1st Quarter Kriegspiel Tournament 2012 Update

After 3 months into the year-long Kriegspiel Tournament, Tim has secured a pretty strong lead with a total of 4 points. Bob, Ross and myself are all vying for second place with an overall score of 9 for Bob, 10 for Ross and 11 for me. Wayne is steady in 5th place overall at 16 points and Eric is dead last at 24 points.

As far as the trend lines go, Tim could if he decided to just simply "skate" for awhile and still maintain a strong lead even if he only places 2nd or 3rd for several games. The rest of us are going to have dig deeper to catch up. Even though Eric is waaaaay back there with 24 points, it's quite possible that over the year that several other players will miss a game night or two and if Eric happens to make those nights and wins handily or close to it, then we may see him in contention for first place. Miracles do happen.

Wayne just needs to score a first place victory one time to find himself in serious contention for a strong second place position overall. Again, he could over time find himself as well in first place if he maintains a steady presence at game night.

Ross as the new guy is performing surprisingly well. With all his cannabis smoking while going to college in Seattle I thought for sure he would be a pushover. But alas, he is crafty and conniving. He too just needs a decent first place victory to place him in cup contention.

Bob is definitely a strong player and in spite of his recent losses is keeping Tim looking back to see where he is. Combining his strong attendance and well thought out strategies we may well see him take pole position from Tim in the future.

As for myself, I'm currently in 4th place. However, I do have home advantage and I am not expected to not host game night thus I ply a steady but sure course to victory. Or so that is the plan. If no one shows up for game night then I will also reward myself 10 points so as to freeze the current position where everyone is at in the tournament. See, just proves I'm not taking advantage of the "AWOKS" in this tournament. Again, as the saying goes "just showing up is half the battle".

May the reflecting light of the Kriegspiel Cup guide you to victory!

Wargame Night 03-12

On March 10th Ross, Bob, Tim, Wayne, and myself got together for a Settlers Cataan: Knights and Cities 5-6 Player Expansion game. This particular Settler's map is pretty much one huge island and as it was randomly constructed the island was divided in the upper north of the map by two desert hexes side by side. Amazingly, no one placed their opening settlements in that part of the board and thus we were all concentrated in the relative center of the map.

As a big believer in the number "5", I convinced Tim to place a settlement on a "5" hex and foolishly he agreed! This prompted Tim to record every roll we were to make in the game to test whether or not certain numbers are indeed more likely to be rolled over others. Of course, I still placed my city and settlement on an "8" and "5" hex respectively to ensure maximum coverage.

After everyone placed their settlements it became evident that the cluster of buildings was centered along the middle of the island leaving only the outside coastline available for future development. Of course, the northern most desert area was also open to colonization.

There was a rule clarification by Bob in which if a city builds a wall and in the likely event the barbarians show up to pillage the island of Cataan then the wall itself does not protect your city. The city is still reduced to a settlement and the wall piece removed from the map board. So the ONLY advantage to building a wall for your city is to be able to hold 2 additional resource cards in your hand before pirates (will a roll of a 7) take half your deck if you hold more than 7 resource cards. Each wall built under each city thus increases the number of cards held in your hand by 2 for a grand total 13 cards before pirates rip you off. Still a good deal however, not as protective of the city as I would like! Change of rules anyone?

Well, as the game got going I kept scoring pretty well with my "5-8" combo and was able to build enough roads to claim the longest road. In all fairness, Bob did claim the longest-road mantle for awhile before I claimed it from him on a permanent basis for the duration of the game. Bob unfortunately was in the thick of things by being sandwiched between Tim and Wayne, thus boxing himself in and unable to truly breakout and claim more land with which to build additional cities.

Wayne made good by hiring the most powerful knight on the board and fending off the barbarians to claim "Defender Of Cataan" twice for 2 easy victory points. Bob unfortunately lost a city to barbarian pillaging as I believe Ross did as well. In addition, Wayne would have played additional "progress" cards however, all of us with the exception of Bob, labored under the delusion that we could only play one progress card at a time (not my fault). Actually, according to the official rules, we can play as many progress cards as we like! I think the mix-up occurred when I was reading the regular Settlers Of Cataan rule when I read outloud that only one "development" card could be played which is true if we were playing the original game. As it was, we were playing Cities & Knights and thus I was blamed for this misunderstanding. It really was Bob's responsibility since it was he who was in charge of keeping us informed, if you ask me (ha ha). At any rate, I don't think we truly missed out on any really big opportunities to screw over our fellow Cataan players with unsavory and detrimental progress cards as we discovered this anomaly midway through the game.

In the meantime, Ross as the Chicago-street agitator that he is, insisted on playing progress cards that tended to tax his neighbors by siphoning off resource cards from each player much to our collective chagrin especially for Bob since apparently he suffered the most by Ross's excesses. Tim on the other hand kept finding himself in economic dry spots as he kept on missing out on rolls that would have benefited him had he not listened to me earlier and placed his settlement on a different number.

As the game continued I found myself in the lead however, as we neared the end of the game I suddenly found myself in a dry spell as well and was coming up short on resource and commodity cards. On top of this, Bob insisted on placing the robber on my "8" hex thus for nearly 3 to 4 times was deprived of resource and commodity cards from that hex. Why he didn't try to screw Ross with the robber I'll never know but my hide has been thoroughly chapped, I must say. Finally, Tim surreptitiously moved into the lead and suddenly he won the game with 13 total points. I came in second with 10. Wayne got 8 points with Ross at 6. I believe Bob got 5 points for last place.

