Saturday, January 05, 2013
The Spirit of the Sword
Today I finished watching the last episode of the Chinese TV show The Spirit of the Sword. It was surprisingly good. This show proves that I don't dislike soap operas, I just like them to have lots of sword fighting and martial arts mayhem, which of course American TV networks will not provide. Oh, well. If you like martial arts films I recommend giving it a try. Also, you can get unintentional humor from the horribly bad English subtitles on the discs. If you like what they show in the opening sequence, you should really enjoy the show.
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
Resolutions
I have never been big on the concept of "new years' resolutions." I have always said that if you identify something that you want to change, just change it at the time you recognize the need for a change. Don't wait for an arbitrary point of time in the future. This probably represents me missing the point of taking the turn of the year as an opportunity to stop and think about what is working and not working in ones life, so I have actually taken some time over the last few days to think about what I want to accomplish in 2013. I have come up with the following.
- Play the guitar again - I haven't really played any of my guitars in probably five years, and I miss it. There is a certain satisfaction in learning to play a new song or mastering a new chord structure that I only find in the guitar, so it is time to get at it again. That being said, spending the first six months of 2013 building up finger callouses again will not be fun.
- Read more books - I have always enjoyed reading, but often get pretty nonchalant about it, taking a few months to finish off one book, and I usually don't read more than a dozen books in a year. I want to do better in 2013, which I can probably accomplish by playing less Football Manager on the computer.
- Partly related to the above, I want to be more intentional about how I spend my time. I often find myself puttering about the internet without purpose, wasting time that could be more profitably used elsewhere. Even if I am playing a game or watching TV, I want to do so because that game is one I really want to play or that show is one I really want to watch, rather than it just being something I am doing without active thought.
Saturday, November 03, 2012
There Goes the Season
When the NHL lockout started I was confident that some games would be lost, but the league would be playing by January 1st at the latest because of the money and exposure that the Winter Classic outdoor game brings. Of course, this being the NHL, run by people who are perfectly happy to cut their nose off to spite their face, they just cancelled the Winter Classic. I am no longer confident that there will be a season this year, and I really can't figure out why. I don't buy the "we can't make any money!" crying from the same owners that sign players to outrageous 12+ year contracts that will obviously harm their own teams a few years down the road. While I didn't back the players during the last lockout (to be honest, I didn't take either side), I am on their side this time around. The NHL is making more money than ever and is generally in good health. If individual franchises can't make money, then fold them or move them. How is not playing hockey going to actually help franchises losing money to make money? Don't you still lose money without that revenue coming in? I just don't get it.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
BattleLore
BattleLore is one of many games in the Commands and Colors series by Richard Borg. At least four different companies have published games in the series, all of which share similar core mechanics. I first wrote about this series back in 2008 with Commands and Colors: Ancients. BattleLore shares many similarities with that game, but there are a number of important differences, as well. BattleLore tries to straddle the line between medieval warfare and swords & sorcery fantasy. The game comes with archers; light, medium, and heavy infantry; and light, medium, and heavy cavalry for each side. All of those units are the same for each side. You can use these units to fight a couple historical battles included with the game. They are also used in the "fantasy" battles, as well. To get that "fantasy" feel, the game also comes with goblins and dwarves, as well as a giant spider unit. The goblins and dwarves are essentially just regular infantry or cavalry with special rules. If you wanted to focus only on historical battles, you could use such units as 'foreign' mercenary troops, or something like that, and not worry about whether they are humans or not. The giant spider doesn't lend itself to such treatment, naturally. It is pretty cool, I must admit, though like all such special creatures (more are sold separately!) lucky die rolls can kill it before you get to do anything neat with it.
Up to this point, everything is pretty much standard Commands and Colors game play, as described in my write-up of the Ancients game. The use of light, medium, and heavy units is the same, the way the board is set up is the same, the way that command cards work is generally the same, etc. There is one thing that sets this game apart, though. That is the use of Lore. Lore is represented by a separate deck of cards. In some battles, the players can buy levels of "lore masters," which are special individuals that are part of your army. You can have a wizard, a priest, a rogue, and a warrior. Each of those character types has 15 cards that represent special abilities of those types. For example, the wizard can use fireballs to try to kill an enemy unit outright, or move units around the board, etc. You figure out what type and power of lore masters you want in your army, and then set up the lore deck with the ability cards for your chosen masters. All of the cards are powered by "lore tokens," which build up during game play. Every turn you have a chance to get up to two new tokens, but you can also get additional tokens by rolling lore symbols on the dice during combat. The more powerful lore cards require more lore tokens to use them, so the luck of the draw doesn't overly influence the events of the game.
