Archon

This weekend was Archon, the St. Louis science fiction/fantasy convention.  In recent years it has been held in Collinsville, IL, but this year it moved to Westport, which is noticeably closer to my home.  While it is a sci-fi convention at heart, they do have a significant block of scheduled games, which I have taken advantage of this year.  While last year I played some games that I had already played and enjoyed, this year I focused on playing newer games that I had no experience with.  Somewhat sadly, while I did enjoy myself in some of those games, I didn't play anything that I felt I needed to add to my collection.  In fact, the only new game I have purchased at the convention is a gift for one of my friends; absolutely nothing new for me.  Well, nothing new game wise.  I did pick up some books at Glen Cook's table, including one by the author himself that I got signed, which was a nice touch.  I have to say that I do feel like the Westport facilities aren't as good for this convention as the Collinsville facilities, just due to the fact that the Westport convention center is too small, resulting in some events being in one area, while other events are in another area in a separate part of Westport.  It is kind of annoying.

Zulus on the Ramparts!

At the beginning of the year I was travelling to Detroit every week for work.  To entertain myself in the evening, I wanted some small (and thereby, portable) board games to bring with me.  Through some internet research, I discovered the game Israeli Independence, which was a quick-playing solitaire game where you played the nacent Israeli armed forces in 1948 defending your country against attacks from multiple directions.  That game used a newly developed game system called "States of Siege."  While I didn't find the game itself to be that much fun, I did like the system, which involves drawing cards or counters to determine which of your enemies (from none of them to all of them) advance on your position that turn, as well as how far they advance.  Since I liked the mechanic, I went looking for other games that use it.

I ended up getting two more games from designer Joseph Miranda that use this same system.  The first of them, Zulus on the Ramparts, I will be discussing today.  The game covers the battle of Rorke's Drift, a rather famous battle in British imperial history where a small group of British soldiers fought off thousands of Zulu tribesmen.  The game puts you in the role of the British commander, while the game system has four different groups of Zulu warriors advancing on your fortification.  Each round you pull a counter out of a cup, and it tells you which group of Zulus to advance, as well as how far to advance them.  If a group of Zulus ever reaches your inner fortification zone, you lose the game as the defenses are over-run.  To stop this, you get to take actions during your turn.  Actions generally involve the play of cards from your hand: volley cards let you roll a certain number of dice to try to kill or drive away Zulus before they reach you; character cards let you bring specific named characters into the battle, all of which have special abilities; you can build an inner fortification line (such that the Zulus have to move deeper into your fortification to defeat you); you can distribute ammunition (necessary after any large volley); form a reserve platoon (required to play certain volley cards); etc.  This is one of those games where you usually want to perform multiple actions per turn, but the game limits you to one (some characters have special abilities to allow additional plays, though always at a cost), so you have to decide which of the many things you want to do is most important.  All the while, the Zulus continue their implacable advance.

The game is, as all good solitiare games should be, hard to win.  I have about a dozen plays of this game to my credit, and I have won maybe 4 times.  There is luck involved in how fast the Zulus actually advance, and from which direction they advance, so sometimes I get jumped by a fast-moving group before I really have a chance to get my defenses set.  Sometimes, I just roll really poorly on the dice for my volley fires, and the Zulus just over-run me without even taking any hits.  Occasionally, though, you can get really lucky attack rolls and actually kill off a bunch of Zulu attackers.  One game I even killed all of the attacking units, and won the game outright, instead of barely holding on for the relief column to arrive (which involves running the deck of play cards down to the bottom).

I consider this to be a very good game.  It takes roughly 30 to 45 minutes to play once you have set it up, and it stays tense throughout, with that constant sense that disaster could befall you at any moment, but you just might pull yourself out of the fire in time.  If you have an interest in the battle, or in solitaire board games, this is worth checking out.

New Design

After over four years of blogging, I have decided it is time to update the look around here.  I don't know if this dark, depressing color scheme is what I will end up with, but it is stark enough to get me serious about figuring out how I want things to look.  Expect some more changes over the next few weeks as I keep tweaking things.

New Kicks

Today I took advantage of a Macy's coupon and bought myself some new dress shoes for work. In the process, I discovered an interesting advantage to the orthopedic insoles I have to use in all of my shoes now. In the good old days, buying shoes was a massive pain in the rear end, because my feet are smaller than 99% of the male population of the universe, at least according to shoe companies. The end result of this is that I had to buy shoes, usually by custom order, from high end, expensive shoe stores. The upside was that I had some very nice shoes. The downside is that I would pay at least $275 per pair, and that was on sale.

Ever since I got my special insoles, though, I have to buy bigger shoes. Now, I can buy normal shoes at a normal store, because once I put in the inserts my feet now fit in a regular size 9 shoe. This means that the shoes today cost me under $70 each after the coupon. When you consider that I paid about $225 for the insoles, let's do some quick math.

Buying two pairs of shoes in the old days, on sale: $275 x 2 = $550.
Buying two pairs of shoes in the new days, plus cost of the orthopedic insoles: $225 + ($70 x 2) = $365.

Even with the added expense of having to buy the custom insoles, I saved $185. Thanks custom orthopedic insoles! You're saving me money!

Let the Fiesta Begin

Today I watched parts of the Flyers/Devils and Leafs/Senators games on the NHL Network. Just a few more days...