Gaming Weekend Day Three

Sorry about the delay- you get back from a long weekend, and life is sitting there waiting for you!

This was the last day of our gaming weekend, meaning a bit more boardgames, and then a lot of getting ready to come home.

We started this day off breaking into groups. I sat down with Eric, Mark, and Ben, and we decided to play GMT Games' Conquest of Paradise, the 4X game in the Pacific Islands. I play as Tonga. The game basically went my way the entire time- my first exploration found the 'Mythical Island' of Hawaiki, plus another island. Future explorations always revealed at least something for me, which was a huge bonus. By comparison- on the first turn, no one else found anything but open ocean, although they would eventually find something as the game wore on (except Ben, who only found Atolls, far from his home island). With the initial luck, I became an early target, and Eric played Weeds on my home island to slow my growth down.

Early on- note the three islands next to my home island (with the white pieces).

 But even that wasn't enough. With no easy way to expand into more production, Ben was forced to mount an expedition against far inhabited islands, with the hope of getting some resource generation in order to fight me better. Eric begins to slowly start building a large stack of 'something'.

I expand towards my edge... and several of those white-ish boxes with nothing on them are about to become MORE islands for me.

Mark decides to attack Eric, creating a crucial distraction that I can use to grow more without worry of harassment. At this point, I'm able to build several warriors and war canoes a turn, and am considering an offensive against Fiji, but realize I have enough points to win, and just fortify my islands close to the 'others'. Eric and Ben attempt futile last minute attacks to stop me, but it isn't nearly enough, as I repel both, buy my last villages, and win the game.

Mark and I decide to fit in a game of Freefall, a game he is working on developing and wanted to playtest. This is a vector-based space combat game that uses Contact/Fleet counters for early game fog of war. I decide to choose a fleet with only three ships (2 Battleships and a Missile Cruiser), and unbeknownst to me, Mark chooses a fleet with 3 Cruisers and a Destroyer. I place my Battleship and Missile Cruiser on my left, my other Battleship on my far right, and spread out my possible contact counters to hide my location.

I have ships in the far left and far right... but Mark doesn't know that yet. Lots of noise in the middle will make him act first.

Mark blinks first, and turns on a sensor mid-map, hoping to catch some of my ships in the sensor range. Unfortunately, everything mid map at this point was a dummy Contact counter, so he reveals nothing, and that turns' movement still sees some of my contact markers stay out of his sensor range, meaning he can't afford to turn the sensor off and try to hide at this point. We continue playing, and I activate one of the sensors on my far left, putting a fleet counter on the board, and revealing an opposing fleet counter across from me.

We've got a contact!

I don't know what exactly I'm facing (turns out to just be a destroyer), but if it's there, I'm going to destroy it. I fire some missiles and some long range fire, and my first salvo ends up destroying the ship facing me.

One side effect of revealing myself here is that the opposing fleet knows a little bit about where I am. They reveal most of themselves, and start opening fire, starting on the missile cruiser. After that exchange, there's not much cruiser left...

The letters represent systems on my ship. The crossed out portions on the left mean those systems were destroyed. Not a good day for the people in the front half of that Cruiser.

With two Battleships remaining, my priority becomes disabling the enemy Missile Cruiser, which probably remains the biggest threat to me. Prior to succeeding, the enemy manages to get a LOT of missiles on the table.

Missiles everywhere!

The rules gives players a chance to mitigate missiles in two ways- vector changes, and splitting Fleet Counters. Splitting the fleets will cause some of the missiles to split between the number of targets (roughly 50-50, but it's a dice roll). Changing the movement vectors makes the missiles slightly less accurate (assuming you change the vectors to have an effect).

The large clump of missiles on the table is targeted on my Cruiser + Battleship stack, and I attempt to use both methods to save the Battleship (the Cruiser was already mission killed, so I was willing to let it go). I split the Cruiser from the BB, and change the BB's movement vectors. It partially worked- I managed to get about 40% of the missiles off the BB's course, and changed the to-hit number by one. The missiles come in, destroying the cruiser, and dealing significant damage to the Battleship, but not really hindering its effectiveness- the extra to-hit modifier plus my point defenses plus my hefty armor kept me basically unaffected, aside from a slight weakening of one of my lasers.

My other Battleship had revealed by this point, and combined, the two ships manage to drop his missile cruiser effectively. At this point, I was feeling pretty good- we each had two direct fire ships... but mine were heavier. Over the next two turns, as we trade shots while drifting past one another (I had run out of fuel on one Battleship, and was low on another, I reduced Mark's ships to ineffectiveness before we drifted away enough for the game to end. Overall, my fleet took the day!

Freefall is a pretty fun system, with a lot of potential. The vector movement is simple, and there are rules for ship construction to make some unique ships (although Mark built both of our fleets). Something we'll put on the table again in the (near-ish?) future.

I followed this with another game of Magic: The Gathering, playing a Commander deck against Matt, who had just built a new deck. I got beat bad :(. Sigh.

I then played Whitehall Mystery by Fantasy Flight Games. Here, one player takes the role of Jack the Ripper, and the other players (in this case Mark and Ben) take the roles of investigators trying to apprehend him. The Jack player writes down his moves in secret, and the investigators use a combination of logic, intuition, and luck, to try to catch him. Both sides have a limited number of special movement types throughout the game, such as using a Boat to move across the water (Jack can do this twice per game, the blue investigator can use it once per game).

Silly investigators... I'm already looooong gone

I manage to get the first three murders off, but on the third one, the investigators were right on top of me, and I had to use a LOT of luck and cards to get across the river, and on the way to my fourth, and final, kill. However, the investigators were on to me, and cornered me on the left side of the big river in the picture above. I use every trick in the book- three different movement cards, backtracking significantly, and a ballsy play to briefly throw them off my trail... but it isn't enough. They realize where I must be going, station themselves to block me off... and I run out of time (Jack only has 15 turns to get to his victims). Good game, guys!

I play a game of Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn with Ben next, using the most recent expansion decks (not the Deluxe Expansions!). Leo vs Victoria (I am running the latter). Leo is a very good Phoenixborn, and difficult to beat, but I have a lot more experience than Ben at this game at this point, and manage to hold on long enough to take an advantage, and win.

Despite what looks like a card advantage, I'm not in a good spot here

I finish the night (and my gaming weekend!) with a game of Super Dungeon Explore. Rob played as the Overlord, and Ben, Mark, and I joined forces to accomplish... something. Unfortunately, by this point I had consumed a significant amount of alcohol, and my ability to take notes, or remember the specifics of the game were (and are) nonexistent. I remember we started off okay, then realized that we were playing the game wrong, and I started reading the rules, then the second mini boss came on in a tile perfectly suited for him, and we lost momentum, and lost the game. That sounds about right, but I really don't remember more than that, haha!

Big tree-dude type guy SMASH!

I can't think of a caption that is different from above for here, unfortunately!

Anyway, that was the end of the gaming weekend. We went to bed, got up the next morning, cleaned up, and went home.  Overall, I had a great time.  I wish I had played some of the things I brought (I seriously brought a ton!), but alas, almost everything I brought stayed in its box.  Maybe next time!