American Airlines actually acknowledges when they screw up

Remember when I was miffed at American Airlines for the ridiculousness of my Chicago connection last Monday? Well, today I got a "mea culpa" email from them acknowledging that they screwed up bad and giving me 5,000 extra frequent flyer miles to try to make up for it. it doesn't make up for it, but it is good to at least know that they are aware of the problem. As G.I.Joe used to say, "knowing is half the battle."

Random Things Found While Cleaning

So I decided to do some cleaning this morning. I really meant to get more to the downstairs living area, but I pretty much got stuck in the guest bedroom/computer room, as that one was pretty much a mess. I threw a bunch of junk away, put books back where they belong, moved a couple games back to the basement, etc. But that was not all. I also decided to do some organizing of my computer game discs and boxes, which I don't think I had done since I moved in over 4 1/2 years ago. I found a number of old computer file backup discs dating from 2002 and 2003, and actually bothered to look at them and see if there was anything on there worth moving over to my main machine. I found a lot of old stuff that I had forgetten I even had, including articles from when I wrote for Lone Warrior and a folder of graphic images, including the one below. I have no idea where I got this from, but truer words were never spoken, I'm sure.

I also finally found my disc for Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord, which I bought ever nine or ten years ago. I had been looking for that thing for months! I had found the rulebook, but not the disc. I found it in a CD holder hidden under some computer game boxes. No idea what it was doing there, but to this day that is still the best small-scale WWII combat game I have ever played. So I immediately loaded it up and played a game, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I remembered how to play it.

Happy Canada Day!

One of the things that got beat into my head very effectively during my recent trip to Toronto was the fact that July 1st is Canada Day, representing the day that Canada became an independent country in 1867. Another thing that I was made very cognizant of while in Toronto was the fact that the NHL free agency period starts at Noon EST on July 1st. Coincidence? Knowing what hockey means to Canada, I doubt it.

EDIT: Super special Canada-specific link just for you!

Fortress America

Fortress America is one of my most favorite games ever. It was the next-to-last game produced as part of Milton Bradley's Gamemaster Series in the mid '80s, and is set in an alternate early 21st century where the Soviet Union never fell, and in fact it has conquered all of Europe and the Middle-East, and has influenced successful rebellions such that most of Asia as well as Central and South America band together and join in it a massive invasion of the United States.

The game itself is a fairly light-complexity wargame for two to four players. One player will always play the United States, while the other players handle the invaders. If there is only one invader player, he plays all three invading groups. With three players, one player handles the west and east coast invaders, while another handles the southern invaders. With four players, each power is handled by a separate player.

One of my favorite aspects of this game is the fact that each power group plays differently. While there are definitely similarities to the invaders, the invasion areas for each are different enough that you can't just use the same strategy no matter which group you are playing and expect to win. The western invaders have five American cities to capture right near the coast, but then you have to push inland pretty quickly. The southern invader has to decide if he wants to push straight up or cut to the right, while the eastern invader has to decide if he wants to push more towards the weak southern area or try to push harder into the extremely lucrative by heavily defended NE corridor. And, when playing with more than two players, the invaders can actually come to blows among themselves, as if the invaders win an individual winner is chosen based on how many points they have. Points are earned by capturing American cities, as well as territories with resource symbols and destroying laser stations. I've been the American player before and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by convincing one of the invading players to leave me alone and to attack another invader to grab points. Man, I love doing that.

The American player has a pretty hard time if the invaders know what they are doing, and playing the American is a very different experience. While the invaders are on the offensive, the American player has to balance defense and offense while trying to keep the invaders from capturing 18 or more cities. The American player has two unique things to help try to win. First, each turn you get to place a laser tower in any of your cities. On each turn, each laser tower on the board gets to fire at any space, with a 60% chance to kill any unit in that space. Since you add one every turn, this can add up pretty fast. Second, rather than having the set reinforcements that the invaders have, you draw reinforcement cards every turn. The cards all have different effects, from placing new units on the board in various spaces (sometimes you have a choice, and sometimes you don't, in where the units are placed) to destroying invader units. The cards are the only way to get the unique American units, partisans. Representing minuteman survivalist groups and other "non-traditional" warfighting assets, these units act like regular infantry unless they are by themselves, in which case they fight like hovertanks, representing their use of guerilla tactics when not combined with regular military units.

Combat itself is pretty straight-forward. Infantry and mobile units (like APCs and IFVs) roll a D6, hovertanks and helicopters roll a D8, and bombers roll a D10 in combat. You usually score a hit on a 5 or higher, though if attacking a city or a mountain space you only score a hit on a 6 or higher unless you have "combined arms," which means you have at least one infantry, at least one armor unit, and at least one air unit involved in the attack. This adds to the strategy because to successfully attack these spaces you need to make sure you have the units you want in position to attack. Since infantry are slow, this can often result in a choice to press an attack with armor and air units now, taking the harder to hit number, or waiting a turn (or more...) to bring up infantry while teh American player continually reinforces his position and gets more lasers on the board. Combats go fast, and can be quite tense when one side doesn't have overwhelming numbers.

In fact, the thing that I like best about Fortress America is the asymmetrical nature of the game. Each side just feels different from the others, especially the American side. Also, unlike many of the Gamemaster Series games, this one will not run on forever if the players decide to go defensive. See, the units that the invaders have in their trays at the start of the game are all the units they will ever have. You start with 20, and then on turns two through six you put eight more on the board each turn. After that, you get no more, ever. So, the invader needs to push hard and fast, because by the time you run out of new units the American player will have six lasers on the board killing your units. And more die every turn, which can never be replaced. It can get tense. The American player never runs out of possible reinforcements, so the American player is just trying to hold out as long as possible. Usually if the American player hasn't lost by turn eight, they can turn the tide as they keep getting new units and the invaders get none.

Definitely one of my favorite games of all time, this is the first game ever to get a "10" rating from me on the Geek. Used copies can be very expensive, but if you like light wargames with good production values and high toy factor (as every piece in the game is a molded plastic piece), it could be worth the money to get your own copy.

True North, Day Four

aka, "The Journey of Death!" See, my flight schedule had me landing in St. Louis at 10:55 AM Central time, which would have given me the whole afternoon to get back into the swing of things in St. Louis. Instead, my connecting flight from Chicago landed at 4 PM Central time, which is a bit later in the day. See, when I landed in Chicago, I was greeted with the news that my connecting flight to St. Louis had been cancelled. Oh joy, oh rapture! No explanation, which is par for the course for American. What wasn't par for the course was that they automatically booked me on the next scheduled flight, which was a step up in service from their usual handling of things.

However, it went downhill from there. The new flight should have landed me in St. Louis at 1 PM, which wasn't too bad, just a two hour delay. So, we boarded the plane on time, got everything stowed, and then sat there at the gate, not going anywhere. Turns out the plane radio had a problem, and the mechanics were working on it, and working on it, and then they left to do something and nobody had any idea what was going on. Eventually, after an hour or so of sitting there, they had us deplane. So we stood around in the terminal for a while before learning that we were getting a new plane. There was much rejoicing. So, we all trundled over to a different terminal, to the new gate, and then things kept going downhill.

See, the new plane, which had just landed (from either Newark or Philly, I don't remember which), had a brake problem, and they needed to drain the brake lines and then put new fluid in. So, another hour of standing around in the terminal. Then we finally board the plane, only to sit in it for over half an hour while mysterious goings on were occurring the cockpit. Eventually they got us off the ground and to St. Louis, but I want those five hours of my life back. Those were five annual leave hours! Those are precious!

So, in the end, the old rule was reinforced: CHICAGO RUINS EVERYTHING!