Benny’s Weblog

A long overdue update. Plays since last year:

22 x ASL
1 x ASL SK
3 x EuroFront II
3 x EastFront II
2 x Starcraft
1 x Twilight Imperium 3
1 x Asia Engulfed
1 x Vimeiro
1 x Angola
1 x Napoleon
2 x Wilderness War
2 x Under the Lily Banners
1 x Saratoga
1 x Napoleonic Wars
3 x World At War: Eisenbach Gap
3 x Race for the Galaxy
1 x Command and Colors:Ancients
1 x Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper
1 x Tigris & Euphrates
1 x Combat Commander:Med
2 x Friedrich
3 x Napoleon’s Triumph
1 x Can’t Stop
1 x Angola

3 x Europe Engulfed
2 x Eastfront
Monmouth
Breakout: Normandy
Blue Moon
Mr Jack
Jambo
Goa
Crusader Rex
Fire in the Sky

A91 - The Road to Gora:
A110 - Shanghai in Flames:
T2 - Puma Prowls:
S22 - Another Summer’s Day:
S23 - Monty’s Gamble:
S24 - Sherman Marches West:
S25 - Early Battles:
Shifting Sands (2):

Notre Dame (4):

Canal Mania (5):

Combat Commander: Europe (2):

Shifting Sands (2):

Deflexion (2):

ASL - HS 3 Tasimbioko Raid: This could be the most-fun ASL scenario I’ve played thus far. Burning Huts and Dive Bombing!

ASL - VV13 Sur Les Chemins De Rome: An Interesting scenario, may have been more enjoyable if I had not totally diced my opponent.

ASL J12 - Jungle Fighters: Fun but hard to see how the Japs can get through the defense. Fun Banzai opportunities though.

ASL S21 - Clash at Borisovka: Back to this tank-only scenario and lost again!

ASL 3 - A Simple Equation: My second play of this one. It’s fascinating that twice my opponents neglected to cover their right-flank. This allows the Germans to use board-edge creep and avoid sometimes even long-range fire.

2 x ASL S2 - War of the Rats: According to my ASL game record this is my sixth play of War of the Rats. I think it’s the best scenario in Starter Kit #1. A very good introduction to Flamethrowers, DCs and Support Weapons.

ASL S21 - Clash at Borisovka: This one seems like a pretty hectic scenario to introduce Starter Kit players to Armor. In fact there are barely enough Acquisition counters to keep track of all the shots!

ASL J102 - Borodino Train Station: An interesting scenario that in the early game feels more like a puzzle than your typical ASL game. Russian squads advancing catiously onto the mapboard and straight into enemy fire. I managed to hole up a large enough force to successfully pull off a Human Wave and capture the required single building. Later I had enough of a force to march down and satisfy the VC for a win.

Combat Commander: Europe (2):

Mr Jack (2):

3 x Gipf (2):

2 x Medici vs Strozzi (2):

Dungeon Twister (2):

Hive (2):

4 x ASL Starter Kit #1 - Retaking Vierville: Helping an old ASL-er get back into the game.

2 x Gipf (2): Discovered I had been playing incorrectly in the past. Now it’s so much more interesting! Can’t get enough of this series of games.

3 x Tamsk (2): Tamsk is still entirely interesting. Lately games have been very close and tense, the last couple have come down to the amount of sand left in the timers. Great, tense stuff.

Medici vs Stozzi (2): Gets better with each play as you learn to evaluate the tiles. Great game.

Angola (4): Multiplayer wargames are turning out to be not my thing; Just way too long with too little going on. I just don’t have the patience to play for 7 hours when my involvement is something close to one quarter of that time.

2 x Medici vs Strozzi (2): This is a really, really good game. It may get stale after around 10 games but in my books that’s a good total… It’ll be interesting to see how it goes.

3 x Tamsk (2): Loving Tamsk, it’s the anti-AP game!

Roma (2): Not bad but starting to pale in the wake of other games such as Medici vs Strozzi.

Dockers
CC:E Scenario (2): Round 6 of the CC:E tournament. Possibly my most important game ended in disapointment as Christian took me down with a very strong win!

