Green Pass Campaign IV, Session 3: Undermined

October 29, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
The party ascended to the stairs to discover that the chapel had become a cathedral of horrors. Evil signs and markings covered the walls and floor, and all things of beauty had been vandalized or ruined. The old altar was broken, and instead there were five rough hewn stones of some necromantic origin, all of them pumping up various foul energies to the ceiling. Four of them were surrounded by undead: 3 soul-draining spectres, 6 armored black skeletons, 24 orange-eyed funeral pyre zombies, and 4 of the nine-skeleton polearm phalanxes, with each group distributed to a different corner. The center of the room just below the green sky-beam was shrouded by magically-animated fumes and debris, but clearly someone was chanting near the center. The ceiling above had been shattered where the beam had torn a huge hole.

Nothing in the room seemed interested in attacking, with only some slight defensive repositioning to protect the various evil altars. From outside the chapel, a mocking voice announced a challenge to come forth and meet the new rulers of Centerpost.

Instead, the mage Qaldor flew to the vestible and wizard locked the doors. The the party carefully arranged themselves around the apse and waited for the underground team of slimes and oozes to finish tunneling a level below.

Whack-a-mole on hard mode

On the ready mark, the party unloaded a volley of powerful magics at the spectres and zombies. The slimes then collapsed the floor below the enchanted stones, sinking them by ten feet into the floor (taking along the unfortunate prelate in the center). The horde outside banged on the doors while the party slowly mopped up the survivors, summoning in an earth elemental to smash apart any of the ritual stones that the oozes found indigestible.

At this point, April Dawnbow, who was watching out the window from the rafters, announced an incoming wave of gargoyle bogies (margoyles, actually) led by a balrog and another vrock. The squadron smashed through the large stained windows just as the party was retreating back into the tunnels, with Sir Pal, his pet bear, and the hydra covering their evacuation.

The hydra and balrog savaged one another as the vrock and gargoyles beat down the bear and began to surround Sir Pal. Meanwhile, the ooze patrol began to gnaw apart the foundations of four pillars in the center of the chapel which everyone agreed looked plausibly load-bearing.

After a couple rounds of getting clawed by dozens of gargoyle arms, Sir Pal announced a fighting withdrawal, and jumped into the central hole (with the vrock in hot pursuit). At that moment, the ceiling came down on the rest of the margoyle swarms.

Having eliminated one Ominous Sky Beam (tm), the party continued boring east across the city toward the second, while the previously frustrated occupiers above erupted in an unexpected wave of celebration...

Green Pass Campaign IV, Session I: The Mist

Writ of Summons on the Authority of the First Office of the Chancery of the Sea-Kingdom of Durnovar, on this the 30th of September, the year 70 AUP, being to all lords temporal, mystical, and spiritual of the chartered lands of Elysium:

We greet you on behalf of King and Archbishop and beseech you to muster at once to the headwaters of the Isigflod, northeast of the Isigwold holdings, and perform the following services on behalf of crown and mitre:

* Confirm the freedom and safety of the garrison at Fort Bodeswell and the Abbey of Little Darply, north along the Isigwold, and aid them in whatever reasonable capacity they request;

* Scout the valley up the Tenterhook to the camp of Centerpost, recently rumored to have fallen to the dread Cult of Orcus, and report on the forces massed there;

* Continue to the gate at Footman's Notch and reclaim control of it from any opposition, so we can re-establish contact with our outposts in the Balewood beyond;

* Warning: Military reconnaissance of the last few months describes numerous creatures of a fiendish and otherworldly nature, including hellhounds and demon swine. Locate the origin of these creatures, and if possible, disrupt their further arrival.

Do not engage any large standing armies until we have mobilized a counter-force of our own. If espionage presents opportunities to eliminate their leadership discretely, however, do not hesitate to do so.

We request you file report by swift courier from Bodeswell to the provincial council at Straddleport upon conclusion of any components this mission.

Heavenspeed, good nobles!

October 24-28, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

The survivors of the north group, having fled Footman's Notch before the rest of the party was torn apart by hellhounds (and not knowing the full details of their fate), finally returned to civilization in the Isigwold, seeking succor at the castle of Tallibrick Sheerclift. Couriers were dispatched to relay news of the events of the last three months, first west along the river road to Straddleport by horse and then by arcane clairaudience back to Durnovar. The office of the chancellor issued a writ of summons for all nobles settled in the region, landed and titled, to muster for a reconnaissance of the region in greater force, all communications from the Green Pass region having been lost.

A party of powerful heroes assembled at the Buckler Gap, discovering a mysterious wall of fog that completely obscured visibility into the valley. The fog was curiously dense, and left a gritty film on the skin as evidence of its unnatural impurity. Attempts to disbelieve it as an illusion were unsuccessful, although the gritty sensation seemed to be entirely psychological in nature.

The company's roster:

• April Dawnbow, woodland hunter (Kim)
• Spinal Pyrope, jello...mancer?! (Kyle)
• Criptus, skinscribe (Andrew)
• Smaug, chiefest and greatest of calamities (Zac)
• Avila Tressa, priestess (Stuart)
• Qaldor Nim, mage (Sherlock)
• Rhaegal
• Tallibrick Shearclift, gnomish ferret-haver (Reba)
• Darrin, dwarven craftlord (Jacob)
• Sir Pal of Din, I dunno, probably some kind of elven ranger (Juston)
• Thorin Odinson, dwarven sapper
• And a roughly equal number of henchmen

After creating a magically cleared bubble of fresh air using the swirling vortex form of a summoned djinn, the party advanced cautiously through the mist, following the road. The thin patches of forest at the mouth of the valley were devoid of natural life, and the trees and plants were repugnantly soft and spongy to the touch. A few miles into the valley the party found a fortified halfling village, barred to outsiders. They could report nothing about the origin of the mist, other than that it had spread outward from the general location of the military depot at Centerpost.

Various chaotic and extraplanar creatures had apparently displaced the native wildlife. First, the party encountered a group of flame salamanders, which fell quickly to powerful spells after being spotted glowing through the fog. The next night, the sleeping party was assaulted by basilisks, which reduced the perimeter of summoned guardian slimes around the camp to giant slabs of stone before the mages could awaken to hurl electricity at them in the mist-choked darkness.

Finally, the party was discovered by a squad of stone giants. The giants hurled great boulders at the party, their infravision apparently unaffected by the mist. Again the heroes swarmed and dispatched the giants.

