Kayfabe and Throwing Shade - Warhammer Underworlds and Rumbleslam AARs

While Sam couldn't make it this past weekend, John and I decided to put a couple games on the table that John had finished painting the miniatures for, but hasn't had the opportunity to play yet. 

The first game was Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire. I had actually bought the starter earlier this year, but ended up selling it since no one else seemed to be interested. It's really a shame, since while I'm cold on Age of Sigmar, Underworlds turned out to be a fun, fast-paced, and tactically complex game.

John and I ended up playing three games. I lost the first, as I sent my warband in piecemeal. While Steelheart's Champions are stronger than the members of Garrek's Reavers in one-on-one combats, John was able to gang up on my fighters and tear them apart.

Realizing my error, I spent the next two games keeping the Champions closer together, playing a defensive game. With this strategy, I managed to win both games.

Warhammer Underworlds has actually piqued my interest, and I may purchase the new starter.

The second game we tried out was Rumbleslam, which John essentially owns everything for thanks to his participation in the kickstarter.

I chose to play as the Cryptborn Nightmares, while John used the Heavy Pounders.

Since I couldn't find a PDF of the rules online (c'mon, TTCombat - it's 2018, get with the times!), John and I had to take our time trying to learn the game as we played.

The first turn mostly saw both teams moving across the ring, positioning themselves for the next turn. My werewolf, however, managed to successfully activate his Crowd Pleaser ability, and leapt to the nearest empty turnbuckle.

The second turn saw most of the action. My werewolf leapt down from the turnbuckle onto the ogre, who in turn went off the ropes to slam into the werewolf. While the big guys fought it out, the smaller members of the team skirmished in the corner, with one of John's halflings and my zombie knocked out for the count.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time, but the two rounds was enough to get a taste of Rumbleslam's rules, and it left me wanting more. We used grappling, off-the-rope, and turnbuckle attacks, but neither of us managed to use any lifting or throwing rules. Maybe next time.

Fort Night - Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis AAR

Like I said in the recent Sekigahara post, I've been on a bit of a tear recently in regards to board games. While they haven't replaced my miniature wargaming hobby, they're a great supplement, offering experiences unlike those of pushing little toy soldiers across the table. 

GMT Games has been my focus recently, since they offer a wide variety of themes and designers that cater to a vast swathe of player types - everything from dense, multi-hour games that cover entire wars, to short, intense games that can be enjoyed in just a half hour.

The newly released Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis falls in the later category. Sam and I managed to play our first game in about an hour, but that was mostly due to having to explain the game rules and a mid-game break to talk to a few drop-ins. I'm sure that playing time will decrease drastically when we break it out again.

Fort Sumter is, as the box shows, a card-driven game in which two players take the roles of the Unionists and Secessionists in the last few moment of peace before the outbreak of the Civil War. Both sides wish to control various aspects of the United States - Secessionist, Political, Public, and Armaments - without escalating too quickly and creating public sympathy for the other side.

You can check out the game's BoardGameGeek page for better reviews than I can offer.

However, I do have to mention the rulebook and playbook for the game. The rulebook is concise - only 8 pages long, and one of those pages is the cover and table of contents - but it's colorful and easy to read.

The playbook, on the other hand, is fantastic. It presents the first round of the game in a step-by-step instructional guide, with little boxes offering reasoning for each action taken, and then also covers the "Final Crisis" round, which differs in structure to the preceding three rounds, but is as vital, if not more so, for victory.

It then presents a short history of the Secession Crisis, along with citations of events, people, and places to each of the 48 strategy cards. These strategy cards are then covered in depth. Finally, the playbook ends with design notes and strategy tips.

I should note that Sekigahara also has a Historical and Design Notes section of its rulebook, although it's not as in depth. If this is the norm for games from GMT (again, these are my only two experiences with their products), then I look forward to buying and learning more! It goes a long way in adding to the theme of the game.

The board at the start of the game begins nice and orderly, with neither playing having any Political Capital tokens on the table. As each round progresses, however, more tokens are removed from the Crisis Track, and the friction between the Unionists and Secessionists escalates.

