December Update

Ouch, I have committed the sin I had hoped to avoid - ignoring my blog for far too long!

My fall has been very busy with working and exercising, but there is a lot of exciting gaming coming up. I should be able to get quite a bit in during winter break.

Most of my gaming has been my PBEM games. Here's what I've had going on:


Twilight Struggle Ladder: I'm in my third game in the ladder, and this time I'm the Americans again. We're going into turn 8 now, and I'm behind on VPs with -13, but my board position is pretty decent as long as I don't lose to Wargames. It should be an exciting finish!

 





Washington's War Ladder: This league just started up, and I jumped right in. I have the Americans in this game too, but I'm getting thoroughly crushed after the first 4 turns. The Congress got dispersed, but he hasn't really moved much - just out pointed me. I just added them up and he has a 50-41 advantage in Ops on me, plus the ones I lost when I couldn't do anything with Congress dispersed. This is going to be a good chance to see if I can figure out a way to break back into the game after a bad start.

Through the Ages: I'm giving this game another chance, despite the minor issues I have with it. There's definitely something I don't understand about what it takes to win. I got to play one game with Bronwen and Rich S., and one game with Patrick and Tom, and got crushed in both. Patrick and Tom convinced me to get into the online website for the game, which is quite fun. I got destroyed by them again, and hopefully learned something from it. I'm still playing another game with two people randomly, and I got the Michaelangelo-Hanging Gardens combo I've won with in the past. I'm curious to see if I can win again with it.

Agricola: I discovered a website for asynchronous Agricola play, which is awesome. I'm playing a game with two random people, and played a 2 player with Bronwen. If you like the game, you need to check this out: http://www.boiteajeux.net/. I took Bronwen out, and have an interesting game going where I'm doing grain and veggies after getting the Seasonal Worker out. (get a grain when you take Day Laborer)

I'm also playing three Brass games online as well, which is always great. I'm in a bit of a funk and not doing as well as usual in those games. I can win at Brass when things generally go my way, but when the luck is a little off, I can't quite overcome it yet.

 

Also coming up soon: TempleCon (Feb. 3-5) and TotalCon (Feb. 23-26)!!!

Chris

Twilight Struggle Ladder Turn 2

My opponent in my Twilight Struggle ladder game was out of town on business, so it took a little longer than usual to finish turn 2. As you may recall, I had a decent start after taking France, being given Cuba by Fidel, capturing a Nazi scientist, and leaving the Iran-Pakistan area empty. This was the board after turn 1:

My hand for turn 2:
   Nuclear Test Ban - 4 Neutral
   NATO - 4 Neutral
   De-Stalinization - 3 USSR
   Warsaw Pact Formed - 3 USSR
   East European Unrest - 3 US 
   Vietnam Revolts - 2 USSR
   Olympic Games - 2 Neutral
   Truman Doctrine - 1 US
   China Card - 4 Neutral

A perfectly fine hand, and I'm always happy to get De-Stalinization in my hands as the Soviets so the Americans don't use it to fund their space program.

Robert headlined Containment, upping all of his Op cards, while I had the Vietnam Revolt go off first, putting 2 influence in Vietnam.

I lead off with a very successful coup in Panama, getting it to 5 USSR influence, and Robert predictibly took Thailand in response to my nearby Vietnamese presence, while also spreading to Egypt.

NATO was formed while I took Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and Robert took Egypt and Jordan.

I made my move with De-Stalinization, taking influence from Romania, Bulgaria, Vietnam, and Panama, in order to take Brazil and Argentina. Robert's CIA (with Containment) took Laos and spread 1 into Algeria. I wish I had had time before then to take Algeria since I have influence in France, but TS forces you to prioritize!

Random Twilight Struggle musings: for those of you new to the game or still learning it's intricacies, here is why I took Brazil and Argentina. It's very possible for the USA to completely shut the Soviets out of the Western Hemisphere, so I take establishing myself there as a priority, unless I think I can win with a quick auto-victory. The Panama Canal Returns card in the Mid-War deck puts a USA influence in Venezuela, so I prefer to move in there later - I'm not sure about this. The Allende card puts Soviet influence in Chile, so there's no reason to put any there first. The one other thing I should have considered more strongly was putting two into Mexico. That would have given me a strong chance to control Central America by just grabbing Costa Rica at some point. I decided to go for a more balanced approach that might let me Dominate both Central and South America.

I decided to fight for it, and put 2 there and 1 into Pakistan. He played Socialist Governments, and simply replaced what he lost, and put the extra 1 from Containment into Burma.

Feeling the creeping American presence on the Asian continent, I went ahead and spent the China Card to take Pakistan and India in one fell swoop. He played the Korean War to take Taiwan, but I got lucky and rolled a 6 to take South Korea!

My final card play was to send East European Unrest into space, which was successful, putting me into having an Animal in Space. Robert successfully space raced as well, using the +1 from Containment to spend Nasser.

Here is the board state as it was after turn 2:

After losing 2 points for missing Military Operations, the VP marker was at 1 for the USA. However, I am very happy with the board position. I have lots in the Western Hemisphere, Domination in Asia, and a turn 3 coup of Egypt could put me in a good state in the Middle East. 



