Warmachine Tip – Zealot Wall
June 1, 2007
Menoth is my main Warmachine army and, as expected, I field the Zealots with the Monolith Bearer. Usually Zealots are my flanking force I put a full unit on either side of my main force along with a Seneschal and they spend the first turn or two running and putting pressure on my opponents flank. The Seneschal is there to issue orders in case the leader dies and to slam any warjacks/warbeasts out of the way of the Zealots.
Usually I use the Monolith Bearer’s mini feat the turn after the enemy engages some of my zealots. That way the zealots can leave combat, ignoring the free strike because they are invincible, then throw fiery death.
My last two games, however, I used the Zealots as impassible terrain instead of offensively. The first game I placed them on the flank as usual and ran the first turn towards a gap (5′ or so) between two pieces of terrain in the middle of the board. My Khador opponent, who had a good mix of jacks and troops, sent a good chunk of his army towards that gap (Kovnik, Behemoth, and Dragoon). Usually I would have waited a turn to use the Monolith Bearer’s mini feat or hung back a turn but in the spur of the moment I decide to instead move all the Zealots into the gap then pop their mini feat.
This really caused grief for my opponent. I had basically plugged the gap and there was no way he could through. Trampling wouldn’t work as I had spaced the Zealots out enough to prevent that. The result was my 84pt flanking force delayed over half of his army for one round which helped me win the game.
The second game I faced Khador again (different opponent). He played Karchev with two Devastators, a Berserker, and a couple Gray Lords. I was also playing a ‘jack heavy force with Zealots and Kreoss as my warcaster. Instead of running the Zealots on the flank I put them in front of my ‘jacks. On turn two when his Devastators where in range of my Zealots I popped their mini feat so they wouldn’t be wiped out. Again I had them spread out and staggered to block him from getting to my ‘jacks in the back.
He moved some ‘jacks to engage them but was basically stuck for a round. I then popped Kreoss’s feat which knocked everyone down and freed up my Zealots so they where no longer engaged. They then moved around the knocked down ‘jacks to bomb Karchev. It didn’t kill him but the next turn did.
That is my tip of the week, month, whenever I think of it.
Crazy Settlers
April 1, 2007
A co-worker of mine recently started playing Settlers of Catan. Though he seemed to like the game he didn’t like the set way to layout the tiles and place the numbers. In typical developer fashion he wrote the Settlers of Catan Board Generator. This application can generate a standard board but also long, skinny boards. It will also randomly place the numbers.
We played a couple games and it was fun because it was different. Playing on a long snake like board opened up some different strategies but also made apparent why Settlers board’s are setup in a certain way.
The main problem is the random placement of the numbers can create one or two really good spots (i.e. a spot adjacent to two sixes) and the winner is decided by who gets to place first. For example, say board shown on the right is generated. The player that gets first turn is going place their piece on the double brick (6-8, in the top right corner). If that same player is able to get on a 2-for-1 brick then they have a huge advantage before the first round.
I’m not sure how many rounds a typical Settlers (Google was no help) lasts but I’ll try to estimate it. Say the average game is 60 minutes long with 4 players. Each player has an equal amount of turns and a, on average, will take the same amount of time per turn. The average turn involves rolling the dice, collecting your cards, then trading. Let’s say the average turn takes a minute so a game will typically have 60 turns, or 60 rolls of the dice. The number of times a number will come up in this game is:
2: (2.78% * 60) = 1.67
3: (5.56% * 60) = 3.34
4: (8.83% * 60) = 5.30
5: (11.11% * 60) = 6.67
6: (13.89% * 60) = 8.33
7: (16.67% * 60) = 10.00
8: (13.89% * 60) = 8.33
9: (11.11% * 60) = 6.67
10: (8.83% * 60) = 5.30
11: (5.56% * 60) = 3.34
12: (2.78% * 60) = 1.67
Now the player that is on the 6-8 brick corner is probably going to be able to place their last settlement on another 6 or 8 title. That means over the course of the game they will get 24 resources from their initial settlements alone. Other players who only control 2 6/8 titles will be get 8 less resources. I know this a bit simplistic as there are other factors such as the robber, cities, etc but I think it shows just how much of an advantage that first player has.
Playing on these random boards really gives you an appreciation on how hard Klaus Teuber (the designer of Settlers) must have worked to make the game balanced. If your board of the standard Settler’s game then give the random generator a try. You can also try variations found at the University of Catan site. I haven’t tried any of these special rules (I haven’t even found time to play all the expansions for Settlers yet) but some of them are written by Teuber so should be pretty interesting and balanced.
If you don’t like the luck factor of Catan then you try the new Settlers Event Cards which replace the dice with a deck of cards.
Warmachine Tip - Deneghra vs. Kreoss
March 14, 2007
My main Warmachine army is Menoth and I often use Kreoss as my Warcaster. He can really shut down an enemy Warcaster that likes to fling spells, such Deneghra, with Lamentation. With Lamentation up the enemy warcaster is either forced to hang back to cast spells or move into the action but have effectiveness greatly reduced. I generally prefer if your Warcaster is far back and out of the action, that way they have less of an impact on the game.
If you play Deneghra you can try this trick on a Kreoss player that has lamentation up. First move aggressively forward into Lamentation range, about 4-6 inches inside then act frustrated because you “forgot” Lamentation was up. Camp on a bunch of your focus because you can’t cast any spells. Make sure you have a couple arc nodes in running distance of Kreoss.
