First Play of War of the Ring Collector's Edition

A couple of months ago, Fantasy Flight Games announced that they had a limited number of War of the Ring Collector's Edition available at the nominal list price of $400. Since this is going for about $1000 on Amazon or eBay, I decided to snap one up. I had a chance to play it for the first time today. We made it through about 3/4 of the game with the shadow player (me) about to win. We played for 5 hours, but setup and takedown took about 1 hour each. I don't think we did much wrong, but I was certainly scrambling through the rules looking up small details. I hope it will be better next time.

Compared to the regular edition of the game, the Collector's Edition is marvelous! The figures look outstanding and because they're painted, it's easier to see which figures belong to a certain nation. The larger board is also very nice, allowing you plenty of room to stack figures without crowding.

Ankle Deep in Lead (uh) Pewter

I recently saw a series of posts on The Miniatures Page where someone was selling their GHQ WWII micro-armor collection. In total, they were selling about 500 vehicles, and I snatched it up for $200 including shipping. And, the sweetest part is that these are already nicely painted. I already have a sizable collection of GHQ modern vehicles (mostly spray-painted medium green with a few details), so this complements my existing collection quite nicely.

Now I'm reading through my entire collection of WWII miniatures rules trying to decide which one to play and find some scenarios. I'm looking at games like Spearhead, Crossfire, Blitzkrieg Commander (a Warmaster derivative), and Look Sarge, No Charts WWII amongst others as well as trying to look at more grand-tactical games where a stand is a company, battalion, or regiment.

Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be

Yesterday, I had the chance to play both Commands & Colors Napoleonics and the 150th Anniversary Edition of Battle Cry. After playing two games of C&CN (trying to make sure we got all the special +1 die firing/+1 die melee modifiers) followed by the First Manassas Battle Cry scenario, Battle Cry felt very simplistic and lightweight. I loved the game in its day, but perhaps I'm ready for a bit more meat in my ACW games. I'll probably work on retrofitting Battle Cry with C&CN rules, using light rifle infantry and light cavalry for ACW troops. Then again, for light ACW games, there's Yankees and Rebels from Gio Games.

My worthy opponent in both of these games was Richard Bliss of The Game Whisperer blog. Please check out Richard's blog--his is much better than mine. Hi Richard!

Memoir Online

I've just started playing the beta version of Memoir '44 Online. This is very nice. But boy is this going to be a time sink...

I'm Stuck on Westeros

I've resisted purchasing Fantasy Flight Games new "BattleLore" game Battles of Westeros, because it was priced high ($80), I already have BattleLore, and I didn't see that Westeros added much to the system. Well, I caved. Why? As usual, because my Friendly Local Game Store, Game Kastle, had a slightly damaged copy for 50% off!

So, I've been reading the rules, trying to grok the differences between BattleLore and Westeros. So far, the items of notes are:

- D8 instead of D6 for battle. dice have (3x light, 2x medium, 1x heavy, 1x all, 1x flag), so that heavy units are harder to damage
- Units in combat are engaged and retreating units have to endure "parting shots"
- Roll dice for a number of activations (single units) and card play for multiple units
- Players alternate activating units instead of iGo-uGo
- For units destroyed, light units count 1, medium units count 2, and heavy units count three

It remains to be seen whether these changes are for the better or not. Certainly it addresses many of the criticisms of the Commands & Colors system.

In the meantime, I've been assembling the figures. I've found that you really need superglue. Two hours and a small tube of superglue later, and I've managed to glue the Lannister faction and the leaders to their bases and tapping them in with the blunt end of a toothpick. Today, my fingers are sticky with dried superglue. But I must continue.

Another new game: Julius Caesar block game

Another game that my brother and I played during PacifiCon was Columbia Games new block game Julius Caesar. JC, as I'll call it, is very reminiscent of other recent Columbia Block games such as Hammer of the Scots and Crusader Rex in that you play a card each turn then move that many groups of blocks.

JC adds the extra mechanic that movement cards have both a number (Roman numeral in this case) showing how many groups you can move, and symbols for how many steps can be recruited after movement. These steps can be to rebuild damaged blocks or to recruit new blocks. The extra wrinkle in this game is that many blocks, such as Roman legions, can only be recruited at a particular city. So, leaders find themselves having to move a block to that city (fighting for it if necessary), then using one of their recruitment steps to "build" a new legion. The legion is built at strength 1, so it's still very fragile at first, and players may have to spend several turns improving it so that it's fit to fight.

In our first game, which only lasted a few turns, I found it confusing knowing where all these recruitable legions were located. I suggested that we place these recruitable legions on the board face down. It then became obvious what cities were important to both sides for recruitment purposes.

This is a good game. Block game fans should check it out.

New game played: Marcher Lords

My brother was able to come visit me for PacifiCon over Labor Day. One of the the new games that we tried was Fiery Dragon's game The Marcher Lords. It's a medieval game about a relatively rare subject: the Normal invasion of Wales during the 11th century. Our mother's maiden name is Bowen (Welsh "ab Owen"), originally from the Swansea area. As such, both of us were interested in a simple game involving the invasion of Wales.

The game has some interesting asymmetric features:

- All reinforcements are random draws. The Welsh get infantry and bows, while the Normans get infantry, knights, and crossbows. The Normans have better fighters, including Knights, but the Welsh have more bows which get to fire first in combat. The Welsh do have some cavalry, but they appear at the start and can't leave their home kingdom. The first Norman reinforcement into a newly conquered area is a castle, which then shores up the defense of forces in that area. Often, the Welsh must try to reconquer an area quickly before the Normans can build their castle.
- The Normans can invade wherever and whenever they like, but any Welsh kingdoms adjacent to conquered areas become mobilized so that they begin receiving reinforcement. Welsh kingdoms not adjacent to conquered areas just sit there, as the Norman's aren't this kingdom's problem (yet!). So the Normans may want to invade only some areas so that the Welsh don't get as many reinforcements.
- To invade, the Norman force must be in supply. The more units they attack a Welsh kingdom with and the farther this kingdom is from the home Earldom, the harder it is to be able to commit resources. The Welsh only roll for supply when attacking a home Earldom.
- There are random events that come into play. At one point, the Vikings attacked the Normans, conquering one of their castles forcing the Normans to deal with them.

It was a pleasant game, finishing in a couple of hours. We were pretty pleased with the game; I'd rate it about a 6.5. It has some nice features, and might also make a nice game for a miniatures campaign.