Dragons Passed
More catchup: another bout of two-player gaming, week and a half ago, Roman and I. Slight resemblance to the "other" Tuesday night, as first up was... Dragon Pass! Roman had made a copy of the rules to read over beforehand, and I'd cracked them open the night before to remind myself, and/or cure insomnia. We opted for the very first scenario over the second, not so much because of any vast complexity difference involved in using the missile combat rules -- "Ducks", "Ducks and" "More Ducks"! -- as because it was a turn shorter. Roman chose the Lunars, and set up along the roads immediate outside Old Sartar, with some covering forces back in the Fortresses in his hands; I set up directly next to him, effectively forcing him to attack them immediately. First round went well for me, and I'd soon eliminated most of his forces in the west, with one survivor fleeing along the road to Duck Point. In the north, stronger Lunar forces remained, and they regroup to make a combined attack with two stacks against the end of a group of my forces, then after eliminating those, using advance after combat to combine into a single large stack. Rather than attack it on my next turn, I withdrew from the pallisade. After a while I was able to regroup, and make an attack against that stack near Jonstown, bringing my Barbarian Horde stack back from almost all the way to Aldachur to participate. That did the business, and the Lunars were left just with scattered forces. I defended all the Fortresses, to make sure I didn't lose any of them to sneaky Lunar moves, so Roman concentrated all his remaining forces on an attack on Jonstown. It was unsuccessful, and the counterattack wiped it out completely, right on the final turn of the game. Result, Sartarite forces held five fortresses, for a win.
Observation: the combination of "defensive doubling" and requirement to attack adjacent stacks means that unless one is attacking with overwhelming force, or rolls very well, counterattacks can be very painful, and if you can force the enemy to do so first, it often seems advantageous. This happened with both the initial setup, and the advance after combat (since otherwise the moving player is the one that'll end up as the initial attacker). This can force vacation of otherwise favourable defensive territory, which is a nasty touch.
We'd a bit of time on hand, so we had a quick game of Richelieu. Been a while, and we had to refresh our memories. Basically it's a set collection/majority scoring game, with the main wrinkles being the two "sets of sets" (Provinces, and symbols, with every tile having one or two of the former, and the ones with just one possibly having a cross, sword, or tower), having to take tiles in a "outside-in" manner from a somewhat patience-like display of four rows, plus the bonus markers, and the player (king and cardinal) markers to "reserve" a tile. I lost out badly on the Provinces, and was sure I'd lost it on those, but as it turned out, scored even more heavily on the "symbols", and I won 26-22 overall. More enjoyable than I'd remembered: must play again.
Observation: the combination of "defensive doubling" and requirement to attack adjacent stacks means that unless one is attacking with overwhelming force, or rolls very well, counterattacks can be very painful, and if you can force the enemy to do so first, it often seems advantageous. This happened with both the initial setup, and the advance after combat (since otherwise the moving player is the one that'll end up as the initial attacker). This can force vacation of otherwise favourable defensive territory, which is a nasty touch.
We'd a bit of time on hand, so we had a quick game of Richelieu. Been a while, and we had to refresh our memories. Basically it's a set collection/majority scoring game, with the main wrinkles being the two "sets of sets" (Provinces, and symbols, with every tile having one or two of the former, and the ones with just one possibly having a cross, sword, or tower), having to take tiles in a "outside-in" manner from a somewhat patience-like display of four rows, plus the bonus markers, and the player (king and cardinal) markers to "reserve" a tile. I lost out badly on the Provinces, and was sure I'd lost it on those, but as it turned out, scored even more heavily on the "symbols", and I won 26-22 overall. More enjoyable than I'd remembered: must play again.