Where the Bresigway River widened into a lake, the party broke off the path in order to investigate the water. It was warm and tinged red, with a metallic smell of rust identifiable as the taint of fresh blood. The mist steamed and fumed from the surface of the polluted water. Setting up camp on the lakeshore, the party successfully divined the origin of the fouled waters by magically scouting along the surface of the lake from the air. A rift had opened in the depths of the lake, spewing forth boiling blood from some infernal underworld. The heat of the water made it difficult to endure; lowering the water by ten feet with a powerful spell was more than sufficient to allow the evil to be dispelled with clerical prayers. As the gaping maw closed, the water cooled and the fuming subsided.

The party set up camp and waited for the mist to disperse.

Green Pass Campaign III, Sessions 3-5: A Series Of Unfortunate Events

After the party-split outside the dark elf city of Emru-Marol, both groups remained cut off from one another, as well as from their original base of operations in the Green Pass region. Here's a recap of the region's various disasters during the last month:

Strike 1 (Team Underdark): Emru-Marol (September 1, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP)

The portion of the caravan that had no objection to descending into the drow-infested Underdark consisted (not coincidentally) of the more monstrous and cave-loving members:

• Zig and his lizardmen posse
• Conan and Grimdark, the two infravision-capable gnomes
• Bob the explorer
• D the dwarf
• Boudicca and her spider familiar (anticipating local-celebrity status)

The party endured an initial briefing from a drow matron claiming to be "Matron Lestreece of House Kilsek". She exhorted the party to assist her in "protecting" Matron Hestabith, the poorly-regarded matron of House Despana, by assassinating Hestabith's overly ambitious daughter, the (far more competent) Lady Ristabelle. After witnessing the matron's ruthless willingness to carve a helpful map directly into the skin of a doomed prisoner, they agreed to serve her in the infiltration mission, traveling to the Despana compound under pretext of being Kilsek slaves (including visible glowing Kilsek brands). Due to the allegiance between Kilsek and Despana, this was a sufficiently convincing cover story to gain them admittance.

Once inside, they went to the rendezvous point where an agent was supposed to provide them with their weapons and gear... and discovered that he had already been killed by another adventurer, a dual-wielding swordswoman, Sruna of the Atlantean Isles. After bashing down the door and tackling Sruna and confiscating her weapons, they were willing to listen to her sad story of being ambushed and defeated. She also described her own mission of trying to locate her captured party members before the sacrifices began at the autumn festival in four days. The party showed no initial interest in helping. She also surmised that they were being double-crossed, since their employer was probably the matron of Despana's rival, Cindnathys of House Tormtor. Sruna departed theatrically by growing an impressive pair of wings to fly over the walls of the compound and indicated she could be contacted at a tavern in the Goblin's Square, part of the Market District. The party also did not return her two confiscated +3 drowic longswords.

At this point a Despana patrol, tipped off to the fact that someone was smashing down doors in the servant's quarters near the kitchen, began to systematically move through the courtyard looking for the perpetrators. The party briefly engaged in poisoning some food for the feast, and then moved to ambush the patrol as it entered the building. After setting off a stink bomb trap (gnomes!) in in the barracks, the drow patrol struggled back out to encounter the party waiting to jump them from another hallway. The drow were eliminated right down to the last member, as their commander struggled (and failed due to a plucky charge) to dump a fireball in the middle of the party.

Art: Niji707

With the element of surprise lost, the party elected to abandon their mission and retreat over the wall instead, using a rope and tackle (and spider assistance). Meanwhile, Boudicca turned invisible and gaseous and slipped off to look for the chambers of Lady Ristabelle, encountering another and more powerful patrol of female drow soldiers arming on the second floor of the central tower. At the top of the tower she found the door and bodyguards of Ristabelle, who was "indisposed" in her chamber. After causing enough to disturbance to lure the annoyed Ristabelle out, wearing only in her negligee, the gaseous Boudicca made one abortive attempt at a choking grasp (which Ristabelle shrugged off easily) and then floating out the nearest window. (I mean Ristablle was the one in her negligee, not Boudicca. You know what I mean!) The party did leave behind a note implicating Tormtor (rather than Kilsek) in the assassination attempt, and ascribing it to the work of the elusive "Drago the Destroyer".

After slipping over the wall with a force of spider-riders in pursuit, the party fled into the city below and began wandering rather aimlessly in search of somewhere hospitable. They eventually arrived at a weird item shop run by a blue-skinned alien humanoid, similar to the ones discovered (and killed) from the ogre sacks. The party elected not to attempt to sell him the strange cloth they had recovered from those sacks. Conan petitioned for a position as a stockboy and clerk, based on his extensive loremastery, and ended up joining the shop's staff (which already consisted of a couple of horrible-looking underworld fiends).

Treasure and Experience
Coins: None
Gems/Jewelry: None
Trade goods: None
Items of special interest: three drowic longswords (two +3, and one +2, but like all drow weapons they lose their potency if taken away from the Underdark)

Total nonmagical treasure value: 0
Gold per share: 0

Killed or put to flight: a drow male patrol: a spellsword commander (500 xp), his lieutenant (190 xp), and ~10 soldiers (10x 38 xp)
Disarmed: Sruna of the Atlantean Isles (1550 xp)

City locations discovered by exploration: poisoner's shop (200 xp), arena (200 xp), magic item shop (200 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 0
Total experience from kills/captures/deceptions: 2620 xp
Total experience from exploration: 600
Total experience: 3220 xp
Total experience per member: 429 xp

(Note: The henchlizards are getting a half-share of 215 xp.)


Strike 2 (Team Wilderness): The Trail North (September 1-24, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP)

Meanwhile, the rest of the party (consisting of Underdark-averse elves and humans) headed north back in the direction they had come, hoping that the departure of the lizardmen would make the enchanted woods (and its centaur patrols) more willing to entertain proposals for an alliance. In the mountains above the troll-lands they bumped into a party of four would-be dragon hunters, a dwarf and his human companions. The dwarf related the tale of his clan's destruction by the intrusion of a poisonous dragon, and begged for aid in the pursuit of his revenge. The party, unimpressed by his lack of familiarity with the region, ignored the petition, but managed to convince him to come north to seek aid with them instead.

Upon arrival at the wooded vale where they had heard the thunderstorm-battle-rockslide-whatever during the night, they elected to veer off and investigate the wizard's mountain instead. At the base of the mountain, they encountered a warband of two dozen goblins, some of them mounted on wargs. A well-placed sleep spell and some mopping up cost them little but some time and sweat, and they continued up the path to the summit. There they found a pair of grim stone-giant guards outside the mount of a cavern. After parley with the giants, they earned an audience with the wizard inside -- whom a goblin prisoner had already described as pretty thoroughly insance.