Doing so is detrimental, as it allows the player who hasn't breached further into the Crisis Track to either influence the board with the Peace Commissoner token (who prevents the addition or removal of tokens from the space on the board where it has been placed) or even the loss of a Victory Point for reaching the Final Crisis stage too early.

For our first game, Sam chose to play as the Secessionists, while I was the Unionists.

Interestingly, the deck of Strategy Cards is actually asymmetrical. Both sides have equal opportunities to take the Political and Armaments spaces; however, the Secessionists are weighted towards the Secessions spaces (duh) and the Unionists are weighted towards the Public Opinion spaces. Control isn't guaranteed, but it's an uphill fight to control these spaces without the proper events on cards.

While I had intended to take pictures after the end of each round, the game was so quick-paced that I only remembered at the end of the third round, so I held off until the end of the game instead.

I took an early lead in the first round by controlling the Political Crisis Dimension and completing my objective, but I'll attribute that to the fact that I had read the rules, and Sam had only my explanation before starting the game to go off of. The second round was more evenly matched, and Sam prevented me from scoring my objective in the third round.

Neither of us broke into the Final Crisis area of the Crisis Track, and we solidified our control of the Crisis Dimensions we could influence. Sam controlled the Secession and Armaments dimensions, scoring 3 points for the additional possession of Fort Sumter. I controlled the Political and Public Opinion dimensions, and scored 3 points as well, as I had a bonus point for ending the game with three or more tokens in my Token Pool than in Sam's.

The final score was 9-8, with the Unionists eking out a victory, representing the Union starting with a slight advantage in the upcoming conflict.

Like Sekigahara, this was a fun, flavorful game with the added bonus of being quick. I plan to bring it to the upcoming South Jersey Gamers Association meeting and hopefully get another game or two in.

The concept of fast playing, card-driven games of influence placement to represent rising tensions could work in so many other places, so I'm hoping to see GMT's stable of Lunchtime Games grow. The next title looks to be Flashpoint: South China Sea, which pits the United States against China's incursions into the global shipping lanes in the aforementioned area. I'm tempted to get in on the P500.

A Bad Day for Dates - Gangs of Rome AAR

Recently, I travelled back up to Pennsylvania for a game day with my old group. Gary, Carl and I met up at 7th Dimension Games for a multiplayer game of Gangs of Rome. 

Carl's a huge fan of the period and the rules, so he's been busily working away at creating terrain to play on, as well as amassing and painting mobs and fighters for multiple people to use.

We were playing the "Careless Is As Careless Dies" scenario. My Dominus, Senator Lucius Salvius Rufus, was out in the city on his way to the market, accompanied by the (in)famous Tisiphone and her gang of Palatine wolves. 

Lucius wasn't without his enemies, however, and it was on this day that they decided to strike against him. Gary and Carl would have two smaller gangs that needed to remove Lucius from Rome for some time.

However, the opposing fighters weren't exactly allied. While both wanted Lucius gone, whoever struck the final blow would be declared the ultimate victor.

Carl's fighters were less able than Gary's, but that allowed him to take some equipment, while Gary had none.

The game began with Tisiphone summoning a Gladiator Ally, who was used to escort Lucius across the city. While slower than any other fighter in the gang, it freed up Tisiphone and the other gang members to fight off the approaching enemies.

Three of my fighters skirmished with Gary's gang at range, while Tisiphone led Lucius away from the fighting.

Carl's fighters sprinted from their starting positions to head off the fleeing group.

Bloodied by spears, arrows, and a panicking mob of civilians, Gary's fighters continued to rush to try and reach the Senator.

For a brief moment, it seemed like victory was mine, to be savored like an urn of Falernum wine. My fighters were holding off both Gary's and Carl's gangs, and I just needed one more activation to walk Lucius and his gladiator escort off the table.

And then everything fell apart. Tisiphone was retired from the table, cut down by one of Carl's fighters. Seeing his employer - and source of income - was no longer around, the gladiator quickly made himself scarce, leaving Lucius alone and unguarded.

One by one, my fighters were picked off, previously suffered wounds coming back to haunt them and Orcus cursed their defense rolls. Eventually, I was left with only two fighters.