The addition of the lore system does set BattleLore apart from others in the Commands and Colors series, and since I like the series you would think that I would be all over this game. In reality, though, I've owned the game for about four years but have only played it a couple times. Why? I really am not sure. The figures are nice, and game plays pretty quickly, it lends itself decently to solitaire play, but... it just is lacking something. I can't even say what. If I want to play a game in the series, I gravitate towards Memoir '44 or Ancients. Thus, even though BattleLore is a solid game, it just sits forlornly on my game shelf. Alas.
Up to this point, everything is pretty much standard Commands and Colors game play, as described in my write-up of the Ancients game. The use of light, medium, and heavy units is the same, the way the board is set up is the same, the way that command cards work is generally the same, etc. There is one thing that sets this game apart, though. That is the use of Lore. Lore is represented by a separate deck of cards. In some battles, the players can buy levels of "lore masters," which are special individuals that are part of your army. You can have a wizard, a priest, a rogue, and a warrior. Each of those character types has 15 cards that represent special abilities of those types. For example, the wizard can use fireballs to try to kill an enemy unit outright, or move units around the board, etc. You figure out what type and power of lore masters you want in your army, and then set up the lore deck with the ability cards for your chosen masters. All of the cards are powered by "lore tokens," which build up during game play. Every turn you have a chance to get up to two new tokens, but you can also get additional tokens by rolling lore symbols on the dice during combat. The more powerful lore cards require more lore tokens to use them, so the luck of the draw doesn't overly influence the events of the game.
The addition of the lore system does set BattleLore apart from others in the Commands and Colors series, and since I like the series you would think that I would be all over this game. In reality, though, I've owned the game for about four years but have only played it a couple times. Why? I really am not sure. The figures are nice, and game plays pretty quickly, it lends itself decently to solitaire play, but... it just is lacking something. I can't even say what. If I want to play a game in the series, I gravitate towards Memoir '44 or Ancients. Thus, even though BattleLore is a solid game, it just sits forlornly on my game shelf. Alas.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Combat Commander: Europe
The next random game in my collection is Combat Commander: Europe. This is an infantry combat game set in World War II, in the European theater of operations. The units a small scale, with unit counters representing squads, fire teams, or individuals leaders or heroes. The game is scenario-based, and the boxed game comes with a dozen different scenarios featuring American, German, and Russian forces. There is also a method to randomly generate new scenarios if you play through all of the scenarios that come with the game. The game is for two players.
All of this is pretty traditional. For decades the game Advanced Squad Leader has been the gold standard for WWII combat at this scale. What does Combat Commander do that Squad Leader does not? While the games do deal with the same scale of tactical combat, Combat Commander plays complete differently. First of all, there are no dice to roll. Instead, everything is handled through the play of cards. Each army has its own unique deck of 72 cards. Each card has an Order, an Action, an Event, a specific map hex and two numbers between one and six. All game activity takes place through play of the cards. To give orders to your units on your turn, you have to play a card with the Order you want to conduct, maybe "Move," or "Fire," or "Recover." You then activate a unit (if that unit is a leader, it can active other units within its command range to perform the same action) to perform that action. Actions are taken outside of the standard Orders phase that interrupt play somehow. For example, the "Fire" card can be used as an Order or an Action. If you play it as an Action, then you can interrupt the other player's movement to have one of your units fire at the moving unit's space on the board. Or you might have an action that adds attack power to a "Fire" order, or that lets you lay down smoke to block the vision of your opponent.
Events are random things that happen during the game, and can result in having one of your units lose morale, gaining new units, having fires start, etc. Above I had mentioned that each card comes with two numbers on it. Those numbers are used in place of having dice in the game. To perform a "Fire" or "Reform" action you draw a card from your deck, add up the numbers, and then you use that number to determine whether your action succeeded or not. Some actions are opposed, and your opponent will also be drawing a card and looking at the numbers to see if his number was higher than yours. If so, the action doesn't take place. I realize that this may sound a bit odd, and it took me a little while to get used to it, but the system really does work very well.