Decrepit and bat-crap crazy, like this guy

The audience revealed that the ancient-looking wizard Keliszennan had access to powerful divination magic, both from his occupancy of an ancient throne of power (carved directly out of the mountain) and his use of a crystal ball. He offered, in exchange for the artifact fragment of crypt-stone given to them by the Castellan of Balewood, to provide advice about their next course of action. He spied on the activities of Lord Varghoulis, now in council with his masters in the ruined city of Nerigos to the east, and then expressed grave doubts that anyone in the region would be powerful enough to stop the army of the dead. He did recommend trying to prove worthy of the attention of a powerful domain-ruler far to the south, from the fire lands -- ideally by murdering one of his rivals, the swamp witch Guendenwidha... Guendeswitha... Guen. (OK, just Gwen, that works!)

Treasure and Experience
Just call it 250 per party member, which is being generous for nuking a bunch of hapless goblins!

Strike 3 (Battle Scenario): The Balewood (September 15, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP)

And back north in Balewood, the Durnovaric Expedition Force was being ambushed by a powerful undead force, while being pursued by an even more powerful ogre-and-orc force under the command of a balrog. (It never rains, but it pours.) The intervention of a centaur outrider patrol was insufficient to prevent the shattering of the human position by ogres, and the unlucky Duke Conylt (and his elvish associate Lady Tesslith) fled into the forest -- Conylt heading west to the keep with little but his own skin for protection and Tesslith retreating south with the fleeing centaurs.

Been A While Since The Last Update

I regard this blog as an expression of my creative interests, and I just haven't been doing anything creative lately. A few reasons:

• The game night at LETU is still going strong, but is pretty heavily invested in 40K. That seems likely to be the focus of most dedicated players in the near future. We typically have sufficient players to have a board game overflow, but none of them are consistent enough to allow anything that carries over from week to week. So we've been playing simpler card games that allow a variable number of players, and feel more casual.
• This semester I have a large number of committee assignments adding to my workload, and can't really commit to anything that requires preparation.
• My wife's work-from-home projects are forcing me into doing more child care, which leaves me with less time for everything else.

I'm still feeling dissatisfied with the large stack of games and books I own that aren't being played, but there's not much I can do about it. The burdens of being an adult and a professional, I suppose.

MEK OP Game Night: Mage Knight Board Game

One of my very first posts was a lament for the absence of a high-quality "hex-crawl" board game -- that is, a board game that could simulate the experience of taking a medium sized expedition (say a mercenary company with a few dozen adventuring soldiers) and allow them to explore a region of undiscovered territory. Computer games have offered quite a few variations in this theme (including the HoMM series, the Warlords franchise, the original King's Bounty and its remake, and several similar games. Most of these aren't exactly to my taste, with minimal emphasis on simulation and a tendency to reduce combat to the "stack of a hundred dragons" approach that feels much satisfying to me than the kind of detailed and realistic large-scale combat you'd find in Total War or Mount and Blade. A good recent historical entry in the genre was the indie title Expeditions: Conquistador, which provides a simple but satisfying implementation of some of the major logistical choices that a real expedition would face. Even then, its combat was more squad-tactical than operational, with the result that you can end up conquering the Aztec empire with a platoon of barely over a dozen men -- whereas even Cortes needed several hundred Spaniards.

This Saturday for MEK OP, we took a shot at learning the Mage Knight Board Game, a modern-feeling treatment of the same genre as old favorite Magic Realm. "Modern", in this case, means that it replaces most of the old dice-rolling event resolution mechanics with a zero-paperwork deck-building approach that feels more like playing a puzzle game than an RPG.

The world's largest game of solitaire.

The fantasy tropes in the game are fairly predictable and derivative (yep, you're on a map full of rampaging orcs and dragons, and you need to capture castles and delve into dungeons, check), but the puzzle game mechanics with the cards feels uniquely well-designed relative to other similar systems. There's an intensely high level of pressure to optimally use each combination of cards, and a wide range of different permutations for the ways in which they can be used. In some respects it would be a good choice for card-counting poker experts, since being constantly aware of the exact contents of your "deed deck" makes it possible plan out your next five turns like a chess grandmaster. This results in a game that feels diametrically opposed to the randomness of a classical 70's-era hex crawl like Magic Realm, despite the enormous amount of shared thematic DNA.

There are a number of game aspects that can drive a simulationist to the point of despair, if you think about them for too long. There's virtually no possibility of death here, with the worst game situation being set of wounds that require a few turns to discard. In a single night, you can walk through three towns, hire multiple military units who are mysteriously awake at 3:00 am to go on dangerous adventures, and fight two major battles. You can conquer an entire keep single-handed without the need for any army, then travel ten miles to do the same thing again, all within 24 hours. Your character is some kind of empowered hero who can travel day and night without the need for rest -- which is fine in itself, but when you pick up additional units of mere mortals, you can actually use their abilities to move even faster. There's no economic system here, so all your troops work for free. Every dungeon has exactly one resident monster (out of five possible types), every keep has exactly one defender, every starting hero gets to recruit one unit, and every monastery protects exactly one artifact. It's all very neat and precise, which makes the puzzle game enormously predictable and strategically deep, but also makes it hard to lose yourself in a plausible narrative of play.

There's also such an emphasis on iconographic information (rather than note-taking and text) that the game ends up with a huge multi-table footprint full of wasted space. That huge board with 100 numbers at the top of the photo above? That's just to record your experience point totals. In an older RPG-style game with a record sheet, it would require a two-digit number in pencil and an experience table. Here, it takes 700 square centimenters of high-quality cardboard just to display a single token occupying one box with the number you care about.

Overall, it's probably best to think of this as a deck-builder card game with a large number of auxiliary systems, rather than a hex-crawl game with a card-based sub-mechanic. The majority of time invested in this game is going to revolve around trying to figure out how to manage your hand and play cards at the opportune moment. Unlike Magic Realm, where every different hero and map situation requires a radically different style of play (and generates a unique story along the way), Mage Knight is about each player performing a predictable sequence of universal tasks with near-perfect efficiency.

I can't say I dislike a game that has this much strategy under the hood. A good player could run in circles around the level of play we were able to reach on Saturday night, and there's an enormous time and practice investment required to become a skilled player. By the end of the night, everyone was taking ten minutes for each turn, trying to milk every last drop of utility out of a dwindling deck.

I still find myself looking for a combat system that creates a narrative dynamic that resembles some kind of styled approximation of real medieval combat, rather than playing a card-matching minigame. I don't think that this will replace any of my interest in finding a more simulationist treatment of the same topic. I should probably haul out my Fantastic Frontiers rules, and try to take a third stab at writing them up in a coherent form. There are definitely a few features of the rules for Mage Knight that I like enough to steal, such as the reputation track.

