PBEM Olympic Standings

Medal count after 8 events
Player	Gold	Silver	Bronze
Nathan	2	3	3
Justin	3	2	1
Chester	2	1	3
Charles	1	3	1

Finishing the Reef Encounter series with a gold has pushed Nathan back to the clear leader of the pack. I failed to medal (again). I hadn't played RE before this year, but I have played 7 games recently and I decided I don't care much for this game. The ideas aren't bad, but there is very little chance for truly clever play, which means that luck plays too dramatic a role in determining the winner. In our last game, both of the first two players were able to get a cube and THREE matching reef tiles. Unsurprisingly, the two of them were close at the end, but the other two scores were WAY back of their scores. Well, on to the next game...

PBEM Olympic Standings

Medal count after 7 events
Player	Gold	Silver	Bronze
Nathan	1	3	3
Justin	3	1	1
Chester	2	1	2
Charles	1	3	1

Tikal was the last event finished and went down to the last game. Things went perfectly for Nathan and he was able to create a tie for last and avoid being shut out of a medal. Interestingly, if you award points for the medals, Justin and Nathan are tied at 12 and Chester and I are tied at 10 - Nathan of course is leading the medal count. Nathan did get to choose the next game and has gone with Tigris and Euphrates.

Combat Commander - #8 Breakout Dance

This blog isn't the only that has been on hiatus this summer. So has Robert Bolan and I's regular games of Combat Commander: Europe. We finally resumed on Monday.  Picking up where we left off, we Robert chose to move forward to the next scenario and choose to play the Allies.

Situation Report: Velikiye-Luki, Russia, Jan. 1943 - As the Kalinin Front - led by several Soviet Shock (but not awe) Armies - drove westward they were able to completely encircle the German 277th Infantry Regiment at Velikye-Luki. Outside relife for this surrounded force was not to be had, however, so orders were given for its units to effect a breakout.

So, Robert setup his Russians and perched his medium machine gun on a hilltop (this was our first scenario with elevated terrain). His only goal? - keep me from getting off the map. My only goal? Get off the map. This scenario also saw us fighting at night, which made the fire orders much less effective. We spent a number of turns just discarding, trying to find the cards we needed. Then I made a run for it and was able to get almost all my units off the map. I had one leader, one squad, and the German hero grouped up in a fox hole. The time event happened and I brought reinforcements back to the map and started moving them down the other side of the map (away from where Robert had been massing troops to keep my set from moving). Things were very grim looking for Robert as I raced my troops across the mostly empty map. When I finally had to move my men past Robert's lone outpost, he advanced on me to go melee. We both had ambush cards (in fact, I had three in my hand) and we were down to whatever fate our cards held for us. Unfortunately for Robert, his fate deck held an event - the dreaded Prisoners of War. This event causes you to remove one of your broken units from the map that are adjacent to an enemy. Robert's only choice was the broken unit involved in the melee. This happened to me as well one time, but twice to Robert during his last ditch efforts to stop me. Having failed, I easily moved all my men off the board at the same time for victory.

Sorry I've Been Gone

Well, here we are - two months since my last post. It has been a busy hectic summer and I have just not felt like posting a thing lately. The thing is - I like posting. There is a certain therapeutic-ness (that's not really the word I'm looking for) to the whole blogging about nothing that I enjoy. So...

I've played some games this summer. Some new, some old. The PBEM Olympics have continued, but we had a couple good sized breaks in the action with vacations. I've either hit a slump, or I just suck - been getting killed lately.

I've made a few trades and bought a few games. Nothing really stands out. Gonzaga was pretty cool. Fresco has been getting a lot of word of mouth, but I didn't see anything special to get excited over. The simple game is ridiculously simple, and the advance game didn't excite me that much - there was clearly a single strong way to play it.

I took some games along on my family vacation this summer. We spent the better part of a week on a houseboat. Of course, with a boatload of kids from ages 4-11, Uno was the big hit. Kinder Bunnies and Qwirkle Cubes were also hits. To Court The King got some play and I taught Wyatt Earp to the adults (one of the non-gamer adults wanted to know where he could buy it as he really liked it). I remain convinced that there are loads of adults that would enjoy a lot of the games that are out there, but until someone can break through the mass market barrier, they just won't make it. The thing with Wyatt Earp - the guy that liked it a lot complained he was lost as I explained it (having likely not played anything like it), but he picked it right up after a couple draws.

Anyways, I need to get a few updates to the Olympics up and a session report from last week. Hopefully we'll be back to normal soon.