GAMING NEWS: Saturday With The Gang (1 April 2006)!

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday, I ended up getting a chance to game thanks to Dave Story... You see, Dave has a low threshold for gaming frustration and Charles has been wanting to play "Sword of Rome" for some time now. Now, Dave owes Charles so Charles roped him into playing on Saturday and then along comes a certain fool that we all know... me! So, I ended up taking Dave's place yesterday and he got off Scott- free!

"Sword of Rome" isn't a bad game... just a long one... and some of the mechanics are known to drive some players out of their gourds... like... Kimbo, myself and poor Mike yesterday!

So, all four of us showed up yesterday...

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Game #1. Sword of Rome

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/7480

Players:
- Charles: Samnites / Estruscans
- Kimbo: Gauls
- Maksim: Greeks
- Mike: Romans

("Sword of Rome" graphic image courtesy of BGG.)

And while we decided to call the game a draw, Mike was probably the big winner. He played a good game... if the dice just didn't trip him up!

And I probably lost simply based upon my kvetching total being met very early in the day. Charles just about expired from the laughter generated by the friendly rivalry between Mike and I. And poor Kimbo hit a miasma of hypoglycemia before we decided to take a lunch break. Oh, the inhumanity we endure to wargame! LOL

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Game #2. Commands & Colors: Ancients

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/14105

Scenario #10 The Battle of Zama!

Players:
- Maksim: Romans - 8 banners - Win!
- Mike: Carthaginians - 2 banners.

This was the big one... where the Carthaginians finally lost it all after putting up the good fight before the Roman juggernaught. And Mike and I ended up with relatively historical results... he was slaughtered and I took minimal casualties for the victory. As consolation to Mike, the Carthos don't have the odds with them in that battle.

As a side note, we're going to need to research how elephants work because we had a little confusion there... does the 'phant rampage if it can't retreat... or only rampage when it dies?

I can also see that some leaders are far more useful in command of infantry than cavalry. My Roman cavalry leaders did little to nothing but take sling fire. I'm thinking of transfering the Roman cavalry leader to an infantry unit next game.

We'll have to ask our local C&C:A experts about these things, which would probably be Dick and Kimbo!

We would have asked Kimbo on the sport, but he had to leave before we broke out C&C:A as the last game of the day.

Since Zama is such a huge battle, both Mike and I found the Line Command card to be invaluable and we both had some.

Our lines essentially advanced on each other though the battle until the weight of both slammed into each other and contact was made.

As a Roman player, I used smaller cards for most of my beginning turns to set up a few huge Line Command gambits.

Mike appeared to be moving his troops piecemeal except for his elephants, which slammed into my line of medium troops rather well. Unfortunately, they didn't do that much damage for such huge behemoths (Although I recall that Carthaginian elephants were actually rather small as elephants go).

While the mediums seemed dangerous, it was actually Roman light infantry that did most of the work. They prepped the targets, engaged in close combat and then ran when they took enough of their own damage.

It was a good game and Mike might have done better had his rolling been a little hotter or had he had a better hand of cards.

ROMA VICTOR!

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Have a great Sunday!

I think I'm going to have a good one as I'll be meeting up with a friend and have a full day planned including a nice hike along the river...

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

P.S.
The C&C:A part of this post was crossposted at BGG here:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/867864#867864