Here is a peek into the cutting-edge Vassal module engineered by the great Brian Reynolds for Levy & Campaign Series Volume II, Almoravid, from a solo game that Volko played to test out module operation. Have a look!
Below you will find a The Plum Island Horror short story written by David Spangler. Please note that this is a work of fiction and not an example of gameplay. Enjoy! -Rachel
Below you will find the seventh in a series of After Action Report articles written by players participating in The Last Hundred Yards ladder play on BGG. You can find the first six articles in this series here. If you would like to participate in the LHY ladder play, please contact Mark Buetow through the LHY Facebook page or on BGG. Enjoy!
Below you will find the fourth and final part in an article series from Elihu Feustel featuring a Labyrinth: The Awakening turn-by-turn playthrough. If you would like to read the first three parts in the series, those can be found here. Enjoy!
How they work and the history behind them.
The victory conditions in Baltic Empires have been constructed to give players multiple paths to victory and to allow for sudden death victories, as it is my experience that this keeps players on their toes and gives a far more exciting game with more intense diplomatic interaction between players. Besides the default victory conditions, players also have the opportunity during play to recruit Dramatis Personae that either replace some of their default victory conditions or offer entirely new ones. In this article I will go through the different victory conditions and explain how they work and what they represent in terms of history.
There are 3 ways of winning a Sudden Death Victory:
The first one is to achieve Cultural Hegemony by being on top of the Mercantile, Production and Military Hegemon Tracks (prototype track pictured to the left). The Hegemon Tracks and how they influence Turn order will be described in detail in the next article in this series, but for victory purposes all you need to know about them is that a Power’s position on each of these tracks is the sum of their controlled infrastructure or units associated with that track (Cities and Customs Houses for the Mercantile Track, Workshops for the Production Track, and units for the Military Track), as well as any modifiers that are specific to that Power, or from Dramatis Personae cards that they may have attached to their Court.
By achieving all three Hegemon positions at once, you have put yourself in a position where you are ahead of the other players financially, economically, and militarily. Such a status would naturally make your power a cultural center and the envy of the other rulers. As such it represents the ultimate goal of every great power in history. A victory of this kind is relatively rare, but it allows for a potentially non-violent way to win, and gives an incentive for the other players to work together to pull down a clear leader.
Below you will find the sixth in a series of After Action Report articles written by players participating in The Last Hundred Yards ladder play on BGG. You can find the first five articles in this series here. If you would like to participate in the LHY ladder play, please contact Mark Buetow through the LHY Facebook page or on BGG. Enjoy!
Let’s begin with a school question: when did WWII start? The generally acknowledged answer is September 1, 1939. But if we define war as a state of actual armed hostilities, regardless of a formal declaration of war, we may find that the answer is not so simple. During the Munich Crisis of 1938 (and here we are talking about the time before the Munich Agreement was signed), paramilitary groups of Sudeten Germans trained and armed in Germany, with headquarters near Bayreuth, were operating within Czechoslovak territory. Small numbers of SS and Wehrmacht personnel (usually company-sized units) even crossed the border to fight there too, carrying out raids and kidnapping hundreds of Czechoslovaks, many of whom would later die in German concentration camps. The Bell of Treason may focus on the conflict of ideas between conceding the Sudetenland or standing up against Germany, but during the same period terror and killing had already started in the Sudetenland. In this article we will look at how the game depicts Germans in two different ways: political and military.
As I’ve explained to you all numerous times before (ad nauseum, to be honest), each player involved in The Plum Island Horror will be controlling one of the six available factions. These factions represent groups of people who are associated with one another for one reason or another … work, recreation, favorite bourbons, culinary tastes, blood types – that kind of thing. We’ve done extensive research, analysis of personnel records, combing of social media, hacking of phones and whatever else we could think of to bring as accurate a portrayal of these loosely-bound groups of individuals as possible. The factions each have their own particular personality and flavor, reflecting the general skills, tendencies and behavior of these hapless, cobbled-together groups of individuals who are desperately trying to save their home island – and probably all of humanity as well. No pressure at all. Here is a brief synopsis of what you can expect from each of these factions, which of course will always result in you losing the game regardless. But hey – you will be defeated in uniquely entertaining ways each time, so there’s that to look forward to.
Yet one more mid-week wargaming evening and another mini-campaign played! The idea was to bring to the table C&C Ancients scenarios featuring the clash between Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompey. That most famous Roman Civil War completely obliterated the Republic system and paved the path for the creation of the empire. As we had only as much time as one evening, we decided on 3 of the most interesting or prominent scenarios – the full set encompasses as many as 11 battles!
So what we have chosen is here – with a short comment why:
Ok, so without further delay, let me invite you to the first century BC, Rome. First and foremost – Illerda!
Below you will find the fifth in a series of After Action Report articles written by players participating in The Last Hundred Yards ladder play on BGG. You can find the first four articles in this series here. If you would like to participate in the LHY ladder play, please contact Mark Buetow through the LHY Facebook page or on BGG. Enjoy!
