Shogun: A review

I played Shogun this Tuesday, and I have to say I enjoyed it.

It's part wargame, part resource management. The board is a map of Japan divided into regions. Each region has an associated card with it, and you hold that card if you control the region. There are ten actions you can take a turn, and you get to take all of them. You can take one of the ten actions in one of the regions you control, by placing the corresponding card by the corresponding action. Herein lies the bulk of the strategy of the game. Which region to harvest rice, which to tax for money, which to build a building in, which to reinforce with troops, etc.

You can also attack and try to gain control of your opponents territories, so in that respect there is direct conflict in the game. That's nice, because often in eurogames what you do has little to no impact on your opponents, and it removes some interaction. "But Tommy," I hear you cry, "that makes this a wargame! I hate wargames! With their combat tables and their excess of dice rolling and they drag on and on and on." All is not lost, my friend. For one, the troop mechanic is not the main focus of the game. Controling territories nets you little points in comparison with developing your territories. Combat is merely a way to supplement your score, rather than define it. If you focus too much on combat, you will lose. Second, and perhaps the most notorious aspect of Shogun, is the battle tower.

The battle tower is a tower you throw your armies in, and they come out the bottom. But the interior of the tower has many nooks and crannies, such that some armies get stuck, and some emerge at the bottom. Any armies that get stuck in the tower you leave there, with the chance of them emerging in a future battle to help out. So, you throw in your armies, and whoever has more pop out the bottom wins. Troops kill each other, and you put the remaining troops back on the battlefield. Simple, elegant. No dice, no tables. Fast and easy.

So, in the end, you net a few victory points for how many territories you control, and many for how many buildings you have in your territories. The game took three players three hours to play through, including teaching everyone, setting up the game, and pausing for breaks. So I would guess the actual game part took two hours.

However, all is not rosy. First of all, I didn't really like the turn order mechanic. At the beginning of each round, a random bonus is chosen for the first, second, and third player. Each bonus is never strictly better than the other. One might be +1 attack, or +1 rice, or +1 gold, etc. You bid on turn order by secretly paying an amount of gold. Problem is, gold is so scarce in the game, you rarely ever want to bid, and are better off just taking whichever position you're dealt. I never really saw a big advantage in taking my actions before another player, but I'm sure it comes up sometimes.

Second of all, this game is very strategy intensive. There are so many things to keep track of each round. Your rice supply, which province would be best to build in, which produces the most gold, which can support more buildings, which province is vulnerable to attack, which of your enemy provinces you can afford to attack, etc. I would not be exaggerating at all if I said it was like playing Risk and two copies of Puerto Rico at the same time. If you're into that kind of thing, great. But if you're one who likes to try to maximize each turn for maximum benifit, you're in for a headache. The game is most enjoyable, I think, if you spend a little bit of time thinking, and a little bit of time just winging it.

All in all, I'd like to play it again with more people. I'd always have the chance of borrowing it, and I think I might take him up on the offer if I can generate interest.

Battlestar Galactica Session: "Tigh's TOTALLY a Cylon...oh wait"

Alright, so I played a five player game of Battlestar Galactica last Saturday, and it was full of thrills and intrigue. Here are our players:
Owen: Lee "Apollo" Adama
Kevin: Gaius Baltar
Tristan: Saul Tigh
Mike: Chief Tyrol
Me: Kara "Starbuck" Threis
Everyone is new to playing the game except me, but I think I explained it well and we get off to a good start.

Loyalty cards are handed out, and of course Baltar gets two. Baltar also informs me (on my loyalty card), that I am most definitely NOT a cylon. But he also informs me these tests are never 100% accurate, so we'll have to see. I immediately suspect Kevin's Baltar, but I'll withhold my judgement. I remind myself that right now, nobody could be a cylon.

Baltar gets the presidency, and Tigh gets the Admiralty. And we're off!

We pass the first few skill checks, and everything is going along swimmingly. No negative cards the destiny deck couldn't've thrown in. But I'm watching, oh yes. With narrowed eyes I survey my fellow "humans". The cylons haven't shown their big ol' basestars yet, so we're left a little free time to do as we will. President Baltar starts stocking up on loyalty cards, I launch some vipers in preparation for the coming onslaught (I am a pilot after all), and everyone else starts drawing extra cards with various locations and the "consolidate resources" card. I try to pay close attention to who draws what, but it's too difficult.

But soon, more and more negative cards begin to creep into our skill checks. On one check three red piloting cards show up. There are only two pilots, me and Lee. I narrow my eyes at Lee, and point out to everybody the red cards. But of course, since I am a pilot too, this brings attention to me. I am convinced: there is definitely a cylon in the fleet. But who? I mean, its most likely Apollo, but with so many cards being drawn, someone could've gotten some extra to throw the blame around. I decide to hold back on the brig talk and watch.

We jump once with a destination of '2', then get close again. Still no Basestars! We jump again, this time with a '1'. Hmm, our Admiral hasn't been choosing that great on locations. Interesting. So now I have two suspects: Tigh and Apollo. Both Tyrol and Baltar have thrown in some "add 2 to pass a skill check" cards that really saved us, so I think they're cool.

