Wargame Night 02-14

In February, we nearly had a blowout in terms of player participation. Tim was the only one who showed up. So we decided to play a game of Stratego to determine the first and second place finish in the Kriegspiel Tournament.

The game was close for awhile until Tim killed my #1 Marshal and then proceeded to wipe out the rest of my army one by one with his #1 Marshal.

Needless to say, Tim won handily that night and secured his first place finish. I "happily" took second place. My strategy was to close off the center path of attack and use my flanks for a one-two punch with my colonels. Alas, this plan did not work. Eventually, Tim figured out my ruse and killed my officers. However, I could have stumbled into his flag as one of my captains was foraging in the rear in a last desperate gamble to stave off defeat but eventually my captain (4) was killed in action.

It was Tim's night in Stratego.

Wargame Night 01-14

On January 12th, a couple of us guys got together for the 2014 inaugural Kriegspiel Tournament game of Twilight Imperium. We decided to enlist Luke, the Yoda-like character in the foreground of the picture, to play as the fourth alien race in TI3. The following races were randomly chosen:

Bob -  The Winnu
Ross - Barony of Letnev
Luke - Ghosts of Creuss
Bruce - Universities of Jol-Nar

 I believe we decided to forgo domain counters this night and proceeded to construct the map forthwith. As the benevolent Universities of Jol-Nar I decided to reach out to Mecatol Rex and sent a delegation - with lots of military hardware- to show them our "credentials". It was unpleasant but the natives soon learned to love us. Now all I had to do was wait for the public objective cards to just shower me with points for holding Mecatol.

In the meantime, Luke meekly moved forward from his wormhole base and was content on being pacific in an otherwise turbulent sea of move and countermove that is TI3. Soon even he bailed on us and it was left to Bob, Ross and myself to determine who would rule the galaxy.

That is when, right on cue, Chaos Monkey decided to pay a visit to Mecatol Rex and take was rightly mine.

He attacked me outright and destroyed my fleet and then proceeded to make a planetary invasion against my army based on the surface including my mech units that I wisely stationed only recently. He too brought mech units and the battle was fierce and bloody. It came down to just one damaged mech unit for each side and with merely one die roll away from complete loss of Mecatol, I was able to destroy his last rusty and burning tank. It was a hard won victory but could have gone either way. Nevertheless, I followed up immediately afterward with a counter invasion and destroyed his fleet and reinforced my troops on Mecatol.

While all of this was going, Bob was slowly building up victory points and in the end he was able to secure first place. Unfortunately, even with my Pyrrhic victory on Mecatol, I was not able to secure the second place finish which instead went to Ross. I had to settle with third place. Most unfortunate.

It was still a fun game but was disappointed that Bob was able to finish so strong in first place. I'm sure he was happy that me and the monkey were duking it out on MR but alas, I lost in the end and nearly wept. Where is Eric when I need him?

Wargame Night 12-13

Back in December, the usual suspects got together for the final game night of the year. Twilight Imperium was chosen and basically to sum it all up for 2013 - I won! Actually, for that night I got 4th place however, I received 1st place in the Kriegspiel Tournament and was proclaimed the Kriegspiel Champion of 2013.
The trophy now sits proudly in the dining room of my home. I have to admit, the trophy did accidentally fall into my lap as there were a number of unusual absences this year from all of the Tournament players.

This caused a rather lopsided score to occur on my part but again, all points are accumulated by each player and again, if you snooze then you looze. Half the battle is just showing up and I believe this illustrates a very important lesson here: slow and steady wins the race! Just keep plugging away and yes, you too can grab that Merry Go Round ring and win it big. So lets hear it for the average folks! God loves the moderates too. Some players felt a little cheated however, so as the Vicar of Christ in the land of Kriegspiel Nacht I decided to spice up the scoring by adding an "average".

So to address the concerns of certain individuals I won't name (Tim) the Kriegspiel Tournament score for 2014 will now include one's average in the Tournament. This will be multiplied by your current standing plus any absence points accumulated during the Tournament year. And indeed, if we had utilized this new scoring system in the previous year, I believe it would have been Bob that would have won the trophy for 2013. But alas, It was your humble and faithful servant who, in the end, prevailed. I know, life is unfair.

So now we look forward to the next Tournament year and I'm sure I will do much better. I have a clear conscious and look with great anticipation to vindicating myself on the plains and space lanes of Mecatol Rex. If I can somehow move from playing 4th place all the time to at least 2nd or 3rd then I will have a achieved a milestone in my gaming abilities. But enough of myself, just look at the sneering Tim! He clearly is taking this way too seriously! His Nom De Guerre is Lord Hideous and now we know why. I'm sure like Vadar before him, he will return with a vengeance.