Everyone played tenaciously as it went longer than I thought it would. Great job everyone! As far as the rolls recorded by Tim it was realized that the number "7" and "8" came up the most each being rolled 12 times. The "6" was rolled 9 times and amazingly the "5" was only rolled 7 times. In other games, I swear to you, it comes up more often than it did this last game. A total of 67 rolls were made before end of game. Surprisingly, the "12" and "11" were each rolled 4 times which everyone has agreed would have to be considered an outlier.

With the 5-6 player expansion, I suspect we'll be seeing this game more often. See ya next month.

Wargame Night 02-12

On February 11th, Eric, Bob, Tim, Ross and myself got together for a Twilight Imperium Shattered Empire extravaganza! The following alien races were randomly drawn:

Bruce- Embers of Muaat
Ross- Brotherhood of Yin
Eric- Emirates of Hacan
Tim- Yassiril Tribes
Bob- The Mentak Coalition

We played the 5 player game in which players who are situated in the 1, 4 and 5 spots on the board are allocated a certain number of resources to compensate, allegedly, for the poor geographical location they find themselves in. For player number 5, he gets 6 trade goods to start which fell to Eric. Players 1 and 4 each got 4 trade goods which fell to Ross and Tim. Bob and I were in prime locations and did not receive any trade goods. We left out domain counters again but included the notorious wormhole nexus and leaders for each alien race. 

Ross was a little late getting to game night so we set up his part of the board for him by "committee". And I have to say the committee did a wonderful job in selecting the proper locations for each of his planet hexes.  We also used the new Shattered Empire agenda cards which hide the public objectives from view until you choose the #8 Bureaucracy Agenda card and after looking at two of the objectives then reveal the one that best suits your interests, thus claiming a victory point, if you can, for that public agenda from the moment it is revealed rather than waiting until the status phase to claim a victory point.

Both Bob and I were in a planet rich zone, a "Goldilocks" zone if you will, with which to reap the bounty of our good fortune. Interestingly enough, Mecatol Rex, the old regnal planet that once ruled the entire known galaxy, was ringed on 3 sides by asteroids, nebula and supernova. Of course, with 3 "SPLOCs" Space Lanes Of Communication going into MR, none of us would have any trouble taking this venerable but important planet.

As the Embers of Muaat, I get the fine distinction of being the player no one wants to be close to and no it has nothing to do with how hot I am! I get start to the game with a War Sun which is the most powerful capital ship in existence. It also is very difficult to develop and takes time and money that must be spent in order to lay the keel of this monstrosity of a warship. The Embers get it from the start and gosh it is such a good feeling. However, the Embers don't start off with any carriers and must therefore build those to transport troops and other material and this causes unnecessary delays as I came to find out later.

As the game got going we all settled in for the long haul of planet invasion and development. As a result, no one chose the #8 Bureaucracy Card that reveals public objective cards with which to gain valuable and necessary victory points. As such we found ourselves with very little to show, at least in victory points, after a couple of hours. I know, very painful. Even though I had a War Sun, I was just unable to capitalize on its strengths. Sadly, Tim was able to sneak into Mecatol Rex and seize it with nary a protest from the rest of the alien clans.

Again, only one public objective could be seen (blockade another players space dock) and thus we could not know what Tim's intentions were on MR, other than to fulfill a Secret Objective, but alas, no one including myself challenged Tim to Mecatol. I did have an opportunity to attack with my War Sun on Mecatol with 4 fighters assigned to "WS1" however, my secret objective did not include MR and since I was way behind in points I could score 1 victory point by attacking Bob's space dock which was dangerously exposed to my War Sun. Thus, I chose the latter and did indeed gain one victory point. However, that left Tim unmolested. Of course, Tim beefed up Mecatol in the meantime and laid space mines in the Mecatol system for good measure.

Well, as the game progressed Tim indeed did claim his secret objective by occupying MR with 8 capitol ships plus a space dock (I believe) and scored his precious 2 victory points. On top of that, for awhile the Bureaucracy card was not chosen and thus chits were placed on it. As you know, once that card is picked up and there are chits sitting on it then the number of chits equals the number of public objective cards to be revealed in addition to the one that is revealed by the player to the rest of us. Alas, wouldn't you know it, three public objective cards dealt with Mecatol Rex and Tim was able to immediately score 3 additional victory points on top of the 2 points he received for his secret objective. There was much nashing of teeth by the other alien races when this was revealed because there simply was no way for the rest of us to secure Mecatol without a major military conflagration that certainly would be costly if not prohibitive in the short amount of time that was then available. On top of that, Tim chose the Diplomacy card which insured that Mecatol would not be invaded that turn. The end was nigh and by hook and by crook, Tim secured 1st place. Is this the time where I say "when good men do nothing evil triumphs"?

The final score was:

Tim - 7 points (1st)
Ross - 5 points (2nd)
Bob - 3 points (3rd)
Eric - 1 points (4th)
Bruce- 1 points (4th)

Long Live Mecatol Rex!