By the time we called the game around midnight, we had discovered two cities (the end-game objectives) but were nowhere close to being able to assault one of them with any prospect of success. I'd say that playing this through to the end will take at least six hours, and it might be wise to start early next time I bring it.

MEK OP Game Night: WotR with Expansion

This Saturday we amazing had no Warhammer tables going, and so instead we set up for a 4-person War of the Ring showdown. I played Free Peoples for a change this time, and most of the other players had at least some familiarity with the system. I elected to add most of the optional characters and minions (and their dice) from the expansion set, but not any of the optional Fellowship cards or other rules.

As with my past experience, the game fits rather perfectly into a four-hour time slot. The game was resolved by a very narrow margin, driving through Mordor in a single turn due to military pressure, with a final corruption level of 9 at the end of the game. A bad tile draw for hunt damage would have resulted in a loss. Instead, we finished with only the second Free Peoples win I've ever seen. Virtually every member of the Fellowship ended up dead (or for the Merry and Pippin, lost in the wastes north of Mordor), and Minas Tirith went down before the Fellowship had even reached Lorien. Things were getting frantic by the end, and the final turn featured the use of all three elven rings!

And yet somehow I won with a deck
containing only two heroes

Then today (Sunday) my wife and brother-in-law played a few rounds of the DC Deckbuilding Game. That's just what's it's called, which perhaps suggests it's not the most original concept in the word. It's a simple single-resource system with streamlined play relative to other similar games. It probably compares most directly with Ascension, although thematically it seems intended to compete with Marvel's more complicated deckbuilder, Legendary. Overall it had the same basic qualities of other games in the genre, but the art was clean and set-up was easy. My BIL was relatively pleased with the thematic integration of the DC universe, which I gather is based on the New 52 reboot of the primary comic titles. There's probably some sense in which I'd feel more comfortable with a more classic Silver Age implementation of the theme that resembles the stuff I remember from my youth, but that's not likely to ever happen. In any event, all the official comic versions of DC heroes are likely to be washed away by the arrival of the new movies in the next decade, which will create new definitive versions of the familiar roster.

I won both games, as Hawkman each time. But as with most deckbuilders it's mostly a matter of luck to grab an early lead and then simply not doing stupid things to squander it.

Fall Semester Kickoff

I've been neglecting this blog, partially because I've just gotten too busy to be an organizer, and I've settled back to being a player again. But I thought I'd still provide some highlights from the first weeks of MEK OP:

• Currently our big games have all been Warhammer. We usually have two tables of 40k going at once, and Kyle is finishing another set. So that seems likely to be a focus for the near future. We also have a Rogue Trader RPG campaign on Tuesdays, and for that matter, we also played a round of Death Angel on Saturday (and died horribly on the second floor). So I guess we've pretty much got everyone playing some version of Warhammer now. It's like a virus!

• We have a lot of board games now, and not nearly enough players for them. Yesterday I saw Carcassonne, Memoir 44, Empire Builder, Axis and Allies, my own copy of Conquest of Nerath, Axis and Allies, and all the old Fantasy Flight and casual card game stuff from last year. Vox is still designing his own RPG system too.

• I'm investing in a couple new games that I bought over eBay:
• Twilight Struggle is currently the highest ranked game on the BGG ratings, and so I thought I'd buy a copy to see what all the fuss is about. It's a two-player card-and-map game that simulates political events during the cold war. It's a GMT game (like Space Empires), so it will probably be fairly concise and austere in implementation (as opposed to the chrome-heavy stuff we currently have). Hopefully this can help to build a campus culture for hex and counter style wargames, too.
• Merchant of Venus is a reimplementation of the classic Avalon Hill game by Richard Hamblen. It's a whimsical sci-fi economic game similar to Firefly, but with heavier emphasis on shipping different kinds of goods around the map. Like all Hamblen games it's quite mechanically baroqe and crunchy on the simulation level, like a version of Monopoly written by 80s-era TSR employees. ("Roll on the Vermin Infestation table to see how many rats are raiding your hotel this turn, and all their colors and ages.") It also has a second version of the rules (the "Standard Game"), which is revised for more modern sensibilities.

MEK OP Game Night: Isigwold Incursion

Last night's group: Reba playing the gnomes (with Ruthy as a paladin lieutenant), Zac as the elves, and Peter as the giants.

March 14, Caudex Annales 71 AUP

At initial set-up

In response to reports of a small beastman encampment in the Isigwold to the north of the Viadunian Road, three divisions of indigenous natives under the command of local heroes launched a preemptive reconnaissance in force into the forest lands. Scouts reported a small assortment of goblins led by wolfriders. Seeking to set up an ambush for the goblins, a detached group of 10 elven light cavalry sallied forth to picket them in order to entice forward into the foothills. The goblin scouts made no prior contact with either group (aside from one captured as a prisoner!), and rode off at once in enthusiastic pursuit.

The wizard Xangold deployed a wall of smoke to conceal both the storm giants (on the left flank) and the archers (on the right flank), and for the initial round of combat, only the archers fired. Expecting to discover a wizard and the hidden archers, the goblins advanced resolutely into the center of the gorge, smashing apart the unfortunate cavalry and making contact with sturdier gnomish ranks. During the light exchange the smokescreen was pulled back just far enough to shield only the giants, allowing them to wait until the goblins had arrayed themselves into neat lines below the cliff wall. At that point a sequence of three lightning bolts cut through their ranks, shocking them into disorganization and general retreat. A second round of hurled boulders from the giants were sufficient to rout the battlefield. 

Attention turned to the reports of a force of larger-size humanoids along the Isig Coast near Straddleport... (next week?)

Order of Battle - Isigwold Free States

• Elven Division, 3 platoons: Light Cavalry-r, Bowmen, Longbowmen
• Gnomish Division (Spellbinder Elrohir), 3 platoons: Heavy Infantry #1 and #2 (Sir Collier Rolando), Arbalest Platoon
• Arcane Division (Xangold Spectregrasp): 3 storm giants, 2 giant eagles

"r" denotes routed
"x" denotes destroyed

Entering the ravine

Order of Battle - Isigwold Incursion Force

• 1st Smasher Division (Bugbear Sub-Chieftain Phraal), two units: Bugbear Ribcrunchers-x, Goblin Wolfbrawlers-x
• 1st Shrieker Division (Goblin Chieftain Pixyag), six units: Goblin Gutskewers (Light Infantry) #1-x and #2-x, Goblin Eyebleeders (Bowmen)-x, Goblin Nobnockers (Slingers) #1-x and #2-r (Goblin Sub-Chieftain Boglux)

Spoils

2085 gold pieces (348 gp share for each division's leader)

sword +1, +3 vs undead

potion of healing

Note: Half of this gold is claimed directly by soldiers, and would be used to slowly level them up to veteran status if they were human (demi-human races begin already as veterans, so they don't benefit but still take their share). The other half is divided equally between each divisional commander, creating a share of 348 gp for each division.