5 x Tamsk (2): 5 plays of Tamsk at Dockers was a riot, I really love this game and there is certainly a lot more to discover as far as tactics go. Deserves a better look.

3 x Polarity (2): 3 plays. Falling out of favor a little as the strategy becomes eclipsed by dexterity accidents hehe.

Australian Games Expo
3 x Tamsk (2): Another 3 games. Excellent stuff!

Yinsh (2): Always amazes me just how much is going on in this game. Look-ahead in the whole Gipf series is difficult as hell; So much so that there’s almost no point in trying and it’s a better game because of it.

Caesar & Cleopatra (2): I like this game but there’s no place in my collection for it. Babel and Roma satisfy the special power 2-player itch enough for my liking.

Byzantium (4): Sadly, we only made it through a single round. It’s a fiddly game which requires one player to know the rules backwards.

Ubongo (4): Light, fast puzzle game. Two plays were great fun but I’m more or less done with it now.

To Court the King (5): A crazy Yahtzee style game with a bunch of special powers. I would play this again with fewer players. Three may be a better number.

4 x Carcassonne (2): 4 tournament games of Carc resulted in 2 wins, a draw and a loss.

Dungeon Twister (2): Totally hammered by the opposition. Next time I’ll play after a good sleep instead of an hour before one!

Medici (3): This one is growing on me. While five players was a stretch, I especially liked the speed of the three player game. Evaluating the worth of tiles really is interesting.

Medici vs Strozzi (2): Essentially the two-player version of Medici. Is it better than the multi? Too early to tell.

Hey, That’s My Fish (3): Just a heap of fun, can get nasty though!

CC:E Scenario 5(2): Scenario 5 grinder against Frankie. Down to the last card!

No-Limit Hold’Em(6): Nice to get back into Poker after not having played for a very long time. Great fun!

Suitcase Game(5): Not really sure what this game is called but it was kinda fun.

ASL - J89 Himmler’s House: Wow, this one is great but… hectic. The stacking in “Himmler’s House” became quite dense, this one would be so much better played on the DASL boards which for which it was designed. We screwed up a bunch of rules along the way but I lost fair and square!

ASL Starter Kit S4(2): First play of this one. All the SK scenarios bar maybe one or two from SK#2 seem good to me. This was an interesting get-your-guys-off-my-map-edge game. Possibly slightly favors the defender though.

CC:E Scenario 4(2): Tournament game against Jeff. Good fun but tense. The more I play this game the more stressful it becomes. But that’s a good thing… right? haha

ASL - BC7 Brigade Hill (2): A pretty good introductory PTO scenario although it does feel somewhat unbalanced. In the hands of a better player the Brits may have had a chance though. The Japanese did an excellent job defending, they timed their attacks very well with few errors.

A Victory Lost (2):

Roma (2):

Roma (2):

Combat Commader Europe - Scenario 3(2):

Combat Commader Europe - Scenario 3(2):

Under the Lily Banners (2):

Bohnanza(4): This game has never really grabbed me. It’s all about the trading which is nice, but the trading is kinda dull all the same.

Bohnanza(7): Twice in two days, too much!

Polarity(4): Polarity is almost certainly best as a two player game but due to its popularity more players always want to join.

Polarity(3): Three just doesn’t work at all, at least not with our house rules!

Thurn & Taxis(3): Thurn misses the mark for me. Feels like Ticket to Ride with less angst.

Combat Commander(2): Played Frankie who took a very well deserved win!

Under the Lily Banners(2): Made it half-way through our learning game. I really like the system even though there are a few holes in the rules. I needed to get on to Consimworld to ask the designer rules questions; That always annoys me.

Diamant(6): Light and thankfully quick. A fun little press-your-luck game.

A Victory Lost (2): The Germans put up a much better defense and actually held off for the better part of the game. For us, playing Germany is proving very difficult to figure out. Another win for the Russians.

ASL Starter Kit S6 - Released From the East: Still a pretty good scenario, lots of room for a varied attack strategy. My opponent concentrated his attack on only two of the buildings which was probably a bad idea. It meant I could rush the defending squads from the 3rd building over to reinforce.