So how long do games last? The short answer is that the players don't know. Games don't last a set number of turns. Instead, each scenario gives you a set number of time slots before you start checking to see if the game ends. The time track advances in two different situations. First, if a player plays all the way through their deck, then you advance the turn track one space. Additionally, if a player is drawing a card for a "die roll," and the word "Time" is in red text next to the numbers, then the time track advances. So, the players really don't know when the time track will advance. This impacts strategy, because you just don't know if you should rush forward with an attack before you are fully prepared for it, or if you will have the time to get everything in place just the way you want it.
One wrinkle with having all orders issued through the play of cards is that if you want to do something, but don't have a card that lets you do it, then you can't perform that order. For example, I have played in many games where I was on the attack and really needed to move my units forward, but I didn't have a "Move" or "Advance" order to do so. And in the last game that I played the American player was running roughshod over the poor Germans, but they didn't have any "Fire" cards so they couldn't return fire against the American forces. I have a friend who hates games like this, but this kind of thing doesn't bother me. If you don't like card-driven games, I recommend steering far away from this one. However, if you can embrace the randomness of having your actions constrained by your hand of cards, then this really is a great game of infantry combat.
All of this is pretty traditional. For decades the game Advanced Squad Leader has been the gold standard for WWII combat at this scale. What does Combat Commander do that Squad Leader does not? While the games do deal with the same scale of tactical combat, Combat Commander plays complete differently. First of all, there are no dice to roll. Instead, everything is handled through the play of cards. Each army has its own unique deck of 72 cards. Each card has an Order, an Action, an Event, a specific map hex and two numbers between one and six. All game activity takes place through play of the cards. To give orders to your units on your turn, you have to play a card with the Order you want to conduct, maybe "Move," or "Fire," or "Recover." You then activate a unit (if that unit is a leader, it can active other units within its command range to perform the same action) to perform that action. Actions are taken outside of the standard Orders phase that interrupt play somehow. For example, the "Fire" card can be used as an Order or an Action. If you play it as an Action, then you can interrupt the other player's movement to have one of your units fire at the moving unit's space on the board. Or you might have an action that adds attack power to a "Fire" order, or that lets you lay down smoke to block the vision of your opponent.
Events are random things that happen during the game, and can result in having one of your units lose morale, gaining new units, having fires start, etc. Above I had mentioned that each card comes with two numbers on it. Those numbers are used in place of having dice in the game. To perform a "Fire" or "Reform" action you draw a card from your deck, add up the numbers, and then you use that number to determine whether your action succeeded or not. Some actions are opposed, and your opponent will also be drawing a card and looking at the numbers to see if his number was higher than yours. If so, the action doesn't take place. I realize that this may sound a bit odd, and it took me a little while to get used to it, but the system really does work very well.
So how long do games last? The short answer is that the players don't know. Games don't last a set number of turns. Instead, each scenario gives you a set number of time slots before you start checking to see if the game ends. The time track advances in two different situations. First, if a player plays all the way through their deck, then you advance the turn track one space. Additionally, if a player is drawing a card for a "die roll," and the word "Time" is in red text next to the numbers, then the time track advances. So, the players really don't know when the time track will advance. This impacts strategy, because you just don't know if you should rush forward with an attack before you are fully prepared for it, or if you will have the time to get everything in place just the way you want it.
One wrinkle with having all orders issued through the play of cards is that if you want to do something, but don't have a card that lets you do it, then you can't perform that order. For example, I have played in many games where I was on the attack and really needed to move my units forward, but I didn't have a "Move" or "Advance" order to do so. And in the last game that I played the American player was running roughshod over the poor Germans, but they didn't have any "Fire" cards so they couldn't return fire against the American forces. I have a friend who hates games like this, but this kind of thing doesn't bother me. If you don't like card-driven games, I recommend steering far away from this one. However, if you can embrace the randomness of having your actions constrained by your hand of cards, then this really is a great game of infantry combat.
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