Experience

For treasure: 1 xp per gp (that is, 348 xp per division) awarded to each division to split between the commander and any of its lieutenants and heroes (you can decide how to divide this among your heroes, if you have more than one of them present)

For leadership: 1575 xp to each division commander

Note: The campaign rules indicate that you should pay 15 gp per week to supply an infantry platoon in the field, or 60 gp to supply a cavalry platoon. (Storm giants cost 48 per week each.) Marching to and from the battlefield should take most of the month (4 weeks), so you can assume that amounts to 60 gp per infantry platoon and 240 gp per cavalry platoon, and 192 per giant. This will roughly cancel out with the small amount of gold claimed from the battle, so you can probably just ignore both the gold and the supply costs if you want, and just assign the experience.

I think the elves should get the sword, since they took more of the risk and the other commanders were both spellcasters. But you can decide that among yourselves if you like.

This is just the campaign equivalent of a nuisance random encounter. If you want serious treasure, find a stronghold and conquer it!

MEK OP Game Night: Evangelism

The campus has a new student center, so we decided to camp out on a giant round table (cue Camelot jokes) and show off some of our board games. Josiah brought over a four-expansion Carcassonne set, basically the Big Box minus the Tower expansion. We methodically covered the table with tiles, despite the fact that most of us had only a vague idea of how the new expansion stuff was being scored.

After Carcassonne, we pulled out Shadows Over Camelot and played a no-traitor game with impressive success. No lost quests until after all three special items were claimed, and then we beat up on the catapults to make the victory as decisive-looking as possible.

Meanwhile in the Green Pass campaign, a solo foray by my wife into the caves resulted in a frantic retreat from some unexpectedly tough hobgoblins, as well as the more professional clearing of one of the two warbands of orcs. The orc sub-chieftain coughed up the following rather disconcerting communique:

It's in some kind of ersatz-Papyrus font, so you know it's serious business. Messengers were dispatched by ship to Durnovar to alert the king to the possibility of some kind of orcish offensive.

MEK OP Game Night: Playtesting

Advancing the Green Pass campaign clock by another month resulted in no random incursions by enemy armies, so the session broke out into two groups: a 40K group with most of the experienced players, and a "Medieval Aegis" playtest with some new players. I was in the playtest group.

Medieval Aegis is a tactical man-to-man combat system created by Richard "Vox" Scott, using a hex map and lots of dice. We each created characters using a simple point-buy system that Vox made up on the spot, for a four-way battle. Because movement is slow in this system, the free-for-all pretty quickly devolved into two battles on each end of the map.

Some comments about the system:

• This is a very dice-heavy system. An average attack involves rolling to attack, rolling for damage, and then counter-rolling for damage-soak. Each of the latter two rolls can involve a half-dozen different dice. Higher quality armor/weapons use better dice, so a standard mathematical operation might look like "Attacker rolls 3d10 + 2d12 + 5, then defender subtracts 5d8 + 2, and applies the difference as lost health."
• Crits and fumbles are quite common in this system (generally on a 1 or a 6, rolling something like 1d6), and tend to influence the flow of combat in unpredictable ways. As an obvious example, the first round of engagement between me and Vox involved both of our archers making failed attacks and dropping our bows for the following round.
• Depending on character build choices, it's not difficult to create a stalemate situation where both sides have lots of armor and only weak weapons that can't inflict damage through it. This creates situations where each side pickets the other, hoping for a crit.
• There's no magic in this world, which removes some of the rock-paper-scissors dynamic of fantasy combat. Nothing beats high-end armor, which stops arrows just as well as swords.
• The point-buy method for leveling up used fairly solid principles of diminishing returns to make it unappealing to dump too many points into one character.
• Archers seem very good, given how many steps it takes to make contact with enemies. I suspect a force of long-range mobile archers with minimal armor would be the quickest way to win. That being said, moderately armored archers can beat unarmored ones, so there's still a difficult optimization to be performed around finding how much armor an archer needs.
• Some rules (like horseback riding) seem minimally implemented, and will probably require more explanation.
• There's no element of dodging attacks at all, aside from a single specialized skill. In particular, wearing lighter armor or having higher agility/dexterity has no benefit in terms of reducing a foe's attack probabilities.

Overall the rules are short, at about 10 pages. Despite being a medieval game, the style of play actually reminded me more of an age-of-sail wargame, with lots of slow maneuvering at range using turn-radius restrictions and a limited firing arc. I like that style of play in warship (and for sci-fi games, starship) battles and maybe it has some logic for heavy knights, but it feels thematically odd to use it for light skirmishers in leather jerkins. I feel like it would be improved by doubling all movement rates to help melee combatants get through the gantlet of arrow fire and create a sense of flow. Even in the current incarnation, though, I would be willing to play again.

MEK OP Game Night: Space Empires 2v2

After the previous attempt to play Space Empires: Close Encounters, I decided it would be more prudent to try team play, to avoid the "3 versus 1" dynamic that can emerge in a free-for-all. (Once one player starts to lose fleets, everyone wants to show up and snag some undefended colonies!) We played with diagonally seated teams, the more offensively-oriented of the configurations. I played with first-timer Jarrett "Sherlock" Locke (green and blue), and Kyle and Kim played as the other team (red and yellow). Empire Advantages are

• Green: +1 attack when attacking, -1 attack when attacked
• Blue: Immunity to black holes, can always use slingshot
• Yellow: Adaptive, gains better bonuses the longer combat continues
• Red: Rolls two dice for experience checks, uses better result

Opening moves saw Red take an aggressive expansion strategy, moving colony ships and the flagship along with scouts despite the risk of a black hole. The other three players took a slower approach, and Blue and Yellow focused on building up a network of pipelines for faster movement.

After two turns, Red is in the lead with 5 colonies.

Red's expansionist attitude extended into the border zone, and turned up three mineral markers. The Green side of the border was less rewarding. (I've just hit the Danger at the top and lost a scout!)

Notice two Red colonies about to build up on the border.

The lure of all those resources was enough to provoke outright hostilities. Green pushed its flagship forward into the neutral zone, staking a claim to the resources. Red, with only scouts in the region, quickly scraped together a fleet of destroyers and the flagship to challenge the claim. The battle results in a moderate victory for Green, as Red loses both destroyers in exchange for a fighter, before retreating with the flagship.

Green's reinforcing fleet is a carrier and two fighters.

Meanwhile the opposite side of the board looks like this:

Bug-infested space rocks, stay away!

