2010 WBC
Gary Phillips
United States
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Games played at this years WBC. Really was the best time ever. Good mix of old favorites, open gaming, events, playtests and new games.
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Gary Phillips
United States
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First up Monday morning was the Warriors of God tourney. It drew 31 players this year, up quite a bit from last year. Ably GM'd by Terry Coleman, who is my pick for GM of the year this year.
I played two new players in the first two rounds, which put me in the semi-finals versus the GM, who schooled me as the English. Warriors of God is a great game...with some deep strategy for such a mechanically simple game. And Leader Death Rolls!
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Gary Phillips
United States
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Tuesday was a day long playtest of It Never Snows, a five map SCS system game on Operation Market Garden. This was it's first playing, and four of us spent most of the day on it. The game it most resembles in mechanics is the recent SCS Bastogne. There were some seams, to be sure, but we also had fun with it while taking copious playtest notes.
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Gary Phillips
United States
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Wednesday morning is always Wilderness War at WBC, always GM'd by the very capable Keith Wixson. This year in the first round I drew Dr. Rob, which was fun, as he is a good friend, and a fungi. Dr. Rob had played before, but was rusty and I had drawn my beloved French for a change, so I won.
Second game was against George Young, a dangerous opponent, but I again got the French. Every speed bump 1SP I threw at him scored a hit, while George was unable to roll high whenever it mattered. A lucky dicing for me.
Final game was Paul Gaberson, and I was forced to finally play the British. I actually was not doing badly, but a lack of imagination on my part and good French play by Paul sealed my doom. Paul went on to win the whole event (second event in a row I was put out by the eventual champion).
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Gary Phillips
United States
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Wednesday evening was El Grande with Brian, Perry, Ken and Nathan Hill. Always fun playing with that crowd, lots of backbiting and poor mouthing going on, all game long. Perry won.
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Gary Phillips
United States
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Thursday was a game of Storm over Arnhem II: Frost's Revenge, an update of the old classic using some of the mechanics (I.e. cards, only the attacker rolls combats, etc) from the more recent Storm over Stalingrad and it's children.
I took the Brit's against Brian's Germans, and lost, but it is early days for this one. I liked it though, as I have liked all the Storm Over games I've played, particularly another game in development, Storm Over Dien Bien Phu (available for pre-order from MMP).
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6.
Board Game: Ra
[Average Rating:7.60 Overall Rank:48]
Gary Phillips
United States
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There were four heats of Ra from which to chose from during the week, and I finally made one Thursday. When I got there, I found that the GM had allowed a player who wanted to make an event that started an hour after the Ra heat to gather a table of players for '1 hour Ra'. I volunteered.
It was a blast! I loved playing 'speed' Ra. I eventually finished last, but had a lot of fun doing it. If only more events had 'fast tracks'.
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Gary Phillips
United States
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Later on Thursday, JR waved me over to a game of Rush N Crush as I cruised through open gaming. R'n'C was a racing game with very fast and heavily armed racers. We were in a bit of a time squeeze because a couple of players had an event coming up, but we managed to kill them in time so they could go, and IIRC I died shortly there after. While fast and armed these racers can't actually take a lot of punishment. It was fun, though I wasn't overwhelmed. I think I might have liked the advanced game better.
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Gary Phillips
United States
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Friday. Actually, we weren't playing a scenario from ASLSK #3, but were playtesting a Historical ASLSK module on the battle of Elst during operation Market Garden. Forrest were the Germans from this scenario later in the battle, with some infantry and a 75mm AT Gun, while I had a strong infantry force and four British Shermans. I mangled the attack as the Brits by not using my tanks or my OBA (new to Starter Kit in this module) to throw Smoke where needed and got shot to hell.
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Gary Phillips
United States
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Later, Ken broke out his new copy of King Philip's War and we played the first few turns. It was easy to pick up and start playing, but I made some crucial first game mistakes as Philip and the Indians that I know not to make next time.
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Gary Phillips
United States
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Friday night was also the Battle Line event. I showed up and was placed in a 'pod' of four, where we all had to play each other once. I went 1-2 and so did not advance from our pod.
When I got back to the MMP demo table I ran into Dr. Rob, who had never played Battle line before, so we played three games of it.
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11.
Board Game: Rattus
[Average Rating:6.92 Overall Rank:431]
Gary Phillips
United States
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Brian had bought this, a charming little peasant-and-rat placement game on the Black Plague. It had some interesting role choosing mechanics...choosing a role gave you it's advantages, but also made your peasants more vulnerable to the plague.
We played it three times Friday night. I give it a thumbs up, it's short enough to almost qualify as a good filler game.
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Gary Phillips
United States
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Saturday Ken and I got this on the table...unfortunately we never finished the game, as I thought Ken had come up with an interesting strategy for the Germans, and also, I like playing against Ken.
We made it about halfway when a break for another game, the Charlie awards, and dinner scuppered our chances to finish it.
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Gary Phillips
United States
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I played Peter Card a game of this, one of my favorite 'quick' wargames. Peter hadn't played it before but he did take the time to carefully read the rules before hand, so with a minimum of fuss we started. I gave him the Germans, which have seemed to be favored so far. I'm thinking the game might benefit from a vp bid mechanic for who gets to play the Germans.
Not that my Commonwealth play is any indicator of balance. Peter quickly got the idea of pounding the British armor to dust with 15th and 21st Panzer, and coupled with his unnatural ability to roll for Tank Recovery he rolled to a victory, though it came down to him grabbing a couple of banners on the last turn to seal the deal.
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Gary Phillips
United States
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Saturday night was another game of El Grande. I made the huge mistake of grabbing a scoring card that gave me a twenty point lead. I was targeted for destruction and never recovered....
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15.
Board Game: Rattus
[Average Rating:6.92 Overall Rank:431]
Gary Phillips
United States
Unspecified
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My final game of WBC 2010 was a night cap of Rattus...I think I won.
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