What little strength I could muster wasn't enough, however, and Lucius fell from multiple bludgeon and stab wounds. While Gary's gang had been critical in diverting half my numbers - and the MVP of the match was the zombie who wouldn't die, as Gary kept rolling the 5+ save to keep him at 1 Flesh - Carl's fighters were the ones to strike the final blow, and so he was the winner of the scenario.

Carl's work on the terrain really brought this game to life, and it was a lot of fun. Gangs of Rome continues to be a fantastic ruleset that's not too rules heavy, but has a lot of interesting aspects. We still like the variety and flavor of the randomly generated fighters, and it sort of creates a feeling of ownership comparing your gang fighters to those of other players.

I'm looking forward to seeing more from Warbanner, like named Gangs, new equipment, and campaign rules.

Block Warfare - Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan AAR

With the unfortunate closing of Half Day Studio's store, my chance to play miniature wargames has been drastically reduced. The store provided an excellent location for hobbyists to gather and play both spontaneously and planend games. 

Luckily, the local library has a room that the public can rent for free, which lets some of us still get together and game during the week. 

Sam and I have been focusing more on hex-and-counter and board wargames, which are easier to transport than miniature wargames - everything fits in a conveniently sized box, rather than having to transport foam trays of miniatures, boxes of terrain, rulebooks, tokens, etc. 

This past week's game was GMT's Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan, in which two players take the roles of leaders of the Western and Eastern armies, lead by Ishida Mitsunari and Tokugawa Ieyasu respectively. 

While our forces are hidden from each other (players can see the relative strength of an army in how many blocks are at a location, but not the specific makeup), the game begins with certain armies in specific locations. This, however, is complicated by random draws from the player's reinforcement bags.

The goals are rather simple - if either of the armies' leaders is killed in combat, or if the regent in Kyoto is captured, then the game ends. Otherwise, players count up victory points for how many castles and resource points (large cities and capitals) they control at the end of seven weeks.

As Sam and I played, we began to notice and understand some of the game mechanics.

For example, our hands of cards consistently grew larger with each turn. Since units enter combat by playing cards of matching symbols, this meant battles started as small skirmishes, but then grew to larger and deadlier outright fights. However, it can be difficult to plan attacks, since half your hand is discarded at the end of each week, and you draw five more cards from the deck. So that carefully crafted hand of cards can shift from week to week.

Inversely, as our hands grew, our armies shrank. Apart from the blocks that start on the table, and the four randomly drawn blocks that begin in the reinforcement area, players only draw nine more blocks over the course of the game. As we fought, Sam and I realized that our reserves were rapidly dwindling.

As for the game itself, it seemed for a time that Sam had the upper hand (as the Ishida player). While I, the Tokugawa player, won the initiative for most of the game, a single week with Sam holding the initiative almost led to his victory. An ill-planned attack by the Maeda on a Western army saw the Tokugawa-aligned clan almost wiped out and their leader vulnerable to an overrun. The Date, who had been holding Shirakawa for most of the game, was attacked and shattered as I had no cards to ge.

(The above photo is modern Sekigahara, which I visited in 2017 during Geek Nation Tours' trip.)

However, I was able to claim victory just before Sam's remaining numbers could overwhelm my forces. During an attack, Sam revealed that Ishida was leading an army out of Kyoto to Kuwana, which had been the sight of constant battles between the two sides. Though Sam forced my army out of Kuwana, a follow up attack against Fukushima at Kiyosu ended poorly, leaving Ishida vulnerable. Tokugawa, who had been taking resource points along the Nakasendō Road, quickly marched his army to end up behind Ishida at Kyoto. Fukushima launched a counter attack, generating enough impact to beat Sam's force and cause two casualties, eliminating Ishida and ending the game.

Hopefully this gets out on the table often, as there's plenty of variation for a game with no dice. We noticed that there were still unit blocks left unused in our bags, so our forces in the next game could look much different than what we were working with.

I should also mention how fantastic this game looks. The map is beautiful, the art on the cards is eye-catching, and the blocks are easy to read from a quick glance.

We had a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to playing again.