At this point, Blue swung to hit Red in the exposed rear while Red tried to shut down the invasion with bases and cruisers. Rather than pulling back to regroup, Green pushed deeper into Red territory-- running into a hard line of three cruisers which quickly drove off the small invasion force. Meanwhile, a reinforcing Green group met the Red flagship with a fully loaded carrier... and lost.

Aftermath of the Green attack, retreated to cover a miner swiping those resources!

This came at the price of completely ignoring Blue, which methodically blockaded two colonies and wiped out one of them. At the conclusion of the game, the board looked like this:

That's my daughter Molly, surveying the wreckage.

If you look closely, you can see Blue's incursion into Red space, the retreating Green fleet, and two Yellow fleets about to take pressure off Red. This is where we called it, after seven turns and about five hours. I think the attack just about sufficed to remove Red's head start, but I still regard this situation as fairly balanced and able to swing both ways. Yellow has taken no losses and has a very nice Empire Advantage for long end-game battles.

Kyle and Kim are already planning for a rematch, and want a copy of the game to plot new strategies!

MEK OP Game Night: Semester Finale

Saturday featured the wildest finish yet to War of the Ring, with a 2-vs-1 game that ended in... a military victory for the Free Peoples!

Shadow initially set up for invasions of Gondor and Rohan. The Gondor invasion went relatively well, taking Dol Amroth and Pelargir. But Rohan held firm, and was relieved by substantial reinforcement out of Edoras, eventually enough to break the siege. All of this unraveled slowly, with the game under little time pressure due to some horrific damage inflicted on the Fellowship by hunt rolls; the Ringbearers ended up holing up in Lorien for several turns in a row, having lost both Boromir, Pippin, and Gandalf.

Meanwhile, the North had been left nearly depleted. Elves sallied forth, first from Rivendell, and then from Lorien, to pressure Moria and northern Dunland. The first invasion was thrown back, but the followup from Lorien was sufficient to seize a mostly-depleted Moria. The Shadow retaliated with a counter-siege out of Isengard, but pressure from Rohan made reinforcing the invasion difficult.

"No worries, folks, we got this."

The final blow came from Erebor. Gimli and a reconstituted Pippin commanded a combined force of Elves, Dwarves and Men through Mirkwood to challenge the Witch King and his Dol Guldur army outside of an undefended Lorien. The Witch King attacked, hoping to defeat both the army and then Lorien. Gimli prevailed, slaying the Witch King personally! The remaining garrison of two trolls fell to a Later-than-Last Alliance of 4 dwarves (leader, elite, 2 regular), 3 northmen (2 leader, regular), and 4 wood elves (leader, 2 elite, regular).

All in all, a relief to finally see the Free Peoples win a game for once.

MEK OP Game Night: Domains At War

As seems to often be the case for the end of the semester, I don't have enough time for a full write-up on the Saturday sessions. Last week we had three new players, so I did another intro scenario for the Battles system in D@W with some alterations to the Chaotic force. I let the new players design their own divisions using a point-buy system based on BR values. This time we had four divisions of Lawful troops against three divisions of beastmen (orcs, hobgoblins, ogres, and a troll platoon). Surprisingly, no one elected to play the elves, or to add any extra heroes to a division.

Durnovaric Expeditionary Force
Company A (Father Padeen BacCorleot, 5th Level Cleric)

• 2x Heavy Cavalry
• 2x Longbowmen
• 2x Slingers

Company B (Lord Damuth, 5th Level Dwarven Vaultguard)

• 4x Dwarven Heavy Infantry

Company C (Magister Finbar Crowne, 5th Level Mage)

• Heavy Infantry A
• 3x Longbow

Company D (Sir Asmund Crayg, 5th Level Fighter)

• 1x Heavy InfantryA
• 2x Longbowmen
• 2x Light Infantry F
• 1x Medium Cavalry

Beastmen Horde, Legions of the Undying
Company A (Warchief Khazay)

• 1x Trolls (with 27 unit hit points and 7 attacks!!!)
• 2x Light Ogre Infantry
• 2x Heavy Orc Infantry

Company B (Chief Awitar -- Kyle: "Hey, didn't we already kill this guy?" No, that was Zraqua!)

• 1x Heavy Ogre Infantry
• 4x Light Orc Infantry

Company C (Engineer Ursk)

• 4x Hobgoblin Bowmen (desperately needed some infantry support!)

By sheer luck, the dwarves and cleric set up on the same side as the hobgoblins, and the mage's division got the trolls. This allowed the mage to keep the trolls locked down with web spells, and the cleric to tie up the hobgoblin commander with hold person, as the dwarves slowly chewed through the ogres and orcs. Web is another good example of a spell that works much better on a large battlefield, where it's essentially perfect crowd control against a single tough opponent.

Once the orcs in the center crumpled, the game quickly moved to morale checks, and Chaotic troop armies never survive more than one of these. None of the commanders were slain, but all of the units routed off the map. Arguably, the trolls were trapped and couldn't escape, but I want Khazay as a recurring villain, so I'm going to assume that he was stronger than his trolls and could break out of the web. (A more detailed system like Pathfinder would allow individual characters a combat maneuver check to escape from web.)

I'm feeling more ready to start on a full campaign with production mechanics included, although I might need to try simplifying the mechanics to accommodate the fact that not everyone has a rule book. For the moment, I'm working on creating more Excel spreadsheet tools to avoid having to look through a zillion photocopied tables for monthly recruitment limits.

YAC Pwn Fest: A Big Success

Last night MEK OP hosted the board game room for the Yellowjacket Activity Council's fall-semester gamer event, Pwn Fest. Despite the obvious popularity of console video games (something like eight different rooms of Call of Duty, DoTA, LoL, etc), we still attracted enough players to run five multiplayer tabletop games simultaneously.  I had a group playing War of the Ring that went until midnight!

MEK-OP Game Night: Savage Reaches Wrap-Up

November 4, Caudex Annales 70 AUP

The climactic defense at the Roaring Banks left gnollish power permanently broken in the Savage Reaches, and left little opposition along the river valley. With poor treasure to claim from the nomadic gnolls, attention turned to the forsaken swamplands to the west. Saurian forces marching against Fort Diffident had been neatly rebuffed two weeks earlier, but the pale dragon commanding them had retired from the battlefield with a haste beyond the possibility of a pursuit. Locating the dragon's lair seemed a lucrative alternative to mopping up fleeing slaver caravans, and so the leadership of the Briarwood Irregulars turned westward at the mountain spur, following the footpaths into the murk and fester of Pallid's Abode. 