Chris

Twilight Struggle Ladder Turn 1

Twilight Struggle is my favorite two player game of all time. I would pretty much play it any time someone suggested it. When both players know the game well, it can take around 2 hours. I finally ran into the online Twilight Struggle ladder than runs through ACTS, a website that keeps track of the cards for you as well as some other information like what turn it is, what DEFCON is, and victory points. I'm using VASSAL to keep track of the board. After waiting for the previous round to end, I was finally been assigned an opponent last week. We rolled off, and I got the Soviets... but wasn't too thrilled by my opening hand.

   US/Japan Pact, 4 US
   DeGaulle, 3 US
   Duck and Cover, 3 US
   Defectors, 2 US
   Independent Reds, 2 US
   Captured Nazi Scientist, 1 Neutral
   UN Intervention, 1 Neutral
   Europe Scoring

Not a lot of Operation Points, and no Soviet events! This was not likely to become a Soviet steamroller game, so I know I am going to have to make sure I get solid gains in the mid game from the Western Hemisphere and Africa.


My opponent, Robert, put his initial influence out in a way that suggested Marshall Plan was coming - with 1 in Greece and 1 in Turkey. He did indeed headline Marshall Plan, and I lead off with DeGaulle Leads France, because he had put two influence in France. I often lead with a coup on the first action round, but with DeGaulle getting out there early, I used Duck and Cover to take France while giving up 1 VP. His first action was to take Spain and move through Malaysia while Cuba went into the hands of the communists.

My second action was to use the US-Japan pact to coup Iran, getting a strong US card out of the deck. Unfortunately I rolled low, which just emptied Iran of all influence. Robert went for a long shot by trying to coup Iraq, and missed.

I captured a Nazi scientist, while Robert put two ops into South Korea.

Two ops went into Afghanistan with defectors, and Robert played Asia scoring. This only gave him five early points with domination and one more battleground.

I went ahead and scored Europe, giving me 1 VP from controlling France for 1 more battleground.

Romania fell to the Soviets while the Americans influenced Lebanon to get some more Mid East presence.

In my final round, I used Independent Reds while cancelling it with UN Intervention, putting 1 in Syria and 1 in Iraq, and Robert finished with getting an earth satellite by pitching Decolonization.

This is how the board looks after turn 1:

I'm feeling comfortable but not thrilled by how my position played out, given my starting hand. Please feel free to critique my play or ask me questions about what my thought process was. Even after 100 plays, I am still learning the nuances of this deep game!

Chris

GBG Report

The GBG is the Greater Boston Grogs, my monthly wargaming group. We sometimes end up playing a Eurogame or two after the wargames are over. My friend Andy hosts in his awesome basement in Wellesley, and I've been going for 4 years now and it's always great. We had 7 people for this meeting - three played Titan (not my favorite but my buddy Marc loves it) while Andy and Tom continued their ASL campaign game, a Stalingrad scenario called The First Bid. They are on turn 6 out of 19, and have played for multiple sessions already... impressive.

I played my favorite game of all time with Asher, Twilight Struggle.

If you haven't played this yet, go get it, play it at least five times, then get back to me. It's tense, it's deep, and it's elegant. This was my 96th recorded game since I started counting once I felt I knew the rules well enough, and I still keep coming back for more.

I was the United States for this game. This game went back and forth, but never got out of control. Asher's initial coup in Iran left Iran empty, and he didn't go in, and he won the Arab Israeli war, giving me no real opportunity to get back into the Middle East. Once I got rid of De Gaulle, I took France and got domination of Europe by taking Greece, Turkey, and Spain. The dice were not Asher's friends this game, and he bombed a number of coups and the Korean War. Eventually I was able to find my way back into the Middle East, by used Puppet Governments to put influence in Saudi Arabia and Libya.

Asher had a hard time getting over to the Western Hemisphere, since I used UN Intervention on Allende to keep him out of Chile, and I used Fidel on the space race. Eventually he was able to coup Venezuela, but around turn 9 I used realignments to remove his influence there. I got a big scoring out of Central America (8 points) to keep the game in control, while the rest of the world was basically a push. When the Pope showed up in Poland, I was able to grab it.

Finally on turn 9, I drew Cherobyl, which is always an exciting and difficult choice. My hand was mostly two Op cards, but since the only battleground he controlled was East Germany, I decided to go for it. Amazingly, he had the Iranian Hostage Crisis, then Terrorism - forcing me to discard two cards, which would lose me a card play and 2 Ops. I started putting influence into East Germany slowly but surely. He followed this up with Persing II Deployed, which removed 3 of my influence in Europe!

On turn 10, I drew a strong hand with three 4 Op cards and Europe Scoring. It takes me a few turns to finally get control of all of the battlegrounds and I win by scoring Europe. Asher is at 9 VPs and shows me that he had Wargames in hand, and just needed two more actions to get DEFCON down to 2 and he would have won. Wow.

Twilight Struggle took us exactly two hours - once both players know the game decently well, it's rarely longer than 2.5 hours. After Asher left, Eric and I played a quick game of one of the old Napoleon at War SPI quad folder games. It was a pretty light move and shoot, hex and counter game, with the main distinction being that every adjacent enemy HAD to be attacked, which led to some interesting situations in how to move your forces in. We just played the shortest scenario which was five turns, and neither of us was able to cause auto-victory by killing forces, so the French (me) lose if they have not reestablished their line of communication with the western map edge.

Overall, another fun day gaming with friends. I'm looking forward to roping someone into playing Fighting Formations with me next month, since it didn't arrive in time for this meeting.

Chris