ASL SP111 - Why At Erp: Reminiscent of the Starter Kit scenario Retaking Vierville with roles reversed. Same map but with the Americans attempting to break units in the victory hexes.
Good fun but a little basic, a nice bridging scenario for new players.

ASL - S16 Legio Patria Nostra

AO12 - Sicilian Midnight

Babel (2)

Medici (5)

Rot & Swindlers (6)

Carabande (6)

Elasund (4)

Polarity (4): I love this game but still trying to figure out what the heck is going on!

Dune (6): This is actually quite a good game, I really want to try this again after reading the rules and becoming more familiar with how things works. At the end of the day it’s a negotiation and area control game but still pretty fun.

Settlers 5/6 Player (6): I’ll never turn down a game of Settlers, simply love this game. My only criticism of the 6 player game is the openness of the board. It feels like 3-player Settlers, plenty of goods to go around, not as tight a game.

ASL A32 - Zon With the Wind: An excellent scenario but can be tricky for the attacker. Getting around those 88s isn’t easy on the Americans.

ASK S16 - Legio Patria Nostra: Not a bad scenario. Lots of room for maneuver for the attacking Free French. Good fun.

Played the following scenarios at Anzacon tournament. There is roughly 17 hours of ASL play here. The only game I won was the very last monster scenario “Ancient Feud”.

ASL SP118 - Seizing the Sittang Bridge: Opponent was Joe Morrow. A short scenario to start off the tournament. Set in Burma, the Chinese attempt to hold off a Japanese patrol intent on capturing the Sittang Bridge. I’m not bad at playing the Japanese because when they inevitably break, they don’t go backwards, they just continue on to the objective. In this case however, I ended up with the Chinese who were quickly overwhelmed.

ASL PBP22 - Morire in Belleza: Opponent was Murray McCloskey. We had a lot of fun with this one, I played the Italians; They’re not bad until they break the first time. Surprisingly, they had a really good 10-2 leader so I was able to get very very close to winning the game. In fact we both thought I had it in the bag until the very last turn when Muzza sprung his HIP artillery piece and blew away enough guys to prevent me controlling the hill. Excellent fun!

ASL FT50 - Meeting on the Summit: This is where the tournament went downhill for me. A night scenario in deep snow with heavy winds was probably the last thing I wanted to play after 9 hours straight of ASL. Needless to say I didn’t have a hope. Cloaking, night LV, Starshells, Trenches, snow drifts. My head almost imploded. I’ll only remember this as my worse tournament experience ever!

ASL 119 - Ancient Feud: And then on Sunday came the monster. A scenario designed to take from 9am to 6pm. Luckily, my opponent Gordon Stokes conceded after only a few hours so we had a result. Unfortunately for the others they only made it halfway through their games after 8-9 hours of play so the TD needed to make a decision as to who would most likely have won if the game continued. Hopefully this problem does not surface in future tourneys.

ASL SK15 - Hammer to the Teeth (2): Our second play of this one saw the Germans getting a good foothold on the town and managing to hold out against the Americans and their reinforcements. This and 88’s At Zon are probably my two favorite Starter Kit scenarios.

ASL SK13 - Priority Target (2): My first play of Priority Target. Looking back it’s hard to see how the Allies with their three artillery pieces have a chance of winning the game. There is a ton of cover on every flank due to the grain fields being in season. Still fun though.

Combat Commander Europe (2): Played my first tournament scenario against Imants. Scenario 1 as the Germans after we both made a successful bid. It was great fun!

Combat Commander Europe (2): Scenario 2 against Alpha. An excellent game which looked a little shaky at the start but became more decisive as the game wore on.

Combat Commander Europe (2): A non-tourney game with Imants. We played an upcoming scenario so he could gain some familiarity with some of the fiddlier rules.

Lord of the Rings (4): Kinda fun, we didn’t come close to beating the game but generally had a good time trying.

Tigris & Euphrates (4): First play for a very long time. Multi-player games are just sooo slooow!

ASL 22 - Kurhaus Clash (2): I kinda liked this scenario, looking forward to giving it another try; But, I’m not convinced the allies have a hope of winning! The Roar balance shows German:63 American:31, I never stood a chance!