The saurian tribes were primitive and dispersed into tiny hovels throughout the swamp, offering little opposition and indeed, little evidence of any recent habitation. The trail itself branched into a sinking complex of broken temple structures being flooded by water and overgrown with razor-thorned vines. Double-lidded eyeslits peered out from the water, then extinguished themselves to leave only ripples as the cavalry companies rode past.

The mouth of the great cave discovered outside the complex was worn smooth by passage, and a team of officers and heroes was already alert to dangers below. The passage sloped down into a chamber of muddy waters, where three saurian elders had elected to make a final stand. Two of the lizardkin were dispatched with fire and sword, and the third fled deeper into the tunnels. Swift pursuit brought the explorers into a throne room full of caged prisoners, waiting to be served as meals to the cave's draconic master. Pushing onward with growing apprehension, the warparty discovered a deep underground pool of acrid waters, churning and bubbling. And then the waters parted and the head and sinuous neck of a young dragon erupted into a furious gout of acid. Even those leaping aside in the nick of time were horribly choked and staggered by the rolling fume-clouds that blossomed around the splashing torrent.

Burning Hands: Need a light?

Both knights of the Irregulars, Thorgood and Wilson, fell in battle to the claws and fangs that followed up this noxious barrage, but not until after the dragon had been dazzled by a burst of light that left him stumbling and swinging wildly. As the surviving saurian burst from another nearby pool to employ shamanic arts to heal his master, scholar and magister Arthur Firebrand moved to catch them both in a fan of crackling flames. With the shaman scorched beyond life and driven into the caustic waters of the dragon pool, all focus returned to containing the dragon's fury. Thorley took a final stand beside the gruff Father Otis, notching arrows as the dragon closed in on them.

Surprise! Dagger KO!

In the end, the wyrm met an ignoble death. Firebrand, his magical arts exhausted, flew at the dragon's right flank with an unsheathed dagger and plunged it into the beast's scarred breast through a rift left by the enchanted sword of Sir Charles. The dragon stumbled in blind agony, and then at last lay quietly on the floor in a pool of fuming gore.

Amazingly, neither warrior was permanently injured after falling in battle to the strokes of the dragon-claws, knocked senseless by the impact but otherwise protected from laceration by sturdy mail, artful parrying, and Sir Humphrey's Ring of Protection.

With magical arts, the dragon horde was quickly identified among the acid-washed bones of hundreds of unfortunate captives. Great treasures drawn from the smaller pool where the lizard-priest had been concealed included (after return to civilization and careful identification): a Ring of Spell Storing with 5 spells, ample compensation for a wizard's valor, as well as a Shield +1. There were additionally strewn about the room a pair of scrolls, one (perhaps not coincidentally) with the fourth-level arcane spell spell storing, and the other with the lesser spell hypnotic pattern. In other corners, bones concealed a second set of Leather Armor +2, a Potion of Clairvoyance, a Potion of Invulerability, and a mildly cursed (but potentially also useful) Philter of Love. The floor was littered with offerings to the dragon from his saurian devotees amounting to the weight of nine thousands of gold pieces, and several rare gems: a flawless facet-cut diamond, a ceremonial jade belt, a wrought silver diadem, and a glamoured moonstone with patterns that swam beneath its surface.

In all, the wealth amounted to over 20,000 gp of monetary treasure, but with the further value of the spells beyond simple enumeration. Thorley Acquisitions now had access to one of the few techniques known of creating items that could store magical energy in any common jewel or ornamental band -- a talent prized beyond nearly all others by the great arcane loremasters of the world!

Notes: Prior to this encounter, I would have rated the battle at roughly even odds, but now it's clear that it required a lot of good luck to go as well as it did. Not only did all three PCs make a successful saving throw against the (basically lethal) dragon breath, but the dragon failed a saving throw against glitterdust. Otherwise it would have been unlikely that the party could have survived long enough to grind it down over multiple rounds. After seeing how lethal the breath attack could be, I didn't use it again during the battle, ostensibly on the grounds that dragons that are attacking by smell (instead of by sight) prefer to claw and bite. Another two breath attacks would have finished the battle quickly and sorrowfully.

Acid? Yeah, whatever. We're all good! (By Howard Lyon)

After the battle, the two rolls on the Mortal Wounds table were totally optimal. That is, both fighters rolled a 20 on 1d20 (for survival), followed by a 6 on 1d6 (for severity of wounds), which let them both get off with nothing except some flavor text about a near-death experience! Not so much as a scar to brag about later. The odds of doing this are essentially 1 in 20*6*20*6, or 1 in 14,400!! This is, to put it mildly, not the standard outcome of being ripped apart by a 30-foot-long acid-spouting dragon in his own lair.

Finally, I'd like to salute playtester (and walking Warhammer 40k encyclopedia) Jeremy Walley, who had to move back to Arizona last week. We all miss you already.

MEK OP Game Night: More D@W Playtesting

Usually I try to put up an in-character recap of the previous session, but this week the detailed roster for the player army was taken home by Walley to prep for next week. So instead I'll just provide a summary.

• We fought four battles, three of them relatively balanced. The humans won three battles, and the beastmen won one.
• In the first battle,  the player army split, and a couple companies of cavalry rode off to intercept a company of lizardmen that were getting rather close to a supply link. Both sides had roughly 30 BR, including a small dragon commanding the saurian troops. This resulted in a strong victory for the humans, at the cost of a heavy cavalry platoon.
• In the second battle, which was concurrent with the one above, the remaining infantry force attacked a mobile gnoll company investigating from the south. This featured a little under 25 BR for each side, and was again nominally balanced. This time the humans fared much worse, and were sent quickly into a rout. Without any "tough" units to take losses, the humans had to lose a larger number of units, and were on the losing end of the +2/-2 morale modifier for number of units lost.
• In the third battle, the cavalry returned to regroup with the survivors, and pursued the gnolls and their prisoners. I allowed a spy to roll as an act of "sabotage" to see if he could release some of the prisoners to fight in the battle (the non-wounded ones from routed units, presumably), but this failed. In any event, the gnollish survivors were totally outclassed by the cavalry, and were destroyed.
• In the fourth battle, two more companies of gnolls joined up to meet the humans at a bridge. A human mage went all Horatius Cocles on them, and fireballed the bridge as they were attacking. I ruled this was good for a -4 terrain penalty, forcing them to hit only on a 20. The gnolls then proceeded to roll 87 consecutive non-20 results! Outcome: Human victory with no casualties, and a river that you probably don't want to be drinking out of, any time soon.
• After cutting back on the number of recon rolls (using range modifiers) and eliminating the distance modifier, the recon system seemed to work more smoothly. I'm contemplating adding a "rumors of distant battles" trigger for long-range recon, i.e., battles count as a recon-triggering event with a longer range. That will give distant domains some chance to be aware of the outcome of a major battle, which seems like the sort of thing that would more easily attract the attention of scouts from dozens of miles away. I like the idea that a dramatic victory by an invading army puts all the other domains in the area "on notice" that something new is happening.
• Spoils/experience calculations are still a bit slow. I think it might be possible to speed them up with a standard worksheet form. It would also be nice to have a worksheet to keep track of wounded soldiers, and when they recover from wounds, as well as experience point totals for units working on Veteran status. All of this is something I could do myself... if I had more time!
• I feel like I'm gaining a better understanding of the strategy of assigning losses. There's a natural need to find balance between trying to kill only your weak units (which pushes you quickly to being forced to make morale rolls) and killing only strong units (which are valuable and can't easily be replaced, providing more staying power in one battle at the expense of hurting you in the next one).

