinking I would let him siege me, but instead engaging him in combat, and crushing his army badly.  With much of his army destroyed, no ability to get his guys out of Wales/Scotland to support the mainland quickly, and the fact I was unopposed on over half the map for a few turns, we called it in my favor, and went to play some non-wargames for a bit.

This is a picture from the turn after I destroyed his main army.  For now, the big thing to see is that there isn't a whole lot of blue on the table:

So yeah, a few games, but we had a great time, and the best news is that I've finally been getting wargames on the table :).

Till next time!