The next turn Kreoss will hopefully try for an assassination using his feat but Deneghra is hard to kill with stealth and high armour from camping on the focus. Hopefully the Kreoss player spends most of his focus.
When it’s your turn first stand up an arc node that was knocked down and run within spell range of Kreoss (i.e. ~6″). Then stand up Deneghra and pop her feat. This will instantly reduce Kreoss’s control area by 4” and therefore reduce Lamentation by the same. You still might have to move back a bit to get outside his now 10” control area but you shouldn’t have to move much. Now arc venom on Kreoss with his effective ARM of 12 till your hearts content.
P.S. - NOT pictures of my paint job, pictures borrowed from Privateer Press gallery.
Desktop Tower Defense Review
March 7, 2007
What simple but amazing game. It follows the golden game design rules of easy to learn but hard to master.
The point of the game is too stop creeps that enter from the left/top of the play area from exiting out the opposite side. You do this by placing towers that block the creeps’ path (except flying ones) and also shoot at them. The big catch is that the creeps will always follow the shortest path to the exit. This means they will not simply run directly into your guns unless you are smart with your placement.
An example of the type of maze you can setup is shown below.
Likely simple to code and simple graphics, it is by a company called Hand Drawn Games. Most of the time was likely spent trying to figure out the stats for the enemies the guns. Lots of trial and error.
If you get stuck (the end creeps have a lot of health) you can view mazes other users have created or watch a video of a maze being built. Yes, I did steal his idea for my own maze when I did the screen shot above.
Fantastically addictive game I would recommend it to anyone.
Good Old Hockey Game
February 27, 2007
Oh! The good old hockey game,
Is the best game you can name;
And the best game you can name,
Is the good old Hockey game!
- Stompin’ Tom Connors
This evening I got the opportunity to play some classic hockey on the Sega Geneses (NHL 95) and somewhat newer hockey on the original Xbox (NHL 2004, NHL 2005) at C2’s house. I then got to play some Wii for the second time in my young life which will be the focus of another post.
It was a blast to re-live my youth with hockey on the Genesis with it’s crappy controls and very pixelated graphics. It didn’t help that C2’s TV is like 50 inch wide screen or something ridiculously big. It is weird seeing teams that don’t exist anymore such as the Quebec Nordics, Winnipeg Jets, and Hartford Whalers and players that no longer play such as Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, etc. The game play is very slow, which wasn’t obvious till we moved up to NHL on the Xbox in which the game play was much quicker.
One thing the older hockey games had going for them was simplicity. With only 3 buttons on the Sega controller there was not a lot of options, it really boils down to a couple simple actions:
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Pass
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Shoot
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Change Player
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Body Check
I think there might have been a poke check or something but that never gets used unless your an “Advanced” player. When playing video hockey it is all about the hitting when you don’t have the puck and shooting/passing when you do. The Xbox controller has a lot of buttons on the top, two analog sticks, and 2 trigger buttons. Aside from the standard 4 actions listed above the buttons preform exotic actions such as:
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Block Shot
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Hook
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Spin Deke
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Hold Against the Boards
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Triple Axel Sow-Cow
The list goes on and on. Unless you have time to remember what all the buttons do you just revert to the 4 basic actions from old school hockey.
So designers of hockey games (I’m looking at you EA) make the 4 basic hockey actions easy to do and work fairly well. That way when a newbie like me is over at a buddies house I can have fun and be competitive without having to read and memorize the manual.
Board Game Inventory Day
February 18, 2007
I added a list of the board and card games I currently own, check out the summary page for all the details. In my youth I was a big fan of games like Monopoly and Risk but in my mid-life crisis years I’ve started liking the so called “German” or “European” games such as Carcassonne and Settlers. These games tend have more strategy and a lot less luck. They are not mindless party games, but rather “mind-full” party games.
I’m also starting to like games where no one is eliminated half way through the game. Risk is a fun game but runs into trouble where someone is eliminated then has to sit and watch the remaining players for next 3 hours. Even in Settlers if you realize you aren’t going to win you can still play and make meaningful actions till the end.
For some interesting articles about games, ethics in games, why we play, etc check out The Games Journal.
New Game
February 3, 2007
I always thought my first “post” would actually be the About page but I just can’t seem to write anything good. I think part of the problem is I’m not 100% sure just what this blog will contain so I decided to just start posting and see what happens.
Part of the reason this blog exists was too allow me to track what games I play, how often I play games, and how much money I have spent (will spend) on games. Part of me thinks this is a bad idea. Reminds me of the first time a video game displayed how long I had been playing (it was an RPG but I can’t forget the name, probably one from the Final Phantasy series). At first I thought it was cool but then I thought about how much of my life I’d spent playing when I could have been doing other things. Good thing I was young, dumb, and full of fun so I kept playing.
Aside from the time I’m also worried that summing up the amount of money spent will also depress me and possible lead physical harm (insert obvious joke about the wife finding the money list). On a more serious note I will likely wonder if I should have spent it on our house, on my family, or maybe donate it to charities. Makes you think why you and I are so lucky to have be able to play games while other people are barely surviving. This is getting depressing, lets get back on topic and save this discussion for another day.
I figure the next couple posts will detail the games I own and how much time and money I’ve invested into each individual one. I’ll probably also say if I liked the game or not but I think full reviews will saved for a later date. I gotta save some material for later.