MEK OP Game Night: War of the Ring

With two simultaneous Warhammer games going on at once, and my wife home being unhappily pregnant, there weren't many players left over for board games. I set up War of the Ring anticipating we might have a few new players, but ended up in a one-on-one game against Walley. He elected to play the Free Peoples again, and this time the game was much more even.

Shadow opened by massing against Rohan. Cards on the table from both sides turned the northern front into a stalemate, and very little happened there through the night aside from periodic reinforcement and an Easterling strike on Dale. Instead, the game featured a very methodical grind through Rohan and on into Gondor.

The Fellowship elected to move south through Isengard. This slightly longer path might have made the difference between a victory and a defeat, given the closeness of the result. As it was, the slightly greater danger of being hunted by orcs out of Orthanc was mostly negated by poor hunt rolls early in the game.

Going into what would almost certainly have been the penultimate turn of the game, Shadow was still missing three victory points, and the Fellowship (guided by Legolas(!) and Pippin(!!)) was only four steps from Mount Doom. Minas Tirith had crumbled under multiple assaults, taking Gandalf, Aragorn, and Boromir with it. An enormous number of non-hunt action dice gave Shadow just enough resources to take apart both Dol Amroth and Lorien, as the clock ran down.

Neither siege would have succeeded without the perfect set of Shadow event cards. The siege of Dol Amroth featured Grond, Hammer of the Underworld, providing a 3 round battle.

Meanwhile, the siege of Lorien was supported by the balrog of Moria, good for some extra rolls pre-battle at 4+.

Why have you forsaken me, Google image search?

*cough* Let's try that again.

OK, that's better. All is forgiven.

And the Witch King made an appearance at both. So at least everything closed out in suitably epic style.

MEK OP Game Night - Space Empires: Close Encounters

For this weekend we played a four-way game of SE: Close Encounters, the expanded version of Space Empires: 4X. With two new players, the obvious decision was to put them both on the same team and then harshly school them in the efficiency of early offensive action! As it turned out, they pretty much figured that out on their own.

I used most of the optional rules, but without ground combat or unique ships. In particular, we used "More Aliens" to make home system exploration a little more dangerous. We used instant upgrades, which undercuts some of the authenticity of the game as an empire simulator, but feels necessary when the game needs to finish in a more limited time frame. If people know that ships upgrade even while on the offensive, I figure that makes offensive action that much more appealing.

Player teams were arranged diagonally across the table:

Red - Reba (playing something that involved extra retreating)
Yellow - me (playing Celestial Knights, double shots first round)

against

Blue - Jonathan (playing Immortals, -1 damage per round)
Green - Zach (playing Star Wolves, bonus to small vs large ships)

Initially we did all turns simultaneously. Everyone lost a scout to the planet of aliens, and I figured that would give everyone a chance to try out the combat system in a controlled environment. But as it turned out, no one but me even bothered to go after them...

First blood started on the Red vs Blue border. The Red forces had discovered a space wreck, and Blue had amassed a small CV force with fighters that we assumed was going after one of the two barren planets along the border. Instead, it skipped right past the aliens to grab the wreck, trashing the Red scout that had been left as a garrison.

At that point, Blue decided to just keep going and see how far a single carrier could get. With three new colonies on the border, there were multiple Red targets available. One of them threw up a hasty defense base, but the others had only shipyards in orbit. The fighters bypassed the base, and neatly eliminated a colony.

The second colony down the line was defended by a flagship, DD, and SY. After destroying the Red forces, at the cost of all three fighters, the Blue fleet settled in to blockade the system. Meanwhile, Green took advantage of the situation to send in a four-destroyer squadron along the other side of the Red border.

I had been tied up with some aliens, but did my best to make a run against the Blue systems with a force of 4 cruisers, 1 DD, 1 SC, and a flagship. Most of my research was poured into movement, to provide faster relief. Unfortunately, one of the two deep-space systems I moved through turned up... a Doomsday Machine! It ate my scout, destroyer, and a cruiser before being terminated. My weakened Yellow fleet pushed into Blue space and destroyed a colony. All this by the end of phase 7.

At that point time was running low. We decided to call the game after the next turn set. With a choice between pushing on toward the homeworld, and stopping to kill more colonies, I made the worse decision. The colony I decided to attack was defended by a base, and by this time Blue had +2 defense tech. When it didn't go down to the initial Celestial Knight charge attack, I knew it was over. Each subsequent round consisted of it ignoring a single point of damage from the cruisers, while slowly picking them apart. Immortals for the win!


Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, the Warhammer folks were pitting an implausible alliance of Orks and Necrons against a stilll more implausible Imperium/Chaos alliance. I dropped by between turns to witness the occasional WAAAGH! I'll let Walley describe the outcome:

We played a 2000 point battle. This is on the large side for games, Basically the largest I feel can be completed in a reasonable time.

The scenario called for each of us to have an objective placed in our deployment zone. This was the primary objective. Secondary objectives were also used in the scenario, such as killing the first squad and the enemy commander. These objectives yield victory points.

Orks and necrons went first, and the orks quickly redeployed from the slow Dark Angel Space Marines on the left flank and concentrated on the more experienced and mobile Chaos Marines on the right. This went well for the most part, but the game swung evenly back and forth. Orks lost their outriders to shooting, and a failed charge left their infantry exposed in the center of the board. Over all, the orks fought well in melee,but were unable to survive the subsequent counter-charges from the marine melee specialists. The necrons spent most of their game shooting at the heavily armored Terminators, eventually destroying them. And Robert's near-sighted Dreadnought finally landed a shot that killed the ork monster truck Battlewagon. 

the game ended after turn 4, with a difference of 1 victory point. Neither side had claimed the other's objective, and each side had killed one commander. However, the marines had killed an over-eager squad of Deff Kopta pilots, giving them first blood. Thus the Marines won a pyrric victory.

Next week I will not start this size game after 8 pm :)