Finally we reach the sleeper phase. I get my second loyalty card and...still human! Dang, I mean...whew! But now there are definitely two cylons in the fleet. Tigh has a rules question, and instead of asking for the rule book, he blurts it out: "So if you have a human card and a cylon card, you're still a human, right?" Uh oh. We all look nervously around. Balar immediately uses his "look at another players loyalty cards" ability, and chooses Tigh. He takes a peeks...and declares the Tigh is a frakkin toaster. So Tigh gets thrown in the brig, the Admiralty passes to Apollo, and finally we draw a crisis card that sets a cylon fleet. Alright! I've got a fistful of piloting cards and the expert pilot ability. Lets rumble!

But it would seem the humans have some infighting. Accusations are thrown around, and now Apollo gets thrown into the brig. Passing the Admiralty onto...me! However, it is short lived, because the next crisis card sends me to the brig, giving the Admiralty to Tyrol. We jump, and the cylons go away. Wow, we're almost there, and we still don't have any revealed cylons. At this point, I'm pretty sure the two cylon players are in the brig with me, so I focus on my escape. I try to bust out and...someone keeps thwarting my attempts! There is a free cylon somewhere! No sooner do I voice my concerns than does Baltar say "See you suckas later", offs himself, and lands on the resurection ship. Freaking Baltar! He also shoots Tyrol along the way, landing him in sickbay.

Next turn: Apollo bids adieu to the humans and joins his cylon brother. Well crap. Hey, but we're still good. Sure, morale's at three, but the rest of our resources are good. We all kick Tigh for acting so suspiciously, but then appologize for putting him in the brig.

We survive one super crisis by forcing a jump, putting population at 6. We sacrifice for the good of the many! That put us at a distance of 8. One more jump and humans win! Our next few crises get us two up the jump track. But then we get to a kicker: a choice crisis card. Either take a hit on -1 morale, or perform the check and risk loosing 2. My choice. I'm about to choose the -1 when our good buddy Tyrol says that he has a lot of good cards that would help us pas the check. I reluctanly agree. And of course we fail. I should've reminded him that with expecting a -5 from the destiny deck and a -5 from our resident skinjobs, we would've needed 17 to pass.

Our morale is at 1, and humanity is about ready to throw in the towel we're so depressed. But we just have to survive two straight cylon turns, and humans win!

Apollo comes up, and tries to activate the human fleet location in an attempt to damage our FTL drive. No luck, our armory is blown up. Meh. But then Baltar's turn comes up, and I remember that he still has his super crisis card. And play it he does. Skill check of 24...fail and we loose 1 morale.

Frak!

I look dismally on as Tigh says he can't add any cards, and Tyrol adds 2. My whole hand counts toward the check...I add it up to 16. I hold my breath as I plop my entire hand on the table, and the cylons add their two.

We turn them over one by one, totalling up as we go...and reach a 20.

Morale drops to 0, humanity declares 'all is lost', and we all start flushing each other out of airlocks. Cylons win, humans loose.

Frakkin Baltar!

Every Superhero Needs a Good Origin Story

Lately I've been wracking my brains to try and remember how I came to play Dungeons and Dragons. I know it happened around age 14...that would be about 1999. I'm a real veteran, I know. I know none of my friends got me into it, nor any fantasy genre movie or video game. I just remember roleplaying, in my own particular style.

It didn't start off as very similar to DnD, more akin to the result of a choose-your-own-adventure book gone awry. It was always one-on-one, and I was the "dm". My friend and I would just be kicking back, probably in my living room, and I would set a scene for him. I remember those parts vividly. It would usually be something like "you find yourself in a forrest. To the north, you see a sparkling castle made entirely of ice. To the west you can hear the sound of rushing water. " Etcetera. Then he would choose a direction and off adventuring he would go. There would be magical items, like swords that shot fireballs. There would be quests up volcanos. It was great fun.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was pretty dang close to traditional sandbox style OD&D. Sure, there was no dice, nor stats or inventory. Sure, I never prepared any material ahead of time. I just thought of it as a poor man's DnD at the time, since I didn't know how to find the actual game, in a time before the prevalence of the internet and the popular status of roleplaying now.

I finally did get a hold of some product. It was a Forgotten Realms box set thing, 2nd edition I think. I remember thinking the maps were pretty cool. With no one to teach me who knew how to play DnD "properly", I weilded it like child might weild a sledgehammer, bludgeoning the crafted adventures into something I could readily digest and regurgitate to my (usually one) followers.

So while I still consider myself a product of the 3rd edition era, my recent forrays into old-school DnD gaming feels very familiar, like a warm coat. It makes you think, because the metagaming just isn't there. When your DM is running a 3.5 module, you know the conventions. You know that if a door doesn't open now, the key will be somewhere in the dungeon. You know that if the king asks for you to bring him the orb in the Kobold King's lair in exchange for the magic shard, well, that's the only way you're going to get that magic shard. You know that if you don't get a 15 or higher on that search check, there's no way you'll ever be getting whatever cool stuff was in this room.

But now, hey! Maybe that key is just lost for all time. Or maybe with some sly words you could bribe the king's advisor to getting that shard for you. Or maybe, if you just look reeeaaallllyyy carefully at weird statue, you might find that magic hammer.

Go find that magic hammer Svaalgard. Go find it and make everyone RESPECT the skull of your dead king.